“Send These...Your Tempest Toss’t, To Me.”

She wore a crown on her head, and held a torch in her hand, or at least she did so in all the stories James had heard about America. It always began with that beautiful lady welcoming you to shore after an often harrowing journey. Her face held the promise of plenty after a lifetime of lack, her torch a beacon of hope after hardships and the weariness of constant toil.

For an orphan growing up in the workhouse in Whitechapel, a full belly, a warm bed and a kind face to look at you lovingly was all but a fever dream. And James, fool that he was, had always been a dreamer, enough to stow away onto a ship for days. It was easy when you’re used to living off scraps. He was 16, young enough to still believe that anything was possible. And he decided that he would see the lady’s face for himself.

He almost made it to a week when he was caught down in the hull by a sailor who was relieving himself in some of the dank bilge water that had collected there. The captain’s threat of being clapped in irons in the hold fell on deaf ears, and James climbed onto the prow and wriggled his way to the end of the bowsprit, clinging for dear life. His knuckles were white from his exertions, but there is only so long even a monkey can cling to a branch. The crew watched him sink, made no effort to save him, as if they knew he could not swim.

The water was ice cold, enveloping him in a crushing,  inky darkness as his ears roared with the churning of the sea. His lungs filled with pressure, and he could do little more than flail about, like the strings on a bag of flour that did nothing to stop its descent. 

In that moment, he made the wish that would define his destiny for the next sixty years: to never feel hunger or cold again, to feel love and care, before the oblivion of death embraced him and he was erased from the world. 

——————————————————————————

It was her hands he had noticed first, gentle as they cradled his face and she peered into his eyes with such solicitude, that he almost missed the thin webbing between her fingers when she finally pulled them away.

Bits of shell and seaweed threaded through her damp red hair which hung in soaked coils down her smooth back and over her pendulous breasts. 

He had blushed fiercely, turning his face away and with a sputtering cough, began to bring up water through his nose and mouth. The salt burned his nose and throat, but when he was done, he had felt considerably better, able to focus on the matter at hand. The matter of her tail, which his head had been resting against: Silver with a sheen of rainbow colors that glistened in the hot sunshine. She was a goddess, a monster. A dream and a nightmare...her green eyes and petal pink lips held him in a trance. 

“Where am I? Am I dreaming, or am I dead?” He had uttered through dry, cracked lips. She shook her head coyly and he sat up eagerly. So, she understand human speech. This did much to reconcile the small part of him still shocked at her piscine attributes.

Through series of rudimentary gestures, they established that she would bring him fresh water. Later, she brought him fish and fruit. When he could walk, he built a fire and set up a lean-to on a rocky outcropping a safe distance from shore. She watched over him that night, the ebb and flow of the foamy surf soaking her tail. He called her Aria, because of her enchantingly melodic voice.

The days blended together, and James eventually learned to swim, first in the shoals that were dotted with shell fish and sea anemones, and later on in open water. There were moments she needed to disappear for while and when she did, James would mark the days on the bark of a hollowed out tree. Aria would return to him with odds and ends: a basket made of reeds, a brown glass bottle, a spool of thread, a boot. He made use of what he could, as the questions mounted in his head. 

After some time had passed, he tried to get Aria to tell him something of his surroundings and give some idea of where he might be. All he could glean was that he was on an island so small they could swim around it in an afternoon, and that he was the only human upon it.

This suited him well for some time, especially when Aria revealed that during low tide, for a few hours, she took human shape. She showed him her legs, and what lay between them. For the first time in his life, he felt joy, and he rose each morning with eagerness. 

It was not all peace and tranquility, however. There was still a world he had left behind and sometimes, the weight of his loneliness overwhelmed him. Despite her tenderness and beauty, Aria was a mystery, too. Her changeful moods were reflected in the misty sky, the wind tipped waves, the rumbling thunder. 

Now that they could converse, he asked her if he were the first man she had ever seen. “No,” she said, and her pale green eyes grew dark and troubled.

One evening, when a dense fog blanketed the horizon, he could swear he saw a ship there, ghostly pale against the dark water. He rushed to build a fire large enough to be visible, but within moments a flash of lightning rent the sky in two, and a torrent of slashing rain obscured everything, dousing James’s fire. He stood on the beach, soaked to the skin and surprised that among the salt spray and sweet warm rain, there were also tears.

When the skies cleared he went to the hollowed out tree, noting only a few dozen marks.

“That can’t be,” he murmured. “There’s been at least six or seven moons. At least.”

James could make no sense of it. He paced about the island over and over, retracing his footsteps. He tugged on his beard. Thick and bristled, it had been mere stubble when he’d arrived. His clothes were now threadbare. 

Aria came to him later that day, and told him of the ship that sank, and its crew.

“You mortals claim to hold dominion over the waters, and yet fear them so much,” she mused. And here she brought a length of rope, and a long brass spyglass. James grabbed it from her hands, but when he put it up to his eye, the glass was broken, a few jagged pieces missing. He swore, tossing the useless relic back into the water. 

“Did you see it sink?” He had to know if there was a chance, however small, that someone had survived, and perhaps might even be able to find him.

“I did not stay to watch. They were bad men, cruel men. And we are happy here. And I love you. So much.”

His stomach churned at the placid expression on her lovely face while she remarked on such tragedy. He tried to build several rafts, but each time they were either destroyed in a gale, or fell apart once he tested them with his weight. During one of these trials, he saw something that made him wonder if he was simply going mad.

He had just dragged his broken raft back to shore when a loud rumbling sounded above his head, and when James looked up expecting another storm, he saw the massive shadow blanketing the hillside. He turned, mouth agape at the magnificent spectacle of a colossal bird-like shape, emitting a plume of gray smoke. He covered his head as it flew past, his heart pounding.

“Bloody hell!”

He stopped marking the days and keeping time with the moons, and made peace with his lot as best he could, and tried not to hate Aria, or mourn the loss of possibilities. 

When he would go to bathe in the tide pools and drink freshwater from the inland streams, he would look at his reflection and see how the backs of his hands grew rough and weathered, his skin wrinkled. One day he no longer recognized the face in the pool. He saw more birds in the sky, “silver albatrosses” as he called them, doing battle, chasing each other, and spitting fire. Later, they flew higher and much, much slower, so that they were barely pin pricks in the clouds.

James attributed this to his madness, as he also did when he tried to dig a well during a season of drought, and found a pile of skeletons. Some still had hair and pieces of clothing attached. There was a small yellowed book as well, in which someone had written about, “the bonny fish lassie, the mhaighdean mhara, who had stolen his heart, his sleep, and his peace.” The entry was dated 1825. That man had called her Lianne, and had still loved her despite her deception, one that James now felt ever more keenly.

He knew he could not drown himself, for Aria would fish him out of the water once more, and he could no more bear to look at her than to see his own wizened aspect. He begged her instead, to release him, to give him back to the sea.

“Please. Do me this last kindness, and I’ll forgive you. Give me the liberty to die in my own way.”

She began to cry, to tear at her red hair as she tossed her head in adamant denial of his request. “I cannot lose you.”

“You already have. You’ll replace me soon enough, with a man young enough to spend another lifetime with you,” he told her bitterly, slowly marching to the surf. “You took everything from me. Everything I was, and all that I could have become.”

“I gave you life. A life with me,” she told him solemnly, following him onto the beach. “In fact, I gave you what you wished for.”

“Well damn me,” James said, wading into the water until it was hip deep. Waist deep. “Damn me, and damn you.”

He felt her arms embrace him from behind, felt her soft lips brush a kiss on his brow.

“You asked if you were the first man I’d ever seen. I never lied. I love you, James, so much I wanted to keep you forever.”

“Well, you can’t. I’ll never get those years back. If you love me as you say, you’ll let me go in peace,” he told her, a catch in his voice.

“I’m sorry...” she whispered. “For every storm, every time I destroyed your rafts, every ship I sent back...”

His body felt heavy and languorous. She brushed her fingers over his eyes until finally, sleep overtook him.

* * * *

“...And in other news, the U.S. Coast guard rescued an elderly man off the Bermuda coast, and after providing medical clearance, are en route to New York Harbor for a scheduled Fleet Week event.”

The television screen showed the crew alighting from the vessel with a shot of the Statue of Liberty in the background, before going back to the studio.

“Amazing. I’m sure he’s got quite the story to tell,” said the fresh faced morning news anchor.

“Absolutely. He’s lucky to be alive,” replied the co-anchor.

The night nurse switched off the TV, and pulled the covers up around her John Doe, who had just regained normal body temperature. She gave his arm a gentle squeeze.

“Don’t worry, sir. You’re safe now.”