The Twilight Swimmer (26 page)

She reached for his wrist and raised the glowing hand to study it more closely, unable to stifle a girlish giggle at the mesmerizing sight. Embarrassed, she cut off her laughter and raised his hand higher, pointing his palm at the wall of the cave.

The cave wall was rough from waist level and up, relatively untouched by rising water. But the lower portion of the wall had eroded over time, its smoothness clearly marking the level the ocean rose to when this cavern was flooded. The smooth portion of the wall was like black glass, almost reflective. But Brandi thought she saw texture on the otherwise smooth surface. She stepped closer and crouched low to get a better look. And yes, there on the wall, she saw grooves not unlike the pattern on the Swimmer’s palm.

“Come closer. Please. So I can see,” she waved the Swimmer forward, and he crouched down beside her with his glowing palm resting on his knee. The blue light he emitted brought the grooves on the cave wall into startling relief, and Brandi could see very clearly that they were not natural. No, these were carvings. The carvings were executed by a rough hand, and with rough tools, but unmistakably human in character. They weren’t symbols or words, these ancient grooves. No, they were pictures. And Brandi gasped as she realized what they depicted.

“This is you,” she said to the Swimmer, her eyes gone moist. She wiped them with the back of her forearm, surprised to find herself so suddenly emotional.

“My kind,” he answered with an involuntary sigh.

The carvings were depictions of men, at first glance. Long forms, arms and legs. But they were drawn in strange poses, with no evident horizontal plane meant to signify ground or a common level on which they stood. Some seemed almost to float above the others, but it was clear that they were not falling. Rather, they were suspended. Still more unusual, the figures were not upright. Almost without exception, these half dozen men were horizontal to some degree, their arms extended before them and their legs pressed together. Their backs arched and their heads thrown back proudly.

“They’re swimming,” said Brandi.

“Yes,” he answered, “There was no walking, in the old days. Nothing outside of the water.”
              “Until you? You’re the first to come ashore?”

The Swimmer met her gaze. A lock of wet hair had fallen across her eyes, and he gently reached out to push the hair behind her ear. “Others too, I think.”

“Who did these carvings?” she asked, sitting down on the rock floor and drawing her knees to her chest. Her wet dress still clung uncomfortably, and she was conscious of the rough surface beneath her. She could still feel heat radiating from the Swimmer’s body, and felt certain that without him nearby this cavern would be icy cold.

“They are very old,” he answered, with another shrug. “Your kind made them.” He raised his glowing hand, increased the intensity of the blue light, and slowly waved it over the cave wall from right to left. The carvings continued from one edge of the smooth section to the other, and the details changed as the scene progressed. The mermen were in a wider variety of positions, sometimes floating as if swimming, other times upright. In some carvings they carried crudely rendered fish. And in the final carving, at the far end of the wall, the mermen were depicted standing upright next to other, shorter figures. They were extending the fish toward these men, some of whom were brave enough to step forward and accept the gift while others were bowing and graveling in respect and apparent fear.

“How long have you been coming here? How did you find this place?”

“When you gave me life. When you gave me back to the water. You and the other, the long one.”

“His name is Spider,” she said with a melancholy smile.

“But he is a man.”

“It’s just a nickname.”

The Swimmer tilted his head to one side, as if studying Brandi’s face for some hint as to her meaning.

“It’s not a real name. His real name is… Oh, why would you care? You don’t even know my name.”

“Brandi is your name. Your name is Brandi.”

“That’s right. You do know. You said my name to my father, when you were in the hospital. Do you know how much trouble that caused? I haven’t left the house for months thanks to you knowing my name. Not until tonight, at least. We had a dance tonight. I went with Spider. With
Jesse
. You get his real name after all. Did you see him at my house? On the roof? You must have with those eyes. That’s why I’m wearing the dress, in case you were wondering. It’s not my normal style. Oh my god, I am babbling. I should stop talking. I
will
stop talking.”

“No. Don’t stop,” said the Swimmer. He reached for her hand and clasped it between both her palms. The blue light was greatly reduced, but still escaped from the sides of their pressed skin. “Keep talking.”

“You didn’t answer. How did you find this place?”

“When you and the long one gave me back to the water. I was injured.”

“You were dying?”

The Swimmer nodded gravely. “It was not safe for me to swim. So I drifted along the shore, looking for a place to hide and… and…”

“Recuperate. You’re looking for the word ‘recuperate’. Don’t feel bad. Your English is actually really amazing considering you’re from… I mean, considering that you’re a…”

“Sleep,” said the Swimmer. “A place where I could sleep?”

“Are you asking me or telling me? Don’t answer that. God, why do I have to give everybody a hard time as soon as they misspeak just a little? It’s a bad habit, and your English is amazing, and yes, ‘sleep’ is probably the right word. Or close enough. You were injured and you needed a safe place.”

“I found this place.”

“And you slept?”

The Swimmer nodded.

“For two months?”

The Swimmer nodded again.

“Wow. That is a very long time to sleep. I know unhappy housewives who can do the same thing, probably, but not without pharmacological assistance.”

The Swimmer looked at her again with a blank expression, patiently searching for clues as to her meaning.

“Pills. You don’t know about pills. Never mind.” She twisted the hem of her dress to wring out some of the seawater, cringing at the wrinkles she left in the delicate material. “I’m very nervous. And the fact that I’m nervous is making me even more nervous, if that makes sense. It’s a vicious cycle. You don’t know that phrase, do you? No, of course you don’t. I’m babbling again. I sound like Spider! Jessie, I mean. I sound like Jesse.”

The Swimmer turned away from her, suddenly interested in nothing more than the pool of ocean water from which they had emerged. He gently lowered his head beneath the surface, and remained below for several seconds. When he rose from the water, he turned to Brandi with a concerned expression.

“Your boat. I cannot hear it,” said the Swimmer.

“Hear it? How could you hear a boat? Oh no! We didn’t tie it off!”

The Swimmer slid gracefully into the water then extended his hand to Brandi. This time she took his hand before jumping into the water. The warmth of his touch was enough to chase away the unfortunate memory of the first icy assault on her senses, and she bravely slipped into the water to join him.

“Are we doing that breathing thing again?” she asked.

“I will give you my air.”

“Good,” said Brandi. “I like that part.”

When they emerged from the tunnel into the choppy ocean waters, there was no sign of Brandi’s kayak. The Swimmer scanned the area with his gray eyes, his nostrils flared and his gills fluttering as air passed through them.

“There,” he said.

“Where,” asked Brandi, desperation in her voice.

“Not far,” he answered. Then he wrapped his arms around her again, sealed his mouth over hers, and dove beneath the surface. He kicked harder than ever before, and this time Brandi could feel the water rushing past them as they jointly flew through it like a torpedo. When at last they surfaced, they were several miles farther out to sea and the chop was rougher. But the kayak was bobbing on the swells, right beside them. He had found it. Somehow, he had found it.

He helped Brandi climb back inside. The chill of the night air was unpleasant against her wet clothes, hair and body. But close proximity to the Swimmer, being locked within his embrace, had left her feeling warm from head to toe. She stared at the back of his head, at his slender neck, at the mound of muscle that was his shoulder as he reached for the bow of the kayak and took hold, ready to tow her back to shore.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said, surprising herself with the assuredness of her tone.

“Where then?” he asked.

The Swimmer hauled the kayak through the water at far greater speeds than the first time they made this trip. Brandi dropped down to the belly of the kayak and tried to stay low, as the cold night air rushed over her, the wet dress clinging to her body only amplifying the bitter chill.

They reached the cabin in no time at all.

He followed her up the gentle slope from the water, his gray eyes trained on her wet hair. When she fumbled with the handle on the cabin door, he moved closer. She could feel the warmth still radiating from him as he stood behind her, not quite touching her body with his own but tantalizingly close. When she finally opened the door and hurried inside, she was relieved to regain some distance from him, to allow her heart to stop its anxious fluttering.

When she turned on the lamp, Brandi immediately noticed what she had completely forgotten. The cabin was still a mess from the Swimmer’s last stay. Brandi was embarrassed by its poor condition, but more worried that the Swimmer would be shamed by the damage he had done. She frantically scrambled around the room, trying to tidy up. She kicked loose stuffing from couch cushions into a pile in the corner then struggled with the weight of the upended couch to lower it back to the floor. It struck the floor with a mighty thud, erupting a pale cloud of dust.

“It was the light. That morning, the light burned you?”

The Swimmer gestured to the window the couch had been blocking and pantomimed a shaft of light streaming in.

“Your burns, in the hospital. They were… terrible,” said Brandi, taking a nervous step toward him and looking over his arms and stomach. “I don’t see scars. You must heal very easily, as easily as you hurt.”

“The healing. It was not easy,” said the Swimmer, averting his eyes. He flexed his hands and looked at the webbing between his fingers. Still translucent, they retained a faint pinkish hue, the only reminder of the suffering he had endured.

Brandi nodded grimly. Visions of the Swimmer holed up in the hidden cave entered her mind. She pictured him curled up on the rock, alone and frightened. She pictured him shaking with the ache of starvation, too weak to slip into the water and hunt for a much needed meal. How he had survived the ordeal without help was a mystery. How he had survived the ordeal without losing his will to live, a greater mystery.

Brandi wandered a loose circle around the perimeter of the room, staring at the material of her dress, deeply creased. She smoothed it down and looked up, stealing a glance at the Swimmer. He stood very still in the middle of the room, turning only his head to keep his eyes on Brandi.

“This color is called coral. My dress.”

“It’s lovely,” said the Swimmer.

“It was. It’s ruined now.”

The Swimmer stepped into Brandi’s path, one hand moving down to her hip. He brushed it against her very gently then took the fabric between two fingers. “No. Not ruined.
Lovely
.” He lowered the cloth as slowly as he had lifted it, and allowed the tips of his fingers to linger against her.

Brandi pivoted on her bare foot and slipped past the Swimmer, prancing across the room and dropping to a crouch in the corner. She rummaged through the pile of stuffing she had formed minutes earlier and extracted a digital camera.

“Kelly must have dropped this when I brought her here.” She held the camera up for the Swimmer’s benefit, ignoring her suspicion that he had no idea what he was looking at. “Kelly, the girl you saved from the warehouse fire. She remembers that night. She remembers you. She even drew your picture.”

“My
picture
,” said the Swimmer, as if trying out the word.

“She wanted a photograph. To prove you were real.”

“I am real,” said the Swimmer, furrowing his brow.

“Only one way to find out,” said Brandi, crossing the room again and standing before him, the camera at her chin. “There will be a flash. A flash of light. Will that hurt you?”

“Sunlight?” he asked, his voice quavering almost imperceptibly.

“No,” she answered. “False light. Human light. Like the lamps.” She gestured to the nearby lamp, its warm glow illuminating the deep scratches the Swimmer had left in the cabin wall.

The Swimmer bent low to examine the camera more closely, raising his hands as if to take it from her hands. But despite his curiosity, he stopped short of actually touching the device and tucked his hands behind his back.

“No, show them to me. Your hands,” said Brandi.

Cautiously, the Swimmer brought his hands around to his waist. He held them horizontal, palms down, once again examining the scarred translucency between his fingers. He grimaced at the sight then looked up at Brandi with soft eyes. “Not lovely,” he said in a whisper.