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The night drew in with deceptive slowness, the lurid rose-and-gold streaks of sunset fading slowly at first and then dimming with a suddenness that had left many unwary captains still on the sea of the Marrows after dark. Once, the woman sitting on the front porch step of the small cabin on Steel Point would have wanted to paint that sunset. She would’ve wanted to paint the things that came afterward, too—the moonlight silvering the waves, and the swirls of phosphor ghostlight in the shallows, and rocky islands that rose from the sea, stark shadows jutting above the lively water. The stars she would have rendered in white paint casually flecked over black.
Once, of course, she’d been fearless. The dim urge to capture the scene faded as quickly as it sparked, and the builder felt a twist of anxiety. Even in her fabled fearless past, she’d never liked being out at night. Oh, it was safe ashore, it had always been safe—but like the mercurial sea itself, the rules that governed the water had a way of changing unexpectedly.
The builder rose, ignoring the grinding twinge in her right knee. That had been getting worse lately. Her youth had fled, quite behind her back, without so much as leaving a note, and the aches and pains that had lasted a day or two when the builder was younger had begun to linger. She kicked off her sturdy garden boots at the door and set them down neatly, side by side. And then, standing there in her stocking feet, the builder hesitated, seized by the pull of something she could not name. An instinct, a need to look back towards the water.
She did so. She’d been expecting it—how, God below only knew—but a lead weight dropped into her stomach nonetheless.
The dark bulk of a boat rested at the end of the dock, the lights of its cabin and prow shining with a cheery amber light that looked cozy and were probably very little use at night. Not the boat of someone who did much night fishing. Or much fishing at all. The builder’s mouth tightened into a thin, firm line.
Ignoring the rogue and entirely idiotic urge to head down to the dock—to run, laughing, as she had once—the builder turned and stepped into her cabin, shutting and barring the door behind her.
#
The knock at the door came some time later. The builder was sitting in her rocking chair with her cat in her lap, attempting to read a book and failing, her gaze skipping helplessly over the words. She couldn’t concentrate. She’d been waiting, fretting, fuming. Bracing herself for this.
She rose and stepped to the door, opening it just a crack. Just enough to peek through. The man on the front porch stood mostly in shadow, but she could make out the familiar set of his shoulders. The seemingly permanent rumple of his clothes. The shag of his dark hair. The builder had braced herself, had known it would be him, even before she’d turned and seen the boat lashed to the dock, but her chest tightened as it always had, constricted in some invisible vise. That old dull hurt, rising to the surface and blotting the light from the air, the air from her lungs.
“Is it you?” the builder asked. Her tone was stern, her voice rough. Thankfully, it did not waver.
“Of course it’s me.” Much smoother. Not as unpracticed. He hadn’t fallen out of the habit of speaking to people. He hadn’t minded staying in the Marrows.
Bastard. It wasn’t fair of her to think so, not really, but she thought it anyways. It felt good to cling to that anger, even now.
“Is it you, yourself?”
“I—” The man shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know how to answer that. Mostly?”
Mostly was probably the most she could hope for. Before the builder left for Steel Point she’d heard the rumors that flew through the Marrows, passed from mouth to ear on a tide of alcohol at the pub. She knew, moreover, how foolish and self-destructive the dockworker could be when left to his own devices.
The thought sent a nasty little silver arrow of grief through her. It pricked her stubborn heart. Made it bleed.
The builder’s throat felt thick, strained. Too much talking after too much silence. “Well,” she said. “What do you want?”
The dockworker hesitated. “Can I come in?”
“What for?” Her tone was sharper than she’d meant it to be. More caustic.
“Please, Elira.”
It was the builder’s turn to hesitate, stricken by the sound of her own name. How long had it been since she’d heard it spoken aloud? For that matter, how long had it been since she’d even thought of it? With no one on her tiny island to speak to, and no reminders of her human self—not so much as a mirror!—Elira had become a thing as nameless and wild as the lean grey rabbits that eked out a living beneath the patchy brush and beach grass. She’d left town to heal, to allow the raw red scars to finally close, but the loneliness had diminished her. For a moment, like those scrawny beach rabbits, Elira could think of nothing to say at all.
“Elira?”
He was still waiting, still watching, still lingering on her step. His face too old. Unfamiliar lines carved over the laugh lines she remembered.
Wordlessly, Elira stepped back and let Joe in.
#
They drank tea together on the front porch, sipping from tin cups and sitting side by side on crates that had once held supplies from the Marrows. The builder only had the one chair, and she didn’t especially want to sit side by side with the dockworker on the end of her narrow bed. It felt strange, sitting outside after full dark, and more than a little ominous, but Elira hadn’t wanted to drag a crate indoors. That might give Joe the impression that his invitation was permanent, after all, and that was an impression Elira was not keen on imparting.
They sat. They sipped. Once, words had flowed like water between them, a well that never ran dry. The words were still there, Elira sensed, but they had lost their effervescent joy. The decades had soured them, spoiled them, until all that was left to say were things Elira would rather remain unsaid. Those unspoken words had a physical presence to them now, a weight that made her skin prickle with dread. A conversational Sword of Damocles.
They sat, they sipped. The stars sparkled like diamond chips, impossibly bright. The fat-bellied moon crested the unseen horizon, where black sky bled into black sea. Distantly, Elira saw the golden light of a boat’s headlamp, creeping across the water. Fishing for the squid that sometimes rose to meet the full moon. For one delirious, lunatic moment Elira nearly turned to Joe, ready to ask him if he remembered the time they’d gone squid fishing, so long ago, and the time they’d camped on the shore of this very island, rocky and wild, and the time they’d sailed to the horizon, all three of them, and thought they’d go on forever—
She raised her tea and drained it, then set the empty tin cup on the porch beside her. “Why did you come here?” Elira asked at last.
“Did I need a reason?”
“Yes,” Elira said flatly. “And I want to know what it is.”
“Fair enough,” Joe said. “And I suppose missing you isn’t good enough?”
“No,” Elira said. It was an obnoxious question, but his voice was heavy with weariness, that teasing spark gone. She suspected the obnoxiousness was nothing more than long habit. Joe simply nodded, accepting her answer.
“I s’pose, then,” Joe said finally, ponderously, choosing his words with a slow care that must be an effort for him, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. For everything. And I’m done. With all of that. I’m…better now.”
“Should I care?” Elira asked, her tone harsh. The words were cruel, sharpened and delivered with a savage twist of the knife—the cold flick of her gaze, dismissive and indifferent. She’d dreamed of being cruel to him, dreamed of hurting him, but seeing him wince cut her just as deeply as she’d imagined cutting him.
“No,” Joe whispered.
The seconds stretched out, time crystallizing, caught in amber. Elira could see Joe rising, awkwardly handing her his empty cup. Saying he had to go. Heading down to the dock, to the boat he’d no-doubt borrowed, and sailing back to the Marrows despite the lateness of the hour. Risking the things that prowled the waves, drawn by the light of an unwary fishing boat. Risking the stone fangs that jutted from the waves to either side of the narrows that threaded between the fishing towns.
She could see it, and still she sat, the words unspoken clamoring for air, clogging her throat until she could hardly breathe. And then he brushed an invisible crumb from the knee of his trousers, shuffling aimlessly about as people do when trying to fidget their way into a quick retreat, and tears pricked at the corners of Elira’s eyes.
“I do anyways,” Elira said, leaning towards him to touch his arm. To hold him still. “I do care, you bastard.”
The dockworker grinned—fleeting, hesitant, but something like a flicker of his old self. Almost. He was too pale, an unhealthy greyish tint to his skin. If he really had left all that behind, as he claimed, he hadn’t done it long ago. The thought of that—that taint lingering on him made Elira’s stomach turn, the tea churning queasily, but she forced herself to maintain her light hold on his arm. There was no call to judge him, for doing what he’d done. Elira hadn’t handled her sister’s death any better herself.
#
Joe didn’t look much better indoors, under the mellow lamplight, but there was a dim spark in his dark eyes. A hint of life. Something of the man she’d loved once. Frankly, she wondered whether she looked any better to him. Elira had made her own missteps in the years since they had fallen so painfully, finally apart. She’d been no happier. Life had treated her no more gently.
Thankfully, the crocheted shawl about Joe’s shoulders did help disguise the unpleasantly wan cast to his skin. Elira tugged her own shawl closer and sat back in her rocking chair, regarding him. They’d dragged in a crate for him to sit on; the permanence of his welcome remained an open question, but the thought of sending him back to sea at night was…well. Unthinkable. The less charitable side of her thought perhaps Joe had known she wouldn’t want to send him off into the dark. Perhaps he’d been counting on it.
Elira dismissed the thought with an effort. There was no need to muddle her mind with doubt now. She’d made her decision, at least to a point. “So why come now? You’ve had years.” Despite the words, there was nothing accusatory in her tone. It was a simple statement of fact.
Joe looked away anyways, unwilling to meet her eye. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. But why now?”
“It’s hard to say,” Joe said. “I’ve been thinking lately. Since the fisherman died. The one who—”
“I know,” said Elira.
“Well,” said Joe, “I’ve been thinking, is all. About how we were…stuck on her, you know. Could never get past it.”
Her: Ariel. Elira’s sister. Laughing, wild, hanging from the prow of the freshly painted blue sailboat. She’d been free on the sea, free in a way that Elira had never managed to capture on canvas. Elira hadn’t begrudged Joe for being a little starry-eyed over her. How could she? Everyone had loved Ariel.
It was Elira’s turn to look away, not trusting herself to look at Joe. She wished she still had a battered tin teacup to fiddle with.
“Anyways,” Joe said. “I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t want to see something happen to you like what happened to the fisherman. And I thought maybe—” His voice caught, stumbling over that ocean of lost words between them. “Maybe you wouldn’t want to see something like that happen to me, neither. Or at least,” Joe added, with another of those hesitant smiles, so unlike the easy grins of his youth, “I was hoping that was still the case.”
“Presumptuous of you,” Elira said, “To think I wouldn’t enjoy seeing you devoured by an unspeakable ancient evil.”
“I thought it was sort of a low bar to aim for,” Joe said, “And maybe we could work our way up from there.”
She smiled, damn it. She hadn’t wanted to smile at him. But it felt good to smile, too, and despite her misgivings Elira felt something stubborn shift in her chest, creaking in protest as it was forced to flex for the first time in years. Why deny herself a smile? Why deny herself whatever this was?
More questions without answers. The world, in Elira’s experience, provided precious few answers, and even fewer satisfying ones.
“Why, Joe?” Elira asked softly. “Why now? Why really?”
She hadn’t thought he would answer—or if he did, his words would be an easy lie, delivered with the glib assurance of his younger self telling a truly outrageous fish story. Instead, the answer came almost at once.
“Because I need you,” Joe said, with a quiet honesty that made Elira’s heart clench with sudden sorrow. “And I don’t think I can pretend I don’t anymore, and I don’t remember why I started in the first place.”
“Because I was stubborn,” Elira said, and now the tears were not just threatening but leaking, damn it all to the deep, searing her eyes and leaving hot tracks down her cheeks. “And I blamed you. And I shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I didn’t make it easy for you, did I, trying to drink it away—”
“Oh, stop it,” Elira said, smiling and scrubbing furiously at her eyes. “Before you talk me out of forgiving you.”
“You’ve forgiven me?”
“I’m willing to consider it,” Elira said. “Possibly. If you’ll think about forgiving me.”
#
They left before dawn, tromping down a narrow, rocky track that led to a narrow, rocky strip bordering the sea. The sky was just beginning to pale, the air suffused with a dim, pleasant violet light that made it no easier to see where she placed her feet but possible, at least, to see Joe’s face. His smile had grown a little quicker, a little steadier. They’d talked through the night, the words coming slowly at first and then streaming out, bleeding out, raw and naked and ugly and true. And it hadn’t been bad, no. They’d laughed, and the rusty sound of her own laughter had surprised her, and the fact that it had surprised her had made her cry. And he’d held her when she cried, and it had felt stiff and alien at first but then it had felt alright, and when she laid her head on his shoulder it did not feel like surrender, or like weakness, but like something true and simple and good, and for a moment Elira felt as though she deserved something true and simple and good.
It was the sort of feeling that could grow addictive, really. The sort of feeling a woman might chase over the horizon, wherever that led.
They stopped at the lip of rock at the water’s edge and looked out over the waves. The water was dark still, but lightening, changing, reflecting the featureless violet sky above with perfect clarity.
“Do you remember the words?” One of them spoke; either, neither, it didn’t matter.
“Yes.”
A deep breath. “As He keeps His seasons, so we offer up our losses…”
They spoke together, both, neither, their voices overlapping and blending together, sinking beneath the mutter of water against rock. Of His seasons, His rages and His trials, His bounties below and above and below, below, below. The old words, gladly accepted, drunk down by the greedy sea.
It was Elira who knelt at the water’s edge, Elira who dropped the tightly corked bottle into the dark. The bottle contained only a scrap of paper—a final love letter to her sister, every inch of the page covered in black ink, front and back, in the old way, leaving no room for the dead to write back. Leaving no open door, no path, no icy channel into her heart.
Even so, a lambent glow rose from the bottle as it bobbed away.
“Fare forward,” Elira whispered. “Fare forward, Ari.”
A hand touched her shoulder, warm and human and true, and Elira did not brush it away.
They burned Elira’s paintings much later, in the early evening. The paintings made a merry fire, popping and flaring and sparkling with color as the chemicals in the paints burned. The smoke was whipped away before it had a chance to sting Elira’s nostrils, carried out over the sea by a stiff wind. Sparks landed in dark water, sizzling as they met the wide, limitless pupil of God below.
Faces, burning. Ariel, lost at sea, and Joe, lost on his own filthy downward spiral, and Elira’s family, fractured and fading in the wake of Ariel’s loss, and the haunted, sunken faces of the townspeople as they grieved their own losses. Their own offerings to the waves. A little shred of Elira’s soul in every painting, crisping and charring in the fire, and a smear of something darker, something that reeked of rot and brine and black, stinking age. Salt and iron, seawater and blood.
She’d wanted to paint the damned, to capture them. To open a conduit between below and above, to chart a course all those lost souls might follow. Joe, taking his foul communion, had sought the same sort of unity, perhaps.
Joe’s fingers brushed hers, gingerly, and then he took her hand. The touch was awkward, hesitant. Soft. Elira accepted it, and after a moment she squeezed his hand lightly, marveling at the simple human loveliness of it—warm skin, pleasantly dry and lightly callused, the backs of his knuckles roughened by work. Strong. Alive. She imagined instead the unity of the deep, imagined his hand in hers there, imagined bone tangled through bone, imagined both of them held forever silent and still, pinned to the bottom of that terrible, lightless well. All words extinguished.
The last light fled and a ribbon of smoke streamed above and away, away and above, carrying ash to the sea and the indifferent stars. Offering up her losses to the deep.
#
Dear Ari,
I hated you for dying. But I hated you before that, too. You were older, smarter, prettier. So much prettier. I was me. Even Joe had a crush on you, even after we were engaged. Did you know that? You must have. You got him to let you work on that boat, and I hated you for that too, because you could spend the day with him and I was stuck in that drafty office of dad’s working on drafts (ha). So much for my dreams of getting out, right? So much for the older one taking over the family business.
God below, I was jealous of you.
And isn’t that all so perfectly, beautifully, fucking stupid? If you’d grown up, you would think so. (Or maybe you knew. You were always ahead of me.) But I was the one who grew up. I was the one who had the chance to do everything that was stolen from you, and I was the one who wasted it. I ruined my life on my own. What happened to you wasn’t Joe’s fault, and neither was what happened to me.
Oh Ari. I wish you’d had the chance to tell me so many things.
Please, Ari. Don’t tell me them now.
Love you forever and ever, world above and below.
Elira.