I strip to the murmuring approval of the sea.
Fabric peels away to reveal white flesh pebbled with cold, nipples hard. The wind takes the clothes, rushing them, rolling, down the stone beach. I hunch my shoulders, ignore the loss.
The first touch is welcome, a homecoming, and water crawls up my shins. It rises, licking, tasting old scars and scabbed knees as I walk forward; a laugh lurking at the bottom of my gut ripples, bubbling, breaking. I open my arms, welcoming the curling cling of the waves.
He screams.
Another step and slick seaweed is between my toes, my name blending with the grumble of the sea. He's frantic, the edge of his voice rasping my ears, turning them red. I want to dive and swim out to the horizon, reach that edge and slip over, fall out of the known world.
A bite halts me, abrupt as breaking bone, fire spreading from my shoulder blade. I glance back to see him on the beach, armed with a deep-sea fishing rod. We are connected by filament fine as spider silk, invisible as it leaves his hand, invisible until it touches me. I rub salt water from my eyes, heat sweeping from the hook in my shoulder. The tide tugs at my body, pushing at my thighs, my hips.
“You aren’t the right shape, Sophie!”
The sun is high and bright in a cloudless sky. He’s come home early. I thought he’d be out on the boat, gone away only to come back. But he’s caught me. Again.
“If you keep going you’ll only get torn up.”
He won't let go of the rod, of me. He’d haul me back naked, bloody, shaking with cold.
I clutch the line, dragging him into the crashing waves. My shoulder rips, warm blood running down my back, clouding the water. Tossing the rod away, he stumbles, then comes to me, the waves willing us together.
He pulls the barb free, hands darting over my skin. The water rises, licking between my legs, kissing my hips, my lower stomach, cooling flesh heated with contact. His clothes drink the sea, beneath them a hot furnace he presses against me. Hip to hip, forcing submission, his mouth covers mine, demanding I forget, requesting I stay.
I stay.
He hurries me toward the stone beach, out of the calling sea, to a land filled with pebbles worn flat and rubbed raw. I quiver in a gust of wind, damp hair slapping against my back. The waves roll after me, then away, sucking at earth with each retreat.
“Where're your clothes?”
I shake my head.
John’s vivid orange coat lies wadded past the water line, a deformed crab. He stands me still, a hand on my elbow as if I might dart away. He throws it around me, fastening the buttons with shaking fingers. It comes down to my knees, shivering in time with trembling muscles.
John talks, words tumbling around me. I listen, not to their sense, but to the tone, the pattern he weaves.
“Don’t you know I love you?”
The question lingers, waiting for an answer. I nod, allowing him to lead me through scrubby brush on bare feet to his waiting truck that smells like fish, old rope, salt, sweat. It smells like the sea. I pause at the door, turning toward the ocean. The rough hush whisper of water creeping up the beach, inspecting the stones I’d stepped across, crawling, crying after me.
I sit on stained fabric. He leans in to fasten the belt, the key on a chain around his neck swinging free. He’s close, eyes meeting mine in the tight space. They’re green like knee-deep moss. He presses another kiss on me, tasting of salt and air exhaled by dolphins and whales, tinted with seaweed and bubbly kelp. Earth and sea, land and water, he is both in his kiss. I lick my lips as he rounds the truck and slides in beside me.
The engine turns, catches, rumbles. The vibration thrums, and I clutch the seat. A crust of salt dries on my skin, my hair.
“The front door was open, stove on.” He watches the road, shifting and gassing the truck. “You left it all behind on a whim.”
He doesn’t sound angry. He can’t understand that playing housewife wouldn’t appeal to something wild.
I look through glass, smelling his forgotten lunch and the reek of waterlogged rope in the back seat. The sea has gone from my window, vanished in a curve of pavement. I wait, anticipating where it’ll reappear; the trees part, exposing a distant expanse of hard blue.
He is a bird, an eagle, that fell in love with a fish and snatched her from the sea.
When the truck stops I look at the weatherworn cabin perched at the top of a cliff. The wood pile tilts against the east wall, high as the eves; an outhouse at a distance, and a spring even farther away. Here we’re on the back side of summer, a short fall approaching and then the deep black days of an Alaskan winter.
At the cliff edge I can look out, see the backs of seagulls, see where sky touches water and stars disappear. I wonder, sometimes, if he first saw me here. My seal face peering above the waves, inspecting the shore.
I clutch his coat tight, picking my way up the gravel path and inside. So faint it breaks my heart the cabin smells of the sea.
A pot of water boils on the stove, beside forgotten fish stew from that morning. I ignore the locked closet door, glance at the metal tub set before the unlit fire.
Fingers pluck at the shoulders of the coat. I turn, so he can fumble with the buttons. He peels the fabric away, lets it pool at my feet.
“I’ll get a bath ready.”
A match is struck, hot water transferred and cold added until it will turn my skin delicate pink. He beckons, and I take his hand, stepping over the rim of the tub, crouching to feel warmth against private flesh.
I exhale, rubbing my hands over my face. Almond soap is smoothed over me, John’s mouth thin and hands gentle. I shut my eyes when he dumps a bucket over me, rinsing my hair. He presses his face against my back. I sit, rigid, listening to him breathe.
“I can’t let you go.” He whispers, a promise, a prayer, a threat, but there’s sorrow beneath the current. His body, my body, it is our body, even with the tin bath separating us.
Then he stands. I follow, water sloshing, accepting the robe he holds. I sit before the fire, combing the memory of sea salt kisses from my hair. He rubs ointment on my hook bite, covering it with a bandage. His hands linger, one on my shoulder, the other following the curve of my spine. With a groan he stands, leaving cool air.
The generator coughs, electric light joins firelight, and then the mellow chords of the record player reach out.
“Dance with me, Sophie.”
With one hand at the back of his neck, the other held against his heart, we sway; his cheek, whiskery abrasive, smooths over mine. I play with his hair, soft curling strands, and he sighs.
Outside, north of the Arctic Circle and trapped by meaningless time, the sun sulks against the horizon. The needle slips off the record, hissing white noise. I move away toward the kitchen, reach for two glasses and the whiskey from the top cabinet.
John stands where I left him, profile an old coin, the hook of his nose giving him a sinister edge. Until he looks at me, until he smiles, and then sweet melting softness shows through; an ordinary face becoming extraordinary, rare. I put the tumblers in his hands, splashing generous amounts into each. Recovering mine, I throw it back, cough. He drinks his own, bending to refill. We do this until the room becomes a sucking whirlpool.
“I watched you on the rocks, naked, soaking up sun for hours. Like the stories. I almost didn’t believe it until I touched your fur.” John speaks, imparting a tale, a slice of tall fiction. “I never thought you'd leave.”
He’s never shared, and it takes time, his eyes on the floor. I reach out to touch the key around his neck. He tracks the movement, and I lift it over his head. I ask a wordless question. John gives a whiskey shrug.
The key fits, finding a mate in the hollow lock. It clicks as it turns; the open door reveals rifles, a safe with a turn dial eye. A seal skin sits folded on the top shelf. I cry into the warmth, rubbing my cheeks against silken fur.
John takes a swaying step, touches me. He plucks at the robe until I stand exposed. He tugs his clothes off, stumbling, knocking over the empty bottle. I consume his nakedness, roving over muscles gained from working fishing lines and crab pots, the scars and dark hair matting his chest, the nest of his genitals.
He takes the fur, shakes it out; the hollow eyes catch light, flash yellow. It settles around me, and I run a hand over the seal face, my face. Catching my hand, pressing a kiss into the palm, he pulls me to the door. The Alaskan never night is a witness as we run down the steps, through the yard, pausing at the cliff edge.
I smile with hunter’s teeth and squeeze his hand. I never considered jumping from here. But with my sleek skin, I’d make it. I take my hand from his, but he reclaims it.
We leap, with no birds to witness our fall. My skin clings, becoming me. Then the crashing cold, a shock, forcing breath from my body, but I surface, swimming. John looks surprised, face to the cliff we have dropped from like a pair of diving puffins.
Then he turns. He sees me. Me.
I have no hand to extend, no fingers to entwine, no arms in the way he knows them. But he holds on as we both suck in air, dive.
I take him home.