Calypso

She rode the back of a wave like a professional surfer, lifting and curling arching her back. Moving through the water and powering through tubes. When the winds dropped and waters were once again calm; she disappeared. Calypso is exhilarating to watch and watched she was.

On the coast set high in the cliff is a house. The Mariner, as the name suggests, was owned by a seaman and had been for centuries. The young occupant, Andrew, was passed the legacy from his grandfather. The house more or less looked the same as it did a hundred years before. Andrew was recovering from an awful accident, and for the past year, he spent hours looking out the panoramic window to the sea. Andrew sat and watched; he seemed to be searching. In fact he was hoping for a glimpse of her. With his powerful Harbour master’s antique spy glass, raised on a platform in front of the window; he watched. The glass had been his saving, since his accident. Much of his recuperation was taken up at the window watching and waiting.

Andrew was sailing just off the coast, when a freak storm lifted his vessel and tossed him overboard. He was found on the beach by a local; walking his dog. The man saw him, lying face down; with most of his clothes ripped from his form. Wounds bled from almost every part of him, and bones protruded from his leg arm and shoulder. Swollen and unrecognisable, Doctors didn’t hold out much hope, as he lay comatose for several weeks.

Slowly he mended, and other than the strange hallucinations about that night; he soon was at full strength. He couldn’t get Calypso out of his mind.” How did he know her name? Was he going mad? Did she really kick up the storm that almost killed him?” He couldn’t fathom why he would believe this? Not only his mind, but even his own eyes were challenging him. Being a down to earth man as he was, he struggled with the memories. So why? Every night that the moon was bright and the sky clear; did he search the sea? With the old spy glass propped on its plinth.

Like a magnet, he was drawn towards the window that dominated the room. Calypso was there. She put on a display that made him verbally groan, his masculinity stoked, desire was pumping in every pore. Knowing his sanity was at stake he forced himself away from the sight. Moments later he twitched and was drawn back. Andrew picked up his eye glass, a powerful modern piece; hoping to get a closer view. He could see nothing but rippling sea. That was when he knew the catalyst was the antique, as if she were inside it. Quickly he went to it, lifted the glass to his eye and searched. Andrew’s breathing became ragged and his hand shook; as once again he saw her. It was like she was calling him, Andrew heard the soft lilting song travelling through the air all around him. Calypso arched her back and whipped her hair over her head it seemed as if she was looking straight at him, when she beckoned him with her hand. Afraid for his sanity, he stepped back. Shaking his head in disbelief, he went to splash his face and compose himself. Logically she could only be a figment of his imagination, that’s what he had to believe.

Pulling on his coat as he went down to the Jetty. The wind whipped up a squall from nowhere, the sky darkened and the shingle rattled as the waves came bounding over it. Andrew’s vision was obscured by the weather, so he climbed wearily back the way he came. Taking himself to bed he hesitated at the medication on his bedside; then swallowed them down. He had a lousy night and decided this rubbish had to stop. Next morning he packed the glass in a box in the loft. He finished his healing at his Mothers house, and soon Calypso was forgotten.

But sometimes he hears an eerie song; which catches him unawares. Just sometimes, the call of the Mermaid challenges his sanity. On the nights of a bright moon, a flash of colour can be seen out at sea. And once in a while, he returns tired from days on the waves, the spy glass stands there in the window and he can’t resist; one last gaze.

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