“The Wind, The Sea, & The Bee” by Katie McGarity

A fog of a woman creeps into the town square. I sense her before I see her, and goose skin runs up my arms under my navy school cardigan. I turn in my seat on the bench to look at her, as if she said my name aloud, even though it’s quiet save for the patter of rain.

She is wispy and barely there, yet so solid she surely cannot be a ghost. The only reason I’m convinced she isn’t a phantom or faerie is because my friend, Cillian Michaels, grunts next to me. He turns to see what I’m looking at and says, through a mouthful of fish ‘n chips and tartar sauces, “What's her deal d'ya ‘spose?"

I can’t answer. I am transfixed by the woman. We catch each other’s eye, and it’s like I know her through dreams. She has hazel eyes, the soft shade of a stone worn down by waves over a hundred lifetimes. She looks back at me without so much as a blink, but there’s warmth in her eyes. Her clothes are dingy and ratty if I'm blunt, like she left them out in the mist for too long. Everything about her is off kilter, in a way that makes Cillian shift uncomfortably.

"Not doin' anything wrong…" he mumbles, "Weird old bird."

Relentlessly, she looks on in a way that makes Cillian start to huff. I stare back at her a long while, too, but unbothered by that sort of thing. People stare at me all the time. It’s a cross between curiosity and weariness. In this way, she's familiar to me. A pang of sorrow and something like excitement that I can't place fills my chest. The sight of her is something known and something lost.

A shape catches my attention out of the corner of my eye, and I turn away from the woman to catch the disturbance. Mrs. Maeve comes around the cobbles with her shopping hanging in the crook of her elbow. She sees us first, smiling softly, before her eyes wander to the other side of the square toward the gray woman. She starts, hand reflexively jumping to the silver cross around her neck. The crevice between my eyebrows pinches to create a crater, and I turn back to the stranger as if to apologize.

In a cloud caught in the wind, she disappears. I pull strands of my bright red hair out of my face like a curtain opening to make sure I didn’t imagine it. Cillian pauses, too, before sitting up straight.

"Good, I wasn't wanting to give her any of my chips," Cillian says humorously, though his voice sounds thin.

I look back at him and roll my eyes. 

"Oh what, like you had words for her?” Cillian says with a hollow laugh, “This and that about how staring's rude and what not? You know, Mum was tellin' me—"

“What’re you two getting up to over here?” Mrs. Maeve says, wandering over to us.

Mrs. Maeve’s one of the village good ladies. She’s younger than she looks, made older by insistent sea air and the wrong way of being a childless mother. One too many miscarriages is how it went about town. I noticed it once when she was watching us kids play at a gathering. Her eyes too-full tide pools flooded by a coastal rain. Even now, she swallows a lump in her throat and stares at me in a way that makes me think she knows something I don’t. I sit up straighter and tug my cardigan tight around my shoulders.

“Nothing, Mrs. Maeve,” Cillian says, dragging his oil-tipped fingers along his school pants. “Just thinking we may have had words about manners for that phantasm that was or wasn’t over there.”

Mrs. Maeve tuts. There’s a clatter of something noisy and unwanted behind us but I keep my eyes on her.

“Oh Cillian Michaels, don’t you make jokes about such matters. I swear, the older you all get, the mouthier ya-are.”

“Couldn’t say as much for Aideen, mum,” he chides.

I elbow him in his side, and he grins, pleased with himself.

“But don’t I know it, miss, I promise it’s the truth. That woman had the look of walking out of the water, didn’t she?”

There’s a final crash behind us and we all turn to see Mr. Whelan standing in the middle of a heap of his fishing things on the ground.

“What did you just say, boy?” the man says, wild look in his eyes that pop wide under his cap and bushy eyebrows that blend into his beard.

I tap Cillian’s thigh with the back of my hand, trying to get him to stop, but he carries on with his jokes.

“Yessir, maybe a selkie by the sight of her—”

Mr. Whelan stomps over to us on the bench.

“Selkies will be the end of us, I tell you!” Mr. Whelan hollers, superstition overtaking him, “They have haunting gray eyes the color of a bad storm that can kill the likes of us. They’re an ill-omen! Upon the women of the town to leave their wains and lives and loves and disappear, and upon men who fall for loving them.”

Mrs. Maeve’s warm brown eyes drop to the ground. A quick scratch on the cobbles like leaves in the wind makes the others jump. But I know those light steps anywhere.

“Now, Whelan, surely you’re not scaring off the children with fishermen tall tales,” my Nan says evenly, suddenly appearing.

Nan herself has wild hair the shade of a partly cloudy day and eyes the color of an oncoming storm. Mr. Whelan backs away from her on reflex but clears his throat. I frown.

“Tell that to that bewitched husband of yours,” he mutters.

“Come again?” Nan says loudly, holding her cupped hand to her ear. “Terribly sorry, couldn’t hear ya. My hearing, you know.”

Mrs. Maeve holds a hand over her mouth to hide her laugh. Cillian crosses his arms and lifts his chin as if daring Whelan to cross Nan. Me? I wish I had a voice to tell him Nan’s more magical than any made up thing he could imagine.

Nan claps a hand to my shoulder.

“C’mon, kids, off we go for dinner. That bewitched husband of mine will be wanting his supper soon.”

Cillian jumps up off the bench and gathers his school bag. I stand too, dusting off my skirt and readjusting so it doesn’t pinch around my middle. We start to make for our house, but I turn back to look at Mr. Whelan staring through slits after Nan. Mrs. Maeve glances apprehensively at the spot where I know she saw the gray woman, too.

“Take a look at my hand, Nan,” Cillian’s voice catches on the wind and blows back to me.

“What’d you do to warrant such welts now, you cheeky bugger?” Nan asks, reaching out to inspect the solid red line along his palm.

“Sister Francis caught me passing — uh — naughty notes. Can you fix it?” he breezes over.

“Of course I can, what kind of a question is that?”

The three of us walk the footworn path back to mine and Nan’s and Gramp’s cottage on the edge of the sea together. In the dimming light, the marigold brightness of our door shines like its own lighthouse. We carry on down the path, the familiar tickle of tall beach grass on the backs of my knees until we shoulder our way inside.

In all the gray and green of Ireland, our house is a burst of color. Yellow walls and a backsplash of tile spattered with bluebells, daisies, and primrose. Herbs and cast-iron hang from the ceiling over the butcher’s block. There’s a steady fire in the stove despite no one being home to tend it yet today. Its smoky reach pulls away at the fog outside, and Gramp is sure to see it from wherever he is on the water right now, on his way home.

I move for one of the pans to start dinner for Gramp. Nan piles her white hair on top of her head to see to Cillian’s hand. He’s still on about what happened in the square.

“—and Mr. Whelan was on about selkies, and Mrs. Maeve was after us like we’re her kids when we’re not. It’s not our fault she has no wains of her own. I don’t see why she can’t leave us to our own business. We’re seventeen aftera—”

“Childless mothers made so should never be mocked or judged,” Nan says sharply, holding him firmly by the wrist of his injured hand. A salve hangs from her fingertips.

“Remember Cillian, Aideen’s without a mother and I was without children until she came along. We don’t know what Mrs. Maeve had to go through before accepting this path she’s on.”

Cillian’s shoulders drop, scorned, but he picks right back up.

“Do you have a mother?” he asks Nan brightly. “Did you want to be a…well, a Nan, I guess?”

Nan laughs because of course she has a mother. I grin to myself, knowing the story by heart.

Nan blew away with the wind once.

She was as good as a girl when she was ripped from the rocks of Skerries’ shores. Her fire hair turned to angel floss in the squall. Fisherman said they saw the change, no doubt trying to feel important. Her Mam said she saw her flying away from the kitchen window and didn’t know how to go about chasing her, said it was almost better if Nan would have drowned to make finding her easier.

When she dropped back from the sky who-knows-how-long later, Nan’s freckles were blown clean off. She was whiter than any Irishman or woman in the town had ever seen before. Her Mam had left town, so Nan was on her own in the world. And when everyone had forgotten everything and nothing about it, Nan said she found me. Tangled in seaweed after a storm, the black clouds turning silver in the sun. Gramp said he spit twice when he saw me. Skin gray and folded in on myself like a curse, no bigger than a fish egg.

“Weeping Christ, Breanne,” he had said to her, “Leave it where Jesus flang it.”

Of course, Nan had none of it — like she never does. She knows things people wish they knew. She turned on her heel back for home with Gramp dragging behind. She got home, placed me in her favorite teacup and put the kettle on. When it started to squeal, she poured the boiling water over my shriveled body, and I grew. When the cup started to crack, she dumped me out into the tub with a thud where she had a hot bath drawn already.

By the time Gramp hobbled his way through the door — Celtic cross hanging above it for an extra sense of irony — a toddler with flaming ringlets soaked through was splashing water onto the floor. Nan was sitting in a chair with a cup of tea smiling at me in the corner. He paused then sighed and said, “At least give her a name then.” 

They named me Aideen. Little Fire.

Gramp took a couple of days to win over, but we’ve been putty in each other’s hands ever since. The three of us, we make a family on our own.

Folks around town didn’t take to us easily, between Nan being a living myth and me being something of a blow-in — or a wash-up as we joke at home. Gramp was a bit of an outcast in his own right but only on his mother’s side. The town treated us like folklore instead of people for a time. Folklore of the finest kind because folks could pretend, they knew something when they didn’t until they got to know the real us. There are skeptics still, like Mr. Whelan, but it’s easier now. Not to mention, Catholics love a good gossip as much as they do God, and Nan has a wise mouth as much as she has a wise word. 

The point of all this? Nan said she looked at me and knew I was hers. They called her the wind. No one thought much of me, being a blow in and all. But Nan called me her fire of the sea, and I’ve always known she was mine. That’s the only story I’ve ever known.

“Everyone’s a story on their own,” Nan finishes, rubbing the remaining salve from her hand onto a towel, “Especially women. To become a woman is a disappearing act. To blend in before all-watching eyes or lose yourself and disappear altogether. There’s strength in transformation — letting the old you disappear. It’s an act best known in magic and done with intention.”

Cillian nods slowly, taking in the weight of Nan’s words before jibing, “It’s a wonder me Mam still lets me over here.”

Nan throws her head back with a barking laugh that takes up the whole house, and I smile, pushing around meat and veg in the pan.

Gramp comes in through the door now. He shakes the rain from his moss-colored flat cap to reveal his ivory hair. Beach sand falls in clumps from his rubber boots to the clean floor but Nan doesn’t mind. She pushes back in her chair next to Cillian to meet Gramp at the door, throwing her arms around his neck and planting a kiss firmly on his lips despite being obstructed by a comb of whiskers.

“Hello, my loves,” Gramp sighs as the warm of the house welcomes him home.

He reaches for me, and I go to him. He plants a wet kiss in my hair. We pull back and that’s when Gramp sees Cillian. His face contorts into a mock scowl.

“Ah Jesus, am I meant to feed you again too?”

Cillian and Nan laugh, and we each serve ourselves dinner.

***

“Aideen,” Gramp said pulling me on to his lap one morning when I was young, “It’s ‘bout time you learned. A fisherman’s sweater is an Irishman’s bond between the land and the ocean. It’s his promise that he shall return to both and to neither.”

He explained it all to me. Some families had their own patterns, and how I could look for who was lost so we could find them again. Recognize our own folk.

The wool keeps you warm. The cables represent strength. Each family has their own pattern in case they were lost at sea. This was always odd to me, as the sea was where I was found, where I felt most at home, but then again maybe some folk didn’t want to be lost.

Gramp taps a patch of wool on his chest. A hexagon.

“My mother didn’t want to see me marry Nan,” he had said with a mischievous smile. “She thought Nan was a witchy woman, but I knew she was magic. We’re still not technically married, so we made our own pattern. See the hive?”

I nodded, eager to join this rank of knowledge-knowers. He winked.

“They mean family. That’s what she is to me and what you are to us.”

He poked me gently in the chest, right above my heart. I pressed both of my hands to my chest, then held them over his heart, pressing gently. To tell him I loved him. His eyes watered before he cleared his throat and said, in his usual voice, “Also, because I’m too damn busy for my own good just like a bee, but that’s just between you and me.”

A fisherman’s sweater makes it easy to identify a man lost.

A few days after the gray woman and Mrs. Maeve and Mr. Whelan, Gramp and I take a walk along the beach together. The clouds are low and thick, and the air drags her cold nails up our arms. Gramp has on his fisherman’s sweater, and I wear one I made myself. We made it together, strands of my fire hair woven into the cable. When Gramp came in from a day of fishing, I ran to the door with the weight of it in my outstretched hands. He smiled broadly and swung it over my shoulders.

“Well done, macushla.” Well done, my darling.

Not far off along the rocks, we see two men working on a boat. I pick out the familiar navy and green wool of fishermen’s sweaters, and dark flat caps on the head of one black bearded man and one red. I hesitate, recognizing Mr. Whelan and Mr. Mulligan, Mrs. Maeve’s husband. Cillian told Nan and Gramp about what happened in the square over dinner. Nan waved off the naysayers because she’s good about letting that sort of thing blow off her back, but Gramp could tell something about it had shaken me. I tried writing it out for him after Cillian had left to explain in detail, but I didn’t have the words. How could I tell him I was more afraid for the gray woman than I was of her?

 Gramp stops, noticing that I pause, before reaching for my hand and giving it a squeeze.

“Stick with me, darlin’,” he says with a wink.

I relax, and we keep walking toward Mr. Whelan and Mr. Mulligan.

They hear our steps roll on the crackle of rocks and stop what they’re doing to greet us.

“Ah John,” Mulligan calls out. “Good to see you there.”

Mr. Whelan’s eyes dart to me. His lips move soundlessly. Maybe a prayer to keep away a curse? I frown, and wish I had the words to tell him I’m mute, not deaf.

“Colm,” Gramp says, tipping his cap to Mr. Mulligan. Then to Mr. Whelan. “Liam. Quite the day to be out working, lads. The storm should be here soon and last the rest of the day at least. If you go out in this, you’ll have a whale of a time later.”

Mr. Whelan squares back his shoulders. Mr. Mulligan looks at him uneasily before clearing his throat.

“Wife’s said she saw a selkie in town, John,” Mr. Mulligan says. “She’s been shaking like a leaf for days and jumpier than I’ve ever seen her. Seemed startled by it as an ill-omen and I made out that we better go hunting for the creature. Keep it away from the other women and wains.”

He at least has the nerve to look apologetic about it. 

“Hunting for ‘er? My god, man. If they want to find you, they will. Especially if you have their skins and keep ‘em away from other more important matters,” Gramp says with a wry laugh.

Mr. Mulligan looks like he’s just entertaining his anxious wife’s woes as an excuse to get some work done, but then Whelan takes a step forward. I grip Gramp’s hand tighter.

“We can’t wait for them to get the better of us, John. They get the better of the town, cast spells on us all, the women—"

“Aren’t you precious?” Gramp says, tapping Mr. Whelan on the chest with the back of his free hand. The younger fisherman stammers. “If a magic woman walks through your door, you’ll make out like a chicken without its head? Not for me thanks. Been living on this rock too long. Wouldn’t mind seeing something new, me.”

 “It’s not a farce, John,” Mulligan cuts back in, “Maeve said there was a woman in tatters coming and going with the mist in town,” Mulligan says. His eyes gravitate to me, probably knowing I was there, and I look down. Mulligan swallows. “Sounds like something we should be paying attention to.”

Gramp takes notice of how they look at me and says, quickly, “Some myths — some legends — are better left to be fantasy. Go on then. Just don’t die in the process because I’ll have to come out and get you me-self.”

He turns, angling me with him away from the men, and we start to walk away, back for our cottage with the yellow door.

“See you at the pub, lads,” Gramp calls back, “Have a pint on me.”

We shuffle away, the waves reaching up the shore for us. Gramp waits until we’re well away to make sure the wind doesn’t carry his next words back up the beach to them.

“I mean it, Aideen,” he says with a shake of his head, “Men like them have their heads so far up their behinds, they have the gall to ask who turned the lights off.”

***

The storm carries on for more than a day, just like Gramp said. When it breaks, it’s late in the afternoon. The sky is curtained on either side by dark clouds outlined with golden threads of the sun. The smell of fresh rain is not yet overtaken by the smell of salt air and seaweed, so the sweeter scents from town can waft down to me on the beach. I’m sitting, looking out over the water, wishing I could walk in but heeding Nan’s words not to go close with the chance of people watching ringing in my ears.

Cillian and Gramp went fishing some time ago so I figured I would wait for them instead. If I’m being honest, I was hoping the gray woman would show herself again, but I haven’t seen her.

Rocks clatter behind me, and I turn to see Mrs. Maeve of all the people walking quickly towards me. Even from here, I can see shiny tears run down her cheeks. There’s a rush of wind, and Nan appears suddenly beside me in her peculiar way of knowing where she’s needed.

Mrs. Maeve reaches us, something dark hanging from her hands, and even before she can greet us, her voice breaks into a sob.

“You’re both here,” she sobs, “Good, good. You’ll understand. You’ll know. It’s been making me sick with worry and regret for years.”

She shakes her head as if to clear out the bad memory of it all.

“She had her own baby. I just. I wanted a baby. I wanted my baby. Felt too guilty to keep it. Too scared.”

Mrs. Maeve holds out what, initially, looks like a charcoal-gray velvet dress. She casts it aside on the sand, the waves licking at it.

Nan turns sharply to look at me, and our world falls into place. Tears well in her eyes and releases a breath she’s held for seventeen years. My heart pounds too hard, too stunned.

Do you have a mother?

Mrs. Maeve takes in a shaking breath, coughing in the process, before she chokes out.

“I’m an evil woman. I had no right to do that to that — that creature — that woman—”

Nan places a knowing hand on Maeve’s shoulder and says, quietly, “I don’t think there is evil here. Only a desperate mother.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a pale hand reach from the foam, and in a curl of mist, pull the velvet skin of the gray woman back to the water. I want to call for her, beg her to stay this time. Please.

Then, the clouds that had cleared for the sun before swarm back in. An anger washing over the world that makes goose skin rise on my arms just like in the town square. The sea becomes choppy, cut up. Gramp could never have guessed the fake break, yet his boat comes around the turn into the cove. The waves lash against it, pushing them up against the rocks. I stand suddenly, heart thumping.

That’s when the world cracks apart. I watch the waves fold their jaws over my grandfather’s boat, crashing over him and Cillian in a bone-splintering sound that we hear from the shore. My eyes lock on to the way the once put together planks of wood bend over backwards in pieces. Nan cries out.

“John! Oh, Jesus. Aideen!”

Instinct drives me underneath the waves. I swim with the power of my own storm, Nan’s voice blowing behind me, pushing. Soon, bits of boat and sinking panic bump against my cheeks. Suspended, Cillian — paler than I’ve ever seen him — floats in front of me with his eyes closed, his body too close to the rocks. I kick toward him, hooking him under the arms to snatch him away. I shoot for the surface, looking around desperately, trying to find — until — there!

I make out my Gramp’s fishermen’s sweater — the one the color of clouds on a sunny day soaked through with rain and sewn full of beehive stitches — and he’s there, doing a dead man’s float but I hold out hope. I cut through the water, hooking one arm around Gramp and tighten my grip on Cillian. Swimming back does not test my strength, my worry does.

I pull Gramp and Cillian up to the shore out of the reaching hands of waves trying to drag them back. I turn to Gramp first. There’s a cut along his head. The rain comes down in sheets that cut like knives across my cheeks. I squint through the onslaught, a prayer on my lips even if I can’t speak it aloud. I press both of my hands to the spot over his heart. But there is no breath in his lungs. No pulse reaching out to me to say he loves me back. A mangled cry leaves me, and I press my forehead against his still chest.

Nan and Maeve are there, helping Cillian. He coughs, opening his eyes slowly. He catches sight of me and sputters, kicks away from me. I imagine what he sees: gray skin, flaming hair, gills, and fins—

Mrs. Maeve sees what Cillian sees, and screams. A nervous fit overtakes her, and she faints into the soft sand.

A voice from above shouts out.

“Siren!” Whelan cries through the wind and rain, “Temptress! Devil! Destined to damn us all!”

Cillian looks at me like we haven’t known each other all our lives. My heart crumbles at the betrayal. He can’t leave me now, not like this. Not with Gramp...

He does not attack, but lurches to his feet, abandoning us to rush to the mob coming to storm us all over again.

When we’re alone, save Maeve in the sand which only damns us more, Nan grabs me hard by shoulder. She reaches out to me over Gramp. I try not to look at him. I look at her, and her flossy white hair is in wet ropes around her face, coming undone by the strand.

“It’s what he would have wanted,” she says softly, “He was always ready for another adventure.”

Nan doesn’t wail. Her small body doesn’t rock with waves of sobs like mine does. She takes her hand that’s resting on my shoulder to reach into the pocket of Gramp’s sweater. I blink at her incredulously when she pulls out a cloudy red sphere of sea glass rubbed smooth in her hand.

“A creature of habit like me,” she says with a small chuckle.

I see in her eyes how this is something she came to love only because of Gramp, a secret they shared. She sighs.

“We carry stones like this for power. Held by one another, it grounds us.”

She smooths her thumb over its surface.

“I gave myself to him,” she recites like a vow, “and now that he’s gone, I go with him. I became a breeze in a gust of wind because I blew to where I was needed.”

She pauses and looks up at me. I raise my eyebrows, and she smiles sadly.

“To you. A promise sung of where love was needed and wanted. A baby abandoned on the beach.”

Finally, a small cry escapes from her lips. She reaches her hand that’s on my shoulder up to my face. I clasp both of my hands over hers, my tears slipping between our fingers, and she squeezes.

“I would do it all again,” she says, “If I could have you and Gramp. All over again.”

We pull away, and she takes hold of my wrist. She turns my hand palm up, placing the sea glass stone there. It’s then that I hear the rocks drum against each other as the town starts to close in. My heart starts to hammer in my ears.

“Carry home with you,” Nan sternly says, “Wherever you go, I’ll find you.” 

She closes each of my fingers over the stone; it starts to thrum in my palm. 

“My little fire, return to the sea.”

I understand, and my chest aches.

We lock eyes, and nod.

Suddenly, the wind carries Nan away one last time. Her last disappearing acts. I see my grandmother blow away into the storm like my grandfather, and a crowd of townspeople running to investigate gains on me.

I take my own chance for freedom, plunging again into the water. It goes from churning hell the color of smoke to calm sea glass before my eyes, sunset beaming out ahead of me. I breathe easier than I ever did on land. 

I swim stitches for miles, creating a row between past and future, pointing to the horizon where the sky meets the sea, where I can see Nan again in the spaces in-between. They connect. Two halves of a storm: the wind and the sea. The harpy and the selkie. Nan and me. And Gramps, the bee, gone back to his hive.

A promise kept.

About Katie McGarity
She/Her/Hers

Katie McGarity holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing & Editing from Regis University and a Bachelor's in Writing and Cultural Anthropology from Fort Lewis College. She has served as a journalist, photographer, copywriter, and editor for nearly 10 years. Her creative work has appeared in Fort Lewis' Images Literary Magazine, and she is in the process of submitting her YA Fiction novel for publication. In her free time, Katie and her husband, Josh, love to explore the Denver-Boulder metro area and care for their cat, Peanut.