Alexander Nicholas
Alex Nicholas is
a radiographer living in Bristol, England,
I've written a fair number of stories but this is the
first one to get published. I hope it will be joined by
others soon. Most of the idea for The Call of Salt
came to me walking along the cliffs of Cornwall, looking
out at the sea.
— Alexander Nicholas
The Call of Salt
by Alexander Nicholas
Eowyn tucked her hair behind the
point of her ear and stared at the sea far below. The
salt air called to her, caused the gills at the side of
her neck to flex and flutter. She raised her long arms
and felt the press of the wind, and imagined how it
would feel to dive, to cut the tension at the water’s
edge, swift as a loosed bolt. She would sink to the
untold depths, to her father’s court deep beneath the
white-capped waves.
Had she always felt
this way? For as long as she could recall she had been
coming here, and the call was only growing stronger,
until her skin ached to leave the human world. When she
had found Badden on the pebble beach by moonlight, lying
with crooked-toothed Rhianwen, the sting of that
betrayal had severed one of the last links that tied her
to the village. Now but one tether remained; was that
enough?
‘Go ahead and jump,
half breed,’ spat a voice from behind her, shattering
her peace. It was Braith, hunched against the wind, bent
over almost double and clutching a stick almost as
gnarled as she herself. ‘Jump then,’ she said, ‘just
like your mother.’
Eowyn’s breath caught
in her throat as she turned to look at the old woman,
both hands pressed on the curve of her stick, small eyes
almost lost in a mass of wrinkles. She had heard
whispers, hard not to in a village small as theirs. No
one had ever stood before her so bold before, said it so
direct.
‘It’s time you was
told, girl,’ Braith said as though reading her thoughts.
‘Time and past it. You’re old enough now, not to be
treated like you’d break.’
Eowyn looked over at the fishing
boats on the far horizon, where the sunlight glittered
on the water. She left without a word, without a
backward glance, but the grin on Braith’s face was on
her mind as she raced back towards the village, bare
feet nimble on the dirt path. She passed walls of
rounded, weathered stone and stood gasping in the
doorway of the dwelling she shared with her mother. Of
course she had heard whispers, living in a village too
small to have a name. She had given them little
credence, or had not wanted to. She had not understood.
Now the vitriol in Braith’s voice spurred her on.
Gwendolyn was bent
down by the pan that hung over the fire. When she turned
to face her daughter, Eowyn caught the aroma of salt
cod, strong and enticing. Gwendolyn’s raised eyebrows
asked a question that her lips did not form, and for a
moment the only sound between them was the bubbling of
the stew, and the whistling of the wind outside.
‘Were you really with
the fishing boats the day that made me,’ Eowyn blurted,
her tongue thick in her mouth, ‘or did you jump?’
Her mother’s green
eyes widened, and her quizzical smile faded. Wordlessly
she removed the stew from the fire, placing the pot down
on a rough-carved birch table, gentle as though it were
her child in her arms, gentle as she had always been
with Eowyn. Her expression was far away; she focussed
somewhere remote.
‘I know the sea calls
you, child,’ she said, her voice light and lilting. ‘It
called to me too, though not in the same way.’ She bit
her lip, and brushed the hair back from her face. ‘He
saved me twice that day, your father. Once from the
drowning, and once...’ she paused, hesitant, in that
moment young again, in need of comfort.
‘Once,’ Eowyn
prompted, trying to sound reassuring, but her voice
wavered and cracked. She clasped her hands together to
stop them from shaking. This was a history of her, kept
hidden her whole life.
‘He was so tender, in
his palace on the sea bed. He breathed for us both. It
wasn’t lust. He may have desired me; I don’t know.’
Gwendolyn’s voice was quiet, and Eowyn took a step
closer to her, not taking her eyes from her mother’s
lined face.
‘He told me that if I
would not live for myself, perhaps I would for another.
He made it so, and so it has been since.’
She dropped her head,
and when Eowyn embraced her, she felt the wetness on her
mother’s cheek, the beating of her heart through her
ribcage.
Later, back on the
cliff, her belly warm and sated, Eowyn stared over the
waves at the red, dying sun, sinking down to join her
father in the palace of the deeps. The sea’s call was
loud in her ears: the crash of waves against the rocks,
the lapping of breakers on the landing beach. Her
father’s court would be waiting for her; she knew one
day she would find it, as surely as she knew the sun
would return from its watery rest. Her mind drifted back
to her mother’s words, the way her lip had quivered. To
live for another. She thought she saw what it meant. She
thought she saw how it was done.
The End
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