Crimson Salt
Kathryn Reilly
Marina wakes and slipping on sandals with grooves hugging each toe, fixes her coffee and walks outside arranging a shawl one-handed to stave off morning’s crispness. Salt air settles into her lungs and she wonders if by her end when the autopsy knife opens her flesh she will split sparkling, offering billions of accumulated salt crystals she’s welcomed from a lifetime of seaside residence. The coffee warms one hand; the other grazes sea grasses and vibrant flowers, showcasing the dry world’s ability to transform sunlight to lush greens, to rainbows. But such beauty fades in his absence. Reaching the sea holly whose ghostly leaves stand out among the greens, she nestles the coffee into the dune and plucks a single stem, welcoming its thorned leaves’ bite.
Continuing to the place between the worlds, where the sea caresses the sand, she gazes outward both hating and loving its vastness. Gulls quiet as she stands long moments, feeling the tide’s push and pull.
Come in or go home, it murmurs indifferently.
Holding the sea holly aloft, she tightens her hand into a fist, relishing the thorns’ sharp teeth. Marina lowers the stem, crushed as her heart, and releases it into gentle waters. Defiant, she whispers “Return him to me,” and eases her hand below the water, crimson droplets swirling as the sea drinks. Turning towards the shore, she walks until the sea fully settles behind her, takes up her mug, and returns to her home readying for the day.
* * *
“It’s been five months now, poor thing,” Marina’s matronly coworker confides to a new hire watching the young woman begin to shelve returned books. “She was engaged you know, full of love they were and planning a summer wedding. Lived on the water those two did; in their blood it was: swimming or crabbing or fishing or lazing—sea in their veins. She used to kayak here around the sound and bring a waterproof bag to safekeep the books she checked out when her shift was done. They worked hard restoring the dunes too, to strengthen the coasts and protect the sea. And then the news—he was lost at sea, swept overboard. It happened on a Wednesday. Two others lost as well. The Captain still drowns his grief at Mary’s pub.” Wide-eyed, the new hire listens, nodding appropriately and offering somber condolences. “Being left behind is such a lonely road to travel.” And following Marina’s example, they busy themselves about the day.
Marina walks home, the kayak longing for the sea.
* * *
She suffers a dinner of baked chicken, rice, and steamed broccoli missing delicate flesh from the sea. But she wants nothing the sea offers until it returns what belongs to her. And so she chews, swallows, and repeats until the plate is clean. Before the sun sets, she walks barefoot upon the sand, through the dunes, thankful the sun warms the sand beneath her feet. Marina stops to pluck long stems until a bounty lays upon her arms: clumps of thrift, lavender spring squill, white sea campion, strong sea asters. Sitting, she weaves a crown, and a smaller, and then ever-smaller ones and finally weaves them together forming an offering vessel. Onto it she places broken shells of all shapes and sizes.
Again, she walks into the sea, always further in the evenings.
“The shells, my heart,” she whispers to the sea, “until you bring him back to me. Bring him back to me,” and she pushes the offering forward, watching it float far until it sinks, swallowed by the sea.
* * *
A sixth and seventh and eighth month pass and the sea drinks from Marina in the mornings and welcomes its broken wards home the evenings so they may sway and find comfort in the tides that break them apart, for there is beauty in the shattering.
* * *
The moon turns once more and the ninth month arrives, bringing howling winds and rain that feels as though it slices open the skin. Marina puts on boots to protect her feet but leaves the shawl and walks down to the sea.
The waves crash, their power never lost on her. Shivering on shore she stands, opening her mouth to howl, each fist holding brittle sea holly, readying to fling it into the maelstrom. But her ankle screams in pain and as the water recedes and she scrambles, chasing after the retreating white, frantically feeling the shallow depths.
Her hands close around it, rescuing it from the tide’s pull. It’s a femur, bone-white, picked clean. His femur. Marina clasps it to her chest, and unafraid takes more steps forward into storm-driven waters, her voice low, demanding “All of him. For he is mine and never yours.” Turning, she stumbles to shore the waters always, always grasping. Cradling him to her chest, she returns home and places him in their bed right where he should be.
The next day she arrives at work and checks out a book on human anatomy.
* * *
Forty-one days later she strokes the bones of his left hand in their bed and slips the rings they bought together where they should rightfully rest.
The sea is stubborn; it has 164 more bones to return. But Marina is patient, and coaxes the sea sweetly, offering crimson salt in the mornings and shells in the evenings. And nearly every day the sea returns a piece of him, though sometimes she must walk long lengths of sand to find him. But she is there when the tides come in searching the shore for her love.
The villagers see her endless walking and chat amongst themselves, worried she drowns in grief. But her coworker shares that she is again kayaking to work, and sometimes she sings shanties softly. “Sometimes,” she shares, “Marina even sings of love.”
Her love’s skull arrives last on a morning calm and bright. The sea eases him onto the shore, skull lolling with the gentle tide, looking towards the path through the dunes. He waits for her, smiling upon the sands.
By day she teaches; by night Kathryn spins speculative tales resurrecting goddesses and ghosts. Her rescue mutts, Savvie and Roxy Razzamatazz hear all the stories first. When she’s not writing, she’s rewilding her suburban backyard. To enjoy what else her mind dreamt up, follow on Twitter @Katecanwrite