The Scarlet Son

Truth, such an insignificant thing compared to the monolith of belief. Where does one end and the other begin? Maybe they are mated and matted in an untidy knot, each one end of the same string.

Won’t you untie me, Mr. Shibari?

I used to look for heartache in crowds. It is a glint in the eyes, it is an open tab at the bar, it is a thing without feathers. It was as drawn to me as I was predisposed to it. An inherited curse. I saw it in my mother, father, then in my brother. Since I was young enough to perceive, I believed it was bound and would eventually bind me all the same. A pirate captain assembling his motley crew I’d look for kindred spirits, because if I could not liberate myself from this hex, then I could commiserate in the strangers beds on which I’d lie, existing on such a strange tide. Rolling in the waves of bedsheets and comforters. All salt-licked and moon-tanned skin. Candle singed beard burning in the night; a plume of smoke in the day.

I was born in an oceanside town. Poseidon himself kissed my head through my mother’s womb, and I suckled brine from Amphitrite’s breast. My mother said I came out right hand first, like I was waving to a crowd. If I could’ve spoken then, maybe I’d have said something prophetic, like, “Follow me into the belly of a swirling eddy and I’ll show you a treasureless map with a heart that marks the nowhere spot”.

My mother named me Adam. Man, humanity, son of the red earth. I asked her once if she plucked it from the Bible, the saint that she was, but she only smiled and said, “No.”

Thirty years have passed. And now I sit behind a worn glass-topped desk, as weathered a seaman as any other great. No one calls me Adam anymore. Somewhere along the way, I was given the moniker of “The Scarlet Son”. To the drunkards in taverns, and the bards with their blistered fingers, I am a shanty. To the outlaws and mercenaries, I am a saviour. And through the looking glasses of naval captains who hope to spot my feathered hat, I am prestige and bags of gold coin.

A beacon of hope for some and a harbinger to others; the red sky at night or the red sky in the morning. The lighthouse and the tempest.

I’ve never cultivated the tales I’m told of myself, though I’ve never shied away from them either. There is nothing wrong with a reputation. It cuts out the middle man. Why deny the benefits of lore, as though it could ever be controlled? A dragon would never tell a knight it can’t breathe fire. A mermaid would never tell a sailor she cannot sing the siren’s song. And I would never deny the key to a chest from a powder-wigged naval officer.

I reach into the cabinet behind me and tenderly retrieve a carved mahogany box, my first plunder, a piece of my mother I stole before emancipating myself for her well-being. Cartomancy beckoned me as it did her. It necessitates a certain hollowness of the soul to channel something greater than the body and mind.

People mistake divinity for a guarantee. I’ve watched men and women tremble while slipping gold coins into some paper-nicked hand and show off the whites of their eyes while a so-called prophet shuffles omens and makes a meal of telling fates. In their favour, I cannot blame the common man for falling victim to this spectacle, because these actors are so well-rehearsed that maybe they themselves become their own victims too. Lifting the lid to lay back on its hinges, I trace the spine of worn edges, all the cards lay together in a stack. Some orgy of the future waiting to come. Forget them as being cards. Each one is a sentence on a decorated page that, combined, becomes a fable. How do fables become misconstrued as fate?

Now, all wise men keep secrets. After all, what are we if not the secrets we keep? I used to think that honesty was the highest virtue, but I’ve come to see that isn’t always the case. I close the box and set it back in the alcove. Through the window, I see the sun has finished slinking below the horizon line, and run a hand through my hair.

On deck, in front of my men, in a long and violently red coat, patched with fine fabrics stolen from notable merchants and rich families, I walk down the line of jeering sailors. All riled up from a week without fighting or fucking, which I’ve found is when they most desperately need leadership, I summon cruelty in my gaze and size them all up.

“What a lonesome night,” I say flatly.

“No fuckin’ shit,” someone spits, and the comment garners some momentum in the form of gruff nods and a few solid “ayes!” The rowdy dangers of boredom swell, unlike the waves, which much like these swashbucklers is in need of a blow. Above or below the belt. But still, my audience leans in.

Because to them, I am my legends. They will never know me as Adam. They will never know me as a child who sat in his mother’s boney lap and read her fortune. They will never know the man, alone in his quarters, who struggles to reconcile with determination and predetermination. I never planned to live this long, so I plan to live tomorrow just as aimlessly, and I will let the poets and historians compose my character and his respective intentions.

“No asses to grab, no throats to choke, and what could be worse than an unsucked cock and an empty palm?”

“Nothing!” The crowd cries.

“Goddamn right!” I stomp my booted foot hard on the deck, just once, and even I can feel the electricity. My body like a conduit, my heel a bolt of lightning. In these moments, I understand the stories I’ve heard of me.