The Model Universe And Other Stories
Page 8
Trust me.
And then she kissed me. Her skin was as cold as ice. Something moved inside my brain. It was like a door opening. A door that had been locked all my life. And the water flooded into my lungs, but it didn’t matter. I could breathe. I could breathe water.
Trust me.
Her mouth didn’t move this time, but I could hear her voice inside my head.
We swam down into the darkness, away from the shore, east and away. I swam in a daze, but I could do nothing except follow her. Deeper and deeper through the chilled black. But looking up, even from that depth, I could see the stars in their night sky, rippling with their blurred light. The moon was like a stretched and out-of-focus lemon sliding along above my horizon of water.
Some of us have always lived on the edge. Those of the sea. Her voice whispered in my mind. Right on the edge of land, water and sky. Your mother was one who ventured even farther. She went too far and the sea pulled her back. You can’t resist the tide. We always knew we would have to go home one day. But we never dreamed it would be for a reason like this.
Like this? What do you mean?
Thinking the words in my mind felt awkward, but she swam back to me. Her fingers closed on mine.
Did you ever wonder why all the animals ran away? All of them. Not just that story on the TV about the Brooklyn Zoo. Every single animal in the entire country. Every dog, cat, horse and cow. Even the rats and mice. They knew what was coming. The dolphins knew. They told us.
Told you what?
She didn’t answer me, but just turned over on her back, drifting through the water. I turned also. Not as gracefully as she did, of course, but we hung there in the darkness. I figure we were probably about a mile down by that time. Some silvery shapes darted by us, almost as quick as thought. One of them paused as if to touch the girl’s hand, but then it flashed away.
And that’s when the sky so far above us bloomed into ugly and searing light. Even with my eyes shut I could see it. A white flash of radiance that blotted out the stars. It surged through the sky, endless and blazing into red beyond the veil of my eyelids. The night was on fire. Surely everything that was would be consumed by it.
Her fingers gripped mine. The ocean won’t burn.
We turned and swam deeper and further down into the blessed darkness. The night receded behind us. After a while, we came to the edge of the ocean floor. It dropped away into an inky blackness of nothingness. An abyss deeper than the sky itself. She smiled at me.
I guess I got lucky coming to Nanituck.
She shook her head. It wasn’t luck. Not someone with your blood. I should’ve realized it when you walked through the door. The tide brought you.
As we swam further down, lights twinkled deep in the darkness. A city sparkling in the depths. The lights of home. Maybe we’d go back one day. Maybe on a different tide. Maybe after a hundred years. After the radiation was gone and the land was silent again. But not now. I was home now.