Free The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker Page A

see.
    •   •   •
    And his other work, his official work, as ship’s artist, his work sketching those ephemeral creatures brought up in the brimming buckets or captured in Harry Owen’s surface net, goes brilliantly well. Night after night they two haul the net, invert it into their jars and vials of water, releasing a cloud of thrashing, scuttering things, soft, struggling ambiguities that wink, pulse, glow, retort, subside. At the height of it, my father is up all night, drawing by candlelight, his dark head bent over the paper, the pencils, despite Harry Owen’s assertion that he must stop for the night and
Go to bed, Leo
. No: he will not. This is his obsession.
    His other obsession.
    What does he see, when he looks at them?
    Soft, translucent bodies, electrical sparks, fiery snowflakes, palpitating stars. Ephemera. They will be gone by morning: gone, as if they never existed at all.
    Thus his rush, to draw them as they fall. The brief bright shower, fiery descent.
    For Harry Owen’s creatures, his captives, do not thrive. Some disappear almost immediately, sinking down and away into those vials filled with seawater; others last a few days, throbbing, flailing, floating, dying. Some last a week. A week at most.
    None are brought back alive. Though some will return in formaldehyde. Others, those solid enough, packed in cotton wool. But what will return are mere shadows of the living creatures, simulacra, gestures toward. In a drawer in the museum now, gathering dust. Unrecognizable things, giving rise to distortions, misunderstandings, mistakes in the science, fantasies.
    The ocean has so many. It will not miss a few.
    In my father’s drawings, that is where they really live now.
    He is almost happy, absorbed in the work that progresses, if not to his satisfaction—for this is impossible, he is never satisfied, though he is prevented, by the brief alighting of his subjects, from his usual picking and scratching, doing and re-doing—then, at least, well enough.
    Their brevity aids his contentment.
    •   •   •
    It is my father’s favorite time, late at night, in the silence and the starlight. The small, guttering flame of Harry Owen’s cigar. Night watch on the booms. Hugh Blackstone at the helm. Sails bellying soundlessly in a night breeze, soft
slip-slop
beneath the bows the only sound. The dark water a solid thing, viscous membrane. There is a sense of breath held, of anticipation, an immanence, as of something unknown that is about to happen: a planet, rising on the dark horizon, out of the sea, it seems, Venus it is, bright as a flame.
    That’s it, that’s what it was—
    Except it isn’t.
    At Harry Owen’s elbow there comes, not a touch, but the warm, familiar insinuation of a touch.
    Dr. Owen
, my mother says,
I have come to see what it is you are always tangling up in this mysterious net of yours
.
    Her golden hair seen in darkness shines like a bright, submerged thing, half seen, rising in a rush to surface in dark waters.
    And what about you, Mr. Dell’oro? What have you caught tonight?
    N-nothing. We haven’t h-hauled the net yet.
    There is fearfulness in him, at her approach. She feels it, draws closer.
    Excellent! That means I can watch. I have always watched my Papa at his work, you know. I have helped him with it, too. He tells me I am his only real collaborator—his scientific amanuensis.
    Turning from them she leans against the rail, then leans over it toward the water; gazes at the place where the towline disappears. It is a thin, shining gossamer, a spider’s web.
    Well—ain’t you going to take up your net?
    Commanded, they cannot disobey. Together Leo and Harry take hold of the line, pull. Then pull again.
    The net, though, will not come.
    I can imagine my mother’s laugh, high and clear and faintly derisive, in the watery darkness.
    A further effort on their part, dark pantings at the line. And then it comes, all at once, furiously, dripping black with weed, green