Designs of the Heart

by Renee Ryder

  “Okay. Now take a deep breath and follow me below. Just in front of us you’ll see a kind ’a wall of seaweed. We’re gonna go through it.”

  “Through it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Blagh!”

  “No, don’t worry. It’s not the green, slimy type. These are reddish and rough. They look like small bushes. There’s a passage just behind it. Basically, we’re gonna pop up inside the coast.”

  “Inside?” she asked, still nervous.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But … We find a place where we can breathe, right?”

  “Of course. Look, if it was dangerous, I’d never take you there. I’ve been coming here for two years and nothing’s ever happened.”

  He still seemed confident, but the uncertainty building up in the logical part of her mind held her back.

  “It seems complicated, but you’ll see. You just need to hold your breath for fifteen seconds and stay behind me. Trust me.”

  “Sorry, Nico. I don’t know.”

  She felt bad for being so anxious, but the thought of going into an underwater passage scared her. Despite that, she appreciated him giving her space to speak her mind, instead of her swallowing it like usual.

  “Okay. Listen. Put on your goggles and watch me, but don’t follow.”

  Though reluctant, she did as he said.

  He dove and she dipped her face into the water.

  She saw him go down about six feet towards the immense tapestry of golden-red seaweed waving in the current, to the submerged part of the rock wall in front of them. He headed directly to a specific point and slipped his arms into it, opening a gap in the plants. Then he turned back to her to indicate that this was the way before swimming back up to join her.

  “What do you say?” he asked, enthusiastic but also funny with his hair stuck flat on his forehead.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem as dangerous as I thought. But …”

  “Okay. Let’s do it another way. Come down with me and I’ll show you the passage in the rock. Then we’ll come back up and you can tell me what you think.”

  She considered it a reasonable option.

  They went down together. He placed himself before the wall of seaweed and spread it apart like curtains. She was an arm’s length behind him and from this new angle she could see a short tunnel in the rock big enough even for a horse. The light filtering through the water ahead comforted her.

  They came back up.

  “So? Shall we try?” he asked, smiling and hopeful.

  “I bet you didn’t think I would do things so difficult for you.”

  “Actually, no. But I understand. I was wrong to assume. Like I said, I do it almost every day. It’s normal for me.”

  Something in his complete acceptance and graciousness loosened the knot of worry in her chest. “Okay. Let’s try!”

  “Great! Stay behind me and don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m ready.”

  22. The Genie’s Bottle

  Hannah and Nico each took a deep breath and dove down.

  She had already seen him part the seaweed at the tunnel, but watching him venture into it gave her a moment of doubt in following him. But only a moment, because needing to hold her breath was the most effective deterrent against hesitation.

  As he’d said, that seaweed was rough—she felt it on her thighs when she passed through. They reminded her of vines, but instead of grapes they had thick tufts the color of her hair. Meanwhile he was already facing the passage in the rock, decorated throughout with the same type of seaweed. She wanted to cling to his feet and be pulled, but how could she tell him? She found some support on the rock itself, then pushed forward and threaded herself through the eye of the needle. The growing brightness ahead calmed her; at the same time, the sharp drop in the temperature of the water made her tense.

  Once inside, he stopped. Gripping the rock with one hand, he held out the other. Relieved, she took it and let him pull her, the seaweed tickling her skin as she rocketed past.

  Overcome by anxiety, she immediately checked upwards in search of a place to catch her breath. When she realized that there was no obstacle between her and the shining surface, she relaxed and took a look at the underwater scene. It enchanted her. It was like looking down on a miniature Italian piazza with a column in the center, but in this case it was a totally submerged little town square just twenty feet underneath them, populated by sea plants and small schools of silvery little fish that swam in synchronization. She was able to measure the distance by sight because while out in the open water a big, blue nothing stretched below, here she could see a polychrome carpet of marine vegetation. As for the column, it consisted of a large spike of rock as wide as the trunk of an oak that reached up almost to the surface. And he was there, enjoying her astonishment—what else could his dazzling smile be for?

  She could fill a diary with all that she saw and felt in that half minute trip!

  As soon as she began to run out of oxygen, she kicked herself upward.

  They broke through the surface and found themselves floating in a pool inside a strange grotto. It was strange because, besides the underwater entrance, a diagonal flow of light filtered through. She looked up and saw a large, lopsided opening twenty feet above them, not directly overhead. It partly widened along the ceiling and side wall, which allowed her to glimpse the sky. Through this blue eye the sun cast its gaze on the low rocks in front of them.

  “I couldn’t bring my sketchbook in here! I was wondering why you said I can’t draw this place.”

  It was the first thing out of her mouth.

  His only reply was a look of astonishment and small frown.

  “Nico, what’s wrong?”

  He remained still for a few more moments, then …

  “Can you hear that?” He beamed. “There’s an echo! Lalalalala!”

  Now it was she who frowned.

  “Since I’m always by myself, I haven’t spoke in here. I never thought there’d be an echo!”

  She smiled at his boyish delight in the discovery and pushed her goggles on top of her head—they were a little tight and might leave a mark around her eyes, plus she could appreciate the view better this way.

  “It’s amazing. I feel to be in a genie’s bottle!”

  “Hahaha, I understand what you mean,” he confirmed, eyes bright. “Come with me.”

  He swam to the low rocks bathed in sunshine. She followed him, passing over the submerged spike of rock she’d noticed before. She put her face in the water and opened her eyes, both to avoid bumping into it and to take another look at that little parlor of Neptune. The rock looked like serpentine, with a greenish covering that looked more like moss than seaweed, and was a couple of feet below her toes.

  Nico climbed up onto the rocks easier than he had onto the boat—here the height was like the edge of a swimming pool—and then held out his hand to her.

  Conscious that she would need his help again later, she resolved to show him she wasn’t a slacker.

  “I can do it by myself, thank you.”

  He gave her room while she climbed up, pushing up onto her chest before pulling up her legs one at a time. She stood up, water streaming off of her. She felt a slight warmth and realized that, from this position, she could see the sun through the eye in the rock.

  “For you,” he said, calling her back to her senses.

  He had taken off his vest, wrapped himself in a blue and white striped towel, and was offering her an identical one.

  “From where did you get these?”

  “Like I said, I come here every day. Well, except when I was with you the last two days. I’ve brought some useful stuff, so it’s easier to enjoy this … this Aladdin’s lamp!”

  She laughed.

  “Over here, I’ll show you.”

  She followed him a few steps over the damp, flat stones to the back of the grotto, her eyes wandering over the rocky wa
lls that curved up into a rugged ceiling.

  He crouched over a large gym bag in a corner. It was so dim that she couldn’t see what other stuff he kept in it.

  “A throw pillow, nail clippers, some snacks,” he said, pulling them out and showing her. “This one’s chocolate. Want some?”

  “Nail clippers?” she laughed. “What do you do with nail clippers?!”

  “Well, every time I came here, I noticed that my nails were too long.” He gestured to his feet, smiling. “But then I’d get back home and forget to cut them.”

  “Then you brought it here.” She couldn’t get over how comfortable and open he always was with her.

  “Yep. I’ve also got some water if you’re thirsty,” he added, changing the subject and displaying a big, plastic bottle of water three quarters full.

  “Thanks, I’m fine,” she replied automatically, as always when someone outside her circle offered her an open drink. Right away she felt ashamed because she trusted Nico, and the reaction was just ingrained. “Well, maybe I’m a little thirsty.”

  “Here you go.”

  She took the large bottle he offered and drank from it. She really was thirsty, but mostly she wanted to show her trust in him.

  “It tastes of sparkling water.”

  “It is. Maybe it went a bit flat ’cause I brought it in Monday.”

  “No, it’s fine.” She handed it back to him. “It really is a corner of Heaven here! How the hell did you find it? You were chasing a fish or what?” she asked, wrapping herself in the towel.

  “You make it sound easy. No, it’s a long story.”

  “Then we must to sit down because I want to hear it!”

  Cloaked in those fluffy pieces of sky, they sat side by side on the low rocks in a ring of light surrounded by dimness, leaving their feet dangling on the surface of the water. The stone seats were very comfortable, probably eroded and polished by the tide over centuries.

  “So, tell me of this place,” she insisted, gently rubbing a piece of towel on her face—the saltwater was kind of irritating her eyes.

  “Well, I’m not very good at soccer.”

  The beginning of his story made her feel like a math student told to figure out the price of an egg based on the cost of butter.

  “Don’t make that face. That’s how it all started.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “Since I was little, soccer has never been my thing. But my friends play pick up games every day, and I wanted to be part of the group, so … They made me play defense ’cause I run fast and I’m tough, but with the ball at my feet I’m pathetic. So I on—”

  “Pathetic?”

  “It means I’m a disaster.”

  “Okay, got it.”

  “So, playing defense, I only had to mark the attacker and block him from passing to anyone.”

  “I don’t know much about soccer, but I think I understood what you mean,” she said, enjoying the pleasure of the cold water on her feet, while the towel hugged her in the warm sun.

  “Two years ago, more or less, we were playing against some guys from another neighborhood in the church’s field. The attacker that I’m marking is an ass. He keeps trash talking. So, to intimidate him, I go all in for a ball that they passed to him and I kick it as hard as I can. The ball goes way up and then right over the fence. It was a nice ball. High quality. The guy who’d brought it, someone on the other team I only knew by sight, says I gotta pay him back. I don’t have a hundred thirty euros to give him, so I climb the fence and go looking for it.”

  “And your friends didn’t come to help you?”

  “We had to pay to use the field, so they got another ball from the custodian and kept playing, just short a player.”

  “So, you went alone searching for the ball.”

  “Yeah. I head for where I saw it go. On that side of the field there’s a lot of bushes that go down to the sea. It’s deserted, not a place where anyone’d go, ’cause it’s kind of dangerous and nothing’s around, except for the escarpment. So I sta—”

  “What’s escarpment?”

  “A kind of overhanging cliff, but slanted like so,” and luckily he used his hands to help explain, since she’d never heard those words either. “With tall grass, shrubs, trees …”

  “Oh, I get it. Sorry, go on.”

  “I look in the bushes in the direction of the kick, but I kicked it hard and the ball must have ended up much farther away, like in the escarpment. I start down, bit by bit, careful where I put my feet. I think that the ball must have ended up further down. At the end of the escarpment, the greenery’s gone. There’s just rocks, so I start checking behind each one. I look until I get to just up here,” and he pointed above. “By then I’m hoping it went into the sea so I could see it from up here and dive down for it. I walk right to the edge and look in. Nothing. But I recognize that stretch of the sea. We always go past it on our way to fish and also ’cause I can see the beach down a ways. The beach where you and I met.”

  He’d kept his eyes fixed on the little pool during his whole story, but with those last words he turned to look at her. It came to her mind then that he was a good man. Why she’d thought something like that right then, she had no idea.

  “I start checking the whole rock, and imagine my shock when I’m in front of that,” he said, pointing to the wide crack above.

  “Are you going to tell me the ball ended up in here?”

  “I admit I’d thought about it, so my story’d sound like magic, with a happy ending. But that’s not the truth.”

  “You mean, you didn’t find the ball?”

  “No. But my friends know things are tight for us, so they took up a collection.”

  She knew the term “collection” so she could guess the meaning of “things are tight.” It would have been interesting for her Italian studies to ask about it, but with the delicate subject she didn’t want to embarrass him.

  “Just think. I look in here and discover this place! I wanna get down inside, but I don’t see how. I could dive, but only an idiot dives without knowing the depth or what’s at the bottom.”

  “It’s well that you didn’t jump. You could have been landing onto the submerged rock,” she said, pointing to it.

  “Yeah, this place is awesome, but not enough to risk breaking your neck.”

  “I wonder how that rock ended up here.”

  “I think it’s part of the bottom. No?”

  “It could be. But isn’t it in a strange position? I mean, it’s right in the center.”

  “I had never thought about it.”

  “Maybe it was a part of the ceiling and one day it fell down, leaving that crack open.”

  “But if you look carefully, the position doesn’t match.”

  “Maybe it came between the crack,” she said, starting to laugh.

  “Kind of a meteorite that went through the hole?”

  “I was thinking more about a volcanic eruption, with a large rock flying over the sea and landing on the coast.”

  “It’d be nice to know the story of this grotto,” he sighed with a dreamy expression.

  “So you didn’t dive in here.”

  “No, ’cause I could dive to get down, but not to get back up …”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it could work, hahaha! Then, what did you do?”

  “I leave. Then I come back the next morning with a rope. I ma—”

  “A line!”

  “Yes, a line.” He smiled at her. “I make some big knots, a shin’s length away from each other, as if it was a ladder. I tie it up to a rock and throw it inside. I take off my clothes and go down one knot at a time. It’s hard to stay focused on putting my feet on the knots ’cause I’m distracted by looking around. I felt like Indiana Jones discovering a cave!”

  “I understand you. I just felt something like that.”

  “Really?” he said in disbelief.

  “Yes.
”

  “Oh … You have no idea what it means to me that you felt that way, too.”

  She wanted to reply that anyone would feel the same way in discovering such a wonder, but why shatter his mystical moment by dragging him back to reality?

  “Then?”

  “Um, yes. I go down into the water. It was so fucking cold I almost froze my balls off.”

  She laughed.

  “At first I think it’s an old reservoir to collect rain. Then I realize it’s saltwater, so there’s gotta be an outlet from the sea. I go underwater and start exploring.”

  “And you found the tunnel we passed through.”

  “Exactly. When I broke through the seaweed wall and found myself in the middle of the sea, I felt like … like … When you explore, you usually move from a large space to a small one. Not the other way.”

  “I’ll understand you better when we go back out.”

  “Yeah, you’ll see. It’s like going into space. I mean, I’ve never been to space, but I bet that’s the way it feels.”

  She couldn’t wait to experience it; luckily, she caught herself before saying it. That would sound like she wanted to leave as soon as possible, which wasn’t true.

  “However, when I get to the open sea, I’ve already decided that this would be my own, secret place! For me it was much easier to get here from the sea than the church soccer field. I just had to find a landmark for when I came back in the boat. From down on the water, you can’t see that hole.”

  “I didn’t pay much attention when we were on the boat, but I watched the coast. It all looks the same. Only rocks.”

  “Even if you look carefully, you won’t notice it. I assure you.”

  “I believe you.”

  “So I swim along the rock for a while. As I spot a clear indentation nearby, like a niche, I imprint it on my brain. From there, I try to measure the distance from the passage. It was so hard to find it again! The seaweed on the side of the cliff is all the same and I can’t remember where I came through. But in the end I find it. I swim back in here and climb up the rope ladder. It’s morning, so I’ve got time to go to the beach and take our boat out. I row along the coast, checking each inch until I find that niche. I take an old, rusty anchor that I brought with me, I tie a rope to it, and throw it into the sea.”