Lee Klein: Jrzdvlz

We walked along the flat sheen between shore break and beach until I started toward the house. It was half-consumed by sand, or protected by it like bulwarks against storm seas.

“From that balcony there she waits each night with a lantern,” I said.

“How come no brave soul interprets the light as an alarm, the woman signaling for help as her house sinks into the sand?”

“It is possible she does not exist.”

“Do you believe that?” Larner said.

“We will see if we enter the house.”

“You are brave now.”

“Your company makes me so,” I said.

We walked to what we assumed was a second-story window— no telling how many stories lay beneath the sand. It could have been a tall tower once, only its uppermost reaches now exposed. It must have been glorious.

The windows were shuttered but unlatched. We stepped into the shadows. The floorboards had warped. It smelled musty, briny, like dried seaweed, in places sulfurous. Undulating yellow bands seemed to hang in the air.

“I detect an underlying scent of seagull corpse,” said Larner.

“No one is home,” I said, “but her presence settles on my skin like dense fog.”

“No man senses such things. Consider yourself lucky.”

“Or cursed.”

Upstairs, there was a large open room, empty of everything other than doors that opened on a view of the sea. I cracked one and then the other. Sea air rushed in and Larner’s fear decreased.

“It feels like being on a ship run aground,” he said. “It will sink beneath the surface thanks to our weight.”

“Just an abandoned house on the coast,” I said.

“Maybe the sailor returned and they left for a distant shore?”

“Every night she returned and stood on this balcony, even through the worst storms. If I had imagined her, she must still reside in my mind. If I see her and you do not we will discover her origin.”

“A scientific experiment that only requires a night awaiting the supernatural,” said Larner.

Afternoon sun revealed blue sky. Far over the ocean, tremendous clouds stirred white capes and surf. From the balcony, we watched the shore to the north, waiting for the breakers to assume the shape of a gown. The sun moved behind the house—we would not see it set from where we were. Throughout the afternoon, like a gunship on the horizon, a steel-gray storm—in places black— signaled distress. We did not mention these dark formations or interpret the lightning. We were too far away to hear thunder. We enjoyed its entertainment, thankful it had missed us by miles. The house would have withstood such a storm, protected by the dunes that devoured it. Protected, threatened. It was almost night.

“She should come soon,” I said.

“I hope she brings a sandwich or some salted fish.”

“Can you make it?”

“I can subsist on this.” Larner’s hands cupped either side of a generous midsection. “And you?” “That last rabbit should suffice.”

“We failed to remember flowers, chocolates, trinkets to win her affection.”

“I have nothing to offer except my curiosity,” I said. “And maybe she once somehow heard me imitate her.”

I listened for her song but only heard the primitive rhythm of my heart.

And then I crouched, wings back, head lowered, tail coiled. Larner crouched, too, peering over the shaky banister.

“Quiet now,” I whispered.

“ ’Tis her?”

“Shh. Hear now?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen.”

Larner tilted his head toward what he hoped might be a melody. “Nothing,” he said.

“The side entrance.”

Larner covered his mouth with his hand. He seemed aware that he was crouched on the balcony of a sinking shore house, accompanied by a speaking beast descended from family lore, awaiting the arrival of a headless widow whose song he could not hear thanks to insufficient human senses but that seemed to pervade the air and vibrate my bones. The porch doors were still open. Inside, the house was darker than the moonless night. But then the darkness brightened.

I nudged Larner to the northern corner where we waited. I opened my wings and overwhelmed the salt air with the scent of my leathery flesh.

A white walking gown raising a lantern lit with aromatic oil: it was difficult to tell if she saw us. Larner heard her song now, faint as it was, muffled by the tulle of her dress. Her presence was ghostly, the gown occupied by an apparently gorgeous form, the veil as empty as ever supported by an unseen shape. We stood against the banister, like ants in amber. She held the lantern and did not waver. Entranced, unable to break the spell, we waited for one another to take action. But her unmoving silence sent thoughts reeling. Possessed by her ritual, drawing her lost love from the surf, so completely did she inhabit the past she did not notice that visitors had appeared in the present. I understood her longing. We both searched for a man: she for her husband and me for the one I would have been had I not transformed at birth.

Larner was a detection device who alerted me to the presence of the unusual. “This sight makes you seem common,” he whispered.

I controlled the rush of breath that might have poured from me unrestrained. “I will take that as a compliment.”

“Not only headless,” Larner said, “but handless. The lantern emerges from her sleeves.”

“Animated only by sorrow and desire.”

“Perhaps one of your impressive fingers might poke her?”

“Why should I poke her?” I said.

“You are my protector, are you not?”

“It’s just a dress,” I said.

“Then poke.”

I pulled a weathered post from under the railing and pressed its end toward where a thigh might be. The board dented the dress without resistance.

Larner nodded. I stepped ahead. There was no end to the board’s entry.

“More dress than damsel,” he said.

I scraped the board along the balcony’s floor, scooted it under the dress, and then lifted.

“Raise it higher,” he said.

I raised the dress. The lantern did not waver.

“Now remove the lantern from her grasp,” Larner said.

I gave Larner a look of disappointment.

“You take the lantern,” I said. “At the least movement I will hurl her into the sea.”

A rounded handle emerged from the glass bell of the lantern before it disappeared into the dress’s sleeve. Larner ran his hand along the handle’s edge, held it tight, and yanked, perhaps too hard, expecting resistance. It gave like the gray head of a dandelion.

Larner put down the lamp as the dress’s arm slowly dropped.

“Now what?” he said.

“All these years as she glided along the water I felt we shared a search for innocence lost, she in her dress, pure and serene, me in these wings and weird heron legs, awkward and cursed. I expected to meet her tonight.”

“Then it follows,” Larner said, “that the dress is an outer wear of innocence. Beneath it, your wings and scales can be comfortable and unseen.”

“Are you saying I wear a dress that walks by itself?”

“Is it not possible that you—my dear Mr. Merriweather—are the sailor she seeks?”

I never once thought her lost sailor was someone like me.

“You say you seek innocence,” Larner said. “Here is a garment worn by the pure.”

“But I am not a woman.”

“I ask you, Mr. Merriweather, do you take this gown to be your wife?”

“Oh really now,” I said.

“Until death parts you. And if you cannot die, well, until the dress becomes a yellowed shred of fabric. For now, raise her over your head. The train shall hide your tail as the veil obscures your face.”

His back to the sea, lightning far off, Larner lifted the lantern high and directed me to stand to the right of the dress.