Those Halcyon Days
They say I was in love
with a fulmar, violent and bloated, with a pack of followers who
tried attacking me. A foolish story, a way to justify my father’s
brutish actions, perhaps. But it was not a jagged nosed fulmar that
swooped down to me that day, but a kingfisher. My Alcyone.
I
had watched her dive from her widow’s walk and into the sea. Some
supposed it an accident, a slip of the foot on sea-slickened wood.
Others imagined her overwhelmed by a longing for her husband, his
ship cracked open against the rocks.
“How
dedicated,” the men would say, lifting a glass in Alcyone’s
honor. “What a model of a wife.”
“How
romantic,” the women would say, cleaning the fish for the day’s
supper, their fingers as raw and pink as the salmon they cut. “They
were so in love.”
But
I knew, as she leapt, the truth. Alcyone cared nothing for the man
lost on his rat-infested ship. She did not spend each night in the
salt-thickened air, pulling her shawl close around her shoulders so
that she might spy a glimpse of his vessel. She did it for the sea.
Each night I heard Alcyone’s wailing voice, aching to be at one
with me the spray and foam, at one with me.
Her
body was sleek and lithe, long before any feathers grazed her limbs.
She entered the sea head first, her hair wrapt in her mourning shawl.
The blackened robes clung to her as her form withered and shrunk,
dyeing her skin before it sprouted tufts of feathers in the brackish
water. She was only submerged for a moment before she flicked
her tail up and beyond, her dagger-like beak aerating the wind as she
flew. When she reached me, I nuzzled into her downy neck, her spine
bristling with her newly sprung feathers. We clung to each other and
stayed just so for a long while.
She
was yar; she was Alcyone.
We
had spent the winter together, sleeping on ice caps, pointing out
constellations far above us in the sky. I would stroke her feathers,
midnight blue and black, with specks of white, her own constellations
that I would memorize, each spot, each freckle. She’d chitter
softly in my ear, whispering the secrets of the wind.
It
was too warm the day he came, the ice melting around us. We had
drifted away from our favorite berg and spotted his dread boat in the
distance. I tasted bile in my mouth, and felt her wings curl around
my neck, protecting me from him as best she could.
“Who
has captured you, Sedna, stolen you from me?” he called from his
boat, his dogs barking at the waves, biting at the sea itself.
“No
harm has come to me,” I said firmly. Alcyone stood perched on my
arm, her sharp beak cast downward, bracing herself against the
incessant barking of the dogs, their hot breaths thawing the ice
around us.
“And
yet here you’ve been for months, wasting away on an ice flume,
while I hunt for you. To protect you,” he added, his voice
attempting to soften. His boat rocked unsteadily against the
surrounding ice. In a flash, a knife appeared in his hands, his dogs
quieting at the blade’s radiance.
“I
need no protection,” I said again. I could feel Alcyone’s feet
begin to shift anxiously, her claws tiny daggers in my flesh.
When
the poets tell my story, they say my father killed my lover, the
fulmar, and then, when we were on our way back home, he threw me
overboard. As I clung to the side of the ship, he slashed at my
fingers and they flopped past me into the ocean. How did my story
become so obscured, so obfuscated, like looking at yourself in a
muddy puddle. Would Narcissus be enchanted by such a blurry version
of himself, his tale stretched and shorn in translation?
It
was he who leapt out of the boat, knife raised. I heard Alcyone
scream, her rattling voice like metal scraping along the ice. I
lifted my hands to reach for her, to hold her fast to me, but I was
too late. His blade sheared my fingers, lopping them off into the
water. I fell to the ice, hearing Alcyone’s angry chittering. I
looked up, clutching my hand to my belly, and watched her jab her
beak through his flesh over and over, his knife useless on the
ground. He swiped at her, knocking her aside, but she darted back to
him again and again until finally she collapsed next to his still
body. The dogs slunk into the bowels of the boat, unsure of what to
do without their master’s voice.
My
fingers lost to the sea, I lumbered over to Alcyone. With my other
hand, I picked up her small frame and cradled it in my arms, my
blood-soaked hair blanketing her. It stained her breast and I began
weeping, my tears freezing on her feathers. Below the ice I could see
fish swiping and pecking at the rivulets of my tinny blood floating
through the water. I watched as one of my shorn fingers bloated and
distended its belly, a tail protruding, then a flipper. The whale
lurched at the ice flume, nuzzling us further out to sea together,
where we belonged. Another finger sprouted whiskers on its muzzle and
barked at us mournfully. They carried us to Alcyone’s nest, and I
gently placed her there. The whale and seal brought me kelp to
wreathe around her, tying her to me. I laid there next to her, my new
companions by my side, moaning a dirge that echoed along the ice,
until I drifted to sleep. Upon waking, her body was gone and I wept
until winter.
***
Now
I sit on the ice caps, my flesh one with the frozen water, and wait
for her return. On a calm day when the wind seems apologetically
quiet, I hear a familiar metallic purr. I look up and see her in the
distance, diving, dancing over the seafoam, arching nearer to me. She
chitters in my ear as I sink my face into her feathers and all at
once I am home.