This is the first part of the serialised novella Ebbed Tide by Byzantia Harlow
featured image of the bioluminescent sea
He has let free the two bodies of flowing water, meeting together.
Between them is a barrier which they do not transgress
Surah Ar-Rahman
The Cahow is a Lazarus species. A pelagic bird once feared lost, since blessed, then fated to ascend its wretchedness. To slip through the cold grip of threatened death, three centuries long. And live again. To pierce the sky, in screeching cry, that “it is I, I did not die”. As sorrow roars, through wind to shore, this anthem for the dead, now risen.
Years spent at sea. Through nights, atop a whistling swirl, asleep within continuous flight. A tiny archipelago, the still vex’d Bermoothes, the only land it’s ever known. Fledged from the rocks of this jagged hook. Urges to return home, which can’t be fought; bring partnered birds back, year-on-year. To nest within ancestral nooks.
Seabird by Byzantia Harlow
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PART ONE
The boat below, a crawling speck on sparkling ocean, trails moonlight from masthead across a darkening ocean. At the horizon a deepening spill of purple ink sky is flashed with golds. An expansive night wraps us in her glittering folds.
We glide on intoxicating salves, oleander and cedarwood, fanned into a heady potion, under our wings. Over an island fringed by colourful reefs. Incensed trees jut from waterlogged rocks. Delicate silhouettes, swaying on warmed winds, laid like patterned lace over the embered hours.
The sea, stained a lightning blue, is wreathed with starlight jewels. Glowing with strange electricities. A natural romantic wonder, this phosphorescent eruption within dark water. Its the fireworms’ cyclical courtship, triggered by waning moon. Water seethes with rainbows of fish, drawn to luminescent spawn. Manta rays glide, resembling soundless kites, buffeting through winds. Jellyfish bob like lit paper-lanterns. Creatures swarm en masse, to devour the light.
A fluttering of leaves through trees, a wail of wind, a bolt of breeze. A sudden mist descends, obscuring all. We, adept at riding Atlantic gales, can no longer navigate, as reference points meld. I sense you becoming anxious as the salt below is whipped to a turquoise froth by invisible hands. So, I float an idea into your awareness – that all will be well if we look with an understanding other than our eyes.
We’ve become a whirl of silver feathers, battered on briny breath. I sense you beating your wings hard against the unrelenting force and feel my connection to you fading. Succumbing, unlike you, to ascend upon the current. I implore you to fly up, before we lose dominion entirely.
Abruptly, a halo-ed brightness expands, causing tendrils of mist to retract, and trail into corners of sight. As scuttling insects. Alone, I discover that my thoughts no longer reach you. We’ve been ripped asunder by the winds. I loop above the water endlessly, flying towards nothing… again and again and again. Looking for you. Circling the aeons, across past and future, through everywhere and every-when, until I surrender to the darkness below. Falling through time. I shatter into a million shards upon impact, breaking into an unlimited freedom.
____
An old man sits opposite a young woman. Between them, a candle’s flicker, reflected on crystal ball, creates a double flamed illusion. The man’s appearance is wholly forgettable, until he raises his head, revealing milky eyes staring fixed upon oblivion.
”I see someone in water. He’s calling for help, but you can’t hear him. You’re waving to him as he drowns.” He says matter of factly. ”You will experience a loss. That which joined you once, will part you.”
Rubbish. Thinks the girl. Another charlatan. He probably isn’t even blind.
”The vision is as sharp as a sword. This is set in stone, not written in sand.” He warns.
____
Adventuring mariners were a superstitious folk, fearful of unearthly cries, as darkening cloak was pulled across the ‘Isle of Devils’. Yet the wail they heard was not demon, witch, nor sea monster.
No.
It was an endemic bird.
It was I.
I did not die.
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INTERMISSION
We are souls caught on currents in and out of existence. Eventually we meet again; within universal consciousness. No-one seeks to leave here, to return to illusion; to what they are not. However, it serves expansion; as experience is the only true teacher.
Amnesia sets in within density, but, preordained moments give glimmers of understanding. So, we decide how to meet next lifetime. The final cycle.
To what degree have we learned to love? This, as always, was the question.
This Graeae woven reality, of fragile thread, can at points be pulled apart, overlapped and re-entwined. The delicate material realm, at its thinnest, converges time.
We plot points to re-unite, at such locations, ensuring we won’t bypass one-another: a significant coastal village, a symbolic song, some pre-arranged synchronicities, just enough to keep us on track.
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PART TWO
Now twinned villages, Cawsand and Kingsand were historically on different sides of the Cornwall / Devon border, a tiny stream between acting as the boundary. Their reunion was marked with a visible sign placed at the exact site of the original separation.
This location was chosen to catalyse our connection. It would be where you passed memorable family holidays. I would discover it by chance, years after you, when in need of redirection.
I never knew the name of the place. I was on a trip in an unfamiliar part of Devon and jumped onto a tourist boat, as it launched, unsure of the destination. It cut a line of white through Prussian Blue, as the weather behind turned grey. The sky tied to turbulent knot above a passing squall. An American, rocked to green by waves, gripped blanched hands to rail. Applying lipstick within a mirror, I caught the storm behind us, atop the silver slither in my palm. The tourist’s companion, distracting him, remarked how the Sea Venture had departed here for Virginia. Fated to be tossed upon Bermuda’s reefs. Then the voices were drowned under sand-scraping-hull.
The shore rose up to meet the boat, as our eyes would first meet, knowingly.
The result of many lifetimes of practice.
Sea erodes land gently, as a perfect receptacle is shaped by its creation.
Disembarking, I discovered I’d been nostalgic all my life for this unknown place.
Salt air kissed my face. Waves crashed out syllables to soothing words, distant and indistinguishable. I was longing for a truth that was held here – in render of costal cottage, in twist and turn of cobbled lane, in rock and wave and playing child. A remembered relevance I couldn’t comprehend.
But wanting to take this feeling forward, I marked the moment with a plea.
Picking up a water worn stick I scraped my name into the shore. Over the top I carved ANIMA MEA, the letters overlapped and entwined, forming sigils in the sand.
Facing the ocean, I whispered :
“Strength of Earth, Wind and Sea
Lend your power please to me
Forces which the tide do make
Ask the waves my spell to take
And let it be done
That it harm no one”
Once the water had wrenched my words from the shore, claiming them, a certainty dawned. There was someone out there for me. And I would recognise them, for they would feel like this place.
Three years later, when we first met, a man cast from an identical mould to his brother walked past. Each of us had met one different half before. But couldn’t be sure which twin we saw, nor which of us he knew. From this ensued discussions on Platonic pairs; enviously split by God’s wrath undue. A clue we left, but overlooked.
You were instantly familiar. As if a phantom on the beach; whose soul imbued its lapping waters.
A few months later you recalled a previous holiday. Then, I was sure.
Tracing back through years of photographs, finding the few I had taken, I extended my phone to you.
“That’s Cawsand. That’s the house I stay in every summer” you remarked innocently, before noting my expression, with teasing roll of eyes, “it must mean we are Soulmates”.
A thread. A cord. A knot to connect. We weave our web, of living and dead.
It was already decided that I would be the one to recognise the connection first, that you would be more resistant. As during this lifetime I was to teach you to believe in magic and you were to teach me to have faith in myself.
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PART THREE
The synchronicities intensify in moments of separation.
I first heard the song in a dream. It was unknown to me, but the chorus repeated so urgently that it snared within my memories.
Seabird, seabird fly home…
We were on a pirate ship, swaying rhythmically through radio waves, rolling on liquid sound.
This world isn’t big enough to keep me away from you…
”What does this song mean to you?” I was desperate to know.
”I am still here, and so are you”, your cryptic reply.
Then a bird began to circle us – tired and searching for home. It vanished, only to return wretched… lingering, a haunting thought stuck on a loop, within the fringes of vision.
I recalled that birds navigate with reference to the stars, looking up into the void.
I watched the bird fall, dead from its quest, into silvery waves below. The ocean is like the unconscious, so I wondered, is this why I keep finding feathers in my path?
On waking I traced the song, sung by the identical Alessi Brothers. I wrote you a letter, demanding an explanation. You didn’t reply, but two years later we were shown.
____
Disoriented, I’m somehow lost on a road close to home. But then it dawns, this is just your old street, approached from the opposite direction. A hidden treasure, rediscovered.
Instantly, I return to you in thought. Remembering how we danced, a binding spell.
An encounter etched in memory, as petals are lovingly pressed within pages. We are sequestered in amber where nothing can damage us. Not even the things we’ve done to each other. Our own reality running parallel, is always the same, like we’ve just left off.
So present. A feeling of home – long lost, reclaimed, remembered.
A car horn interrupts my thoughts.
I trail my attention down to the street again, and gasp.
There you are; in reality.
You stand watching me, thinking of you.
We decode the minute expressions instantaneously, fully understanding. Like well-read passages retained in memory. Revelations flash between blinking lashes. A prior knowledge and familiarity at odds with our handful of encounters, stretched between years of absence.
A magnetic anchoring of energies. Ever known Agape.
I reason it’s not unusual to run into each other. It could all be coincidence, until a vintage convertible stalls in traffic beside us. A car that had trailed me for weeks. Sunlight blinding from its blue bodywork. The roof is down, and it’s soundtracking the street.
The radio’s playing and the host says a listener has requested a song.
Seabird, seabird fly home…
”Urgh. I HATE this song”, you chastise the adjacent driver.
”It’s not his fault. It’s the Universe”, I interject.
You turn to me, ”I suppose you’ll think this is another sign.”
”I am still here, and so are you”, my glib reply.
You roll your eyes, but your smile betrays you.
I continue walking.
Unspoken love, upon lips of madness and bliss. I have knocked on the door, between states, waiting for a truth within which to answer. To witness my soul, evasive evermore. Destiny’s threads appear, I try to catch them like a wave before they recede again. Slipping through the gaps in my fingers, they leave little trace. A molluscs trail on my palm, from which to divine the future and preserve the past.
____
There is only one world ocean, yet where two seas meet, waves roll in opposite directions. A mirrored, immiscible dance. Seen or unseen, the boundary is a fine line between worlds.
To be continued…
About the author
Studio Portrait
Byzantia Harlow (b. 1986) lives and works in London. She received her MA Painting from The Royal College of Art, London and her BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.
Solo exhibitions include ‘Take What Resonates’, Harlesden High Street, London (2021) ; ‘Lunar Water’, Platform Southwark, London (2019) and ‘From the same source I have not taken’, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London (2018).
Harlow’s work investigates the intersection between true experience, constructed encounter and embellished recollection. Her long-term interest in alternative societies, groups exploring the spiritual or supernatural and unconventional healing practices informs current work. For Harlow, every determination of an event is the balance between cynicism, or acceptance of the mystical. Blending the natural and the supra-natural, the work asks the viewer to take a leap of faith, to follow Harlow through the labyrinthine structures of sculpture, of social performance, and of constructed narrative. The artist is opening the door to both possible enlightenment and potential (dis)illusionment.
Alongside her art practice Harlow works as a Psychic Reader using a Tarot Deck she created. She will be exhibiting her deck within an upcoming solo show at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix this year. Her Project ‘The Silver Stream’ on Soho Radio explores the artists’ theoretical concerns in collaboration with invited guests.
Byzantia Harlow, image – durational performance within ‘Lunar Water’ 2019
Previously on CREATRIXmag by Byzantia Harlow:
