Sea Letters

“Amelia.”
She pushed the toes of her muddy boots into the ground and raised her little body as high as she could. Her hands gripped her wrinkled blue skirt until her knuckles turned white. She was determined that, when Papa left, he would remember her as a young lady, and a little girl no more.
         The sailor’s brown, muscular hand came down soft as a goose feather on his little daughter’s brown curls. His fingers stroked the rumpled lavender ribbon that trailed from her braid.
         “Amelia…”
         She heard the broken sobs from her mother, who stood several feet away with her hand over her mouth, straining to muffle her weeping. Amelia did not cry. Papa would remember a strong girl when he boarded the ship. She would not let anything spoil that.
         “The sea, Papa,” she whispered. “Is the sea kind today?”
         Her father looked out at the chilly Atlantic, breathing softly in the evening sun. A flock of gulls descended upon the water, upsetting the steady waves with a series of ripples. “I think so,” he replied, turning his eyes as blue as that sea upon her. “The sea and I, Amelia, we are very good friends.”
         Amelia nodded, and watched the sea. It was like a great cat purring, waiting for her father. Amelia had had a cat once. It had been a sweet little calico that purred constantly and seemed to smile when Amelia petted her. It had also bitten Amelia unexpectedly one day, and so they had had to take it far into the country and leave it there.
         “Papa, are you sure –“
         “Sh, Amelia.” He pulled on one of her ringlets, letting it bounce back. He always did that, when he was being playful. “The sea is like a kitten today. It will be like a kitten all the way to Curacao and back. She likes to play, but she is very gentle.”
         Amelia stared at him. She suddenly reached out and grabbed his hand, holding it between hers and feeling the weathered roughness of his palm. “I will write letters to you, Papa, every day.”
         The sailor laughed and pulled another curl. “Letters, Amelia? And what will you do, tie them to a gull and send them that way? Just send prayers to heaven for me, little gull.”
         “I will write, Papa.” Her eyes were fixed on his face, tracing every line and wrinkle. “I will write.” She did not smile. He leaned down and gathered her into his arms. She stared at the sea over his shoulder and hardened her eyes. She would not cry.
         Then he was suddenly in the distance far down the shore, with his bag slung over his shoulder. He walked close to the water’s edge, so that every other wave reached up and lapped at his ankles. Amelia’s mother turned away abruptly and hurried away from the shore toward their small cottage. Amelia watched until he disappeared, then found the biggest stone she could and hurled it with all her might into the sea. It made a terrible splash, interrupting the peaceful evening for a moment. But the waves overcame it, and the disruption the rock caused was lost in he perpetual breathing of the ocean.
         Amelia gazed at the sea, her little face set like stone and her hands clenched at her sides. The ocean purred on.

         She wrote the first letter the following day. It was short and awkward, because there was not much to say so soon. But nonetheless, she rolled it up and looked around for a string to tie it with. There was none, and her mother was gone into town. So she pulled the ribbon out of her hair and tied it with that.
         And what will you do, tie them to a gull and send them that way?
         She went down to the shore and sat in the sand, letting the wind toss her unbound hair as it liked. The waves seemed bigger today, and the sky a little bit darker. She lay on her back, wrenching her eyes away from the sea. Turning the letter over in her hand, she wondered how to send it. How far was Curacao? Her mother had told her it would be several months until he returned. That was a lot of letters.
         She heard a sudden splash. Looking back at the sea, she scoured the waters in search of the sound but she saw nothing. The sea was settled again into its steady rhythm, its never-ending waves. “I heard that!” she shouted. But the sea remained quiet, taunting her.
         Amelia got up and wandered back to the house. Her mother was still gone, so she left the lonely cottage and began walking down the dirt lane that ran parallel to the beach, but was far enough away that the ocean could not be seen or heard, though the rank, briny smell of it still hung in the air. There were short, meager shrubs scattered across the sandy soil, and as she continued, they grew thicker and taller until she was nearly in a strange little wood made of miniature trees. She slowed her pace. She had never walked here alone before, and suddenly she was keenly aware of how dark it was among the brush. She could hear gulls squawking nearby, but she never saw any.
         Suddenly her foot struck something hard, and she shrieked. It was just an old dirty bottle. Looking around, she saw several more, stashed under shrubs and half-buried in the sand. Then she heard a soft rustling of leaves. Standing very still, she let her eyes roam the vicinity. Then she spotted him through a tangle of branches. It was Robbie MacDougal, a nasty boy who lived several miles down the shore. He was holding a bottle half-filled with something – Amelia doubted the integrity of the liquid – and guzzling it down with a zeal. Amelia didn’t dare move. He was an ill-tempered boy, as she had learned at school, where he was a grade below her despite his several years’ seniority.
         After a few minutes, he tossed the emptied bottle aside and stood up. Amelia quickly ducked down, but he only started stumbling down the path in the opposite direction, pausing every now and then to catch his breath. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Amelia started to turn away, when her eyes fell upon a bottle. She snatched it up and then ran back home.

         The weeks crawled by mercilessly, and Amelia kept writing letters. She had nearly exhausted the supply of bottles at Robbie’s hideout, but the disgusting boy provided more every few days. She was certain to write in her letters the source of the bottles, so that her father would not think she had taken up drinking.
         Every night, Amelia would walk down to the ocean’s edge and steel herself. The sea would sit there, and she could feel its silent laughter creeping up her spine. She would glare at it for a while, standing almost in the water, but never near enough to let it touch her. Then she would throw a bottle, with a ribbon-bound letter inside, as far as she could, wincing when it hit the water. “Don’t you dare swallow it,” she would whisper. “Take it to my Papa, and don’t you dare swallow it.”
         Then she would blink away her tears and run home.

         The sun set, as it always did, upon the western horizon, casting a golden glow across the sea. It was very still that evening, with its waves at their smallest. No ships moved across the waters, and no gulls filled the air with their coarse laughter. The shore stretched along, silent but for the softly waving reeds, and empty but for the tall, elderly woman who stood as close as possible to the water without letting it touch her. She stood very still, staring across the waves for a long while. Then she raised her hand and tossed an object as far as she could into the waves. It was a bottle, with a ribbon-bound letter inside. It landed in the sea with a noisy splash that shattered the silent eve, but the sea quickly regained its composure and silenced the noise, forcing the bottle to succomb to the steady breathing of its waves. The woman stood still and silent for a moment longer before turning and slowly walking back up the beach to a small cottage, as the ocean purred on behind her.

word count: 1418