The Empty Nets
The sun, a merciless disc of bleached brass, hung in a sky so pale it seemed drained of all life. Beneath it, the Adriatic was not the vibrant, sapphire-blue of the tourist posters, but a sheet of hammered, listless silver, reflecting the glare with a hostility that made Marko’s eyes ache. His boat, the Sirena, named for a creature he’d never believed in, rocked with a sluggish, weary rhythm, as if the sea itself was too exhausted for anything more.
Marko’s hands, calloused and leathered by salt and sun, worked the nets with a practiced, grim efficiency. Each pull was a prayer, not to God, whom he considered a distant and uninterested landlord, but to the simple, brutal mathematics of survival. Haul, coil, sort, cast. The rhythm was as much a part of him as the beat of his own heart. But for weeks now, the rhythm had been off. The symphony of his labour was missing its central theme: the heavy, thrashing weight of a full net.
With a final, grunting heave, he hauled the last of the day’s catch onto the deck. It was a pitiful sight. A few small, silver sardines, their eyes dull, flickered amidst a tangle of seaweed and a single, bewildered-looking crab that scuttled for the scuppers. There were maybe a dozen fish in total. Not enough to sell at the market in Komiža. Barely enough for his own supper, let alone to contribute to the village’s communal larder.
A low, guttural curse escaped his lips, swallowed by the vast, empty silence. He slumped onto a wooden crate, the frustration a physical weight on his shoulders. He looked at his hands, at the net, at the empty sea. This wasn’t just a bad day; it was the culmination of a bad season. A creeping, insidious poverty was settling over the island of Vis, a slow suffocation. The young people were leaving for the mainland, for jobs in hotels and factories. The old ones, like his grandmother, were left behind, their stories and their worries growing in the quiet.
He could feel their eyes on him even now, miles from shore. Old Luka, whose hands trembled too much to mend nets anymore. The widow Ana, with her three hungry children. They didn’t say anything, but their silent hope was a heavier burden than any net. Marko, the strong one, the reliable one. What good was strength when the sea gave you nothing to be strong against?
He started the Sirena’s engine, the diesel cough shattering the stillness. The boat turned its blunt nose towards home, towards the cluster of white stone houses that clung to the hillside like nesting gulls. As the island grew from a hazy outline into the specific details of his life—the chalky path up to the village, the dark green smudges of pine and cypress, the bell tower of the church of St. Cyprian—the knot in his stomach tightened.
The harbour at Komiža was quieter than it should have been. A handful of other fishing boats were moored, their crews performing the same desultory post-mortem on their own meagre catches. The air, usually thick with the smells of salt, diesel, and frying fish, held only the scent of sun-baked stone and despair. Nodding to a few of the other men—a silent, grim communion of shared failure—he tied up the Sirena and began to unload his crates.
“Is that all, Marko?” It was Ante, his hands on his hips, his face a roadmap of sun-wrinkles and disappointment.
“That’s all,” Marko replied, his voice flat. “The water is… empty. It’s like they’ve all swum away to a better party.”
“A party we weren’t invited to,” Ante grunted. “My boy, Ivan, he called from Split. Said there’s work on the docks. Good money.”
Marko didn’t need to ask if Ivan was coming back. The answer was in the slump of Ante’s shoulders. Another one gone. The island was bleeding out, not with a dramatic wound, but with a thousand small cuts.
He carried his single, light crate up the winding stone path to his grandmother’s house. It was a small, sturdy building, its stone walls two feet thick, built to withstand the bora wind that could scream down from the mountains. The shutters were faded to a soft grey-blue, and geraniums, defiantly red, bloomed in pots by the door.
Inside, the air was cool and smelled of rosemary, dried figs, and the faint, ever-present scent of woodsmoke. His grandmother, Baka Jasna, was sitting by the hearth, her gnarled fingers working a piece of embroidery. Her eyes, still sharp as flint, lifted from her work and took him in—his tired posture, the single crate.
“The sea was not generous today,” she said, not a question, but a statement of fact.
“The sea is a miser,” Marko replied, setting the crate down with a thud. He pulled out the few fish. “We’ll have these. I’ll take the rest to Ana later. The children need it more.”
Baka Jasna nodded, her face a mask of serene acceptance that drove him to distraction. How could she be so calm when the world was falling apart? She set her embroidery aside. “Sit. Eat some bread. You are tired in your soul.”
He slumped into a chair opposite her, tearing a piece of dark, crusty bread from the loaf on the table. He chewed without tasting it.
“It’s not just tiredness, Baka,” he said, the words tumbling out. “It’s… what’s the point? I work from before the sun is up until after it is gone. I mend the nets until my fingers are raw. I read the water, the sky, everything my father taught me. And for what? A handful of fish that a cat would turn its nose up at.”
“The sea gives, and the sea takes away,” she said, her voice a soft, rhythmic chant. “It has always been so.”
“But it’s only taking now!” he burst out, slamming his palm on the table. The bread jumped. “It’s not a cycle, it’s an end. Soon there will be nothing left. No fish, no people, no life. Just an empty rock in a dead sea.”
Baka Jasna watched him, her head tilted. “You see only with your eyes, Marko. You look at the water and see an empty plate. You do not see what moves beneath.”
“There is nothing beneath!” he insisted, his voice rising with frustration. “Nothing but more empty water. I don’t believe in things I can’t see, can’t touch, can’t put in a net.”
A small, knowing smile touched the corners of her mouth. “There is more in this world than can be caught in a net, my boy. There are older currents. Deeper tides.”
He knew what was coming. The stories. The old, foolish stories. He felt a fresh wave of exasperation. This was what they were reduced to—fairy tales while their stomachs growled.
“Don’t, Baka. Please. Not the Vila tonight.”
“Why not?” she asked, her eyes twinkling. “She is as real as the hunger in your belly. More real, perhaps. The Vila of the winds and the forests, she who dances on the cliffs when the moon is full. She who can bless a fisherman or curse him, who can stir the sea into a fury or calm it with a whisper.”
“She’s a story you tell children to make them behave,” Marko retorted, tearing another piece of bread with more force than necessary. “A ghost to frighten them away from the cliffs at night. There is no beautiful woman with stormy hair and sea-blue eyes who commands the wind. It’s just weather. It’s just… science.”
“Science,” she sniffed, as if the word was a foul taste. “A new word for an old ignorance. My own grandmother, she saw one. Down in the cove beyond Stoncica. She said her hair was the colour of the forest floor after rain, and her eyes… her eyes were the exact, terrifying blue of the sea in the deepest channel. She was tangled in a net, not of rope, but of moonlight, they said.”
“And I suppose your grandmother cut her free and was granted three wishes?” Marko said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“No,” Baka Jasna said, her smile fading into something more solemn. “She was too afraid. She ran. And for a year after, her nets came up empty, and the bora wind tore the tiles from her roof. You do not turn your back on such things, Marko. They are the spirit of this place. We are just… visitors here.”
“Well, if she’s out there,” Marko grumbled, standing up and gathering the fish for Ana, “tell her this visitor could use a little help. A mountain of mackerel would be a good start. A sunken treasure chest wouldn’t be refused either.”
He kissed the top of her head, the familiar scent of her—lavender and old wool—filling his senses. Her faith was a comfort to her, he knew, but to him, it was a symptom of the problem. Believing in magic was a luxury for those who weren’t fighting for their next meal.
“You mock,” she said softly, catching his hand. “But the old world doesn’t disappear just because you stop believing in it. It just waits. And sometimes, it gets tired of waiting.”
Later, long after he had delivered the fish to a grateful, weary-eyed Ana, long after the sun had plunged into the sea, leaving a blood-orange stain on the horizon, Marko stood on the pebble beach below his house. The night was vast and clear, a tapestry of cold, hard stars. The only sounds were the gentle, sighing lap of the water on the stones and the distant chirp of crickets.
He looked out at the dark, shifting plain of the sea. It was an emptiness that stretched to the edge of the world. Baka Jasna’s words echoed in his mind. You see only with your eyes.
What else was there to see? He was a man of substance, of weight and measure. A net was for catching fish. A boat was for crossing water. A man worked, he ate, he slept. There was no room for spirits of the wind and forest in that equation. It was a simple, hard life, and he had accepted its terms.
He picked up a flat, smooth stone and skipped it across the inky surface. It bounced four, five, six times before vanishing with a final, soft plink. The concentric rings spread out, shimmering in the starlight for a moment, before being swallowed by the greater darkness.
An empty net, he thought. An empty sea. An empty future.
He turned his back on it and trudged up the path to his house, a solitary figure against the immensity of the night. He did not look back. If he had, he might have seen, far out where the water was deepest, a strange, phosphorescent shimmer that was not the moon’s reflection. He might have seen a patch of water that swirled against the tide, as if stirred by an unseen hand. He might have heard, carried on a sudden, inexplicable breath of wind that smelled of pine and wildflowers, the faint, echoing sound of a laugh.
But Marko saw none of it. He was a practical man. And the practical world, or so he thought, was all there was. He went inside, closed the door, and blew out the lamp, leaving the island to the mysteries of the night.
