Butes

She pulled him from the waves, maddened and crazed. When he spoke it was not in words but in gibberish – riddles and half-formed vowel sounds, croaks and sobs. But she kept him anyway, and took him home with her. She tended to his wounds and the chill that had struck through his bones; she clothed his crippled body and fed him hot stew. She let him garble out his nonsense-sounds until he finally became quiet and fell into a sleep, his head cradled in her chest.

And as his eyes shut slowly, as his lips stopped chattering and chapping out nothing-words, as his breath slowed and deepened, she knew how beautiful he was. She knew how she loved him.

In his dreams his words were not nonsense. In his sleep he repeated a lulling lay, a ballad of briney tides and dangerous, enduring depths. She listened silently. Rapt was her attention and wrapped were her arms about his torso, clinging to him as though the tighter she held him the closer she could bring that song to her… She clung to him like a drowning man would, and her eyes remained open but unseeing throughout the night.

By day he did not speak. Sometimes he would mumble and gibber, narrating an inner mindscape unknown to his hostess. Other times he would stare at the horizon, silent, his head turning one way then the next as though he strained to hear the wind or the gulls. But each night as he fell asleep his tense body would relax back into youth’s softness and she would steel into his room to listen to the song on his lips.

One night, very slowly, ever so gently, she stooped to place a kiss on his lips as they moved. She felt the flesh yield and mould to hers, and breathed in the breath upon which the lilting song travelled. It tasted sweet and it tasted salty, and ever so gently she broke away once more.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed, and the seasons moved on in their ever-constant dance. And she watched him all day, listened to him all night, and fell deeper in love with him and the song of his dreams. Soon, she began to understand the otherworldly lyrics that formed the ballad, and began to realize its origins. She had been told, as a girl, about Melusine the fishwoman, about the Sirens that plagued Ulysses, and the seal-women of the northern islands who could shed their pelts to walk on land and marry men. She had been warned about the siren song that some sailors insisted rang out over the isolated oceans, calling out for menfolk to ease their sorrow and loneliness. And she knew how a man, once caught in the net of the song would throw himself into the unforgiving waves to unite with its source.

She had not heard of one coming back to shore.

And for this, she loved him all the more.

As the days went by, she became more forthright. Often she would kiss his cheek as she set down his dinner before him, or let her hand brush his almost carelessly. Her smile became warmer to him, her eyes less coy, her voice softer, but he remained unyielding and unaware. One night, before she lay him in bed, she pressed her body against his, but all he did was stare silently out of the window at the night. As she sat by his bed listening to the song, tears streaked her face and fell onto his dark hair, like silver stars in a midnight sky.

The next day broke fresh and cool, and she led him outside by the hand. She drew him slowly behind her away from the cottage, and his head moved side to side listening, straining to hear… And as she walked down the cliff path he heard it.

The waves broke upon the pebble shore steady and enticingly. The gulls called out over the shallows, and the smell of salt on the air travelled to his olfactory senses, reminding him of a perfume he had once smelled. His smile broke into a relieved sigh as his feet touched the water for the first time, and she turned to take both his hands as they walked further into the sea.

He began to sing. The rolling notes, pregnant with the essence of Mother Ocean herself, rang out from his very being, and she joined in the song. She knew it by heart. As their tunes created a new harmony with the gulls and the breakers, his eyes met hers for the first time and he smiled with joy, both their faces glinting with drops of water, their lips just above the water. He grasped her tightly, and she opened herself to him as they sank beneath the waves, both songs still echoing in the final breaths they exchanged.