The Fisherman

With a grunt of pain, the fisherman pulled the wooden oars toward his upper body, silently cursing his old age. As the small rowboat propelled forward, he silently brooded on the effects of his many years alive, ruminating over the deteriorated state of his body. Though this had been a subject of worry since the time of his fortieth birthday, recently it had become a more constant, and considerably more negative, topic to think about. With each passing year had come further pain and inconvenience, and the fisherman had come to despise his own body, as well as the difficulties that came with it.

His arms, though thankfully still able to navigate the calm ocean waters, had become brittle. They ached, along with every other part of him. Every morning, the fisherman ran one frail hand through what remained of his hair, thin and grey. Wrinkles showed on his face where the skin had grown loose, sagging against the hard bone underneath. Even his eyes, which had once been a most vibrant blue, had faded and paled as the years had progressed.

He felt tired, something that even the calming atmosphere around him could not soothe. It was the sort of morning he usually enjoyed most, all grey clouds and mist. Quiet, save for the gently rolling waves of saltwater and the unmistakable noise from the seagulls overhead. Peace during a time that other men might call gloomy. He had always questioned the opinions of other fishermen, who generally seemed to prefer days full of intense sunlight and heat. He was much too old for such bright light, he thought to himself, though he had not enjoyed hot days much as a youth either. Nowadays, the sun only served to pain his aged eyes. He had always preferred when things were overcast and gentle, light streaming in through the clouds instead of beating down heavily upon his back without a filter.

Looking around briefly, he marvelled at the fact that he could no longer see the shoreline. Rarely, if ever, had he pushed his boat so far away from land. Most days, he could capture enough fish to sell while remaining within a reasonable radius from the beach. Unless he was set on capturing some deep-water fish, he was always close enough to the shoreline that he could be called back with a shout.

More unusual still was the lack of his fishing gear in the boat with him. He genuinely could not remember the last time he had been at sea without his pole and tacks and worms. Though he had considered bringing it with him, the last-minute decision to leave it all in the shed had been a good one. This was not a morning to spend with the fish, and even if it were, there was not enough room in the rowboat.

While his own person occupied much of the available space, it was the small bundle at his feet that claimed the rest, resting at his feet and extending all the way to the other end of the watercraft. Though it was smallish, he thought, it was certainly beautiful. Wrapped in the most delicate silk his wife had been able to purchase, the yellow material shimmered when the sunlight hit its surface, the only colourful thing visible under the overcast sky.

And yet, though he could not deny the thing’s beauty, he avoided looking down at it with a feeling of guilt. He considered pulling the beautiful wrapping off of the thing, gently, just to look, but even just the thought of it came feelings of wretchedness and pain and great wrong. Even the simple knowledge of what lay before him, concealed only by the silk, was enough to cause his weak hands to shake and lose his grip on the oars. He choked back a sorry little sob, staring ahead. His lungs tightened in horrid little spasms as he held his breath to steady it.

As he exhaled, one long exaggerated movement, the air around him chilled. He felt the need to stop moving for a moment and allowed the oars to slack, revelling in the stillness of the moment. To the fisherman, it seemed as though time itself had stopped, for he could feel no breeze nor see any ripple in the water. Everything, including himself, had frozen.

And then, as he waited in awe and silence, mist began to gather from the ocean's surface.

Rapidly, gusts of white rose from the water and began to billow around him, bursts of moisture swirling around the boat. He could feel the wind now, unpleasantly cold and harsh, whipping against his cheek and pulling at the heavy flannel of his clothing. The thick air surrounded and smothered him, growing and expanding as it spiralled upward and outward and everywhere until he could see nothing but the pale fog around him.

For a moment, the fisherman was overwhelmed with the idea that they were reclaiming the bundle at his feet. God in Heaven, he thought, distraught, as he reached down and hoisted the thing into his arms. Not yet. You can't take it yet. I haven't had my say! He pressed the silk-wrapped thing to his chest and lowered his head into it in a futile attempt at protection, frightened and pitiful. He clung to the cool fabric, thinking that it would evaporate from his grip at any moment.

Though he had been fighting against it, a small sob escaped his lips as he prepared for the bundle to disappear, and all at once everything stopped. The boat beneath him once more became immobile. The sound of the waves had ceased. The wind no longer caressed his cheek, and yet the bundle remained in his arms. Suddenly hopeful, and trying to be brave, the fisherman opened his eyes.

His boat, he realized, was no longer anywhere to be seen, and beneath him was only rock. The island had changed dramatically in the year since he'd left it, and yet the sight of it still left him breathless. Though it was very small, perhaps only three times his height in diameter, it was astonishing to look at. Sharp, dark-hued rock rose from the surface of the water in a manner that could only be described as harsh, the surface of it craggy and rough. In the very centre of it stood a tree – or, rather, what remained of a tree that now seemed as cold and lifeless as the stone beneath it.

“This place has died,” said a voice behind him, and the fisherman turned as sharply as his body would allow. The woman watched him quietly, the lower half of her body submerged in water. Her arms rested on the edge of the rock face comfortably, and she tilted her head slightly as she regarded him.

“Lanna,” the fisherman breathed quietly, unsure whether to welcome or repel the young woman. His fingers tightened convulsively on the silk in his hands. “Lanna, don't do this. Don't...”

She stretched out her arms, her expression unreadable, and as she did, he felt something inside him tighten in anguish. Facing the inevitability of it, he edged closer to the water and the waiting woman unwillingly, his stomach twisting into hurtful little knots. Fighting the feeling that everything about this was fundamentally wrong, he allowed her to take the bundle from his outstretched arms.

She cradled the thing in one arm, looking down at the silk wrapping in confusion. With her free hand, she tugged at the edge of the material and lifted it away, letting it drape down over her arm backward in order to reveal the face underneath.

The child underneath the silk looked as though she could have been sleeping, the fisherman thought through the terrible wrenching feeling in his heart. The gold in her hair reflected more sunlight than her silk wrappings, and she looked very beautiful in her best Sunday dress.

“Why did you cover her?” the woman asked, looking from the child to the man. He did his best to steady the tremble in his lips, and spoke.

“I...I couldn't see her. Not like that.” The woman said nothing for some time, merely examining what she held in her arms until the fisherman found the courage to speak again. “You have to fix this. Make things right.”

“The agreement was one year.” The woman's voice was gentle. “I cannot extend it any longer than that.”

“You could. You could do anything if you wanted to.” Though his tone was insistent, the urgency and frustration did nothing to mask the wretched, desolate plea underneath. “You owe this to me, I saved your life.” His voice broke, his throat tense and tight.

“You did,” she said quietly, “and for that I am eternally grateful. It was because of your mercy and your kindness that I offered to give you anything that was within my power to give. You asked for a child.”

“Not for you to take her away so soon,” he said, his voice broken and exhausted. “Not for that.”

“You knew how long it would last. It was for this reason that I did not offer you an infant. Instead, you were gifted with a precocious, curious, wonderful little girl for as long as I could sustain her life.”

The man swallowed, having anticipated this. “Then I want you to erase my memories of her. Take it away so I don't...so I can't miss her.” Tears collected in his eyes, threatening to spill over, as images formed in his mind.

A young girl with golden hair, rolling in the dirt. Playing in the garden. Sitting in the rowboat in the seat across from him, her golden hair pulled back into an elastic and topped with a straw hat to block out the sun. Struggling with the fishing pole and nearly falling overboard at the first tug on the line. Reeling in her very first fish. Lying on the floor of the house that night as he cooked up the carp, retelling the events of the day in thick Crayola. He could feel the paper in his pocket as he moved, folded into quarters and kept safely away inside his faded jeans.

The woman recoiled slightly, as if struck. “You disrespect her.” Her voice, once gentle, grew into anger. “She loved you dearly, and you wish to throw that all away completely? Forget that she ever was?” The woman wrapped her arms around the little girl's torso and hugged her to her chest, as he had done minutes before. “If you would rather dismiss her entirely than suffer the pain of your loss, then you did not deserve this gift to begin with.” She turned her back to him, blocking his view of the girl.

“No!” he cried out, overcome with anguish. “No. I don't. I don't want to forget.” The woman looked backward at him over her shoulder in curiosity. “Of course I don't want to forget. But I don't ...I don't know what to do. I can't think of what I'll do without Cissy. I can't go home to my wife without our little girl.” And with that, staring into the face of his future without his daughter, the fisherman shattered, his aged body suddenly seeming too feeble to handle it. He leaned forward in defeat, and cried out. Hot tears spilled onto the rock face below him as he shook, and the woman took pity on him.

“Hold her,” she said quietly, placing the child back into his arms. “I cannot reverse what has happened, nor do I wish to erase it from memory and condemn it to nonexistence. She deserves to be remembered. Perhaps her life was short, but it was good, and if you cannot celebrate what is good in your life without despising it once it is gone, you disgrace any joy that it brought you.”

The fisherman said nothing. For many moments he simply held Cissy, stroking the golden hair on the little girl's head, allowing his tears to splash the surface of her pale forehead. Lanna was quiet, watching over the pair of them reservedly, and allowed the fisherman some peace before she spoke again.

“It's time to let her go,” she said, and the fisherman said nothing. He inclined his head slightly in unhappy agreement, blinking ever so slowly and suppressing a small shudder. Though he was quiet as the woman reached forward and touched the centre of the child's forehead, moments later his jaw fell open in astonished outrage as the child began to crumble in his arms. Spreading from the point where the woman had touched, the flesh and bone that had been Cissy turned to sand as it fell to the ground before him.

He yelped and jerked back, instantly regretting it when his bones ached in protest. “What...?” he asked, bewildered and unable to complete his question. The woman in the water made no sign that she'd heard him, doing little more than flicking her eyes up toward the surprised old man. Gaping in abject horror, he watched helplessly as the sand hit the rock and, astonishingly, melt into its surface.

And as he stared, grass began to blossom. Beginning from the area the sand had touched, it sprouted up around him, the island blossoming into colour and life, small multi-hued flowers emerging between blades of green. The grass rapidly spread to cover the entire expanse of rock, crawling toward the lonesome tree in the centre. As it touched the base of the wood, the tree transformed. The trunk darkened to an earthy brown colour as beautiful leaves sprouted from its branches in plentiful bunches.

The fisherman sunk his hands into the newly formed dirt and inhaled sharply, tears dripping from his cheeks onto the soil. “She's gone. You – you destroyed her.”

“I created her from sand one year ago,” Lanna said gently, “and unto sand she did return. She is not any more lost now than she was this morning. That corpse held nothing of Cissy, not after she had died. And now, because it was let go, it has created something beautiful. Look around you.”

He didn't, not needing to look in order to know of the island's beauty. The woman in the water continued. “You cannot experience new beauty if you are stubbornly holding on to what is gone. However...”

He looked up at her as she approached, his hands still supporting him as he hunched forward. Between the two of them remained a small pile of sand, weighing down the grass it sat upon. With careful hands, the woman set down a glass bottle the fisherman had not realized the woman had. Carefully, she pushed her hands underneath the sand and pulled it upward, and the old man noticed for the first time that the pile of tiny rocks contained fragments of seashell and conch. He decided not to comment.

She poured the sand from her cupped hands into the mouth of the bottle, concentrating so as not to spill any of what had already been so greatly depleted. “You see?” she said quietly, offering the bottle to the fisherman. “You can keep her with you always, to remember. You simply must not dwell on it so horribly that you miss everything else in your life because of it.”

He took it in one hand, miserable and defeated. “I don't think I'm ready for that yet,” he said quietly. “I don't want to be without her. I don't want to be happy. I don't want to try to be happy.”

“You will,” the woman promised, and for one fleeting moment, the man felt hopeful. He looked up at the tree in the centre of the island, clutching the glass in his hand, and though he turned back to the water to thank the woman for what she'd done for him, she had vanished.

He had one moment to catch the sight of a long, glistening tail fin sink into the water with a splash before Lanna was gone.

The fisherman sat there for a moment, listening to the therapeutic sound of sea water crashing against the island's surface, before inspiration struck. With a feeling of finality and comfort, the man pulled the rectangular paper out of his pocket, being overly careful not to tear or bend it. He unfolded the white sheet, smiling at the amateur scribbles that were supposed to represent him. He closed his eyes for a moment, savouring it, burning it into his memory, and rolled the paper into one thin tube before dropping it into the bottle with the sand.

And then, in one sweeping motion, he looked out into the ocean where Lanna had disappeared and waved goodbye to the saltwater.

“Thank you.”