SHE LOVED HIM
By Catherine Knutsson
he loved him.
She loved him at the break of day when he pulled on his boots and ventured down to the seashore to push his dory out into the chiseled gray sea.
She loved him when he returned at noon, nets full and glistening with scales and blood, frowning at the catch as he sifted through the nets, tossing the squid and dogfish to the gulls that chased him to shore.
She loved him in the evening when they met at the pub for the first time. She loved him when he smiled at her, when he took her in his arms and danced her around the room, when he drank too much and tasted of whisky, or when he slipped a note under her doorstep, asking if he might escort her to the fair, when he kissed her, unfastened her laces, and slipped his soul into hers.
She knew then that they were not to be parted. Not like her first man, claimed by the sea, marked from the beginning as its own creature. His blood had been touched when he was a boy, he had said. The sea had called him out, morn after gray-misted morn, and mocked her in the afternoon, whistling high that today might be the day it ate his soul.
That would not happen to her new love.
The night they wed, she slipped his net-knife from his belt. With moonlight pooling on the floor of their cottage, she knelt and cut a lock of her hair. “He is mine,” she whispered, braiding the three strands of russet and wrapping them around the hilt.
Her love stirred in his sleep, reaching out for her from his dream. She set the knife in his hand, closing his fingers around it, weaving them together with her own. “As long as he holds this knife, he is mine,” she whispered to the moon. “The sea will never claim him as its own. It has lovers enough.” And she clung to his chest, listened to the steady pulse of his heart, and imagined it inside her, beating next to her own.
When the weather turned, she begged him not to leave, to stay with her, close to the fire and the shore, close to her heart. He kissed her hands, touched her lips, then pushed the dory from the pebbled strand, taking to the white-tossed sea with his nets and oars. He sang as he rowed, and smiled at his love.
Day dimmed to night. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and wandered the strand, calling his name. At midnight when the wind left the air still and the moon peered out from behind its shroud, she waded into the sea, letting it pull at her skirts.
“You may not have my love,” she whispered to the waves. “Give him back to me.”
The waves danced away, racing out to the ocean. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, her love was before her, white-cold from the depths and wrapped in weed. In one hand was his net-knife, and in the other, a locket with her portrait, clasped close to his heart.
The wind keened, the moon sighed, and she bent to him, dragging him onto the pebbled shore.
“We shall not be parted,” she said to the sea. “Do you hear that? We shall not be parted!”
The moon turned its head, dropping behind the curtain of cloud, and the wind sang its bittersweet song as she took the net-knife from her love’s hand and cut open his chest. A single gull hovered over her as morn broke, waiting as the slick cool blood of her love spilled on the beach.
“We will not be parted,” she said as she reached into his chest and tore free his heart. “He is my love, and I will hold his heart to mine forever.”
The salt of his blood mingled with the salt of her tears as she devoured his heart, eating his soul, leaving the sea lonely once more.
Catherine Knutsson lives on Vancouver Island and divides her time between writing, teaching singing, and hiking the wilds. Her work has appeared in Shroud and NewMyths, and will be featured in upcoming issues of Goblin Fruit.
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