The Lovers of Porthangwartha

Her
“I am thine.”

We spent every night in that cove, where the moonlight pooled like spilt milk, suspended in time. He smelt like whiskey and salt water, briny, like the sea had laid claim to him long before I did. There was something stirring in the way he looked at me, something deep and pulling. I loved him with a kind of hunger I couldn’t name.

 
Him
“Thou art mine.”

She refused to believe that I had to leave. My throat seized as I told her I was getting the next ship out. I held her close, resting my head on her chest, feeling it rise and fall. We made a vow: we would meet again in that same cove, at that same hour, on that same day, in three years’ time.

Her
“Beyond control.”

I waited for him like a fool. The letters never came, not one, no matter how long I lingered by the front door. The floorboards wore thin beneath my feet. I kept my heart tethered to his until it choked and mutated around his memory. Every full moon became a punishment; I’d go to the cove and watch the tide claw up the rocks, as slow and certain as grief.

Him
“In the wave.”

I hadn’t forgotten our promise. In fact, the thought of seeing her was the only thing warding off the dark. The sea took me quick. One moment the ship was going over, the next, silence. Then water seeped into my lungs, filling every gap, swallowing me whole. The waves don’t keep time the way we do, but they remember. The current carried me, slow and sure, westward. Homeward.

Her
“Be the grave.”

Three years to the night. I went to the cove, even though I told myself I wouldn’t. I crept across the beach. Every shadow seemed to twitch, every wave hissed and spluttered as it bit at my ankles. I waited. The tide was high - higher than I’d ever seen it.

Him
“Of heart and soul.”

There she was. She almost looked the same, but she now carried a hollowness with her - one I felt etched into my own eyes. Pale, thin, half-gone already, but still the girl I loved. We didn’t notice the tide, how it coiled around us, claiming its due. I reached out for her as the waves writhed up to my ribs. She didn’t move, I didn’t either. The current pulled. Her lips were cold. Her hand tightened around mine, and the water dragged us under.

Days later, the woman’s body washed up on shore, eyes half-open, as if still searching for him. Word soon reached the village that the man had died that very night, in a foreign land. They say if you go down to the cove on a full moon, you’ll still see them. Ghostly, pale figures, hands clasped, waiting in the shallows. Some still swear they hear a woman’s scream.

The cove is now known as Lover’s Cove, a name spoken softly, as if not to wake the dead.