Prologue
If I close my eyes and breathe to the rolling rhythm of the sea, I can still remember that long ago day. Harsh, cold, and lifeless it was, as empty of promise as my lungs were empty of air.
Since that day, I have seen many others, more than I have the strength left to count. Yet that day glows as bright as the Galator itself, as bright as the day I found my own name, or the day I first cradled a baby who bore the name Arthur. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because the pain, like a scar on my soul, will not disappear. Or because it marked the ending of so much. Or, perhaps, because it marked a beginning as well as an ending: the beginning of my lost years.
A dark wave rose on the rolling sea, and from it lifted a hand. As the wave surged higher, reaching toward sky as smoky gray as itself, the hand reached higher as well. A bracelet of foam swirled around the wrist, while desperate fingers groped for something they could not find. It was the hand of someone small. It was the hand of someone weak, too weak to fight any longer.
It was the hand of a boy.
With a deep sucking sound, the wave began to crest, tilting steadily toward the shore. For an instant it paused, hovering between ocean and land, between the brooding Atlantic and the perilous, rock-bound coasst of Wale, known in those days as Gwynedd. Then the sucking swelled into a crashing roar as the wave toppled over, hurling the boy's limp body onto the black rocks.
His head smacked against a stone, so violently that his skull would surely have split open were it not for the thick mat of hair that covered it. He lay competely still, except when the whoosh of air from the next wave tousled his locks, black beneath the stains of blood.
A shabby seagull, seeing his motionless form, hopped over the jumbled of rocks for a closer look. Bending its beak toward the boy's face it tried to pull a strand of sea kelp that was wrapped around his ear. The bird tugged and twisted, squawking angrily.
At last the kelp broke free. Triumphantly, the bird jumped down to one of the boy's bare arms. Beneath the shreds of a brown tunic still clinging to him, he seemed small, even for a boy of seven years. Yet something about his face--the shape of his brow, perhaps, or the lines around his eyes--seemed far older....
If I close my eyes and breathe to the rolling rhythm of the sea, I can still remember that long ago day. Harsh, cold, and lifeless it was, as empty of promise as my lungs were empty of air.
Since that day, I have seen many others, more than I have the strength left to count. Yet that day glows as bright as the Galator itself, as bright as the day I found my own name, or the day I first cradled a baby who bore the name Arthur. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because the pain, like a scar on my soul, will not disappear. Or because it marked the ending of so much. Or, perhaps, because it marked a beginning as well as an ending: the beginning of my lost years.
A dark wave rose on the rolling sea, and from it lifted a hand. As the wave surged higher, reaching toward sky as smoky gray as itself, the hand reached higher as well. A bracelet of foam swirled around the wrist, while desperate fingers groped for something they could not find. It was the hand of someone small. It was the hand of someone weak, too weak to fight any longer.
It was the hand of a boy.
With a deep sucking sound, the wave began to crest, tilting steadily toward the shore. For an instant it paused, hovering between ocean and land, between the brooding Atlantic and the perilous, rock-bound coasst of Wale, known in those days as Gwynedd. Then the sucking swelled into a crashing roar as the wave toppled over, hurling the boy's limp body onto the black rocks.
His head smacked against a stone, so violently that his skull would surely have split open were it not for the thick mat of hair that covered it. He lay competely still, except when the whoosh of air from the next wave tousled his locks, black beneath the stains of blood.
A shabby seagull, seeing his motionless form, hopped over the jumbled of rocks for a closer look. Bending its beak toward the boy's face it tried to pull a strand of sea kelp that was wrapped around his ear. The bird tugged and twisted, squawking angrily.
At last the kelp broke free. Triumphantly, the bird jumped down to one of the boy's bare arms. Beneath the shreds of a brown tunic still clinging to him, he seemed small, even for a boy of seven years. Yet something about his face--the shape of his brow, perhaps, or the lines around his eyes--seemed far older....
![~[Arima]~](https://a1cdn.gaiaonline.com/dress-up/avatar/ava/5c/b7/5fd2a8d112b75c.png?t=1526018136_6.00_11 "~[Arima]~")
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