Crossings Ch. 05

"Just relax," she said, which made my eyelids flutter. "Your body can float all by itself," she continued, "all you have to do is keep it steady, lazy little kicks will keep your butt on the surface, scull your hands gently, back and forth, so very easy. Keep breathing, noticing how much easier it is to float when your lungs are full, nice and steady, you're doing so well." She was treading water near him, looked at me, blinked. Looked back at Mariano, not actually seeing him this time. I could sense that I was disturbing her lesson so I retreated to the bows to find a relatively comfortable place to sit.

I heard her ask "Remember how Jess relaxed you in the car, isolating your involuntary physical response, how much easier relaxing became for you?" Then I stopped paying attention.

The boat remained where it'd been. I was feeling better but hungrier than ever. Callie and Mariano were doing something that would probably be helpful to him someday. My only memory since my first dives to that underwater arch, roughly 8 hours ago, was a vague vision of lying on the boat's swim platform with Callie kneeling beside me. Where had the day gone? It was now late afternoon and we were deep in the island's tall shadow. I remembered the food Mariano brought and went below for it. Did I mention how hungry I was? Everything he'd packed up for us that wasn't for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow went straightaway and I was still famished. Nahual had fishing gear but I wasn't going to wait, even though I knew there were dorado and yellowfin about 'cause I'd seen them in the aquarium-clear water. The dinner bag Mariano brought for us had four portions. Were we expecting company? Fuck it, I unpacked one and gobbled it up, which helped, but not enough. I was actually in pain from the hunger. Sure, maybe I could wait and I really didn't want to eat anyone else's portion, it felt like I was already in a lot of trouble with Callie. There were limes, jalapeños, onions, garlic, avocados, and mandarins in the bag Mariano brought for dinner. In the onboard fridge was ginger, scallions and cilantro, viognier from Walla Walla of all places, Carta Blanca and Negra Modelo, two steel Buqui Bichi howlers, prawns, mango salsa, eggs, soy and teriyaki sauce, and in the galley's pantry and spice cabinet were olive and sesame oil, salt, black and white pepper, smoked paprika, beans, potatoes, sesame seeds, shari rice, nori, rice and red wine vinegars. There was fishing gear in a locker, rod holders and a fighting seat on the starboard stern plus a large-ish grill with rail mounts. Time to improvise a teriyaki-ginger-lime marinade with salt, pepper, paprika, jalapeño and scallions, then measure out a pot of rice, still dry for now on the galley stove.

Back outside I would ideally troll at speed, but to avoid upsetting Callie's swim lesson I rigged a weighted purple streamer jig on a wire leader, cast as far as I could, as far from Callie and Mariano as I could, a pretty good first try at 40m, and reeled it in. It took less than a minute, incredibly soon (I thought) especially with people in the water not far away, something I'd never tried before. I pumped the fish in, letting it pull against the drag, letting it run so fast the reel virtually screamed, slowly reeling it in again, tiring it out. A strong fast fish, lots of fight especially at first, but I was stronger with the additional advantage of not having hooks in my lip (just my heart!). Finally alongside, a fine young blueback wahoo, almost 10 kg, head partially out of the water, I thanked it for its sacrifice, slid a gaff hook into its gills, raised it far enough to cut beneath those gills and let it bleed out over the side. Callie and Mariano had come back aboard and were bent nearby, curious, and I'm glad they were; blood in the water with sharks about would not have been a good thing around swimmers, magical protections or no, a thought that somehow made me dizzy and achy. Eventually the fish stopped convulsing and I boated it. Callie and Mariano brought a big plastic cooler with ice. I raised and wet the fold-up cleaning table, then beheaded, gutted, scaled, cleaned, and filleted the fish. The grill was propane, not my favorite on land but it would do fine out here. We iced one fillet and half the other, then I brushed marinade on most of the rest. Callie started the rice, then she and Mariano set up the cockpit table while I hosed and cleaned up the cleaning table and deck. They plated the dinner Mariano brought; he noticed one portion already gone.

"I ate it," I said. "My apologies if it was intended for someone else, but I was starving."

"It was yours," Mariano said. "Callie said to get extra, that you would be hungry tonight."

Callie wasn't smiling when I looked at her, but I mouthed "thank you, goddess," to her anyway. She nodded but still seemed sad.

"We all worked up an appetite today, I think," I said. Mariano smiled. Callie went below to remove the rice from heat and add a mixture of salt, sugar, and rice vinegar, then let it cool.

Twenty minutes passed, enough time for the marinade to do its magic. I brushed off the scallions and replaced them with sesame seeds, cut off the part I hadn't marinated.

"For sashimi, or sushi," I said. Callie shook her head like she couldn't quite believe I'd just said that. "The rest grills up fast, so get ready. You can do the sushi," and I had them slice the wahoo and avocado thin, lay out the bamboo mat, cover it with Saran wrap, sliced fish, nori, rice, a few prawns and avocado, then roll it up, slice the resulting maki, and top with diced scallions and cilantro. Roe would've been better, but even this well-stocked boat didn't have that. Meanwhile, I lit the grill, let the grate heat, cleaned and oiled it, then put the remaining fillet on, skin side up for a light sear, some of the sesame seeds popping, then flipped it skin side down for two minutes more. This didn't fully cook the fish, the flesh still pale pink in the middle, but that tender sushi-grade interior would be just fine. I thought of Julia Child: "The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude."

Dinner was fucking amazing. We ate all of it, splitting a bottle of viognier, an excellent pairing with the wahoo. Callie seemed happier, Mariano was delighted ... he'd never tasted cuisine that wasn't prepared in a Mexican style, we all knew he had a great sense for good food, and with the right ingredients, none of this had been difficult to prepare.

It was evening now; we raised anchor and motored up the east side of the island, reaching its northern end at dusk. There were several sheltered coves that would be good places to stay the night, but before that I wanted to get in the water again, this time with Callie.

"Callie, honey, you seem unhappy," I said. "Is everything OK?"

She seemed torn between an urge to reprimand me for not referring to her as my goddess, and by genuine pangs of sorrow and regret. She bowed her head.

"I can't tell you," she whispered, "not yet. But you won't remember asking me that, and you won't ask again. Understand?"

"Yes, my goddess," I said, nodding, not understanding at all but content to follow her direction. At least for now. Which seemed an odd caveat for me, then. She looked intently into my eyes.

"Do you trust me?" she asked softly.

"Yes, my goddess," I said.

"Then forget," she whispered, and I did.

We played two rounds of three-handed cribbage while waiting for full darkness. Mariano wasn't comfortable going into dark water, but we lowered the swim platform far enough that he could lie on it while wearing goggles and a snorkel, his head over the edge, enabling him to see a little of what we would underwater. Callie and I snorkeled for a bit before deciding to go deeper the way I had before. I was surprised to find that she already knew how, but then my memory of earlier today was decidedly patchy.

There was light in the water, floating all around. Diatoms, bioluminescent, incongruously reminding me of "It's A Small World." We each had a flashlight but darkness was nicer so we kept them off. A manta ray cruised slowly just below the surface, seeming almost to hover. It disappeared very quickly below when I tried getting closer. The water was calm and almost completely flat, the only sound above from fish breaking the surface, sometimes jumping, or the occasional hesitant breath of wind nudging the boat into a different attitude from the long anchor cable. Back underwater with Callie, both of us nude now except for Callie's bikini top, flashlights on lanyards, the long knife strapped to Callie's leg: one minute below, then two, then three, then I stopped counting, eyes adjusted to the darkness, surrounded by bioluminesence, like pale colored snow falling in moonlight. I reached to hold one of Callie's hands, and she squeezed mine in return. I swam below her, rolled over, reached under her top to caress one of her breasts, touched my tongue to her pebbling nipple. Callie put her hands on my shoulders, then wrapped her legs around my waist, riding me underwater, sliding her body down mine, caressing my erect cock with her soft warm vulva, took me into her for a moment, her beautiful eyes commanding mine to not look away, then slid away and pressed her groin to me, slowly moving up and down, fingers and nails lightly caressing my chest, sharing sensation. Under normal circumstances being upside down underwater would lead inevitably to water up my nose, but here, now, magically enhanced, all was copacetic.

I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit around the fairest sun?

My hand clutching her wondrous ass, holding us close, I engulfed her with my other arm, probed her warm mouth with my tongue, eyes deep in hers, then slid her higher on me. Her legs were still wrapped around my waist and those legs were strong enough to resist if she wanted, but she let it happen, legs sliding up either side of my chest to my armpits. I urged her higher still. She sighed bubbles and wrapped her thighs around my neck, our eyes still locked together. My hands came around to her breasts, squeezed her, my thumbs brushing back and forth across her erect nipples. She threw her head back, breaking eye contact, and I nuzzled her sex, lips and tongue teasing at first but then deeper, harder, rougher. She was close so I backed off, then bore in again when she was away from her edge, twice more bringing her to that edge and then easing off until I heard her voice in my head.

"Yes, my good slave, now." I bore down on her clitoris and she spasmed as if electrocuted but I kept on until she came, hard and long. We'd been underwater for 10 minutes. She finally unwrapped her legs from around me, giving me a squeeze before she did, then took my hand and we surfaced to a sky full of stars, a light haze of evaporation on the water. We'd been magically sustaining ourselves without breathing underwater for so long that normal breaths seemed unfamiliar, but our lungs hadn't forgotten and we breathed deep for two minutes, catching up. She swam close and caught my eyes in hers again, put her hands on my shoulders, making me tread water for both of us.

"That was nice, my good slave, but you'll need to fully submit if you want yours," she said. "You'll find your mind becoming even more susceptible to my thoughts, my words, my suggestions, as soon as you enter me, deeper in my power the deeper you're in me, and when you hear me command it, your mind will slip away so easily, just as I want it to, just as you need it to. Staying in the water with me means you agree to do as I say, to become even more submissive to my desires, which are all you want, all you need."

She didn't ask for my agreement but she didn't need to ... just staying here with her was all the agreement she needed.

"Good slave," she whispered, wrapped her legs around my waist again, and slowly lowered herself onto me, hovering at the very tip of my cock, pulling me in and pushing me out rapidly, using just the muscles at her entrance, stimulating my glans until I wouldn't have been able to think straight even if she hadn't already told me she wanted exactly that. There was nothing for me to do, nothing but sink into her power just as she'd told me I would. We sank into the water and she lengthened her stroke, taking me deeper, into her, into her power, into her control. Below us were more lights, red and white, flashing rapidly, dim with distance but coming closer.

"Let your mind fall away," she said in my mind, and conscious thought fled.

Forget all about the pressure of days
Do what I say and I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head

"Good slave," I heard her think, then she unwrapped her legs and separated from me. "Keep yourself safe, let your body act on its own without your mind guiding it, protecting yourself, protecting me, healing yourself as you need, all without thought, just letting your body do what it already knows so well, your unconscious mind knowing it won't need to remember any of this. You'll forget all of it until the time is right, just like everything else. No surfacing until we're safe."

I felt something grab my arm, something sinuous and long with sharp edges. And then another like it, then all of a sudden I was being pulled into something I'd never felt anything like, red and white flashing all around me, and then something bit me, really fucking hard, tearing more than an inch deep into the muscle of my side, again and again. And then another thing like it was on my leg, both of them gripping so tight there was no escape. Bodies slick and rubbery, no way for hands to grip except for winglike appendages. I tore one away and the rest of the body separated, but another had already latched onto my other leg and more were swarming closer.

I am a killer
You'll get lost and buried deep
If you swim with me

"Away!" my body shouted, wordless and almost silent underwater, and the creatures not already attached to me wavered as if hit by a shockwave. Then I did it again, and again, better targeted and more effective each time, but as I twisted to detach the two creatures still attacking me, as my body's attention turned to them, I could feel the rest coming closer.

I felt something entirely different closing in, much bigger, a veritable killing machine. It impacted one of the attacking creatures as suddenly and catastrophically as a speeding car and I could feel its teeth tearing through the creature's rubbery flesh, and then another was caught, the rest clearing like a swarm of bats from a cave, dozens or hundreds jetting in dozens or hundreds of different directions, but most importantly away from me and from Callie.

I removed the two remaining creatures by tearing at them, ripping the mantle of one in half, the other detaching as soon as it felt my hand pulling it apart and jetting away in a black cloud. I grabbed a piece of one still-spasming creature and kicked towards the surface. We were away from the island and the boat, out of the little sheltered cove in deeper water. We swam back. Mariano was aboard, the swim platform still submerged. We climbed up and over the transom. My side and both legs were a bloody torn mess.

"Go inside," Callie told Mariano, but he shook his head. "He'll heal," she said. "You've seen him do it."

"You saved me," he said. "Both of you. I want to do anything I can to help." Callie took Mariano's face in one hand, looking deep into his eyes.

"You're a good man, Mariano," she said, holding his gaze. "But truly, it's better if you don't see this. He's going to be fine."

Mariano couldn't look away, I know all too well how that goes, but he backed up a step, then another. She wasn't magically compelling him, he was just doing what she asked. Because he trusted her, trusted what Callie and I had together. And maybe because he was used to doing what Jess wanted, compelled or not.

I examined the remains of the creature I'd pulled up, using my flashlight. It was most of a very large squid, part of its mantle missing but the tentacles intact. A very dark uniform red color.

"Go below, Mariano," Callie told him. "Please. And find something loud to listen to, or find headphones and call Jess." Reluctantly, he backed down the companionway into the saloon. She turned back to me.

"Humboldt squid," I said, holding it out for Callie to see, but she only glanced at it, "and I think the thing that scattered them was a great white shark."

"I'm so sorry, Bob, but you need this," she said, backed up a step, and swift and strong and sure as a cobra, she roundhouse-kicked my upper leg. I felt the femur snap and my world go dark yet again.

Lyrics:
Lover's Rock - Sade
Nightswimming - Michael Stipe & Mike Mills
Between The Bars - Elliott Smith
Slow Life - Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, Ragnar Þórhallsson, Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson

Next in chapter 6:
Journeys | Like a dreaming sleep