A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [63]
“Are you ...?” I put my hands on my knees, gulped down air.
“You know who I am. You found the book.”
“Yes.”
“You read it.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know. That’s different than before. The book. I thought maybe it would help. It’s the same every year.”
“For eighty years.” I straightened. Her white-amber eyes blinded me.
“Yes. For eighty years. Do you remember? Do you know my name?”
I hesitated.
“You don’t. It didn’t help. I have to go to wait for you again.”
“NO! Please! Don’t go!”
She turned again. The water foamed at her knees now. I wanted to go to her, hold her, but adrenaline shot through me and my palms slicked with sweat when I thought of approaching the water.
“Please!” I called. “Please, I’m begging you! Tell me your name! I’ll say it! I’ll say it!”
“I can’t. You have to remember. Remember you loved me, remember your desire for me, for always. If you can’t, it wasn’t real. There’s doubt. Love can’t survive in doubt. There must be no doubt.”
“Please ... please, I love you! Don’t you see?”
She nodded and her eerie eye-lights bobbed in the dark. “I know you do now. Because you fell in love with me during our time. But you must remember.”
“What if I’m not him? What if I’m not?”
Water foamed at her waist when she turned again. “Where were you born?”
I opened my mouth to answer. I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember anything before I met her.
“You see? What were your parents’ names?”
I groped my mind, strained for answers. There were none.
“What is my name?” The tone of her bell-voice changed again, a minor note, a sad song. “Just say my name, and we can be together forever.”
My foggy mind swirled with images, all of them her, and all of them since the full moon. Our night in the lighthouse, our times here in the cove, in the house—nothing before she walked out of the sea.
She stared at me, cocked her head.
“You don’t remember.”
I tried to step forward and a wave frothed at my shoes. My heart slammed to a stop and I leaped back, a small cry escaped me.
“Do you still deny the truth?” she called, gentle and warm. “You’re still afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes, afraid. Afraid of the ocean that took you from me.”
My jaw worked, nothing came out.
“The ocean took you by force. You must have been afraid when you died. You never come near the water. Every year I try to get you to swim with me like we used to, but you won’t. Every year for eighty years. You’re afraid of the water.”
“I’m not ... I wasn’t ...” Another wave chased me farther up the sand. My pulse quickened. I looked back at her, and breakers tossed and rumbled at her chest now.
“Just say my name,” she spoke, and the music of her voice hypnotized me. “Just say my name, and we can be together for all eternity.”
My helpless tears answered her.
“I wanted to believe mine was the last name on your lips, just as yours was on mine. But until you can remember, I’ll never know for sure, and we can’t be together. Love can’t survive under doubt. Don’t you see?”
I watched her moonbeam eyes, her body unaffected by the tide and waves crashing over her shoulders. She stood still, as if on land, and gazed at me.
She was more beautiful than the sea, more beautiful than the moonlight that drizzled lovingly over her that first night, more beautiful than the music she danced to. She was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen.
She turned away, and her sorrow pierced me.
I bit my lip hard, so hard it bled, and plunged into the waves after her.
Images swirled over me, through me, in me. Images of something, the walls of a house—no, a ship! A ship’s bulkhead. It rocketed toward me, because the boat capsized, and tossed me like a pebble in an empty can. I remember a calendar fell off the wall and flailed and flapped like a frightened bird. Someone screaming, not me, but someone. I remembered the world stopped, went blue and green, cold. Bubbles, rays of light spearing jade depths. Cold, so cold!
And a name, the last thing in my mind was a name, and I screamed it now, splashed against the surf and screamed it, unable to see her, unable