Quid Stellae Signant

She finds that there is nothing unusual in his clothes. It was true that when she first put on his tunic and tied his sash around her waist, when she wound the long broad blue cloth of her turban around her cropped black hair, she had been afraid that she would weep. His clothes still [...]

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For a little moment they looked at one another without trust, and then Mordred came forward, wading in until he reached the man. The selkies moved about as though they’d flee, but they stayed; the man spoke to them in a soft, strange language, and they stayed.

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“What was it like?”

The question settles in the old man’s rooms in the back of the museum, much like dust — there’s a good deal of dust. Although the old man is meticulous and precise with his books and artefacts, keeping them neatly organised and in fine condition, he doesn’t worry much about the rest of the room. The question settles in with the dust, and the boy keeps still, waiting for an answer.

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He had killed many men, and now he himself was dying. He had sent the children of the island away before the end, that he might be alone, and now–and now he was going back to the sea. It was the one thing he loved that had never been taken from him.

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Nemo is a man made of shadows, umbrosus viri. Cogitatum turbulentus habeo, thinks Aronnax, and stares in frustration through the windows of the salon, where the fish swim by, where he has seen cramp-fishes and sea-horses and little sharks, where he has seen Octopus joubini sometimes. When he thinks of Nemo, it is in Latin; and though he has time, sometimes, to be happy and think of what he sees through those windows and of his specimens and the thousand and one things he’s now discovered; despite that, he mostly thinks of Nemo.

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He was a very quiet man, who never joined in the singing and dancing at night, who never seemed to be around when you wanted him, who never did what everyone else did because he was always somewhere else by himself. You could often see him up in the sails, watching for whales; or out at the stern, staring into the water. Rumour had it he wanted to be a harpoonist, but he didn’t know how. Rumour had it he had asked the best harpoonist in New Bedford for instruction, and been laughed at.

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There was only one creature Captain Nemo held dear. He had made her with his own hands.

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