She must walk past Ciag and Marik both in returning to the village among her would-be rescuers—must hug the Widow when she had dumped her shellfish at the porch; and the Widow held her back then and looked at her in the eyes—looked deep and wisely, as if she knew something of her shame.
So did others. There were whispers in the village that day, whispers from which she had been safe all her life till now—whispers which blamed her, and both brothers. The brothers glowered and said nothing. There was a fight by the nets, and Agil's eldest son had a broken tooth and Ciag a gashed hand, both the brothers against the three strong sons of Agil. The girls and women whispered too, more viciously. The Widow held her peace, waiting, perhaps, on Mila to speak, which Mila would not, could not. Mila took the goats up the hill the next morning and sat frowning at the ground and staring out at the sea, which was gray as the skies were gray, and bristling with the roughness of winter winds.
Gifts resumed on the morrow, both brothers in full view of the village. That turned the gossip to amazement, and in some hearts, to bitter jealousy, because Marik and Ciag were the handsomest and richest young men in the village, and deeply, forlornly, the young girls had had hope of one or the other of them. Witchery, they whispered at their mending, hating Mila. And the women recalled drowned mother, drowned father, and bastardy. The sea's bastard, rumors ran the louder. Ill luck, Agil's eldest son murmured among the young men, to salve the hurt of his broken tooth; and Agil himself repeated it in council, until the whole village was miserable. Mila wept, and waited for Marik to do something. The look in Ciag's eyes these days was unbearable; and she imagined that Marik might after all have talked to him. Perhaps it was now for her, to refuse Ciag's gifts, but she did not know.
The sea roughened, shivering in winter, and the waves came high up the shore. The slighter boats did not launch at all. The brothers went out day by day, defying the waves, giving the best they caught—poor in this season—to Mila, neglecting their own parents, who walked sorrowful and shamed amid the gossip of the village.
On a certain day, storm boded, and no boats put out at all. The men huddled in the hall, mourning over the weather.
But Marik went down to the boats and stared out at the sea; and Ciag joined him there. "Will you go out?" Ciag asked; he spoke little to Marik, because he was bitter with his brother, who had told him the truth: let Mila refuse me herself, Ciag had said; and because he loved Ciag, Marik was caught between. Now—" Dare you go?" Ciag asked again; and Marik felt the sting of challenge, which of them was the better man, which of them dared more for Mila's gift.
"Aye," Marik answered, and set his shoulder to the boat. The twoof them heaved her out, ignoring the black cloud which lay in the east of Fingalsey. Marik went for his reasons, that his pride was stung; and Ciag went for his, which were dark and bitter—while the sea sang with voices long unheard on Fingalsey.
That was dawning. By noon, there was dire foreboding in the village, because there was one boat out, and they all knew whose. By afternoon the rain had begun, and winds drove the waves higher, sending white breakers against the rocks at Fingal's Head.
Evening came, and folk gathered at the brothers' door, in the wind and driving rain, to bestow their pity on the brothers' hearrtsick parents. But the Widow did not come, while Mila—Mila huddled between the houses and against the wall, and listened to the gossip of the gathered crowd, shivering in the rain and lightning.
Then, in full dark, a walker came up the shore, amid the howling of the wind-racked sea—a man dark and draggled and reeling with exhaustion, from across the Head.
Mila ran first to meet him, caught his icy arms and looked into Ciag's haggard white face.
"Marik?" she asked, striking him to the heart. His eyes took on a wild look.
"Drowned," he said.
The villagers closed about, parents seized on Ciag, who flinched from their arms and their eyes, who babbled a tale of a great swelling wave and a struggle to fight the currents which drove their boat. The wind howled over his voice. The rain drove down; and they bore him shuddering and sobbing toward his parents' house and hearth—"Mila?" he asked. "Mila?"
"Send for Mila," his father said.
But Mila had run from out the village and down the shore in the night and the drenching wind, by paths she knew in the dark, along the rocks, in the crash of spray.
There was a place the currents brought all wrecks and flotsam, the finest shells, and once, in the old, unlucky days, the bodies the sea was willing to give back—a place where fanged rocks broke the waves and the sea swirled back into a recess of calmer water. Mila fled there, among rocks awash with spray and the fangs backspilling white torrents under the lightnings. There, beached, on its side, lay the brothers' boat.
She reached it, looked inside, ran her hands over the undamaged wood, her heart broken by sudden surmise. The seas crashed in her ears, her eyes were blurred with salt spray and tears. She looked outward, where the crags called the Teeth broke the white spray—looked over her shoulder villageward, for far away on the wind came voices hailing her: the villagers hailing her, she reckoned—and then not, for these voices sang, rising and falling in the wind, and one of them she knew.
" Marik?"
She stepped out into the sea, struggled amid the surge and the wreck, knee-deep, hip-deep, battered by the waves. She found that recess where dead men beached, hating what she came to find, and bound to find it. The voices wailed—low and human ones among them, the villagers certainly, seeking her, wanting her back. She struggled the harder in the surge, drenched in cold rain and the colder breakers of the sea, her feet faltering on rocks which tore numb flesh. She found him, in the lightnings and the heaving of the waves, a drifting white figure, face-down. She cried aloud and fought toward him, her skirts swept by the sea. She was no longer cold. The sea caressed and did not bruise. The rain enveloped her like a veil of ice. She was numb with grief.
He was naked—surely he had cast off every hindrance to try to breast the waves; but the currents were treacherous here and the rocks were cruel and sharp. He had struggled to live, and Ciag had lost him—but not lost the boat, notthe precious boat, the boat which brought Ciag home. She reached Marik's body, thrown to and fro by the surge which swept him too, his white limbs loose, his dark hair that spread in the water like weed—she held her dead close and wept, hearing the singing of the wind.
The body moved gently to the rocking waves, moved—suddenly with will and life, writhed over in her arms, head turning. The eyes were dark and vast in Marik's face; the streaming hair flowed with the currents; the skin was white and no less cold. Dead arms enfolded her, dead lips parted to kiss, and the teeth were razor-sharp, a mouth ribbed and cool and tasting of kelp and sun-warmed sea.
" Mila!" she heard call distantly.
Lips clung, teeth pierced, and all the green thunder of the sea roared through her veins. Lips clingingly parted, and cold arms fell away, lithe white body arched to cleave the surge, to flash away with a pale glimmering among the black waves, lost at once in darkness and depths. Other voices whispered, murmured. Hands touched her feet, her legs beneath the water, fingers tugged at her skirts; voices sang—and touch and voices vanished together at the next outward surge of the waves.
" Mila!" Ciag's hoarse voice cried, from somewhere up on the rocks above. Other voices joined his: " Mila!" and rocks crashed and bounced down into the pools with white splashes, from Ciag's reckless course downhill. He floundered out to her, embraced her in hot arms, carried her from the tidepool, himself yielded to the hands of the young men who had dared follow him. Other hands lifted Mila, carried her and him to solid land, chafed her cold flesh and his. Seaweed was tangled about her, and blood and the taste of the sea was on her lips. She shut her eyes to the gray and the dark and saw only sunwarmed green.