I disembarked at Yfor Bay well after dark, met by the swish and suck of great water. Nowhere else in the world, I had read, did the tide recede as far as at Yfor Bay, exposing vast, muddy flats, derelict tangles of kelp, mussels squirting gently in the barren expanse. And nowhere else did the tide return so swiftly, kissing the upper shore-grass in the space of a quarter-hour. When, months before, the invitation appeared for a lecture engagement at the island’s only university of note, I accepted at once——accounts of Yfor Bay had long ago captured my imagination. Soon, at last, I would see its wonders for myself. Exhausted, I fell quickly to sleep in the starched sheets of my motel bed, mist massing at the window.
I awoke, too, to mist, likely to linger to midday, as my guidebook had warned it would. I certainly hoped there would be time enough, after the university engagement, for a diverting bake on the eastern beaches. But my impresario at the university, a faculty member in linguistics (her name previously unknown to me, I must admit), had encouraged me in my desire to take several days to explore Yfor Bay beforehand. Its landscape, its resilient people, its overlooked sites: all highly unusual, she wrote, and stimulating to encounter. On her advice, I turned from the motel lot onto the western shore road, heading north into the clinging fog.
I was keen to meet the local Yforians, descendants of those who had first settled the bay. They were tawny, small-eyed and elfin-eared, and exceedingly kind and cheerful. Glad for any stray visitor to have washed up on their side of the island. Decades ago, their culture had nearly expired: battered by expulsion and centuries of halting return, almost succumbing to brackish provincial neglect and outward migration. But the people had salvaged and incubated their culture, and the signs of its quiet resurgence were all around. I sampled the prized wine of the kytrif, a purple rosehip that grew, round and heavy, in the scrubby wilds, bobbing in the relentless coastal wind; I climbed the narrow stairs of refurbished lighthouses, already bleached with salt-spray, to observe the rugged coastline; I heard the sweet and mournful notes of the raddwellyn pipes, which, I learned, the youth studied in grade school, part of the Yforian cultural revival, along with the resurrection of the raspy cadences and snaking glyphs of its native tongue. The place set my senses alight, beyond expectation. The second night of my visit, relishing a comfortable bed at a friendly bayside inn, I contemplated with pleasure the vistas, the flavors, the beguiling encounters of the journey thus far. Further enchantments, I presumed, awaited in the day ahead.
The third and final morning of my explorations of Yfor Bay, I pulled off the road beside a weather-beaten wooden church, its quaint, sponge-earthed cemetery beckoning. Fingers of mist trailed among the gravestones. According to decades’-long custom, the markers were etched with images that gestured to the vanished lives of those buried beneath: a young man, grinning, tossed a fishing line at me, his arm frozen forever in its granite-trapped arc; an antique ship sailed toward the horizon; an octopus—arms twining through an anchor and harpoon—leered. Etched waves lapped upon gravestones, near and far. The graves were clustered, naturally, by clan; the same few names repeating, those families who had been granted the right of return to the ancestral home in the centuries after the expulsion. These were the expired of the surviving remnant.
And then, at the back of the churchyard, in the shadow of a spindly tamarack, I saw it. My heart caught and shuddered in my ribs, to read the name I had not thought of for many years, till recently. The surname of a former student, a young woman full of promise. Ysa’s family name was spelled differently here; hers a later bastardization, I guessed, or an Anglicizing of the tongue-confounding original. The island had been her homeland. This I had not forgotten.
It was only the previous September——scrolling through the local paper to find an acquaintance’s obituary——that I stumbled upon Ysa’s name unexpectedly. At first, I thought I must have been imagining: an intruding daydream, increasingly frequent since the retreat of my once all-consuming work life, one of those surreal hiccups that punctuated idle hours of contemplation. There was no photograph accompanying the announcement of death; I was free to reconstruct the contours of the brow, the cheek, the fall of dark, tangled hair, according to my own emerging recollections.
Now, beside a clutch of graves bearing her ancestral name, I remembered an intimation, in the newspaper notice, of struggle——not in illness, if I recalled the obfuscating testimonial correctly, but in life. Beloved colleague and friend, it read. Dedicated to healing the trauma of those who suffered——“similarly,” did it say?—— …those who suffered similarly. What had befallen her, I allowed myself to wonder now, in the stretch of years since our too-brief time together? The cause of death was veiled in euphemism. No details as to ceremony or burial. No husband or children mentioned; no parents, no siblings. A clean plunge, headlong into infinity. And we had never spoken again, after that final parting. How little I have ever understood of affairs of the heart——a flaw that some forgive, and some do not. No matter.
I confess that, in that deserted graveyard, I began to conjure the sighs, the surrenderings, of a long-lost summer. I whispered her name aloud: syllables once precious to me, my lips clumsy with the name so long unspoken. But what good would it do me——or her, no longer among the living——to dwell on passion’s tender victories and failures, from the distance of so many years? Is it not possible for one to mistranslate the words and signals of the other——even in the very moment of their expression, let alone in memory? Isn’t this the inevitable tragedy, the mystery, the exquisite thrill at the heart of human companionship? No one was to blame for what happened between us. It was an ancient story.
I pushed her out of my mind. I zipped myself into my rain jacket, alone in the condensing fog, and turned back toward my car.
There was little left to the itinerary on my last afternoon on the Yfor side of the island, save for a small museum that several locals, and my contact at the university, had warmly recommended. In truth, I had grown weary of the gray mist and of the restless water of Yfor Bay. Its faceless, insistent sentience, always tugging at my attention, unnerved me. Its insinuating movement. Creeping closer when you looked away, like a manifesting crowd of starved and greedy children in a fever dream. I craved the blue skies and warm sand that awaited a mere two-hour drive across the island——that evening’s destination. In the rental car once more, I opened the map across the steering wheel. In a crease, I spied a small blue triangle on the outskirts of the town of Yrjmak: the Museum of Yforian History and Culture and Yfor Bay Genealogical Institute. The final stop on this largely captivating——if increasingly lonesome——bay-side tour.
I pulled into the lot forty minutes later, shells and gravel crunching beneath the tires. I feared I had arrived too late; there were no other cars, no sign of human life. Yet, peering through a window near the entrance, I spied a dim glow emanating from somewhere inside the old clapboard house that served as the museum. I was startled, then pleased, to hear the scrape of a lock released. I hadn’t even had to knock.
The black-haired young woman who greeted me wore traditional garb, down to the broad-toed clogs, something like small, hardy flippers, that I had seen thus far only in illustrations. She grimaced tenderly as she held the door for me. This expression——long forgotten, but startlingly, uncannily familiar to me in that moment——I now understood as a peculiarly Yforian relic. I had seen the same expression, it occurred to me with sudden certainty, playing across the features of waitresses and proprietors and children building forts among the shells and driftwood of the western beaches: thin lips curling over broad and powerful teeth. Teeth once expert at masticating the spiny kriodd native to the bay, for reducing seaweed to a briny paste. A genetic oddity. And an echo of my own, long-buried past. Ysa’s lips, her teeth. Her sweet protests. Yes. I couldn’t help but remember.
The young woman——her nametag read Kaffryn——spoke to me in the guttural but lilting burr of Yforian English. She spoke of local history in her accented tones, as I trailed her among the warren of period rooms downstairs.
“After the Great Expulsion,” she said, bringing me into the rustic kitchen with its painted floors and quaint tools for deboning and churning and sifting, “many family names disappeared from the region forever.” I now knew well the story of the violent uprooting of this people by the ascendant imperium, encroaching from the south, hundreds of years ago; they didn’t stand a chance against the onslaught, unbridled and rapacious. That history, that truth, the thread connecting everything in this windswept place.
My lovely guide ushered me, next, to our last stop: a small front room, where, in the dim light of the after-hours museum, I examined the display of documents and images. There were photographs of working men: tanned, weathered, leaning harpoons and fishing rods against their hips. The black-and-white of old film stock yielded to the orangey tones of more recent decades, capturing mirrored sunglasses and baseball caps and paunches over rubberized pants. There were photographs of schoolchildren, too, lined up in rows, and pictures of beaming women brandishing prize-winning quilts and jams.
“She’s always there, among us,” said my guide from behind me. Her breath warm against the nape of my neck.
“Who’s that?” I said, inching closer to the display, thinking, at first, it was to some communal elder that she referred.
“Ysefra, of course.”
It was a name I hadn’t heard before, and I told her so. She laughed haltingly and blushed; she bunched the corner of her apron in her hand, bobbed on her heels. She could hardly have been more than seventeen. “It sometimes just means ‘ocean,’ you know. But there are two names, actually,” she said, crinkling her Yforian eyes with mischief, a teasing child. “Twin sisters. Ysoddra is low tide. The One Who Reveals. Ysefra is high tide. The One Who Takes.”
“The One Who Takes. Sacrifices to the gods, you mean? Is that what we’re talking about?”
My young guide dimpled charmingly. “Only those who deserve to be sacrificed,” she parried. I laughed.
Ravening goddesses of Yfor Bay——this was news to me. The profusion of bayside churches——far more than the small population appeared to merit——was noted by the guidebook; the local calendar ornamented with saints’ days and holy festivals. But it was not for me to judge their faith, patched together and careworn, borne of tribulation and its memory. A faith that stoked the embers of pagan ways. Fruits and flowers piled on altars as offerings on feast days, I imagined. That sort of thing.
“Some say it’s not the true Yforian way,” she said, “that the beliefs were brought back after the Washaway.” The Washaway: the name Yforians sometimes used for the expulsion and dispersal of their people in the old days. It seemed to me a strange name for an act of deliberate political violence perpetrated on this people by the armies of the southern, mainland capital (city of my birth, in fact, and that of generations of my family before me). As if the tragedy were simply a function of the natural world, a deed of pelagic fate. “Superstitions taken from the tropical places, they say,” she went on, “where some families settled for a time, before the Return.” She leaned closer then, her breath hinting of anise, of ripening roses. “But I don’t believe that. Ysefra and Ysoddra, they were always here. All along. That’s what I think.”
“Ysefra,” I murmured.
So close to the name I had cherished, for a time, long ago. An inkling, a question, was taking shape, gathering from the corners of my mind.
My guide, in any case, had already turned away. A few minutes later, having dutifully read through all the explanatory labels, I found her sorting and straightening a display of brochures in the entrance vestibule. I wished to know more of the archaic tales of the sea goddesses, Ysefra and Ysoddra, but found myself tongue-tied. Sheepish, perhaps, to have missed this lore in my sporadic research for the trip; I could sometimes be a careless reader, on subjects outside my domain. I fished in my wallet for some small bills to fold and drop into the donation canister. I shrugged into my jacket, preparing to depart.
“Ah, on your way, then,” she said, whirling around, as if she had just remembered me. “So soon. You’re expected on the other side of the island tonight.”
I paused, fingering my jacket’s zipper. “Yes,” I said. “Indeed, I am.” Had I mentioned my next destination to this raven-haired young woman——spoken of my lecture engagement, of my longing for a sun-warmed beach? I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t recall. This beautiful vestige of a ravaged people has bewitched me, I thought. No, not bewitched. So many tiny holes in my memory, lately. Or had that always been the case? The fabric of my thoughts growing threadbare.
“Would you like to see the Upper?” she said, now effervescent, a girlish change of weather. “Best to be cautious. It’s windy up there. We’re not supposed to bring up visitors.” She giggled. “But you seem strong enough to take it.” She gestured toward the dark and narrow stairs beside us, which ran up through the core of the house. The Upper, I had learned from my guidebook, was the local name for the chinked widow’s walks that graced the roofs of old residences on Yfor Bay. Something like castle parapets, carved from wood.
“I fear I’ve taken up too much of your time already,” I said. “You’ve stayed late on my behalf. I’m sure you have better things to do.” I smiled; a fatherly smile. She was, after all, so young. I wondered if she came and went from work dressed in the old-time skirt and clogs and apron, which suited her so well.
The look that met me, as I hesitated, resting my gaze on her, tantalized me. I saw that she was daring me—as young people do. Testing my capacity for adventure. Judging my trustworthiness as a partner in crime. And yet her half-veiled, dusky eyes also spoke, it seemed to me, of weariness. Of relinquishment. Yes——I remembered that look, too. Those eyes. Ysa’s eyes, gazing at me from the other side of a car window, before the glass was rolled up, eclipsing the pale face inside. The last time. Before her taxi pulled from the curb, before it shot away into the night. I’m going home——that’s all Ysa had said, in the end. Going home where you can’t find me. Back to the land of her youth, to repair her wounded heart, I surmised. She would recover, like anyone else. It was a summer’s dalliance, that was all; something to weather the doldrums between spring and fall semesters. Yet she had in fact stayed in her adopted city, my city, in the intervening years——so the obituary had implied. Or had gone home and then returned. But I never saw her again.
My guide must have taken my brooding silence for acquiescence. She clutched the banister, nodding, and began to climb the steps, the slap of those odd Yforian clogs echoing along the stair treads.
We passed through the museum’s attic, its neat boxes of genealogical files stacked along one wall. Along the other, there lay a long table piled with a strange harvest: the rods and sharpened tips of fishing gear; a jumble of thin, rubbery cladding, akin to snorkelers’ costumes; nets woven of fat blue cord. The smell of mildew and brine. The arching skeletons of strange, ancient fish hung from the walls on iron armatures. We climbed a clanging spiral stairway to the roof.
What surprised me most, as we crested the stairs and emerged into the twilight, was not the wind, which tossed strands of my guide’s black hair across her face, partly obscuring it——though the wind blew powerfully. No, it was the din that startled me. For even when the first slap and rush of wind died away, a ragged, susurrating pulse remained, as if my head were trapped inside an echoing seashell. Blinking, I licked salt-spray from the spackled corners of my mouth.
Resting my hands on the splintering parapet, I watched the great fiery globe dip below the horizon, its weak rays scattered by the encroaching evening mist. I tried to orient myself in the last light, squinting to find the long wharf of Yrjmak Point in the distance. But I couldn’t make out the wharf. There was only the fog, wisps of it snaking through the remaining stands of balsam fir that ringed the grounds here, grounds that sloped steeply toward the bay.
By chance, it was the perfect time to glimpse the low tide of Yfor Bay, according to the tide chart I had consulted that morning at breakfast. But it seemed to me now that I must have misread the chart. For high tide was coming, that was certain, and it was coming fast. I could hear it all around. Everywhere, the whispering rush. “The water is closer than I thought,” I called to Kaffryn, my guide.
A rattling wind blew toward us then, displacing the mist that had gathered along the ground, below. In that moment the boxy forms of gravestones emerged in the clearing. “Is that a cemetery?” I called, pointing exaggeratedly, hardly able to hear my own voice. She shook her head faintly, cupping her ear, miming that she couldn’t make out my words. I stepped close to her, my chin nearly brushing her delicate ear as I asked again.
She leaned away, against the wooden railing, shouting against the wind. “An old one. We bury farther inland now. With rare exceptions.”
I joined her, shoulder to shoulder, and looked out. “And what’s that——some sort of monument?” For a slender obelisk had materialized in the center of the graveyard, with the parting of the fog. A resting anchor was carved into the stone, at its base. A memorial, I guessed, for young men lost at sea.
“Go have a look,” she called, turning toward the stairs, smiling her encouragement. She led me back downstairs and through the house with a great thwacking of clogs and jingling of keys and deposited me outside the back door. I stepped onto the path, crushing tiny shells as I walked. The path led in an upward spiral to the obelisk, raised as it was on a kind of shell midden.
The obelisk, of veined marble, was furred with rusty green lichen. On the reverse, facing away from the museum and toward the shore, was an etching: neat houses aligned in rows above a bay, in precise detail. I supposed the town in the etching must be Yrjmak. Yes——even the house museum was depicted there, and the tidy rectangles of the graves, and the obelisk itself, where I now stood. Above the picture plane, I saw what must have been the name “Yrjmak” in the old alphabet, the tangled tentacles of the looping Yforian script.
The breeze dropped away then, suddenly, as in the pause after a deep exhalation. Briny, sticky, the bay’s breath lingered on my skin. I shivered in the close air and wiped my forehead, the back of my neck, watched the twisting script dissolve into dusk. Silence. The strangest feeling, then——that someone was just behind me, watching. Waiting.
I turned, stumbled from the obelisk’s mound. My eye caught a solitary marker then, beyond the closest cluster of old graves. Its granite newly cut, raised high above the ground——an altar, almost.
In the stillness of no-wind, I walked. Beside the gravestone, I read the English words, freshly incised, beneath the writhing ancient script. Ysefra Llefgreddyn, the gravestone read. Ysefra. Ysa. Here she was. My Ysa. Mine once; mine to lose.
Or never mine——yes, I saw now, for the first time, that this was possible. So long ago! How little I understood of creation, back then. How sure I was, in those days, that knowledge was mine to impart; the world’s sweetness, mine to taste——endlessly, without permission, and without consequence.
And then, as if an invisible hand had turned a dial, the sound returned: the obliterating roar of a thousand waterfalls. My ears filled with it; I was inside the rushing, the rushing inside me. The wind——bold and intimate——hurtled up the slope from the water, boxed my face, my shoulders. I stepped back with one foot to brace myself against its charge.
Through the clamor, behind me, aloft, came a high-pitched shriek——once, twice——a piercing of the thickening howl of air and water. I turned to see a dark figure pressed to the wooden barrier of the Upper. Leaning into the battering wind, black hair-tendrils a net in flight. Arms wide. Triumphant.
I shouted for help then, staggering, my cries muffled by the merciless tumult. I flung myself toward the obelisk, pressed myself to its smooth, narrow surface, my only shield. Beyond it, the Shadow of Shadows rose along the shore’s slope. Up through the gravestones, the Shadow rose. Up to the midden upon which I stood. The shells loosened beneath me and slid away. Forgive me, Ysa, I thought. Forgive me my transgressions. Regret, a crushing fist around my heart. Too late.
I clung to the obelisk. How fast it came, the water. Gentle now, sighing, climbing my legs.
A tumbling suck-and-squelch of cyan wave. The smash of flesh and mineral, fusion and scission of cells. Brine. Debridement——the human body, septic, excised from the earth’s amnion. The tide: all that endures.
Emily Alice Katz‘s short fiction has appeared in Salamander, Meridian, South Carolina Review, and Lilith, among other publications. Her favorite revenge story is the novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Togarchuk; her villainous alter ego is L’impératrice Malice; and her favorite historical beef is the epic feud between the famous eighteenth-century rabbis Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschutz, the former of whom accused the latter of heretical occult practices. (Prague? Secret amulets? Yes, please.) She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her family. You can read more about her at https://emilyalicekatz.com/
