2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
As Nickel sat in the boat, having paid the last of Rishi’s money, he sat stooped, shivering, and paralyzed by all that had happened. The tears kept coming, but his skin felt numb to them, shriveled by the cold.
The waters were calm yet frolicking in even waves. The fog had lifted, scarcer over the waters, heaving its blue expanse clearer for Nickel’s eyes to see—a landscape free of the fog for the first time in what felt like forever.
The rowing men were stragglers, not looking dissimilar to Steve and Farrul when Nickel had first met them; rugged, creased skin, stained, worn clothes and coats tattered by use, covered in straggly beards and hair from years of living in the canyons. They were also looking for Hedonim, they had said, but nothing more.
They sang more than they spoke. After a couple of hours of being rowed by the men, Nickel’s attention finally drifted to their words, all of them:
There’s a hundred men
to sail the seas
and row them to the sun
When all is done
and my screens have cleaned
my weary eyes to sow,
the sun of my dreams
unraveled from the fog,
I lift my head
to the woman of the sky,
unbeknownst to her,
I drink from the bosom
of a canyon creek,
and then I truly know,
When I lie in the puzzle
of my Hedonim dreams
and the paths that may go
The man without his eyes,
But a cunning device,
Looking through the Ether’s fog,
I thank the maker,
whoever may be,
tomorrow or the day before
For all I know
it’s the drink I give
to forget all my woes
When I row, row, row
I know there’s nothing to lose,
It’s why I call it my
Twenty-Two Hundred Blues
Why I call it my
Twenty-Two Hundred Blues.
G.R. Nanda 