The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. —Loren Eiseley

“No thinking, just doing. When you think about things too long, you just talk yourself out of them.”

I have this sense that someday we won’t even remember why we were friends in the first place. She will float away like a brightly colored bird living in the wrong part of the world, and I will stay behind, gray-feathered and sodden and wingless.

It starts as a low croon that rolls in with the tide, a sound so faint it might just be the wind blowing through the clapboard shutters, through the portholes of docked fishing boats, and into narrow cracks along sagging doorways. But after the first night, the harmony of voices becomes undeniable. An enchanting hymn sailing over the water’s surface, cool and soft and alluring. The Swan sisters have awakened.

“Once a Swan sister has whispered into your ear, promised the touch of her skin, you can’t resist her. She will lure you into the water then pull you under until the life spills out of you.”

Perhaps we all have some oddity, some strangeness we keep hidden along our edges, things we see that we can’t explain, things we wish for, things we run from.

The wind is constant. It howls and tears at siding and rips shingles from roofs. It brings rain and salt air, and in the winter sometimes it brings snow. But for a time each spring, it carries in the lurid and seductive voices of three sisters held captive by the sea, aching to draw out the girls of Sparrow. From the black waters of the harbor, their song sinks into dreams, permeates the brittle grass that grows along steep cliffs and rotting homes. It settles into the stones that hold up the lighthouse; it floats and swirls in the air until it’s all you can taste and breathe. 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. This is how they do it—how the sisters are freed from their brackish grave. They steal three bodies and make them their own. And this season, they do it swiftly.

An abrupt hush breaks over the island and sends a quick chill across the nape of my neck. The singing has stopped. Bo takes a step closer to the edge of the cliff, like he’s straining to hear what is no longer there. “It’s gone,” he says. “The sisters have all found bodies.” The words seem pulled from my throat. The quiet settles between each of my ribs, it expands my lungs, it reminds me of what’s to come. “They’ve all returned.” I close my eyes, focusing on the silence. It’s the fastest it’s ever happened before. Now the drowning will begin.

We wait for death. We hold our breath. We know it’s coming, and still we flinch when it claws at our throats and pulls us under. —Plaque located on the stone bench on Ocean Avenue, facing the harbor (commissioned in 1925)

“There’re always reasons to stay,” he says. “You just need to find one reason to leave.”

Four weeks later, on the summer solstice of 1823—a day chosen by the townspeople because a solstice was said to guarantee a witch’s death—the three sisters were drowned for their accused witchery. Marguerite was the oldest at nineteen on the day of her death, Aurora eighteen, Hazel seventeen. Born on the same day. Died on the same day.

Love is an enchantress—devious and wild. It sneaks up behind you, soft and gentle and quiet, just before it slits your throat.

I might love him. And it has tilted my universe off center, the frayed edges of my life starting to unravel. Loving someone is dangerous. It gives you something to lose.

Magic is not always formed from words, from cauldrons brewing spices or black cats strolling down dark alleys. Some curses are manifested from desire or injustice.

But magic was not always so linear. It was born from odium. From love. From revenge.

If only love were so easily conjured, there wouldn’t be so many broken hearts,

Death is not a fire, death is a cold so fierce it feels like it will peel the skin away from your bones.

All these years, my sisters sought revenge for their own death, but I wanted revenge for Owen’s. He sacrificed himself to try to save me, maybe because he felt he had betrayed me—for the trial, for confessing to having seen the mark of a witch on my skin. He believed he caused my death. But I caused his. I should have died that day—I should have drowned. But I didn’t. And I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened to him. For the life we never got to have.

“I know you’re not my Penny.” My eyes snap to hers, my heart drops down into my kneecaps. “Excuse me?” “I’ve known all along.” I start to clear my throat but can’t; my entire body has dried up and petrified. “I . . . ,” I begin, but nothing else comes out. “She’s my daughter,” she adds, her voice settling into a cool pace that wavers against the threat of tears. “I knew the moment she became something else . . . when she became you.”

When the sky is gray and mournful and the fishermen push out beyond the cape through the fog, they will look up to the island and say a prayer—for good winds and full nets. They say a prayer to her, the girl they often see standing on the cliff’s edge, the girl who was drowned long ago but returned again and again, white gown catching in the wind. And during harvest in early spring, when the island smells sweet and bursting with sunlight, a figure can be seen wandering the rows, examining the trees. She is still there. An apparition caught in time, the ghost of a girl who lived longer than she ever should have, who dared to fall in love. Who lingers still. Not because of revenge. Not because she’s looking for atonement in the seams and shadows of the town. But because this is where she belongs, rooted where she first came ashore two centuries ago. This land is hers. Damp and moss green and salt winds. She is made of these things. And they are made of her—the same sinew and string. Death cannot strip her of this place. She belongs where the land meets the sea. She belongs with him. In those quiet moments when she stirs the new spring leaves on the apple trees, when she watches Bo moving down the rows, his eyes bent away from the afternoon sun, his hands rough with the soil, she leans in close—so close she can recall the warmth of his skin, his hands against her flesh—and she whispers against his ear, I love you still. And when he feels the wind flutter against his neck, the...