The Sea-Eye

In Fujian, by a narrow sea, lay a village with an ancient well at its heart, dug no one knew what year. Its water was clear and cold, never rising in flood nor failing in drought, and the villagers called it the Sea-Eye. The old said its bottom met no ground spring, but the sea beneath their feet — the dark sea, where the drowned go down.

By the well lived a fisher-wife, Lan by name; her husband, Lan Dashun, had capsized ten years before, and his body was never found. Widow Lan kept the old house at the well's edge, alone these ten years.

At first she feared the well. At night it gave off sounds — not water's sound, but an oar's, slow and even, as if a boat rocked below; now and then a cry, faint and muffled by water, too blurred to make out. Other houses heard it too, and said the Sea-Eye drew the tide up from beneath. Only Widow Lan thought the cry sounded like her man's voice.

She began to lower a small lamp each night, in a bamboo basket on a rope, a bronze bell tied to the end. The first times, she drew it up — the flame out, the basket soaked through, smelling of salt and brine, plainly the sea's smell, though the well water stayed fresh. Yet the bronze bell had rung — at the moment she loosened her grip, it shook once of itself, as if someone below had touched the rope.

The old headman warned her: 'Dashun was a matter of the open sea; the Sea-Eye is a matter of the earth beneath — they bear no relation. Don't let it take your wits.' Widow Lan said nothing, and still lowered her lamp each night.

In the seventh year a typhoon passed, and three boats overturned beyond the village's sea. That night the rain was fierce, and the well's water rose suddenly to the mouth, yet did not spill, but lay still and full. Widow Lan heard the oar below quicken, with many voices in it — weeping, calling, consoling — all mixed, like the clamor of a boat's people at the moment of sinking. She leaned over the rim, and for the first time heard the cry plain:

'Lan-shi, I can't come back. You live well up there.'

It was Lan Dashun's voice, not a shade off.

When the rain stopped, the well's water fell to its place. Widow Lan no longer lowered her lamp each night, but on the first and fifteenth she scattered a handful of rice into the well, as if serving a meal. She told people, 'He's not suffering down there; he's rowing down there, only he can't row back.'

Years later Widow Lan grew old. The well remains, and the Sea-Eye. On still nights the villagers still now and then hear the oar below, slow and even, as if someone in the dark sea were rowing, slowly, home.