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Love Song
Written for the "Bootstrap Bill" Drabble Challenge

by Eledhwen
August 7, 2005

When she was 16 and he 18, he asked her to dance at the May fair. Together they whirled around the Maypole, and she thought she would drown in his dancing dark eyes.

She watched him sail away on a merchant ship just weeks later, wondering if he would ever be back. And he was; he returned older and more dashing, capturing the heart of every girl in town with his exotic manners and long curling hair. But he only had eyes for Elsie Mitchell, and she only had eyes for him.

He courted her that summer with posies of flowers and cakes from the bakery. Her father frowned, and warned her off him. And indeed he disappeared again before the autumn was old, heading back to blue water where she could not follow.

For a while she thought her heart would break, and then she politely rebuffed the attention of the other young men – the ones who had not sailed away – who sought her hand and her heart. Deep in her, she knew he would be back.

When she was 21 and he was 23, he came back from his voyages and gave her a ring and asked her to marry him. With a leap in her heart she said yes, and he promised not to go away again – at least not for a little while. He found a job in a chandlery and they married, and settled down in a small house not far from her parents. On the first night of their married life they lay together, and it was sweeter and more terrifying than she could ever have imagined.

But they were happy, Elsie and Bill Turner, and soon she was with child. She knew it would be a boy, and knew what she would call him. She thought he was happy too. And he was, but every night he looked towards the sea, and sometimes he wandered alone by the harbour looking for a ship that never seemed to come.

Then came the unexpected visit from a wild young sailor with baubles in his hair and hands that flickered like moths against a candle flame. After that Bill was not the same, and even though he played with little Will and went to work as normal Elsie knew she had lost him. The day he took ship again she held him and kissed him and thought she would run dry from the tears she shed.

He was different when he came back. He told her that the merchant trade was profitable, and gave her a pearl necklace she knew he could not have afforded. That night she wore it as he embraced her and wished she knew her husband.

She and little Will were alone most of the time, as Bill Turner sailed the seas and tried to assuage his guilt with gifts. He gave them stories too, tales of far-off places and of majestic ships. Elsie did not want the tales or the presents. She wanted the man she had loved around the Maypole as a girl.

One year he did not come back. A package arrived for their son, a single gold coin and a message to keep it safe. She threaded the coin on a chain – another gift from Bill – and gave it to young Will, somehow knowing she would not see him again. Her Bill Turner, her dark-eyed sailor, her pirate; he had been lost a long time ago.

~.~

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