Sea of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  I sat down on an Adirondack chair that was on the deck facing the ocean. Two things were bothering me. One was that Zach had correctly guessed what candy bar was my absolute favorite. It could have been happenstance. It could have been, but somehow I didn’t think it was. There could have been a simple explanation as well. Well, I had been sick for a full week and I could have said just about anything in my delirious ramblings. I could have even said something about my favorite candy.

  It was weak, but it was possible.

  But it was the other thing that was a problem. Zach had said that I had lost a lot of weight while I was sick. It was true. But most of the weight I had lost had been in the days immediately following the change. The days where I was most panicked and most uncertain were the times where I couldn’t bring myself to eat much. However, Zach didn’t meet me until after I had dropped twenty pounds.

  How had Zach known how I looked before the weight loss? And did it have another simple explanation? I couldn’t think of one.

  The troubling question made my stomach roil in distress. It made me suspicious about the only two people who I knew in the wide, wide world. I didn’t want to think that way about them.

  I sat there for a while and then got up to use the yellow house’s bathroom. The patio door was unlocked, and I didn’t even get to use the bathroom before I saw the note taped to the glass.

  The contents of the note made me shudder.

  When the hand came down on my shoulder from behind, I screamed like a little girl.

  Chapter Nine – As I Stand Alone…

  Zach spun me around and held onto my shoulders tightly as he yelled, “Calm down! It’s just me!”

  I bit off the scream and closed my eyes for a minute. My chest was heaving with the adrenaline rush his unexpected presence had caused. The moment before he had touched me, the moment I had finished reading the note taped on the door, was an instant in time where I had felt so incredibly alone. No one had been there. No one would ever be there. It was a heartfelt shock to find out I wasn’t all by myself.

  “Do you have to do that?” I finally accused, snapping my eyes open. “Do you have to sneak up on me?”

  Shaking his head, Zach let go with an abruptness that bothered me. It felt as though he was afraid to touch me any longer. “You were gone longer than you should have been. You’re still tired, weak, what was I supposed to do? Assume everything was peachy fine keen?” He ran a hand through his hair and stepped away, trying to put much needed space between us.

  I stared at him, my arms wrapping around my body as if I was protecting myself. I wanted to ask the question, ‘How did you know what I looked like before?’ But I suspected that he would brush me off. It would be, ‘I didn’t say that.’ Or, ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Or, ‘You misunderstood.’ It was up to me to decide what he meant. It was up to me to decide whether or not I could trust Zach, last name unknown.

  “There’s a note,” I said instead, my voice was a thread of sound, not like myself at all. I pointed at the glass doors. Then while Zach looked at the note, I went to use the bathroom. The house was neat and clean, the way the owner had left it. I guess he wanted his wife to know that he had kept it up for her. Her name had been Marie. He hadn’t signed his name except with an initial, ‘J.’ It could have stood for a multitude of names, James, Jake, John, or Jason. I knew inside that it didn’t matter but I still speculated. I could have looked through his papers to find out but I made myself resist. After all, I was still thinking about Gigi and Eddy.

  When I came back outside, Zach was sitting on the same Adirondack chair I had sat in. The note was clenched in his hands, but he was staring out to sea. I sat in the other chair because I wasn’t sure what to say. There was a feeling of transient wretchedness that stretched far and away.

  Even from where I sat, I could see the words that started the note. His neatly cursive letters were easy to read. ‘Dearest Marie,’ it began lovingly. ‘As I stand alone here, my thoughts are with you. When I woke up two weeks ago, I was alone. I thought you had gone to the store, but the car was still in the resident’s lot. Then I couldn’t find anyone. The electricity stopped worked and I had barely noticed. I realized that you probably won’t return. Your empty nighties on the couch next to your wedding rings on the floor tell me that this was not a woman who simply stepped out on our marriage. I can’t live without you, my darling love, my wonderful wife. The sea is calling me and I’m going…’ I couldn’t read anymore because Zach compressed his fist together and crumpled it into a tight ball of useless paper.

  “Would you have…?” Zach asked suddenly. His chocolate brown eyes met mine with the force of a locomotive going down a mountain. It forced me to stay focused on him. I literally couldn’t look away. “If you hadn’t found anyone?”

  I looked at his beautiful features. He was such a handsome man. Gruff, too. Controlling. Protective. Was it out of fear? Did he think that if he didn’t protect us then he would be alone? Was it that he didn’t want to be alone anymore than we did? Was this his way of shielding himself?

  And there was something about the way he looked at me that cause a trembling deep in my soul. I didn’t know how to identify it, nor was I certain that I was ready to do so. I shifted back to his question. “I don’t think I would have done what he did,” I answered candidly. “He went into the ocean and deliberately…” I sighed sorrowfully for J’s loss. There was so much pain intrinsically bound into the few brief words he had written on a plain page of notepaper. Would it have made a difference to the man if he knew that there were other survivors out there? Looking for each other in some cases?

  “Not deliberately,” Zach repeated my words broodingly. He paused and added calculatingly, “But you would have died nonetheless.”

  “If I hadn’t found someone like you and Kara,” I said. “I probably would have died soon enough.” Was it cold of me to say that? It was the truth. Even if a griffin hadn’t raked my flesh, even if a madman hadn’t attacked me, even if I had blithely continued down Highway 101 by myself, I would have slowly wasted away. Human beings weren’t meant to be alone, and I wasn’t an exception.

  Then something else occurred to me, “And if I hadn’t been touched by the firefly pixies.” I had to give them some credit as well.

  Zach looked away from me. I think he was satisfied with my response. He wasn’t happy but he was persuaded by the truthfulness of my statements. He glanced at the note in his hand. “Do you think he changed his mind at the end?” he asked pensively.

  “He loved his wife very much,” I said. “And I don’t know the answer to that. I hope it ended quickly.”

  There was such a look of intense sadness on Zach’s face as he stared west across white cap strewn waters. I reached over and touched his shoulder. He cast me a look and wryly smiled at the reaction of the contact. “He thought he was alone,” I said. “Perhaps he didn’t want to feel the pain anymore.”

  “Life is always going to be painful,” Zach said prosaically. “Things have a way of happening, whether you like it or not.”

  I struggled to find a way out of this melancholy mood we were both in. “It doesn’t have to be painful,” I said firmly. I reached over and gently took the crumpled note from him. I stood up and went back to the glass door. I carefully replaced it on the door, making sure the tape would hold it again. “It’s up to us to make sure it’s not.”

  Zach rose from the chair and carefully drew me to him. He tucked my head into his shoulder and buried his face into my hair. It was a platonic embrace. I was comforting him as much as he was comforting me. We held each other until a sea gull came gliding over the rail and surprised us both with a cawing cry of complaint. He let me go with a crusty, “Kara is going to think we went skinny dipping or something.”

  “Or something,” I said with half a forced laugh. “We don’t even have a good sea monster story to tell her.”

  ♦

  We spent the remainder of the afternoon on a slow ri
de to Brookings. There were more hills and more dramatic views of the ocean. Twice we saw something large out in the ocean that could have been the large snake-like, green fishy thing or its brother. Of course, it might have been a stupefied whale, wondering what the dealio had happened to his world. Incidentally, I added the green fishy thing to the last page of my notebook and didn’t bother to give it name besides ‘Big Green.’ Someday, someone who knew something about such creatures would name it something suitable. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be during the course of the thing eating him or her.

  I had to admit that I was the only one getting the best looks. I stared out to sea with occasional glances behind us to ensure that nothing or no one was following us. We stopped at a steel bridge overlooking a cove far below and Zach wondered aloud how long it would be before the infrastructure started to collapse.

  Kara looked thoughtful. She pointed at the asphalt of the road. Weeds were springing up in cracks on the road. “Before too long there won’t be much road left. We won’t be able to ride bikes here in a few years. These bridges could last ten years or they could get washed away in a storm next winter. A hundred years from now, there won’t be much left of our world.”

  Who would repair any of this anymore? I didn’t think of it before. All the things we took for granted were going to be gone, or they would be gone soon. The lack of food wasn’t going to be the only issue we would be facing in the future. The three of us were very solemn as we continued our journey.

  We reached Brookings before nightfall and passed through the town, crossing the Chetco River. By mutual agreement, none of us wanted to spend the night in a place where the man who had attacked me might be able to burn us down. We found a house in the low hills east of the populace and set up for the night. It was another nice house, although not as expensive as the one with the broad window views that I had woken up in yesterday.

  Again I was tired, although I hadn’t done anything particular taxing except for keeping a sharp lookout. I hadn’t even fallen asleep. Kara and Zach could both tell I was exhausted so they let me sleep before she woke me up for a dinner of a vegetable and pasta soup she had made from the last of Gigi’s vegetables. The pasta had come from the previous occupant’s kitchen, along with the canned chicken stock for the base. Not that I was complaining. We had cloth napkins and tea from bottles in the pantry. It was quite civilized.

  Afterwards, I took a blanket out to the deck and cuddled up in a white spindle rocker placed strategically in the corner of the deck. Someone had put it where they could see through the ‘v’ of twin hills to the beaches and ocean to the west. The sun had disappeared and only a little purplish pink remained to indicate that it was ever there. Far above me the stars were beginning to appear in astonishing rapidity. Soon enough I couldn’t see the sea at all. It was a sheet of blackness that extended into infinity.

  Kara brought me a glass of white wine and placed it on the banister near my right arm. I blinked as she moved back into the house, a silent form, a mom-like being that wasn’t motherly at all. I took a sip and smiled. My mother and father let me have a glass of wine at dinners on weekends. Most of the time I didn’t like it anyway. The wine that Kara had given me was sweetish and wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t finish it.

  I was still sad from seeing J’s note. It was not dissimilar to being in Gigi and Eddy’s house, but it was worse. J had been alive after the change. He’d been alone. Then he couldn’t abide it for a second longer. That made five people who had made it. Five out of how many? The population of the United States had been around three hundred million. (The figure that came to my mind was another benefit of a social sciences class.) The population of the state of Oregon had been around three million. Five out of three million? And that was only the ones we had encountered. Perhaps if I found a formula to figure the percentage of survivors to the areas we came from, then I could calculate how many people were still out there.

  There were others. They weren’t all insane. Of that I was certain.

  And there were the firefly pixies. I saw the greenish glow coming up the valley and I smiled. My smile faded just a little as I realized they could be coming to warn us as well as to see how I was doing. I hoped it was the latter, because I didn’t want to know more danger was lying in wait for us around the next bend.

  It took them a few minutes to make their way up to where I was sitting. They came over the deck’s railing in a wave of pulsating light. They circled me once and then twice. Many landed on the wood balustrade as they gathered closely to me. One of them landed on my hand and I stopped the motion of the rocking chair with my foot. The little firefly pixie chattered at me questioningly. When it paused, I said, “I’m all right.”

  It tilted its head as it considered me. The little thing was so delicate and so beautiful that it almost hurt my eyes to look upon her. Her? When had I decided that? It was an odd feeling that came to me. The firefly pixies were all hers. Each and every one of them was a female. I didn’t know how I knew this, but it was in my head and it stuck firm. She chirped again longingly; it was a question that I didn’t comprehend.

  “What is it?” I asked. From behind me I heard the soft footsteps of someone and knew Zach had joined us. A few of the firefly pixies launched themselves into the air and headed for him. Well, he was pretty enough to be one of them; that was for certain. I heard him chuckle quietly as they buzzed his face with avid eagerness.

  “Hi guys,” he said softly. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Hi, girls,” I corrected. He snorted, and then amended his words, “Girls, then.”

  A few more of the pixies landed in my lap and held a little conference of animated chirruping. A few buzzed about in animated concert. It was a marvel they didn’t fly into each other.

  “Are they following us?” Zach asked, wonderingly.

  I smiled. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  The group in my lap finally decided on an action and turned to me en masse. I was silent as they looked up at me expectantly. Finally, they began to sing to me. It came to me a moment later that they were trying to sing, ‘Jingle Bells.’ They had the tune correct but the words didn’t sound right. They abruptly stopped and one of them jabbed my stomach in a hopeful manner.

  “They want you to sing,” Zach said, sotto voce.

  I carefully took a drink of the wine and replaced the glass on the railing, trying to avoid the pixies gathered there. Then I began to sing. ‘Jingle Bells’ was first, of course. Over the last two days I had been wondering what else to sing to the little things if I was to be given the chance again. I had thought of quite a few. I didn’t know all the words, but it didn’t stop me. ‘California Dreaming’ was next, followed by ‘On Top of Old Spaghetti,’ and ‘Bingo.’ Once I started down the children’s songs, there was no going back. Zach threw in, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ Kara came out a little while later and suggested, ‘Frere Jaques,’ in both French and English, and ‘Clementine.’ She also helped to sing, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ ‘Kokomo,’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ and ‘Good Vibrations.’ Apparently, she was a Beach Boys fan. We finished with ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,’ and another encore of ‘Jingle Bells.’

  I hadn’t known that I knew so many songs. When it was obvious that I was pooped, they gathered into a tight knit group and headed back over the railings down the hill.

  One of the little pixies flew close to my cheek and nuzzled me. I stayed perfectly still as a touch as soft and light as a butterfly’s wing brushed over my skin. The contact was so fleeting that it didn’t seem real. Then my skin tingled and I kept myself from twitching her away from my flesh. I couldn’t quite see what she was doing but after a moment she chattered approvingly at me and zipped off after her group.

  “That was weird,” Kara said in an awed voice. We were all watching the greenish glow move west.

  “What isn’t?” Zach muttered. Then I felt rather than saw him look at me. He tensed up and step
ped closer to me. “There’s something on your face,” he said. “Let me…”

  “No,” I said. “It’s from the pixies. One of them touched me. It’s probably just a little of their bioluminescence.”

  Zach’s posture changed. I couldn’t see his face but his broad shoulders were rigid and then they relaxed minutely. “Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly. “You should probably wash it off.”

  I didn’t touch my cheek. I didn’t want to wash it off.

  But the next morning I looked into the mirror and saw that it was a mark. It wasn’t readily visible except that the interior bathroom was dark enough to see that the mark glowed like the firefly pixie’s illumination. It looked like an outline of the pixie’s form, about three-quarters of an inch long with the wings extended to the side. I closed the bathroom door to shut out the light coming down the skylights in the hallway. The bathroom became almost as dark as night.

  My cheek glowed in the dark. The figure with attached wings was obvious. And no, it wouldn’t wash off. It appeared as though I was marked. I suppose I should have been bothered but it didn’t matter to me.

  I knew I wasn’t up to riding a bicycle yet, so I submitted to the trailer again. I said determinedly, “I’m getting a bike in Crescent City.”

  It wasn’t a question but Zach only eyed me with subjective consideration. “We’ll see,” was all he said. I didn’t think he noticed the pixie’s mark in the bright morning sun, but I caught Kara looking at it curiously.

  I shrugged and she shrugged. They would see it soon enough when the sun went down. I was hoping that Zach didn’t make a big deal out of it. It wasn’t like he was my father.

  It was another leisurely ride. Not a half hour after we started we crossed the state line into California. I’ve been there before, once to Disney Land when I was about ten years old, but I didn’t remember much about the trip. I had been only interested in the end product. I still had the Mickey Mouse ears at home.