The Sand and the Sea

Nancy climbed slowly down the steps towards the beach, gazing to where it curved into the unassuming darkness. The light of the moon cast a pale reflection on the advancing tide but wouldn’t save her from snapping an ankle or cracking her skull. Her nightly true crime podcasts had her thinking about her brains getting dashed against rocks and any other manner of tragedy that might befall a young woman late at night.

From halfway down the uneven stone stairway, she could see most of the beach. The moonlight gave her just enough confidence that it was empty. This was not what she wanted. He should be here. He said he would be and she was the fool for believing him. 

The guy literally referred to himself as a Shaman. That should have been enough to end the conversation and walk out of the pub. Fionn would have laughed at her getting herself into a situation like this. The old Fionn. The Fionn she married. He would have left her just enough time for it to be a funny memory before intervening and ensuring no harm befell her.

She didn’t feel unsafe now, but the fact the self-proclaimed Shaman was a no-show made it more likely he was a sexual deviant and this worried her. Something stopped her from turning and ascending the stairs to her car and getting the fuck back to her hotel. She clung to the slim possibility that this guy would turn up and that he wasn’t full of shit.

They had planned to meet in the middle of the beach a quarter past midnight, the moon still low in the sky, and they would have some time to complete ‘the ritual’. She had no idea what the ritual entailed but she knew how trapped she had felt for the past seven months. She needed to see her husband again. 

The Shaman had promised to bring him back. Nancy knew this to be impossible. Even as she walked to the very spot on the beach, the wind whipped up grains of sand around her exposed ankles. Why hadn’t she worn tights? Better question, why hadn’t she dressed for the weather and worn pants? It was cold. 

She knew the answer. She wanted to look good for him. He loved her pale, spindly legs. He said it to her constantly. Not towards the end but in the early days. Those were the good times. Shaking off those thoughts, she turned back towards the sea wall and gauged the distance between it and the water line. She had already taken about forty paces. Another ten should make it halfway and that would be the agreed spot. 

She wasn’t under any illusions that her husband would be coming home with her tonight and that they would continue their life together as it had been before Christmas. Even if that was on offer, she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted anyway. There were things she had said in the last year that she wished she could swallow back down. Years ago, he would place his hands on her shoulders and steady her when her thoughts ran away from her. Those times were long gone.  

She had been reading a lot about energy and healing and old Irish customs and did like the idea of an Otherworld but she didn’t know what to expect tonight. She stood on the spot and shivered down her entire body. 

Nothing. 

She should expect nothing tonight. Even if this drunken lunatic did show up, he wasn’t magic. He couldn’t bring the dead back to life in the same way she couldn’t un-say what she had said. 

While she was still deep in thought on that final conversation, a darkened figure strode towards her. Strode was kind. He stumbled, and as he got closer she saw a naggin of whiskey hanging limply from his hand. 

She had left the pub nearly four hours ago and he clearly had not. What was she thinking trusting a disheveled, probably homeless drunk? She shouldn’t be surprised, she had handed him her last bit of cash, twenty euro, to get another couple of drinks before she left. He had probably turned that into a couple of naggins and was now well and truly polluted. 

But he was here. That was something.

“Are you okay?”

“Besser dan uk-eh, I am wonder-pull,” he said, slurring and swaying his way through a very simple sentence.

Nancy thought about running but she wasn’t scared for her safety. There was a kindness in the Shaman’s eyes that she had noticed earlier and that kindness lingered even as his eyes rolled further back in his head. In the light of the low hanging moon, she decided she was going to see this through, whatever it was. 

“All work, let’s get to right,” he said, with gusto before breaking into hysterics upon realizing his mistake. He drained the naggin and flung it as far away from him as he could. Nancy made a mental note to pick it up when this was done. 

“Why did they,” he paused to burp, “name you Nancy?”

“You mean because nobody my age has that name? I could ask you the same about being a Shaman? They haven’t been around for centuries.”

In truth, Nancy didn’t know why she was called Nancy. She would ask her father and he always had a different answer. He loved Ronald Raegan so named her after his wife. He loved Christy Moore’s version of Nancy Spain. She was conceived on their honeymoon in Nancy, France (she had debunked this one, they went to Turkey). Fionn used to joke that her father fancied himself as Frank Sinatra and named his daughter likewise. 

“Shamans were never in Ireland. You mean Druids.”

“But you call yourself a Shaman?” Nancy was incredulous.

The man tried to focus on her face with a smile. “Druid describes. Shaman sells.” He laughed deeply to himself. “Shall we?”

The Shaman walked about ten yards away from her, sunk his heel deep and dragged it through the sand to create a trench. He kept the ten yard radius around her until he had created a perfect circle, an incredibly impressive feat for a man as stinking drunk as he obviously was. 

“Nancy comes from old Irish. Old, old Irish,” he said, his slur seemingly disappearing on the strong wind that was disturbing what had been a relatively calm beach tonight. 

“You have the look of old Ireland about you. You might have been a Maedbh or a Grainne. I suppose parents don’t know what to expect when they see their baby and just give them the first name they think of.” The man was speaking entirely coherently now, as he had been when she first met him this evening. Nancy couldn’t understand how this was but she was also starting to get nervous about the ritual. “Doesn’t matter if it suits the life that they are about to live. I preferred when they didn’t name the baby until their second birthday. Get to know them a bit and give them a name to suit their destiny.”

The man had pulled a pouch from his long coat and was now walking the circle, spreading what might have been salt, but could just as easily have been the ashes of a dead relative. That would be illegal but she sensed that wouldn’t have been a problem for this man.

“I thought the reason they didn’t name the babies was because there was a good chance they might die?”

“That’s what they want you to think,” he tapped the side of his nose and gave her a wink that was half way to a night’s sleep.  

He had finished spreading the presumed salt and returned the pouch to his coat and was now holding a massive blackthorn stick. He had not entered the beach holding this and there was no way it had been in the vicinity when Nancy arrived. It had to be five foot long, three inches thick and impossibly straight for any piece of naturally growing wood.

“How did you… how is that here?” She asked, her face was screwed up like a pig licking piss off a nettle.

The Shaman double tapped his nose again and gave her another wink. He nudged her aside ever so slightly, and drove the stick into the ground where she had stood. It sunk a solid foot into the sand and stood erect as if it belonged there. Impressive strength from a man who looked just as likely to collapse at any second.

He stepped back a couple of paces from Nancy and performed an exaggerated bow, as if to a Queen.

“We are ready to begin, Queen Nancy,” he announced, rather grandly.

“Okay, so what should I do?”

“Just stay exactly where you are and look at the stick. Never at me, always the stick.”

The Shaman then exited the circle and dropped to his knees, taking a prayer-like stance directly in front of Nancy. It was difficult not to look at him but she did as she was bid and stared at the stick. After a couple of minutes of silence save for the lapping tide and the whipping wind, the Shaman got up and walked around the circle, disappearing from Nancy’s field of vision. She doubled down on the stick as she heard muttering coming from him to her back left. 

Nothing was happening but Nancy was starting to notice the sounds of the distant waves crashing as the tide continued its slow, methodical march back inland. The wind came in less organized bursts, sometimes leaving the beach totally still and others tousling Nancy’s shoulder length hair like her husband used to do on lazy Sunday mornings when he was angling for sex. The muttering behind her had turned into a steady, dull chant that filled the air when the waves did not crash and the wind did not blow.

Nancy could hear the Shaman move again, this time taking up residence to her back right but still beyond her line of sight. There were no words there that Nancy could recognize. It could have been Old Irish or plain gibberish. She unclenched her shoulders and tried to loosen out, again really trying to focus on the blackthorn stick. 

She wasn’t sure if the moon had just gotten brighter or her eyes were fully adjusted to the dark now but what had looked like a perfectly straight blackthorn stick was now riddled with imperfections.

The top of the stick had been worn smooth into an almost perfect dome. Someone had clearly spent years leaning on this stick, the palm of their hand rounding its tough edges day after day for as long as it took.  

The straightness that Nancy had initially seen was hiding a slight bend, not a natural bend from the growth of the branch but one made and moulded from pressure over time. Someone had leant on this stick while climbing hills and mountains, using it to support their weight.

The stick, from top to bottom, contained ugly black bumps where offshoots had tried and failed to sprout from, damaged by frost and animals. They had withered and died and become little nubs of failed potential. 

Nancy had somehow not noticed that, in spite of her staring at the stick, it had come loose in the sand and had been slowly listing to the side. It was leaning so heavily now that the next slight movement would likely break it loose from the sand altogether and it would fall to the ground, ruining whatever was supposed to happen during the Shaman’s ritual. 

Her concentration gone, she looked over her shoulder to see if the Shaman had noticed the stick. As she did so, he began to lurch forward, stumbling rapidly and uncontrollably towards her and falling face first into the sand at the very same moment that the stick finally gave way and became horizontal. 

The day’s alcohol had finally caught up to him, just as Nancy was starting to believe that something supernatural was about to happen here tonight. Not only was the ritual over before it started but she had to figure out how to get the Shaman awake and sober enough to walk off the beach. He likely wouldn’t die out here since it wasn’t a cold night. The tide was creeping ever closer, however, and there was no guarantee he would wake up when it started to lap at his lifeless body either. 

She took a breath and crawled forward to shake him awake. He was face down in the sand with his arse sticking up in the air like a baby might fall asleep. She pushed on his hip with one hand and his body lurched and fell until he was on his side. She readied herself to give his cheek a forceful slap to rouse him but something caused her to let out a horrifying, nearly noiseless gasp that came from deep within and died in her throat. 

“Fionn?” she whimpered, a mixture of fear and disbelief painted across her every pained feature. 

“Fionn, is that really you?” She was crying now and rubbing the face of the man on the sand who had most recently been the Shaman. “How? Fionn, honey?”

Her husband’s eyes opened slowly, and focused with some effort on her face.

“Nance,” he smiled, and she became a puddle on the beach that might have been washed away by the impending ocean.

She cradled him. 

“I don’t… I don’t understand. How are you here?” She cupped his face in her hands gently.

“This isn’t you…” he whispered through dry lips.

“It is me! I’m here! I can’t believe you are.”

“This isn’t…” he paused, swallowing dryly, “about you.”

She looked deeply into his eyes that once belonged to the drunken Shaman and saw the same life in them that was present in the good old days. She sobbed, her body overwhelmed her and she started to shudder uncontrollably. As a heavy, solitary tear fell from her cheek and landed with a splash on his, she whispered, “It’s all my fault. What an evil thing to say to someone.”

“You didn’t cause this.” He was still drowsy and struggling to get his words out. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“I didn’t know you were struggling. Why didn’t you let me help you?”

“I couldn’t see past my own shit.”
“We were so good. We could have gotten past this.”

“But we didn’t.” He said, without emotion. “I have to go now.”

“You can’t go, Fionn. We need to talk more. We need to talk forever.”

With that, he closed his eyes. 

“Fionn? FIONN??” she screamed, and even as she did his face slowly morphed in her hands. Nancy was devoid of words and overflowing with emotion. What the fuck had just happened? 

The Shaman’s eyes opened and he looked at Nancy through clear eyes.

“Well, what a crock of shit that was,” he said, and before Nancy knew what was happening, he was picking himself up off the ground and bidding her good night.

“Wait, where the fuck are you going? Did you not see what just happened?” She stumbled a little, over her words and on the sand as she struggled to rise. “Did what happened not just happen?”

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” He was walking away from the circle but stopped and turned around to clarify. “It never actually has for me but I’ve heard stories. I had a good feeling about this one.” He continued to walk further from Nancy and the circle and the blackthorn back towards the steps that led to the top of the sea wall. 

“I’m sorry, hold the fucking fuck! Where is my husband? Where is Fionn?”

“I’ve already told you, sometimes it works. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see him.”

“I DID SEE HIM! I JUST SAW HIM! YOU WERE HIM!” 

This stopped him in his tracks.

“You saw him?”

“I saw him!”

She stood rooted to the spot, blackthorn at her feet, as she screamed into the wind what had just happened. The Shaman took another step back to her with every sentence, the puzzlement and wonder on his face more evident as he drew closer. Even as she was screaming, she was aware of the tide still making its relentless march back inland behind her. It had reached the trench that made the circle a circle and the trench was beginning to fill with water. 

The Shaman was back in the circle now too, close enough that she could speak softly but she could not stop screaming. He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. Something in this motion caused her to stop mid sentence and look deeply back into his eyes. These eyes that were her husband’s eyes just a few minutes ago. But what were they now? They weren’t quite Fionn’s but they didn’t belong to the drunk Shaman either. These eyes that had been rolling around inside his head now seemed smaller. Murkier.

The Shaman made no sound and spoke no words. He just stood looking deep into her eyes. As he did so, she felt herself searching deeper for air to fill her lungs. She was finding it hard to breathe now. Her ears felt like the inside of a seashell and everything was ocean.

She blinked and realized the Shaman was actually talking. She tried to focus on the movement of his mouth because all she could hear was the gurgle of water in her ears. He was repeating the same four words.

“WE NEED. TO LEAVE! WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE!” She looked down at her feet. Water rushed around them, up to her ankles before receding rapidly and exposing the remnants of the trench that created the circle.

“Nancy, we have to go. We need to get off this beach.” He turned and started to walk quickly, but stopped again after he had stepped gingerly over the trench and out of the circle. Nancy was not following. She had come half way but had stopped and was looking down again at the trench. 

“Nancy, come on. That tide is coming in fast. We need to leave.”
“I don’t think I can. He might still be here.”

“He’s gone. He’s not coming back. If you stay, you’re gone too.”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “It’s all my fault.”

“You need to get out of this circle. You need to get off this beach.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You can, Nance,” he pleaded, holding the large blackthorn out towards her to grab on to. “You can do it.”

Something about this action caused her to obey. She put a hand on the blackthorn and let him drag her towards him and together they walked out of the water to drier sand. Something triggered in Nancy’s brain and she remembered the Shaman had thrown his empty naggin away. She didn’t want that getting dragged out to sea. Breaking away from his grip, she went over to where she thought it might have landed.

The moon was still shining brightly down, higher in the sky now, and she hoped it would shine off the glass of the little bottle to give her its whereabouts. It didn’t and she fumbled around looking but the beach was clear. She looked back to where the Shaman had been, assuming he would have waited or followed her but he was nowhere to be seen now. He had gone to such great lengths to get her out of the water and now he just disappeared? She still had questions for him.

She forgot about the naggin and ran towards the steps, hoping to catch the Shaman before he got any further. 

By the time she got up the steps to the top of the sea wall, she was out of breath. Bent down with her hands on her knees, she looked out across the small car park. The street lights on the road cast enough light to be able to see everything between where she stood and the road itself. He was nowhere to be seen. Surely he couldn’t have disappeared that quickly. How long had she been looking for the naggin?

Trying to figure out her next move, she knew she needed to get to her car and get these wet socks off before she caught a cold. Sticking her hand in her pocket to fish out her car keys, her hand crumpled a piece of paper that she wasn’t expecting to be there. She dug her hand in deeper and wrapped it around the paper. Pulling it out, she realized it was cash. A crumpled twenty euro note.

The twenty trembled between the fingers of her right hand as she grasped the thick blackthorn firmly in her left. She turned back towards the beach. Wet sand glistened where the water had just retreated. The moon slipped behind a cloud.