Bound to the Sea

Part 6 - The Dream

Time had not touched the memory. It remained as he had experienced it five years before, replaying like a broken record in Ellis' mind at night. His waking mind pushed it aside, covered it over in daily routine, but in dreaming the sting of it was raw as a fresh wound.

Ellis departed the port at Galway as a sailor for the last time on a foggy November afternoon. He had a cottage waiting for him on Inis Mór, enough money to purchase a better fishing boat, and a loving wife he had not seen in almost eight months. He went over in his mind all the things he was going to tell Saoirse about his travels. He could hardly wait to show her photographs of ports in India and Greece and America and to give her the bag of stones he had collected from every new shore he had set foot upon.

The village of Kilronan was quiet with its rows of squat, square houses and hushed conversations behind closed doors. Ellis departed the ferry and took the Main Road out of the village, walking for twenty minutes or so in the semidarkness until the lane took a sharp right turn onto the Low Road through Oghil. Here the path was narrow, flanked by stone walls that undulated over the hilly ground. His pace quickened as he approached the peninsula to his home on Kinereigh, eager to return home to his own familial welcome.

His croft house stood just as he remembered it. Perhaps the grass had grown higher on the whitewashed walls in his absence, and the gulls had taken to nesting in the roof where the wind had torn away some of the thatch. But it was perfect and it was his and it was home. After so long at sea with very little companionship, he ached to take his wife into his arms, to smell the peat fire, to spill stories of his travels to her waiting ears.

As he approached the house, a strange, high-pitched sound from within reached his ears. "Hullo?" He called out as he unlocked and opened the door. He entered the sitting room to find his family friend Owen standing in front of the fireplace, holding a wailing baby.

"Ellis..." Owen's gruff voice sounded strange. He looked as though he had aged five years in Ellis' absence. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes rimmed in red.

"Owen! God, it's been ages! How have you been?" Ellis was startled to see an expression of raw despair on the old man's features. He felt his smile drop away. "What's wrong? Where is Saoirse?" Ellis cast a glance about, expecting her to emerge from another room to greet him. Owen took a ragged breath.

"Sit down, lad..." Owen gestured to an armchair with his head. The baby let out another piercing cry that made Owen wince. Its tiny hands were balled into fists and its legs kicked the air.

"Where is my wife?" Ellis hardly recognized his voice as his own. Mind racing, he finally addressed the wailing baby in his friend's arms. "And whose child is that?"

"'He's yours, Ellis. Yours and Saoirse's..."

It was as if the floor had fallen out from under Ellis' feet. The blood rushed in his ears and he swayed where he stood. "Our child?! We have a...? Owen... where is Saoirse?!" His voice reached a higher pitch and broke on her name.

One of Owen's hands settled heavily on Ellis' shoulder. The other bounced the squalling baby. "She's gone, lad. It was a month ago. Did you not get the letter we sent to port?"

"Letter?" Ellis' voice was barely above a whisper. "No. No, I never got a letter." His mind swam. His hands had gone numb. Owen's words had reached his ears but he could not make sense of them. "Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

"It was early October, the week before the market closed. The weather was foul but she insisted on going out. Didn't say where. It was like she was possessed. She left the bairn with me and Moira before she..."

"Before what? Where did she go?" Ellis leaned forward as if to draw the story more quickly from the old man's mouth.

"She went to the sea. We found the boat gone the next morning and no sign of her."

"But why?!" Ellis fell into the chair then, his eyes fixed blankly on the space in front of his feet. "How could you let her go? Owen, she can't be gone!"

Owen's face crumpled in shame. "We didn't know she meant to take the boat. We thought she was going to the village, to set up the stall for the market. She had an odd look about her, like she was listening very hard for something. If I'd known..."

Ellis glanced up at the child then, and Owen's eyes softened. He put the baby in Ellis' arms. Ellis stiffened immediately, his eyes wide as a frightened deer. "Take him, Owen. I can't..." Ellis tried to force the bundle back into the older man's arms, but Owen backed away.

"You're his Da. He needs you." Owen said with gruff finality. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"He needs his mother!" Ellis awkwardly held the baby against his chest. "I need... Saoirse... oh God..."

Like a drowning man at sea he grasped at the threads of his life that had come undone. "Maybe her boat got lost on the water. Maybe if we send out a search party..." He sank deeper into the chair and it creaked plaintively under his weight. The baby stirred in his arms and whimpered. Ellis knew in his heart that it was too late, but his mind had not yet caught up. "Why would she leave? Why?" The question hung in the air, unanswered.

After a long moment he forced himself to look at the baby in his arms. He tried to find Saoirse in the child's rosebud mouth and wide blue eyes. "What's his name?" He asked Owen as he smoothed the reddish fuzz that covered the baby's head.

"Saoirse called him Ronan." Owen smiled warmly at the child. "Looks like her, doesn't he?" The smile compressed into a bitter line, and the old man passed a hand wearily over his face.

"He does." Ellis agreed sadly, his broken heart warming slightly as he looked down at his son. "Easy, Ronan." He rocked the child back and forth until his crying quieted. "Da's here."

Ellis woke slowly, the dream evaporating like steam from a tea kettle. He stared up at the ceiling which was now dappled with the floral pattern of the lace curtains. His eyes itched, and he tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.

Slowly the events of the previous night came back to him; the woman at the water and her striking resemblance to his wife. It had been a dream, surely. She was in his dreams often. This one had just been more vivid than the rest.

The fisherman set about his morning tasks, putting on the tea kettle and setting out food for the dog. Ronan wandered out of his own bedroom with Mac at his side. His hair stuck up in copper tufts and he had blanket lines across one side of his face. He blinked sleepily at his father and twined his little fingers in the dog's long fur.

Ellis gathered the child to his chest, and Ronan squirmed at the unexpected show of affection. "I saw the water lady, Ronan." Ellis said.

"Did she sing to you?" Ronan asked, and Ellis shook his head into the boy's shoulder. "Did she tell you her name?"

Ellis held the child at arm's length and studied his face. "You know the water lady's name? She told you her name, Ronan?"

The boy nodded, sending his bright red curls bouncing. "Her name is Seer-sha."