Two:
Lost
She came to me with eyes like the sea, and it wasn’t ten minutes before I was drowning in them.
It happened one day when I was suddenly tired of everything. I’d had my fill of hunting, fishing, falconing, swimming, mock-fighting, picnicking, boating, horseback riding, and just about every other diversion the summer palace had to offer. Even the doe-eyed peasant girls in the village had ceased to entertain me, though they continued to fawn over me just as prettily as ever. I longed for the excitement of the capital, from which my father had banished me for two endless months more. In frustration, I trudged down to the seashore, thinking that I would walk awhile instead of sulking in my rooms.
Some time later, I emerged from my reverie to find that I had gone a good distance farther than I had ever been before. Indeed, the palace and the village were completely out of sight, and I was alone with the waves and the sand.
Just then, I heard a low moan coming from behind a large boulder that lay a few yards away, quite close to the water. Wondering what it could be, I decided to have a look. As I came around the boulder and caught sight of the source of the moan, I stopped short, my feet suddenly rooted to the ground in amazement.
There in the sand lay a beautiful woman of sixteen years or so. She was naked as a newborn and making no attempt to cover herself, though her dark, tangled hair was as long as I’d ever seen and could have served. At first I thought that this was one of the village girls, trying a new trick to entice me, but then she looked up and caught my gaze with her own.
Her eyes were like no others that I had ever seen on woman or beast. They were enormous under their lids and of deepest blue-grey, filled with some peculiar intensity that stilled me, held me fast. Those eyes revealed a mysterious, compelling spirit that the sweetly vacant girls of my acquaintance could never have matched.
“Who—who are you?” I stammered. I am indeed known several kingdoms over for my skillful wit.
The girl did not reply, but continued to stare, expressionless. Tearing my eyes from her face to run them down the length of her, I saw that her legs and feet were covered in bruises and angry red slashes. Blood oozed down to mingle with the sea water that lapped up about her lower body. Though she did not grimace nor shed a tear, she had to be in terrible agony. I could not leave her there; not even to return with more aid.
Moving slowly, as if in a dream, I bent to lift the woman from the sand. Her smooth skin was cool to the touch. She was not heavy, but lay limp as one asleep, attempting neither to resist nor to ease my task. With some difficulty, I shifted her in my arms until her head lay upon my shoulder. As I bore her towards my palace, I asked her for her name, several times more than once.
She turned her face back over my shoulder, and said nothing.
Cleaned up and dressed hastily in an ill-fitting frock left behind by one of the peasant girls I had particularly favored, my mysterious foundling was being examined by the palace physician. I had been barred from the room, and so stood leaning against the wall in the hallway, tapping my foot and fidgeting. I was impatient to learn more.
Finally, the doctor emerged from the chamber. He wore white whiskers and a serious expression.
The first thing he had to tell me, before he even moved on to the condition of her legs, was strange indeed. Stranger even than the previous events of the afternoon.
“She has no tongue, Your Highness. I do not mean that she had one which was cut out: she has simply never possessed a tongue at all. There is not so much as a stump, nor even a scar.”
I took this in for a moment, but as I could think of no satisfactory response, I waved my hand for the man to continue. He told me that her legs had been badly battered; perhaps in the course of the shipwreck she had surely been the victim of. The limbs were broken in several places, and while they would heal, she would probably never be able to walk without pain.
After he left, I went in to see her. I found to my astonishment that she had somehow climbed out of the bed and crawled to the window, where she sat, looking out at the sea with her strange compelling eyes. Her expression was haunted, and fancying her gripped by terrible memories of the wreck, I laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. As if to tell her, “you’re safe now, with me.”
Her shoulder seemed to melt under my hand. Moving with all the fluidity of water, she shrugged me off without any other movement, not even a glance in my direction. In surprise, I opened and closed my mouth once or twice, but nothing came out. At last, regrouping, I cleared my throat.
“My lady, I beseech you, I must know your name. The physician confirms my guess that you cannot speak. Have you any letters?”
She showed no sign of having understood a word I’d said.
“In that case, I shall call you ‘Perdita,’ which means ‘lost’ in Latin. Allow me to say, lady, that while indeed you have suffered and lost much, I consider myself most fortunate in the privilege of bringing you aid.”
Still she gave no response. If I had thought to impress her with my knowledge and breeding, well, I had failed. Still, “Perdita” was a good name, I thought, and so I resolved that it should be hers until I learned of another.
As for her manner, perhaps she was still grieving, or yet unable to come to grips with her misfortune and loss. I had heard that such things could strike people, and particularly women, silent in more than just the tongue. I decided to withdraw and leave her to herself for a time, in hopes that the solitude would serve as a balm for her wounded spirit.
Days went by, and slowly Perdita began to take some heed of me. She would look at me when I was talking to her now, some of the time anyway, although I often had the impression that my words were little more than noise to her. Occasionally, I wondered if she simply did not understand my language. At times it would seem that she did, but later she would appear completely uncomprehending. I had to demonstrate the use of the fork to her before she understood that I was inviting her to eat the fine meal that sat in front of her. She didn’t seem to realize it was food, and she handled the fork as though she had never seen one in all her life.
In fact, for the first day and a half that she was at the palace, we could not convince her to eat. The physician and the cook were at the point of despair, and I was becoming convinced that she was purposefully starving herself. However, when we at last set fish before her—fine swordfish, the cook’s best—she did eat some of it, though she made faces all the way through. Eventually we discovered that she preferred her fish nearly raw, though this had the cook throwing up his artist’s hands in despair.
Aside from the swordfish incident, Perdita’s expression was unchanging: it was completely unreadable at all times . . . unless she was gazing at the sea. Then her features were filled with a confusion of fear, hurt, and longing that baffled me completely.
Though the days passed, I could not gain any understanding of this mysterious creature. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Though her steps faltered and stumbled, her other movements were as graceful as a running brook. Her skin was all but luminous. Yet I could not reach her, could not comprehend anything about her. She was an enigma, untouchable and utterly compelling. I made endless attempts to pierce her indifference, and the more I failed, the more I hungered.
Helping her along the hallway between her bedroom and the dining room, or perhaps the terrace that overlooked the bay, was more of a pleasure to me than my former bedroom romps had ever been. I longed for the gentle pressure of her weight leaning upon me, the eternally cool touch of her impossibly pale skin, which could hardly withstand the mildest sunlight. Never had any female seemed as desirable to me. The pink cheeks, coquettish mannerisms, and naughty behaviors of the village girls utterly failed to charm me. I stared right through them, much as Perdita had stared through me when we had first met. Perhaps I was beginning to take on some of her distance, since my entire mind and soul were completely bound up in my yearning for her. I was a ridiculous mess, foppish and lovesick, but I didn’t have it in me to care.
Evenings, she would rest on the terrace in the twilight, staring out at the sea, and I would watch her in turn from a nearby window.
Then, one day when no other soul was anywhere to be seen or heard save us two—and I believe she did not notice me there—something astonishing happened.
At first I thought the sound was the wind on the stones of the palace . . . but the night was still. As I listened, I realized that it was her.
She was singing, her lips parted only slightly. There were no words, but a melodic wail, high, long and haunting. Mournful. There was inexpressible sorrow contained in the sound, and yet it was like no music ever heard in my halls. It was more like the moaning of the sea breeze, or whalesong. It was utterly alien. In my amazement, the thought crossed my mind—no human being could make such utterances.
The singing lasted long, not pausing for breath. As the sound faded away at last into the darkening sky, I noticed that my hands were gripping the windowsill tightly, and my whole body was tensed as though fighting to keep itself from rushing to her side and accosting her.
Slowly I relaxed each muscle, taking deep, silent breaths. When I had regained control of my body, I crept away to my chambers.
That night I tossed and turned in tormented half-dreams. Sometimes it was a vision of her face, her nude body on the beach, or her drowning-pool eyes. Once I dreamed that I heard the song again, and woke with a start to find myself at the door to her room. Shaking myself, I went back to bed. But then I dreamed of her mouth. I was leaning down to kiss it, when it opened wide . . . and became an endless dark hole into which I tumbled, screaming.
In spite of this horrifying vision, I decided at last that I could not deny my feelings. I was surely in love with Perdita. It was the truest thing I had ever felt in all my wretched, shallow life, and I had to do my best to claim its object as mine, once and for all. So, the next night, I told her.
It was past dark, and the servants had herded her back into her chamber for the night. She was sitting in her room, combing through her long, dark hair, with the same distant look on her face. I came into the room after begging for her leave to enter. She gave no assent—did not react at all—but I came in anyway and knelt by her side.
“Perdita,” I began, “In the short time that you have graced my humble palace with your presence, I have been completely captivated by your beauty and grace. I am your most humble servant, sweet lady. Please, consent to be my wife and future queen.” I kissed her cold hand.
She just stared at me as she had that first day on the beach. I could no longer contain myself.
“Perdita, I love you! There is nothing I would not do for the least sign of your regard! I would fetch you the moon were it only in my power—all of those foolish promises that men make to their beloveds, I make to you. Command me and I will obey! Only marry me, marry me and be mine.” With that, I threw myself upon her. Taking her delicate face in my hands, I kissed her with all the passion that was in me.
When she did not respond, I drew back. I was crying, and my tears fell onto her cheeks, her lips. Something, some flash of recognition, seemed to flare up in her empty eyes. She raised her hand to trace the tracks the tears had left on my face. I closed my eyes briefly, her cold touch all but burning. Then she drew her hand away to touch the salt water that had fallen onto her own face. Her expression was sad, so sad. I thought I would drown in the emotion, and indeed, I wanted to. These feelings, however, were not meant for me. Her eyes were fixed on something far beyond me; when I moved to embrace her again, my arms clutched at nothing.
She slipped away, ungraspable as liquid, and lightly fled on steps that must have hurt like knife-thrusts. Crying out, I pursued. Her flight took her down the steps and out of the palace as swift as the wind . . . all the way to the beach.
When I arrived, out of breath, she stood in the water up to just past her knees, standing on the edge of the rocky shelf that plunged down into deep water. Her white nightgown, wet from splashing as she ran through the shallows, clung to her form like a second skin, and her hair hung wild about her face. Falling to my knees in the sand, I cried out the name I’d given her.
She turned and glanced over her shoulder at me. Those eyes! There was nothing in them that I could comprehend, no feeling at all. She simply looked, for a moment, and then turned away. Her voice raised once more in that strange, high song. Then, raising her arms above her head, she gracefully tumbled into the water beyond the edge of the shallows. Singing. She floated on the surface for a moment, limbs flung wide, and then the song was cut off as the waves closed over her head.
I cried out again, staring after her desperately, but she never resurfaced.
I knelt there in the sand until the morning, but never saw so much as a ripple. When the sun peeked up over the far edge of the world, I staggered to my feet and somehow found my way back to the palace.
After the allotted time was finally up, I returned to the capital to assume greater duties in my father’s court. A year later I married a rosy blonde princess from a neighboring kingdom, who will make an excellent queen one day. The people already love her for her goodness and charity. She is human, touchable, safe.
At night, when she is asleep in the bed beside to me, I lie awake and dream of eyes like pools to drown in, and two lips enclosing only emptiness. I cry a little salt into the pillow for my sea-maid, who had no more capacity to love than does the cold ocean itself.
Sea Change II: Lost ©2004 a. kleber