Lovesong

As published in Other Voices June 2008.

She was singing from atop a jut of rocks not a sea mile off port when I was coming in after another long wasted day. It was her song that first caught my notice, it carried across the water with steadfast harmony. As I approached the rocked area, all I could see was her golden hair, long and wavy, her naked back to me.

I threw my anchor out into the rocks and called to her. “Hullo there! Do you need help?”

She turned towards me and she was, for everything I know, the most beauty I’d ever seen. She smiled, but with difficulty. It wasn’t the spray of the water on her face, she was crying.

“Thank-you, sailor, but I do not need help. I am in mourning for love.”

Her voice carried like a song I must have already known. It struck me deep and took root, the way songs do when you’ve heard them enough, when you believe in them. I never wanted this one to end.

“Please, miss, let me take you to shore, I will get you home safely. You should never travel alone on a broken heart.”

“My home is not on shore. And the love I mourn is not my own.”

After she said this, I was close enough to see she had no legs; instead, there was a long scaled tail, and where her feet would be were fins splitting off to the sides. She seemed part fish and part woman, and I didn’t know quite what to think, but for my life I couldn’t take my eyes away from her. She turned from me again and continued to sing.

I returned to my ship, took my largest net, and threw it over her. I would take her with me knowing love would not let us be apart.

We did not speak, and she did not sing, on the way home or afterwards, and it would be a long time before she sang again. Our love was a troubled affair, for she never quite believed my life was entirely for her. Every day that I went out to sea and returned empty-handed, I knew that when I unlocked the door, she would be there waiting, as beautiful as she ever was.

One day, months later, I realized she was no longer as beautiful as I remembered. She said the beauty was never hers, it was the reflection of the sea, and without it she would die. She asked to come out with me the next day, so she could sing and catch me a fortune. I would no longer be poor and I could release her and soon meet my true love and be happy forever. It seemed like such a beautiful song, and I would indulge her, though I knew I could never let her go.

We set out early in the morning, going deep out to the sea, as far as my ship dare. True to her word, she sang her song, and I cast my nets over the side. When I pulled them up again, they were full. In no time
at all, I had a month’s catch, but it wasn’t enough to let her go. Because I loved her.

So she cried and sang her song once again, louder than before. I covered my ears but it wasn’t enough. A single fish jumped onto the deck. And then another. And then dozens, and hundreds, and thousands, and even after the entire ship was full, she did not stop singing. In minutes, the weight was too great, and the wood split, and we sank below the water.

She swam over to me, kissed me once with her salty lips, with all the beauty of the sea reflected within them, and then left me forever. Alone.

And now, here I wait in the water, holding to a piece of my ship, telling my story to the sea, hoping it will carry to her and she will sing it and be beautiful once again.