Gardena High School - El Arador Yearbook (Gardena, CA)

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Kindred FIRST PRIZE STORY One can never think of her apart from the sea — and I, who knew her well, can never smell the salt tang of the ocean or hear waves beating upon the shore, but her memory, sharp and poignant, grips my heart. She was quite glorious when I knew her first. At any rate, I thought her glorious. She lived in a small fishing town in New England. Her father, a person one never saw, was first mate on a whaling vessel, and her mother was a nonentity. She had quantities of brothers and sisters, younger than she, who were also nonentities. Her name was Seena Owen. My uncle, a scientific man, had rented a cottajfe in this village, rather removed from any super-abundance of human- ity, to study crabs and jelly-fish and sea-things for another of his ponderous, and uninteresting scientific volumes. I was fourteen at the time, and my kindly, be-spectacied and ab- sent-minded uncle, who had taken a fancy to me, asked to have me accompany him. I was eager to do so; 1 wnuld undoubtedly have a good time, if only by reason of his ab- sent-mindedness. Boys of fourteen can usually find a variety of things to do when their sole guardian is an absent-minded, kindly, be-spectacled scientific man. When I first saw Seena Owen I considered her beautiful. I rather compliment myself on my daring originality in this, for every one else in the village thought her very unpreposs- essing in appearance. She was tall, she was lank, and she was divinely graceful. She carried herself like a queen, but all un- consciously. Her hair was a pale, light color, very long, and she usually wore it unbound, flowing down her back. I thought of sea-weed. Her eyes were a clear, translucent green, sea- colored. Her face was sullen, brooding. There was a curious, intense aliveness about her, a white flame burning behind her eyes. I noticed her first when I accompanied my uncle on a little walk down the beach, in search of sea flora and fauna. We were about three miles from the village. Seena was there, standing on the sand, the sea wind whipping her dress back, blowing her hair. Her queer green eyes, unsheltered from the sun and wind, gazed off across the unquiet waters. She Has beautiful thus-1 stopped short to look at her. She should have been a figure carved on the prow of some gallant sea-going vessel—a Viking ship. I had an uncanny feeling that that was what she had been once. She was perfectly oblivious of us, and my uncle was oblivious of her He would have thought noth- ing of seeing a sea-nymph, or a mermaid, or Ai hrodite aris- ing from the waves. We went quietly past, behind her, but while my uncle was searching for sea life, I stole back concealed among the sand dunes, and watched her. She was still as I had seen her first, still gazing out to sea. I wished passionately at that moment

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Dedication To the spirit of adventure, of discovery and daring:, personified by the sea, we dedicate our 1931 El Arador— to the romance, the glamour and mystery in the rough roar of the tides and sparking foam, in the raving tempests and after-calm, the whistling sea- winds and screaming gulls, the shining, tossing, dark waters and plunging ships. To the sea ' s perfect order and harmony we aspire, and for the will to do, the soul to dare that we may strive, discover, and attain.

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that I were an artist, to paint her as I saw her— to immonalize that brave figure. She seemed kindred to the sea. Suddenly she turned and looked sharply at me. I knew that she knew 1 had been there, watching her. She did not smile. She turned away again and started walking toward the village. I had offended her, I had intruded upon her sacred solitude, her communion. Later, queerly enough, we became friends. I do not under- stand it, unless perhaps it was because I knew her a little better than any one else ever had. Only a very little better, how- ever. Mine was the only human companionship — if 1 may call it that — that she had ever known. But, somehow, she was not dependent upon human companionship. She, herself, 1 felt, was not quite human. She did not need sympathy, or understanding, or friendship. She needed nothing but the sea; she was dependent upon that — it was her life. One reason, I think, that she liked me — better, tolerated me was that 1 was content to sit beside her when she com- muned with the sea, quietly, not breaking the charm. She was never conscious of me then. Sometimes her lips would move; she would repeat something rhythmically under her breath. Perhaps she was repeating a poem. Perhaps the im- pression came to me — she was chanting an old rune in some strange tongue. When she was younger the people of the village thought her merely a queer little tyke. Now she was a young woman, and they began to look upon her with suspicion. I heard it whispered that she ■as a witch. Old beliefs, old super- stitions, die hard in little, out-of-the-v ay New England villages. One night 1 shall never forget. iVIy uncle was putting his notes in order, and would remain lost to the world until, per- haps, the next morning. There was a storm far out. The sea was terrible; there was a strong wind. Seena and I silently walked up the beach. She seemed to be glorying in the raging of the wind and sea. VVe stopped when we reached the top of a high cliff, directly over the water. It was the wildest night 1 had ever known. The sea seemed actually, diabollically, human, rav- enous, reaching. 1 hated it. Soena gloried in it — in its power, its strength, its invincibility. VVe stood silent. I had the impression that if 1 spoke to her she would not hear me . Thinking back on it, it seems we stood thus an age. Everything--the sky, the sea, the wind, was black and terrible. Seena was inspired; she was triumphant. She was not a woman; she was a creature of the sea. For the first time 1 was afraid of her. She seemed so elemental— so ageless— so inhuman. The villagers ' words echoed through my mind— She is a witch. Then, almost unnoticeably, she stepped