Dane hadn't spoken while they ate, just got up to get her more of anything she wanted as if he was reading her mind. There were a couple of moments when she wondered nervously if hecouldread her mind, but then she realized that it was simply because he was extremely attuned to the tiniest changes in the environment around him. She could see it in his constant vigilance, the way that his intelligent gaze took in everything, his face registering tiny changes of expression as he catalogued everything that he saw.
It was a quality she had seen before in people who worked closely with their environments: soldiers, pilots, hunters, fishermen. People like that became intimately aware of their surroundings for survival's sake. It was a quality Mira had always found very appealing.
"Are you a veteran?" she asked as he collected the plates.
His reaction was a subtle flinch and freeze, so low-key that she wouldn't have noticed it if she hadn't, she realized, started to become as attuned tohistiny tells as he was to hers. The plates in his hands gave a brief clatter.
"There's no need to tell me if it's too personal," she said quickly. "I am, you see. I was a pilot for the U.S. Army, flying helicopters. I came north to Canada after my discharge to stay with a cousin in Labrador and fell in love with the coast up here. All of this was years ago now, but I wondered if we had that in common, that's all."
Dane hesitated, not quite looking at her. Then he said, very briefly, "Yes. I am." The way he clipped off the words seemed to close off the topic like snipping a piece of thread.
"Can I help you with the dishes?" Mira offered as a deliberate change of subject.
The tension in his shoulders relaxed a little. "Yes," he said. "Thank you. After that, I need to check storm damage on the rest of the island."
"May I come with you? I'd like to see more of your island and perhaps look for some of my things as well."
"Your things?" he asked.
"Yes, from my boat." It was disconcerting to talk about it in this bright, sunlit cabin, with the storm seeming to belong to some past country that she no longer visited. She tried not to let the thought of the sunkenMerrylegsdampen her mood. All her things, dragged to the bottom of the sea ... "I'm hoping some of my stuff might have floated ashore."
"We don't have much shore," Dane said. "But I'll show you."
They went out into the sunshine. Mira guessed it was early afternoon, the air warm and balmy despite the brisk sea breeze. The sky was flecked with small, fluffy clouds, as pure white as the fleece of a flock of windborne sheep. It was even more difficult to think about the storm's towering waves and ice-cold wind in this mild weather, with the sun warming her shoulders and drying her hair.
Dane carried the dishes with him as they walked down a winding forest path toward where Mira could hear waves pounding on rocks. "I wash the dishes in the sea," he explained. "Salt is a good sterilizer. And then I rinse it off at the spring. That way there are no scraps up at the springhead to attract gulls or other scavengers."
"That seems very sensible. Do you have animals on the island other than sea birds?"
"A few," Dane said. "There are some mice and squirrels, and hawks and other small predators that prey on them. Nothing big. The island really isn't big enough for deer and things."
They reached the water's edge, and she saw what he meant about the lack of a shore. It was all rocks here, without anything that could properly be called a beach. Dane crouched on a rock with graceful balance and leaned over to dip the plates in the water, rinsing them.
It looked like a one-person job after all, so Mira walked out to the end of the rocks, picking her way with care since some of them were covered in treacherous, foot-trapping seaweed. She shaded her eyes with her hands and looked for any floating debris that might have come from her boat.
She could see immediately how hopeless it was. The ocean stretched glittering and sunstruck for miles in every direction, a brilliant wind-ruffled plain fading into the blue sky at the horizon. She could see a couple of other rocky islands far off, but nothing else, no sign of the mainland or any large body of land.
It was starting to strike her how close she had come to death. There was no way that she could have survived long enough to float all the way to land in the wind and the waves, and no way that a rescue vessel could have navigated those seas to pick her up.
So how did Dane get to me, anyway?
She turned to look at him. Crouching on the rocks in his bright red-and-blue shirt, with his hair loose and unbound, he looked like he was modeling for a photo. She found herself wishing she had a camera, although that, like everything else, had gone to the bottom of the sea withMerrylegs.
Her memories of the storm were jumbled, but she didn't think they were completely false. The first clear memory she had of Dane was of him catching her as she fainted on the shore. He had been absolutely naked, unless her dazed mind had made that part up.
She wondered what in the world Dane had been doing out in the storm, especially naked. Communing with nature, maybe? She wasn't sure if he seemed like that much of a hippie type, but she had heard of people going out in the rain naked to bring themselves closer to the natural world. Maybe that was something he liked to do.
At least that part was possible, just a bit eccentric. The rest of what she remembered was completely out of the question. It must be a dream; ithadto be.
And yet the sleek black-and-white form lifting her to the surface again and again, nudging her gently toward land, seemed as real as the rest of it. As real asMerrylegsgoing out from under her and the waves breaking over her head, as real as the cold dragging at her limbs and the life jacket uncomfortably pressing against her chin.
Her memories were incredibly hazy toward the end; she had barely been conscious, she suspected. But she still remembered it, if not clearly. She recalled the orca nudging her up in the water, and then it had slipped back into the water, and she had clambered out. At some point in her awkward climb across the slick rocks, Dane had been there, pulling her to safety.
"Mira?" Dane's voice pulled her back from her memories, and she realized she had been standing still as a statue, gazing out blankly to sea. "Do you see something?"
"No," she said, shaking the memories off. "Oh, no, wait!"
Because suddenly shedidsee something. There was a bright object snagged on the rocks. Mira scrambled toward it—"Careful!" Dane exclaimed from behind her—and bent down to tease it free. The object was bright pink and fell in loose drapes across her hands. She knew what it was even before she got a good look.
