Chapter 6 Healing #2
Quickly, I try to pull back. But, his clawed hand grips my flesh too firmly, with too much resolve to complete whatever ritual he has set himself in the motion of.
To my astonishment…to my horror, he licks the scratches and blood from my palms. I pull them away, both out of self preservation and embarrassment. I could die from either.
“They’re very dirty, um, here—I’ll get us some fresh water.
There should be plenty, embarrassingly enough I haven’t taken a bath in a while…
” I kick myself, I shouldn’t have told him that.
Even if he is some sort of creature, no one needs to know the details of my bathing habits on this rock, or lack there of.
Rubbing my hands together in the cold breeze, I can feel they also feel less cracked and worn surprisingly for having fallen on them repeatedly last night.
I was sure my knuckles were going to be shorn off today.
I try not to think about how he must have something to do with it.
Yet, this small pang I feel in my stomach…
I feel I would have an easier time accepting it as the feeling of magic, than even beginning to think about what this feeling has meant before.
I push it all away as I brush my hands off on my pants and roll my sleeves up.
In the shed, just a hundred or so feet away is a rain barrel to collect fresh water.
I pull the barrel out onto a small creaky wagon and wheel it over.
I turn on the tap and soak a small towel and wash my hands.
He grabs at them again. “Still, no!” I yelp as I lightly smack them away.
He really is like a puppy trying to mouth on me.
Turning the tarnished brass knob slowly, I show him how to open the tap, and he begins to wash his wounds and the blood off his body.
I look on jealously, I feel so dirty and crunchy from the salt.
He gestures towards the faucet, looking at me like I’m the weird one sitting here covered in salt and blood.
I guess it wouldn’t hurt to bathe as well.
I usually do it out here so the water has somewhere to run and doesn’t flood the small bathroom.
Using my fingers like a comb, I start to detangle my hair, but I feel distracted as I watch him rub the water over his face and body.
It drips over his trim frame which glows in golden amber hue even in the cool shadowed light.
He looks so out of place on this isle—he should be in the sun, in warm humid rain that drizzles over vast sand covered beaches.
I wonder if mermen migrate, and how he could have gotten so lost as to end up here.
Through my nostrils I breathe in mortified self-hatred and through my mouth exhale repressed longing.
How can I even be thinking like this? It makes me want to chuck myself into the sea and leave him to be the new lighthouse warden.
I suppose it’s because I haven’t seen a man naked in so long that even his torso is making my mouth salivate.
The men that drop my supplies at the dock are all beer-bellied-tobacco-smoking sailors.
Too loud, too dirty and too old. When I see them from my window it’s nothing like this.
Am I so touch starved I’ve resorted to fantasizing over this injured creature I’ve just met? For having just been on the verge of death, he is practically glowing. The fog making him into a hazy illuminated daguerreotype, any flaws blurred out by this silvery gilding.
My eyes drift lower, down his bandaged stomach muscles, his navel overflowing with water, creating a stream that leads my eyes down to his—nothing.
Oh, it’s just scales, flat scales that go on forever and ever.
I think he notices me staring and opens one eye towards me, I quickly turn away towards the water bin.
Well, he hasn’t tried to hurt me with his arms or mouth, and I don't see any...um, appendage down there, that for example a sailor could try to hurt me with. He seemed pretty confused too about why I was embarrassed about the whole licking thing…maybe, mermen aren’t sex-fueled like human men.
I squint at him for a while, but decide since he seems to not be human-flesh fueled either, that I don’t have too much more to worry about.
I laugh to myself under my breath. I must be crazy, but what else do I have to lose? My sanity has surely gone out with the low tide this morning.
I don’t know if it’s a small moment of uncharacteristic bravery or just that I’m too exhausted to even think anymore, but I unbutton my pants and drop them to kick them away.
The black rocks are emanating some warmth today, making my strip-down not so painful.
I remove my prickly woolen socks, my itchy half-shredded wool sweater, and just like that, I am finally freed from my allergic cage.
My skin spasms against the cold morning air and I do a quick scratch all over.
I languish in the delightful pain of my nails being able to directly reach my skin.
Mr.Longluscioushair over here—I mean ‘Lir’, is busy detangling his curls.
While he’s distracted, I peel away my clothes leaving only my underwear and a thin—now torn as well—camisole, and start scrubbing.
Against my will I moan from relief, my skin hasn’t felt this much air in months, always being at least partially trapped in a steel-wool iron maiden.
Of course I had washed sections of my body at times, but during the apex of winter, a full shower would freeze you before the soap was even lathered.
Now, despite usually being covered head to toe, I can feel peeling wallpaper slabs of salt that had crept under my clothes washing away from all over me.
I look up quickly, his head is resting on the rocks, heavy lidded doe eyes watching me. “It must be so fun to twirl about like that.” He smiles softly.
“I’m just washing.” I stretch one leg up and wiggle my toes, he laughs at the gesture.
I pour water over my head and my hair finally releases itself from its bird nest. Maybe, that’s why those gulls wouldn’t leave me alone—they thought I had stolen one of their homes and was wearing it like a hat.
I didn't realize how long it had gotten, I was admiring his hair but actually mine is now longer, reaching all the way down to the mid-point of my back. I guess it’s been that much time since coming here.
When I first moved out here I cut it all off, cropped to my scalp to even get away with riding the boat incognito.
It’s been three years. Three years that I’ve been alone, twice as long as I was even married at all.
I stand there feeling like a cold child shivering out of the bath, staring into my reflection in one of the small pools.
His voice trails in and out, and I look up from the watery mirror.
“A long time ago, a great ship crashed. Carrying in it stolen pillages of war, great riches and art from a land they had burned to the ground. The sea does not care if you are a great general, or of your medals. If it wishes it, it will consume you.”
“Is this supposed to be a comforting anecdote?” I look up at him still resting his head on the golden channel-wrack covered rock, no longer looking at me, but through me—through the lighthouse, through the sea, and through time itself.
He ignores me, continuing, “I swam through its broken hull and saw the paintings fade into blue black, the precious metals they had killed for just tarnishing and rusting away…but, I remember a sculpture of a woman, every curve and detail thought out. Carved to look wrapped in wet cloth, they made it look like transparent fabric draped over her even though it was solid stone…”
“Sounds beautiful,” I hum, as I deluge myself with another barrel of water over my head.
“Yes. That’s the word—beautiful.” He smiles.
Hastily, I pick up my scattered piles of beige wool and canvas that I huddle behind in an attempt to cover up the blush that rolls down my body.
Even though I don’t really feel like a person anymore, let alone a woman, I should keep my guard up more.
Why had I felt comfortable enough to be so exposed anyways?
More than the actual nudity, his words make me feel the most bare.
“Well, if you want to get back to the ocean and your precious statue, you better start making your moat that way.” I point with my chin and turn quickly. “I am not carrying you again.”
In an awkward shuffle, I rush back into the lighthouse.
The door slams a little too loud behind me as I brace myself against it, gripping between its worn boards for any support that would stop my chest from pounding.
When I am finally able to breathe again, I recite to myself in the tiniest whisper, “Beautiful.”