She Came From The Sea
A short queer historical fiction story about a mysterious sea-spirit, and about society and its expectations. Written for Naked Figleaf Press' Figlet Issue Five: Friend or Foe.
She came from the sea.
She came from the sea – not only that her hands reached up from the deep; not only that her face, aglow with pale light, emerged from the surface; not only that her nude body wound itself from the waves.
She came from the sea – because she bore all the beauty and terror that had ever touched that fathomless expanse.
Harriet saw her first from within the gilt prison of her carriage. All in the town, nestled against the rugged cliffs, spoke of her but never had she believed them.
Women did not sit naked on rocks, such as in the time of Odysseus, and look back at the rigid world of society. Women did not belong to the wild sea but to the tameable and knowable land, moulded by its hand and wearing its clothes.
Yet, there she was.
She did not move – only perched on a stark stony pedestal, out of touch of the tide. Her long tresses moved in the wind and her limbs glistened in a fine rain; those things were the only reasons Harriet knew she was alive. She did not blink or turn as men stared at her and readied their boats to cast her from her throne.
She simply watched.
For a moment, Harriet imagined that her eyes found her, even across the distance. Cyril made her turn away, as if the form of a fellow woman would repulse or upset her.
It did – not for its repugnance or shocking nakedness, but for, when Harriet dared to look at her own bare body, she could never imagine it glimmering in such uncaring freedom.
Day by day, the strange phantom appeared. That was what Harriet told herself she must be. Cyril did not allow her to go within sight of the shore again, but Harriet heard from the fisherfolk and the sailors about the sea-spirit’s terrifying beauty and appalling allure.
Some tried to go out to her. Boys of ten and men of seventy would line the beach and wonder how best to ensnare her: by net or oar or harpoon. Yet whenever they tried, she would vanish into the waves again. No mortal thing could mar her image.
Harriet did not think of her. That was also what she told herself. She did not think of her – but when she worked on her embroidery or took out her watercolours, she only created the blue of waves and the lovely severity of black hair upon pallid skin.
She saw the shine of green in otherworldly eyes.
Cyril must have found fear in such colours, for he forbade Harriet to wear the hues of the sea and dressed her instead in the ruddy shades of dull earth. Harriet did not argue. She had long ago learnt it was easier not to.
Day upon day, week upon week, the word fizzled around the town. Was she a friend or foe? Harriet thought again of the sirens of Odysseus: those spectres of the deep who sang and coaxed men onto razor-sharp rocks. She imagined tying her own hands to a mast and pushing wax into her ears.
But for Harriet, her terror was not the beguilement or the reef. Her terror did not sing sweetly or promise peace. Her terror did not come from the sea.
So when, one night, she escaped from Cyril’s bedroom, bundled herself in her morning gown, and hurried towards the sounds of crashing waves, it was with no fear.
She told herself that it would be but a glance, that she would walk the night-time beach and turn again for home once she had seen the dark blue waves, the black hair, the green eyes.
But on the rough sand, with the world at her back and the sea at her front, Harriet felt herself on the threshold – of rigidity and liberty, of silence and wildness, of the dull fabrics of her clothes and the bare flesh beneath.
A gaze as piercing as needle-points watched her. Harriet allowed it to undress her, to shed the layers of her society and all that she had been told not to do.
On her rocky temple, that phantom of the deep raised her arms: an invitation across the lip of the waves, a promise that she would not disappear alone beneath the surface.
She came from the sea.
And to the sea, she went.
You can also listen to me reading this piece aloud here!
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