Every day I see her when I walk along the river. Always on the far side, always kneeling among the rocks, always dressed in white. She never speaks, never looks at me. The footing is rough there, where the river falls down to the sea, and I always look down to be sure of my feet on the loose rock. Every time, when I look up she’s gone.
They call her the ferryman’s daughter in the village down the coast. If you stand a few rounds in the rambling, low-ceilinged pub and ask the old fishermen who drink there, they will tell you that their grandfathers saw her, that she has haunted the rivermouth at least since the clipper ships brought tea and sugar and spices to this shore.
She’s lucky, one will say; the fish come to her call.
An omen of death, another says; listen and she’ll tell you the names of those about to die.
A ghost, according to others, whether she drowned herself when her lover was lost at sea or was drowned by a jealous suitor or lost on one of the ships lured in by the wreckers’ lights.
#
In my own little house between the river and the village I hear voices, in the wash of the waves on the shingle, in the fan in the window, in the wind roaring and whistling around the house and under the eaves. Never clear, never distinct; just the murmur of words spoken behind closed doors.
Except occasionally at the new and full moons when the tide runs highest. Then, sometimes, I hear the words of the ghosts, of the sailors and fishermen taken by the rocks below the house. Last month, my own ghosts spoke to me. “Why do you stay here? There’s nothing for you here. Go back.”
If I leave, though, I will no longer hear the other voice. Some nights when the wind and the waves are high and I wake in the depths of the night I hear her, a voice I no longer remember but always recognise, a voice out of my forgotten past, speaking to me softly, telling me tales I can never remember.
I can’t remember much, these days. I left so much behind when I came here — burned my journals, replaced my phone, deleted all my accounts, destroyed anything that might serve as an extension of my memory. I came here to forget and be forgotten. Only the voices out of my past remain, speaking words I can’t understand.
#
Tomorrow I shall walk down the river past the ferryman’s daughter to the seashore. I shall gather up smooth stones off the shingle into my pockets and walk out into the waves. There I will join the voices and hear them clearly; there I will remember all the stories and be forgotten.
Edited together out of various writing prompts from the spring and fall 2023 Madwomen in the Attic fiction workshops. This shares creative roots with through the water and the waves.