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What the Water Took From Me

a short story

By Katie AlafdalPublished 2 years ago 12 min read
2
What the Water Took From Me
Photo by Shannon McInnes on Unsplash

Summer came to Copenhagen like the final breaths of air might come to a dying man: purely out of habit. Colorful facades beside the sea posing in the half-hearted sunlight because they had always done so this time of year. The blue air infused with ephemeral warmth but only for a little while. I might have found it beautiful if my head was not so full of violent and rotting thoughts.

The move to Denmark came in the months after father's suicide. Our mother, the foremost expert on Kierkegaard in all of the America's, thought a change of pace might prove invigorating. And where better than the birthplace of her long dead philosopher muse?

Regine was the one who told me that Copenhagen had once been a Viking fishing village. No doubt she used the information to entice me, but I merely shrugged as she relayed it.

Regine was two years younger than I, going into the ninth grade. She looked more Scandinavian than mother or I, with her fair hair and electric blue gaze. In truth, she looked like father, and so I tried very hard not to regard her too closely in the period following his passing.

Perhaps that was why she made other friends so quickly, despite school not yet starting up. Mother had never been particularly warm or engaging company, preferring her tomes and treatises to family game nights. And now I was not much better.

"You're almost through with high school, Abhay," Regine whined one evening, when they were still unpacking everything into the new apartment. Mother was already asleep.

"So?" I hummed, not really paying attention.

"Soon you'll be off to university and I'll never see you again. We should go out and explore the city together, don't you think?"

I scoffed, shaking my head.

"I don't feel like it," I returned. This was not a lie, at least, but Regine let out a pitiful little exhale. Her disappointment was like a burning thing, too scalding to hold for very long.

"Boredom is the root of all evil--the despairing refusal to be oneself," she quoted, flashing a sardonic smile at me. She knew I hated it when she rattled of Kierkegaard aphorisms at me. That was a habit she had picked up from mother.

"I'm going to bed," I excused myself, slipping into the shadowy solace of my own room.

***

In the fall, the steady hum of routine made our assimilation easier. Regine went directly from classes to museums with her friends, all laughter and stolen smiles. I cloistered myself in the school's library, pretending to read so that no one would think to bother me.

And it was in those last weeks of summertime heat that Regine told me about the cove.

It was late afternoon, and she was slipping a towel into her book bag.

"Where are you going? I was about to order a pizza for dinner," I began, expecting her to drop her things and eat with us, a bit like old times. I tried to make my voice sound warm and engaging, and the effort was exhausting.

"Some of the girls and I are going swimming," she explained, smiling.

"Isn't the water a bit cold for that, at least for you? You're not used to the Danish weather yet, surely," I laughed, but she simply shook her head.

"There's a spot where the water is uncannily warm. I've been going all week," she supplied, shifting from one foot to the other impatiently. And then, biting her lip, her eyes brightened.

"What if you came with us, Abhay? You never do anything fun, and I worry about you. My friends will be nice, I promise. And our spot is just along the harbor, but it's very exclusive. You'll love it." She expelled in a rush.

I shook my head, but now that the idea had occurred to her, she was unwilling to let it go.

"You have to come, for me. I'll be so upset if you don't. Plus, there's all this lore about the place, dating back to Viking times, and the tenth century. You'd love it. It's supposed to be enchanted by a Norse witch, a völva. That's right up your alley!"

It was true; Viking seeresses were "right up my alley". As a child I went through a phase in which everything I learned needed to pertain to Old Norse magic, or else it promptly left my head. And the völva held a special place in that long-ago swirling, nebulous developing mind.

In the old mythology, these witches were so powerful even the gods would seek them out for information about the future. Equipped with wands, supernatural singing powers, and magical seats, they could travel to other worlds, undergo different experiences of consciousness. One story describes how the great Odin himself reached out to a völva to learn about the end of all times, Ragnarok.

After father shot himself, I began to think about Ragnarok again. Because in a way, his death was an end to the world I had always known. Perhaps, the universe was made up of a thousand little Armageddon's, and we were condemned to live through all of them.

"Fine, let me get my swim trunks," I acquiesced at last, shivering slightly.

***

The cove was nothing like I expected. The waves were gentle, the color of slate, under the full moon. I watched the white light loom across the water, transfixed.

Regine's girl friends were already waist-deep in the current, laughing and splashing each other.

They froze when their eyes fell on me, water sliding in silent rivulets down their skin.

"Why did you bring him?" one of them asked, her voice cold and imperious.

"This is just my brother! I told him he could come swimming with us tonight. Is that cool?" I shifted uncomfortably as the mirth left their eyes.

One of the girls stepped a few feet out of the water, shaking her head.

"Boys are not permitted to swim here," she hissed, looking strangely frightened, "Send him away. He should not even know this place exists. I thought Electra told you--" she threw an annoyed glance at another dark haired girl, who was presumably Electra.

"Oh, she did, but I thought you meant weird boys. Abhay's cool, I can vouch for him," Regine's smile was uncomfortable now.

"Get him away from here, now," the girl muttered in an undertone, "Before she sees him."

"I don't understand," Regine's brow furrowed in confusion.

"It's fine, I'll just walk home. Have fun," I assured her, taking a few steps back.

"No, it's not fine. Why are you all being so strange?" Regine stood her ground, eyes suddenly white hot with anger.

The girls looked amongst themselves, shrugging.

"Suit yourself, Gine," the oldest said raising her eyebrows, "Don't say we didn't warn you."

Turning to the others she gestured towards dry land, "Let's leave the fools to their evening."

Slowly, they slipped out of the current, the sea foam clinging around their ankles in a last ditch attempt to drag them back in. My cheeks flushed, and I attempted to calm my sister.

"It really is okay. I don't want to swim anyways," I whispered but she was already too furious to pay me any attention.

"Elitist snobs," she growled under her breath as the last trailed up the path leading back to the city, "I need new friends."

"No, they probably just don't wanna hang out with random guys they've never met. I get it--It really isn't an issue. I don't care."

Regine let out a small, frustrated sigh.

"We might as well go swimming, I guess," she hummed, slipping her dress over her head, and diving headfirst into the waves.

For a moment, I hesitated, watching the lull of the tide. Overhead the moon shone brightly upon everything. The air had turned chilly, but it seemed silly to stay on the shore after all of that.

From the moment that my toes hit the ocean, I knew something was wrong. The sea was ice-cold, and penetrating, and yet I found myself wading farther into the water, as though in a trance. The sea wound its way up around my chest, and I found quite suddenly, that I could not breathe.

I tried to scream for Regine, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. Beneath the surface, a warm pair of hands fastened around my ankles, dragging me down.

***

It did not feel like drowning, at least, not in the way I had always imagined it. There was no struggle or resistance-- my lungs simply gave out-- my throat unfastened itself-- the water entered every part of me until it was all that there was.

A face appeared from the surge of seawater-- a long, angular countenance with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth. Had I been above the surface I might have screamed.

Visions unbidden flashed before my eyes. My father, teaching me to balance upon the quivering wheels of a bike. Father again, cooking Regine and I lasagna on a winter evening. Father, scribbling a note and locking the door to his and Maman's joint study.

"Have you had enough yet, child?" the face asked, and its voice was at once melodic and grating, like waves upon crags.

I nodded, clenching my eyes shut.

***

I came to on the beach, shuddering and gasping in the early morning light, kelp tangled around my heaving body. Along the cove, a line of police cars sent shocks of blue and red light through the mist.

"Abhay!" a voice shrieked. Regine. I raised my head blearily to watch as she tore down the beach, wrapped in a towel. Behind her, paramedics.

"Good god, we thought you were dead, and out to sea. We called the coast guard and everything. Are you all right? When did you come ashore?" She clutched me tightly, shuddering, but I found that I could not speak.

"I have to call mom," she thought out loud reaching for her cell, "She's worried sick up the beach."

I nodded, as the paramedics checked me for broken bones and wounds, listened to my heart and the ragged sounds of my breath.

As they slipped me into the back of the ambulance, I heard one whisper to the other.

"Another one, just like the others. But he lived, somehow. I don't understand it."

"Don't you know," hissed the other, looking around furtively, "The place is cursed."

"An old wives tale," the other returned, but he did not sound too sure.

***

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced," our mother pushed the hair out of my eyes, smiling weakly as she hovered over my hospital bed, "Don't be afraid. You're safe now, another experience under your belt."

I nodded, throat impossibly painful, and eyes stinging under the fluorescents.

"Don't go all academic on him, he almost died," Regine growled from her seat at the end of the room.

"But he's alive, and we're all here together," mother retorted vaguely, still smiling.

I attempted to speak for what felt like the thousandth time since I returned to dry land, but found it impossible.

"Just rest now," Regine soothed, noticing my discomfort, "They said you just have to stay overnight to make sure you don't have a concussion."

"Apparently he's not the first to have trouble in the cove. The doctor mentioned a few boys have drowned there before, but usually their bodies wash up a week or two later."

Regine shuddered, her eyes fluttering shut.

"Stop Maman, I don't want to think about it."

***

That night, I dreamed of the woman beneath the sea, with the hollow eyes.

"Have you had enough yet?" she goaded, smiling queerly at me, the sockets of her eyes illuminated by a maritime lightness.

Her hands locked easily around my throat, and I was powerless as her grasp began to tighten.

"Please, no," I begged her with my eyes, but she only grinned at me, her face feral.

"You wanted this," the sea itself seemed to hum, "So come and drink your fill."

***

My voice did not return when I was discharged from the hospital, or in the weeks after that.

Once, in the halls, I glimpsed one of Regine's old friends. It was the girl called Electra, staring at me strangely from the shadows of a classroom.

Our gazes locked, but I could not call out to her. As I moved to approach her, she simply shook her head, looking terrified.

"Go away," she mouthed and I froze in my tracks.

Mama and Regine, for their parts, were very patient with my silence.

A few days after I left the hospital, Regine procured me a fresh journal and a fountain pen, like the kind our father used to use before he offed himself.

"So you can tell me what you're thinking," she smiled wanly as I took the pen tentatively in my fingers.

But when I attempted to put my thoughts to paper, my handwriting came out spidery and crude, like a child's. What kind of queer regression could force me back into a time before my more careful scrawl?

I'm scared.

I wrote at last, before crossing it out again, and then showing Regine.

She nodded, her look pensive.

"I know," she murmured, leaning her head against my shoulder, "It will pass."

***

Every night, I was forced back to the cove under the cover of darkness. Never before had I experienced recurring dreams with such devastating detail.

And every night, the völva met me beside the sea, her head quirked to one side, her mouth gaping in a smile.

"What do you want?" I screamed over the wind, tears rushing to my eyes unbidden, for in these nighttime fantasies, at least, I still had possession of my voice.

The witch did not bother answering.

"Why won't you leave me alone?" I tried again, sobbing now.

And in the rumble from the ocean itself came her answer.

"I spared you, when I did not have to. I let you live, and now you belong to me."

"But why?"

"Because you transgressed on my turf and had to be punished. And because you were lonely and the darkness in you was curious."

I shook my head, disbelieving.

"I might have kept you under the surface forever, but instead I let the sea throw you back up. Now, you only pay your respects in dreams. A generous compromise. Other boys were not so lucky."

She said it simply, ruthlessly.

"Have you had enough yet, child?" she hissed, as I shuddered before her.

And in the morning, she would be gone again.

***

The terms of my contract with the witch were consistent. She came for me in the evenings, and dutifully, I would follow her beneath the sea. At dawn, I would return to my body, exhausted and stiff with cold.

Regine observed it all with pursed lips.

"It's like the story of Persephone," she mused, one morning, shoving a brimming cup of tea into my trembling hands, "Swimming in the cove was your version of eating the pomegranate seeds. I'm just glad you come back to us in the daylight."

I nodded, heart beating dully in my chest. I thought about father, about Regine, about mother and Kierkegaard, about old Norse magic.

Perhaps, the universe was made up of a thousand little Armageddon's, and we were condemned to live through all of them.

Short Story
2

About the Creator

Katie Alafdal

queer poet and visual artist. @leromanovs on insta

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