A long time ago

I knew something wasn't right. I was lying on my back and I couldn't move. A single light shined directly onto my face, but it wasn't strong enough to blind me. The light was strange, soft and vague, and seemed to throb ever so slightly. "You are awake, I see."

A dark voice, a voice one would hear in the deepest part of the night; surely a man's voice, but unlike any I had ever heard before. Any normal man would be afraid of such a voice but, oddly, I found I was only mildly curious. I said, "Aye, I am awake. However, I cannot move."

"No, not yet. If you agree to do what I want, you will move again, as you did before I saved you and brought you to me."

"Who are you? Where are you?"

"I am behind the Cretan light. Lovely, is it not? Shim-mery as a king's silks, warm and soft as a woman's fingers tracing over your face.

"I saved your life, Captain Jared Vail. In return I ask a favor. Will you agree?"

"How do you know my name?"

The Cretan light-whatever that was-seemed to brighten a moment, and harden into a column of trapped flame, then soften once more, the glow gentle, pulsing like a resting heart. Did it believe I had insulted the being behind it? Its master, perhaps? No, that was ridiculous; a light, no matter what it did, was without breath or feeling, without a soul- was it not?

"Why can't I move?"

Where was the bloody man? I wanted to see his face, wanted to see the human who spoke all those words.

"Because I do not wish you to as yet. Will you grant me a favor for saving your life?"

"A favor? Do you wish me to kill someone? I have not dispatched a pirate or a thieving dock rat for three years." Where had that pathetic attempt at humor come from? There was no laugh, more's the pity, for that would have made the voice human, and perhaps that was why 1 had tried to jest. Still, I was not afraid, even though I knew in some part of my brain that I should be scared out of my few wits. But I was not.

"Who are you?" I asked again.

"I am your savior. You owe me your life. Are you willing to repay your debt?"

"I have gone from granting a favor to paying a debt."

"What is your life worth, Captain Jared Vail?"

"My life is worth all that I am. Will you let me live if I do not agree?"

The Cretan light -flashed bright blue for an instant, then flickered, as if brushed by a waving hand. Once again it settled. The shadows behind it remained impenetrable, like a black curtain covering an empty stage. My imagination was on fire. The voice brought me back. "Will I let you live? 1 do not know." A heavy pause. "I do not know."

'Then I have no choice, do I? I do not wish to die, al-though I would be well dead now had you not saved me. But I do not know how you managed it. The huge wave was on me, and the wound in my side-I would have died from that blow probably before the water crushed me."

I realized in that instant that I felt no pain from the gaping tear in my side that had hurled me into a madness of agony. I felt nothing at all except the strong, solid beating of my own heart, no stuttering with pain or fear, no gasping to find a breath.

"Ah, the pain. That is another debt you owe me, would you not agree?"

Why was I not afraid? The absence of fear made me feel cold to my soul. I was thinking it made me less a man, less- alive. Had he somehow removed my human fear? "How did you heal me?"

"I have many abilities," the black voice said, nothing more.

I retreated into my mind, trying to keep myself calm and focused, allowing no frightening stray thoughts to make me want to scream in terror, even though I knew any sane man would be babbling by now. He wanted me to pay him back for saving my life. I could certainly do that. But I asked, "I do not understand. You saved me in a way that no mortal could have saved me. If this is not an elaborate dream, if I am not dead, I would say you can do anything. What could I possibly do for you that you cannot do yourself?"

Cold silence stretched on and on. The Cretan light danced wildly, shooting off blue sparks that sprayed upward into the darkness, then suddenly there was calm. Was the light a mirror of my savior's feelings? The voice said, "I have sworn not to meddle. It is a curse that I must obey my own word."

"To whom have you sworn this?"

"You need not know that."

"Are you a man as I am a man?"

"Do I not speak incessantly as does a man, to hear the sound of his own voice? Did I not laugh like a man?"

Yes. No. "Will you tell me where I am?"

"It is not important, my friend."

His friend? If he was such a friend why could I not move?

Suddenly I felt my fingers. I wiggled them a bit, but still I could not raise my arm and that was surely alarming. Yet I wasn't alarmed, truth be told, merely interested and intrigued, as a man of science would be at the discovery of something unexpected. Had he seen the thoughts in my brain? Now, that gave me pause.

I said slowly, "What could a ship captain possibly do for you? You have demonstrated powers I cannot begin to imagine. I was aboard my brigantine in the middle of the Mediterranean, five miles from Santorini, my last port, and a huge wave appeared out of nowhere. I heard the screams of my sailors, heard my first mate yell to God to save him as that nightmare swell crashed over us. Then a splintered board speared into my side, tearing me open, and then the crushing mountain of water, and yet-"

"And yet you are here, warm, whole."

"My men? My ship?"

"They are dead, your ship destroyed. But you are not."

I thought of Doxey, my first mate, loud and crude, loyal to me and no one else, and Elkins, the cook, always singing filthy ditties, always making lumpy porridge everyone hated. I said, "Perhaps I am dead, perhaps you are the Devil and you are toying with me, amusing yourself, making me believe I am still alive, when I am really as dead as-"

A laugh. Yes, it was a laugh, low and strangely hollow, and something else-the laugh wasn't quite a man's laugh- it seemed to me it was more the imitation of a laugh. Was I in Hell? Would evil Uncle Ulson trip into my line of vision, ready to welcome die to his home? Why was I not afraid? Perhaps death removed a human's fear.

"I am not the Devil. He is a creature that is something else entirely. Will you pay your debt to me?"

"Yes, if I am actually alive."

I felt a bolt of pain so horrendous I would have welcomed death as a savior. My side gaped open; I could feel my flesh ripped away to my bones. I felt my guts oozing out of my belly. I screamed into the blackness. The Cretan light shot high, a wild mad blue. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. The Cretan light calmed.

"Did you feel your death blow from that falling beam?"

For a moment, I couldn't speak I was breathing so hard, bound in the memory of that ghastly agony. "Yes. I felt my own death but an instant away, so I must be dead, or-"

I heard amusement in that black voice, again somehow hollow, not quite right. "Or what?"

"If I am truly alive then you are a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, though I am not at all certain there are grand differences amongst those titles. Or you are a being from above or below that a man of reason cannot accept. I know not and you will not tell me.

"You need me because you have promised not to meddle. Meddle? That is a curiously bloodless word, a word empty of threat or passion, like a promise a maiden aunt would make, is it not?"