Washed Up

John,

When I perused the photos, some days ago, I passed this one by without special notice. Now that you’ve given it a name—Washed Up—it’s too delicious to let go…

***

I woke early that day. The sounds of the sea had shifted with the breeze, and the smells of the sea were fresh. It was cool, and I dressed warmly, and I was drawn to walk the beach even before morning coffee.

It was the phase of the new moon, and predawn fog began to lift as I walked the wet sand of an ebbing spring tide. In the distance I spied a form at the water’s edge. It looked like driftwood, yet its ebbs and flows were too graceful to be wood. Perhaps the remains of a great fish, I thought, but as I moved closer I realized it was a woman, and she was naked.

At first I thought her lifeless, for no one would lie naked and still on sand pooled with water on a cold bleak day. I hastened toward her, not wanting to believe her dead and wondering what I could do for her if she wasn’t.

Her eyes were full of life, and she looked directly at me and did not seem afraid. She raised her chin in the smallest of gestures: a little hello as if she’d been waiting for me.

“Can I help you?” I asked, but she never spoke, then or any time I was with her, though she could make sounds when she was moved to.

Strangely, she didn’t seem cold, and though I tried, again, to speak with her she only stared in return.

“Do you want me to take you home?” I asked, motioning up the beach, from where I came.

She opened her eyes wide and smiled and looked up the beach too, and she made an arching motion with her neck, pointing toward my home.

I touched her, and she startled, but then she relaxed once again. I tried to help her stand, but her legs seemed too weak to hold her. With my arms under her knees and back I picked her up and managed to stand. She snuggled into me and rubbed me with her wet hair.

As I trudged homeward I studied her. She was young and gorgeous and, in my imagination, fertile. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew what I wanted to do, and her snuggling encouraged me.

I brought her into the house and laid her on my bed, but she pointed with her head, repeatedly, to the small bed by the window facing the ocean. I moved her there, and she looked, longingly, at the waves. I opened the window a crack, so she could hear the sound of the breakers. She smiled, and then she opened herself to me and arched suggestively. Her message was clear, and I undressed as she watched with fascination.

She had the form of a woman, and we made love, but her motions were not like any woman I’d ever known, and I knew that though she was much a woman, also she was not. She was a gift to me from the sea, and I was a gift, perhaps a necessary gift, to her.

We made love throughout the day, and she coaxed more out of me than I’d thought possible, but she was a magical creature with magical ways. I knew I would be sad to lose her, but I knew, though it was difficult to believe, that she was a being from the deep.

As evening came she told me, wordlessly, she needed to go home.

I carried her again and laid her on the strand as I’d found her, and, like a porpoise, she wriggled her way into the water and beneath the waves.

Sadness came over me, yet I was joyous. I felt bittersweet as I watched the ocean fade toward darkness, and then she rose from beyond the breakers, at home in her element, being the beautiful creature she was, and she arched as she leapt from the water—once, twice, and again: Goodbye, Thank you, I love you, she said, and she was gone forever.