On this island, women wait.

It’s what they were made to do. Each morning, the sun warms the white-and-blue houses and, soft-boiled eggs, the doors crack. One by one the women trot out, sit on cattail stools outside their doors. Hair neatly tucked under headscarves, needlelace dancing between their fingers, banter and song flying around. Many a tourist has walked this cobbled street and seen them like this, sun-kissed and picture-perfect, lightly wrapped in viscous Mediterranean mystique. My grandmother was one of them and my mother too. Island daughters, their husbands away forever at sea.

On this island, women have always waited—and, as a sidenote, lived. Always lived alone. Whenever their men returned, they were visitors from another world. And when the sea eventually claimed them, the women still waited. Until the sun went down and they went back into their houses. Until they died in their sleep like fishes.

When you come back the first time, you have a son. “Definitely a son,” Pilgrim Shark, our eldest wife, rules the moment the little tadpole of a creature opens his eyes and something in me stirs, poking my insides with the shape of worry and disappointment. A feeling at its strongest only at that moment—then slowly fades away. When you come back, this is simply your son: growing quicker than a weed, round fat swelling under every stretch of skin.

Baby in my arms, I go down to the port to find you. The ship is a dark ghost against the sun. The loot, unnerving: basketfuls of luscious white fish and glistening molluscs, pale tentacles slithering one on top of the other. This is the stuff we trade our lives for: the treasures of the deep sea. Something stirs in me anew, like hate, like desire. That too, goes numb after a while.

You take me in your arms with a timid smile. The sun warms our backs. You have aged a decade, yet you’ve been away only for a few months. It’s alright. That’s what the sea does to you.

At home, you have no sea tales to share and I have no village news to tell. I serve white fish kakaviá and you stare at it for a while. “It’s what the village wives make for your return,” I explain. “Only a little of the white fish in it. For good luck.” When we were young, if we remember anything at all of that hazy time, we never really noticed what our fathers ate when they came home. Now that I am a wife, I do. All night we prepared the broth on the beach, taking turns to stir. Our hair was smoked with the aromas of boiling fish entrails. When the ship arrived, Pilgrim Shark and her daughters chose some of the fish and a couple of octopuses and added them to the large pot. On my way home, I picked up our share.

“It looks too white.” You draw a spoonful then let it drop back into the soup—creamy and thick it splashes back in with a little trickling sound. I lick my teeth without opening my mouth. I swallow.

“Don’t be fooled.” My voice comes out parched. “The rest is flour. From the mainland.”

I must be looking at you too eagerly because you avert your eyes and push the bowl away. “You know what, I’m tired of fish. I might eat later.”

My shoulders hunch but I don’t lose hope. Mother said some things take time. “Of course. Come, let’s sit.”

The bench is below the open window, dressed with blue and white crochet spreads on top of old fishing nets. The little basil pot you gave me before you left is still there. It fills the whole room with sweet grassiness. I sit, you put your head on my lap. My fingers tangled between your hair, a familiar texture. This time your skull feels softer, or maybe my fingertips are harder. I can’t tell.

I have tasted my destiny. I know what I must do.

For now, I wait.

On my wedding day I am soapy foam. My mother and aunts have made me a dress of gauze and lace, my hair is full of nightflowers and jasmine. You look as beautiful: in your shirt and vest and boots and vráka, you are dressed up the part, you are, from now on, definitely a man. “Boy or girl is in the eye, not the groin,” as the saying goes. My eyes are like my mother’s; yours like your father’s. Our wedding is decided on our sixth birthday.

But I have grown up to love you, my friend, my soon-to-be husband, and now we take our places at the chapel. On the hill, half-hidden between pines, is the only church on the island, a palimpsest of belief. The old saints are faded so much we don’t remember them anymore. New saints drawn over them in charcoal and madder and gold-dust halos, the only saints that ever existed: the sea with all its fish and shellfish, with all its oil spills and poisonous seaweed. And shadowing them all, the only goddess of those who live on the coasts and islands of this place: Zarghána, the two-tailed ghorghóna of undulating hair and fish eyes, holding a trident in one hand and a ship with all its sailors in the other.

On this island, women wait. Because all the men are truly married to her.

I look at the murals in the candlelight and you brush my hand lightly. Our relatives wait, eyes blinking quietly in the dark, and it is time for the ceremony. This island has no priest because the men are so few and they all need to go to sea. Pilgrim Shark dons the black habit of the church. For however long she wears it she becomes a man and an ordained one too. “Jonas, dance. The virgin has a whole god in her belly,” Priest Shark sings in octatonic, breaking seaweed bread and calling the names of prophets that matter little. “Jonas, dance no more,” she sings towards the end. “Your legs are scales; your heart is sponge. Go back to the belly of the whale where you belong.”

“There are no whales anymore,” I say nervously after the ceremony has ended. We dine on the finest kakaviá we’ll ever eat, a fish soup made of stuff we do not eat, only sell. It’s the flesh of the softest fish, creamy and white like a funeral pyre. Its briny wobbliness against my palate feels like sin.

I am sitting below the drawing of a blue whale: it used to be a living creature, now ascended to heaven as saint. Maybe that’s where all the men go when the sea claims them. Zarghána looks at me from her mural eyes. No matter where I am, she always stares.

“No prophets anymore either,” my mother says, chewing on a pale tentacle. She smiles and her teeth flash white in the dark.

As soon as our wedding night passes, you leave on a boat. It is when I am shown the secrets of this island. Mother tells me it’s what every woman goes through. Every woman who must learn how to wait.

“Waiting is piety,” she always said. “It is honour. It is devotion. We always wait, no matter what happens.”

Men have always been away. On war ships, on trade ships, on fishing boats. The sea is their true household, Zarghána is their wife. But they used to return. Some died in the water, yes, but if they were lucky to make enough money, they came back and never left again. Some could still hear a calling, sometimes, the whirl of the ocean drawing them back on the deck, but they had families and children they had barely seen grow up, and senior parents who would soon die—all the things that chain you back to shore.

The sea is a dark, oily mass. Most of its creatures only exist in murals now, beatific and sanctified, golden halos encircling them. Those that do exist are full of poisons. But the men on this island know how to go where the fish is still pure and breathe air and saltwater. The men on this island earn a pretty penny from the despots of the Yerakári mountain in the mainland, who send their servants down to the shores to buy fresh fish for banquets. The men on this island fish to keep everyone afloat, but the price is their lives.

“Do we keep on waiting even if our husbands return flat inside coffins?” I ask once.

“There are no coffins at sea,” Mother says. “Only water. Your husband might one day return. You can never know. You wait.”

We marry only once. Lovers are unimportant and, probably, everyone’s had several, but there’s only one husband to each wife and the only thing this means is: the one who goes to the sea and the one who waits.

“I waited a long time for your father. A long, long time. The sea claimed him, yet I still wait.” Mother smiles, a sad smile, a strange smile. Somehow, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time. “Tonight, you will learn all you need to know. Your world will be born again.”

“What else is there to know? She eats them all. The destiny of man is the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the sea is the belly of Zarghána.”

“But this is not your destiny,” Mother says.

“What is it, then? Waiting?”

“For now, yes. You wait, and so does your destiny. Until you meet halfway.”

The second time you have a daughter.

You don’t bother with her—all you need is to see the eyes. You don’t bother with any of us; you have already become a stranger.

This time you eat a little of the soup. A couple of spoonfuls but, as you do, it sends shivers down my spine. You stop all of a sudden, looking confused, mildly disgusted even.

That night you whisper between my hair: “I think I saw her. Saw the Zarghána.”

My fingertips are definitely feeling tougher this time, and I resist the urge to pinch your soft mollusc skin until it turns blue. For the first time in a long, long time, I can feel an emotion sharp like an urchin needle. For a few moments I am burning with fear, excitement, jealousy, horror. It’s blown away like a candle but it was so pointy and vivid I will never forget it was there for a while.

“What’s she like?” I ask, my voice a little more than a whisper.

“Oh. I don’t even know.” There’s pain in your words—or something like that. “Not sure I truly saw her, but the feeling. I had that feeling. Maybe I saw her in my dreams. She’s…massive. Like a white whale. She could crush you in her hand and let you drop like sand, carried away by the wind. Terrible. Terrible.”

“Did you see her face?” I ask and I can feel my heart beating fast.

“No. No. I only saw her back. I remember a black mass of seaweed braised in petrol, flowing like a river, like hair. No, I didn’t see her face. Perhaps if she had seen me I would have dropped dead.”

“Perhaps. But you’re here now. Hush.”

I rock you to sleep like one of my babies. When you go away again, some lingering emotions remain in me. Some doubt. Mother said there’ll always be doubts.

“Mother. Do we keep on waiting even if we have seen the dead bodies of our husbands with our own eyes?”

This time Mother does not say something like you never get to see the dead bodies, they’re all lost at sea. She simply says, “We do.”

“Why?”

 “Because there’s nothing left to do. We do not belong to us. We are of the island. And the island is of the sea. You should know this by now.”

I know a few things by now: what destiny tastes like, what lives at the bottom of the sea. How your emotions, your memories, start to leave you little by little, and one day you wake up as someone else.

I should know this by now, but there’s a part of me that tries to forget it: a small glass shard on the beach, lost among thousands of pebbles. And yet, still reflecting light.

When we marry, when you leave for the first time, I am shown the secrets of this island. Mother tells me it’s what every woman goes through. Every woman who must learn how to wait.

The night sky is full of stars. I seek the Traveller and the Sea Eagle, all the constellations that will guide you home. My hair still carries the smells of wedding flowers and my skin, the odour of your body. Mother walks ahead, my aunts behind me, past the empty cobbled stone and to the beach. Our feet rustle the sand; the waves brush our toes.

Mother speaks. “We have a duty to this island and to our husbands. We have sacred promises to honour. You didn’t know about this before, but now is the time. You are a wife now. Tonight, you become one of us.”

Farther down the beach there’s talk, laughter, song. A bonfire is burning, and I see nearly all the wives of the village gathered here: for me, for my initiation to the sisterhood. I am anxious and underprepared—not dressed properly, not knowing anything about what’s required of me.

“Hush, don’t worry,” Mother says. “You were made for this.”

Pilgrim Shark is there, taller than the rest, a crown of seaweed on her head. Just like she dons the priest’s habit and becomes a priest of the church, she now wears this headdress like the priestess of another time. Her arms are wide open in welcome.

“Blessed be, my child. You have your mother’s eyes.”

I look all around me: eyes, eyes watching me. My mother, my aunts, Priestess Shark, every other wife. They all have the same eyes.

This must mean I have them too. I never really noticed before. Realizing that only now makes me wobbly, my grip on reality uncertain.

“She has chosen you,” Priestess Shark says, reading my thoughts. “At birth. She has chosen you as daughter.”

Part of me knows exactly what she is talking about. And part of me is completely oblivious to it, as it has been my entire life.

She takes my hand and only then I notice it is shaking. “You are nervous,” she says with a smile. A very odd smile. “Don’t be.”

She leads me deep into the congregation of wives who softly float away as we pass through them. The waves stop crushing. The silence is terrifying.

Between the wives a big pot of broth is simmering in low fire. The smell of fish—of foul, rotting fish—comes from everywhere. My stomach turns.

Priestess Shark is given a ladle and softly stirs with one hand, the other never leaving mine. It is now clear to me that I do not wish to be here. This is wrong. Everything is wrong.

“We are her,” Priestess Shark says and the wives repeat the words in a soft murmur all around me. “She is us. She is the sea. We live, we wait, we die. We do her bidding and claim her debt.”

Priestess Shark lifts the ladle, now full of soup. I look over my shoulder, seeking Mother. I draw my hand away but she grips it tightly—so tightly, a rock wrapped around me. I seek Mother again and I can’t find her.

“It is time, my child,” Priestess Shark says. “Time to taste your destiny.” She is now facing me, those huge round eyes looking into my very soul. The ladle is closer to my mouth and the stench is unbearable. The soup is dark, almost black, shiny under the stars. Something moves in it. Something looking at me.

“I don’t want to! Mother!” I try to wiggle my arm free but Priestess Shark’s won’t budge. It’s like she’s a statue: completely inhuman, a creature made of rock and sand, only looking like a person.

Again, I seek her, through the wives, through their eyes. I find my mother. She is just like everyone else, although she smiles.

A smile full of narrow sharp teeth.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Priestess Shark echoes Mother’s past advice. “This is your destiny. Some are the hunters in this world, some are the hunted. We have a duty. This is it. Do not resist.”

The stench is so nauseating now that I retch on my feet. I am on my knees, hand still trapped inside a rock. I close my eyes for the last time, drawing the curtain on the world around me—a luxury I’ll never have again. A piece of wood between my lips and the black syrupy soup pours into my mouth. A sticky river of dead things squirming with unholy life. They end up inside me, I can feel their tiny movements, I can even feel some of them moving lower towards my belly, ready to take their place in a dark corner and build themselves a womb.

The nausea starts to succumb. I am forgotten. The wives around me rustle and move to take their turn on the ladle, to taste the soup.

“Every moon, we eat her flesh,” Priestess Shark says, half-explaining, half-reciting a ritual. “We serve it to our husbands when they arrive. We draw them closer. We open their hearts. We prepare them. And we wait.”

When I open my eyes, I am lying on the beach and the stars are the first thing I see in my new existence. I know I will never close these eyes again. The world undulates, becomes warped at the corners. The world becomes quieter, a constant hum in my ears drowning every other sound.

My tongue thrashes inside my mouth, fish on a bait. Glides against needles, summons salty spit. I swallow and it’s iron and fat.

Delicious.

“Now you have tasted it.” It’s Mother’s voice. She has kneeled beside me, face hovering above mine, offering an arm. “Now you know what you must do.”

She doesn’t blink.

She never did.

The last time you’re home, I know you shouldn’t be here at all.

You know it too. Ragged and torn, but alive, you have the air of a beast about you. I find you on the beach, your fingernails stuffed with rust, your forehead peeling, your lips cracked and lined with reddish dirt and stains. I’ve seen fishgut that looked better than you do now.

You wrap your arms around me, the recognition still there, still unbroken. I respond with a soft touch on your back, the blood that pounds beneath the skin reverberating. “Come inside,” I simply say and walk you home.

Silently we walk past the wives. They all sit outside their doors, waiting. They look at you with round eyes, you look back, seeking something. When our eyes meet you stop for a moment: a flash of your old self is still there; the sea hasn’t completely changed you, perhaps. “Where are the children?” you ask and I’m not sure if you mean our children or all of them, but it matters little.

“At school, where else? Come inside.”

I wash you and dress you and feed you kakaviá: you devour it, slurp so loud you must have woken a giant. My heart beats fast with ecstasy—never before have you accepted it so gladly. Never before have you come so near me. I sit on the bench of fish nets and you lay your head on my lap.

You won’t speak of what you saw out there. You won’t say why you’re the only one to return. What happened to your crewmates will never be said out loud.

But hush, this is not the time. I am so close to you I can hear everything in my mind. This is the time to close your eyes and travel like driftwood on a wave.

When you open your eyes again, it is nightfall. The stars are out. Your eyes are glass mirrors. On their surface, two eyes like saucers are reflected. In their depths, something stirs with sudden dread.

“Hush. This is not the time.” On their surface, a smile full of teeth like needles.

Hush.

This is the time to close your eyes and travel to the bottom of the sea, where we all belong.

On this island, women wait.

It’s what we were made to do. Each morning, the sun warms the white-and-blue houses. Like rotten eggs, the doors crack with a stench. One by one we float out. Hair cascades on our shoulders like baleen. From between our tattered dresses, thick skin gleams silver where a nipple or a thigh was. Hands crossed over our knees, we do nothing but wait.

We all have the same eyes: round and lidless, they never close. They watch. They’ve always watched.

No tourist walks the cobbled streets anymore. Whenever our men return, we gently take them underwater. Deeper, deeper. And when the sea in us eventually claims them, we wipe our mouths clean of blood and gut, wash our aprons back to foam white. Perhaps a tear was shed from those unblinking eyes. But fish can’t weep.

And we still wait.

Until the sun goes down and we go back into the house.

Until we sleep with eyes open, the whir of the ocean forever a kiss in our ears.

© 2024 Eleanna Castroianni