Upon A Starlit Tide

Epilogue

Time can never truly be contained. We try, of course. With ships’ watches and glasses filled with sand; with clocks and church bells. We name the holy days, the months, the seasons; mark the turning of the year. We believe that, by naming time, we have captured it, forcing it to bow to us.

In truth, it is we that bow to it.

Even the tide will conspire, to a degree; offering an illusion of order, of timeliness. Ebb tide. Flow tide. Dead tide. And yet it, too, will inevitably forsake us, unwilling to be checked. Time weaves through the tides, and beyond them. Past the turnings of the moon, its silvery, changeable face. Light to dark, and back again. Past the falling leaves, the misty frosts, the warming sun.

An endless net, is time. Catching nothing.

He marked its passage the only way he could. Day, by day, by day. Each morning he slid his boat into the sea, and he fished. In the afternoon he dried and mended his nets. Sometimes, he passed a word or two with the other fishermen. Other times, he went to the village and partook in celebrations there. Weddings and baptisms. Funerals and holidays. But every sunset without fail he went down to the shore, to the place where she had last stood. He gathered driftwood, built a fire. Watched violet flames dance against the evening sky.

His own tiny seasons.

His own light in the dark.

At first, he wept. Or, worse, sat in broken stillness, the ocean of his tears run dry. Tides came and went, and the moon turned its back to him again, and again. The tales were always of men taking to the sea, and women being left behind to long and worry, to take comfort in their children and in the certainty that a husband or a sweetheart cannot stay away forever. That one day, he will come home again. They would abide by the Old Ways, those women, the customs known to keep sailors safe: praying in the village church by day, and refraining from brushing their hair at night. Lighting a candle on a storm-wild eve, when the sea roiled and the wind raged so hard the windows shook. A light for lost souls.

There were no such comforts for him. No children of his own, no songs or prayers to hurry his beloved’s return. His hair grew wild, his beard thick, despite the certainty that no brush, nor blade, could threaten her. She needed no light, was not lost, and yet on stormy nights he lit a candle in the window of his small cottage. Slept alone in his narrow bed, assuring himself that the tiny golden flicker would show her he waited still.

Years passed. Day, by day, by day.

And then, one summer’s end.

Something.

The night was cool, autumn’s breath riding on its back. He had been working on the fire, coaxing it to life, when the smallest movement in the dusk—a disturbance in the warp and weft of his world—caused him to look up.

A wild thing looked back at him. Half in the water, half without, her tail coiled in the shallows, her hair a veil of night. She was moonlight and sunlight together. Pearl and storm. Dream and nightmare. So fae, so other, that he knew a moment of fear. Six years had passed since she was here. Did she even remember him? Or had some instinct, dark and hungry, drawn her to this shore?

Was she a predator, and he merely her prey?

He found he did not care. She was all that he had dreamed of for so long. Bare shoulders and smooth arms; long torso, shapely hips. Skin glimmering with seawater and magic. There were ropes of pearls in her hair, and shells at her wrists. The curve of her breasts, almost visible beneath the layers of sea-silk binding them, near undid him. She was magnificent in her beauty and her terror.

Delight and doom.

‘Luce?’ Her name, a light in the never-ending dark.

He rose slowly, achingly so, one palm raised. No harm. He had blankets with him. Warm clothes and food; a basket of just-in-case. He took the corner of a blanket, drew it free.

‘Luce?’

She frightened him: there was no denying it. Time, and the sea, had changed her. Her eyes were large and dark, her wildness, her faeness, a warning. He thought of the drowning tales: seamaids who lure and take. Their kisses a curse, their beauty a trap.

Delight and doom.

Then let it be so.

One, two, three steps and he was halfway down the shore. Heart thudding like a boy’s, legs shaking. Blanket trailing in the sand.

Four, five, six and the cold glimmer of her scales, of her eyes, were dragging at his soul. She wore her sea-knife at her waist, her mirror, and her comb. He braced himself. Did seamaids kill with knives? Teeth? Or would a simple drowning do?

And then—

‘You grew a beard.’

Her voice was low, rough with disuse. But it was her voice. Her smile.

He fell to his knees in the shallows. ‘Christ, Luce,’ he muttered, reaching for her, barely stopping himself.

Long, cool fingers on his jaw. ‘I like it, Samuel.’

His name on her lips undid time. He crushed her to his chest, cold and fae and wild. Ran his hands down her hips, the first, smooth meeting of skin and scale.

‘I missed you,’ he muttered into her hair. Tears and seawater, mingling. ‘Did you—did you find the horizon? The path of stars?’

She nodded against him.

‘Your father?’

Another nod. ‘And more, besides.’

She drew back, her smile, her joy, star-bright. ‘I found it all, Samuel. Everything I wanted.’

Everything I wanted. His heart, so close to broken, did a little death dance. Fool, it leered. What did you expect? A seamaid for a wife? Trapped and miserable? Look at her, for Christ’s sake.

‘Everything I wanted, Samuel,’ she said. ‘Except you.’

Except you.

His heart stilled. Listening.

‘There are places,’ she whispered against his ear, ‘where the Fae and humans live closely together, yet. Where you and I—where we could—’

It was all he needed, and more. Tomorrow morning, when one of his family came to check on him as always, they would find the cottage empty, the Dove gone. And they would know that Luce had come back from the sea, and that Samuel had gone with her to follow the stars.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly. It was answer and promise. Longing and joy. She smiled against his lips, weeping too, as the Manche washed happily around them. Tears and salt. Sorrow and sea.

There is magic in such meetings.