by Thea Mair

She floats on the moonlit surface of the sea, the thick, silver bands of light bouncing off her near-translucent skin. She is a lone star in the endless, dark blue void.

The Island is restful tonight. No one will come to search for her. The fishermen will have gone to bed hours ago and will not set out to the harbor for hours yet to come. The only house nearby, her own, lies dark on the clifftop, the shadowy bodies of skuas, great grey specters in the sky, circling above. A breeze skirts over the Island from the East and carries her gently out of the bay, away from her home, away from her life.

When painting, she has often sought to capture the feeling of the tide tugging amiably at her hair, of the water spilling over the soft skin of her belly, wrapping itself around her limbs. She wonders now, drifting peacefully out into the night, how she ever thought she could. It is a special brand of magic, the Island's own, and it is inimitable. She hopes - she plans - to spend eternity this way.

It is strange, but she has always wondered whether the magic of the place was real. She has always known of the strange aura to the place, it is true, and always joined her fellow islanders in their ritualistic, almost slavish honoring of the tides. An oil torch lit on the long stretch of beach marked low tide and a gift of bog myrtle and heather was offered to the high tide. But she had never understood why. Never felt the fear that she had seen so clearly in the eyes of the old women that stood vigil on the shore every evening, pacing up and down in the roiling foam, watching the flickering flame of the torch or the bursts of bright yellow and purple as the meagre little bouquets were submerged in the surf.

Now though, under the stars and seabirds, she feels it in her very toes. Tonight, no wildflowers float in the water, though the tide is as high as ever. Perhaps she is the offering. The longer she lies here, weightless in the water, the firmer the change takes hold. Soon she will not need air to breathe at all. She feels the shift of the current as she passes the boundary of the bay.

She fancies that she can hear a voice from above on the clifftop as if from a far greater distance. If she were on dry land, in daylight, she would have recognized the shrill panic in that voice. If her eyes were not so full of the sky, she might even have seen the black silhouette of a man set out against the lime-washed white of her cottage.

It is peaceful here amongst the waves. The Island must know what is right for her or else it would not have called.

Her mind empties of all but the magnetic pull of the tide. A pleasant sensation of pressure caresses her body as the weight of the water begins to assert itself upon her. Soon, the panicked shouts from the clifftop slip away, leaving behind only the coursing, pulsing, living thing that blocks her ears and stings her throat and forms a cloudy film across her eyes.

She does not struggle as the water begins to immerse her, waves washing her face with salt, flooding her mouth and nose. She sinks, her pale hair streaming like a banner in front of her, round arms still outstretched towards the moon. The depths are calling, calling her and she cannot resist.

She feels no fear as the sea takes her. For she knows it is only the beginning. How lovely it has been to be a woman, she thinks as her form sinks out of sight. But how lovely it will feel to be more.