The Enchanted Boy

I was seventeen the summer I met him — the summer of sky lanterns, of music in the sand, of endless salt in the air and wildflowers in my hair.

We stayed in a cottage that clung to the edge of the cliffs, where the sea breathed against the rocks below like some great, dreaming beast. My mother said it was to help me “reset” — after the year I’d had — but I knew what she meant. I wasn’t speaking much back then. I’d lost too much. I’d felt too little.

Then one evening, just past the blush of dusk, I saw him.

He was standing barefoot in the tide, pants rolled to his knees, hair longer than any boy’s I’d seen, the color of storm clouds.

He was just… there, like a figure sketched into the horizon, looking not at the sea but past it — as though watching a memory vanish.

I don’t remember walking down. One moment I was on the porch, the next my toes were sinking into the cool sand beside him.
“You came,” he said, as if I’d been expected.

I didn’t answer. I just stared at him — not because he was beautiful, although he was in a quiet, untouchable way — but because his eyes looked like they knew something mine didn’t.
“You don’t talk much,” he said after a moment. “That’s alright. Silence is where truth lives best.”
He never told me his name. I never asked.

I saw him every day after that. Sometimes by the shore, sometimes in the hills where the wild lavender grew. He always seemed to know where I’d be. And though we rarely spoke in words, I felt more heard with him than I ever had with anyone.

He told me stories — strange stories, as though they’d been carved from dreams. One about a crow that stole stars. One about a girl who lived in the reflection of a lake. Another about a boy who once loved so fiercely he turned into a song.
“Are they true?” I asked once, when the wind died enough for me to find my voice.
“All of them,” he said, smiling. “But only if you believe them.”

I wanted to tell him about my father — about how the world had felt muffled since the funeral, like cotton stuffed in my ears and lungs. About the guilt I carried like a phantom limb.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I listened to him.
And somehow, that was enough.

It was near the end of August when he said he wouldn’t be staying much longer.
“The tides are pulling me elsewhere,” he said, running his fingers through the seafoam. “I was only ever meant to visit.”
“Where will you go?”
He looked at me. Really looked at me.
“Far,” he said softly. “Very far. Over land and sea. But this—” He reached out and touched my chest with the tips of two fingers, right over my heart. “This stays with you.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.

That evening, we sat beneath the stars, our backs against the crumbling stone wall of an old watchtower. We talked — more than we ever had. About everything. About the foolishness of kings and the wisdom of fools. About rain that felt like music and silence that felt like thunder. About the way loss can carve you into someone deeper, not smaller.

Then he said it — the words that would never leave me:

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love… and be loved. Just to love — and be loved in return.”

He said it like it wasn’t a quote. Like it wasn’t borrowed. Like he’d lived it. Like he was it.
I think I cried, though the stars blurred so gently I couldn’t be sure.

The next morning, he was gone.
No note. No goodbye.
Just the memory of a boy who had never really belonged to the world, but who gave me back mine anyway.

Years have passed.
I speak now. I live now.
There are days I still feel hollow, still ache with things I can’t name. But on those days, I go to the sea. I walk barefoot into the tide, close my eyes, and wait.

And sometimes — just sometimes — I hear his voice in the waves, telling me stories about crows and stars and songs that never end.
No one ever believes me when I speak of him. Some say I made him up, that he was just a boy in my imagination, conjured from grief and longing.
But I know the truth.

There was a boy.
One very strange, enchanted boy.
And he changed everything.