Like a marble statue placed,
Looking o'er the watery waste,
With its white fixed gaze;
There the Goddess sits, her eye
Raised to the unpitying sky:
So uncounted days
Has she asked of yonder main,
Him it will not bring again
To the lone and lovely island
In the far off southern seas.
Her song carried into the air and wound round the trees of the forest and burrowed into the sands of the beach and every scent of every flower and the cedar and juniper and cypress belonged to her and the birds who flew from far to touch down upon her sacred land sang along with her and when she laughed at their trilling flourishes it too became another thread of song that wove through this island, her island. She ran her fingers along the bark of trees and spoke to tree and fern and grass and leaf as friends, as companions, and when the sun rose she raised her face to drink in the warmth.
Bountiful sky and beautiful sun. They’d been with her so long as her constant companions on her island far away, hidden away.
The rest came and went. Trees grew and grew and then died. The flowers cycled in and out of life with each season, with each year. The constant change became a monotony yet the permanence of sun and sky filled her with warmth, with light, and she took that bright and poured it outward into her island.
A paradise. A refuge.
The birdsong changed and she turned to the shore. Their twittering and singing twisting cacophonous, a chattering, a crowing.
Her own song fell away and she scowled at the puncture in paradise, this uncalled for interruption.
And then the wind blew and her eyes opened wide.
This was something new.
And she ran and the suddenness sent her owls and falcons winging into the air and the squirrels and rabbits sprinting away from her and even the lynx and wolves and jackals leapt away from the temporary peace she brought to them. Past trees and streams, over stone and earth, she burst through the forest into the openness of the beach and the forever of the sky ranging over the tumultuous winedark sea to see the sea birds circling and chattering around some beast washed ashore.
Her lungs emptied for a moment though she did not know why. Did not have the words to bring forth.
A trembling fear took her and she gripped a fistful of her own hair and braided the strands quickly before unbraiding and braiding them once more. She stood there at the precipice of beach and forest, of past and future, for a moment that held her for eternities.
Years and centuries would come and go and her lost island would be swallowed by the sea but she would forever return to that moment when all that she was, all that she longed for, all that she feared came crashing down upon her.
She raised her face to the sun once more and then stared down into the earth as if staring through the layers of soil and stone and molten rock.
And step by step, she approached the birds.
And step by step, she breathed slowly, pulling all her strength into her chest, into her hands, building typhoons of wind to protect her heart, to unleash with a fury untold and unknown if necessary.
And step by step, she saw that the beast was not a beast.
And she knew, even before she saw his face, that all her dreams and nightmares had arrived in this terrible, wondrous gift.
And she kept stepping. And she came closer and closer.
And when she shooed away the birds and stood between him and the sea and the sun, her shadow covering his face, she stared down at the man and studied his face. His thin neck and hollowed cheeks, his ragged, tangled hair and his long and highbridged nose and wide brow.
She memorized these features and every scar carved into his coarse skin, the ravines of age at the corners of his eyes. Tears welled in her eyes and she fell to her knees, hands falling to the sand. She dug her fingers in and wept and muttered to no one, to everyone, to everything, to those gods who abandoned her, who she prayed would hear her, “Why? Father, why send me the dead? After all this time.”
The sun arced across the sky and the sky bruised and blushed and the stars cast off the cloak of day and the moon’s wide eye opened full to stare down upon her as she watched the dead man lay there in the sand. She considered the waves that brought him here and how they might reclaim him, drag him away, leaving her once more alone, with nothing and no one.
Such cruelty. She turned to the sea and unwove and rewove her hair into braids daring the tide to rise to take him again. For she would not let him go. She promised that to herself and she dared the seas and the gods to reach into her island.
Her island.
Her paradise.
She stood and drew a line in the sand. The very next lap of the tide caressed this line but did not pass it. The next did the same.
“This is mine,” she cried into the night, into the vast expanse of sky and sea. “Let him become the sand beneath my feet. Let his bones rot and turn to soil. I will treasure every flower that grows from him.”
The hush of the waves sounded like laughter and she hated the gods in ways she believed were buried deep in her past. Weaving curses new and old, strange and unbidden, with every breath as she stood vigil over the dead man through the night until the sun kissed red the sky once more as the stars pulled the blanket of day back over their faces and the moon slowly shrank into the blue.
Never once did the tide rise past the line she drew with her foot.
Even so, she turned back to him and bent low to take him in. She studied the pores of his face, the calluses of his hands and feet, the sinew and bones that she believed would be her only memory of this break in the monochrome of her days.
“He can’t have you,” she said to no one, to all, to the gods, to herself, to the dead man, the drowned man.
Caressing his face, he felt so real. So beautiful.
She wept once more for the beauty of this curse, this taunting gift capsized on her shore. “Why,” she cried to no one, to herself, to the birds and jackals, to the winds and the sky.
Not trusting the sea and the merciless gods, she took him by the hands and dragged him up the shore towards the grass and the trees. With his body stretched long, she wondered if drowning had expanded his body, if he was nothing but a beautiful bloated corpse. She wondered how a living man would be, what proportions his arms and legs, what he would sound and fee like.
And he coughed.
And she fell backwards, pulling her hands away as if scorched.
And he coughed once more and she retreated on hands and heels, pushing and kicking away from him as he turned to the side and coughed again, spitting.
She watched him but he made no more movement. Only then did she hear his breathing and understand she’d been hearing it all along. Was not the waves but his lungs, but his beating heart, his living soul roiling in his chest, in his beautiful body.
And when he seemed motionless once more and closer still to death, only then did she creep closer and stare down upon the face of the man who held her heart in his large, rough hands.
She whispered a greeting so quietly even she could not hear it.
Fear gripped her. Terror drenched her.
She pulled her hair away from her face and wiped his own tangled seasalted hair away from his and then his eyelids fluttered and she every fibre of her shuddered like a thrummed chord sending vibrations so harsh and calamitous that the sky itself seemed to shatter in the moment when he opened his eyes and blinked and saw her.
She said, “You see me.”
His eyelids fluttered once more and he reached a hand towards her but it fell useless back into the sand as he gasped and his shallow labored breathing echoed inside her skull.
Without thought, she reached past his outstretched hand and put her palm to his cheek and brought her other hand to his other cheek and before she had let out that single breath she held she was straddling him and lowering her face to his until her lips met his dry papery lips and she breathed into him sending as much of her spirit as she could spare in the hopes it would save him, that he would not leave her alone so soon, so permanently.