They wouldn’t need the Gasparilla to escape. They hadn’t needed it to reach the island, either, but as a matter of form and familiarity, it had been an entertaining exercise. He hadn’t been in a boat since his failed errand a lifetime before. It wasn’t strictly forbidden, but in some way he felt certain that his estrangement from the surface was part of his punishment.
Go dash yourself, you silly craft. José pushed on toward the shallower swells of the water that foamed and crested close to the beach.
The nearer he came to a sandy place where he could stand, the more he rethought his impulse. When he finally found footing and hauled himself to a standing position, chest-deep against the waves, he looked back at the boat and saw that it was already turning and listing with no one at the helm.
A quick pang stabbed at his heart, and it embarrassed him.
It was only a boat, and an insulting one at that. But at a distance, in the dark—with its remaining lanterns burning themselves down to tiny points of light—the Gasparilla was a pretty thing after all. He wanted to curse her into kindling, but he found himself wishing her well, and offering a silent, thankful prayer to Mother for letting him have another night with a deck that moved under his feet and sails that flapped over his head.
His hair clung close to his face and his clothes sucked wetly at his skin. The salt didn’t bother his eyes anymore; it hadn’t for decades. But he felt it all the same, gritty and pungent. A breeze off the coast pressed against him, coaxing the water into rivulets that dried to taste like crushed shells and decay.
José pushed himself at the shore. The water rushed past him, underneath him, and against him as it rolled back and forth, shattering itself on the coast. His feet took a step onto sand that didn’t melt beneath him, and he was back on Captiva—one of the last spots he’d ever stood on as a mortal.
Bernice had beaten him by a full minute.
She shook herself. She’d lost or dropped the sweater she’d been wearing. Light and wet, her dress revealed every curve underneath. She snapped it away from her stomach with her fingers.
The swim had washed the last of the blood out of her hair and off her face, but somehow she looked even less civilized and more dangerous—there on the sand, barefoot and as pale as the translucent things that crawl on the ocean floor.
Shark woman, José thought. The words crowded together in his mouth, and they were perfect so long as they were not spoken.
“What?” she asked, and the word clicked like a bite.
“Nothing,” he told her, and the moment was broken.
She ran her hands up her forehead, pushing her wet hair back away from her eyes. “All right. We’re here. Now where are we going?”
José pulled at his shirt. He tugged it away from his body and let the breeze blow through it while he looked back and forth, up and down the dark strip of shore. He shook his legs to kick away the worst of the wet. His boots held on to most of it, but he was accustomed to the sensation.
“This way,” he said. “Follow me; I can find it.”
Bernice made a slight grimace. José saw it just before he turned away to lead, and he stopped. “Is something wrong?”
She shook her head, but didn’t shake the frown loose. “It looks like Anna Maria, that’s all. I hated that place. Let’s get this over with and get out of here. I want to get back in the water.”
“This won’t take long.” He was careful how he said it. He nearly wanted to hit her, but he refused the impulse in favor of coddling her, because it was easier. He could force her to come if he liked. The situation was his to control, if he chose, but things moved more quickly when he led her gently than if he pushed.
She tromped through the sand beside him, following his lead between two trees with trunks that stretched and sprawled as if they were melting. “I should’ve kept my shoes,” she said.
He agreed, pettily pleased that she was uncomfortable. “Undoubtedly. Where did you leave them?”
“I don’t remember.”
She probably didn’t. It didn’t matter, either, that she’d spent her whole life walking around; a few years on the floor of the ocean could make you forget even the most basic necessities.
When he’d first emerged, it had been hard for him, too. But he’d been alone, and for him, that was easier.
He didn’t know what Bernice would have preferred. Maybe she would’ve liked to burst into the air like Venus, launched from her shell unattended. She was still young, though—so young that if they’d gone down together on the same day, in the same year, he could have been her grandfather.
She moved beside him, following awkwardly through the sand. It was easier to walk down by the water where the turf was smooth, if wet; up in the woods it was like stepping through flour. “How far is it to your spot, the hole or the pit or whatever you called it?”
“Not far.” He doubted himself even as he said it. How long had it been since he’d seen it? And in truth, his idea of “far” was probably quite different from Bernice’s. “Close enough that I halfway imagined digging that channel to the ocean. It would’ve made a marvelous private cove, but it was . . . impractical.”
“Impractical,” she repeated. “Maybe you should ask Mother about it now. Maybe when all this is settled, and she’s gotten what she wants from us, and we’re done, maybe you can retire like you didn’t before.”
The thought had occurred to him, yes. Arahab would find it a small task to carve a path between the hole and the ocean.
But he’d never asked.
“One day,” he answered vaguely. “I’ll bring it up, and see what she says. But before any rewards, there’s work to be done, and at the moment, my standing in her eyes is only somewhat better than bad.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I know you don’t. It’s because you haven’t failed her yet.”
“I won’t fail her,” Bernice said, and something about the way the words came out sounded strange to José. She presented the sentiment with confidence, yes—and something else, too.
“If she thought you would, she would never have chosen you. Though you’d best remember, she chose me once as well—and the task was more than I could complete.”
They walked together in something close to silence, navigating the close-set trees and the darkness of the rain forest undergrowth with eyes that were accustomed to a much stranger, deeper darkness.
“You and me are different.”
“Indeed, my love. We are.”
Where Water Meets Stone
Down in the enclosed cove, the sunken hole with no outlet to the sea, a low grumbling of rocks and mulch twisted a soft sound. A rough-edged creature assembled itself, rising up from the earth. It tested its makeshift limbs. It shook one arm, and then the other, and it stepped from clod-foot to clod-foot.
If it stepped too hard or too fast, clumps and crumbs of dirt and leaves shook loose. In order to hold itself together better, it moved more carefully.
It could hear them coming.
The man and the woman—or the two things that once were man and woman—were making their way back to the secluded spot and sometimes talking, sometimes keeping quiet. Although it was quite dark beneath the forest canopy in the middle of the night, the creature knew that they could see well enough. Arahab would have seen to that when she changed them.
It wondered what other changes she might have made. Those fragile things, all meat and fluids bound in a sack of skin, how would she have altered them to keep them close?
Their skin must have toughened to the point where mere soaking would not swell or split it. Their eyes must have been taught to gather even the smallest slivers of light, and they must have transformed the way they took air; they must have learned to take what they needed from the water, yet retained the capacity for breathing above the waves.
The thing considered its own first capture and wondered at her state.
It had left her behind that house on the other island, safe except for the
miserable wretches who tried to worship her. To date, they hadn’t bothered her, save to smear her with blood or offerings. The damn fools wanted to summon the water witch, and they thought the stone girl was a sign. The situation couldn’t have been more ridiculous.
The girl couldn’t help them, and if the water witch even knew about her, that would be the end of it. The water witch would destroy the girl without a second thought, and very likely she would treat the idiot worshippers the same.
What did they hope to accomplish? Arahab wished to destroy everything they knew and loved. What did they think she would give them?
As the footsteps approached, the creature stood very still against the tall, fingerlike roots of a large banyan. It did not feel the need to hide. It did not expect to be seen, but it was interested in observing. It wanted to know what the water witch’s consorts could do, and what they looked like. It wanted to see for itself how a human might transcend the flesh while keeping it.
It might give the creature some idea of what to expect from its stone girl when the time came for her to emerge. She might not be enough. She might not have been the right choice. She might not even survive the cocoon.
But it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
The creature that had made itself from the dying leftovers on the forest floor did not breathe, because it did not need to. It simply held still and watched while the man and woman walked past, moving just inches away and noticing nothing.
“How much farther?”
“We’re here. Now,” the man said.
They stood at the lip of the sinkhole. If she’d taken another step, or two at most, she would have gone over the edge.
The creature moved behind them, silently for all its bulk. It watched over their shoulders as they held hands and half climbed, half slid down the edge of the hole into the bottom. And once they were away from the edge, scooting foot by foot toward the water, the creature sat itself down at the cusp of the precipice and pretended to be invisible . . . which only meant that it did not move, and that no one saw it.
Down below, the man and woman tripped down the steep slope.
The spot was peaceful and pretty, even to the creature—who had little use for pools of water or places where things may float.
In a few thousand years, the place might yet become a proper cove. The incoming tides might beat a path inland, eroding the sand and scooping out the trees; or the sudden rush of a storm could do it more quickly.
Sunken and overgrown, the sinkhole’s sides were thick with palmettos and small trees that clung tight using roots that wiggled deep into the sandy dirt. The creature could feel them, tangled and stringy, burrowing among the bigger roots of taller trees and holding the hillside together in their own way. To the man-shaped thing sitting atop them, they felt like strings and ropes pulled taut and tied together.
Moonlight streamed in full, high enough to illuminate the hole’s interior and the pond that filled the bottom. Without any tide to pull it, and away from the swift ocean air, the surface was as still as glass and as blackly speckled as the sky it mirrored.
“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” the woman said, and she followed it with a grunt as she skidded farther than she meant to. “It’s great.”
The man didn’t push the issue. He reached back and took her hand, steadying her descent and completing his own. He landed at the bottom with a small jump and a triumphant smile.
“It was, for years and years, a most excellent refuge. We would leave the ships anchored by the shore and camp. The water was fresh, if not perfectly clean, and there was plenty of fruit and game on the island. A man so inclined might live here happily and unassisted for . . . for a lifetime.”
“Maybe a man so inclined,” she mimicked his speaking rhythm. “No woman in her right mind would put up with it for a second.”
“Then it’s a good thing no woman ever needed to make such an adjustment.”
“Where’s this treasure chest you left down here? Let’s get it and go. I deserve a reward for hiking through all this mess—and barefoot, too.”
“You should have kept your shoes on.”
“I couldn’t swim in those heels. I can hardly walk in them.”
He conceded the point with a shrug. “We won’t be long,” he said. “Here. Why don’t you swim, if you like that better than hiking.” With one long, slim hand he held hers and lifted it as if he were inviting her to dance. He guided her into the shimmering pool until she was knee-deep, and smiling.
“There’s not anything awful in here, is there?” she asked.
“There’s less in this pool than the ocean currents we crossed to come here.”
“So nothing that bites?”
“Nothing that bites harder than you, I promise.”
She laughed at that, and zipped backwards with a slippery splash, all fish-quick and flexible. Out in water that was surely no deeper than her waist she lounged on her back, the tips of her hands and feet peeking past the surface.
He walked away from her, staying close in the shallows but moving to the far side of the pit.
But the woman wanted to play, so she called out, “Is there anything with stingers in here that would stab me?”
The man answered over his shoulder, without turning his head. “None so sharp as yours, my darling.”
“Is there anything vicious in here?”
“Nothing half so terrible as you, my love.”
She cackled with glee, splashed and drifted.
He worked through the thick, wet mold and grasses down by the pool’s edge to the far side—where a remnant of the cave wall was strung with vines as thick as arms. He pushed his hands between the long, living curtains and withdrew them again, empty. Down beside his feet he found a stick, or a dried-out root. He pried it loose and wiped away some of the mud that covered it.
“What are you doing?” The woman called from the water.
“Looking for your treasure.” With long, solid stabs, he rammed the stick through the vines. The baton slipped easily among them, meeting resistance shortly behind the vegetation where the rock stretched up out of the ground.
“Is it back there someplace?”
He rammed the instrument forward again.
“Is it back—?”
“Yes, darling. It’s back here someplace. But it’s been a long time since I left it, and things have grown quite a lot. Give me a moment and I’ll find it.” And soon, he did.
The stick passed through the growing drapes, and nothing stopped it. The man let go and let the thing drop; it landed with a wet clatter somewhere beyond where anyone could see it. He wormed his arm amid the vines and wriggled it back and forth. Plants tore and leaves tumbled; the living curtain gave way and a hole opened.
In the water, the woman stopped splashing. “Is that a cave? You’re not going to drag me into a cave, are you?” She rotated herself in the water and began a slow swim in the direction of her partner. “I’m not following you into any damn cave.”
“No,” he replied as he pushed his arms, head, and part of his torso into the darkness on the other side. “It isn’t a cave. It’s only a ledge.”
A scraping, splintering grind echoed around behind the hanging vines. The man emerged slowly, his shoulders and hands inching backwards at last as he drew the chest from its hiding place and into the open night.
Behind him, the woman quickly appeared from the water—standing close and curious. “Let me see.”
“One moment.” He levered his fingers beneath the hinges and gave them a pull. He was rewarded with the squeak of stretching leather and the uneven ripping of old metal.
“How long has this been here?”
He forced his full hand between the lock and the soggy front panel. It cracked and split with a damp pop. “Perhaps a century or so. Since . . . I can’t recall the year. It would have been 18 . . . 1815? 1820? It was before I went into the water, but not terribly long before.”
After another round of jabbing and rending, the lock finally snapped and the clasp fell away.
“Here we go,” the man said. The lid was falling apart in his hands as he lifted it away. It crumbled into sodden pulp once its hinges were gone, and the heavy loot within settled and scattered.
“Wow.”
“Yes.” He dug his fingers into the coins and baubles. He combed through them and separated the treasure from the green-black cake of mildew that coated it. Beneath the glaze of mire, the trunk’s contents sparkled with vivid brown light.
The creature at the edge of the pit blinked slowly.
Out in the water, over the sandy breech, the ocean was singing a peculiar song. The creature felt a tightening in its coiled, cobbled insides. The sound rushed; it was air over waves, and a ferocious sweep under the surface.
Water witch, the creature thought. It knew that the witch had a name, but it would only use that name if forced. She might not notice him. She might have only come for her underlings, whose eyes were round and crinkled with joy at their fresh discovery. But the odds were against it.
The creature almost wished it hadn’t left the trinket in the music box. It had seemed logical at the time. The ruse was a means of making sure, of knowing with absolute confidence that the witch was still there, watching and lingering, and that she was as close as it feared she might be.
Besides, the creature wanted to see her interacting with her pets. It needed to see how she worked with them, and how she treated them. How resilient were they, really? How helpful were they, really?
It owed its own static and frightened recruit some knowledge of what she’d be up against.
And the time was at hand. The monstrous water witch arrived at the island’s edge and was furious to see no passage to the cove; but then she sank herself deep and felt around for an outlet that ran beneath the shore. She found it shortly.
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