“Why did you stop?”
“I grew up.”
Peter quotes softly, “‘Why can’t you fly now, Mother?’ ‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.’”
“I ran out of time. I had to work. You know, those kinds of reasons. Bad reasons. Real reasons. But I did miss it. I don’t think I even knew I missed it. Do you think...it’s really here because of me?”
Instead of answering, he fills his lungs and then ducks underneath the water.
Mimicking him, I duck down, too, and open my eyes underwater. The salt water stings my eyes, but I ignore it. Underwater, the ocean teems with fish that shouldn’t be here: tropical fish of red, blue, and purple, iridescent deep-sea fish that glisten with their own rainbow light, freshwater salmon, dozens of pet-size goldfish... Suddenly, the fish part, startled, as Peter swims through the water toward me. He catches my hand, and we burst out of the water together to breathe. Water droplets bead on his chest and roll off his hair. And he looks so perfect that I want to touch him, to know he’s real.
“Thank you for saving me,” I say. “In the void.”
He nods. He’s looking at me so intensely that I feel as if I’m stuck in the sand. The water crashes around me, and I am motionless.
“You know it’s possible that there are sharks here,” he says.
“You had to say that.”
“I didn’t have to.” He’s grinning. “I chose to.”
I roll my eyes at him. Only a little while ago, I was so close to despair that I nearly died, and yet this man has the power to make me feel like laughing. “Luckily, I didn’t lose any sharks.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“No.”
“Maybe you lost your chance to see one.”
“I’ve never seen a—”
Stepping closer, he puts his fingers on my lips. “Don’t tempt the void.” He’s dripping with water, seawater over his muscles. I’m aware my clothes are clinging to me. It’s suddenly harder to breathe air than it was to hold my breath under water. My eyes are drawn to his lips, and my body feels drawn to him as if my bones are metal and he is magnetic.
Abruptly, I step backward and look toward the void. It sits on top of the sea about a quarter mile away, plunging itself into the water. “Can it hear me? Is it alive?”
“Maybe, and not exactly.”
“But it can grow.”
“See, knew you were clever.”
I splash water at him. He skips backward and splashes me back. I sweep my arm through the water and fling the wave toward him. He retaliates by shoving water toward me. I skip back, trip, and fall into the water.
He holds out his hand like a gentleman. “I think that means I win.”
I kick his ankle in an attempt to sweep his feet out from under him. It doesn’t work. He doesn’t budge. Instead, he releases my hand, and I fall backward again, splashing into the water. When I come up to the surface, I’m laughing.
On the shore, in the desert, Claire is shouting, “Shark! Shark!” Victoria and Sean are shouting with her and pointing.Great,I think,everyone is mocking me and my ocean.Except that they couldn’t have heard Peter’s joke from shore...
I turn and see a dorsal fin. Waves push against my legs, and my feet sink into the sand. I feel the fish around my ankles, brushing their scales against my skin, touching their puckered lips to my legs and then vanishing in a swirl of water.Shark.I didn’t mean to—
And then the dolphin blows water out of its spout.
I laugh again, and my laugh feels wild and free.
It’s surreal, all of this. All of this is a crazy, extended, supertrippy dream.
“I am going for a ride,” I announce. I push forward through the water toward the dolphin. The dolphin swims in lazy figure eights. His fin breaks the waves. He’s silvery, sleek, and strong, as if he were a single streamlined muscle undulating in the water. I’ve never been this close to a dolphin before, but I am not going to be afraid. It’s a dolphin. And it’s here somehow, impossibly, miraculously, magically. I grab on to its fin, and the dolphin takes off.
