"The Sea Wraith" by Amethee Hewitt

Good day to you. My name is Amethee, and I'm afraid to say that I'm dead. I have been for quite some time now, over one hundred years, and that warrants some explanation. Less the fact that I'm dead though, more the part of my still being capable of telling you this.

So here we go, I'm laying all of my cards out on the table, but to tell you the truth I don't think I'm playing with a full deck. Maybe I shall find a few more while I tell the story.

Alright then, I suppose I should start at the beginning, or at the very least the beginning of what I know, which just so happens to be the end of my life.

The first thing I remember is being on a frosty beach in the early hours of the morning. I was cold and wet, and my throat felt rough and coarse. I had no idea how I had got there.

I looked around me. It was an alien landscape - cold and unforgiving. Behind me lay a thick and forbidding forest, in front a wild and thrashing sea.

On the sand in front of me was one of my brown leather boots. Whatever had occurred for me to end up there must have caused it to come off, so I knelt down to pick it up. As I reached out for it my hand went straight through it.

I stayed there like that for a while, my hand passing through a boot. I had no idea how to describe it, no idea how I was doing it. It all seemed so surreal that for a time I simply could not move.

After some time I came to my senses. I believed there must have been some explanation for this occurrence, and I needed to find it. I wafted my hand to and fro through the boot whilst trying to figure out the cause.

Then it hit me, like a wave. The tumultuous sea had washed something ashore whilst I was messing with the boot, and when I saw what it was I was more dumbfounded than I was with the boot.

Laying on the sand, face down, was a young girl. She had messy brown hair and a sodden brown dress. The waves lapped around her ankles, and one of her feet wore a boot identical to the one I had found, whilst the other did not. The girl was me.

I fell backwards, shuffling back away from the body I too clearly recognised. I was mouthing the word "no" over and over again, shaking my head as I did it, but I was shocked to the point that I could not make any noise. I could barely even breathe, but now I realise that didn't matter that much because I was already beyond the necessity of breath.

I do not recall for how long I did it, but I certainly believe day changed to night and then to day once more, whilst I was curled up under a pine tree in tears. Since being on this island I have marvelled at the beautiful view I get of the night sky, much better than through the smog of London, but that night I payed little attention to the sky.

After some time I heard the crunching of footsteps on the snow behind me, getting slower as they drew nearer. I held my breath, as though that would help me to hide, until I realised quickly it would never work. However, as this dawned on me, I heard the steps move away at their normal pace.

I was safe, I remained undiscovered. I had time to try and figure out how I got here, but now there was a problem. There was a person on this island, and I had no clue as to how they would react to me.

It wasn't long until I discovered that, however, at least in part. The next day I found out how this person reacted to my old form, my much more tangible former host.

I was sat on the beach all night, and into the early hours of the morning, sleep being impossible for me in my new state. When I heard the footsteps I scrambled to my feet and ran to a thick patch of trees nearby so I could watch this person.

Out of the snow strode a lean and rather tall man, at least six feet, with a head of flint-grey hair intermingled with strands of white, as though dusted with the the finest snowfall. He wore what I now know to be the fashion of the time - smartly dressed with a white shirt and matching trousers and waistcoat of a very slightly bluish grey - but no warm coat to protect him from the cold. He had the silver chain of a pocket-watch to match his silver spectacles which he carried in his left hand, his right hand being occupied with a shovel.

He dug the head of his shovel into the ground with some force so that it remained upright when he went to go examine my body. Now donning his spectacles, he turned my lifeless husk over and examined it. Upon realising that one boot was missing, he looked around and found the item of my perplexion on my first day, and then placed it on my foot. Once he was done he lifted it up and went over to the tree I was cowering under the last time he was here, leaning it up against the trunk, giving it the look of a broken marionette.

Then this man began to dig. He began high up the beach, out of reach of the lapping waves and close to the trees. He seemed to struggle in the sand, with it being of poor material for a grave, all falling in upon itself with each shovelful of sand taken out. He was determined though, for some unknown reason.

By the time the shadow night was fast creeping over the horizon, the man finished his work. He then lay the body in the grave, arms by its sides, and then began the task of filling in the grave. This was much easier for him, so he was done in a short amount of time.

When all the sand was filled in he drove the spade into a spot just above the grave, where the headstone should be. Then he knelt down and patted the sand covering my old body before getting up and leaving.

It was a very strange occurrence, although considering I was a ghost it was comparably normal. I spent the night say on the grave, hoping that I could remember some of the experiences that I had shared with my companion six feet beneath me, but nothing came.

The man returned in the morning, and I hid between the trees once again. He approached with a cluster of wild flowers in his hand, a rustic bouquet to grace my burial site. They were very pretty, I only wished that I could be seeing them in a happier circumstance.

He knelt down on the disturbed sand once again, and held the flowers close to his face. At first I believed him to be smelling them, but then I realised he was blowing onto them, and they were slowly becoming encased in a layer of ice. Once they had been encrusted completely with the glistening frost he laid them upon the sand, below the shovel.

Now, all the while I had been there, debris had been washing up on the shore. Not far out at sea there were various jagged rocks, about which I could make out various pieces of flotsam and jetsam from a boat that must have been dashed to pieces upon them, and this was also what was being deposited upon the shore. Watching these pieces, it slowly started to dawn on me that it was probably a shipwreck which brought me to this position.

Of all of the washed up debris that now graced the shore, one piece was clearly recognisable from a ship - the wheel. It looked very rustic, made of worn wood with old bolts holding it together. The man must have seen some value in it, because he picked it up and examined it after placing the flowers.

He turned it about in his hands for a while, before looking over at the shovel that was my makeshift gravestone. Then he walked over to the shovel, removed it from the ground, and dug one of the handles of the wheel into where it was. It was a much nicer tribute, I thought, but he wasn't finished.

He must have seen something else that caught his eye when he picked up the wheel, as he returned to the shore. Squatting on the sand, he picked up a small plank of half-buried wood and brushed the sand from it. I had no idea why it was so interesting, but the man was captivated by it.

He tossed it over to my grave and then began to rummage through the rest of the wreckage. Before long he found what he was looking for - a nail. Using that, and a flat side of his shovel's head, he hammered the piece of wood into the centre of the wheel and, needing to lay it on the sand to do this, he erected the wheel once more.

Then he left, simply strolled off into the woods as though what he had just done was the most normal act in the world. It was, more or less, in comparison to what happened next.

He was barely out of sight when I cautiously emerged from my hiding spot to inspect what he had done. I was slowly edging towards the wheel when I heard a crackling. It was not the crackling of logs on a fire though, but an icy crack. Looking down, I saw its origin.

Spreading outwards like the roots of a tree, ice seemed to be growing out of the flowers. The tendrils spread over the grave, criss-crossing in such a haphazard fashion that eventually the entire section of sand was covered. It was not over yet, as the ice climbed up the wheel, looping around on itself in the gaps in the wood, until that too was encrusted I'm ice and firmly enough connected to the layer atop the grave for it not to fall over.

I was bemused to say the least, as much as when my hand passed through my boot, but it did not stop me from wanting to know the importance of the wood nailed into the wheel. As I peered through the ice that covered it I could make out writing, which must have been why the man noticed it. Carved into the piece of wood were the words "The Sea Wraith".

I had no name until then. I had forgotten whatever I was called before, that memory was claimed by the tumultuous waters which took my life. All that I knew was my body was buried in a grave which named it as "The Sea Wraith", and thus that was the closest thing I had to a name.

The man did no come as much after that. He did visit, but not every day like before. It was very lonely, all by myself for what seemed like it could be an eternity. One day I snapped.

I could not take it any more. I could not take the loneliness or that I could not remember anything about myself or that I was dead. I wanted it all to end so that I would not suffer any more. So I decided to take a walk out to sea.

I had no idea what to expect when I stepped into the waters. I did not even know if I could die again, if I could end once and for all. My only hope was that if the sea could take my life once it could do it again.

The tiny waves lapping at the sand broke through my legs. Not around. Through. It tingled a lot, like pin pricks but gentler. They carried on up my legs the deeper I got.

As I kept moving I noticed my dress stayed as it was on land, not billowing around me as it floated on the water as I had expected. It moved just as it had done on land as well, not stifled by the water.

As I looked at the dress I saw something changing. The material grew darker, not as it would were it sodden, but I sinister and ominous dark. The darkness of the inside of your eyelids when you clench your eyes out of the fear of what you might see in the shadows. The darkness of nothingness.

I felt myself slipping away. The water was up to my neck and I did not know where I ended and the water began. Then the beach disappeared from under me, all of me was submerged. That was where I ended, and the water began.

There was no longer a constrained form holding me in, I pervaded everything, and the darkness pervaded all of me. The sea and I were one. At the same time I was basking in the sun on the surface, and hiding in the murky depths below. I felt a thing beneath me which should not have been, but in many ways needed to be. The ship, that which carried me here, was now a part of me, and I was at peace.

That was where I stayed for the next few days, or weeks, maybe years. I had no concept of time, the sea knows not and cares not when it is, it just is.

I was disturbed. I awoke from my slumber, from the shadowy depths to feel life at the surface. The space in which I resided was unusually devoid of life, unlike the bustling waters about me. It was as though the fish feared me. But something at the shore did not.

I rose from the deep, feeling myself grow smaller as I did so. Life swarmed in to fill the empty space, now vacated by death. I hit the surface and broke free from the form I had taken in the briny depths. I was born again.

But the darkness still engulfed me. That which I became upon entering the water remained, flowing through me. I felt my hair loose around me, floating in the air as though underwater, like seaweed gently tousled by the currents.

I moved towards the source of the disturbance, not so much walking or swimming as gliding across the surface of the water. The closer I drew towards the shore the more I felt the splashing at the water's edge.

My hair lost its buoyancy. I felt myself grow lighter as the darkness left me. The land would soon reclaim the child of the sea, birthed upon its shores.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on the sand, in the same position I had found my body. In front of me was its resting place. To my right was the undertaker, his shoes off and trousers rolled up as he stood in the shallow waters. He looked at me, surprise painted on his face. Then it changed to a friendly smile.

"Hello there, young lady," he said calmly in an accent I didn't recognise. "I wondered when I would see you again."

I panicked and scrambled to my feet before running into the trees. I scrunched myself into a ball on the floor behind one of the pines and hoped he wouldn't follow me. How could I have gone from being so powerful to so vulnerable in such a small space of time?

The footsteps followed me, crunching through the snow, slowly. They stopped behind me. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was crouching down.

"You need not be worried Amethee, I knew your father."

Amethee. Was that me? Is that who I once was, before the Sea Wraith?

"I know that none of this will make any sense to you, dear," his tone became quite sympathetic. "It wasn't meant to happen this way, but if you come with my I can try and explain."

I wanted to know everything, I needed to know what had happened. So I got up, my legs shaking a little because of the nerves. The man gave me a gentle smile to let me know he was a friend, and then gestured for me to follow him.

We walked through the woods together, in silence. The only sound was the brush of his arms against the trees and the small pattering noise as he knocked snow off onto the ground.

Once we were quite far into the woods I saw where the man must have come from. There was a wooden house, fairly large but unfinished, standing in a clearing. Felled trees lay around it - building material to be used for the rest of the house. I could see where new rooms would go, as currently the bottom floor was only about two thirds of the way done, and the walls at the back continued up to suggest a second floor would be built in due course.

"This is my home, Amethee. You and your father were going to help me build it, and live here with me. It has been hard work completing it on my own, as you can see. Let us go inside and I shall explain further."

The inside was just as unfinished and dishevelled as the outside, with stacks of books scattered about the place. There was a rug rolled up at the edge of the room, a fireplace with a mantelpiece laying on the floor in front of it, and three high backed chairs. The bed was also in the same room. It was very spacious, but the amount of furniture spread throughout gave it the illusion of being both cluttered and sparse at the same moment.

"This has been my life for the past three years, and there's not much to show for it. I'd been working on it for about a year before your father set sail over here."

"Do you remember my father?"

His face turned sombre as the words fell from my mouth.

"Amethee, how much do you remember of your life before you came here?"

"Nothing. I knew not even of my name until you called me by it."

"Oh my, take a seat and let me explain everything."

We sat opposite each other and the man told me all he knew of my life, which was considerably more than I knew. He told me that my mother, Theodosia, was little known to him, as she died giving birth to me. My father, Bryce Hewitt, was a Lord in Parliament, very wealthy and powerful, and he spent vast quantities of money on the occult, trying to contact my mother. It never worked, but that is how the man on the island found him.

This man, his name I learned to be Eyrdrik, also had a belief in the occult. The two men met in Greece, each on an expedition to find an apparent magic tome with great power.

Eyrdrik believed that humanity had the capacity to improve beyond the point it was at, and my father agreed. Eyrdrik was not a wealthy man, however, but with a large donation from my father he would build a school in which to educate anyone who exceeded normal human capabilities.

Just over two years ago, my father chartered a ship with which to carry him and the things he would need on his journey to join Eyrdrik on his island of Øya Helter. My father knew not of how the island came into his possession, but he refrained from asking.

I accompanied my father on the board, as did a great quantity of gold - all of my father's wealth converted into a medium which could be traded to any country for the materials necessary to build Eyrdrik's school.

On the voyage, the ship encountered a formidable storm, too formidable for the crew. It was dashed to pieces on the jagged rocks surrounding the island, and those inside drowned in the frigid waters, so close to their goal.

For some reason I survived beyond death. Eyrdrik saw me that day when I was cowering under the tree, but chose to leave me be. After he buried me and I went out to sea, he never saw me for a year and a half - all that time I was under the water, away from human contact.

"So," said Eyrdrik, letting out a heavy sight. "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"Why do you think I... survived?"

"There are many curiosities in this world that cannot be explained, my dear. You saw what happened to your resting place once I left, and the last person to see that was your father. I felt he needed some proof of the existence of extraordinary things, and it seemed to satisfy his curiosity until he began his journey to this island."

"But that does not answer my question."

"I am afraid that I do not believe I will ever be able to, Amethee."

We then sat in silence for what I can only say is far too long. Eyrdrik confessed that he needed to sleep, and so went over to his bed. I had had no need of sleep, nor food and drink, so I decided it was time for me to explore.

The half-built house had little to explore, so I ventured out into the island. It was mostly snow and trees, few rises and falls across the landscape. There was a small family of wolves I noticed prowling the woods, so I assumed there would be some small animals such as rabbits also in order to feed them.

It was good to get out - I learnt that I had other abilities in my new form. I need not walk, as it appeared I could glide about on some sort of mist. That was not all the mist did, as my experience with the wolves led to me being quite frightened. As the fear seized me I felt a feeling encompass me like that which I felt upon entering the sea, and at that point my entire body descended to mist and floated around the wolves and into the woods on the other side of them.

I returned to the house around dawn, and Eyrdrik was already awake and working on the house. I wanted to help him, but I hadn't tried to touch anything since my hand went through the boot. I didn't know if I could actually hold anything any more. But I had to try.

I watched him strip the bark off of a log, and then he went into the house for some reason. Whilst he was gone I went to the tool he was using and tried to grab it. My hand went straight through.

I got angry and saw my hand flicker a bit, mist up. I focused before I misted completely and tried to think as much as I could about being solid. I'd never had to do that before, so it was rather difficult. But I still tried my best, and when I grabbed the wooden handle I felt it against my skin.

I was so happy that I lost concentration and the tool slipped through my fingers. That didn't matter to Eyrdrik though, as he was stood in the doorway of the house clapping me.

"Well done, I noticed you hadn't tried to touch anything all the time I've known you," he said as he walked over. "Take all the time that you need to learn your capabilities, and maybe then you can help me build the house."

That is exactly what I did. I learnt how to hold things once again, and how to control the mist that I could become. I never entered the water any more though, that much power and darkness can corrupt that sweetest of minds, and in death I was purified, so I did not want to smudge the cleanliness of my soul.

I did venture down to the beach every now and then, on my walks with Eyrdrik or alone, to visit my old self and pay my respects. I always cleared away any debris I found, so as to leave my body in as pristine a place as possible, looking out upon the vast ocean.

One day we found a figurehead, we assumed from the ship that brought us here, washed up upon the shore. It was an intricately carved person in a shroud, made of a peculiar grey wood. We kept it, out of respect, and after plenty of work we built a peaked roof for the house to display it under, watching out for our home and not a ship.

It did take a while to build, but we managed it all the same. Even when it was finished I knew Eydrik wanted more for it, but I never knew what. I thought it was a wonderful home, but maybe he was lonely, I know that I was. We were there for decades before we had any company.

But company did come, joining us at what became The Academy. Victor was the first to arrive after me, unless you count Clarissa... Anyhow, this is where my story ends. I still know very little about my old life, but with the people I have met here I do not think I would wish to go back to it.

So that is the end of this story. I don't like endings, but as I know all too well they are inevitable. I'm sure you'll hear from me again, so let us just say that I shall speak to you next time. Next times are much better than ends.