Sand Song

This was supposed to be two paragraphs. Well, the best laid plans...

A long time ago, farther back than the living memory of the oldest trees that stand above the rocky cliffs, and after the birth of the great boulders that now form the smallest grains of sand, there was no music in the sea.

The shores were silent. The waters rose and fell, following the pull of the moon, but they did so quietly, barely stirring the shells on the tide lines. The gulls fished, but they did not have the heart to cry out. The breeze thought it a sad place, and left the sand lying where it had been for countless years.

Poseidon did not know what music was, and so the ocean lay quietly. There was no joy in the sea because there was no joy in his cold heart, in the shifting shadows where he stayed deep under the waves. He might have discovered it had he ventured to the shore, for there were people who possessed the gift of song there, but he did not. Instead, he brooded deep in his weedy palace, and ignored the edges of his kingdom.

A young man lived within sight of the great expanse of blue water, and his greatest joy was to spin music from his violin. In the evenings, when the day's work was over, he would go sit by the sea, in a secluded cove, and play to it.

As he did so, he noticed that the water would often begin to hiss over the sand, echoing the rhythm he set with his songs. A gull or two, flying in to listen, would give a racous cry in time to the music. Once, finally, as he threw his heart and soul into his music, a wave crashed onto the shore in counterpoint, rushing up the beach and drenching him where he sat, before receding. He thought it was glorious.

The man loved bringing life and movement into the ocean he knew so well, and year after year, he grew increasingly skilled, able to coax more and more from the waves, which now swept in and out of his cove rhythmically, regularly, to the cry of gulls and the sigh of the wind as it stirred the sand, accompanying the beautiful sounds he drew out of the wood of his worn instrument. Soon was added to this the melody of laughter, as first his children, and then his grandchildren, came to race along the beach and chase the waves up and down the cove.

But the man was growing old, and he know that when he died, this gift would be lost. And so he made up his mind that he would take the gift of music, and present it to Poseidon.

Bidding goodbye to his family, he tucked the violin under his arm one last time and began to row out to sea. The waves lapped around him, the only movement on that vast smooth surface, as he made his way out beyond sight of land. He stopped rowing and looked around, alone.

The old man knew that Poseidon would not hear a voice as small as his. It was an impossible task he had set for himself, and yet he felt that his gift was worth any cost. And so he lifted up his old violin and began to play as if it were the last time. He threw his entire soul into the song, and such was his skill that soon the waves began to build into mountains around him, foam flying off of them and spray filling the air, driven by the tempest that strove to match the voice of the instrument in his hands. The breakers echoed the slowing beat of his heart as they began to surge in rhythm, and so when the violin finally dropped from the old man's lifeless hands, it was if his heart and the song continued, blended into one melody carried by the storm.

What the old man's one small voice could not do, the sea did for him. The ocean found its voice in the storm he raised with his music, and it carried even to the darkness where Poseidon rested. And he roused himself, and rose to hear this strange thing that had come about by another hand than his. He heard the wild music and felt the power in the dance of the waves, and he was moved by them. He looked at the ocean as he had never done before, and he saw the beauty of a world where the sea moved and sang with a never-ceasing rhythm.

But it was still a mystery to him, how to make this music, and so he dove deep, questing for the thing that had brought this about. He found the violin resting in a bed of sand and seaweed, its polished wooden surface reflecting the shadowing play of light on the moving waters far above, and it was beautiful.

With one finger, Poseidon plucked a string. The note pleased him in its watery resonance, and so he plucked it again and again, matching the surge of the waves that still echoed to the beat of the old man's heart; and as he did so, the water along all the shores began to ebb and flow in concert with the sound. This pleased him even more, and so he ran his webbed fingers along two string. The sound was discordant, but it fell into place with the first, and the gulls heard it and rejoiced, screaming their approval  over the rocky coastline. And Poseidon heard the beginnings of music that he had created, and he was joyful.

He is not a man as we know men, but it was in him to feel gratitude for this gift. And so he took the barest tip of a finger and brushed it along the highest and smallest strings, and the wind along the shore began to play in the dunes. It is so faint that you cannot always hear it, but if you listen closely, the melody that the old man was most fond of still echoes along the shore. It is wild and gentle, with the promise of a storm to come, backed by the wash and ebb of the pounding surf and the cry of gulls. When it stirs the dunes, the sands whisper the Prayer for the Dead and the waves still crash in the rhythm of the old man's heart.

Poseidon keeps the violin always by his side, playing upon it the melodies that became the music of the sea. Most of the time it is a gentle song, but sometimes he sits for too long in the darkness of the deepest seas, and then he plays the same wild song that he heard when he first knew that there was music in the world. And the waves crash and pound, and the wind shrieks along with him, until he grows calm again, and the sea grows calm with him.