Aoife and the Spirit of the Sea
Part 1
Her hair was as red as the sun at dawn, glowing in a sea of greyness. She would have liked to wear it free-flowing but her mane was for her husband’s eyes only. He made that painfully clear, often leaving a trail of yellowy-purple pearls around her neck as a reminder. Aoife’s strawberry hair was deemed impudent and bringer of bad luck by village folk. And so were her freckles, flocks of them travelling across her face, shoulders, chest and other less visible parts of her anatomy. She was told, sometimes they seemed to move on their own, like migratory birds. Even her eyes inspired whispers and inquisitive looks, one blue and one green.
It only requires the right whisper to the right ears, witch, and you are done for. Her rare beauty got her constantly walking on the edge and the lightest gust of wind could throw her off, even with her magnificent hair tied in a knot and hidden under a bonnet. Her husband kept her in the house and made her cover herself from head to toe for the unavoidable weekly market run. They hadn’t been married for longer than a year. The husband, at the beginning agreeable and seemingly caring, had soon turned dark-tempered. His belt met her flesh more often than his lips did, his hands often closed in a fist.
She had failed to fulfil her wifely duties. Each time it started well, morning sickness announcing an early success, to then have it all wash away in a sea of unwelcome blood. One of the times the baby took to her womb for nearly a quarter and it was all looking up for the couple — He was elated, treated her and the life within with the care you handle one of these precious glass fineries found in a noble’s house. She got proud too soon. To one morning wake up in agony, her lower self burning like the pits of hell, Hephaestus’ hammer driving the baby’s dismantled body out of her to bleed her empty and depleted.
She survived the episode and things became darker. The beatings became heavier and marks were permanently visible, hair falling off in chunks. Her eyes stared into purgatory, skin pallor. It was time to run.
One especially dark night, husband passed out on a drunk, Aoife picked up what provisions she could, wrapped herself in a heavy cloak and slithered away under the pitch black sky. She walked for days and nights, possessed by an ancestral fever, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, just walked. A silent voice inside of her told her that she was to reach the ocean and so she walked on until sky and ground became one in the distance. Last time she had seen the sea she had been very young and wanted to go on the ships; soon learned that red-haired girls weren’t welcome aboard.
And there she is once again years later, surrounded by boats and vessels, seamen rushing about distrustingly side-eyeing the silent wrapped-up dark figure stood in total stillness. For the first time in her life she is mistress of her own destiny and whatever she does next is up to her.
She decides to join one of the fishing vessels. She hears it is easy to get in them so far as you are ready to work hard. She took a small amount of money on her departure, which she uses to buy old boots, workmen clothes and a knife to shave her head. She uses coal from a burning stove to darken her features, I look atrocious, she thinks, but this will have to do. Drag name’ s Will.
She approaches a vessel recruiting new staff, recruiter chewing tobacco and leaning against the gangway’s handrail. Stares at the strange shaggy childlike figure with strangeness.
‘I hear you’re looking for seamen.’ She remembers to lower her pitch halfway through the sentence. The recruiter visibly has no idea what to make of the person standing before him and decides that they are a young boy whose body hasn’t been blessed by God.
‘We are leaving tomorrow early morning. We need men who can carry their own weight’ he studies the short and narrow figure ‘…You sure you’re up for it, kid?’
‘Absolutely’, she staggers through her newly found tenor range, ‘Name’s Will’.
‘Alright, Will. Be here tomorrow morning 5AM or we’re leaving without you.
To be continued…
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