A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

It began as all things did: a girl on the shore, terrified and desirous.

“You’re so pretty. You really are. You’re the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. Do you know that?” If she said yes, I do, she was a conceited harpy. If she shook her head and rebuffed the compliment, she was falsely modest, playing coy. It was fae-like trickery. There was no answer that wouldn’t damn her.

It was an eternal feeling, this sense of being unwelcome. No matter where she was, Effy was always afraid she was not wanted. She took a sip of tea. The warmth helped ease some of her discomfort.

There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.

What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned, What a selkie but an unwilling wife, What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both From the gentle tumult of dark waves?

We must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. When men fall into the sea, they drown. When women meet the water, they transform. It becomes vital to ask: is this a metamorphosis, or a homecoming?

“Everything ancient must decay,” he said, and it had the cadence of a song. “A wise man once said thus to me. But a sailor was I—and on my head no fleck of gray—so with all the boldness of my youth, I said: The only enemy is the sea.”

The Fairy King had many forms, and some looked, on the surface, identical. Some days I could not tell if the husband who came to me was the one who would kiss my eyes closed with infinite tenderness, or if he would press me down into our bed and not care that I whimpered. Those were the most difficult days. When I could not tell the kind version of him from the cruel. I wished he would be a serpent, a cloven-footed creature, a winged beast—anything but a man. From

That was the cruelest irony: the more you did to save yourself, the less you became a person worth saving.

She wanted to say I don’t believe you. She wanted to say thank you. She wanted to say tell me more about who I am because I don’t know anymore.

Water finds its way through the smallest spaces and the narrowest cracks. Where the bone meets sinew, where the skin is split. It is treacherous and loving. You can die as easily of thirst as you can of drowning.

“I love you.” Effy pressed her forehead against his. “I love you,” Preston said, voice wavering. “I’m so sorry it’s ruined us both.”

I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me.