The Fisherwoman’s Tale
by Lisa Lahey
The fisherwoman, Enid, lived alone in a log house on a slate foundation. Her dark hut was a single room with a wood stove, her bed, and a table and chair. There was a small mirror just large enough for Enid to see her face, but she seldom glanced into it. A fishing line hung from one side of the ceiling to the other. A draft whistled continuously through a tiny window framed in plain linen drapes. Enid salted and hung up each day’s catch to dry the fish over a fire that crackled in the wood stove.
Each day, Enid fished and gathered berries, grew a meagre garden, and set traps for wild hare, but the traps often remained empty. When she fished close to shore, she squatted on her haunches at the edge of the lake, digging through bullrushes and weeds, seeking crayfish. When she finished hunting for smaller prey, she stood and clung to the edge of a net and, its corners weighted with stones, she threw it into the lake. It unfolded and landed over anything that had swum beneath it. Enid hauled in her net, and sometimes it had a flounder or a bass inside. Other times, it had nothing.
Years ago, Enid lived in a picturesque village with a low populace. An intelligent girl, Enid worked as an alchemist. She was highly respected as the village medicine woman and healed every sickness she could, with or without pay from the villagers. Enid was more concerned with healing the sick than filling her coffers.
Although she was a successful alchemist, she was homely and awkward. Enid made few friends and had no husband. Families flourished in the village, but no one came calling for her. She became so lonely that it was a laborious task merely to rise from bed in the morning. Over time, she stopped preparing medicines for the villagers, and her garden fell into disrepair.
* * *
Alone in her fishing hut by the lake, Enid prepared each day’s meal by scraping the scales from the fish she caught, skinning it, and slicing it in half. She placed it into a wrought-iron pan and cooked it on the wood stove. The smell of cooked bass filled the air, and her mouth watered. Enid devoured her dinner along with a thick, hard piece of handmade bread, and washed it down with a fermented juice made from wild berries grown in her garden. Had she not been so lonely, Enid would have been content, for her needs were simple.
Long ago, she’d learned the price that extravagance could demand from a woman. A wealthy, but lecherous man finally came calling for her. Enid was a trusting woman and didn’t know that he played upon her loneliness. He was also her first suitor, and she was grateful for his attention. The man visited her with linens, food and other niceties. So skillful was he in seducing Enid, that it was easy to fall prey to his carnal desires. Within a month of their tryst, Enid discovered she was pregnant. She expected him to wed her, but the man laughed at marrying such an ugly wife, and he abandoned her.
Over time, the girl’s belly rounded until it became impossible to hide her pregnancy from the villagers. Despite all the care the girl had shown the village over the years, the villagers branded her a harlot, and turned their backs on her. They agreed that her pregnancy was the devil’s work.
Racked with shame, Enid packed her belongings and left the village. Broken-hearted and empty in body and spirit, she walked over rough terrain for many miles, her feet blistering and her swollen legs aching. At night, Enid crawled beneath trees and inside abandoned animal dens to sleep. After many weeks, she found an abandoned fishing hut and it was there that she made her home. It had all the amenities she needed and, even though she was utterly isolated, she was grateful to have found it. Enid settled into the little house and became a skilled fisherwoman.
* * *
Years passed, and some nights Enid cried herself to sleep, asking God to help her survive another day all alone. Then, one morning, when she cast her net into the lake, it fell to the bottom. She tugged on it and felt a small weight inside it. As she pulled the net toward the shore, something she’d caught twisted and turned in the waves. Finally, the net reached her feet, and she lifted layers of weeds and bullrushes aside until she could see what it held. Inside was a silent, pale baby, so translucent that she could see tiny blue blood vessels through its skin, and the hint of dark eyeballs beneath its lids.
Enid stared at it for some time. She felt she must be dreaming, for how could an infant survive beneath the water? What had created the child? She was tempted to throw the infant back into the lake, for she feared it might be cursed. It must have been evil or come from a supernatural realm. But when she looked at its tender face, she remembered the horrible pain of birthing a stillborn son. She had never recovered from his death and, now, looking at this infant, something stirred in her.
Enid scooped the silent infant into her arms. Feeling no breath, she opened its mouth and blew hard into it. Moments later, the infant squalled and wriggled its limbs. The infant shivered, and it clung to her bosom. She wrapped her shawl around it, turned and carried the infant into the house.
Since she had no breast milk, Enid had no idea what to feed the mysterious child. Had it died quickly, which she hoped it would do, she would simply have thrown it into the lake and forgotten it. But it squawked and breathed, stubbornly clinging to life, so she found a wooden crate, lined it with a tweed blanket and lay the infant inside. Enid had no idea what to do with it, and so she ignored it, salting, and eating fish, then letting the fire die down into smouldering embers. The infant moved and smacked its lips, but it didn’t cry. Enid lowered the light on her gas lantern and went to bed.
By morning, the infant was still alive. She leaned over it and saw that it sucked its tiny fingers and, driven by hunger, it soon squalled. When the sound of its shrill voice filled the hut, Enid’s breasts flooded with milk. She pulled open her bodice and saw milk streaming from her nipples, over her breasts and onto the flat of her stomach. She touched the milk and licked it off her finger. Tasteless and watery, Enid wondered at it. Then she picked up the crying baby and placed it to her breast. It latched onto her nipple and suckled hungrily, breathing hard through its tiny nose.
She studied the female infant’s features and saw they were like those of her dead son. Long, black eyelashes and soft, feathery eyebrows framed her beautiful face, which now bore no signs of veins or translucence. When the child finished feeding, Enid wrapped her in her shawl and set about sewing clothes made from her apron and drapes for the tiny girl.
From that day forward, Enid’s loneliness disappeared, and her heart filled with love for this peculiar child. The baby seldom cried, staring at Enid with her large, dark eyes as she suckled at her breast. It mattered little to Enid where the child came from. Such a dear, tiny girl couldn’t be evil, and the joy she brought to Enid banished fearful thoughts from her mind.
For months, Enid lived happily with her daughter. Then her luck turned. The lake was as deep and cool as ever but, when Enid brought her net to the lake, no matter how far she cast it, no fish was ever snared inside. She fished from dawn into the evening, but her net remained empty. Her small plot of wheat withered, and the lake seemed barren of fish.
Without fish to sustain her, Enid’s body weakened, and her breast milk dried up. The baby, who was as hungry as her mother, bawled and screamed for hours on end. Maddened, Enid ran from the house and rushed to the lake, leaving the baby alone. She waded into the water up to her waist and threw herself beneath the waves, hoping they would suck her down and drown her. But she thrashed about in agony and returned to the surface.
By the third day of her famine, the infant, now starving, began to quiet. Her cry became a whimper, and Enid peered into the crate, afraid that she would see a shrivelled corpse. As much as she hated the infant’s holler, she would hate for her to die even more. Without her realizing it, a bond had formed, and Enid wanted very much for her child to live.
When Enid looked inside the crate, she saw the baby had become dreadfully pale and was lying very still. Her hands shaking and her eyes brimming with tears, she picked up her child and held it to her chest, crooning to it as if it still lived. Her tears fell onto its tender face, and she wept as loudly as the child ever had.
Raising her head to gaze at her, Enid shrieked when she saw what she held; a large, ugly bass lay in her hands, it’s mouth open, its eyes wide, its rotting body still and dry. Screaming, Enid threw the creature away from her and crumpled to the floor. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rocked her body back and forth, moaning and gnashing her teeth. What had happened? Had she gone mad? What had she been feeding and caring for all these months?
Had she caught a child in the lake, or had it always been a large bass? In her dreadful loneliness, had she seen and nurtured what she thought was an infant? Enid wondered now, as she had when she first caught the creature, what it was, and whether she held an infant or something else altogether. Was she indeed a sinful harlot whom God had punished with a demon child, as the villagers had claimed?
When the sun set and the little house darkened, Enid finally quieted. She thought about the child for hours and decided she must indeed have gone mad. The whole time she’d been nurturing a fish, placing it to her breast, and laying it in a cradle at night, singing a lullaby to help it sleep.
She crawled over to the bass and grabbed it in her hands. So hungry was Enid, that she didn’t bother to cook the animal. She gobbled it up, bones and all, grunting and panting as she ate. Satiated, Enid reached for a mug of water to wash it down, then with a heavy sigh, lay on her bed and fell asleep.
Hours later, in the dark of night, Enid jolted awake, her heart pounding and, for reasons she didn’t understand, dread flooded through her body. With a hand that shook, she lit the gas lantern beside her bed. She looked around the hut and when her eyes adjusted to the light, she froze where she stood.
Enid stared at her table, which was covered in blood. Blood had dried along the sharp blade of her fish-scaling knife, and it had spattered the walls and the ceiling. Enid looked at her hands and realized they, too, were blood-smeared and hacked with tiny slices made by the fish-scaling knife. She tasted blood in her mouth and when she glanced into the small mirror, she saw that it covered her face and disappeared into her hair.
Enid turned from the mirror and looked at the fishing line. Strangely shaped pieces of flesh hung from it, and she instantly knew what she was looking at. Enid had killed and eaten her own child, hung her skin on the fishing line to dry, and slid the bones from her carcass into a bucket. Enid’s voice erupted in an ear-shattering wail as she fainted, her body falling with a heavy thud, her legs and arms splayed across the floor.
It was dawn when she woke. Enid pulled herself onto her bed and, steadfastly keeping her gaze from the table, she stared at the floor, hiding her hands beneath her bloody apron. Enid forced herself to breathe slowly and calm her grieving heart. She refused to accept what she saw with her own eyes and instead, forced herself to believe that she hadn’t fished an infant out of the lake. It had all been a dream. She had gone mad from living alone for so long, and in her deep desire for a human companion, when she caught the largest bass she’d ever seen, she’d mistaken it for an infant.
Enid was certain she hadn’t recognized the bass for what it was, because she could never have murdered her own child. Enid was not a sinner, and no child had ever suckled at her breast or lain in the crate beside her bed. She had never dragged one from the lake in her net. It had all been a feverish madness.
Without another thought, Enid pulled the skin from the fishing line and threw it into the bucket along with the bones. Walking to the lake, she threw the bucket’s gruesome contents as far out into the water as she could. Skin and bones sank beneath the sparkling waves, forever concealing the horror of whatever had happened in her house. Sunlight danced upon the water making her eyes brim over, but not with tears, for Enid had no reason to cry over a dead bass.
Enid would soon cast her net into the lake to catch her next meal. Her long experience told her that that, once again, the lake would be filled with fish and that she would dine as well as ever, wanting for nothing more than what she had.
Copyright © 2024 by Lisa Lahey
