Tidepool

Our vessel was anchored. The crew and I were counted present with other survivors on Wednesday the 18th, the date of her arrival in our bay port town.

Prior to that she existed only as a whispered rumor, a woman’s silhouette seen in the low tide water. Said to have emerged from the waves and engaged in some unknown ocean witchcraft, witnesses described bundled scarves under yellow rain gear. She was seen filling buckets and making a harvest of predawn tidepools.

I thought she was only another transient.

Without warning she entered the Sea Gypsy barroom. Asking to speak to management, she conducted a job interview for herself at once. Half-drunk and tired working men watched the performance and admired her plainspoken confidence.

Even during her performance her expression held the unguarded quality of a creature unfamiliar with deception. Raven hair and strangely purple retinas; she was lean, stood proudly tall and straight, and moved fluid like mercury. When reaching for a water glass, her arms revealed strength earned in hard living and travel along ocean shores.

The atmosphere turned maritime blue when regulars learned her name was Olivia. A stranger to everyone, her unaccountable presence displaced all gossip. The room began to quietly arrange itself around her.

Her family awaited some species of deliverance, she told us, though she had no words to elaborate. She sought employment, not relief. No arrangement in which she would surrender control. She would put her hands to labor in exchange for a place to stay and legal tender. At home, unexplained reserves were running low and the approaching season would remove the remaining color and sunlight from both sky and sea. Her meaning was lost on us.

I thought her speech metaphorical, a placeholder for the truth of her origins. Still, I wondered at rare and wistful mentionings of an eleven-year-old boy that rang true. In all her ways I observed an instinct toward equilibrium and a disregard for imposed boundaries. Her explanations often extended beyond necessity and produced an involuntary tenderness in those present.

The room watched for any sign of artifice in this bold person with her strange speech. Laughing, they judged her genuine and urged the establishment to employ her.

She nodded and repeated her intention to acquire legal tender. A promise of reciprocity was arranged at once. Olivia insisted on beginning immediately. She said she had no other priority. Management agreed she could start after washing off the stench of the sea and changing her clothes.

I saw no more of her that night but would remain in her orbit throughout the workmen’s week until the disappearance.

When I returned to the Sea Gypsy the following night she was there. I had the impression she had never stopped working.

Most of the room watched her as one might watch a rare bird walking the shore. Never had the establishment gleamed, never had the atmosphere felt so at peace. Time spent at this drunkard’s hole in the wall was now grounding, healing.

The town was under her care. From that night on I attempted my introductions.

She was receptive to all attention. Men circled her easily, offering gifts and idle promises. Each left believing he had her favor.

Olivia stayed in a furnished flop house room above the bar. Many spoke of how the hallway outside it smelled faintly of salt and sweetness. I affirm this is the truth.

I once walked the narrow steps lightly so they would not creak and approached the door of her tiny upstairs apartment. I had only a moment’s glance inside before the door flew open and she pushed past me with the young dishwasher sprite holding her hand, leading her downstairs.

Seaweed was on the ceiling as if afloat, and starfish were scaling the walls.

I observed she hoarded fruit, canned and fresh, pineapples and melons. Taken together with her time in the tidepools among kelp and starfish, we know only that she could be the reason for the impossible purple vines in the salt sand and for the palm fronds and pineapple brush now growing along shores where ocean water should forbid them.

The next night I arrived late during her shift and found the customers she served joyful and more than entertained.

At their prompting I asked about her origin. When she looked directly into my eyes the room fell silent.

I was speechless at her response.

She reported she only remembered floating.

At this, looks were exchanged. Then laughter. I watched her tilt her head in surprise at our mirth.

On the fourth night I was soon to disembark for northern cold water fishing and was determined to make an impression on the barmaid. I took a morning walk along the surf where I believed it likely our paths would cross. I pretended coincidence as I joined her among the tidepools.

Alone, her chin lowered and her dewy eyes looked into mine as if I had offended her. The corners of her mouth tightened into a frown. She candidly asked me when fishermen would have enough. She asked why I did not leave the watery land she loved to heal for a time.

It was then I noticed she had built three odd small signal fires.

I asked their purpose, but my attention was stolen by hooting and splashing in the inky black ocean. I turned toward the sound, but Olivia took my hand and stood in a way that drew me from the sea. She told me to bring my crew the following night, that we should join her at her Friday beach gathering before we shipped out.

I next saw her at that party after the Friday work shift.

When I arrived, a grand blaze was already burning, and the crowd was larger than any gathering our town had seen in years. There were fishermen, cannery workers, deckhands, and the younger men and women who had never swum on a cold night. The harvest moon was full and bright enough that the breakers shone white as bone.

Olivia was already in the surf.

She stood where the waves struck her thighs, laughing and beckoning to those still on the sand. Several men had already joined her and more followed easily, drunk and eager to impress her.

I went only as far as the shallows.

She continued walking.

The water reached her waist, then her ribs. Still, she went farther, teasing everyone for shrinking from the cold of the surf and turning now and then to call someone by name or splash them like a child at play.

From the beach it looked harmless. In the bright moonlight we could see the swimmers plainly. Their heads rose and fell with the tide. It was then I noticed something unusual about the water around them. The surface seemed disturbed in places where no swimmer moved. There were brief flashes beneath the waves, pale and shifting, like the turning of fish in great number.

At first, I thought nothing of it.

But soon a man near Olivia shouted and began swimming hard for shore. Another followed, coughing and striking out wildly as though something had brushed past his legs.

Laughing, most paid them no mind.

Olivia had moved farther again, her movements becoming more feral. Her sharp teeth glinted with moonlight.

By then she was little more than a pale shape beyond the others, rising and falling with the swell. I remember seeing her lift both arms as if greeting someone approaching from the deeper water.

The sea around her darkened.

I cannot say what happened next with certainty. The waves were restless and the crowd on shore had begun shouting warnings.

But when I counted the swimmers again there were fewer heads in the water than before.

Several returned to the beach trembling and silent. They stammered of creatures pulling at them and dragging the crowd out to sea.

Two score were lost forever.

Olivia herself did not come back that night.

Now it has been two weeks since the missing were last seen.

That morning the notorious item was first mistaken for canvas tangled in the kelp. I was present when it was unrolled, shed clean as a disguise abandoned.

It was Olivia’s skin.

The ocean had taken its due.

This is my testimony. God help our cursed town.