Kelpie

Creative Writing by Molly Pinto Madigan

The wind howls and whips her hair into a fury as she stands, facing the sea.  The rocks feel vaguely slick beneath her cold-numb toes.  No sun shines to warm them – all light is veiled and source-less gray – and they have a vicious look to them, so hard and unforgiving.

The surf is surprisingly still, given the wind.  Vagrant gusts press against her body – too intimate – and steal the voice from her throat, snuffing out all sound around her.  It weeps and throws her crow-black skirts around her like the flapping of tattered wings.  She wishes it would carry her away.

The sky is gray and unreadable.  The clouds stare down at her without judgment, without emotion.  It is hard to tell the time of day; is it dusk, or dawn, or something else entirely?  It seems to her she has slipped into an in-between place, outside of time, outside of reality, with its tasteless responsibilities and stale practicality.   The keening breaks, and everything is still.  Her mind, which has been restless as a finch in a cage, is suddenly as still as the iron sea.  Finally, the voices are silent.

A rippling rip in the seamless sea, a crack in the metallic sheet: she sees him.  A thread of breath escapes her raspberry lips.  A body, a boy, a man borne upon the water: still.  Abalone skin flashing, blue-tinged, borders merging with the surf, he is as still as sleep, as still as death.  His hair is dark and sleek, sheened like a seal’s, with lips of tarnished pewter.  He is so still, his face upturned towards the gray.  His dulse-colored eyes are open, but vacant.  No spark warms their chill.  He is beautiful.  She finds him lovelier in death than all the breathing boys, with their ruddy faces and reeking breaths.  He is beautiful and tragic, which she hears is the best kind of beauty.

She stands, transfixed, for a heartbeat, before stumbling over the rocks, which bite the tender flesh of her frigid soles.  She cuts into the glassy sea, and feels nothing as the waters sear her long toes, her pale ankles.  The cotton of her skirt wraps around her, clinging to her trembling thighs as she wades deeper.  Now the water gnaws at the edge of her mothy sweater…

As she approaches, he is lovelier still: she sees the dark stubble that lies beneath the pearlescent skin, the tiny crabs tangled in his swaying hair.  There is a macabre appeal in the lavender tinge at the corner of his lips and the bruise-like shadow at the seam of his hair.  Death is beautiful, and there is a solace in that.  She sees a promise there.  She does not see the seaweed mingling with the undulating darkness, its stain growing.

A wave rolls, and the frigid waters come crashing like an icy hand.  It rises above her goose-bumped breasts, burning with cold.  It presses in, close to her heart, which nearly ceases in its beating.  She almost reaches him before the wave takes him.  She watches – almost there! – as he is swept under, his pale face shining like a beacon beneath his coffin of rippling glass.  His garments fan around him like a shroud.  She watches him as he sinks.

Surging forward, spindled arms outstretched, she stumbles.  Her skirts trip her up, and her head breaks the surface.  Sputtering, she resurfaces, pulling her ropey hair out of her eyes.  The sea is once again calm, and he is gone.  Nothing disturbs the sea, now a perfect mirror.  There is nothing to signify that he had been there and gone.  The sky is veiled and offers no protection from the waters.

He is lost.  She cannot find him.

She stands there, breast-deep now in ocean, growing cold.  All is silent; she is numb to the tide pulling at her inky skirts.  She is deaf to the wind.  She is senseless to the seaweed that spreads its stain and slowly twines around her ankles.

Molly Pinto Madigan was the 1st place winner in the Red Skies Creative Writing Contest Spring 2012