Our Lady of the Harbour

by Charles de Lint

  “Maraghreen,” the lake replied as the wind lifted one of its waves to break upon the land.

  She lifted her head, looked over the white caps to where the lake grew darker still as it crept under the cliffs into the hidden cave where the lake witch lived.

  She was afraid, but she went. To Maraghreen. Who took her scales and gave her legs with a bitter potion that tasted of witch blood; satisfied her impossible need, but took Katrina’s voice in payment.

  “A week and a day,” the lake witch told her before she took Katrina’s voice. “You have only so long to win him and your immortal soul, or to foam you will return.”

  “But without my voice…” It was through song she’d thought to win him, voices joined in a harmony so pure how could he help but love her? “Without it…”

  “He must speak of his love first, or your soul will be forfeit.”

  “But without my voice…”

  “You will have your body; that will need be enough.”

  So she drank the blood, bitter on her tongue; gained legs, and each step she took was fiery pain and would be so until she’d gained a soul; went in search of he who held her love, for whose love she had paid such a dear price. Surely he would speak the words to her before the seven days were past and gone?

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Lucia said.

  Katrina only smiled and shook her head. She could tell no one. The words must come unbidden from him or all would be undone.

  * * *

  Matt was late picking Katrina up on Sunday. It was partly his own fault—he’d gotten caught up with a new song that he was learning from a tape a friend had sent him from Co. Cork and lost track of the time—and partly from trying to follow the Byzantine directions that Lucia had used to describe the route to her Upper Foxville apartment.

  Katrina didn’t seem to mind at all; she was just happy to see him, her hands said, moving as gracefully in speech as the whole of her did when she danced.

  You didn’t bring your guitar, she signed.

  “I’ve been playing it all day. I thought I’d leave it at home.”

  Your voice…your music. They are a gift.

  “Yeah, well…”

  He looked around the loft, recognizing a couple of the posters from having seen them around town before, pasted on subway walls or stuck in amongst the clutter of dozens of other ads in the front of restaurants and record stores. He’d never gone to any of the shows. Dance wasn’t his thing, especially not modern dance or the performance art that Lucia was into. He’d seen a show of hers once. She’d spent fifteen minutes rolling back and forth across the stage, wrapped head to toe in old brown paper shopping bags to a soundtrack that consisted of water dripping for its rhythm, the hypnotic drone only occasionally broken by the sound of footsteps walking through broken glass.

  Definitely not his thing.

  Lucia was not his idea of what being creative was all about. In his head, he filed her type of artist under the general heading of lunatic fringe. Happily, she was out for the day.

  “So,” he said, “do you want to head out to the island?”

  Katrina nodded. But not just yet, her hands added.

  She smiled at him, long hair clouding down her back. She was wearing clothes borrowed from Lucia—cotton pants a touch too big and tied closed with a scarf through the belt loops, a T-shirt advertising a band that he’d never heard of and the same black Chinese slippers she’d been wearing last night.

  “So what do you want—” he began.

  Katrina took his hands before he could finish and placed them on her breasts. They were small and firm against his palms, her heartbeat echoing through the thin fabric, fluttering against his skin. Her own hands dropped to his groin, one gently cupping him through his jeans, the other pulling down the zipper.

  She was gentle and loving, each motion innocent of artifice and certainly welcome, but she’d caught Matt off-guard.

  “Look,” he said, “are you sure you…?”

  She raised a hand, laying a finger against his lips. No words. Just touch. He grew hard, his penis uncomfortably bent in the confines of his jeans until she popped the top button and pulled it out. She put her small hand around it, fingers tight, hand moving slowly up and down. Speaking without words, her emotions laid bare before him.

  Matt took his hands from her breasts and lifted the T-shirt over her head. He let it drop behind her as he enfolded her in an embrace. She was like liquid against him, a shimmer of movement and soft touches.

  No words, he thought.

  She was right. There was no need for words.

  He let her lead him into Lucia’s bedroom.

  * * *

  Afterward, he felt so still inside it was though the world had stopped moving, time stalled, no one left but the two of them, wrapped up together, here in the dusky shadows that licked across the bed. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

  She seemed to be made of light. An unearthly radiance lay upon her pale skin like an angelic nimbus, except he doubted that any angel in heaven knew how to give and accept pleasure as she did. Not unless heaven was a very different place from the one he’d heard about in Sunday school.

  There was a look in her eyes that promised him everything—not just bodily pleasures, but heart and soul—and for a moment he wanted to open up to her, to give to her what he gave his music, but then he felt something close up thick inside him. He found himself remembering a parting conversation he’d had with another woman. Darlene Flatt, born Darlene Johnston. Belying her stage name, she was an extraordinarily well-endowed singer in one of the local country bands. Partial to slow dancing on sawdusted floors, bolo ties, fringed jackets and, for the longest time, to him.

  “You’re just a hollow man,” she told him finally. “A sham. The only place you’re alive is on stage, but let me tell you something, Matt, the whole world’s a stage if you’d just open your eyes and see.”

  Maybe in Shakespeare’s day, he’d thought, but not now, not here, not in this world. Here you only get hurt.

  “If you gave a fraction of your commitment to music to another person, you’d be…”

  He didn’t know what Darlene thought he’d be because he tuned her out. Stepped behind the wall and followed the intricate turns of a song he was working on at the time until she finally got up and left his apartment.

  Got up and left.

  He swung his feet to the floor and looked for his clothes. Katrina caught his arm.

  What’s wrong? she signed. What have I done?

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s not you. It’s not anything. It’s just…I’ve just got to go, okay?”

  Please, she signed. Just tell me…

  But he turned away so that he couldn’t see her words. Got dressed. Paused in the doorway of the bedroom, choking on words that tried to slip through the wall. Turned finally, and left. The room. The apartment. Her, crying.

  * * *

  Lucia found Katrina when she came home later, red-eyed and sitting on the sofa in just a T-shirt, staring out the window, unable or unwilling to explain what was wrong. So Lucia thought the worst.

  “That sonuvabitch,” she started. “He never even showed up, did he? I should have warned you about what a prick he can be.”

  But Katrina’s hands said, No. It wasn’t his fault. I want too much.

  “He was here?” Lucia asked.

  She nodded.

  “And you had a fight?”

  The shrug that came in response said, sort of, and then Katrina began to cry again. Lucia enfolded her in her arms. It was small, cold comfort, she knew, for she’d had her own time in that lonely place in which Katrina now found herself, but it was all Lucia had to offer.

  * * *

  Matt found himself on the ferry crossing from the city over to Wolf Island, as though by doing so, he was completing some unfinished ritual to which neither he nor Katrina had quite set the parameters. He stood at the rail on the upper deck with the wind in hi
s face and let the words to long-dead ballads run through his mind so that he wouldn’t have to think about people, about relationships, about complications, about Katrina.

  But in the dusking sky and in the wake that trailed behind the ferry, and later on the island, in the shadows that crept across the lawn and in the tangle that branches made against the sky, he could see only her face. Not all the words to all the songs he knew could free him from the burden of guilt that clung to him like burrs gathered on a sweater while crossing an autumn field.

  He stopped at the statue of the little mermaid, and of course even she had Katrina’s face.

  “I didn’t ask to start anything,” he told the statue, saying now what he should have said in Lucia’s bedroom. “So why the hell do I have to feel so guilty?”

  It was the old story, he realized. Everything, everybody, wanted to lay claim to a piece of your soul. And if they couldn’t have it, they made you pay for it in guilt.

  “I’m not a hollow man,” he told the statue, saying what he should have said to Darlene. “I just don’t have what you want me to give.”

  The statue just looked out across the lake. The dusk stretched for long, impossible moments, then the sun dropped completely behind the horizon and the lamps lit up along the island’s pathways. Matt turned and walked back to where the ferry waited to return him to Newford.

  He didn’t see Katrina again for two days.

  * * *

  I’m sorry, was the first thing she said to him, her hands moving quickly before he could speak.

  He stood in the hallway leading into Lucia’s apartment, late on a Wednesday afternoon, not even sure what he was doing here. Apologizing. Explaining. Maybe just trying to understand.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It’s just…everything happened too fast.”

  She nodded. Do you want to come in?

  Matt regarded her. She was barefoot, framed by the doorway. The light behind her turned the flowered dress she was wearing into gossamer, highlighting the shape of her body under it. Her hair was the colour of soft gold. He remembered her lying on the bed, radiant in the afterglow of their lovemaking.

  “Could we go out instead?” he said. “Just for a walk or something?”

  Let me get my shoes.

  He took her to the lakefront and they walked the length of the boardwalk and the Pier, and when the jostle of the crowds became too much, they made their way down to the sand and sat near the shoreline. For the most part, his voice, her hands, were still. When they did talk, it was to make up stories about the more colourful characters with whom they shared the beach, both using their hands to speak so that they wouldn’t be overheard, laughing as each tried to outdo the other with an outrageous background for one person or another.

  Where did you learn sign language? she asked him at one point.

  My cousin’s deaf, he replied, his hands growing more deft, remembering old patterns, the longer they spoke. Our parents were pretty close and we all saw a lot of each other, so everybody in the family learned.

  They had dinner at Kathryn’s Café. Afterward, they went to the Owlnight, another of Newford’s folk clubs, but this one was on the Butler University campus itself, in the Student Center. Garve MacCauley was doing a solo act, just guitar and gravely voice, mostly his own material.

  You’re much better, Katrina signed to Matt after the first few songs.

  “Just different,” he said.

  Katrina only smiled and shook her head.

  After the last set, he took her back to Upper Foxville and left her at Lucia’s door with a chaste kiss.

  * * *

  Thursday evening they took in a play at the Standish, a small concert hall that divided its evenings between repertory theatre and music concerts. Katrina was entranced. She’d never seen live actors before, but then there was so much she didn’t know about this new world in which she found herself and still more that she hadn’t experienced in his company.

  It was just past eleven by the time they got back to the apartment. Lucia had gone out so they could have the place to themselves, but when Katrina invited Matt in, he begged off. His confused mumble of an explanation made little sense. All Katrina knew was that the days were slipping away. Saturday night, the lake witch’s deadline, was blurring all too close, all too fast.

  When he bent to kiss her on the forehead as he had the night before, she lifted her head so that their lips met. The kiss lasted a long time, a tangle of tongues. She pressed in close to him, hands stroking his back, but he pulled away with a confused panic fluttering in his eyes.

  Why do I frighten you? she wanted to ask, but she had already guessed that it wasn’t just her. It was any close relationship. Responsibility frightened him, and perhaps more to the point, he just didn’t love her. Maybe he would, given time, but by then it would be too late. Days went by quickly; hours were simply a rush, one tumbling into the other.

  She gave him a sad smile and let him go, listened to his footsteps in the stairwell, then slowly went into the apartment and closed the door behind her. Each step she took, as it always did since she stepped onto the land, was like small knives cutting through her feet. She remembered the freedom of the waves, of movement without pain, but she had turned her back on scales and water. For better or worse, she belonged on the land now.

  But that night her dreams were of foam. It gathered against the craggy shore near her home as the wind drove the lake water onto the rocks. Her sisters swam nearby, weeping.

  * * *

  Late Friday afternoon, Amy and Lucia were sitting on a bench in Fitzhenry Park, watching the traffic go by on Palm Street. They’d been to the Y to swim laps and they each nursed a coffee now, bought from one of the vendors in the little parade of carts that set up along the sidewalk first thing every morning. The sky was overcast with the scent of rain in the air, but for all the weather report’s warnings, it had held off all day.

  “So how’s Katrina doing?” Amy asked.

  An expression that was more puzzlement than a frown touched Lucia’s features. She took a sip of her coffee then set it down on the bench between them and took out her cigarettes.

  “Well, they started off rocky on Sunday,” she said. “He left her crying.”

  “God, so soon?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Lucia said.

  She got her cigarette lit and blew out a wreath of smoke. Amy coughed.

  “Sorry,” Lucia said. She moved the cigarette away.

  “It’s not the smoke,” Amy told her, lifting a hand to rub her throat. “I’ve had a tickle in my throat all day. I just hope I’m not coming down with something.” She took a sip of her coffee and wished she had a throat lozenge. “So what did happen?” she asked.

  “He didn’t show up for a couple of days, didn’t call—well, I guess he wouldn’t want to speak to me, would he?—but then he’s been real nice ever since he did show up on Wednesday. Took her to see your friend MacCauley over at the Owlnight, the next night they went to that production of Lizzie’s play that’s running at the Standish, and earlier today they were out just mooching around town, I guess.”

  “He really needs someone,” Amy said.

  “I suppose. But knowing your history with him, I don’t know if I wish him on Katrina.”

  “But at least they’re doing things. He’s talking to her.”

  “Yeah, but then he told her today that he’s going to be away this weekend.”

  “That’s right. He canceled Saturday morning band practice because he’s got a gig at that little bar in Hartnett’s Point. What’s the problem with that? That’s his job. She must know that.”

  Lucia shrugged. “I just think he should’ve taken her with him when he left this afternoon.”

  Amy sighed in sympathy. “Matt’s not big on bringing his current belle to a gig. I remember how it used to really piss me off when we were going together.”

  “Well, she’s heartbroken that he didn’t ask her to come a
long. I told her she should just go anyway—show up and meet him there; I even offered to lend her the money for the bus—but she thinks he’d get mad.”

  “I don’t know. He seemed to like her dancing when we played at Feeney’s last weekend.” Amy paused. “Of course he’ll just be doing songs on his own. There won’t be anything for her to dance to.”

  “She likes his songs, too,” Lucia said.

  Amy thought of the intensity with which Katrina had listened to Matt’s singing that night at Feeney’s and she knew exactly why Matt hadn’t asked Katrina along to the gig.

  “Maybe she likes them too much,” she said. “Matt puts a lot into his music, and you know how bloody brilliant he is, but he’s pretty humble about it all at the same time. He probably thinks it’d freak him too much having her sitting there just kind of—” her shoulders lifted and fell “—I don’t know, swallowing the songs.”

  “Well, I wish he’d given it a try all the same. I’ve got to help Sharon with some set decorations, so Katrina’s going to be on her own all night, just moping about the apartment. I asked her to come along, but she didn’t want to go out.”

  “I could drop by your place,” Amy said.

  Lucia grinned. “I thought you’d never offer.”

  Amy punched her lightly on the arm. “You set me up!”

  “Has she still got it or what?” Lucia asked, blowing on her fingernails.

  Amy laughed and they went through a quick little flurry of slapping at each other’s hands until they were too giddy to continue. They both leaned back on the park bench.

  “I bet I’ll have a better time,” Amy said after a moment. “I’ve helped Sharon before. If she’s got anything organized at all, it’ll only be because someone else did it.”

  Lucia nodded glumly. “Don’t I know it.”

  * * *

  Amy went home to change and have a bite to eat before she took the subway north to Upper Foxville. Looking in the mirror as she put on her makeup, she saw that she was looking awfully pale. Thinking about feeling sick made her throat tickle again and she coughed. She stopped for some lozenges at a drug store that was on her way. They helped her throat, but she felt a little light-headed now.