Part Three of the serialized novella Ebbed Tide by Byzantia Harlow
featured image: aerial photograph of the Bermuda Islands
PART ONE
The Isles of Bermoothes, lie scattered like emerald runes.
Cast from a cosmic hand, upon vexed waters.
The verdant shores are haloed in shell-blushed sands.
And lapped by virescent lagoons.
A promise of Arcadia, is carried on the waves.
Which break into whispers at her dunes.
But her hooked constellation betrays a nature to snag.
And this temperament can’t be fought, by those marooned in her waters.
They who will be caught.
Snared by the reefs that protect her flanks, or sliced by her snarling breakers.
Once spewed from a volcanic mouth, and sharpened by the sucking tides.
These rock-teeth cut like daggers through the bedevilled sea.
An ocean that churns erratically, above a graveyard of ships.
Those drowned together, in eternity.
They who haunt the waves.
The wretched, entrained by the false light of the wrecker’s torch.
Drawn, as insects to flame.
And rendered to dust in its scorch.
The seas are charged by mysterious forces. Imbued with restless souls, lured off Fate’s true course. Lost bones that lie deep, below glassy waters and are polished clean by the swell.
Apparitions oft’ caught, in the keened corner of fishermens’ eyes.
Pale faces, bloated by the sea, float ethereally, as the moon through dark water. Shadows scramble atop slippery rocks with clinging hands, sliced to pallid ribbons. As downed sails trail through the ship’s plunder and tighten around silver, like seaweed strangling corals.
Men are seen at the shore, trapped in an endless loop, enacting crimes which violate all morality. Spectres rifling through the sodden pockets of those beguiled to their finality. Deft hands plucking jewelry from rotted skin, as though shucking pearls from sliming oysters.
Some say time tangles within ‘The Devil’s Triangle’, that there’s a portal to cosmic lands. Others postulate that Atlantis may be found beneath its sands.
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INTERMISSION
A youthful man glides through an aquamarine expanse, encased in a rubber dive suit. He follows a stream of lustrous fish, which shine, like a silvery beacon, through the depths. The dead silence feels ancient, filled only with the suck of oxygen through a cylinder, which seems to breathe the very tides in and out.
The shoal, lured by corroding metal, have led him to the rusting carcass of a steel ship. He assesses it as being a 1940s construction, scuttled three decades later; adjudged by the aquatic life which has crept around its bones. The ghost of a vessel, turned artificial reef; lain undiscovered by intrepid tourists of the deep. Until now.
Her belly has been gashed, spilling entrails of machinery across the seabed. Once smooth moving cogs, now rusted still by the ravages of time.
Glowing anemones sway feelingly through the currents as the man inspects the wreckage. He notes jagged windows, that once framed the sky and sea, are now breached by unconstrained infinity. A piece of plastic sheet caught on their metalwork begins to flap within the swell, like a square of silk waved in farewell to a lover at the docks.
Underwater photograph of a shipwreck in Bermuda
The diver’s eyes settle onto soft surrounding sands, traced in gentle ripples by the waves. A school of parrot fish twist past in an iridescent cloud. Their movement disturbs the seabed below; revealing something unnatural. A dull section of pottery has been freed from the covering sediments.
Fanning gloved hand, he clears the water, to reveal a mysteriously displaced artefact. An object that could only have come from a much older, coterminous wreck. He pulls the relic towards his mask inquiringly. Its surface has been bitten by centuries of saline damage and growth, well beyond the time-frame of the nearby ship. He believes he is holding something akin to the vessels he’s viewed in museum displays, dating from the 16th century.
He remembers a similar form, seen within pages of a historic magazine. A Bartmann Jug; made in salt-glazed ceramic, modelled with the unique face of a wild man, often used to store produce during voyages at sea. Created with a thin neck, round body and flowing beard, countenances which belied their utility.
Grotesque features which caricatured Cardinal Bellarmino, a fearsome inquisitor. The bottles were often filled with alcohol, drunk in act of defiance. Or used in counter-curses by Protestants, who were fearful of bewitchery. He recalled the bloated shape was thought to resemble a bladder. Some inserted pins within, with intent to cause pain, to the organ of the harpy who had hexed its owner.
Holding the piece of history he’s retrieved, he begins his slow ascent to the surface.
Feeling its weight becoming burdensome.
A sickness floods through his body in waves, as he grips the decompression line.
Fighting a feeling, infiltrating deep within, which threatens to engulf him.
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PART TWO
A building clings low to the eastern side of Cornwall’s Rame Peninsula. Its sheltering walls are formed from the rocks of Cawsand Bay. Though incredibly thick, they are not impenetrable to the fingers of damp, which permeate through the structure. The trace of their touch leaves surfaces cool under skin and beaded with moisture.
A stout door opens directly to the sands, where at low tide the wooden fishing boats lie beached like great whales in the waterless harbour. Algae creeps a third of the way up their anchor ropes, in an echo of time and rising water.
The hut is positioned to readily receive pilchards, the moment the huer’s trumpet signals them in sight. Then tools are dropped and the whole village heads to the shore to launch a fleet.
A thrashing shoal flashes through the sea, as a flurry of boats are arranged, with a wave of yellow gorse, into positions for the catch.
Finally, a frenzied crowd of villagers will bring the silver spoils of the sea inside. To be pressed and preserved under the building’s dank roof.
The brine-filled air of the preserving room is nauseating. It clings to the clothes of a working woman, stinging at her eyes, as she dips raw hands into the mounds, sprinkling granules liberally. She takes on a cosmic quality, surrounded by the round barrels, containing layers of fish, placed in circles of seven. Like pointed stars, glistening under her outpouring.
Her vision is blurred by salinity, but the strong wooden beams of the room remain clear and feel anchoring. Her sore eyes scan across them, before settling over the doorway. She contemplates the charm placed above, within a hidden alcove, by her own hand.
She had filled the vessel the previous year, suspecting witchery, after her barrels of fish had soured to black without explanation. She created the enchantment with the detritus of her own body – fingernail clippings, a scrag of hair, a cloth she’d soaked with urine. These were bundled together, with a written plea to the Gods of the Sea.
She secured them around an iron pin, used to draw out evils and impale them within. Then seawater was added, to drown out all sin. Before precious beeswax, dripped from her only candle, spluttered over the stoneware bottle.
And with calm determination, she sealed her intentions in.
The vessel was decorated with a bearded man, crudely modelled and satisfyingly grotesque to her.
She placed it, upturned and with purpose, above the threshold, to ward off enemies and ill fate.
Although hidden from her view, she felt the bottle staring through the wall at her, with malice now. She envisioned the face, upside down, with the lolling eyes and gaping mouth of a hung traitor, and shuddered within.
Byzantia Harlow, drawing of a 17th century Witches Bottle, similar to those retrieved from the Sea Venture wreckage in Bermuda.
Tomorrow, at Plymouth Harbour, she would gift the charm to her departing lover. Appearances aside, it had served her well this past year. The tides had been bountiful and not a pilchard had spoiled. He would benefit from its protection now, not she, as he took to the roaring waters. He was high on the promises he’d received, of unspeakable blessings for partaking in the mission. The Men of God had said he would shine as the stars through the aeons – for as long as the Sun and Moon endured, for his troubles.
But despite this levity, it was a journey shadowed with danger. Bound for Virginia, to the aid of serpent eating strangers, desperate to the point of starvation.
No, it was him, not she, who needed protection now.
She would not be the first anxious soul, nails bitten to the quick and longing for a sleep that never came, over an absent lover. And in time she would forget him. He would drain from her memory like the receding tide. So, she would be glad to offer her token, more a comfort for herself, to ensure his safe passage at sea.
Even if part of her may wish him to drown for his stupidity.
Rubbing her chapped hands to throw off the salt, she watches it fall like stars to the floor. And then gently removes a brick from the wall, above the door.
As her fingers feel their way to the back of the crevice she begins to mutter ”drown…drown for your stupidity”.
She sees a ship, sucked into a whirl of sea, in her mind’s eye.
And swept away in the imagery, she spits, “drown… drown… for leaving me.”
As her fingers settle around the neck of her charm, she continues, “now to adorn the night sky… for all eternity”, as she pulls the bottle, out of the darkness, into the light.
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PART THREE
”Each time you do this meditation you will be transported to a different life. Give yourself time to understand the events of these past lives and their impact on your current lifetime…”
A euphonious voice suggests to me, cooing and soothing through my computer screen.
“All that you will experience in this session, you will remember. Be sure to write it down in a journal for future use…”
I look at the video thumbnail, it shows a star-filled background; a round window in the centre contains another world within. A rope ladder leads up to this portal, which frames a land abundant with nature, but lit in an unnatural glow. The back of a figure can be seen looking into the strange landscape.
I bat my eyelids closed as instructed.
I am within the clutches of drowsiness as I listen, but the drone of the voice keeps me on the threshold of sleep.
“Every time you breathe out, breathe out all past tension… watch as it flows away…”
I slam my laptop shut irritably. No doubt this Youtube video had come up due to my recent internet searches; ‘Past Lives’, ‘Karmic Relationships’, ‘What’s the difference between a Soulmate and a Twin Flame?’, ‘Am I psychic or mad?’, ‘Am I predicting the future or Manifesting it?’, ‘Can I renegotiate a Soul Contract?’.
After all, I think to myself, the internet is a digital crystal ball. It can predict our moves via algorithms. Ever expanding, limitless information, the new Sublime. It knew before I did that this was a video I would be curious to play.
I return to the mundanity of cleaning my dishes. The warm, soapy suds sliding over my fingers help to rid me of my disdain, as if they are washing off the experiences of the last few years. Years of constant wonder at the state of my sanity, and trying to comprehend the unfathomable.
This water is real because I can see it is real and not just feel it in some abstract way.
I like the certainty of it over my skin, reassuringly present, undeniably existent.
As I pull the plug free from the drain, the water begins to fold into itself, forming a whirl, before draining rhythmically.
Breathe out all past tension, watch as it flows away…
The whirlpool is entrancing me and I am aware that I cannot pull myself from its mesmeric twirl. Round and round it swirls, hypnotically. As I look into its eye, visions start to form in my mind – like a window is being opened into another realm.
I discover I am standing on a wooden ship, a balmy breeze is rocking it gently, like a cradle. I am one of many, on a voyage to an unfamiliar land. The vessel transporting us is large and ancient, with billowing sails which seem to commune in the winds.
I look at my hands. No longer familiar, filmed in soap, with painted nails… but large, rough and unknown to me. They are clutched around a salt-glazed jug, fashioned to the form of a grimacing man. His expression seems to acknowledge my confusion, mockingly.
I hold the vessel to my face, attempting to discern my identity within a smooth section of glaze. The reflection staring back at me has not my face. Within the blur I see a man, who’s skin has fallen through time, or hardship.
I am not myself, and yet I am… A man of uncertain age, from a long time past…. but with familiar eyes. Eyes in whose reflections I recognise myself.
Then something flashes through my memory, like a half-forgotten dream retrieved.
I’m aware the year is 1609 and this day is July 24th. I’m on a rescue mission to a failing Colonial settlement. I remember a woman waving goodbye from Plymouth Harbour. The jug I hold is a love token from her, containing bits of her corporality. Charged, so she said, for my good fortune.
Instantly the whole past reveals itself. I remember my soul has transitioned through multiple bodies and periods, as a person may inhabit multiple houses in life. I have been many different characters. And some of the roles I’ve played have run parallel in time to each other, colliding through certain events and collapsing in on one another.
Half-formed images appear and recede. Projected by an unseen hand, zooming in and out of time.
Before I have fully formulated my next question, its answer drifts into my consciousness: love is non locality.
I have a knowledge this is something to do with quantum entanglement and I hope I will remember to look into this further when I return to the present.
Be sure to write it all down in a journal for future use…
And all at once the ship’s great sails become distorted by a sudden wind. A storm summoned from the North East, which can be seen as well as felt. They appear to be twisted by some malevolence, just as a sick mind may warp the soul.
And then follows an unrelenting torment, restless and without repent. A swirling and swelling of the seas. The waters appear bewitched, rolling in huge walls, like the inhalations and exhalations of something monstrous.
A dense mist begins to cloak the ship, and I watch a feeble ray of sun attempt to penetrate it, before being blotted out. The skies darken like a rotting thing, as if all light from Heaven has been beaten away.
I look up and notice a pair of pelagic birds, tumbling through the currents, in a whirl of silver feathers. Their unearthly cries ring out like a den of furies, roused by our despair. Eventually they are ripped asunder by the winds. A solitary seabird remains, looping above our vexed ship, endlessly. Flying towards nothing… again and again and again. As if circling the aeons, across past and future, through everywhere and every-when.
Then panic spreads its choking grip across the passengers, as every joint spews out her caulking and mighty leaks rupture the ship’s hull. Men bail out water with futility as it rises before their eyes. Our vessel is covered stern to bow in ocean, whilst the punishing rain lashes, stifling all prayers.
The liquor room, breached by desperate men, broken to the point of resignation, is ransacked for a final draft.
Those who have not yet lost hope of averting impending disaster, begin to toss anything of weight overboard. Precious supplies, intended for a doomed settlement, are fed instead to insatiable waves.
A fierce man with terror in his eyes grabs at me. He attempts to free the charm I am holding from my clenched grasp. I resist, hands frozen still in fear, but he persists.
And throws the jug overboard.
My hopes are discarded, in oblation to an enraged sea.
As mournful wails, drifted through miles, reach out to me.
Far off echoes, like a foghorn sounding its call from the dead.
I see the bearded bottle, plumelet to the waves and recede through the water.
The features become blurred and distant, as if lost through time.
And I feel myself begin to drown.
As my lungs fill.
Cerulean swirls obliterate me.
____
The diver looks up to the surface. Watching a circle of sun, tunnelled above, elongating to form an ellipse in the current, then return into itself. The shadow of the ship’s hull looms over him as he resurfaces, as a much frailer man, holding the artefact he has retrieved.
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
Part One and Two of Ebbed Tide by Byzantia Harlow
