Vickie Vickie,

I’ve always hated the ocean. It melts silk. It washes off makeup. It’s so despisingly honest, like vitriol in the eyes, like a lover’s disdain.

It kills you and it doesn’t have the decency to be personal about it. Drowning is a bureaucratic death, agreed upon by committee of natural forces, no one signing their names on the execution forms. I loathe it.

I hate thinking about death. A good legend will never die, you know this as well as I do, but sometimes death is part of the legend. The rebel and the nun with the dagger; the companion and the twelve days of sickness; the arm-tearer and the dragon’s maw.

What if the most important thing I do is dying? After everything I’ve done, all the knowledge I’ve gathered, all the people I’ve tricked and kissed and left asleep, dancing across the morning dew? My greatest achievement, failing to keep myself alive.

I raised four children so they could die for someone else’s story. Moloch, Abahai, Isak, Iphigenia. Would you remember them? Your false-brothers, your false-sisters? You are the one who’s real; your memory will count, until they spin you into legend too.

I can’t stop thinking about Moloch in the giant, subsumed, healing, digested. I can’t stop thinking. I don’t know what to do if I’m not spinning a yarn for someone or cracking open some ancient bafflement or doing…something. There’s so much waiting on these journeys and nowhere to walk, nowhere new to explore. Stagnancy is survival out here, in a sense; the ship is a breathing vessel, wind in its sails; endless change means it dies out here. So I am trapped in motion, trapped in potential, trapped in this nothingness. There are no tyrants to topple, no secrets to unfurl. Just me. Just the crew. Just Birch and his disdain. Just the sea. That hates me and doesn’t care about me and it never does it never even cares about how much I can’t stop thinking about it. NOT THAT I’M JEALOUS. OF THE SEA.

It’s been a hundred years since I last crossed it. I hid myself in the ship’s festering gut, indistinguishable from the others made to be cargo. The sea did not pronounce their deaths, but it was the executioner of their hope. I saw it fade out of their eyes every day that we were trapped in bondage by the endless water, every day one of them rotted to death and was thrown over the side.

I tricked the dockmaster into giving them the ship and letting them sail home, one of my greater schemes. But the light never returned to their eyes. The sea did that, Vickie Vickie. It’s a murderer. I dive into my cups night after night trying to figure out how to deal out justice, how to get my revenge. NOT THAT I’M OBSESSED. WITH THE SEA.

You would know better. I wish I could see as you do, sometimes. I can’t see straight paths like you do. I just know where all the detours go.

But I’d never give it up. It’s mine. Through all the schemes and tricks and triumphs, through all the ups and downs, it’s what I am. It’s how I carve my mark upon the world. And one day you’ll do the same.

We go North, past where the pale plague of the Americas came forth, to Ireland, to the Gaels. The thumbsucker giant awaits us. And you, the sinless grave. Our path is clear; yours is filled with briars. You’ve asked me for advice; I know what that means for you; I’ll do my best.

You speak of blasphemed weeping, but you must remember that there are always two eyes, equal and separate. That you only see one does not negate the existence of the other.

You speak of blasphemed weeping, but you must remember that the blasphemy stems from the war. Look at the scarring. Sniff for gunpowder. Listen for the whinnying steeds and the crack of gunfire.

You speak of blasphemed weeping, but you must remember that ichor has a source. A leak at the stump means an abcess up the arm. Look for something hidden. Look for what refused to be fixed.

I’ve done my best to be direct; you will need to interpret the rest. It will be difficult. I know you will succeed, my son, but it will be difficult. Keep Birch’s words in mind. Werewrightwork, אנשתן, was a tool of the Nephilim to shape creation, not repair it. It is a powerful healing tool, but it a tool for change first.

I’m sorry that I raised you. Tricksters don’t make good fathers. But I love you even still.