The Unbeliever (Fiction)

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The sea claims its own.

It was what everyone said, though Kiara had never believed the tales. The man who managed the boathouse pulled Kiara aside after she and Marin married, on the beach, their bare toes brushing the ocean. “The sea claims its own,” the boat manager had said—and he would know. He’d watched his own wife disappear over the horizon, where water meets sky. “The moment they stepped on a boat, they’re no longer ours.” 

Kiara, too, had spent much of her time staring at the sea, waiting for Marin to come home with a fresh catch. But she didn’t believe the man. Marin was hers; she was Marin’s. The sea could not come between them.

Every storm, Kiara held her breath. A squall, a storm, a wind that made the waves rise in such a frenzy that no one would even see the land before their ship was splintered. Marin returned, as she always did, but each time, the seafoam grew stronger.

Yet when Marin kissed Kiara these days, Kiara tasted nothing but the salt of the ocean.

Kiara knew deep down that Marin was claimed by the sea from the moment she laid eyes on seafoam. She had no parents to warn her away from the fishing boats; she had to feed herself, and there were many fish to eat, if she could only catch them. She didn’t know the dangers until the other fishers saw her eyes. By then, she was as gone as they were. The fishers could offer no comfort. It was the land dwellers, the ones the fishers left behind, who offered solace. Comfort was given by those who remained.

Kiara didn’t know how to fight the sea. How could she tell it that Marin would always be hers? How could she lay her claim through more than the ring on Marin’s finger?

The day after a bad storm, Kiara sat on the shore, watching the horizon for Marin’s boat. As the waves brought it to shore, Kiara thought of the dishes she’d make with the fish Marin brought. Fish guts caked her galoshes, and Kiara breathed it in. She used to hate that salty, sickly smell, but now it meant that Marin had returned home.

Some hadn’t. The shattered remains of their boats had washed up onshore, a reminder of what the sea had claimed. The boathouse man’s wife had been among them.

“The next journey will be my last,” Marin said at the dinner table that night. She was biting into fresh potatoes that Kiara had baked. Marin’s pupils were no longer visible, only the green of the seafoam. Years ago, when Kiara and Marin were so happy, the other land-dwellers had warned Kiara of this: When the eyes disappear, the sea will make its claim. Kiara felt certain that Marin would be the exception.

Marin was foggy-eyed, like she couldn’t find the lighthouse to guide her home. She sat in front of Kiara, but Kiara couldn’t make Marin see.

“Stay here,” Kiara said. “You will miss the sand.”

“No, Kiara, come with me,” her love said.

“What would I do at sea? Play my guitar?” Kiara said, her tone derisive. She kept the waves at bay by playing her music, bare feet planted firmly in the ground.

“Come with me,” Marin whispered, her voice growing fearful. “I can’t fight it anymore.”

Kiara searched Marin’s seafoam eyes. In Marin’s cheeks, Kiara noticed seaweed connecting the freckles and shivered. “Why do you have to go back?” she asked. “If you know this is your last journey, can’t you just stay here? I’ve been making good money selling produce from my garden. You won’t have to return.”

Marin swallowed, salt dripping from the corner of her mouth. Something flickered beneath Marin’s skin like a wave. “You don’t understand.” Her voice was the bellow of a whale. “You have not been to sea.”

Kiara reached for Marin’s hair, becoming blue-green and stringy. “Who do you love more?”

Marin’s skin turned dark as algae. “It is not that simple.”

“It can be,” Kiara said. “Marin, choose me.”

Marin brushed her lips against Kiara’s. The taste was salty and desperate. “That’s why I am asking you to come,” Marin said. “I do not want to go alone.” Kiara didn’t recognise the fear in her voice. It washed over Kiara, crashing like a wave.

Who was this woman who, moments before, had her wife’s voice and skin and eyes? Saltwater would soon corrode her bones. Seawater would soon poison her veins. Seaweed would snake into her muscles. Soon, Marin would not be able to stand on land. Her feet would become sea urchins, her hands starfish, her skin fish scales.

Had Kiara already lost?

When Marin left on her next voyage, she did not tell Kiara that she loved her. With the seafoam in her eyes, the waves rippling on her skin, and the algae growing on her head, she told her only, “Help me. Find me.”

Kiara could not find the words to respond. She said nothing. She stood on the shore, staring at the waves, long after Marin’s boat disappeared on the horizon.

Marin’s boat did not return.

Kiara screamed at the sea, feeling a tug at her heart. Like the way she saw Marin pull up anchors. Kiara clenched her fists.

Everyone spoke as though the sea’s power was inevitable. Unstoppable. It was hard to argue with: the sea crushed boats. Kiara stared down the tooth-like waves without flinching. The sea was ferocious, furious, even, but so was Kiara. The waves were an opening jaw, and Kiara shouted at it, “She is not yours!”

The sea may claim its own, but so did Kiara.

Everyone spoke as though the sea’s power was inevitable. Perhaps it was sacrilege, but Kiara did not believe it. She’d never fully believed the tales.

Perhaps Kiara’s power was inevitable too.

With her guitar on her back, Kiara went to the harbour for a small fishing boat. The boathouse manager was hesitant to allow someone with no experience to take the journey, but he knew as well as anyone the urge to fight the waves. He grasped Kiara’s hand and said, “Bring her home.”

Kiara had seen Marin set sail many times before; she knew well enough how to begin. And she had the tug on her heart to guide her.

Her hands gripped the wood until they were covered in splinters. At night, when she pressed her fingers to the strings of the guitar, Kiara let herself bleed and kept on singing the notes that only she and Marin knew.

Then something strange happened. The seafoam began to creep beneath her fingernails and across her skin, soothing—not stinging—the cuts on her hands. The saltwater worked the splinters free, kissing the wounds as it sealed them. The wind carried her songs with the waves, bringing voices back to her, asking for another. Kiara let the smell of the salt, the seaweed, the fish, settle into her pores.

In every breath, she smelled Marin.

Seaweed wove into Kiara’s long, dark hair, tangled by the wind and the foam, flowing behind her as if she was a wild woman from the forest. Kiara smiled. Yes, the sea was beginning to claim her, too. Her hair would become seaweed, her smooth skin fish scales, her eyes algae, her voice reduced to nothing. The sea was using all of its might to bring Kiara, too. It was begging her to believe in its power.

For the first time, Kiara understood. This was how it began.

The sea would heal her only to bring her to its watery depths, as someone not quite human—never truly human again.

Kiara smiled at its attempt. The magic of the sea was nothing to an unbeliever. There was magic in the sea, of course. But Kiara had different magic. She believed in her own power far more.

The waves liked her music. The voices carried on the sea wanted songs. So, she would sing. She would sing until she was hoarse, and even then, the sea would not claim her, because her voice was her own.

She began her melody.

Kiara tugged at the rope around her chest with the notes of her song, searching for her anchor, searching for her sailor. She directed her little boat towards it.

The land could not fight the sea on its own. It needed a whisper of rebellion to restore the harmony. Kiara was that whisper.

The sea, agitated, brought something into view. Kiara squinted into the sunlight, already knowing what was ahead. She knew the shape of Marin’s boat on the horizon better than anything, save for Marin herself. It was a watery version of her boat, made of soaked, half-rotted wood and flowing seawater. The waves surrounded it in columns like prison bars.

Kiara could not see Marin yet, but she felt the familiar tug on her heart, and it told her that Marin was not a willing prisoner. In her song, Kiara wove the answer to Marin’s whispered plea the day she left: “I will find you. I have found you.”

Kiara strummed her guitar, coaxing the waves to bring Marin’s boat closer. Dirt bubbled underneath the waves, and sand churned with the foam. Closer and closer the boat came. The sand and dirt rose above the water, floating but sturdy. As the sand once had woven itself between Kiara’s toes at her wedding, so now it wove into every crack in Marin’s boat, giving her a surface to bring her home. Kiara’s voice carried over the waves, which retracted like claws, giving way to the soft sand. Kiara smiled; she had wondered whether the waves would obey her, but she now saw with her own eyes the conviction she had always felt. The sea was not the only power. 

After all, there was land beneath the sea, and Kiara had called on it.

The sea retreated, offering Marin up on a single wave. Kiara pulled Marin on board, but the water let her down gently. It had retreated, but it was not jealous or vengeful. It almost seemed relieved that one had lived. One had not been claimed. One would come home.

Marin was finally close enough for Kiara to see the seafoam retreating from her eyes until all that remained was the dark colour of soil. Kiara smiled. She set her guitar down on the deck.

“I knew you could fight it,” Marin said, with a wonder in her earthen voice that made Kiara wonder if Marin had doubted her. She did not look back as her waterlogged boat sank into the waves. Her calloused hands gripped Kiara’s face.

Marin’s face was as ruddy and pockmarked as it had been the day they married. The seaweed had retreated from Marin’s hair, leaving her hair black as night. Her arms felt solid, no seawater seeping through the pores, no salt in her veins. She smelled like the earth after a long rainfall.

Kiara had won.

The sea guided the little boat back to shore. Kiara could not fathom what had brought about the relaxation in the splash of the waves.

Perhaps the sea was relieved that it would not need to take more. Or perhaps it was ashamed at how many it had taken. Perhaps it’d grown tired of the battle, and wanted the land to remember its claims, too. Perhaps that was what it’d been doing for so long: begging the land to remember. Longing for balance.

Marin set foot on land and vowed she would not sail again. Kiara knew this was a lie. But she also knew that the sea would not try to claim Marin again, even if the saltwater allure remained. Kiara, too, went to sea again, singing on the deck of Marin’s fishing boat while she worked. Land and sea. Sea and land.

Others remembered the balance now, too. Kiara’s power reminded them.

The land claims its own.

Hannah Scott-Ravikumar is a queer mixed-race writer and historian originally from Iowa City, Iowa. She is currently studying for a PhD in medieval history at the University of Oxford. She has had a story published in Unfortunately, Literary magazine and was a mentee in the Asian Women Writers’ Mentorship program. When she is not researching medieval history or writing, she can be found knitting nervously while watching women’s basketball.