She didn’t expect her clothes to still be there. She’d imagined them drifting away upon salt waters. But there they were in the distance, heaped like a cairn. She hadn’t seen much of the beach the night before, only what the green light permitted. It had seemed a mystical place then, of light and shadows, the sea shimmering—primordial. In the daylight, it looked much like any other shoreline. The shingle underfoot was unremarkable, interspersed with driftwood; the hull of a rowboat stood rotting in the distance, while the ocean was flat and grey, the same bleak colour as the sky.
The magic had gone. She watched the horizon for a few moments longer before stooping to retrieve her clothes. They were wet and heavy from the sand and surf. Her shawl had separated itself from the bundle and lay stretched upon the shore. Lifting it, Elspeth was aware of a sticky residue coating the fibres and then she saw what was underneath.
It looked like some kind of membrane, gelatinous and almost translucent but for a pinkish tinge in the middle. Perhaps it was some kind of jellyfish, though there were no tentacles or muscular parts. It was just an empty sac, like a deflated balloon. It put her in mind of a caul.
Elspeth thought briefly about casting it into the sea but she didn’t want to touch it. So heaping up the clothes in her arms, she made her way back to the croft-house.
Life on her lonely promontory suited her. She’d walk most days, skirting her way along the beach, or drifting further along the headland. She’d head back in the early afternoon, aware that the dark was creeping in. The days were short here, brief interludes in the drawn-out nights. She read old stories by the fireside—the bookshelves crammed with texts on local folklore and mythology, left by enthusiastic holidaymakers—while she listened to the familiar creaking of the wind through the house. Her memories of the flower shop were an ocean away.
She hadn’t thought much more about the night in the water, about the cold lure of the sea. She was unwilling to seek an explanation for her behaviour any more than that she would try to understand the strange phenomenon that made the sky glow. But later, as she walked along the shore, keeping her eyes downcast to avoid the assault of the wind, she happened to glance upon the strange caul-like form in the surf.
It was larger now, if indeed it was the same thing, and pinker. In its centre a curious growth had appeared, a rose-coloured protuberance that almost resembled a starfish, though it had only four limbs. Elspeth knelt beside it and reached out a tentative finger. The membrane was slimy with sea-foam and salt. The pink swelling in the middle undulated with the movement of the tide or perhaps from some kind of internal pulsation. Was it alive?
Elspeth took a step back. She didn’t know what to make of it. The thing didn’t resemble any marine life she was familiar with. But then she didn’t know what strange creatures thrived in these cold waters. For all she knew, this was a common organism in these parts. Again she wondered whether she should push it back into the open water but something stopped her from doing so, and turning slowly from the sea, she made her way homeward.
The next day it was even bigger. The membrane was now taut and the fleshy star had accrued a halo of seaweed, which appeared to be enmeshed in the translucent bubble that surrounded it. It was certainly alive; Elspeth could see pink darting rays coursing along the body of the creature like blood through an artery.
She thought about calling Donal and telling him about the thing she’d found on the shore. Perhaps it was an endangered species, an aquatic wonder particular to these shores. But she didn’t want anyone to disrupt the peaceful silence of her new life, the dark, embryonic stillness of her world. She’d rejoiced at news on the radio that the ferry connecting the island to the Orkney mainland would most likely be cancelled due to inclement weather. The idea of being completely cut off, utterly inaccessible, gave her the same giddying feeling she’d experienced the night she saw the green lights in the sky. She felt empowered at the idea of her solitude and at the same time, utterly dependent on forces she didn’t fully understand.
Elspeth knew something was wrong as soon as she set foot on the shore. She was becoming accustomed to the sounds of the island; the whistling of the wind, the roar of the surf, the croon of the gannets flying overhead but this was something she hadn’t heard before. It sounded like a series of high-pitched cries, a multitudinous screeching and wailing, carrying with it a sense of frenzy and desperation. Elspeth walked faster toward the din, breaking into a run when she saw the host of seagulls ahead, converging on one spot, fighting against each other to get at the thing in the surf.
Elspeth raced toward them, waving her arms wildly and shouting loudly to compete with their noise. As she drew closer, they took slowly to the air, squawking irritably at being denied their meal.
The thing in the surf looked pitiful. The torn remains of the membrane curled about its pink flesh, red in parts from the seagulls’ assault. Elspeth knelt beside it and looked over its injuries, seeping red from exposed, raw tissue.
“There, there,” she said, gently touching the creature’s centre, its texture mollusc-like and slimy. She felt it recoil at her touch. She gathered seawater in her palms instead and gently poured it onto the creature, washing its wounds, hoping that the salt-water would restore it.
She could hear the seagulls encircling above. She picked up a stone and threw it into the air. Then shrieking loudly as she went, she walked toward what remained of the old rowboat, and began to drag it across the shoreline, stopping intermittently to scream at opportunistic gulls swooping low, or to fling another stone skyward.
The sea-battered hull was the perfect enclosure. She lowered it over the creature, sad that she would be denying it the light, though it would mean its survival. And she thought of her own existence, the absence of light in these long dark days that marked her time on the island, and how much she had thrived.
The creature healed well within the dark interior of the boat. It acquired a carapace of shell and shingle; seaweed adhered to the parts that had been most exposed by the seagulls’ attack, compensating for the flesh it had lost. Though it didn’t resemble any amphibious life Elspeth was aware of, it looked strangely appropriate on the shore, like a mollusc beneath its shell amid a net of kelp.
It grew in size too. About the length of a newborn now, it squirmed in the surf in much the same way. Elspeth made her way down to the shore at first light each morning and would gently lift the driftwood from the creature so it could see the sky, though it had no discernable eyes. Often she’d take a blanket to sit upon, sometimes a flask and her breakfast so she could stay beside it as long as she pleased. She wondered as she watched the pink flesh stir whether it needed to be fed too, or if it absorbed the nutrients it required from the surf. She tried dangling a variety of food in front of it, but with no recognisable mouth, it was hard to know how it would feed if indeed it possessed an appetite.
She thought often of milk, of how most mammals are weaned by their mothers. She tried splashing it with a little cow’s milk but it just ran off its surface and into the spume. She didn’t suppose she had anything to worry about. The creature was growing in size each day and though it didn’t appear similar to any established form of life she knew, it looked healthy and strong in its own way. But she wanted to exert some kind of influence on its growth.
She began to tell it stories. First the stories she knew from her childhood, fairy tales with moral instructions, then the stories she read in the evenings beside the fire—stories from the island. Tales of creatures that appeared human, living in vast underwater kingdoms and monstrous creatures that inhabited the land: giants and trows, water horses that drowned their riders. She wanted the creature to know the stories of the land it was being born into.
One time after talking of the impious trows—dwarf-like mischievous sprites, who crept into houses after dark to torment the inhabitants—she placed her finger against the soft pink belly of the creature and stroked it softly until it began to purr.
“This island breeds monste
rs,” she whispered, wondering if it possessed enough sentience to recognise her voice.
And just as she was about to withdraw her hand, she felt a sharp stab of pain and looking down saw the beading of blood on her fingertip.
Elspeth stood by the window watching the man beside the boat. She could almost fancy he was a sailor, presumed lost, the wreckage of his vessel at his feet. Or else, one of the Fin-folk from her stories, returned from the sea, dressed in a magical sealskin coat.
In the half-light, it certainly looked like a man. She’d fashioned him from driftwood and twine and dressed him in her oilskins. From a distance you wouldn’t know that the figure was actually her mediocre attempt at constructing a scarecrow.
It seemed a good idea to create a sentinel. She couldn’t watch the creature day and night and she worried about predators lurking nearby. She hoped it would be enough of a deterrent, though its purpose was perhaps to pacify her mind more than anything else.
Elspeth closed the curtains and sat beside the hearth. She thought of what she had told the creature. That islands like this one breed monsters. Maybe it was because things were more extreme here, the climate harsher, more severe, the land constantly besieged by the sea. After all, who knew what dark forces the sea harboured, perhaps from time to time spitting out these peculiarities to accumulate on the shore like flotsam.
Strange things thrived in the darkness, wasn’t that right? So this was the perfect place to raise them. It was on a windswept island, much the same as this one, that Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel retired to build his second creation. A female this time, at the behest of his first creature. Why did he choose such a lonely place to bring her into being? And what did he create her from anyway, far from the mortuaries and graveyards he’d plundered back in Ingolstadt to build his first monster piecemeal? Was she made from the shingle and spume like the creature on the shore?
Maybe it was something to do with femininity and wild places. Frankenstein’s monster was the product of the civilised world, but the female, she could only be engendered in the wilderness.
Elspeth made her way back toward the window and peered out from behind the curtain. It was darker now, but she could still see the scarecrow’s silhouette and the dark outline of the boat. She could imagine the creature within, pink and engorged, sleeping softly to the sound of the surf and she knew then, with a strange certainty, that the half-formed thing was more like her than she’d realised. The creature was female.
She’d always wanted a girl and here she was, brought in with the tide. The goddess Aphrodite had been born of the sea, formed on the foam after her father’s castrated genitals were flung into the surf. It was an odd parentage; Aphrodite’s existence was dependent on her father’s emasculation, and her mother, according to this genealogy—was the sea.
The sea. Elspeth thought of that night in the luminous green water. Of the energy she felt charging through the current.
She would name her child Aphrodite.
Elspeth smiled and returned to her place by the fire. After all, it’s a fine line between monsters and gods, a vague boundary like the shoreline itself where neither the land nor the sea hold dominion.
The next day Aphrodite began to crawl. She was now the size of a baby seal and moved in a similar lumbering way, pulling herself up on her fleshy stumps. Elspeth stood next to the driftwood man and clapped feverishly. Proud parents.
“Well done, Aphrodite. Well done,” she called.
And Aphrodite basked at the applause, though Elspeth could only surmise as much from the quickening of her movements, the excited writhing of her form. She still had no perceptible features; she was just a mass of pink flesh, like an oversized starfish, though the two lower limbs were less developed. When Aphrodite rested, reclining against the rocks, she almost resembled a human torso. Lying in the surf, dotted with sand and shingle, she gave the impression of a drowned person brought in by the tide. The only discernable thing about her was the shell carapace and the seaweed mane that trailed behind her when she moved.
The fact she was no longer bound to one spot filled Elspeth with hope. There was the prospect of her holding her, maybe taking her home to nurse and raise, perhaps even tucking her into a cot like a regular child. But there was nothing regular about Aphrodite. Her need for seawater would prohibit a normal home life. It would be more likely to nestle her into a bathtub than a crib. And then there was her diet to consider.
Elspeth stopped the train of her thoughts before they gained momentum. She didn’t want to ruin this moment by worrying about how Aphrodite would fit into the world around her. It was enough that she was growing stronger, taking her first steps boldly along the shore. She watched Aphrodite amble toward her, her movements slower now as if she were fatigued. Or hungry. Elspeth knelt beside her and Aphrodite placed a stumpy oily limb on her leg.
Elspeth knew what she wanted and was happy to comply. Aphrodite deserved to be rewarded for such an achievement. Under the gaze of the driftwood man, she lifted up her sleeve, exposing the flesh of her wrist and let Aphrodite’s cold, wet skin envelop her.
Elspeth found she adapted to motherhood well. She took pleasure bathing Aphrodite in the surf, plaiting her seaweed tresses. She even enjoyed the night feeds, untroubled by the lack of sleep. She could anticipate now when Aphrodite would call her, distinguishing her cry from the similar sound of the gulls. And wrapping a shawl about her shoulders she’d hasten to the shore and lift Aphrodite onto her lap. Then she’d pull up her sleeve and feel Aphrodite’s cold, moist flesh coil itself around her in the way she imagined an octopus would fasten itself to its prey.
She hadn’t expected to feel this kind of joy so late in life, this deep sense of contentment as she nursed Aphrodite. She wondered if all mothers felt such a bond. It didn’t matter to her that it was blood instead of milk, she was feeding this nascent life with a part of herself and that was all that mattered.
The flower shop didn’t even come close to this feeling, though it was the single product of her life’s labour and though it had sucked out her energy and time in much the same way. It was just a shadow compared to the living thing in her arms and Elspeth felt a pang of regret that she had not arrived at motherhood earlier.
In the moonlight Aphrodite’s shell-skin shone the colour of pearl. Elspeth took to identifying the seashells that made up her mantle as she rocked her: dog whelks and cockles, tellins and periwinkles. Interspersed with these empty shells, the exoskeletons of long-dead molluscs, clusters of barnacles grew in abundance and rock lice flitted along the surface, burrowing into the crevices and hollows left vacant.
Aphrodite purred in time with the lapping of the waves and Elspeth withdrew her arm. Would it just be barnacles and isopods that would crowd Aphrodite’s carapace, or would she, one day sprout other more curious life forms, creatures as mysterious and strange as she was? And how would she cope, with all this life to support, crouching along the shoreline with her monstrous children on her back?
The next morning there were two men beside the boat. Elspeth rubbed her eyes and made her way closer to the window, hoping she had conjured a second driftwood man from her sleep-addled mind. But there he was, a real man, slightly shorter than her creation though dressed in matching oilskins, stooping slightly to examine the boat.
Elspeth bolted toward the door, struggling with her shoes and coat before racing out onto the beach. If he looked beneath the driftwood, what would he make of Aphrodite? He’d flee surely, perhaps report her to the authorities and they would take Aphrodite away to prod and examine. Or maybe out of revulsion or fear, he would attack her. What chance would she have, barely able to walk, let alone run from an assailant? She might retreat into the sea and perhaps disappear forever. Elspeth ran harder, with a speed and agility to her movements that belied her age. She needed to reach her child, to protect her from the man and the world he brought with him.
But as she made her way closer, she saw that he had disappeared. She scanned
the scene ahead, looking for the slick, rubberised fabric, wondering briefly if she had imagined the intruder after all.
And then she saw his walking boots, sticking out from behind the boat, at the end of two narrow ankles that disappeared from view. Rounding the boat, she saw the whole hideous spectacle.
Aphrodite had pinned him to the ground, spreading her bulk across his chest. Her surface area was wider than normal as if she had elongated herself somehow, the effect being that more of her pink body was exposed beneath her shell exterior than normal. Elspeth edged closer, confused as to where Aphrodite’s flesh ended and the man’s began. She made the same gentle purring sound she made when Elspeth fed her.
“Aphrodite!” Elspeth said, summoning the voice she heard parents use when chastising their children in her shop. She repeated it again, more loudly this time, noticing how Aphrodite’s body had spread over the man’s face, perhaps obstructing his breathing. She began to consider a way to prise her off, looking about for some kind of stick or tool rather than touch her with her bare hands, possessed by some instinctive knowledge that physical contact at this moment would be precarious. Her gaze settled upon the driftwood man—his blank expression seemed to convey the same sense of bemusement she felt—when Aphrodite relinquished her grasp and slid back to her place beside the boat.
Elspeth wished she hadn’t moved because now she could see what Aphrodite had done to the man. He was bloodied and disfigured; an Aphrodite-shaped hollow where she had lain on top, the man’s face and torso reduced to a fleshy, red depression. Elspeth moved forward tentatively, watching the waves lap against his body, filling the concave that was completely devoid of organs and entrails.
She stumbled back to shore and fell against the shingle. She could see Aphrodite purring contentedly beside the boat and next to that, the man’s backpack bobbed back and forth with the tide.
Elspeth sat on the shore for a long time. At one point she lay back against the rocks, hardly caring if Aphrodite crept silently toward her and up onto her prostrate body as she had done with the backpacker. She studied the grey sky, whorls of black clouds swelling like the dark undercurrents of the ocean and thought of the green spectacle on the night of Aphrodite’s conception.
Shadows & Tall Trees 7 Page 4
