Turtle Island Dreaming

by Tom Crockett

  She was one wave, then the other, reckless for the collapse, holding both crests, crying, salt sweat in her mouth, biting down on her own lip, tasting blood, delicious sensations, polished stone circle on leather cord banging between them, crashing, back to her body as Rafael exploded inside of her, hot and wet, and then she was exploding, trembling, clinging to him, legs and arms entwined, not Shakti now, but Kali, erotic goddess of death and fiery creation, squeezing every last surge from him, then, and then, and then . . . suddenly weak, spent, melting in a pool of sweat and semen, her moisture and his, blood, and tears, and traces of scented oil, jasmine . . . sandalwood . . . musk. . . .

  Sleep. Little death.

  * * *

  Again she woke first. The sun had risen, started to climb. She untangled herself from him gently and rose on still-unsteady legs. She walked a little way into the jungle to relieve the pressure in her bladder. Then she bathed herself in the stream.

  She was still sore from his being inside her and her skin was sensitive in places from rough caresses, but she felt happy, full, almost buoyant.

  She brought fruit and cool water to him. She bathed him with a cloth dipped in the water and he reveled in it. He stretched like a cat, allowed himself to be fed juicy bits of fruit, and eventually sat up. He kissed her gently on the lips and they both rediscovered the little cut from her bite. She wanted to thank him, to say something, but there seemed to be no need for words between them.

  After they ate, he left to wash himself and rinse the wooden bowls. He wetted his hair and squeezed the excess water from it. It hung long and glistening in the sunlight. Then he came back to her. He still had not refastened his kilt. She saw him look at the weaving, saw an uncharacteristic shadow flicker over his face.

  She stood then, intending to give him time to weave. He had been more than generous with her. But he caught her thigh in a strong grip and pulled her toward him. She stood in front of him and let her fingers comb through his damp hair. He ran a hand slowly up her right thigh. She knew by instinct that he was tracing the path of the turtle. He twisted her thigh gently and she opened herself to him. His finger glided inside her thigh and then stopped. He laughed.

  Curious, she bent to look for herself. The turtle was half hidden in the dark curls between thigh and abdomen. Rafael kissed her there and she held his head with both hands. He kissed her again and again, and then he was licking her, parting her flowery folds with his tongue, making lazy circles, then frantically lapping, then pausing.

  She stood as long as she could. She draped a leg over his shoulder for a time, then shifted it back, needing both legs to stand. When the tremors came she slumped down, pressing herself hard against his mouth. When she could stand no longer, she let herself be guided down until she knelt over him, riding his mouth with liquid convulsions. Soon, however, even that was too much, and she fell to her side. But still he would not leave her. She let herself be rolled onto her back, allowed him to devour her like some carnivore.

  When she came this time, she did not fight against it, but surrendered to it, risked the plunge, held onto the impossible duality of the experience, and remained in her body.

  They lay together after that, stroking and exploring one another more slowly. He inspected the traces of her wounds and showed her his. He seemed at times like a surveyor mapping her every mound and estuary.

  They made love again. They did it slowly and she let him hold her still this time, experiencing the intimate connection. They spoke playfully while they coupled. She made him come in her mouth and between her breasts. He made her come by touching herself while he watched. She lost count of the times she felt the rush of orgasm, but she felt it fully and completely every time.

  * * *

  They slept again, but something woke her. It was late in the day. But was it the same day? Could they have done so much in just one day? She felt like she was waking from a dream.

  Something hurt. Her head hurt. An odd high-pitched sound rang in her ears. Rafael sat up, too. He looked stunned, dazed. He stood up, held his hands over his ears.

  “No, it’s too soon.” He looked about frantically. “I have time. I still have time.”

  Marina held his arms. “What is it Rafael? What’s wrong?”

  “The weaving. It isn’t done yet and already they’re here.”

  “Who’s here?” Marina yelled. She had to yell to be heard over the noise. The ringing had turned to wailing and she already knew the answer to her question.

  All at once Rafael regained his composure. He had momentarily lost his center, but then he found it again. He picked up his kilt from the floor and buttoned it around his hips. He picked up the jacket he had given Marina and helped her on with it.

  “What’s going on?” She asked.

  He took her by the shoulders and said calmly but firmly, “You must go now.”

  “What do you mean go? Go where? Why?”

  “They will be here soon and you cannot be here.”

  “I’m not leaving you like this, Rafael. It’s my fault that you didn’t finish on time. I’ll tell them it’s my fault.”

  “Please, Marina, it’s me. I don’t want you to see me when they come.”

  “I don’t understand.” Rafael took the stone circle from around his neck and placed it around hers.

  “I could love you, but I’m not free to love now. Maybe soon. I almost finished this time. Perhaps next time I will complete it, but now I have to begin again, and you can’t be here for that.”

  “But it’s my fault. If I hadn’t come, if you hadn’t helped me, you would have finished. It’s not fair.”

  The wailing was growing louder, even more uncomfortable. Marina and Rafael were shouting at each other just to be heard.

  “I was supposed to help you. You were supposed to help me. But we are moving at different speeds. I have a heavy penance. I have nowhere else to go. You have to learn certain things. This place, all of this is a great gift. Do you understand that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Rafael kissed her, hard and passionate, then pulled away softly. He hugged her to him and spoke directly into her ear so as not to have to shout.

  “Take the forest trail up the mountain. It’s the way Mai-Ling went, and I know in my heart she must be safe. Go now and don’t look back, please.”

  Marina had tears in her eyes. She wasn’t sure she could do it, but she could sense how urgently he needed for her to try. She turned away but he caught her wrist.

  “Wait.” He pulled her back. He scooped something off the floor and knelt in front of her. It was her pearl and coral anklet. He tied it around her ankle. He let his hand slide up the inside of her leg, caressed her thigh briefly, then turned away to his loom.

  Marina stood a moment, then turned and ran from the hut. She couldn’t see the wraiths, but it sounded as if they were all around her. The sun was dropping below the tree line and the trail was taking on shadows. She climbed a gentle sloping trail upward for what seemed like twenty minutes.

  The sound of the wraiths faded, and the further away from it she got, the less she liked having fled the hut. What would they do to him? she wondered. What was the power they had over him? When she finally decided to turn back, the trail was even darker and harder to follow. She crept down it, unfamiliar with it even though she had just climbed it. She listened for the wraiths but heard nothing. When she was almost certain that she would never find the hut in the darkness, that she had somehow wandered off on a side trail, she recognized the stream where she had bathed only that morning.

  The hut stood off to the side, but it was empty, no loom, no chests or bundles, no carpets, no hammock. No, that wasn’t true, either. She could see something. There was a mist blowing past the hut and every now and then through patches of it she could see the hut as she recalled it. She crept closer. Candles burned in the hut. Rafael was there, seated in front of his loom, but instead of weaving, he was pulling threads from the beautiful cloth, unraveling it, unmak
ing it as she watched.

  He was weeping. She couldn’t hear him, but she saw his eyes glistening by the candle glow. The mist shifted and she saw the women in black. They sat around Rafael on the floor, patient and silent. Their hoods were thrown back and their robes were spread open to reveal skin and dark terrible wounds. Rafael’s family, Marina realized.

  There was an older woman with a dark gash across her belly, a younger woman, the one Marina had accidentally touched by the pond, and a little girl. The young woman must be Carita, Marina guessed. There was a great bloom of black blood high on her chest, and her belly was rounded. Rafael had said she had been pregnant with his child. The little girl had her back to Marina, and while she could see no wounds, she knew they must be there.

  Rafael did not look at them. They were his own private ghosts, and they haunted him in mute testimony as he sadly pulled apart his great weaving.

  She wanted to go to him, but he had not wanted her to see this.

  Another patch of mist blew through and her vision was again obscured. The mist was unusual. She had not recalled seeing mist or fog since she woke on the island. As she pondered this she realized that it was not mist obscuring her vision of Rafael and the women and the hut, it was their transparency. They all shimmered like ghosts before her. She and Rafael had both looked like this briefly when they had left their bodies.

  They were slipping away from her now, like shadows. She watched them as long as she could, feeling sad, feeling empty again.

  At last she turned and started back up the trail. It was dark now and the trail was hard to follow. She walked as long as she could, but when she began to trip and stub her toes, she found a mossy spot just off the trail at the foot of a tree with low overhanging branches. It provided a sense of shelter even though she was not cold, was not worried about rain, and was not afraid of wild animals.

  She lay awake for a while, sitting up, clutching her legs to her chest. Rafael, as she had just seen him, was more ghost than solid form, and yet her body still ached from him. He was painfully real to her. Then she remembered the little stone circle talisman Rafael had given her. It was still fastened about her neck. She squeezed her fingers around it, grateful for something to hold on to.

  CHAPTER 4—MIRROR DANCE

  It has been proposed that rather than gross or subtle clues to position and direction, it is movement itself, some kinesthetic sense, that provides the secret map of sea turtles. Perhaps they know themselves so well, live so much in the present, that they feel their way across oceans, knowing the physical “rightness” of muscle strain versus current drift. What flotsam and jetsam, what waterlogged and wasted cargo would I need to jettison to see my way so clearly?

  Morning noises woke Marina. They were the noises she had come to expect as the jungle changed shifts with the light. The night hunters made their way to burrows, lairs, hollows, and nests, while the colorful things that needed open blossoms and bright light to spot dangers, took their place. It was a morning symphony of exotic squawks, calls, whistles, and roars. She heard each one not as a dull drone or annoying background, but as part of a great whole.

  There were smells here, too, that intrigued her. She had never had a keen sense of smell, but now she was aware of a rich, moist, loamy smell—the smell of peat, of wood and leaves composting. Woven into this blanket were other subtle smells: almost-sweet floral aromas, something odd and surprising, like vanilla bean or caramel, a hint of salt in the breeze.

  She thought of Rafael’s essential oils.

  Rafael.

  Marina had slept sitting up, her back in the round of a great exposed root. She was sore and stiff. Her legs ached, but she could not say if it was from climbing the jungle trail or from making love with Rafael. Worse, she felt an ache, an emptiness that began between her legs and seemed to spread upward. At least I know it was real, she thought, as she ran her hands over her thighs and belly. That at least was something to take away.

  But she had more than that, and she knew it. She was changed somehow. She felt as though she had crossed a bridge into another country. The process that had begun when she dug herself free of the sand down on the beach had somehow been completed with Rafael.

  When she had learned to walk and regained her balance, she had resurrected some somatic sense of her own body moving through space. This had been a revelation in itself, but her other senses had seemed annoyingly sensitive, out of her control. They had threatened to overwhelm her. What she had wanted to do was suppress them—to push them down and hide them somewhere inside herself.

  Rafael had showed her another way. He had dared her to give her senses free rein. Rather than controlling her capacity for the sensual, he encouraged her to attend to it. The expansion she’d experienced expressed itself in the language of eroticism, but her experience with Rafael had been about more than just sex, more even than just passion. She had had both in her life before, but this was something different. She could truly say that she was living fully in her body. She could not recall when she had ever felt so aware of her senses. Perhaps as a child . . .

  Images of her youth flickered before her. A gangly girl of twelve or thirteen, suddenly awkward when running, off balance with swelling breasts, embarrassed by boys. Full of the smells of a late summer evening: cut grass, barbecued chicken and roasted potatoes, citronella candles, sweat, her own perfume—half baby powder, half desire. The tastes of lemonade and bubble gum mingle in her mouth. She can still taste a trace of blood from a cut lip—an accident—a prize got wrestling with the boys. Grass itches her skin. She is aware of her bee sting, the little pink bandage over the cut on her foot, all her glorious wounds. She hears the cries and laughter of children, full into their make-believe. She hears the murmur of adult conversation, the clink of ice in glasses, Joni Mitchell on the stereo from inside the house. Then there are the birds, the crickets sawing in the high grass of the fields, and the toads calling down by the pond.

  That girl on the edge of becoming a woman had been alive like this. She was still alive inside Marina. Rafael had found her.

  Part of Marina wanted to go back. She wanted Rafael in a physical way. She had tasted something that had only just whetted her appetite. But there was another reason for going back. She owed Rafael something. She had taken what he had to teach her and given nothing in return. She had been the cause of his not completing his weaving in time.

  She wondered what it meant to have to begin again. How long would it take him? How many times had he started over? Would he have another chance? Would he want her back? Could she even find him again?

  Marina stood up, pulling herself to her feet by a low-hanging branch. She ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She opened her bright little jacket to straighten it and noticed the turtle tattoo. It had moved from its dark nest between her thighs. She remembered Rafael’s kissing her there and it made her shiver. The little turtle had now moved to her belly, inches from her naval. She studied it, poking and stretching the skin beneath it. It was the closest she had been to it yet.

  The detail in the turtle’s shell was fascinating. It was hard to imagine that the old woman she had called Turtle Mother had done this. It seemed the work of an artist.

  The interlocking pattern of shells inked onto her skin formed a map like the tattoo on the Turtle Mother and her younger incarnation’s back, but it also formed a tiny labyrinth. She wondered what propelled it. How did it travel across the ocean of her body? She never saw it move. Did it move only while she slept? How did it know where to go, and where was it going? The colors of the ink still seemed vibrant, but were a shade less bright than they had seemed when the turtle had navigated the channel that was her thigh. Now, in the open ocean of her belly, was it fading?

  What did that mean?

  Both the Turtle Woman and Rafael had said something about time. She had only a limited amount of time to do or learn something. She had only the time while the mark of the turtle was visible.


  The tree she had slept beneath was only a little off the trail, but in the few steps it took to find the path again she knew that she would not go back. She wanted to. She felt she had an obligation to. But she had also a higher calling. Rafael had wanted her to continue on her path. With all his guilt and sorrow, he still could not believe that Marina would not choose life over death. Though she herself was still not certain about what she wanted.

  Marina decided she could best honor Rafael by pursuing the course that seemed to revere life. After all, she thought, I can always go back. I might only have a limited amount of time to go forward.

  Marina belted and straightened her jacket. She looked down the trail in the direction from which she had come, turned in the opposite direction and started to walk. The coral and pearl anklet clicked softly and seemed to reinforce a strong, confident stride. It made her aware of the swing of her hips and a way of walking that was distinctly feminine. Sometimes she stopped to listen to the sounds of the jungle. She would walk carefully then, shifting her weight over first one foot then the other. She found that she could walk almost noiselessly this way.

  Her only other possessions were the colorful woven jacket that draped about her shoulders and the little polished stone ring that hung from the leather cord around her neck. Sometimes her hand would drift absentmindedly up to the stone and fondle it. She rubbed it, polishing it with her fingers, and occasionally a finger would slip through the hole in the stone. This caused parts of her body to tingle in an odd echo of erotic vibration, as if the stone resonated with the energy she and Rafael had unleashed with their passion. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it was distracting, and she had to force herself not to indulge in it, at least not while walking.

  Late in the afternoon, after what felt like hours of gradually climbing into the jungle and the interior of the island, Marina became aware of her thirst.

  She wondered where she might find water. The trail had followed a stream in the morning, but she had left that hours ago and could hear no trickling sounds off in the distance. Surely there must be streams and springs even in the high interior of the island, she thought. The trick was in finding them. She considered going back, but decided against it.