Maiden from the Sea

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  The fog had lifted and she was drawn to the sight of a dark firmament and strange lights renting the sky. Growls of thunder descended around her ears as if from invisible beasts giving off blinks of jagged light. She did not feel herself fall, and when she came to, she couldn’t move. The lidless eye of hot sun cut through her skin. She was caught in its gaze, unsure of where she was, hovering, it seemed, in space. Then everything faded away—even herself.

  She felt her mind coming back. She tried to raise her lashes, but they were caught in the mask of her body. Nasook was above her in the shadows of her half-closed lids. He held a bark cup and was coaxing her. “Drink! Maidenhair berry tea.”

  Her mind pushed at her lips: Move! She tried to scream. What if he thinks I’m dead? I can’t tell him I’m not.

  She breathed in Nasook’s pungent male scent as he lifted her. His scent overpowered the smell of the damp earth and sea air as he carried her over the beach and back to the cave where she lay feverish. When he reached with his flint knife and snipped off a long strand of hair tight to her scalp, she winced. He took hold of it and braided it with a blue jay’s feather entwined in his own hair. “Strange and strong powers in sky spelled you and you lived,” he said, lying beside her.

  She came out of the fever and lay staring at Nasook asleep. She rose upon an elbow, and as she bent over him, her breasts fell outside her bodice. She touched his face with them, held his face in their warmth, unashamed of the instant charge that went through her body. She felt weak, wanting the passion she had unexpectedly experienced before. She didn’t know if this was the way it was with women, their bodies hungering after the body of a male and finding satisfaction in the oneness they created, or if she had been maddened by this wild environment. Nasook’s eyes opened and he drew back, his look wandering to her face then to her belly, where it stopped. He straightened up and left so quickly, stones scattered under his feet.

  Genevieve raised herself slowly and carefully, the baby like a ball in front of her thin body. She followed Nasook to the cave’s exit. She watched him go, staying in the entrance as the grey light of day suffused the darkness. In this silhouetted world, she imagined tipping the sea to her lips as if it were a bowl. She would drink from it and find herself in a kingdom in a sea of dry land. She would live as the queen of a palace. No! She shook her head. Not in the king’s palace. I would not be safe there if the king turned from me to someone else. I want to be loved by a common man who wants a common life that no one can interrupt. We would live warm and frugal, always a hand’s throw from hunger to whet our appetite for life, keeping our senses alive. Striving to thrive. That would give our lives passion. But this life . . . She looked over the ocean, her eyes stormy. She went inside the cave and sat by the fire where Nasook had left a cup of water and dried eggs in kelp and pieces of smoked salmon in birch rind.

  Some days, as she listened to her own voice whining through her head, she detested herself. She would cry: “I can’t live! I can’t survive. The cold is biting my bones, and loneliness is eating out my heart. I can’t live!” But then she’d think of her life, her child’s life, and spring’s life pushing up through the earth and she would be overpowered with hope. Those nights she would imagine having her own house, one with louvres. The shingled house would have overlapping and shifting slats to let in light and air, and keep out rain. It would be built to welcome southerly winds and keep out easterly ones.

  Crows cawed from a tree branch as she walked over the cliffs, her shadow moving with her like a twin. Water dripping from thawing trees made light tiptoes on stones. She pulled up a deep, strong breath and let it out as if it were the stale, damp atmosphere of the cave. She drew in spring’s fresh air as the sun licked the wet ground dry. Life surged strong. I have lived! I can live! I will live! She stepped quickly, watching her shadow dance with her as if it were a second self.

  She caught sight of herself in a pool of water standing still and shining like a metal looking-glass. She stopped so quickly she almost toppled into the water. Her face showed thinner than she remembered, her hair longer, and straggled, despite the run of her fingers through it. She hadn’t thought much about her appearance. Food and warmth had governed her mind. She parted her furs, ran her hand over her belly rising like a blue moon under her dress, now faded, and well-worn. It was loose enough to oblige the growing baby. The chemise underneath had long been relieved of its laces and used to mend her bodice torn by the French fisherman. She smiled at herself in silver-gilded water.

  The sun high in the sky strolled her shadow as she sat on a flat rock and leaned against a boulder, her face lifted to the soft stir of wind. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. Pearl-grey tickleaces rise from the cliffs into the air, showing their white breasts like snowflakes drawn back into the sky. Sarah grabs the falling feather of a tickleace, as the seagull dips its wings and writes its way across the sky. The pale blue feather is heavy with squid ink, ready to fill white pages with stories of women holding babies inside them as their bones banged against ships’ ribs on their way from a land of famine to another island skirted by a sea swarming with sea life. Their sounds are voices filling Sarah’s ears, finding her feather pen poised above a blank page. She lowers her pen to write . . . words coming behind the skittering pen are invisible.

  Genevieve awoke, startled as if a bird’s feather had touched her nose. Impulsively, she took white birch rind Nasook had brought her and carefully parted layers of skin. She mashed spring cranberries into juice and swirled her fingers through the mixture. She pressed a twig into the juice and used it to push against the parchment to make indents, drawing the likeness of birds and clouds. She wished her mother had taught her to make more than the marks of her name. She wanted to know enough markings to put down her thoughts and press them into the birch rind. The twig broke and she used a bird bone to press deep, so that even if one layer was stripped, the next would carry the imprint of her name and images. She drew the moon, sun, stars, and a sea wave on bluish-grey slates with a sliver of slate. Next, she drew a man with a woman and baby and coloured them with red ochre. She slipped her birch etchings between the slates and placed them into a niche in the cave.

  She smiled. I was here; I am still here. When I’m gone, my markings will be here.

  Chapter 10

  The Shipwreck

  Spring’s whispering fresh breath, sweetened with scents of new life, stirred Genevieve, bringing a longing to have her child against her breasts. Wild cherry trees cast their blossoms about like coins of snow. She uttered a pleased exclamation at seeing tiny red cones fastened to spruce trees. She gathered a handful and took them with her to spread on a rock outside the cave. The sun will dry them hard, she thought. When she went to pick them up, there was only yellow powder, as fine as dust.

  Sun dust, she thought, trailing her fingers through it. She should have left the cones where they were, let them spring to life.

  One night as she slept, a strange dream pulled her under, imprisoned her in a cave of water, held her there. She finally surfaced up through sleep into a night filled with sounds she couldn’t decipher. They dragged her out of oblivion into her shivering flesh.

  The wind is like a chatter of voices coming and going, she thought, before falling back to sleep. She sat up, startled as if a wind had swept through the cave, blowing out her dreams. Other sounds were pulling on her, yanking her out of her rest. Human moans, she thought before falling back asleep. As the light of dawn seeped through the cave, she awoke with an unsettled feeling. She wrapped her cloak tightly around her and walked across the head of the cliffs to where the black sea gurgled as if it had something caught in its throat. The cold wind pulled at her clothes like a savage beast wanting to tear her apart; it changed suddenly, pushing her back toward the cave as if it were a mother’s hand, its howls a mother’s scold to stay sheltered on this mad sea morning.

  Inside the cave, she was relieved to be
free of the strong wind, like fingers of ice down her spine. The moans that had come against her sleep had surely been the wind. She drew all her clothes around her and slipped back into the laudanum of sleep.

  Later, when the wind had slackened, she ventured outside, tuning her ear for sounds. Fog had settled into a thick blanket over the cove. It was as if the sky itself had come down around her, thick against her face. She treaded her way carefully across the cliffs, getting close to the beach, before she could see that a dark gargantuan body, looming out of the fog and snagged on the sharp-toothed growlers, was an old grey ship. The doomed vessel, penetrated by growlers and battered by cove cliffs, had grounded on the seashore, pieces of its ribs and other debris floating around it. The tilted ship made gurgling sounds from a giant hole in its side as it strained against the roll of the sea. The keel of the ship had cut through the sand, its stern facing the sea, its prow sticking up on the beach. Its canvas sails and rigging had broken from their holdings and collapsed on the beach.

  Genevieve turned away in horror at the sight of bodies—so many of them. Out past the ship, some undulated in lifelike movements among wrecked wood. Wooden spoons and bowls floated among kegs and debris bobbing on the water. She considered wading out to grab sodden bodies, but the water was cold and deep. The captain, his crew, and other voyagers were all beyond help now. She did not want to become one of the bodies drifting out from the cove. Soon wind and tide would take them out to sea.

  She eyed the ship, its keel grounded in the rocky beach. She scanned its height, wishing she could climb aboard the wrecked ship and get to the captain’s room, where she knew there would be food. Even before she left France she had heard tell, from seasoned travellers, of captains squirrelling victuals away for themselves.

  On the beach she sighted a jar of honey and uncovered smoked bacon wrapped in brin. Ship biscuit, plimmed in the salt water, floated close enough for her to reach out. She grabbed as many provisions as she could and bundled them, along with a cresset of oil bobbing on the water. Then she hurried as fast as she could, afraid that at any moment Indians would descend from the hills to raid the ship, searching for food and the white man’s tools. Out of breath, she made her way across the path and down to the cave with her treasures.

  She caught her breath, letting her heart settle as she warmed herself by the fire, sending it flaring with a tiny drop of oil. Once she felt rested, she turned resolutely. She would steal if she had to from the dead, steal whatever was necessary to keep her life strong. The earth’s treasures were hers as much as anyone’s, more than those who had gone to God.

  She traced her steps back to the ship. The fog had lifted and from the cliff she could see the scattering of bodies more clearly, most of them drifting away from the ship. A cove of graves! she thought grimly.

  “Femme!” she exclaimed at the sight of a body, the coat half off and caught on a jagged piece of rock at the far end of the beach. Hair strayed from the female’s head in a mass of tangled strands like seaweed. Genevieve went toward the corpse, her heart racing. The girl looked to be about her own age. She reached to touch the pale, round face, her eyes open and dark. She drew back in horror. She had never before touched a dead face. A white, laced bolero covered the bodice of a woollen, bruised-blue dress lying sodden around the body. For an instant, Genevieve imagined the soft folds of the dress around her own ankles, rather than her own thin, tattered one. Then she fell on the beach, sobbing, thinking: This could have been me washed up on the beach for gulls and auks to tear apart.

  Her voice broke into a strangled cry as she went closer to the stranger. She fell back on her heels, shivering violently. Sticking out from under the girl’s dress lay the alabaster form of a blue-white baby, a twisted, fleshy cord trailing it. Tears streamed down her face as she lifted the baby farther ashore and gently laid him on the sand. She drew in quick, shallow breaths as her hands tightened on the dead girl’s shoulders to drag her up on the beach beside her baby. She pulled the boots off the dainty, white feet. Then she stripped away her outer clothes: the long woollen coat, the dress, the loose leggings. At the sight of cloth strips lacing the dead girl’s body in a tight embrace, Genevieve knew that the young mother had wanted to keep her condition a secret. She left the undergarments on the body. Then she started to dig a grave, clearing away rocks and sand. She dug as fast as she could, her breath coming in gasps, her fingers paining from the effort of scooping out a grave with only a piece of shale. It took a long time, but she finally rolled the young mother, whose forehead showed a large gash, and the baby’s unblemished body into the hollow. She spread sand and pebbles over them, sadness cutting her being. Guilt followed like a stone striking her heart. She had stripped a mother of her clothes! She assuaged her conscience: The mother has no need for them.

  As soon as Genevieve got back to the cave, she dropped onto her branch pallet. She lay there a long time. Finally, thoughts of her treasure stirred her. She was going to stop complaining to herself and be glad that her flesh was alive even if it was cold at times. She lifted the seal from the honey and touched it with her finger. The taste on her tongue sent a surge of strength through her body. She dug into it. Then she stopped. A greedy stomach is as nauseous as a greedy hand; it could result in an empty belly from retching.

  She picked up the woollen blue dress, handling it gently. There were seeds in woven bark sewn in the under pockets of the sleeves: flower seeds like those of evening primrose and others, tinier and darker. In a small stream out from the cave she washed all the clothes and laid them by the fire. When the dress was dry, she stood close to the fire and dropped her tattered dress and heavy furs. She came to life as she slipped on the dress. It fell light and curved around her bellyful of baby. She swirled it around her, knowing that in the summer when the baby was born she would frolic in the wind, the dress dancing with her.

  Exhaustion took over and she slid down into a deep sleep. She awoke, startled. Gruesome images from the shipwreck surfaced, crowding her mind. She pulled Luke’s sheepskin cloak over the dress, its hood slack down her back, and walked out to a point of cliff that jutted like the bow of a vessel. She stood as still as the wooden figurehead on a ship, her dress billowing behind her like a hair bracket. The easterly winds had come up against the land, swirling everything in their path, and the tides had risen high on the beach. The wind clawed her hair back from her face with cold fingernails and grabbed her clothes. Her tears fell into the wind’s long, moaning song. The girl from the shipwreck no longer had to struggle. She was at peace.

  Genevieve, feeling a stab of envy, leaned toward the wind, as if challenging it to change and let her topple over the high cliff and back into the sea from which she was pulled. A sharp gust hit her like a fist, pushing her back, commanding her to live. She stumbled away from the cliff. Looking back, she saw a large, white, yellow-billed bird high above black cliffs in the distance. A shrill cry startled her. The bird hovered like a vulture. She could have answered with as grievous a cry from her solitary position, but she felt mute. If she died, the bird would pick at her body to feed its young. I’ll have its body yet to feed my young, she thought fiercely.

  The next day she plodded across the cliff and down in a valley toward the beach reluctantly, unwilling to bury more bodies if they had washed ashore. She stopped, astonished at the sight of Indians in two canoes rounding the point—canoes with gunnels arching to a midway point on each side. Paddles dipped, lifted, sheets of water falling away. As soon as the canoes reached the beach, an Indian jumped from one canoe and dashed onto the beach. His black hair resembled Nasook’s, long and straight down his back, a piece at the crown plaited and decorated with feathers. Across his cheeks and forehead were strokes of red paint. A companion followed, letting out a shout. As quick as a blink, there were several Indians on the beach. Not wanting the men to see her, Genevieve crouched behind a boulder in from the beach. If she had understood Nasook right, the Red Indians bel
ieved—as did some white men—that one lot of people wasn’t human if they spoke in another tongue and were of another colour. The Indians scrambled for supplies from the shipwreck. One man shouldered another man, letting him climb over the lowest side of the ship and gather the ship’s supplies. Some men remained on the beach while an Indian in each canoe, laden with shipwrecked goods, paddled away.

  Genevieve drew in a quick breath when she spotted Nasook, his face marked in red ochre. He didn’t look her way. He doesn’t belong to me, she thought. I don’t belong to him. Her hand went to her belly. Our baby does.

  After making several trips back and forth, the men left. From a hideout, Genevieve watched canoes and paddles cutting into the water, the paddles lifting it clear from its blue, restless bed. The Indians couldn’t have been far all this time and yet they hadn’t bothered her. She wondered if Nasook would find the courage to talk to them about her and the baby. Her heart gave a lurch. What if that caused her and her child to lose their lives?

  By the afternoon of the next day, the sun shone in a cloudless sky, and warm, westerly winds swept across the cove. Genevieve made her way back to the beach, not sure what she would find. The change in wind must have dragged the bodies out to sea. A small keg floated in the water. A wave tossed it, dragged it. It bobbed back and forth before it became grounded in the sand.

  Genevieve walked toward it. She bent cautiously. The cover fitted tight against the rim of the keg. She pulled on the rope that went down through the cover, likely so plimmed by salt water she would never get it off. It didn’t budge and she rested before giving it a harder pull. Finally the cover came up. She drew in a musty, briny smell as she squinted to allow a shadow of the keg’s contents to come in sight: a red cloth with a black skull and crossbones painted on it. She lifted the cloth and her eyes opened in horror at the sight of a skull. She screamed, her body shuddering. The cover fell back down. Her mind raced with images: Someone’s face and eyes had been part of that skull, someone’s thoughts had been held inside it and—someone’s body had been rudely parted from it. A naked skull was as mysterious to her as the sun and moon. She had never been close to the skinless head of a human. This one’s eye sockets were patched with sealskin.