Seaward Song
Short Story
Age Group: Adult/YA
Genre: Fantasy
Summary: Two sisters are reunited after facing an impossible choice at the hands of the sea ten years ago.
Seaward Song was entered in the Clean Fiction, Spring Edition 2023 Windows into the Multiverse contest.
Through the window, I saw them—the woman and the beast. Waves lapped the woman’s perfectly laced boots as she stood on the rocky shore. Though wind whipped around her, grabbing her hair and tossing her skirt, she seemed intent only on the monstrous thing crawling from the sea on two clawed feet. The thing’s tail dipped into the roiling sea. Its fishlike head boasted whiskers, each as long as my forearm, and its bulbous eyes stared unblinking.
To my shock, the woman sat beside the ugly creature and wrapped its slimy head in an embrace. Though they were at the shore and I at my study window, the wind carried the woman’s words to me.
“It’s good to see you again, sister.” She kissed the thing’s gray skin and drew back to look at it. “Are you well?”
Had she really called this thing Sister? Surely, I misheard. No one so beautiful as this could be sister to such a loathsome creature. I shuddered as it extended a clawed foot, and the woman took it.
“I wish we could talk, like we used to.” The woman held the thing’s hand and stroked the dorsal fin jutting from its head. Ugly spines decorated the fin, but the woman seemed not to notice them. “It’s been so long since you last visited.”
The beast trilled, and perhaps I imagined it, but the creature seemed sad.
Waves crashed closer every moment, as if reaching to pull the beast back into the ocean’s depths.
“I’m so glad you’ve come.” The woman pulled the creature close. “Seeing you brings me such joy. Will you stay with me a while this time? Please?”
The beast laid its head on the woman’s shoulder and released a wailing sigh the like of which I’d never heard before, nor since. The mournful sound cut deeply.
“Don’t cry.” The woman said as the beast wrapped clawed hands around her and buried its face in her wind-blown hair.
Water licked the shore, and a white-crested wave fell across the beast’s back and pulled it toward the sea.
The woman held onto her beastly sister until the wave receded.
“It wants you back.” Tears stained her words. “But I need you.”
The creature raised a hand and with one claw gently caught a single, falling tear then tapped its blunted snout to the woman’s nose.
“No.” The woman sobbed. “It’s not all right. The sea wanted me, not you. It isn’t right that you suffer because of me.”
The creature thrummed a gentle strain of song. Each note was far too beautiful to have spawned from something so hideous. But a violent wave ended the song, and the beast dug its claws into rocks to keep from being snatched into the sea.
When the wave receded, urgency filled the beast’s voice. It slapped the angry ocean with its tail, and the spray showered both woman and beast.
“Stay with me a little longer.” The woman kneeled, clutched the creature’s feet, and held on as the surf beat her face and arms, trying to dislodge her. “We were just children!” She shouted to the sea. “You should never have made us choose.” She let go of her sister and spread her arms wide. “Go on. Take me now and let her be herself again.”
But the sea gave no reply. In fact, the waves now seemed reluctant to touch her.
“Coward!” the woman cried. “Do you only deal with those who can’t defend themselves?” Anger thickened her voice, and she hurled a stone into the waves. The sea raised a whitecap to catch the stone, and it sank into the deep without a sound.
The beast nudged the woman’s arm, and with a plaintive keen begged her to stop.
“But you didn’t deserve this.” Bitter tears streaked the woman’s cheeks. “I fell in, and you pulled me to safety. When I woke aboard our little boat, you were in the waves, already half beast. It should have been me.”
The creature trilled again and nosed into the woman’s arms, curling half its scaly body into her lap. But the ocean had recovered from the woman’s rebuke, and one last wave cascaded over woman and beast, pulling the creature mercilessly until the sisters were ripped apart. In moments, only the beast’s eyes and mouth were visible above the water.
As the monstrous sister was swallowed by the sea, she keened the same beautiful song as before, and her voice rode the waves to shore where her still human sister sat speechless. Scratches from the sea-bound sister’s best attempts to hang on raked the woman’s arms and hands.
When shock faded into resignation, the woman folded red-streaked hands and whispered to the empty sea, “I love you too, sister.”
Even now, decades later, I remember that sea beast’s song, and sometimes, in the quiet, I hum it to myself as I gaze out this same window wondering if, perhaps, I might see those sisters again some gray morning.
Seaward Song is Ⓒ D. T. Powell, 2023.