* Author :
Jennifer Hudak
* Narrator :
Pippa Alice Stephens
* Host :
Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer :
Eric Valdes
*
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Previously published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Rated PG-13
The Day of the Sea
by Jennifer Hudak
When the Sea came to our village, she was an old woman. She arrived when the water crested and draped over the earth, its salty fingers pushing out offerings of sea glass and bladder wrack. Her dress trailed behind her, hair tangled with kelp and tentacles. No one doubted that she was the Sea. Everyone was disappointed.
We’d all heard tales about the power of the rising ocean, how it leveled towers and returned rock to sand. How it would destroy everything in its path in order to make its way home, to our village. In those tales, the Sea was a warrior, beautiful and terrible, slashing her way across the continent, swallowing everything in her path. Even when gossips at the market began to whisper about nearby towns swallowed by salt water, about boats crushed like kindling and bones strewn across the ocean floor, even as the smell of salt wafted on the breeze, we did not seek her out. We waited for her to come to us, as the stories had foretold.
But the Sea that arrived was timid and exhausted from her travels. We’d expected her to thunder against our walls, insistent and unrelenting, Instead, she waited just outside the village, frail and silent. The tide nudged at our gates and withdrew, nudged and withdrew, as if asking permission to enter. If she had ever been a warrior, it was a long time ago.
We’d prayed to her. We’d spent generations waiting for her to arrive. No one was willing to turn her away. But no one stepped forward to welcome her, either.
“I am weary,” said the Sea, in a voice as deep and heavy as fathoms of water. “I have seen too much and traveled too far.”
The villagers all shifted their feet and avoided her gaze. If they let her inside, how could she return the favor? Her waters, stretched thin here at the end of her journey, wouldn’t offer up the bounty we expected; they would only flood our fields and poison our lakes. She was not what was promised, and though no one said it out loud, everyone thought it would be better if she didn’t get too comfortable.
But then, my grandmother stepped forward.
“Come inside, then, and rest,” my grandmother said. “I have food and drink, and a bed that stands empty since my youngest son and his wife died of the blue fever.”
The Sea bowed her head. “The Sea does not rest. But I will linger here, until the tide goes out.”
When my grandmother took the Sea’s hand, it was ice cold, but she didn’t let go.
Once the Sea had gone inside my grandmother’s house, we children ran for the shore. We couldn’t wait to see the treasures in its shallows, things we’d only heard about in story and song: oysters hiding luminous pearls in their soft gullets, fish that glowed in darkness like candles, creatures spined and tentacled and every color we could imagine. But the water, even though it was shallow where it flooded the outer fields, was so cold it numbed our feet and ankles, and none of us wanted to wade in further. We ran back and forth as the sluggish waves approached and retreated, searching for any kind of treasure, for surely the Sea wouldn’t leave us empty handed, not after we’d welcomed her and offered her food and drink.
