The Hums Followed
Flash fiction, 700 words. For IAM's March 20 prompt. Happy Spring, and a blessed Holy Week! I do, in fact, trill, "Hum! Hum!" whenever I see a hummingbird.
Where William sailed, the Hums followed.
They were luminous, numerous, splendiferous in their bright chorus. In this sea of light, he need never fear the Endless Night. The Hums were his birthright and his doom.
Where he led, they would follow. Should he rest, they would rest. Should he rest too long, they would die. For to be a Hum was to be motion, to be wave and particle, to be as a tiny winged bird, requiring a sup of sugar mere moments after the last.
William was a traveler in the Endless Night, one of many. Most ships were burdened with barrels of oil and pitch to ward off the inky expanse, but his family had ever sailed light.
Now William sailed the lightest, for he was the last. He alone now guided the Hums, he who had not seen another human soul in more than ten years. The time to bring a wife, and in time, children, into this sacred duty was beyond the means of his body.
Bad luck and William’s own blitheness had failed the Hums.
Oh, he would die first. The ship would keep moving for a time, but the nature of the Endless Night was stillness. His ketch would rest, the Hums would rest, and they would die, their trust misplaced, their hopes, such as those little creatures could hope, dashed.
The Endless Night made it too easy. It was a trap for Hums, though whether by nature or primordial design, none could guess. It was a trap for men, too – the dark was soupy, edible, inflammable. There was neither tide nor current, but travelers spent their days performing certain rocking motions that drove their ships forward through the miasma, steered not by rudders but by sails. For ten years had William done this himself, such as that he could rock even while dozing, though he was careful never to sleep too long, never to lie motionless for more than an hour or two, lest his precious pilgrims perish.
It was in such an hour when slumber threatened that he heard a thin cry. He raised his head and saw a thin light in the distance. The cry became a sob, a childlike one. Travelers, the first he’d seen in decades.
It was a larger ship than his ketch, full to maybe eight men, two women, and a small, sobbing child.
They were angry, he could see it from afar despite the single sputtering torch that cast more shadows than light. All bore down on the girl-child.
“Hail,” William called, cutting through the Endless Night and the anger.
They turned to notice him, and began to mutter tales twisted by the witness of many strangers and many years. The Humming Ship was a sign of Outer Darkness – there were no safe harbors where the Humming Ship sought a port.
“Do you need aid?” he asked kindly. To them he was an omen; to him, there was no unfriendly face after a decade of Endless Night.
The child had not lifted her head from her hands. She wailed and wailed, and wailed the louder when someone in the crowd landed a light but vicious kick.
“We have an imposter in our midst,” said one of the men ruefully. “A woman sold her to us in return for oil, but she is not a traveler. What traveler is afraid of the dark? She will soon learn the meaning.”
With a sudden decision that hinted at many days of sleeplessness, he grabbed the child and made to toss her overboard, to be swallowed by that which she most feared.
The girl screamed and opened her eyes. The Hums swarmed around her. The man shouted and one of the women made to clutch the child back, but the other stayed her arm.
The man released her, a begrudging relief spanning his face when he saw that the Hums, weightless and yet heavier than the Endless Night, bore her to William’s ship.
“Let it be one your hands, then,” said the man.
William steered his ship away without a word. Ten years had taught him to savor them.
The girl had stopped crying. She stared in wonder at her bright saviors. The Endless Night was awash in the pinprick glow of a million Hums.
William wondered what to say to his new daughter. He spoke finally, to every creature who cared to listen.
“You need no longer fear.”