Submission one, island one
Part I
Onn didn't wave when she walked down the shore toward him, didn't smile when she
stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew
it because of the way his eyes never left her face.
“You're bigger than I remembered,” she said stupidly.
“You too,” he said. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.”
“Memory does play tricks on us.”
Silently, they crawled onto the little raft in the harbor. He used a paddle to
maneuver them slowly toward the middle of the inlet. She noticed out loud that he
was sunbrowned and strong.
“The strong part comes from working on the new city. The sunbrowning comes from
this beach. I spend a lot of time on the water. The land just doesn't feel right
anymore.”
“Has it been so long?”
“I've been gone for four years.”
“So we're strangers now?”
“Aren't we, Tenati?”
“No,” she said. She reached out and touched his leg.
He didn't move, just sat there and stared at her long brown hair. Then he asked,
“Want to swim?”
In answer, she dropped herself over the side of the raft. The water was clear and
clean, and there was not much salt in it . . . a consequence of the various island
streams flowing into the bay. She swam for a while, then returned to the raft and
lay on it in the hazy sunlight. A tiny needler hawk circled her, then landed on the
raft beside her head. She knew it was there, and ordinarily would have been afraid
of it. But not today. Let it walk on this raft, let it bake in the sun as I am
doing.
After a while, the raft rocked a little. Then he touched her cheek so gently, so
gently that she wanted to cry. Like the touch of a rose softly gliding over her
skin. She remembered that, the touch of his soft and innocent hand on her cheek.
His eyes said nothing as his lips formed the whisper; “ I missed you.”
She looked at his cold, blank stare. He had been away working on building the
underwater city for so long that she didn't understand her feelings anymore. She
still loved him, but he had changed. She could see it in every move that he made.
“You're going to shrivel up if you stay in the water. Also, the leviathan might get
you.”
He smiled. “The leviathan learned to leave me alone a long time ago.” But he
pulled himself onto the raft, bringing a wash of water across it as it tipped. It
was cold on Tenati’s back. Onn lay down beside her and said nothing more. Just lay
there. And lay there.
Finally, Tenati, the sweat dripping off her, the mosquitoes beginning to hover as
the dusk came on, took one final dip in the water and began to push the raft in to
shore. Onn showed no sign that he knew what she was doing, but his irregular
breathing told her that he was not asleep. When they got to shore, she climbed onto
the dock and said, “I love you, Onn. More than ever.”
He didn't answer. She doubted that he believed her. She walked back up the shore
and changed into her travel clothes. He was leaving soon, but she could not say
good-bye again. He had been back for at least two months, but he had just contacted
her. What had happened to him down there? Whatever it was had put a rift between
them, and he seemed to be on its edge about to fall.
The pain inside him built as she left. It was his nightmare that held him there. A
roaring in his ears and a vast invisible globe that grew and grew and rolled toward
him to crush him swallow him fill him empty him . . .. And the globe reached him,
roaring like a storm at sea.
I have begged and she hasn't answered. The whales are swimming deep inside me and
she doesn't help. I need help. All the monsters in the world are inside me instead
of outside me I've been tricked and trapped and they are inside my walls not outside
my walls inside with me and she won't help me. When I stop thinking about a muscle
it shakes. When I stop thinking about a fear it leaps at me. I'm drowning but the
water keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and I don't know how to get out the
walls go up forever and I can't climb over and I can't break through and she won't
talk to me.
Onn just lay there on the raft and trembled. The sun was just on the horizon, and
he knew that he needed to go in. He just couldn't move for the fear and pain of it
all. In the faint dimness of his memory, there was only one voice that he had
recognized over the past few years. He could hear it clearly, though a dim and
distant voice, but he did not understand it. He strained to hear that one voice,
because that was the voice that would save him from the terror that swam every
moment closer to the surface where he watched and waited helplessly.
Submission one, island one
by Scot Adams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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