What Belongs to the Sea
Aurelia grew up in a cottage by the sea, where she awoke to the ocean’s song every morning: waves crashing and seething, hissing and slurping, battering the granite cliffs upon which their cottage stood. The sound seemed like a secret language to her, one that only she could hear. It spilled into the hollows of her soul, and whispered, come and play.
She did. Day after day, Aurelia clambered down the narrow goat trail eked into the cliffside, and played on the shore—gathering seashells and pebbles; braiding crowns out of sea-grass. Tossing breadcrumbs to the seagulls, who flocked to her like moths to flame. But her favorite thing to do was swim—in the water, she became weightless, ethereal, a girl of grace and fluid motion, carried seamlessly upon the current.
Time slipped away from her, there on the shore. Often, she played for hours, until the tide went from low to high and back again, until the sky darkened with shades of indigo and bruise-blue. Until finally, her father came out to fetch her, demanding that she come inside for dinner, or chores, or for the simple fact that a girl could not simply play in the water all day. Why couldn’t she play with her dolls, or out in the fields, or in the village square with other girls her age?
“But Papa, I love the ocean,” Aurelia insisted, whenever her father questioned her about the matter.
“I know, Auri dear. The ocean loves you too.” But Aurelia’s father always said the words with a wary eye upon the waves, on the hidden depths beneath. For Aurelia’s father knew what sort of secrets the ocean hid within its depths. He knew more than most.
***
Aurelia’s father was a somber man, his skin tanned and weathered by his decades at sea. He’d spent half his life as a fisherman, but gave up his hooks and nets in favor of life as a woodcarver. Now the rooms of their cottage overflowed with his creations: bowls, chairs, cabinets, tables. Pendants and puzzles boxes and toy boats too. Many of his creations were adorned with carvings of a woman, a woman with a crown of seashells and a mane of curls, and a scaly fish’s tail where her legs should’ve been. The woman, Aurelia knew, was her mother.
“I caught her in my net one day,” her father told her at an early age, while she was seated on his lap for a bedtime story. “Judging by the weight, I thought it was a stone, a great heavy stone that’d gotten snagged in my net. But then I haul it up onto the deck, and what do I see? A hissing, snapping, frightfully angry woman, with a great big tail where her legs ought to be!”
“Mama had a tail?” Aurelia demanded, knowledgable enough even at age five to find this mildly incredulous.
“She did indeed. It was remarkable, her tail. Scales in every color of the rainbow.” He waved his hand in a curving gesture, as if to capture the tail’s essence—but of course, he fell short. For color, motion—when had such things ever been captured by the hands of a woodcarver?
“Naturally she was quite incensed about the whole ordeal,” he said. “As for me—well, I was just flabbergasted. So I didn’t much complain when she shimmied over the edge of the boat, and flopped right back into the sea. But a few days later, I saw her again. Perched on a rock near the shore, watching me. She said she had questions for me. She demanded to know what I’d been doing with that terrible net of mine anyways.”
And from there, the story went on what seemed to Aurelia like a fairly predictable trajectory. Her mother, the woodcarver said, was deeply curious about people on land. Bursting with questions about anything and everything, just like Aurelia herself. And while Aurelia’s mother asked questions and the woodcarver provided the answers, the two of them fell in love. But shortly after Aurelia’s birth, her mother returned to the sea. Never to be seen again.
“We parted amicably,” her father always emphasized. “Truly, there were no hard feelings either way—she just had things to do out at sea, and I had my work cut out for me here on land. Raising you.” And he gave Aurelia an affectionate bop on the nose.
“But Papa, you still parted,” Aurelia protested, and the fact that they’d done so amicably seemed of little consolation to her. “Why didn’t you ask her to stay?”
“Because your mother wouldn’t have been happy if she’d stayed. Some people in this world belong to the sea; can’t set a foot on land without yearning for the freedom of the waves. Your mother is one of those people.”
“Will she ever come back and visit?”
“I told her she can come back anytime she likes. But it’s up to her.”
Naturally Aurelia found this answer less than satisfactory. Day after day, she gazed out at the line where sky met sea, hounded by the questions: what out there in the ocean could be keeping her mother occupied? What did she look like, what was she doing now; did she ever gaze out at the horizon and think of her daughter, the way Aurelia so often thought of her?
In her father’s woodshop, there was a carving of Aurelia’s mother perched atop a rock, resting on the windowsill like a household guardian. Sometimes Aurelia traced the wood with her fingertip, tried to ascribe color and motion and life to it—the echo of a laugh, the softness of a hand, the glint of iridescent scales in the light. But the carved wood seemed a paltry thing, an empty facsimile of a mother. Stiff and lifeless beneath her touch.
***
Some days, Aurelia tried to ignore the mother-shaped hole in her heart. Or at least, she learned to breathe around it. For she could see how her father tried to fill up that hole as best as he could. With his kind smiles and velvet-soft laughter, and the clever little puzzle boxes he carved for her out of wood. With his gentle words and his endless stories, and his endless answers to her endless questions. More often than not, her questions poured out while she was helping him in the woodshop.
“Papa, how big is the ocean?” she asked one day.
“Terribly big. Marvelously big. Big enough to hold the dreams and desires of everyone who ever lived. Would you pass me the awl, please?”
She passed him the awl. Today he was carving the curved leg of a table, seashells and dolphins eked into the wood grain.
“Have you ever seen the end of it?”
“There is no end to the ocean, Auri dear. Not that I’ve ever seen, at least. Would you pass me the plane, please?”
She passed him the plane. He angled the tool just so, smoothing out the fine edges of his wood-carved dolphins.
“What about the line where sky meets sea, have you ever seen beyond that?”
“Well, beyond the line where sky meets sea—there’s more sky, and more sea. And on and on for as long as you can fathom. A man can spend his whole life chasing horizon lines, and never find what he’s looking for…”
And so forth. Often, they passed hours that way, exchanging questions and answers by the dusty light of the woodshop. But more often than not—the focus of Aurelia’s questioning turned to her mother, by day’s end.
“Papa, what did Mama say, before she left?”
“That she bid me well. That she bid you well. That I ought to raise you to be brave, and curious, and kind, just like her.”
“Are there other merfolk out in the sea?”
“Possibly. Maybe. I suppose there well could be. But I only ever met the one.”
“Did Mama ever talk about other merfolk?”
“No. But that might be because I never asked.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Because she had so many questions about us landwalkers, I could hardly get a word in edgewise. And anyways—it would’ve been rude to do so. I caught her in my net that first time we met, you see. I didn’t want to impose on her in any way, not even with a single question.”
“You should’ve asked, Papa.”
“Well, I didn’t. The curiosity that comes so easily to you and your mother, all your questioning and badgering—it’s not in my nature. Long as I have a roof over my head and wood in my hands, I’m content as can be. Would you pass me the awl again, please?”
Aurelia did not pass him the awl. When the woodcarver looked up, he saw his daughter gazing out the window, towards the ocean where it seethed against the cliffs. He knew that look in her eyes. It was the way her mother had often looked at the sea, in her brief time on land.
The woodcarver’s chest tightened. “Auri?”
“Why hasn’t Mama ever come to visit?”
“Well, because she loves the ocean very much.”
“More than she loves me?”
“She loves the ocean, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you too.” And it was true. The woodcarver understood that it was possible to love someone and leave them too.
Aurelia, however, seemed less than appeased by this answer. She lifted her chin, specks of sawdust glinting like fireflies around her head.
“When I grow up,” she said. “I’m going to find her.”
“In a boat?”
“Yes, in a boat. Or I’ll swim.”
“Well, I suppose you could try and find her if you like. But I’ll say, I’ve seen men spend their whole lives chasing horizons, and still walk away unsatisfied.”
“Because they don’t find what they’re looking for?”
“Because what they’re looking for is often here all along.” He tapped the skin between his daughter’s eyes.
She gazed up at his finger cross-eyed. “I’ve got nothing up there but my head.”
“And what a wonderful head it is. Filled with all sorts of questions and cleverness.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Of course I’ve got questions and of course I’ve got cleverness. But I don’t have Mama. So I’ll look for her, Papa. I’ll search all the way to the ends of the ocean.”
“You’re welcome to do so, if you think that’ll make you happy. Just remember, you can come back anytime.”
She blanched slightly. “Oh. Oh, Papa. Of course I’ll come back. I would never just leave.”
And she meant it. To leave her father, and never return—she could not fathom doing that to him. Could not fathom following in her mother’s footsteps that way.
But even as she said the words…she could hear the song of the waves against the cliffs. Churning, ceaseless. Calling to her, like an echo of memory or a half-forgotten lullaby.
***
The years slipped by, and Aurelia’s mother did not come to visit. And though Aurelia still played by the ocean every day, it became easier to do so without thinking of her mother every time she did, wishing for her mother, gazing out at the horizon and dreaming of her mother. In the ocean’s embrace, in the crashing waves and salt-scented breeze, she found—something. Something that came close to filling up the mother-shaped hole in her heart. More so than the wooden facsimiles that filled her father’s workshop, anyways.
Meanwhile, her father gifted her with wooden puzzle boxes of increasing complexity—nooks and crannies and clasps and buttons where she least expected them. She solved them all, with her quick mind and clever hands. Often the puzzle boxes opened to reveal a prize hidden inside—a candied sweet, a wooden pendant. A seashell, gleaming with polish and scented with sea-salt. She laughed with delight each time she opened one, and her father always smiled and kissed her brow. But around the edges of his smile, she saw the phantom hints of sorrow, creeping in like a water-stain on wood. As if with every passing year, every day his daughter grew taller and stronger and more full of life—something inside him was draining away.
***
For her thirteenth birthday, the woodcarver gifted his daughter with her hardest puzzle box yet. Fifteen minutes into her attempts to open it, she let out a cry of exasperation.
“Ah! Papa, I can’t open this one! You must’ve glued it shut!”
“You can do it, Auri,” he said, voice gentle as ever. “Keep trying.”
Aurelia tried. She twisted and strained and fiddled with the puzzle box, until her fingertips were chapped and raw. Until finally, finally—the puzzle box popped open. And the prize within slipped out, landing neatly in her palm:
It was a scale. A slim, smooth, iridescent scale, glimmering with all the colors of the rainbow.
“Your mother told me to give that to you today.” The woodcarver was watching his daughter, his gaze careful, intent. It was the way he looked at his half-finished woodcarvings—things incomplete, less than whole, halfway through metamorphosis. “She said you would know what it meant, when the time was right.”
Her mother. Aurelia’s mouth went dry. They hadn’t spoken of her mother in years. And though her likeness was carved into half the creations in her father’s workshop—some days, it was easy to forget that she was even real. Easy to believe that all this time, she’d been a myth. A tale her father had conjured up, to explain away the mother-shaped absence in her life.
Aurelia pinched the scale between two fingers. She held it up to the light, turned it this way and that. Colors rippled and shimmered along the surface, shifting from cerulean to scarlet to emerald to rose. Never a single hue for long.
“I’ll know what it means when the time is right,” she repeated slowly. “That’s all she said about it?”
“That’s all she said.”
Aurelia didn’t have the faintest clue what it meant now. Or at least, she told herself she didn’t. But in the back of her mind, she felt something shifting, stirring. As if the sight of that scale had awakened something dormant in her.
***
Aurelia kept the scale on her bedroom windowsill, so that she could look at it every morning when she looked at the waves. And in the weeks after her thirteenth birthday, her body began to change.
Her limbs elongated, her hair thickened. Her dreams became more vivid, filled with visions of crashing waves and underwater kingdoms, eked out of coral on the ocean floor. Meanwhile the other girls in the village spoke of newfound desires, strange, sticky desires that left them hungry and wanting in the dead of night. And Aurelia felt desires too—but not for anyone in the village. For the ocean.
One night, she awoke gasping and sweat-slick from a particularly vivid dream. In the dream, she’d been swimming underwater, dancing and twisting and weightless upon the current. And now that she was awake, the open air felt painful against her skin; it made her whole body feel dry and prickly and inexplicably wrong.
Aurelia pressed her hands against her temples. Tried to count her breaths, steady her pounding heart, the way her father taught her. Beyond the window, the sound of waves against the cliffs seemed louder than usual. Hungrier. Like a chorus of a thousand whispers. The sound spilled into the hollows of her soul, and whispered, come.
She did. Out the door, down the hall, towards the doorway of the cottage where she’d lived her whole life. But as she reached the threshold, she hesitated. Turned back around, fetched her mother’s scale from the bedroom windowsill. She left it at her father’s spot at the kitchen table, hoping he would find it come morning. Hoping he would understand what it meant.
Her descent down the cliffside was clumsy, painful. Although she’d scaled this cliff nearly every day for as long as she could remember, now her limbs quaked and quivered as if made of jelly; as if they’d forgotten how to move on land. By the time she made it to the shore, her palms were ragged and blood-stained, flesh cut to ribbons by the stone. Blood dripped down her fingertips and flowed into the sea; it mingled with the sea-foam in swirling eddies and currents.
Aurelia stared at the horizon line. A searing heat bloomed between her legs, akin to the heat of desire she sometimes felt at night. Only…different. Only…more. And when she brought her hand down to her own thigh, she felt the cold, smooth slickness of scales.
Scales. New scales, sprouting out of her skin, shedding paper-thin ribbons of flesh along the way.
Aurelia closed her eyes. The roar of waves was deafening around her, drowning out all conscious thought. Drowning out everything, save for a feeling of pristine, utter clarity. As if all her life, she’d been waiting for this metamorphosis. As if the blood of her mother was rising to the surface, pushing hard against the walls of her veins. As if the blood leaking out from her lacerated palms was the blood of her father, the blood of all that kept her bound to land—now swallowed by the ravenous sea.
She swam forward. A stroke with one arm, then the other, while her legs underwent their metamorphosis. As skin gave way to iridescent scales, while bone and tendon rearranged. There was no pain—or maybe pain like this felt like purpose. Maybe this was the pain of becoming, everything that weighed her down carved away as if by an awl.
Back on the shore, her father emerged from their cottage, watching as his daughter swam further and further away. And though his heart ached with a thousand fathoms of grief—he did not speak, nor move to stop her. For he knew better than to try and keep what belonged to the sea. Than to cage what yearned for the freedom of the waves.
Aurelia dove beneath the water. He newly-formed tail flicked out behind her, propelling her forward. And when she inhaled her first breath of salty, foam-swept sea…it felt like she was breathing for the first time in her life. Like the water filled up every hollow in her soul, every ache and grief-carved absence.
