Down To The Seas Again

Brought to mind by Anna's lovely mermaid-themed post, here is a slightly toned-down version of an old aquatic bodice-ripper.

***

A painted world unfolded in the sunset, littered with shells and sand and broken pools of twilight that rushed out with the falling tide. With the last breath of foam still vanishing around my ankles, I stood, barefoot, and looked up.

The sky was endless, unrippled, painted loveliest of all in shades of coral and blue that reached their arms out forever across the little twinkling town below. I smiled as I breathed in that sky, heavy with voices and sea-salt and life, and made my way running up the beach toward the village. The night was waiting, and my time was short.

How different it all would have been, had I not seen you there.

You were the only traveler who crossed my path along the strand that night. The rest, the beachcombers and the sunbathers and the fishermen all, had long since retreated to the warm fires of home. It was nearing winter now, and the seashore grew rapidly cooler as the sun descended. The fisher-wives would gossip that in the gloaming hour, at the dead of the year, the only souls who lingered at the shore were merfolk and madmen.

I had noticed you once or twice before, standing alone on the shore. In the dim twilight I could never tell if you had more of the merrow or the madman in you, though once I perched hidden on a rock nearby and watched for as long as I could, just trying to decide. The way the seawind whipped your sable hair around you, the way you stared off at the horizon, unmoving, while it buffeted your face, I thought there must be some madness in your heart. But it was a certain kind of madness--sea-fever--the longing of the land-born for the sea. That much I understood in the way the salty wind had etched itself around your eyes. So I had laid low behind the crags and watched for a while, wondering what else lay behind the face I saw, so beautifully weathered, yet haunted with pale tides of innocence.

The weather darkened and the seals cried in the distance; wrapped tighter in your storm-grey cloak, you sang with them for a while. A pleasant baritone, giving a bittersweet song to the sea. Merfolk and madmen, I thought, watching your dark hair curling around your cheek--and sometimes, maybe, a son of the selkie, too.

As the words tumbled through my mind, your head turned in my direction. I dove behind the rock, beneath the waves, left only the tiniest splash, and followed the beach away until you were far behind.

But I carried your song with me, carried the memory of your face--and I haunted the beach, now and then, at night when only the merfolk and madmen roam, hoping to glimpse your lonesome shadow along the greying strand. Once or twice, I found you there again. Always alone, always gazing into the surf, and then beyond to the horizon. Always singing that low and longing sea-song beneath the roaring of the wind and the waves. I stayed hidden, and listened, and after a while I would go away--though always, in my heart, I longed to linger on the beach with you. To hear your sweet voice singing once again, to look past the secrets in your eyes, to know your thoughts.

To know your name.

And now I stood with the painted sunset overhead, bleeding its colors around me on the glistening sand, and I saw you there.

I had not expected you. But now the light still lingered, and the tide washed out far beyond my hiding rocks, and I stood in the open on the shore, and there you were. At first, you didn't seem to notice my presence--turned half away, you gazed intently, as ever, across the quietly churning sea. Foolishly frightened now I stood near you at last, I thought perhaps if I stood very still you might never notice me at all. So I waited, motionless, planting my feet in the chilly sand and watching in silent fascination as the wind toyed with your hair.

You murmured to yourself, a few notes to a song I'd heard before. Your voice was so sadly sweet, even dampened and battered about by the constant wind that sighed in from the rocks. I listened, and you sang a while longer, and the wind stung my eyes as your quiet singing bruised my throbbing heart. Suddenly the words welled up in my throat and tumbled from my lips--I sang along, ending the refrain with you in harmony. Our voices died away and left the beach once more in its solitary hush.

Seeming neither startled nor disturbed, you turned slowly until you faced me. I inhaled a soft breath of the dryly murmuring wind, catching it in my throat. I had never come close enough to see your eyes. You set them on me now, pools of blue phosphor taken straight from beneath the waves. Too bright to be selkie, too warm to be anything but human. They regarded me for a moment, almost unbearable in their silent intensity, and I briefly considered fleeing into the sea as fast as I could run. But then you spoke, and your voice was still the soft and lilting voice of my selkie prince.

"You know the tune."

"Yes," I said faintly, still staring. I wanted to say more, but the words would not come.

"A beautiful song, is it not?"

And you smiled at me, a deeply human smile to come from the ghost on the shore who had haunted my thoughts for so long. Then, for the first time, I realized you were staring, too--staring with the same quiet wonderment that, no doubt, was tarrying obviously in my eyes. I pulled my shawl around pale shoulders, tightly, and said again:

"Yes." I paused; then, smiling a little myself, added, "Beautiful." Two words, this time, lest you might think me a dullard or a fool. But you only laughed, ever warmly. I was surprised to find such warmth behind a face that had always seemed so distant.

"I've heard you sing before," I said, before I knew what I was doing.

You looked at me again, arching your eyebrows in a question. "I only sing when I'm alone," you replied.

"Not always alone." I paused again, suddenly sheepish. "I've been out here on the beach before, sometimes, when you sing. You don't see me, but I'm here. Sometimes I hear you."

That laugh again. "Does it please you?"

Possessed by some witchery I could not understand, I only wanted to look into those brilliant eyes and tell you that your very being had become the heart of my deepest pleasure. I wondered recklessly if this was what men called love. But I held fast to grace, and smiled at you once more. "Very much," I said carefully. "You have a beautiful voice."

"Beautiful," he echoed, as I had. Then, remembering, said, "Thank you. It is kind of you to say so. Do you have a name, kind lady?"

The warnings of my mothers and my grandmothers came swimming altogether into my ears. I halted. --How I would love to tell you--, I thought, --for it would never be fair to ask for yours, if I cannot give you mine...--

But I only smiled again, hoping I could smile away a few unanswered questions. " If we sit here on this beach and talk to one another long enough, perhaps one of us will guess the other's name. A guessing game, how would that fare with you?"

Reckless again--it must have been the moon--I took hold of your weathered hand and squeezed it slightly, and felt the water swelling up beneath our feet as the first touch flowed between us. You gave me a look that burned in your eyes like lightning on blue water, and just like that I forgot the boardwalk, and the village, and the hillside full of lights. We walked together, hand in hand, until we found the shelter of a cave along an inlet.

You were full of questions. You must have seen the ocean in my eyes, the same deep water that flowed through your veins. I was careful, of course, but I answered what I could, and filled the rest in with smiles and jests and little touches on your arm that were as much for my benefit as your own. There was a passion in your eyes when you spoke of the sea, and I adored the passion in your eyes--so I plied you with questions of my own.

The people of your village were not lovers of the sea, though many made their living on the ocean. But you had the fever in your blood, and you ached for the water and heard the waves calling to you nearly every night. You were a sailor once, but some old wound kept you from it now. So you had to be content with walking the shoreline in the evenings, singing to the sea--believing, you said, that the sea-folk might hear you, and this soothed your ache a little.

Night fell. We sat a while, listening to the gentle lapping of the surf along the coastline. Your hand, at some point, had slipped into mine, and now as you finished talking your head came to rest at the soft crook of my shoulder, your long hair spilling loosely across my breast. Through the mouth of the cave, we saw the moon rise, and I blamed it again for my recklessness as I ran my fingers through your hair. The seals were calling again, in the distance, and I answered with a faint lullaby.

"I've never heard that," you murmured lazily. "What is it?"

"I learned it from a selkie," I said with a smile.

Whether or not you believed me, I cannot be sure--but you smiled back. Then, idly, you mused, "Are you hiding your cloak somewhere, my nameless lady? If I find it, can I keep you?" You smiled wider, turning to face me. "Or if I guess your name! Can I keep you then?" You pulled me closer and playfully began to rattle off a list of common names.

Nothing even close, but my panic was real enough to require a shift in this treacherous current. Panic or opportunity, or maybe the reckless moon again--whatever it was, I had to occupy your idle lips, and so I pulled you closer still and kissed you soundly.

Falling quiet, you slipped your arms around me and returned the kiss with a slow and smoldering passion. From the instant your lips touched mine, my head was spinning, lost in an unimaginable feeling of finally succumbing to the ache that was born in my heart on the first day I saw you. I could feel your fever flowing into mine, passed through the floodgates we had opened into one another. You held me so tightly, sliding your warm hands beneath my shawl and up over the arch of my back, pulling me nearer still into the flood and the fire. Our lips melted together for a moment more; then I pulled back, gently, briefly, breaking the kiss only for the sake of looking in your eyes.

They gleamed in the dark, reflecting the moonlight that shone on the walls of the cave, more warm and intense than ever before. "I want to know your name," you whispered as I brushed the dark hair from your eyes. "Please tell me your name."

The look in those beautiful eyes was enough to break my heart. The moon bounced off the black rocks, laughing at me silently. As the tide inched its way around us, I twined my fingers with yours in the wet sand, and whispered, "I love you. Ask no more."

It seemed like enough. Kisses fell like the rain upon my face, pouring down my cheek and over my neck, pooling at my throat, your fingers pressed gently into the small of my back, your other hand raking through my dampened hair. Kisses slid against your skin, each in turn, the way a wave will always roll back out to sea once it has touched the edge of the world.

"More," I told you breathlessly. I knew that there was more; I felt it in the way you pressed against me, in the way your heart was beating against my chest with a hunger and a fever far removed from any other kind I knew.

"More," you answered gently, and pulled me with you as you sprawled back in the sand. A rain had begun to fall outside the cave. Trickles of water crept in around us, rushing around our legs now and then in a cool white torrent, but all I felt was the movement of your body, the burning of your gaze. The skin of your hands was rough and warm, but their touch was seafoam-soft. We breathed together, and your arms encircled me once more. I sank against your body as you sank into mine.

It hurt, at first, but only for a moment. Then it was as before--a natural progression, a perfect fit. You gently moved with me, swaying with the rhythm of the moon outside, the reckless moon who laughed against the cavern walls and fell in cool droplets all around us. I put my arms around you and swayed along, rose and fall, ebbed and flowed against your body until there was nothing in the world but the shapes and shadows that we made together. My hair tumbled over your shoulders; you buried yourself inside me fully, and pressed into a long and lingering kiss that drove the cold out of the cave and miles away from the shoreline.

You flowed in me, like water, and I sang for you like the sea. When the kiss at last was broken, we were kneeling in water that rose almost to our chests. Breathless but for a moment, we shook ourselves from heaven long enough to look around.

"Perhaps it's time we should go," you said, squeezing my hand. I nodded quickly, and we made for the entrance to the cave, which was rushing over now with a constant flow from the sea. My heart fell as I looked outside.

The tide and the rain had come rushing in, and now the path we had taken to reach our cave was no longer a path at all, but a torrent of raging water. Too deep to walk through, too powerful to swim without the risk of drowning; but neither could we stay in a cave that was soon to be flooded as well.

I looked at you, then, saw the fright in your eyes, felt the decision turning in my head, twisting in my stomach.

--You know what will happen if he finds out-- I heard the voices shouting again. --He will never be the same. He will not be allowed to remember. You will have to leave him. Forever.--

The last reminder echoed like a funeral knell in my head.

To have found you, only to give you up now; to love you so briefly, only to lose you so soon. How could I do it?

But you would die if I didn't.

"Do you trust me?" I shouted over the roar of the water.

"Do I...? Yes...Of course, why?"

"I can get us out of this."

"You can?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes!"

I steeled myself. Tried not to look in your eyes, but faltered. "I love you," I barely breathed. "Remember that, somehow."

"What are you going to do?" you asked, wide-eyed.

"I'm going to help you breathe. Trust me. And don't be afraid."

I kissed you, then, and pulled you close to whisper in your ear.

One word. My name. My true name.

I took your hand, and we dove.

I know you will not remember now, but this is how it happened. In the instant you learn a thing's true name, you will see that thing for what it really is. The glamour fades, true form returns, and what seemed human is no longer. That is how it was. My face changed, though only a little. My eyes darkened. Fingers joined together with a delicate membrane, and as simply as you had parted them before, my legs grew together, fused into the scaly, magnificent tail that marks my kind so plainly.

To my relief, as we submerged, you did not recoil in fear; you had always believed, and perhaps you even guessed a little at the truth when we first met. Even when I changed, as I looked in your eyes, I saw that the love remained there. For that, I am grateful.

It was our last kiss--there, beneath the waves, my strength supporting you, our lips locked together as I shared my breath with you until we reached the safety of the shore. With my last sigh against your mouth, I breathed a breath of sleep, and you drifted away in my arms. I took you to the edge of the beach, laid you down on the shore, and lingered nearby in the shallows until almost dawn.

I knew I had to go before you woke. I knew that when you did, you would have no recollection of what had happened the night before. Would have no memory of me at all. They say this is for your own good, to keep you from madness, to keep a firm line drawn between the world of the fae and the world of men. None of these reasons could comfort me that morning, as I watched you one last time until the sunlight crept across your face. Then I said goodbye, and swam away.

You are beautiful when you sleep, my love. You look so peaceful. So content. If I could get the magic to work again, I would come ashore and sit beside your window in the mornings, just to watch you. I would never wake you; would never try to endanger you with the memories they say you are better off without. I am told the risk is too great, even if I keep out of sight. The magic will not work again.

But I hope I may be forgiven when, sometimes, I go to hide in the water behind the rocks along the beach. I watch for you early in the twilight, where I know you will never see me. The wind still whips at your wild hair, and you come down to wander the shoreline, singing.

Dreaming, as you always did, that the merfolk hear your voice.