The Silent Sea
I crept down the rocky beach and watched the silent waves.
It had been three years since the sea stopped making a noise. I remembered what it had sounded like before: the crash of surf driven by the wind like a long, slow heart. The low static whoosh of it, lulling me half-asleep while I lay and watched the gulls. I'd liked those sounds, unlike the ones that remained to me now.
There was still plenty of sound on land. The honk and rumble of cars on streets, the blare of the television my housemates refused to turn off. Apartments and offices were still noisy: shouting, clanking, ringing little boxes. Where I could clench my eyes in concentration trying to type over the chatter, then be snapped at for every mistake. It was the sea, and only the sea, that had lost its voice.
The gulls' plaintive honk over the water was gone, though the gulls were not. A few of the white birds circled silently, taking turns to dip into the gray-blue water. One emerged holding a fish and the others dove in competitively while it wriggled in its captor's beak. A flurry of feathers blew out from the flock and floated across the waves. All silent, as if I was watching on a muted television. Someone had left an empty rowboat moored here, which bobbed in the water, not even creaking. It had been here for weeks, unwanted and untouched. I'd been watching.
Creeping closer, I put out a hand to the low gutters of water around the closest rocks. A small wave broke on its way to me, cascading down itself in a foamy veil. The water under my fingers rose up in response, reaching my knuckles, before the wave leached away again. I could smell the salt. My fingers ached with the sea’s cold.
Back when the sea made a sound, there had been more people here, for good or ill. Waders and swimmers, despite the cold. Boats. Fishers and oil-riggers, humans grabbing what interested them in the thoughtless way that humans do; but also more beach-cleaners and conservationists, trying desperately to preserve what humans loved. Nobody really talked about the sea, these past three years, either to use it or to save it. Nobody went out in the water. As if the bustle of civilization was itself a sound.
They said that if you went far enough out in the waves, your own voice would stop up. Ships had been wrecked that way, I'd heard. But maybe it was just imagination. A few hundred feet back of me, where tall buildings rose up from the asphalt and cars jerked and honked in their long lines, there was sound aplenty. And that other sound, now that I'd been gone long enough. A yelling of my name. People behind me, urging me back to the land, back to my fruitless work. The sound and crush and urgency that I simply didn't want anymore.
Carefully, I climbed into the rowboat. I took hold of the oars. They were sturdy, solid things, polished smooth. Whoever abandoned this had cared for it once.
I pushed out into the waves and watched the scrambling shore-people shrink into the distance, still screaming, until at last their panicked noise fell away into the silence of the sea.
© 2024 Ada Hoffmann
About the Author
Ada Hoffmann is the author of the OUTSIDE space opera trilogy, as well as dozens of speculative short stories and poems. Ada’s work has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Compton Crook Award, and the WSFA Small Press Award, among others. They are also the author of the Autistic Book Party review series, devoted to in-depth #ownvoices discussions of autism representation in speculative fiction. Ada is an adjunct professor of computer science, as well as a former semi-professional soprano, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and LARPer. They live in eastern Ontario.