The Hungry Deep

They went down to the sea, and some of them came back again. The ladies of the town knew the waves meant riches for some and doom for others, and they discussed it in their kitchens with each other, weary with the work of keeping house and family in the long months it took for the men to return, or not to return, as was often the case. But some of them came back again, and it was foolish to believe your man wouldn't be among them.

The boys and girls, wearing tattered clothing handed down over seeming generations of their forebears, would run and play in the surf, careful of going too deep and attracting the anger of the ones who lived on below. Many of them had fathers or older brothers who had been taken into the dark crush, who waited now, forever hungry, for their children, or their children's children, to stray too far out and join them. It was just the way of things.

A fair lass or lad might be said to be touched by the sun, but in the dreary shanties on the water's edge, where the families of the divers lived, a different, darker word was muttered. "Shaped by the deep," they whispered of any child dark of mein, which was vanishing few, truth be told. And yet there were some, who differed from their peers in their pale skin and jet-black eyes, who were thought, by the superstitious, to be specially suited to the deep. And who, living at water's edge, was not just a little superstitious?

Maggie Malone's father had gone down to the sea so many times he was an old man when she was born, old before his time. That, said the ladies in their gossip, explained his daughter's form. That he had joined the hungry beneath the waves shortly thereafter was further proof that she was defined by the deep, by the crushing depth beyond which no one dared go. But Maggie, for all her outward appearance, was a sunny child, and if there were whispers, they were quiet ones.

She grew to womanhood, looked after by mother and grandmother, as so many children of the drivers were. The boys would eventually be called to go down to the sea like their fathers, and some would return, enough to keep the population of divers steady, enough to swell the coffers of far-off financiers in far-off capitals of business. The girls would wait, growing older, raising children alone, or together as the case might be, as who among them didn't have a relative or two to share the burden? Maggie was no different than any girl, and it was assumed that she would choose a man, back briefly and gone again too quickly, to be her husband, perhaps give her a child or two, if he was lucky in the deep.

The whispers surrounding her rose in volume as she continued to shun this obvious duty. It wasn't as if no man offered. Even those shaped by the deep, as it couldn't help but be said she was, found suitors, and Maggie was a comely young thing for all her complexion. She greeted each proposal with polite attention but always responded in with a firm negative.

"She'll be an old maid," her mother, the widow Malone, thought, shaking her head sadly. And what was there for a woman alone? It wasn't as if Maggie could hope for something better. No one living at the water's edge had any hope of better. Since time immemorial, the men went down to the sea, and the women waited, and the children grew old and everything smelled of fish.

But Maggie seemed unperturbed by her fate, which was, if the scolds among the ladies of town were to be believed, to be alone forever and die when she had no one to support her. Maggie, it must be said, was unperturbed by many things, so the mutterings of the scolds were unlikely to change that.

What turned the mutterings to shouts was when, one day, Maggie showed up to the work detail about to go to sea, wearing her father's old gear, her charcoal hair shorn close to her scalp like a man. So much like a man was she that her presence at first went unnoticed, until the foreman was counting heads. Even then, she didn't speak up, and it was some time before it was established that she was the new man.

"A woman has no place in the deep," scowled the foreman, already counting the cost of the delay. "Go home and wait, there's a good lass, and leave the men's work to the men."

"I have no man to wait for," said Maggie.

"Then perhaps you should be thinking of that, and not wasting my time with this nonsense."

"Where is the law which says I cannot go?" 

"No law," admitted the foreman, after thinking a moment, a costly moment. "But button your lip and go home all the same. We can't abide your nonsense. There's no facilities for women aboard, and we'll be months out. Think what it'll do to you, lass. We can't stop work for you."

"I don't ask for any different than a man," Maggie said. "And I know my work, same as you. If I were a boy, I'd be a new hand, and so I am one."

But the foreman, thinking of columns of figures rather than people, denied her entry to the ship and there was nothing she could do to make him listen. It was the same with the next party, and the next, until the company put a guard on the pier specifically to turn Maggie Malone away. And that guard's wages had to come from somewhere, or so the ladies of the town said to the widow Malone, in voices which were not quite demands but certainly not requests.

"Maggie, the men go down to the sea," said the widow Malone. "If you want to help them, you'd be best to do the work you can do. Maybe you can mend jackets or some such like. You've no business bothering them."

"But..." began Maggie.

"Maggie, I can't have half the town on my kitchen badgering me for you to leave well enough alone," said her mother firmly, in a voice in parts pleading and forceful. "You'll stay away from the pier, there's a good lass." And no more was said.

Maggie stopped her attempts to join the work details as they shuffled down to the sea. She joined her mother in mending, widow's work to be sure, but it seemed that Maggie was to be a widow before she was a wife. Her hair grew back, slowly but surely. The guard grew lax and then vanished, as the bottom line had to be served. And all seemed to be normal.

But Maggie, in her free moments, walked the shore, and no one could quite fathom what she did. If anyone cared to watch her, she seemed aimless, picking up bits of detritus from the tide line, sometimes stopping to stare for minutes at a time. If anyone listened, they might hear snatches of an odd tune, but who had the time to observe what a strange young woman did in her free time. The suitors dried up, as it seemed fruitless to bargain with her, when all she ever said was no. The ladies of the town only cared that she had found some meaningful employ. No one thought much about her, apart from occasionally finding her odd.

Sometimes the widow Malone would go to her daughter's bedroom at night and find her missing. Sometimes, the next day, Maggie smelled particularly of salt. But the life of a widow is not so idle as to allow for much time for worry, and anyway Maggie always explained that she had been walking on the beach. Sometimes her hair was still damp, but who noticed such things when there was mending to be done?

Children were warned not to go too deep, because the hungry ones below would surely claim their own, but superstitious or not, one grew out of such fancies. So the day that Maggie went down to the seashore and kept walking into the surf, no one was there to watch her. It may be that she strayed out too far. It may be that something called to her. It may be that that's all a bunch of old nonsense, and that tides are tricky things, even for experienced swimmers.

When Maggie didn't return, her mother was sad, but in a lifetime of sadness, what's a little more? There was mending to be done, and after all, folk had been going down to the sea and not returning for time out of mind. She put her grief to the side and only took it up late at night, when all the lights were out and there was no one to judge her tears. She did the same as all the women had been doing since the town was formed, since before that, even, for it is woman's fate to wait and worry and grieve.

And when the hungry deep disgorged its inhabitants on the wider world, and the far-off financiers in their far-off lands trembled at their ledgers, who can say whether Maggie Malone was at the head of the host, a dark fury wreathed in seaweed, eyes like the storm? Who lived to have seen it and report? After all, a woman has no place in the deep.