Points of Departure (16 page)

He gently took her bandaged hand in his hand. “Something really has you worried, doesn’t it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “The ocean gets
to me when I’m out at the cottage, that’s all,” she said. “The fog and the waves and the sea lions barking …” And the madness that lingers at the ocean’s edge, she thought.

“I told you it was a lonely spot,” he said.

“Not lonely so much as …” She hesitated. “I never feel quite alone anymore. And I get to imagining things. The other night, I thought I saw a light, dancing on the waves just beyond
the breakers. I don’t know; I guess my eyes were just playing tricks.”

Michael grinned and stroked her hand. “Don’t worry about your eyes,” he said. “You probably did see a light. Have you ever heard of bioluminescence? There are microorganisms that glow …”

Michael explained it all—talking about red tides and marine chemistry. Kate let the reassuring words wash over her. Michael never had time
for the vague, ill-defined feelings that plagued her. She listened to him, and when he was done, she managed a smile.

“You’ve been working on that project much too hard,” he said. “Why don’t you just stay in town tonight and spend the night with me?”

She stared at her coffee in silence, “Don’t be afraid to come back to me,” he said softly. “You can if you want to.”

She did not know what she
wanted. “I have to go back tonight,” she said. “I have work to do.”

“Why tonight?” he asked. “Why not wait until tomorrow?”

The answer came to her mind, but she did not voice it: the moon would be full that night.

She freed her hand from Michael’s grasp and held her coffee cup between her palms. “I have work to do,” she repeated.

She drove back that night, speeding around the curves in the
twisting road that led from Santa Cruz to her little patch of nowhere. The old Beatles song on the tape deck drowned out the whisper of the waves: “I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden with you.”

The full moon hung in the sky over the cottage as she rolled up the drive. She turned her key. The music stopped. And the crash of the surf filled the car.

Kate walked to the edge of
the cliff. Below her, the sea shimmered in the moonlight, the swells rising and falling in a rhythm as steady as breathing. She felt eyes watching her from the ocean below.

She slipped three times as she descended the path. The third time she caught herself with her wounded hand and the cut flared with a bright new pain. Her ankle throbbed but she continued to pick her way down the slope.

The
waves had not yet reached the bottom of the path.

The tiny beach was a silver thread in the moonlight, extending away in either direction in a shimmering line.

She stood on the silver strand and gazed out to sea.

A light danced on the wave. Loneliness swept over her as a wave swept over the sand, touching the toes of her boots with foam. Involuntarily, she took a step to follow the retreating
water. The next wave lapped around her ankles and a fierce pain touched her wounded hand so that she longed to sooth it by touching it to the cold water.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard the echo of a voice saying: “Blood calls to blood.” She took another step forward and the water lapped at her knees, dragging on the legs of her jeans.

The light danced out of reach. The water was
cold against her ankle. It eased the pain. The water could ease the stinging in her hand. If only she waded out farther.

With her bandaged hand, she gripped the pendant that hung around her neck. Michael would not believe that there was a watcher in the water. But the light was there.

And the loneliness was with her. She watched the dancing light and thought about the glowing microorganisms
that Michael had described. The water tugged at her legs.

“No,” she said softly to the water and the light. Then louder, “No.” The water tugged at her, urging, insisting.

“No.”

She could feel eyes on her as she trudged up the path.

Turning her back on wonder. No, turning her back on cold gray waters that would beat her against the rocks.

There was no storm that night. But she heard the sound
of the waves against the cliffs—calling, calling. She slept uneasily and she dreamed of a lover: a salt-sea lover with hands like ice and the face of a prince. Between his fingers, webbing stretched; his teeth were pointed; he carried with him the scent of the sea. He loved her with a steady rocking as rhythmic as the sea, and he held her when she cried out—was it in pleasure or pain?—at the chill
of his touch. She stroked his dark hair, sleek as the fur of a seal. He came to her for comfort, this silent lover whose kisses tasted of salt. He came to her to make a truce.

She woke to the scent of the sea and the sound of a gentle thumping. Half-awake, she fumbled uselessly for the pendant at her neck. It was not there, though she could not remember, taking it off the night before. She left
her bed wrapping the quilt around her and stepping into the kitchen.

The door to the porch swung wide open, moving slightly in the breeze and bumping gently against the kitchen wall. She picked up her pendant from where it lay on the porch railing. She did not put it on. She did not need it.

No fear was left in her.

The single wire of the old fence was strung with drops of dew, one drop on
each rusty barb. The old fence should come down, she thought. It served no purpose anymore.

The waves washed against the base of the cliff; the ocean moved in its endless rhythm. Drops of her blood ebbed and surged with those waters. And the strength of the sea surged in her.

Far away, a sea lion barked. And the bright sunlight of early morning glinted on the two strands of eel grass that lay
across the steps.

F
YNN PLANTED HER
with the tomatoes in the greenhouse on the first day of spring. The instructions on the package were similar to the instructions on any seed envelope.

Vegetable Wife: prefers sandy soil, sunny conditions. Plant two inches deep after all danger of frost has passed. When seedling is two feet tall, transplant. Water frequently.

A week later, a fragile seedling
sprouted in the plastic basin beside the tomatoes: two strong shoots that grew straight with little branching. The seedling grew quickly and when the shoots were two feet tall, Fynn transplanted the seedling to a sunny spot near the entrance to his living dome, where he would pass it on his way to the fields each day.

After transplanting the seedling, he stood beneath the green sky and surveyed
his empire: a hastily assembled refabricated living dome that marked the center of his homestead; a greenhouse built of Plexiglas slabs, tilted to catch the sun; and the fields, four fertile acres that he had tilled and planted himself. Most of the farm’s tilled area was given over to cash crop: he was growing cimmeg, a plant that bore seeds valued for their flavor and medicinal properties. Row
after row of dark green seedlings raised their pointed leaves to the pale sky.

Beyond the fields grew the tall grasses native to the planet, a vast expanse of swaying stalks. When the wind blew, the stalks shifted and moved and the grasses hissed.

The soft sound of the wind in the grasses irritated Fynn; he thought it sounded like people whispering secrets. He had enjoyed hacking down the grass
that had surrounded the living dome, churning its roots beneath the mechanical tiller, planting the straight rows of cimmeg.

Fynn was a square-jawed man with coarse brown hair and stubby, unimaginative fingers. He was a methodical man. He liked living alone, but he thought that a man should have a wife. He had chosen the seed carefully, selecting a hardy stock, bypassing the more delicate Vegetable
Maiden and Vegetable Bride, selecting a variety noted for its ability to thrive under any conditions.

The seedling grew quickly. The two shoots met and joined, forming a thicker trunk. By the time the cimmeg was knee high, the Wife had reached the height of his shoulders, a pale green plant with broad soft leaves and a trunk covered with downy hairs. The sun rose earlier each morning, the cimmeg
grew to waist high, filling the air with an exotic spicy scent, and the Vegetable Wife’s stem thickened and darkened to olive green. The curves of her body began to emerge: swelling hips pinching in to form a thin waist; rounded breasts covered with fine pale down; a willowy neck supporting the rounded knob that would become her head. Each morning, Fynn checked the dampness of the soil around
the seedling and peered through the leaves at the ripening trunk.

In late spring, he first saw her pubic hair, a dark triangle just above where the twin trunks joined to form her body.

Hesitantly, he parted the leaves and reached into the dimness to stroke the new growth. The smell of her excited him: rich and earthy and warm, like the smell of the greenhouse. The wood was warm beneath the hair
and it yielded slightly to his touch. He moved closer, moving his hands up to cup the breasts, running his thumbs over the unevenness that promised to become nipples. The rustle of the wind in her leaves made him look up.

She was watching him: dark eyes, a suggestion of a nose, a mouth that was little more than a slit, lips barely parted.

He backed away hastily, noticing only then that he had
broken the stalks of several leaves when he stepped in to fondle the trunk. He touched the broken leaves guiltily, and then reminded himself that she was only a plant, she felt no pain. Still he watered the Wife generously that day, and when he went to work in the cimmeg fields, he hummed to himself so that he would not hear the grasses whispering.

The instructions had said that she would ripen
at two months. Each morning, he checked on her progress, parting the leaves to admire the curves of her body, the willowy stalk of her neck, the fine bright gleam of her eyes. She had a full body and a softly rounded face.

Though her eyes were open, her expression was that of a sleepwalker, an innocent young girl who wanders in the darkness unaware.

The expression excited him as much as her
body, and sometimes he could not resist pushing close to her, running his hands along the gentle curve of her buttocks and back, stroking the fine dark hair that topped her head, still short like a little boy’s hair, but growing, maturing like the rest of her.

It was late spring when he first felt her move under his touch. His hand was on her breast, and he felt her body shift as if she were
trying to pull away. “Ah,” he said with anticipation, “it won’t be long.” Her hand, which had formed recently from a thickened stalk, fluttered in the wind as if to push him away. He smiled as she swayed in a puff of wind and her leaves rustled.

That afternoon, he brought a thick rope, looped it around her ankle, and knotted it carefully in place. Smiling at her angelic face, framed in dark hair,
he spoke softly. “Can’t have you running off. Not now that you’re almost ripe.” He tied the other end of the rope firmly to the frame of the dome, and after that he checked on her three times each day, rather than just once.

He cleaned the inside of the dome for the first time in months, washing the blankets of his bachelor bed, opening the windows to banish the mustiness. He could look out the
open window and see her swaying in the breeze.

Sometimes, she seemed to be struggling against the rope, and when she did that he checked the knots to make sure they were secure.

The cimmeg grew tall, its sharp glossy leaves catching the sunlight and glittering like obsidian blades. Her leaves withered and fell away, leaving her naked olive green body exposed to the sun and to his gaze. He watched
her carefully, returning from the fields several times each afternoon to check the knots.

He woke one morning to find her crouched at the end of her tether, pulling at the knot with soft fingers that bled pale sap where the coarse rope had cut her. “Now, now,” he said, “leave that alone.” He squatted beside her in the dust and put his hand on her sun-warmed shoulder, thinking to reassure her.
She turned her head toward him slowly, majestically, with the stately grace of a flower turning to face the sun. Her face was blank; her eyes, expressionless. When he tried to embrace her, she did not respond except to push at his shoulders weakly with her hands.

Excitement washed over him, and he pushed her back on the hard ground, his mouth seeking her breast where the rough nipple tasted like
vanilla, his hand parting her legs to open the mysteries of that dark downy triangle of hair.

When he was done, she was crying softly, a high faint sound like the singing of the small birds that nested in the tall grass. The sound woke compassion in him. He rolled off her and buttoned his pants, wishing that he could have been less hasty.

She lay in the dust, her dark hair falling to hide her
face. She was silent, and he could hear the wind in her hair, like the wind in the tall grass.

“Come now,” he said, torn between sympathy and annoyance. “You are my wife. It can’t be that bad.”

She did not look at him.

He cupped her chin in one hand and tilted her head so that he could see her expression. Her face was serene, expressionless, blank. He patted her shoulder, reassured by her expression.
He knew she felt no pain; the instructions had said so.

He untied the rope from the frame of the dome and brought her inside. By the window, he set a basin of water for her. He secured the rope to the leg of the bed, leaving the tether long enough so that she could stand in the window or the doorway and watch him work in the fields.

She was not quite what he expected in a wife. She did not understand
language. She did not speak language. She paid little attention to him unless he forced her to look at him, to see him. He tried being pleasant to her—bringing her flowers from the fields and refilling her basin with cool clean water. She took no notice. Day and night, she stood in the window, her feet in the basin of water. According to the instructions, she took her nourishment from the
sun and the air and the water that she absorbed through pores in her skin.