Five

The next night, Merle went out, after dark, as usual.

She had said good night to her father, as usual.

She walked to the top of the meadow, as usual.

She could not see Erik, so she waited.

She waited, and when he still did not appear, she began to grow worried.

Thinking there might have been some misunderstanding, she set off through the meadows by herself, the hem of her dress getting wet once again. She walked the entire length of the meadow, and back, and still she had not found Erik.

Eventually, desperately worried, she decided there was nothing else she could do but to hurry home.

A lonely figure was she, in the cold moonlight, the wind blowing the leaves from the trees in the dark, her wet skirts stroking the night grass.

She stepped to the door of the house, and slipped in, in darkness, and had her foot on the first stair, when suddenly a voice called from the drawing room.

“Daughter.”

A light flickered, and there was her father, sitting in the armchair, by the dying fire.

“What are you doing, daughter?”

Merle came forward, forming some explanation in her head, but then her words fell away.

She saw that her father was holding a pistol. He was pointing it at a figure who sat in the other armchair by the fire.

It was Erik.

Merle gasped. Erik looked at her sadly.

“Tell me,” her father said coldly. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

Merle shook her head.

“I cannot!” she cried. “I cannot do that! I love him! I want to be with him forever.”

Merle’s father stood.

“On the contrary,” he said. “You will never see him again. Isn’t that right?”

This remark he aimed at Erik, who stood also, miserably, looking at the floor.

Merle cried, “No! Erik! What does he mean? Say it isn’t true!”

But Erik shook his head. Yes, it might be true that love will always find a way, but so can hate.

“Your father is right,” Erik said. “I’m sorry, Merle.”

Erik headed for the door, and Merle ran to stop him, but her father stood between them, waving the pistol wildly.

“Father! No!” Merle cried, but her father roared back in her face.

“Go to your room!”

He turned to Erik. “And you! Just go!”

Merle ran upstairs sobbing.

The door closed behind Erik.

Her father was right; that was the last she ever saw of him.

*   *   *

The following day, early in the evening, word came to the village that there had been a death, a drowning.

Erik had sailed as normal, with the other fishermen.

A storm had blown up and they had run for cover at the southern end of Blest, but Erik’s boat had not returned.

Another fisherman reported seeing him in trouble, some way behind the rest of the fleet, which he said was strange, because Erik was the best sailor of them all.

*   *   *

Two days later, Erik’s body washed up on the southern shore, nibbled by the fish that he once caught.

A day after that, his boat was found, or the remains of it, in the shallows.

There were signs that the bottom of the boat had been stoved in, from inside, which again everyone found odd, because it had been well enough the morning he set out to sea; everyone swore to that.