The first women returning to the shore found the handbag. Along the river, in a grassy hollow on the bank where they met each month, the purse went unnoticed by the women until they were just upon the spot where it huddled curiously among their towels and clothes.
The women had been out quite far that morning because the air was still and the water as smooth as silk this midsummer day. They’d gone in an hour after sunrise and swam the mile to the riverbend, where they tread water until each arrived, taking a collective head count, just in case. Because they were of what was politely termed “a certain age,” they always swam in pairs, staying near their partner in case of a leg cramp, fatigue or, sometimes, panic.
But today’s swim had been glorious, and the women triumphed to have embraced the river for all the restorative thrills it offered. Nothing felt as good as what they called the rush, a frigid shock to the body as they submerged themselves in the water. They swam first against the current while they were strongest and, returning, with the flow when their energy began to wane. Ignoring fatigue, they laughed and shouted as they waded back to shore, took off their swimming caps, and shook out their hair, but stopped when they saw the peculiar object that hadn’t been there when they’d left.
The women had been gone only an hour, which was apparently enough time for someone to leave a handbag on the shore. The women looked around. Perhaps the person was waiting and watching for the purse to be found. But they didn’t see anyone, not even a car in the distance. This small beach was barely more than a sandy bar at the top of the small cove and remote enough not to be stumbled upon by chance. Someone would have to know about it to have driven or biked here.
The purse was roomy, a coffee-brown leather crossbody bag with a flap across the front like a mail carrier’s pouch. Inside, the women found a tortoiseshell hair comb and a lace handkerchief, white with blue sprigs around the edges. Both seemed older than the bag itself—possibly family mementoes or keepsakes passed down from one woman to another.
Nothing else distinguished the bag, nor did the women recognize it as belonging to anyone they knew. The older women recalled the folktale of a sleeping baby in a basket left on shore for a kind-hearted woman to find and the tiny girl was adopted by a childless widow. Together they lived quietly away from town caring for each other until their deaths. The story was a lesson of goodness repaid and of mutual needs fulfilled by divine intervention or luck, depending on the telling.
Thinking of a baby left in a basket long ago, the women were relieved to have found only a purse. What would they have done with an abandoned baby? Times were different now; babies couldn’t simply be taken home. The women knew it was better to have found just a handbag, but some couldn’t help but remember the pleasure of holding a newborn, its sweet scent and milky nuzzling, with a fleeting intimacy and buried ache that these collective swims sometimes assuaged.
After debating whether to involve the authorities, they decided to post a note on their wild swimming page stating they’d bring it next time they swam, and one of them volunteered to take the purse home for safekeeping.
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But no one claimed it. The women joked they were returning to the scene of the crime, yet found nothing out of the ordinary. Arms empty, they left the purse in the same sandy spot at the river’s edge and went on their swim as usual.
The day was overcast with a hint of fall in the air, but the sun promised to break through the clouds and reflect off the deep blue water. Two by two, hand in hand, the women waded out toward the deeper current and entered the water with strong, swift strokes.
Again they swam to the riverbend, bobbing and waving exultantly to each other before returning, where, even from the river, they could see the purse on the shore as they approached. Pulling themselves from the water, they found the first purse was now joined by a second similar purse. Inside was a small leather coin bag with a metal clasp containing the end of a wooden pencil, tooth-pocked and worn to a dull graphite stub. Like the first purse, the second bore no distinguishing features beyond the leather itself, which looked to be of good vintage quality with superior stitching.
The second purse changed the story the women had been telling about the first: that it had been left as a joke or was an innocent gift left by an admirer of wild swimming. Two purses seemed more suspicious, possibly sinister. Still, they agreed not to call the police. They didn’t want to look foolish or paranoid. Also, many of them were fans of crime shows and fancied themselves amateur sleuths; they were determined to solve this mystery on their own. The group decided to post another note for their next wild swim—the last outing of the year now that the air was getting colder and the mornings darker. This time, however, two of them would stay behind to hide in the tall grass and watch from the river bank.
They could hardly wait for the month to pass.
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The third time the women gathered at the river, a spicy coolness nipped the air. Today was the autumnal equinox, a day and night of equal length when many believed the earth rebalanced its energy by granting second chances to address past wrongs.
The group left the purses as planned amongst their things and the pairs of women entered the water, except for two who had volunteered to keep watch. They lay down on their bellies in the river grass, waiting as the swimmers disappeared from view.
The sun rose and the grass warmed like a cocoon around them, until the women began to nod off. They slept in their grassy bower until the others returned from their swim, laughing and shaking water from their bodies.
The two purses were still on the sand but now, as the women discovered, an old coin had been left in each. The women shuddered to think someone had come so close to the watchers, whose embarrassment at falling asleep quickly turned to fear.
All of the women had experienced losing something in the depths of a handbag and finding it months later, a welcome re-materialization—keys slipped to the bottom; sunglasses gone missing; money hastily deposited; jewelry removed for safekeeping. If something could disappear and be found again, surely a coin could turn up. Couldn’t it?
If only the watchers hadn’t fallen asleep. Were they certain they hadn’t seen or heard anything? How had someone crept up so quietly they hadn’t been spotted? To think how close they’d come to discovering the mysterious stranger who had taken on a growing malevolence in their minds. Even the crime readers were afraid. The intrusion felt more sinister than ever.
Now the women argued about what to do. Leave the purses where they were. Hand them in to the police.Bring them back for yet another swim, which would be a challenge since the weather was turning quite cold and the water temperature would be difficult to bear. The women were ready to snuggle into their cozy homes in the morning rather than plunge into frigid water. Another cold swim on a late autumn day was more than they could contemplate. The presence of the purses had already changed the satisfaction of their swims by reminding them that they weren’t alone. The river wasn’t really theirs—they just liked to think it was.
But they also knew they needed to claim their right to be safe in the open air and the rushing water they loved. They agreed they wouldn’t forfeit their monthly swims to anyone and this final swim would prove it, for they would swim on Samhain, the ancient celebration marking the harvest’s end when the veil is lifted between worlds. It was a superstition, they knew, but the women found it fitting, for didn’t this mystery have something of the otherworldly about it?
They would swim again, and they would set up a trail camera with sensor-activated video. Using the purses as bait, they would train the lens on the beach and see what transpired while they were in the water.
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On the last October morning with a nip of frost in the air, the women gathered on the bank as the sun appeared cautiously over the river.
They placed the purses in the same spot and positioned the trail cam on a nearby stone. They shivered together, standing at the river’s edge. The women tucked their hair under their bathing caps, put on their Neoprene socks and gloves, waded up to their shoulders, and plunged in. They would need to swim hard to stay warm.
Entering the water was like claiming admittance to another world, for air and water envelop a body differently; movement must adapt to the liquid weight drawing against skin. Submerged, the women let go of the sky and light above to shift their senses to the stroke of arms and legs through a heavier substance. The cold was acute; the shock propelled their bodies into the current until they were swimming without thinking, moving only to stay alive. They swam as long as they dared and then turned as one, worrying that they hadn’t been gone long enough for the cam to catch their interloper.
With relief they dragged themselves out of the water and toward their towels and jackets. As cold as they were, they immediately looked for the purses. Both were still there, their flaps opened agape toward the sky. The women dressed quickly and gathered around the camera. They would catch the intruder in the act and then . . . well, they’d see what came next.
But it wasn’t a man, a woman, or a child they saw in the video. It was a bird. A magpie, specifically, that mischievous and curious creature with an advanced ability to reason. The women watched as the black and white Corvid glided to the purses and flipped open the leather flap on first one, then the other. Then it flew off, its long tail glinting, and returned in a short time with something shiny in its mouth, which it dropped into the first bag. Within moments, it was joined by a second magpie, which deposited a gleaming object into the other purse. Then, they were gone.
The women clapped each other on the shoulder and shouted, “Hurray!” That was all there was to the mystery. Birds, intelligent birds, but birds all the same. The women had been fooled by the known tricksters of the avian world. Laughing in relief, the women didn’t speculate how two birds might carry a handbag between them. Instead, they bent forward to see what the birds had left for them this time.
In the first bag, they found a flashy brooch of colored stones; in the second, a glinty bracelet of leaf-shaped charms. Neither was real gold but both showed traces of soil between the filigreed facets.
A token left behind by the river years ago, the women decided. Nothing of importance, nothing to trace, nothing to declare. Only a bit of mystery that had brought the women more closely together and strengthened their commitment to their swims. To be joined by the treasure-sharing magpies could only bestow good fortune on their collective endeavor, proof that nature—at least here—welcomed their presence.
The women hugged each other regretfully. With winter approaching, their wild swims would end, at least until spring brought them, and the magpies, to the river again.
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Writer, farmer, and teacher Kayann Short, Ph.D., is the author of A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography (Torrey House Press), a Nautilus Green Living & Sustainability winner. Her work appears in The Hopper, The Write Launch, New Flash Fiction Review, and Burningword, among others, and the anthologies, Dirt: A Love Story and Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Non-Fiction. A recipient of the Downing Excellence in Journalism award, Dr. Short runs a CSA and organizes community writing events at Stonebridge Farm on Colorado’s Front Range. “Wild Swim” is part of a work-in-progress featuring women as a collective protagonist. More on Short’s writing can be viewed at kayannshort.com.