Bound to the Sea

Part 5 - Ghost of What Was

Ellis sat in front of the fireplace, his fingers working the torn threads of a damaged fishing net back into knots. Every now and then he coughed, his salt-water ruined throat stinging. The distant sound of the waves striking the shore filled the sleeping cottage with a somnolent hum. Ronan, fighting sleep, sat in a kitchen chair with his nose pressed to the cold glass of the sea-facing window.

"She's out there, Da." The boy said before rubbing a hand over his eyes.

"Mm?" Ellis hummed in reply as he folded the net back into a neat bundle. "Who's out there, Ronan?"

Ronan hopped down from the chair. "The water lady. Who took-" He yawned. "- the fish."

"Oh, aye?" Ellis scooped the child into his arms and gave a perfunctory glance out the window, but saw only black with a smudge of white at the sea's edge. "Seems you need to rest your eyes, lad. Off to bed with you."

The fisherman carried the boy to his bedroom and tucked him into bed. Too restless to sleep himself, he lingered at the sitting room window on his way to his own room. A couple breaths of sea air should clear his head, Ellis mused. Making sure Mac, the wolfhound, was on solemn guard duty of the child's bedroom, the fisherman left the cottage to wander down to the foreshore.

The sea at night was a curious thing. Only the sound of it gave it away. It roared, a vast black void, indistinguishable from the sky except for the faint dappled reflection of the moon on its surface. Ellis watched the waves pounce on the rocky strand then retreat, inky blackness encroaching very near his feet then pulling away with a hiss of white foam.

"Where did you go?" He whispered to the sea. "Did you save me that night?" Ellis raked his hands through his hair and across his face, feeling foolish for speaking to the void. When he removed his fingers from in front of his eyes, a flash of white out in the darkness caught his attention. He squinted and saw a pale figure materialize on the end of the dock, not ten feet to the right of where he stood.

God, it's her. He would have registered more surprise at the sight of the woman, but he wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming.

"Hullo?" He called out to her. "Are you lost?"

The woman crossed the dock in surefooted strides but stopped upon reaching the shore. She turned to face Ellis and tipped her chin up a fraction. Her face caught the moonlight and Ellis' heart crashed into his ribs.

"Saoirse?"

The woman froze and her salt-tangled, wild black hair caught the wind. She was dressed in a long leather tunic. Her eyes widened, black irises in eyes like twin moons, round and reflective. She seemed to shrink a bit, flinching backward.

"Saoirse!" Ellis found his voice again and called out to the woman. She paused, blinked. She studied him a moment then turned away and melted into the darkness. "No, Saoirse, come back!" Ellis ran to the space she had just occupied, but the woman was gone. An apparition, a figment of his troubled mind.

After much fruitless searching, the fisherman found his way back to the cottage. He closed the door quietly behind him and sought refuge in his own bedroom. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but cozy in the way of well-lived in houses. A wood-frame bed was snug in a niche against one wall with an antique nightstand beside it. The only other objects in the room were a large trunk at the foot of the bed and a framed photograph on the nightstand. Ellis picked up the photograph in shaking hands and sat on the bed. The image blurred before his eyes as tears clouded his vision, but he did not need to see it clearly to know what it depicted; it was a red-haired woman wearing a long white gown and a serene smile.

It was his wife, Saoirse, on their wedding day.

She had drowned five years ago to the day, and the woman at the water had looked exactly like her.