The Kingdom by the Sea

The love of my life came from the sea.

Many, many years ago I found her after a storm ravaged the beach outside the cottage where I lived alone with my dog. I was a man whose life began and ended with fishing, as did my father and grandfather and his grandfather before him. Our blood was made of seafoam. Our hearts were a vast ocean. When I was a child, I dreamed briefly of leaving my little village and journeying to the capital but quickly realized I would miss it all too much. I knew, with some small sense of contentment, that I would live and die in the same place I was born.

Storms weren’t so unusual. My father once said that storms were simply the Gods cleansing the sea. Afterward everything felt lighter, cleaner, and thus I believed him. We would go out onto the beach after it passed and check on our boats together. I kept the tradition long after he died. It was in the boat that I found her all tangled up in the nets atop some kind of material that made me at once think of the white shroud we buried my mother in. Fleshy, but transparent, and almost seemed like it would crumble at the slightest touch. She wore nothing but an iridescent, pearl-framed shark’s eye shell necklace. The girl I found in my boat had dark hair, wild blue eyes, and a spear through her leg. I calmed her, pledged my assistance, and carried her back with me to the cottage where she waited with my dog while I fetched Doctor Carbonneau. When we returned, the girl was still there but the dog had run off.

Concern creased the old doctor’s already wrinkled forehead when he saw the girl not only standing, but walking about the cabin, the spear freed from her leg and no wound in sight. The spear lay in a pool of thick, dark ichor on the floor. I was overjoyed and the girl smiled, but the doctor grumbled and coughed into his handkerchief. The girl danced over to me and held my hands, her seafoam eyes shining and glittering, while the doctor transferred the mess on the floor into a vial in his shaking hands. He left that night and that was the last I saw of him for many, many years.

That night she was named Serena—she couldn’t speak, but she could understand. I listed names that I thought might suit her and Serena was the one that she picked. From that night on, Serena and I lived together in my cottage as a man might live with his wife. She could not cook and would cry when I brought in fish, but when the moon slipped discreetly across the bed we shared she sang softly to me an indistinguishable melody that soothed my body into deep slumber. Whenever I woke, I found her on the beach at daybreak making little pieces of jewelry from harvested shells and twine.

No one trusted her. Many whispered. I heard them when we went into town together— “just came up out of nowhere, and now she follows him like a shadow,” someone would say. “I don’t trust her. She looks strange. Don’t you think her eyes are a little . . . well . . . wrong? And if she’s standing in just the right light, doesn’t she look like she has scales instead of skin?” another would chime— but we paid them no mind. Serena walked with her shoulders back and her head held high. She paid no mind to their sneers. Didn’t bother with their gossip.

In the end she won them over with the jewelry she made every morning. Necklaces and bracelets and earrings all crafted from fishing twine, hooks, and treasures found in the sand. Pearls so iridescent that, when hit with just the right light, one could almost see landscapes within. Spiral shells erupting with color that were harvested from the beach. She made one for everyone in the village and they took them with glee. She was so, so loved, my darling Serena.

Madam Claudine Delsarte, wife of the lord who lived on the hill overlooking the village, stormed into the inn as Serena and I ate lunch one hot late-summer afternoon. Claudine, who stood out from everyone else with her silk dresses and mannerisms learned during her brief time at court, was easily the second prettiest woman in the village.

The first being Serena, of course.

Claudine threw a necklace at Serena made with those iridescent pearls framing a scallop shell of dark blue.

“What did you do?” Claudine howled. I had never seen her so angry. I was stunned to silence. “You bitch! What did you do?”

“Leave her alone!” I would never stand for anyone treating Serena like that. How dare she! I tried to move Claudine back, but she pushed me away.

“Her neck! Her neck is ruined!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. Everyone at the inn watched from their tables.

“Nicolette! My daughter! She got this necklace from your whore and now she’s covered in scaley patches! How are we supposed to marry her off looking like that? Her life is ruined!” Silence followed. Claudine drew heavy, ragged breaths as everyone stared at her. She balled her hands into fists at her side. She turned and addressed the room. “We don’t even know where this—this—outsider came from! No one ever asked! She just showed up one day and we all just accepted it! Well, I’m asking now!” Claudine turned back to Serena. “Where did you come from, anyway? Huh? Andy why don’t you ever say anything?”

“That’s enough.” Matthias, the inn keeper, came out from behind the bar and grabbed Claudine by the elbows. The purple olive shell bracelet clinking on his wrist as he moved. Claudine looked at his hands and gasped.

“It’s happening to you too! Matthias, look!” She wrenched one of his hands off her and held it up for all to see. Webbing had grown between his fingers, and gray scales crawled up his thick arms in patches. Everyone looked—then shrugged and went back to eating. Claudine deflated.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” Matthias said, gently, not wanting to excite Claudine’s clearly fragile mind. She went without further protest. Once she was gone, Matthias turned to smile at Serena. “Sorry about that. If I were you, I’d just ignore her. She probably just angry she’s the only one who didn’t get one.”

I looked at Serena. Rather than crying, my brave Serena just smiled.

That night I woke to singing from the beach.

I followed the sound, boots remaining by the door. Jagged rocks half buried beneath the sand cut into the bottoms of my feet, but I didn’t care. Didn’t even really feel it. All that existed was Serena, sitting on the sand bathed in the full moon, singing to the waves as they rose to lick at her toes.

Seeing me didn’t stop her. She reached out her hand as she sang and I took it, falling to my knees to crawl to her like a sinner to salvation. I sat beside her and listened as she filled the night with the kind of music that put crickets and cicadas to shame.

After she finished, she smiled at me. For a few moments longer I searched her face, her eyes, the fullness of her lips and knew that this moment would be the end of me. I kissed her hard and pushed her down onto the sand. A sigh poured from her as she bloomed for me. I tore her dress away and took her in the moonlight and the rising waves. The shark’s eye shell necklace around her neck moved with her.

News reached us the next day when Serena and I went to sell fish in the village. Claudine had died. Nicolette pushed her mother from a second story window for not giving her necklace back. Everyone agreed that it was a shame, but what else was that poor little girl supposed to do? Nicolette and Lord Delsarte delivered the news personally. I shook Lord Delsarte’s hand to show my sympathy. When he took it back the sunlight highlighted the blue veins in the webbing between his fingers. Serena just smiled and spoke not a word.

Summer wore on. After Claudine’s funeral, the villagers gradually ceased buying the few fish that I caught—but I didn’t care. I existed only for Serena’s pleasure. I lived for her laughter and her sighs and the way her skin tasted like the sea. The ground collapsed beneath me when, one evening as summer began to fade into autumn, I came home and she was gone.

Nothing remained of Serena but the faint smell of brine in our bed. I ran out of the cottage screaming her name at the top of my lungs but found nothing except her dress in a pile on the shoreline. Wrapped up within, the shark’s eye shell necklace. I screamed and cried at the indifferent, gray sea.

Autumn brought with it the resurfacing of Doctor Carbonneau and a new miracle potion that drew visitors from all around hungry for a quick and easy cure for their ailments. Many complained that the black tincture was bitter and reeked of brine and barnacles, and that the “fish-eyed and scaley” villagers made them uncomfortable. But, in the end, it was worth it to be healed instantly from whatever afflicted them.

I didn’t care about any of it. Day in and day out I waited on the shore for my beloved Serena. The sea called to me. Sang to me. Beckoned me. I fingered the shark’s eye shell necklace that now resided at all times around my neck, and through it thought I had a connection to my life, my light, my Serena.

And so, beneath the full moon and the waves crashing against the cliffside, I will join my Serena in her citadel beneath the sea.