Deep [inspired by the movie of the same name]

Down by the salt-stained boats and men, there is a story told of black haired girls who would disappear into the sea, in the days when my father was a boy.

“What did they go looking for?” I asked. The old man snorted and churned his ass into the polished wood of the chair that had been bleached sad by the sun. He squinted, in spite of the grey dull clouds and light rain, and spat 5 feet to his side. “Sea cock. They believed old witches’ words of mer-men and love at high tide”.

Before I could ask anymore, he humped out of his chair and stood for a minute in the blinding light of the rectangle sky, his hands clinging to the doorposts. Then he swayed down to the docks, where the others stood sniffing at the wind, wondering when the tide would come in.

“Old bastard. It was more than that, but this is what happens when you spend your life slitting soft fish skin, with all them young boys watching out on the lonely water”.

Her forearms were like street-light poles; she swung the wet rag over the counter, lifting my mug to leave a wet gash where the wood was dry before. The water smelt like rotten cabbage. Dolores was known as a barmaid who loved Yeats. I looked a question at her, over the rim of suds.

“Wicca. Part of the stones we walk on, in this town. Can’t shut away history, lad. We all didn’t just get up, pull on our clothes and go to work. This land’s older than all the old bastards put together”. Her voice and the smell of rotten cabbage receded with her into the back room.

We walked down later that day to her cottage. It smelt of old woman and dog. Her mother sat crumpled in a chair, gazing through the television to her bed that lay a wall away. The dog scratched the door as Dolores fumbled with the key. Whining, he dashed out in a streak of musty fur to the scraggled grass outside.

Her voice tore my eyes away from the arcing back, and the brown memories of lunch which now lay steaming with the marigolds. “Here’s a book of my mother’s. It’ll tell you more than I could. Lemonade, lovey?”

I sat next to the old woman as she farted in a deflated, woebegone way. Dolores was in the kitchen, her black nylon behind straining in front of the fridge.

The book had no covers, and was filled with the yellow faded pages that come with being left by the window. It told of the sorrow that came with a black haired daughter, of her will to return to the sea. Stories of families who had left this island for fear of losing their daughter to Manannan Mac Lir, the sea god who followed his own wishes. Tales of girls gone missing, their bodies never found. That when they did, the fish would be plenty that year. And finally, the myth of the blood-vow.

Come high tide, if a young girl was to prick her vein and drop her warm blood into the waves, a mer-man would come and claim her for his love that night.

“But Dolores, she wouldn’t be able to breathe. There were no bodies found”.

She flicked grains of butter, shining their sweat onto the knife before grinding them into the bread.

“Wicca. Magic to you, laddie. Don’t ask me how it works. All I know is there are no more black haired lasses on this island. The ones who went missing were never seen again by human eyes”.

“But…”

“Touch”

The old woman blinked. I had not expected her to speak. Dolores walked into the room, butter on her fingers, and crumbs over her breasts.

“Touch. She wasn’t supposed to touch him”. Her watery eyes looked at the space between Dolores and me. “They all had to swim out; they knew when he was there. They had to swim and swim, out to deep water, past the point when you’re tired and want to sink, just let her take you in her cold arms and hug you. He would swim alongside all the time, smiling and urging you to swim further. If they could keep swimming till the water turned sweet, then he would hold them to his heart, and take them home”.

We sat silent. Dolores in patient silence, me fingering the page that held a Gaelic chant, her mother’s crumbled figure nodding in the chair that had become a part of her.

“But not all of them could do it, could they Dolores? I—

“Mother, it’s time for your bed. Lad, you can let yourself out? I’ll have to give her her bedpan as well, and there’s time enough before you have to be around such work, yes? Tomorrow”. So saying, she of the strong arms lifted the frail body and gently dragged it to the room beyond the television.

The dog walked me out. A picture on the shelf caught my eye: an old print, a tiny face in a mass of dark hair… black hair…

Black hair.

The dog shook his fur and looked pointedly at the door.

I couldn’t sleep. The cold shingle under my boots crunched and shone with the moon’s light.

The sea called me that night. Moon called to tide, tide called to man. Madness or loneliness overtook me, and the moon had not traveled far before I pulled out my Swiss army knife and, legs blue-veined under rolled trousers, I stood in icy waves that sucked my feet lower into their wet underlip, dripping blood into the sea. Salt stung the fresh slit.

Clothes were lost. I dove in, striking arm-length after arm-length.

I don’t know how long I swam. Black water shining where my arm left a trail, covering me up, bearing me on, but I could feel the time underneath my tiny body, the ships and dead men, the coral in skulls, the sea weed forests, the fish guards who would come for me when I could breathe no more.

His arms tired, he struggled, and then paused lying on his back, closing his eyes. A porpoise rose out of the waves and nudged his feet. In fear he swallowed a lot of water, then came up to stare at the fish. He reached for its back in fear, and when he realized the slippery cool skin would not desert him, he clung to her, his face out of the water.

She took him to where the whales sing, to where they feed endlessly. They swam past green ice, and fishing polar bears. They swam past Orion and the water was sweet, her heart warm and beating where his ear pressed against her skin.

Before dawn, she left him close to shallow water, nudging him towards the soft-sucking sand. She turned and swam—the ocean ripples she left behind streamed like soft black hair.

He was found sitting where the tide left white foam lines over his thighs and face. He refused to move. Dolores brought him food for three days and three nights, which the sea took without a fuss. On the fourth night, he uttered a great cry, and plunged into the waves, again beating forward towards the moon.

A year later, Dolores found a squealing little boy with black hair lying on the shingle. She put him in her fish basket, his gills flared red and gasping against the silvered-mackerel death under him. She put him in a clean fish tank when she got home, gasping from the run. He coughed, eyes shining, kicked his legs and darted about the tank.

Her mother went missing 3 evenings later. She was found sleeping on shingle, smiling. Her hair had come undone, thin silvered black strands mixed with dancing crabs and red seaweed. An empty fish tank lay next to her.

There was good fish that year, the old man said, speaking to the bored tourist. He then squinted, in spite of the grey dull clouds and light rain, and spat 5 feet to his side.