The Island That Loved Too Harshly

The sea was the first thing Marina saw every morning — endless, blue, and deceitfully calm. From her kitchen window, it stretched toward the horizon, glittering like a promise it never intended to keep.

She lived on Vela Stina, an island so small that gossip traveled faster than the wind. Two hundred souls clung to its rocky shore, proud and weary, their houses painted white but their hearts full of shadows. Marina had been born here, like her mother and grandmother before her. She had left once, briefly, when she was twenty and foolish, but she returned when her husband fell ill. That was twenty-five years ago.

Now she was fifty-two, with salt in her hair and lines around her mouth that deepened each time she smiled — which was rare. She had no children, only a small vineyard behind the house, a lazy dog named Pero, and a tendency to notice too much.

People said she was kind. They said it like an accusation.

Every morning, Marina walked to the bakery. The islanders were already awake — fishermen mending nets, old women sweeping steps, young mothers pushing strollers. The air smelled of coffee and seaweed.

“Dobro jutro, Marina!” shouted Mira, the baker’s wife. “You look pale again. You should eat more. A woman needs strength.”

Marina smiled faintly. “Maybe I’ll buy two loaves then.”

“Good idea,” Mira said, patting her arm with a hand still covered in flour. “We worry about you, you know. Always alone in that house. It’s not healthy.”

Marina nodded, as she always did. People on Vela Stina worried a lot — it was their way of feeling righteous. They worried about who drank too much, who didn’t go to Mass, who painted their shutters the wrong color. Worry was a form of ownership.

That morning, as she left the bakery, she noticed a girl sitting on the steps of the old post office. Dark hair, foreign clothes, a backpack too heavy for her shoulders. She looked maybe eighteen, nineteen. Marina had never seen her before.

“Are you lost?” Marina asked gently.

The girl looked up, startled. “I—uh—yes. I missed the ferry. It was the last one today, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

The girl sighed. “Great. My phone’s dead too.”

Marina hesitated only a moment. “You can charge it at my house. It’s not far.”

The girl’s relief was immediate. “Thank you! I’m Lena.”

“Marina,” she said.

By afternoon, Lena’s phone was charging in the kitchen, and Pero had decided the visitor was tolerable. They drank lemonade on the terrace, the air humming with cicadas.

Lena was from Zagreb, a university student traveling alone. She’d taken the ferry to Vela Stina because, as she put it, “it looked quiet.”

Marina smiled at that. “Quiet, yes. But it has ears everywhere.”

Lena laughed, unaware of how true that was.

When evening came, Marina insisted she stay the night. There were no hotels this time of year, and the ferry wouldn’t come until morning.

“You’re sure?” Lena asked.

“Of course. It’s nothing.”

It felt good, Marina thought, to care for someone again. To see the gratitude in another person’s eyes.

The next morning, half the island already knew.

Marina could feel the stares as she walked to the pier with Lena to see her off. Old Stipan muttered to his friend, “That’s what happens when a woman lives alone too long.”

By noon, Mira from the bakery came knocking.

“Marina, draga, people are talking,” she said, lowering her voice. “They say you took in some stranger last night.”

“She missed the ferry,” Marina said. “She was just a girl.”

“Of course,” Mira said, eyes soft with judgment. “But you know how it looks. A woman alone. You must be careful. We worry about you.”

Worry again. Always worry.

After Mira left, Marina sat by the window for a long time, staring at the sea.

The rumors grew like mold.

Someone said the girl had stolen from Marina. Someone else claimed she wasn’t a student at all but a thief from the mainland. Another swore she’d seen them holding hands by the pier.

By the end of the week, Father Luka visited.

He was kind in the way priests often are — his voice low, his smile sad.

“My child,” he said, though Marina was older than him. “People talk because they care. They only want what’s best for you.”

“And what is that?” she asked quietly.

“That you keep your reputation intact. You have always been respected here. Don’t let one act of kindness endanger that.”

Marina smiled without warmth. “So kindness is dangerous now?”

The priest sighed. “You know what I mean.”

But she didn’t, or perhaps she did and didn’t want to admit it.

That night, she dreamed of the sea swallowing the island whole — houses, churches, people and their words, all sinking together into silence.

In the days that followed, Marina noticed the shift — small, almost invisible. People greeted her less. Conversations stopped when she entered a shop. Children who used to play near her gate were suddenly called home.

When she went to Mass, she could feel the weight of glances. Someone had scrawled a word on her fence in white chalk: “Čudakinja.” Weirdo.

She washed it away, but it left a ghostly trace, like a scar.

The cruelest part was how everyone pretended it came from love. “We just want you to be careful,” they said. “We only want what’s best for you.”

Mira brought her soup “because you mustn’t cook alone all the time.” Old Stipan offered to “check on the vineyard” as if she were incapable of pruning vines herself. Even the priest sent a basket of figs with a note that read, We are all God’s children. Don’t stray from His care.

Care. Always care. But Marina felt it like a rope tightening around her neck.

Then, one evening in late August, Lena returned.

Marina found her sitting by the stone wall near the vineyard, knees pulled to her chest, eyes red.

“Lena?”

The girl looked up, startled. “I didn’t know where else to go. My boyfriend left me in Dubrovnik. He took my money, my bag... I just remembered you were kind.”

Marina’s heart twisted. “Come inside.”

They spent the night talking in the kitchen, candlelight flickering on the walls. Lena told her everything — the lies, the promises, the shame. Marina listened, offering tea and silence.

“You shouldn’t stay here,” she said finally. “People will talk.”

“I don’t care,” Lena whispered.

Marina smiled sadly. “You will, one day.”

But she couldn’t send her away.

By morning, the island was a storm.

Two young men had seen Lena arrive. By noon, they’d told everyone that Marina was keeping her “secret lover” hidden.

The whispers turned to murmurs, murmurs to voices.

By evening, the church bell rang though it wasn’t Sunday.

Marina looked out her window and saw a group gathering in the square — Mira, Stipan, half the town. Father Luka stood at the front, hands raised for calm.

Pero barked nervously.

Then came the knock.

“Marina, open up.”

It was the priest’s voice, polite but firm.

Lena froze. “What’s happening?”

Marina didn’t answer. She knew.

When she opened the door, the priest and Mira stood there, faces solemn.

“Marina,” Father Luka said, “there are concerns. People say you are keeping a stranger here.”

“She has nowhere else to go.”

“Still,” Mira said, eyes flicking toward the window where shadows gathered outside, “it doesn’t look good. You know how people are.”

Marina’s voice trembled. “Yes. I know exactly how people are.”

The priest sighed. “We only want what’s best for you. Let the girl go. We’ll help her find the ferry tomorrow. The whole island is worried.”

There it was again — worry. The word that disguised cruelty, that turned compassion into something suffocating.

Lena grabbed Marina’s hand. “Please, don’t make me leave.”

Marina’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s all right, draga. It’s all right.”

She turned to the priest. “Give me one day. She’s tired.”

Father Luka hesitated, then nodded. “One day. But after that, she must go.”

When they left, Marina locked the door and blew out the candle. The house fell into darkness, except for the trembling light of the moon.

That night, Lena cried herself to sleep on the couch. Marina sat by the window, staring at the black sea.

She thought of her husband, dead fifteen years now, who had been gentle but weak. Of the years she’d spent trying to please people, to be respectable, to fit into a place that worshipped sameness.

She thought of how they called their cruelty care, how they claimed to protect her while stripping away everything that made her human.

By morning, she had made her decision.

At dawn, she woke Lena.

“You’ll leave today,” she said softly.

“No! You promised—”

“I know. But they won’t stop. And I can’t protect you.”

Lena’s face crumpled. “Where will I go?”

Marina pressed a small envelope into her hand. “There’s some money inside. Enough for a ticket. Go to Split. Start again.”

Lena hugged her tightly, sobbing. “You’re the only person who’s ever been kind to me.”

Marina didn’t answer.

They walked together to the pier. The ferry hadn’t yet arrived, but the sky was already light. A few fishermen watched them, whispering.

When Lena boarded, she turned back once, waving. Marina raised her hand but didn’t wave back. She stood there until the ferry disappeared behind the cliffs.

That afternoon, the priest came again.

“I heard she left,” he said.

“She did.”

“Good,” he said softly. “It’s for the best.”

For the best. Another way to say we broke you because we love you.

When he left, Marina went to the vineyard. The vines shimmered in the late sun, heavy with grapes. She began to cut them slowly, carefully, the air thick with sweetness.

By sunset, she had filled three baskets. She brought them to the cellar, lit a candle, and sat among the barrels.

The air was cool and damp. The flame flickered, reflecting on the wine bottles like tiny eyes.

She thought of Lena, somewhere on the mainland, maybe safe, maybe not. She thought of herself, here — cared for, pitied, controlled.

The loneliness pressed against her like a stone.

Upstairs, the wind rattled the shutters. The island was silent. Everyone was content, convinced they had done a good thing. They would sleep peacefully tonight, proud of their care.

Marina picked up a small knife from the workbench. It was meant for pruning vines. She held it in her hand, feeling the weight, the sharpness.

Outside, the sea sighed against the rocks — patient, eternal.

She whispered to it, “They meant well.”

Then she pressed the blade to her wrist.

The next morning, Mira came with bread. When no one answered the door, she called the priest.

By noon, the whole island gathered again in the square — the same faces, the same voices, now soft with horror and guilt.

Father Luka said prayers. Mira wept loudly. Old Stipan muttered, “She was too sensitive. Poor thing.”

They spoke of how they had only wanted to help, how they had cared too much, how no one could have known.

The island would remember Marina kindly — as a woman who was fragile, who needed protection, who couldn’t bear the world’s weight.

They would never admit that it was their care that had killed her.

And by the next summer, when tourists returned and the sea glittered again, they would speak her name rarely, only in whispers, as if kindness itself had been a kind of sin.