The Waves

The story of how Rosa came up out of the sea was old gossip by the time the girl had reached her seventeenth year. After all, it was the kind of story that was still shared around dinner tables when the conversation went stale, or in the schoolyard amongst children desperate for their own share of novelty and adventure.

It had been in the heart of a cold spell when they found her beached in the sand, one of those mornings when the mist covered Alston Point like a shroud. The baby had been tangled in kelp, and so pale that the children who came upon her thought at first she might be a jellyfish, or some washed up long dead monster from the deepest most secret parts of the ocean. Only after she began to cry, a high piteous wail that reverberated around the cove, did it become clear that she was as human as one of them. A shock of dark curls pressed damply to her forehead, and her mouth was the vivid color of coral. The eyes were as murky and densely clouded as the sea mid-storm.

The child had been taken in by a local couple, a crab fisherman and his wife, who already had a number of their own children, all boys with bronze skin and sun-bleached hair that fell in waves around their faces. She was the couple’s first girl child, and they adored her immediately with a passion that was almost frightening. They named her Rosa, after some long-forgotten relation. It was imagined that as she grew, she would come to resemble her new family, that as she matured under the sun, she might become tan and strong like her brothers. But this did not happen-- if possible, she became even paler, so that her skin was almost transparent. The white skin of her throat seemed to glow with a queer bioluminescence, and her face loomed from out of tangled hair like the moon from clouds. She became more willowy as the years passed, more bone than flesh, so ethereal it seemed sometimes that she could hardly be real.

While her brothers roamed the beach in enthusiastic blonde packs, Rosa kept to herself, usually shored away in some ocean cave, a book in her lap. She was quiet and solitary by nature, but not unkind. Whether it was the mystery of her circumstances, or something fluid, and alluring inherent to her was uncertain, her presence encouraged an easy peace in everyone who met her. And so it was that she gained a reputation for being a perfectly charming child, and later, an entirely absorbing woman.

On Sunday mornings, while Rosa’s mother was away at church, her father would sneak her on board the little fishing vessel he manned with a small crew during the week. Occasionally the boys would join them if they were not out catching waves with friends, or drinking under the high-school bleachers. Usually, however, it was just the two of them alone on the expanse of blue thunder. Rosa’s mother hated to let her daughter anywhere near the sea. Perhaps it was superstition, or something akin to mother’s intuition, but she had always entertained a fantasy that the waves might somehow reclaim the child they had given up so long ago.

Rosa looked forward to these adventures, for something in the sea called to her. It was a kind of dark passion she could not explain away or quell, no matter how hard she tried to for her mother’s sake.

It was on one of these covert father-daughter expeditions that Rosa first saw the fins. She counted three of them, slicing through the slate-grey waves, before turning away to tell her father. It was the middle of summer, and the air was unseasonably warm for the small New England coastal town. Even so, sharks were generally few and far between, as far as Rosa knew.

“Bull sharks, I reckon,” her father muttered gruffly, although his eyes appraised the water skeptically, “Sometimes they’re known to migrate this far north when the water is warm. Some were spotted off the Massachusetts coast not too long ago, but all together like that is unusual. Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

Rosa nodded, mutely, the salt stinging her eyes. The sight of the fins, glinting dangerously just below the surface had sent a cold thrill through her. It was as though something heavy had settled in her stomach, some kind of realization she was not equipped yet to understand. Her father, noticing her discomfort, attempted to smile

“Well, you’ve got a keen eye, my girl. Why don’t we get you back to the mainland so your mother can fix you a plate of something hot, eh?”

* * *

That night, Rosa typed “shark migration Atlantic ocean” into her search bar. A strange feeling had come over her and refused to leave ever since the morning’s excitement. She gazed at pixelated pictures of great whites and leopard sharks, sawsharks and threshers until the buzzing in her ears reached a fever pitch. Exhaling softly and exiting out of her tabs, she moved towards her window, which opened out onto the beach. Sometimes, when life became a little too loud, she would sneak out and sit beside the sea until feeling returned to her limbs, and the stress of her day wore away into the turf.

The moon was bright and full, and Rosa shivered despite herself. She trailed her way down to where the waves crashed gently along the shore, displacing bits of shell and fragments of seaweed. The sand went damp under her feet, and seafoam gathered around her ankles. She looked out at the ocean, surprised by how clearly everything was illuminated under the moon and stars. In another moment, her heart sank heavily within her.

The fins had returned, and this time she counted nearly seven of them. She stumbled backwards so that her feet were out of the path of the waves, her heart thundering in her chest. The fins circled close to the shore, even though the water was no doubt shallow enough to be dangerous to them.

“What are you doing here?” Rosa whispered in horrified fascination, “Get away before you beach yourselves”. She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness-- it was not as though the sharks could hear her, and even if they could, they would hardly understand. But after a long moment, the fins began to recede. Rosa let out a shaky exhale, unable to comprehend how any of it was possible.

* * *

The next morning Rosa rose blearily, her mind still uneasy. It felt as though she had hardly slept, and bits of sand still rubbed between her toes. She must have tracked it into bed with her the night before.

At breakfast, she forced a few bites of pancake down her throat before shuffling the rest around on her plate. She had no appetite. The boys readied themselves for school, gripping their school bags with the causal strength of their age, and heading out towards where their bicycles were stored. They usually rode into town together for school, but this morning, Rosa could not escape the roar of the sea.

“I’ll catch up with you, yeah?” she called out, and the others shrugged.

“Mom will be livid if you’re late,” they teased, eyes glinting. She nodded to show she understood, and then waited for them to disappear around the street corner before absconding for the beach.

It was late enough in the morning that their father had returned back from his morning expedition, and so his boat was docked. Without thinking too much, Rosa slipped from the pier onto the unsteady deck, bobbing up and down with the waves. Almost immediately, she detected the fins out of the corner of her eyes.

“Of course you were waiting for me,” she murmured under her breath, a sliver of dread settling in her stomach. There must have been ten of them this time.

Taking a deep breath, she untied the ropes that bound the boat to the pier, and begun to steer the ship in the direction of the fins.

* * *

When Rosa did not return from school that afternoon, her mother was alarmed, but her father said not to worry. He had noticed his boat was gone, and assumed Rosa had gone out for some peace and quiet.

“She knows how to handle herself, and the weather is fine,” he soothed.

Her mother, borderline hysterical with worry, merely pursed her lips.

She had always known that something like this was coming, from the moment she had taken the child that the sea had thrown up, into her arms for the first time, so many years ago. What comes from the abyss must return to it, she had reasoned.

* * *

Even now her family waits for Rosa to return. They watch the sea for signs of familiarity-- a transluscent face, a flash of coral lips, even the hint of black hair. Every year, the sharks return to the cove in absurd numbers, defying typical migration patterns and the laws of marine biology.