Cover by Thomas Heitler, a student of art at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen
Out of the Cold Sea
‘You never left him!‘’ she cried. ‘Did I not?’ The old man was stuttering with cold. The water coming off him gathered in a pool and spread slowly across the stone flags. ‘Feed me, wife, or do you wish me dead too? Stoke the fire! Get my food!’ But the woman was gone. The path along the cliff-tops was treacherous in the dark but she held on her way, an empty peat basket on her back. The wind dragged at her. ‘How could he have done it?’ she sobbed into the rain. ‘How? Please God I am come in time.’ She reached the place and peered over the edge of the cliff. At first she could see nothing but the spume and the tide surging, higher, higher. And then—there he was—a pale shape against the rocks. Did he move, or was he already dead? All her life she had climbed these cliffs, down and up them, but never in the dark. Never with a body on her back. She slid the last few feet and found the man almost more by feel than sight. He was painfully thin, little more than bones. But still alive. She could feel his heart beating in his chest. ‘I’m here,’ she panted. ‘I’ll not leave you.’ Page | 1
She folded him gently into her peat basket and started to climb. It was a long, long way but at last, the breath tearing out of her, she staggered into the shelter of the cottage once more. She laid her burden carefully down on the stone floor. Her husband had done nothing in her absence—the fire had died to glowing embers, and the kettle was cold. He had barely moved. ‘What have you done?’ he hissed from the shadows. His voice sounded strange. Frightening. ‘What have you meddled with?’ The woman lit a candle so she could look for the first time into the face of the rescued man. The one she had saved from the cold sea. She held up the light… and screamed. And her cry brought an answering howl; the call of an animal that has tasted death on the wind. ‘See how he brings the cold sea with him, as I said he would?’ her husband hissed. It was so; the floor was now a shallow pool of salty water. She dared to glance again inside the basket. Again she cried out, as a set of putrid fingers, encased in strands of seaweed, scrambled for a hold. During his journey in her basket, the man had withered; as water drained from his poor, half-drowned body, he had dried and shrivelled. With his puckered skin and twisted bones, he now resembled some ancient, mummified deity: except for his eyes, which were large as tea-cups, moist as fresh oysters. Through these monstrosities, he stared steadfastly upwards, seeming to see beyond the face of his rescuer to her very soul. ‘The smell of him!’ Her husband cried, coughing into his filthy kerchief. She nodded, paddling back from the stench of rotting flesh and fish that had not dwelt in water for many a day and night. Page | 2
‘You must return him, woman, or I’ll not own you as my wife for one more day.’ ‘Do not threaten me with desertion, after what you’ve done,’ she warned. ‘If they found you out their retribution would be as the fires of Hell.’ To buy some time, she set a cloth over the basket. Tiny shudders shook the basket for a while but soon they heard the man give a watery sigh and settle. ‘There,’ she whispered, ‘let him be. We’ll have no more talk of my returning him. He belongs with us, as well you know.’ Still, she shivered as the water rose around her feet and the basket rumbled as its occupant re-gathered strength. ‘That... thing belongs to the sea, woman, and the sea will collect it, as you’d well know if you weren’t so damn stubborn!’ The old man pointed an accusing finger at her. ‘What will you do when they come for it, huh? What will you say?’ The woman had no answer. Outside, the storm grew louder. Suddenly there was a hammering at the door, and a loud moan which pierced the howling wind. The husband spun round and his face turned ghastly white with terror. ‘See!’ he screamed hysterically. ‘See what I’ve told you! They’ve come! They’re here!’ As he ran from the room the woman walked slowly over to the mantel piece. Her hands shaking, she pulled down the rifle which hung there. It was an ancient weapon, a forgotten relic of the Old Wars in which her father and grandfather had fought. She could barely lift it. She cocked it and pointed it clumsily at the door. From the other side came the sound of something scratching at the paintwork and sniffing. From the basket there came a desperate groan. Page | 3
Taking a deep, trembling breath, the woman spoke: ‘I had a son once, before you stole him from me. A loving husband too! But him you drowned in your cold sea and took my son and changed him!’ Her heart racing, the woman squinted down the barrel and took aim. ‘I will not let you take him a second time!’ She squeezed the trigger. There was a sound of thunder. The husband yelled and leapt forward through the smoke. The basket quivered and moaned. The woman dropped the gun to the floor; three fingers of her left hand, which had held the burst barrel, were gone. She wrapped her apron around the wound and squeezed tight. The cloth began a steady transformation from worn grey to bright scarlet. ‘You of all should know, Annie Jones,’ said a soft female voice from the other side of the door, ‘that what we send out, we receive thrice in return.’ ‘Then think what pain shall soon be yours,’ gasped the woman, clutching her hand. ‘You, who have stolen away my son.’ ‘But it is you who have taken my son,’ said a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. ‘You have him there in your basket. You took him without his skin, and when the moon’s tide turns at six o’clock this morning, his life’s blood will ebb away and he will die. And then, Annie Jones, I will have to kill you.’ Annie stared at the door. Fragments of gunmetal were embedded in the pitted wood. Her husband spoke then, and Annie jumped. She had forgotten he was there. ‘Lady, there’s no need to talk of killing,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We can put things back the way they were meant to be. Annie’s my wife now. She’ll obey me. Just give me a—’ Page | 4
‘I will not!’ Annie sobbed. ‘That there, that man in the basket, that is my boy! Do you think there’s anything the sea could do that would stop me from knowing him? That there’s my boy, and you shan’t have him!’ ‘Don’t you remember our bargain, Annie?’ ‘What bargain?’ ‘You remember. Look deep. Remember that day on the shore...’
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