Water Steps

by A. LaFaye

  Tylo started hitting me. “Take a picture. Take a picture.”

  “Of clothes?”

  “It proves it.” Tylo hit me again. “They’re silkies.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re hippies.”

  “Hippies?” Tylo stared at me, looking surly.

  “Yeah, commune-living, nature-loving, swim-with-no-clothes-on hippies!”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  I expected him to be grossed out and ready to go home.

  But not Tylo. No, he said, “This I’ve got to see!” Then he ran off down the point before I could stop him. So much for my great cover-up.

  SHOTS

  “Hippies?” Tylo stopped. He stared at the clothes. “Those aren’t hippies,” he panted, “they’re the people from my house. Look—the same skirts and sweaters!”

  I could see my hippie story dissolving faster than salt in tea.

  Tylo spun to face me, “They are silkies! They’re Irish. They love the water.” He started hopping up and down and pointing, “So are your parents!”

  Jeez, he’s met them what, twice, and he already knows. Took me seven years. What a genius.

  “Let’s go back.” I grabbed Tylo and gave him a tug. If I couldn’t trick him into going home, maybe I could pull him.

  “No way. I’m going out on the point to take a picture.” He yanked the camera off my neck and started running.

  I couldn’t let him take a picture. My parents would be front page news on every weirdo newspaper in the country. That’s what I got for wishing our family’s picture could be front page news.

  Waves or no waves, all I could see was Tylo’s back as he ran down the point, my camera knocking against his side.

  “Wait,” I yelled.

  Reaching the last flat rock, he slid to a stop, me slamming into him. “Shh!” He fumbled to get his binoculars. He scanned the horizon. I prayed he’d find nothing.

  “Where are they?” He scanned again. “They have to be here. Look at those clouds.” He pointed toward Vermont. Dark clouds hung over the lake like steel wool.

  A storm. Those clouds woke me up. I stood on rock. Not a rock on a beach, but a stone dropped in the water, surrounded by waves. Tide-crazy, wind-frenzied waves, with a storm lurking. My lungs locked up. My joints filled with lead. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I just wanted to scream.

  “They’ve got to see the boats to safety.”

  Safety. I needed safety. Dry land.

  “Wait, I see one.” He backtracked toward the shore to get a better look, with me rushing along behind him. I could hear Tylo, but I didn’t care what he said. I just wanted off those rocks and back in my bed. My safe bed.

  “Another.” He said, shuffling sideways, craning to look. Made me nauseous just to see him teetering so close to the water, but he kept right on talking. “They say silkies swim in pairs. Mates for life. Like wolves.” He turned to face me, saying, “Want to see?” But seeing me, he said, “Are you okay?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “You don’t look right. Are you going to hurl?”

  Hurl! No, don’t hurl me in the water! I grabbed Tylo’s arm so he couldn’t push me.

  “Chill,” he laughed. “We’re safe with so many silkies here. They’ll save you. And I need that picture.” He pulled forward, dragging me. Even with me gripping for dear life, he got the camera to his face, then started searching the waves.

  I closed my eyes, ready to cry. I couldn’t look. Couldn’t imagine what those waves would do if I fell in. But Mem and Pep. I had to protect them.

  Ca-ree, ca-ree. A squeaky melodic call went out over the waves from the west.

  “Hear that? They’re calling to each other.”

  Ca-ree, car-ee. This time from the east. Such a sound. So clear. It drifted into me, comforted me. Ca-ree. Car-ee.

  “Wish I could call back and lure them closer.”

  Felt the desire of it in my chest, the longing to call back.

  Click. Tylo took the shot. “Got one!”

  The longing grew, stretching down my arms, into my hands. I had to see them. Touch them if only with my eyes. I took the camera, used it like a set of binoculars to search the waves. Nothing more than water, dipping and swooning. Nothing more than waves.

  Ca-ree, ca-ree. A brown head crested the water, a seal, then another. Click. Click. Two more farther out. Click. They patrolled. Swimming. Searching for anyone who needed them.

  “We’ve got their pictures!” Tylo shouted, running ahead. “We’ll be famous!”

  He jumped in the air, but slipped as he came down, his foot going out from under him, his body pitching forward.

  “Tylo!”

  He fell so fast, he couldn’t catch himself. He hit ear-first on the rocks, sliding toward the water. No. Not the water.

  His arms didn’t go out as he slid into the waves. He’d been knocked out. Unable to save himself even in shallow water.

  I had to go in. Had to save him. But I couldn’t move, the fear of it pressing me thin, drilling me into that rock. I felt the water that swallowed him filling my own lungs.

  Then, in the call of a seal, I heard Pep say, “You can’t let your fears grow bigger than you, Kyna. They’ll swallow you up.”

  Just as the waves swallowed Tylo.

  RESCUE

  I threw myself in. The water broke like glass over my skin. Only darkness surrounded me as I spun and fought to find Tylo. Weeds and rocks and eye-stinging water, nose-biting, lung-filling water. Don’t panic. It’ll drown us both.

  I could do this. See what I wanted. Do what I wanted. Fear would not make me leave my friend. I promise, Mom. I promise.

  Kicking, I thrashed through the water, my hands out, my eyes searching. Only dark and darker showed up in that water. No light reached a black-hole dark spot just a few feet ahead. I kicked again, pulling with my hands, then dove. Wet cloth. A boot. Tylo. I pulled. I yanked. I pushed off the bottom with my feet and dragged him up and inland at the same time.

  Breaking the surface of the water, I screamed for air. A need that stretched all the way back to that cold night when the sea took my family. I needed that breath to break free of my fears.

  Pulling Tylo’s face out of the water, I dug my heels in to backpedal to shore, yelling for him, “Wake up! Wake up!”

  Dropping him on the beach, he fell like so much wet laundry. Taking CPR and first aid lessons like some kids learned to swim, I dropped to my knees and set to work. Check for response. “Tylo! Tylo !” Open the airway. Give rescue breaths. Pump and blow. Pump and blow.

  He coughed. Forcing out the water. I turned him on his side to rescue position as he gasped for air.

  Catching my own breath, I realized I’d started to cry. I sat on the beach. Wet to the bone. Staring at the water.

  Eyes stared back at me.

  Black, blinking eyes surrounded by gray hair, the smiling teeth so white, the chin just beneath the water. I knew those eyes. That gray, gray hair, like a mare in the meadow. Mem? Bobbing behind her, a larger face, eyes that made me feel safe. Could it be Pep? Two more faces, then six. All of them watching. All of them waiting.

  Tylo coughed, then sat himself up as I stared like I’d been frozen in place. “Wha . . . What happened?” He shook his head, then turned to face the same way I did and came nearly face to face with the whole pod. The whole clan of Terin. Or his descendants anyway.

  Mem laughed, then tilted her head back to call out, “Ca-ree!” Her family answered, turning once again to sea. As they swam out, I saw the bottom of their feet come out of the water, once, twice, then fins. Tails splashing out of the water.

  Who needed pelts? They just dissolved into their silkie selves right there in the water.

  I ran. Ran right over those rocks.

  Tired, Tylo called out, “I’ll wait here!”

  Ran through the thoughts. Realized things running from rock to rock. Mem and Pep had rescued me. Not from a cave on the shore, but the oce
an. Silkies come to rescue the fools who’ve stayed out too long in a storm. They’d come to dry land for me. Raised me on two feet, leaving their pelts and their seal lives behind. Only knowing the freedom of the water when they could get away and swim in pools and waters polluted with chemicals. They’d done this for me. For me. Given up half their lives to make me feel safe.

  Reaching the end of the point, I jumped down onto the rocks and put my hand out in the water. From the grayness of her pelt, I knew Mem swam to me first. I stroked her back, as smooth and gray as her long hair. I laughed. Pep came too, doing tricks, arching up in the water to swim backward, clap his fins, and bark. His brown hair looked almost red in the moonlight.

  Silkies. My parents were silkies.

  I stood up and did what any good daughter would do. I stepped in.

  LAST STEP

  Not that I’d wish a concussion on any friend, especially not one as good as Tylo, but with his blurry vision and swimmy memory, I could convince him that we’d only seen an old sail rumpled on the rocks and my Aunt Rosien’s pet seals at play. With my camera rock-smashed and waterlogged, he had no picture to prove me wrong.

  As we trudged through the underbrush with my new camera in tow and a plan to photograph something on dry land like an owl, he said, “Hey, at least I really saw seals.”

  “Not everybody sees that on their summer vacation,” I said, leading the way up into my tree house, a good roost for owl watching at dusk when they first come out.

  “Yeah. Think you can win at the fair with this picture?” Tylo asked, pouring a cup of cocoa from his thermos.

  “If we catch one in flight before winter.” We’d been up there three nights in a row with no luck.

  “And we’re out of marshmallows.”

  “Greg?”

  “You guessed it.”

  Guessed it. I would have never guessed that the whole reason Mem and Pep had dragged me all the way up to Lake Champlain was to reveal their big secret. Get me to finally face my fear of water so they could tell me the truth. The whole truth. And sometimes when I thought about Mem and Pep as shape-shifters who could go from being as human as me to seals as barky and spry as the ones I saw on the field trip to the zoo, the idea of it got so big I felt like floating. Some people find out their grandparents used to be hippies and got arrested for protesting, or that their mother once entered a beauty contest and wore a bikini in front of the whole town. Real mindbenders that make you see your family in a whole new way. But finding out your parents are mythical creatures, well, that one sets your mind on spin.

  Had me so distracted, Tylo had to tap me with his cocoa cup and point when an owl set down in the high branches of a tree about a hundred feet away.

  Put that camera his parents bought me for saving their son right up to my eye, complete with a zoom lens Pep paid for because I’d taken my biggest water step ever. As I watched that owl, its lantern eyes scanning for mice, I started remembering Mem’s tale of the owl bride, a poor girl trapped in an owl’s body by an evil witch, and it set me to wondering just how many of Mem and Pep’s fairy stories had been real. Were fairies really pony-riding, baby-stealing little fiends?

  The idea of it nearly turned me away from that owl, but when it screeched, Tylo took in a howl of a breath and I snapped shot after shot—those wings spreading out into the air like a glider launching from a cliff. Snap. Snap. I caught it tilting toward us, mid-dive. Could see the photo in my mind’s eye . . . wings out, one tipped up, one down, wide-open eyes lantern yellow, talons down, ready to snatch up the mouse from the ground and fly away with it.

  “You got it! You got it!” Tylo shouted, hitting me in the arm and tossing cocoa all over us both.

  I sure did. I got a photo that could earn me a blue ribbon. And I finally understood all of Mem and Pep’s stories and you’ll see when you’re ready secrets. And boy, did I feel ready. Giving Tylo a “catch you later,” I raced down the ladder.

  “Later, Water Girl!” he shouted from above.

  Yeah, that’s me. Water Girl. Miss Fear herself had actually rescued someone at sea. Well, at cove really. Where Tylo went in, he could’ve waded back out if he’d been awake.

  I’d saved Tylo’s life like Mem and Pep had saved mine. A little bit of silkie may have rubbed off on me over the years. But I doubted I could ever give up as much as they did for me. All I had to get rid of was my fear. And I nearly flew home without the weight of it on me. Even went by the beach route to get there.

  Happy to know taking that one last water step brought me an ocean’s worth of wonderful things. I’d saved my friend Tylo, faced my biggest fear, and found my families there. Not just the truth about Mem and Pep, but my birth family, too. Now I could think about them, pull back wisps of memory with no fear of the bad memories that lurked below. I could just splash and play with them, just like I did back then.

  They say most of the world is water, so I guess that little belly flop into the lake opened the rest of the world up for me. And it felt good to wade around in it. Had me excited to see what Mem and Pep might be up to back at our place. Yes, it’s ours now. We plan to stay all year, every year. And I’m just fine with that. They talked the Kenricks into selling them the cabin—apparently a broken leg while waterskiing was enough to turn Mrs. Kenrick off lake living. I certainly won’t be trying waterskiing anytime soon, but I actually felt pretty good about living on the lake. We’ll keep Grandma Bella’s house for holidays. And Mem says I might want it for my own family someday.

  I’ll miss Hillary, but we’ll keep in touch by sending each other photos. The first one I sent her is of me waving from the water. She’s going to go into orbit over that one. I told her to show it to Bobby Clarkson.

  Found Mem and Pep circling the dock. People style. With it just dark, they didn’t dare go silkie when people could still see them.

  “Skinny dipping,” Pep laughed, taking another lap in his blue moon trunks.

  They’d dragged the dock in, so I could get on it from a bridge. I lay down to look into the water over my folded hands.

  “Did you fancy our birthday suits?” Mem said, turning on her back. Leave it to a silkie to be able to go that fast on her back, even with her legs.

  “Pep’s fur is red!”

  “I guess it works like a beard. Some fellas with brown hair grow red beards. I guess red silkies can have brown hair.”

  “Fancy that.” I sat up and crossed my legs. “So, are fairies really mean?” I teased.

  “Next summer, we can take you to Ireland. And you can find out.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re not even from Ireland.”

  “Am too.” Pep straightened up to tread water beneath me. He made it seem as easy as breathing. For him it probably was. “It’s your mother who’s the Irish-American. We did meet in Ireland like we said. She wanted to see the Mother Sea. Can’t say as I blame her. At least we’ve got salt.”

  Mem splashed him good.

  So Mem and Aunt Rosien had been born in Lake Champlain, but Pep came from Ireland. They’d just come to the states when they rescued me. Did they swim all the way here? I probably wouldn’t know that part of the story for awhile, but from all the things I learned that summer, the one that surprised me the most was just how little you can really know about people, even when you think you know it all.

  I’m not just talking about the fact that I never knew, never even guessed, my parents were silkies. Living, breathing fairy tales that tucked me in at night.

  But I’m also talking about myself. I never knew, never would have guessed, I’d ever put my foot in water again, let alone learn how to swim.

  We’d live like everybody else during the day, then at night Mem and Pep would patrol the lake for wayward boats or foolish swimmers. Me, I’d be home in bed, dreaming of following them in a sailboat with the moon to guide me—at least that’s the dream I’d had for three nights running, each time with Tylo jumping and waving at me from the beach, shouting, “Wait for me!”

  An
d now the morning after having that dream a fourth time, I stood on the beach sporting my first-ina-long-time swimsuit—purple with blue butterflies. Not bad. I walked right into that water so that Mem could give me my first swimming lesson.

  She held my head as I leaned back into the water, saying, “You know, in the winter, when the vacationers go home, we can swim silkie pretty much any time we like.”

  Pep came to swim round us. “And in a good diving suit, you won’t feel the cold at all.”

  As I lay there in the water, my arms fanning out, my back wet, my muscles loose, my parents swimming like a net around me, I believed I could float. Knew I would swim. And for the first time since my mom walked me into the water as a wee child, I couldn’t wait.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A long time ago at a beach on the St. Croix River, I stepped into a sinkhole and flailed to get back to the surface. Luckily, my mom saw me go under and came to the rescue. It took me quite awhile to get over my fear of water. And I remember coaching myself to not let the fear win. I love to swim now. So I wanted to give Kyna that kind of victory too. And who am I? I’m Alexandria LaFaye. The author of this book and a handful of others. I used to live on Lake Champlain—but I never did catch sight of a silkie. Now I live in Cabot, Arkansas, and teach in the low residency MFA Programs at Hamline and Hollins universities. Let me know what you think of Kyna’s story at www.alafaye.com.

  THE AUTHOR WILL DONATE A PORTION OF THE PROCEEDS FROM THE PAPERBACK EDITION OF WATER STEPS TO KIDSPEACE

  For more than a century KidsPeace, the National Center for Kids Overcoming Crisis, has been dedicated to helping kids avoid and overcome the kinds of crises that can strike any child—from family disasters to depression, personal problems, and the stresses of modern life.

  Founded in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1882 this national children’s charity brings help, hope, and healing to some ten thousand youngsters each year at more than fifty centers around the country. In recent years, KidsPeace has provided vital help and comfort to the nation’s children and families in times of need following the 9/11 terror attacks, the Washington, D.C., sniper episodes, Hurricane Katrina, the shootings at Virginia Tech, and many other crises both large and small.