Once upon a time, before the carnival rides and cotton candy, when this neon and concrete town was a fishing village, there lived a boy named Nikoro, handsome and gifted, whose fathers and fathers' fathers were the luckiest of fishermen. It was said in the village that their luck seeped from the bones of their hands, so that everything they touched - lines, tackle, tiller - would be smeared with their luck. The women swore they could smell it, a purple sweetness, like lilacs after rain. And there were men in the village who envied this sweet luck and complained to their women when the catch was bad, wanting for just one day to have the bones of Nikoro's hands. But the women made them undo the wish and said, "Theirs is the gift of the sea, who never gives except she takes away."

Every morning when Nikoro woke, he went to the beach with his father and readied the boats, coiling the line and stowing the tackle, and sometimes he would reach into the waves and pull out a bluefish or a little trout. "He has the hands," the men said, and before the small fleet set out, Nikoro and his father tapped the prow of every boat, for blessing and for luck. And in this way, Nikoro grew up, admired by his village and certain of a gift that came to him without toil or pain.

When Nikoro came to be a man and it was time for him to marry, his father said, "Find a cheerful girl who will bear a strong son and he will be gifted as you are and I am and as our family has always been for generations." His mother said, "Nikorito, you will find someone you can't wait to see in the morning and you hate to part with at night. Then you will know you are in love." So Nikoro looked at the girls of the village, at their full bodies and shy smiles, and he waited.

In the mornings, he went down to the sea before the men awoke, creeping out of his parents' house in the deep dark, and he sat on the cool sand and sang the sea's songs back to her, and sometimes the sea shushed him back to sleep and the men would find him when they came for the boats, sound asleep in the soft sand and they would tease him saying, "Who is she who sneaks out of her house to meet you here? What beauty will you marry?" When Nikoro answered, "I missed the sea and had to be near her," they all laughed as though he were joking.

When spring came, Nikoro brought flowers to the sea -- forsythia, myrtle and moonflowers. He picked them in the night and said the name the sea taught him while he slept, and he carried them down to the breakers and waded in and gave them to her one by one and watched her take them. This made Nikoro happy. They spoke to each other all night in hushed voices, and when she'd hold his hands, he could feel his gifted bones burning and glowing. Thus the men found him now, every morning, drenched with seawater and asleep on the beach, and his father and mother grew worried.

"What is he doing," his father said, "that he never sleeps or eats, like a man possessed."

His mother said, "He is in love."

In the summer she came to him, at the waning of the first warm moon. She had eyes like abalone and smooth skin, mottled grey and blue as the inside of a shell. When she lay with him and touched him, her hands were his hands, identical, and their bones glowed through the skin, and Nikoro heard the voices of the drowned whispering in his ear in a thousand thousand tongues. Each voice held secrets beyond the reach of spirits bound by human flesh and Nikoro felt transformed.

When the dawn came and she was gone, Nikoro believed she might never return and the men found him weeping on the beach, repeating, "I am alone. I am alone."

And they said, "At last we understand," though they did not. Each man had in mind some human girl, one they admired now or had admired years ago, one they never married, and they gave Nikoro manly advice to carry to the village, ways to win her back or to find another, better, prettier. But Nikoro didn't hear them. Then, one morning, when the men came to the boats, he was not on the beach, and when they didn't find him, some elbowed each other and said, "He has succeeded" and others, those who'd foundered themselves and barely survived the wreck that only love can cause, felt the scars in their hearts tighten and ache, and they looked to the horizon and frowned and prayed.

So it passed that the sea was merciful and the men found him floating face down in the outgoing tide and they threw out a net and dragged him into the boat, salt-scalded and babbling, but still alive. The story leapt from house to house, like a fire, and the town burned with talk of Nikoro, and the women told how the men found him by the light of his hands which glowed in the dark sea like burning torches and that those who'd pulled him in the boat were drenched in a sweet lilac smell that surrounded them for three days and would not fade from their clothes and skin even with washing.

Nikoro's mother and father brought him home and watched him and though he begged and broke their hearts crying, they did not let him go to the sea. They locked him in a room and stood watch night and day. So Nikoro lay in the dark, listening to her voice far away, calling, and he called back the name she taught him and sang her wordless songs in a voice his parents barely recognized. The house and all the objects in it vibrated with the song. When this had gone on for weeks, his parents consulted the wise woman who said, "He must marry immediately" and, without much trouble, she found a girl, shy and lovely, with smooth hair and warm eyes, who'd loved Nikoro since they were children and played together on the sand and the wise woman said, "You will cure him. You will save him in a way the men couldn't when they pulled him into the boat. Do you understand?"

The girl said she did, and she dreamed of how he'd love her, how her children would have his gifted hands, and how the village would say that, but for her, they'd have lost Nikoro and all his luck, for he had gone mad and she alone could bring him back.

And when it came time to marry her, Nikoro did not resist, but walked like a man in a dream through the double line of villagers who held up their hands and prayed and rained white and yellow petals down on the smiling bride as the couple passed by. His parents warned her, "You must watch him. You must keep him from the sea."

"How will we eat?" she said.

"We will feed you until he is well. You are our daughter now." When the girl smiled, Nikoro's mother touched her young face. "Bring him back," she whispered. "Bring him back to us." And the girl nodded and they both shed tears.

Soon enough the girl discovered that no pleading or sweet speeches, no words she could find, could keep her husband from the sea or bring him to her bed. Three times she had to call the men in the middle of the night to rescue him again and they dragged Nikoro from the breakers, thrashing against their force but not noting them, staring instead at something they couldn't see, something in the middle distance that his eyes tracked. They followed his gaze and said, "There's nothing there, Nikoro." But he began to make sounds they didn't understand, in a voice halfway between speech and song, and some swore they heard his voice echoed faintly over the wind and waves and others that they saw what must have been phosphorescence glowing there in the middle distance. The men took him home to his wife and told her, "Lock him in a room. Keep watch."

And so she did. She locked him away as his parents had and lay awake listening to him sing and feeling their bed and the walls of their house sing with him. Filled with despair, the girl consulted the wise woman, who said, "You are his wife." So the next night the girl came to his room and lay down with him and said softly, "I am your wife," and touched his chest and kissed his temples and the hollow at the base of his throat, just the way she'd pictured doing when she'd thought of him long ago. At her kisses, Nikoro stopped his singing and noticed her for the first time and lay quiet as touched him, staring at the ceiling. The next night, when he began singing, she returned and she touched him again and kissed his mouth, and the taste of his breath was sweet, like lilacs after rain, and he looked at her with wide eyes and touched one finger to her face. So it was that after several nights, the girl became his wife and Nikoro stopped his singing, as the wise woman had predicted, and began to eat human food again, and when they walked through the town holding hands, the village smiled, beneficent, and said, "She has done it. She has rescued him."

Only Nikoro's mother continued weeping. She has mourned too long, the village said, she lives now for sympathy. The wise woman scolded, "He has come back to us. You have seen it with your own eyes." But Nikoro's mother shook her head and sighed and wept. The women let her be, stopped consoling, clucked their tongues and whispered when they saw her coming. Nikoro's mother didn't mind them. She lived now in tears and distraction, in rags; she wandered the market, looking without seeing, mumbling an endless argument to no one. Some of the women, however, those who loved stories, claimed that if you got close enough when she wasn't looking, you could hear strange sounds surrounding Nikoro's mother, like dune grass hissing in a storm, like the air around her spoke in a crowd of hushed voices. One day these women noticed that Nikoro's wife had begun to look pale, that her skin always beautiful was almost translucent. "She is pregnant," all the women said and rejoiced and waited for Nikoro's wife to grow big bellied like a sail in the wind. In expectation of that day, the women began making tiny clothes and blankets and storing up gifts for the baby.

Nikoro's wife grew paler almost by the day, but her body did not open and fill out the way a woman's body does when she carries a child inside her. Instead, Nikoro's wife seemed to be wearing away, and the women noticed when she came to the market, that her clothes did not fit and the bones of her elbows and knees made all of them want to take her home and feed her thick stew and bread. So they went to the wise woman and said, "She must be too sick in the mornings. She will lose this baby if she does not eat." The next morning, the wise woman visited Nikoro's wife and brought herbs and ginger to help her keep her food. Nikoro's wife sat with the wise woman and talked with her and made her strong tea and said that Nikoro was now able to fish again and that his hands were luckier than ever and that she waited all day for his return and they were happy together. When the girl smiled, the wise woman noticed her resemblance to Nikoro's mother, though she'd never noted it before. It was there in the shape of her face and something about her eyes. She thought then that it was human nature that all families grow to resemble one another, whether or not they were blood, that love could transform the flesh as easily as the mind or soul, and that the furious love of families, laced as it was with need and longing and regret, would do this faster than even sickness or age.

The wise woman left the herbs and the ginger and instructions for how to use them and, parting, she lay her hand against the pale cheek of Nikoro's wife and looked into her face and it was then that a cold foreboding filled the wise woman's heart and she went home troubled by a fear she couldn't name.

The wise woman felt this foreboding every time she thought of Nikoro's wife until finally, as she knew they would, the women of the village came to her kitchen again with baskets of food and they said, "Nikoro's wife must be ill, terribly ill."

"Is she still pale?" the wise woman asked.

Some of the women said her skin was bluish and some said grey. The woman who sold sweets said, "Her hands are ice cold." Another woman said, "It's her eyes. Her eyes are growing pale, too, and they shine like shells."

"They shine because she is in love," an old woman clucked. And the all the women laughed about being in love and about men and spoke of their difficult pregnancies and debated among themselves what malady Nikoro's wife might have and urged the wise woman to go to her, each one suggesting the best remedy.

The next morning, the wise woman set out with a willow basket full of the most potent plants she knew and the same heavy foreboding that she had carried with her for weeks, a weight like a stone in her chest, cold and smooth and polished with dread. When she drew near to Nikoro's house, she heard his wife singing in the kitchen while she worked, a strange song in a voice that the wise woman had never heard before, and the wise woman felt her heart trip over itself. But when Nikoro's wife saw the wise woman through the window, she waved out at her, smiling, and brought her in and made her tea again and put sweets on a plate.

"Are you well, my dear?" the wise woman asked.

"Quite well, thank you," Nikoro's wife said.

"You are so pale," the wise woman said. "The women of the village worry about your welfare. They believe you must be pregnant. Are you pregnant, child?"

Nikoro's wife rose to some little task she invented just that moment. When she spoke her voice was stiff and cheerful and she said, "Not yet. Soon, I hope. Maybe soon, but not yet. I am fine, though, truly. They are very kind to worry."

The wise woman removed the plants from her basket and taught Nikoro's wife how to make a poultice of one and how to grind the seeds of the other to a fine powder and mix it with water. She spoke of ways to hasten conception and the girl lowered her head and smiled shyly and said nothing. And so they passed the whole afternoon in instruction, and the wise woman spoke of what the land yielded and what gave health, and Nikoro's wife listened and smiled, but the wise woman could feel that only part of the girl was with her in the kitchen, as her eyes wandered to the window again and again.

The sun set; a little breeze blew up and the clouds gathered in the east over the water. "The men will come back soon," the wise woman said. "I should be going."

Standing in the doorway, taking her leave, the wise woman saw Nikoro coming home from the sea. As he walked up the narrow path to the house, his eyes were fixed on his wife who watched him also and smiled and waved. The women stood together watching him draw nearer and nearer and Nikoro's wife began to hum a little and the wise woman recognized the song she'd heard her singing in the kitchen.

"It is good to see you so well, Nikoro," the wise woman said, in greeting.

But Nikoro never ceased staring at his wife when the wise woman addressed him. He may have heard her words or not, she couldn't tell. He brought his hand to his wife's face and said, "She grows more beautiful by the day, doesn't she?" Nikoro's wife leaned into her husband's open palm and closed her eyes.

"Well, goodbye," the wise woman said; "I'll be back in a few days to check on you." Neither Nikoro nor his wife said anything. Nor did they move. They remained in the doorway, intent on each other.

The wise woman walked away with an echo of the song in her head, an empty willow basket, and the smooth grey stone of dread. Before her, the lights glowed in the town and she thought of the women in each house, the men and children come back at evening, gathered around them, as around a warm fire. No one waited for her return or returned to her at evening, no one but she gazed into her fire, and when she thought of her solitary meal and her quiet rooms, her own loneliness suddenly oppressed her.

Then she felt a terrible chill rise from her dark womb and race across her skin. And, halfway down the path, though she didn't want to, she turned back and looked again at the couple she'd left. They still stood in their doorway, but they looked after her and waved, sensible maybe of the earlier failure of courtesy. Nikoro's wife had wrapped her arm around her husband's waist and his hand rested on her hip on the other side. They smiled when she turned and she could hear, just barely, "Goodbye. Goodbye." The wise woman raised a hand to wave back, let it fall, stood transfixed.

In the shadow of the darkened doorway and the falling curtain of night, through her simple blue smock, Nikoro's wife glowed sea green, her eyes shone like moonlight on abalone. The wise woman's gasped breath came to her mouth drenched in rain-sweet lilac. She heard whispered in her ear, as if the woman stood beside her, the voice of Nikoro's mother calling her name and when her voice disappeared, a different sound rolled like a wave from Nikoro's open doorway. The voices of the drowned speaking like storm wind through dune grass, each voice distinct, singing of all they left and all they loved. With them came other voices that the wise woman alone would recognize, women lost in childbirth, small children taken by accident or disease, all these rolled toward her and over her and she braced herself and felt the force of them like a reed bent in the current.

When the sound passed, the wise woman opened her eyes. She would not have been surprised to see the world around her transformed, to have found herself in some exotic land amid strangers or plunged deep into the sea. But she was still on the path that led from Nikoro's house to the village, and Nikoro and his wife turned, as she watched, retreating into the dark cave of the open door. The wise woman watched them go and turned again toward the lighted town, but found her feet would not carry her there and the thought of her room and her small fire filled her with loneliness.

So she walked instead to the edge of the land, where the fishing boats stood ready for morning in a ragged row, then past them, to where retreating waves made the dark sand hiss a lover's complaint. She pulled a few stray blossoms from her empty willow basket and tossed them in the foam. She dropped the basket, gathered up her skirts, and waded to her knees, looking out to where the white caps raced each other like children across the green expanse of the sea. Then she heard again the voices of the drowned rising around her like the tide and they drenched her with their stories, with their sorrows and their joys, and she gave salt tears to the salt sea, and as she wept, she cried out a song to join with theirs, a song they all knew by heart. "I am alone," she sang. "I am one of you, one of your own kind. We are alone."