The Gdappi Coast is older than eyes, older than sin, older than hearts. Cities line it, ruins encrust it, fishermen ply it up and down past the long, stone beaches, hauling the little nets for the big fat Tzab fish that move slowly through the warm currents. They drift for days on the current, the whole time without a single word leaving their lips – all communication is by hand and eyes. It’s bad luck to speak aloud on a fishing trip, though no-one remembers why. The one exception is when one of the big merchant ships bulls through the path of the fishers; then the dried and gummy lips unseal themselves to vent a torrent of abuse upon the likes of those who would so cruelly run them down.
The merchants don’t care, of course. They’ve got bigger problems of their own. The Gdappi Coast is old, and its trade routes not much younger, but age has not softened the sharp teeth that lie just below the waterline over so much of its length. Where there are no stones, there are reefs; where there are no reefs, there are stones. And as the years and decades and centuries roll by, one constant remains: the petitions and the complaints and the long, long pleas to the kings and queens of the Gdappi for lighthouses and lighthouse-keepers, for lonely men and women to tend farfires that could light the cruel barbs of the sea and steer them well away.
Most came to nothing. A few unlucky ones caught rulers in bad moods and were punished. A handful persuaded a ruler (begrudgingly), and a shoddy little tower of cheap cement and cracked stone would be erected, to stand for a little less than a half-century before a storm roiled up from the deep and spat upon it.
And one day, one petition in the court of Queen Ktami came to her in a capricious and sour mood, and received an unusual response.
“Half,” she said, from her throne of wrought iron and blackened wood. “I will pay for half of the costs of construction. The rest will be paid by the petitioners. And if the cost exceeds eight thousand ba, they will pay two-thirds the cost. And if this complaint comes again in my hearing, they will pay all the costs and all of their property and also their tongues, so that I do not have to hear it again.”
Obviously this did not sit well with the merchants, but equally obviously they did not protest. And so they grumbled and whinged their way around a map of the most dangerous shoals of Gdappi, the spots marked with dozens of little grey scratches of ship names and dates and cargos lost. And so they found, to their dismay if not their surprise, that the most dangerous places of all were remote and difficult to reach, and so construction would be expensive and lengthy.
“One-eighth of the cost shall be paid by all,” said the youngest merchant.
“One-eighth would bankrupt me,” said the poorest merchant. “I should pay less.”
“Your ships use this route more than any other,” said the cruelest merchant. “You should pay more.”
“And you use this route less than any other, and I suppose you’ll say to pay less then?” asked the sharpest merchant. “No, no, no. Enough arguing, brothers and sisters. I have a plan.”
And the sharpest merchant cast out her finger and pointed at a single lump on a single hump on a single point on the coast line, nestled amidst so many wrecks that it was hard to see at all.
“Here there is an old building. Next to it is an old, old hill. And atop that hill is an old, old, old stone that spirals like a corkscrew until it near to brushes the roof of the sky. We shall make this our lighthouse, and all of us shall pay one-eighth the cost of a small shack and a bright torch. Will this please?”
It did.
“Then it is done,” said the sharpest merchant. And shortly thereafter, it was.
The stone did not brush the roof of the sky. It did not even come near. But it looked like, and with a fire atop its brow it looked moreso still.
And so the keeper of the lighthouse was hired for little payment; a young man who could afford to lose a few years tending a fire and losing his mind. He was given a garden on the old, old hill and a crude house on top of the old, old, old stone, overlooking the old ruins. And next to the house was a squat bonfire, whose fuel stole most of his house’s living-space.
He was a lazy man, if still strong, and he put off his labor for some time. Instead he drank. Now and then he threw some on the fire to ‘liven it up,’ and for the most part the fire did not object. Soon the sun went down hard and his little light was all alone but for the stars and the wink of a full moon.
Then, in the deep old heart of the night, the lighthouse keeper heard a noise. It was this noise: thump.
The lighthouse-keeper cocked his head and listened. Was it just the rum in his blood?
Thump. Thump.
Where was it coming from? He wandered to the edge of the trail that led down from his stony perch to the ruins down the hill, and listened harder.
Thump, thump, thump. Thump-thump. Louder and nearer.
The lighthouse-keeper was a lazy man, but not a foolish man, and his mother had been no fool either. And her stories told him what to do when he heard things like that in the night: he ran into his house and barred the door with his own bed, and he did not come out ‘till morning, when he ran far, far, far away. Which was none too soon, since within the week the merchant-men came nosing about with angry questions and angrier clubs, demanding to know why their fire had gone out and taken a good ship to a cold place.
“Too lazy,” said the richest merchant.
“Too greedy,” said the meanest merchant.
“Vices of the young,” said the oldest merchant. “We should get someone with experience.”
And so a second keeper of the lighthouse was hired for a larger payment; an older woman with decades of lonely fires and lonelier vigils underneath her belt. On her very first day she sowed and weeded the garden, began a shack for the fuel, and dug a small hole for her pet she-neg, who was nearing deafness in her old age but still a happy companion with teeth that would shame a hippopotamus. By dusk’s end the fire was neatly stacked and kindled fit to put a gleam in the eye of the world that could be seen from heaven, and only then did she permit herself a small smile and a sip from the special bottle she carried everywhere.
She poured out a measure for the she-neg too. Only fair.
And just then, as she was providing fairness, she heard a noise like this: thump.
A frown filled her face, and she and her old neg listened.
Thump-thump. Thump.
Down from below, from beyond the cliff, from the shoals.
The lighthouse-keeper’s mother was long gone and little-known to her, so she’d had to make her own advice. But it was good advice, and right now it told her what to do when she heard things like that in the night: she took herself into the cabin and locked herself in and sat at the window, she-neg at her feet, eyes on the fire.
She sat there ‘till dawn, and she only blinked twice. The neg didn’t growl, but it shook a lot. And come dawn she walked out to her cold, dead fire and wrote a note with charcoal on its stones, then turned heel and left forever.
DON’T LIGHT IT AGAIN. LOOK TO THE SEA.
“Too cowardly,” said the cruelest merchant.
“Too old and slow,” said the youngest merchant.
“Still too young,” said the oldest merchant. “We should’ve hired older.”
“Hire nothing,” said the poorest merchant. “We’re already paying too much, and our help is unreliable and untrustworthy.”
“Then we will rely upon ourselves,” said the sharpest merchant. “Listen to me, brothers and sisters. I have a plan.”
The eight merchants trampled the garden in their clumsiness. They nearly knocked over the shack as they argued over who should complete it. They almost forgot to light the fire.
But in the end they did light it, and they even managed to keep it lit. And in the calm of the wide long night, alone with the flames, they managed to feel just a little bit proud.
“It is good,” said the meanest merchant.
“It is good,” agreed the youngest merchant.
“My rheumatism nags me and my back hurts,” said the oldest merchant. “But I agree that this is good.”
“Shush,” said the sharpest merchant. “Do you hear that?”
Thump.
Just a little bump on the edge of the eardrum.
“I don’t hear anything,” said the richest merchant. “You’re making that up.”
“I heard something,” said the poorest merchant.
Thump. Thump.
“There, you hear that?” said the cruelest merchant. “Where is it coming from?”
Thump, thump. Thump-thump.
“Down below,” said the sharpest merchant. “Thieves and trespassers, come to steal from us! Quick, quick, into the hut – gird your knives and sharpen your eyes!”
And so they piled into the house and waited as the sounds grew louder, and their eyes fixed like diamond drills on the mouth of the little path that led up the hill from the mainland, knife-hilts growing damp with sweat in their hands, their backs to the wide and empty sea. So fierce was their focus that they didn’t see what was happening until the fire winked out.
“Thieves!” shrieked the meanest merchant.
“Saboteurs!” hissed the cruelest merchant.
“Impediments to enterprise!” shouted the richest merchant.
“Wait,” said the sharpest merchant, who was nearest to the window and had half-thought she’d seen something quite wrong. “Perhaps we should-“
“AT THEM!” roared the oldest merchant, and the door was flung wide for an army of gold and shining steel knives, which stampeded out the door so quickly that the sharpest merchant was knocked aside and rolled underneath the bed.
She listened, and she heard the shouts and yells of her fellows.
She listened, and she heard the calls grow quieter.
And she listened and heard the screams, and she tucked herself into the very farthest corner of the room under the bed, and she did not sleep until the sun rose over a cold, cold, cold fire.
Only then did she search the hill-top, and she was not altogether surprised to see no signs of her fellows beyond excited footprints. Most of these had been erased; obliterated by strange tracks that still smelt of seawater and brine. They had too few toes, and might not have been made by something as straightforward as feet at all.
The sharpest merchant walked the long roads home alone, and counted herself lucky.
But she never did sleep well again without a light.
The Gdappi Coast is old, older than eyes, older than sin, older than hearts, older than humans. And some places on it were never made for their hands and feet to touch.