The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

These waters are haunted, the seamen still say—and they’re right.

I’ve glimpsed my own future in those leaves many times: a boy blowing in from across the sea, shipwrecked on the island. His heart beating wildly in his chest, his skin made of sand and wind. And my heart unable to resist. It’s the same future I’ve seen in every cup of tea since I was five, when my mom first taught me to decipher leaves. Your fate lies at the bottom of a teacup, she had often whispered to me before shooing me off to bed.

I can feel it in the air, in the spray of the sea, in the hollow spaces between raindrops. The sisters are coming.

On weekends, sometimes we’ll sneak beers or a half-finished bottle of white wine from her parents’ fridge then get buzzed while stretched out on her bedroom floor listening to music—lately it’s been country hits, our most recent obsession—and flipping through last year’s yearbook, speculating about who’s going to hook up this year and who might be inhabited by a Swan sister come summer.

I take a single step into the water—I have to go in after her. I don’t have a choice.

“Most guys aren’t so chivalrous around here.” I rub my palms together, trying to warm them, my fingers cold to the bone. “The town might be required to give you a parade.” He smiles full and big for the first time, a softness in his eyes. “The hero requirements in this town must be pretty low.” “We just really like parades.”

“On the first of June the summer after the sisters were drowned,” I begin, staring at the flames working their way through the dry beach wood, “locals heard singing from the harbor. People thought they were imagining it, that it was only the horns of passing ships echoing off the ocean’s surface, or the seagulls crying, or a trick of the wind. But over the next few days, three girls were lured into the water, wading out into the sea until they sank all the way under. The Swan sisters needed bodies to inhabit. And one by one, Marguerite, Aurora, and Hazel Swan slipped back into human form, disguised as local girls who emerged from the harbor, but not as themselves.”

This is what cajoles the weak-hearted from sleep, pulls them out of bed and beckons them down to the shore. Like fingers wrapped around their throats, it drags them into the deepest part of the bay among the wreckage of ships long abandoned, pulling them under until the air spills from their lungs and a new thing can slip inside.

While Marguerite liked older men with money and power, Aurora fell for boys who others said couldn’t be seduced—she liked a challenge, typically falling for more than one boy at a time. Hazel was more particular. Precise. She didn’t delight in the affection of numerous men, like her sisters, yet they adored her anyway, a trail of heartbroken boys often left in her wake.

I stand at the dresser, not meeting my own gaze in the mirror on the wall, running my fingers over a meager collection of things.

“Have you ever been in love before?” Bo braves to ask. I look back at him, absorbing the drowsy slant of his eyes. “Once,” I confess, the four-letter word spilling out. It’s something I don’t like to talk about—with anyone.

Hazel Swan could often be found whispering wishes onto a blood moon, her lips as swift as a hummingbird in flight. She enchanted the moon, wishing for things she craved—a real love to wipe all the others away.

She looks intrigued, and her head tilts to the left. “You say it like we have a choice.” “What if we do?” “Don’t forget,” she says crisply, “it’s your fault we ended up like this in the first place.”

Neither Aurora nor Marguerite Swan ever made it back into the water. Because at eleven fifty-four, their sister Hazel Swan dove into the sea and drowned herself, severing the two-centuries-long curse in a single act of sacrifice.