Page 31 of Currents of Desire

“A tether,” she says, her voice sounding distant now, as if she is already moving away. “A drop of the deep. You will hear the tides now, Jack. You will know when the storm comes. And you will know if I am near.”

She steps back. The water laps at her ankles.

“Go,” I say, because if she stays one second longer, I will grab her and never let go, and we will both die for it. “Go.”

Her eyes are fully silver when she looks at me, mirroring the fractured sky. Without a word, she turns and simply falls forward, letting the muddy floodwater swallow her.

I catch a glimpse of her beneath the surface, a blur of motion, a sudden, violent displacement of the current. Then a massive, scaled tail breaks the surface, slapping the water with a sound like a gunshot before she disappears.

Then, she is gone.

The ripples spread out, fighting against the current before being washed away.

I stand there.

The sun widens its breach in the clouds, pouring more light onto the mud. The humidity rises. The insects begin to sing again, a rising buzz that tries to compete with the new sound in my head.

The thrum. The heartbeat of the ocean.

I can feel her moving through it. It’s a faint sensation, like a tug on a loose fishing line. I sense her speed, her steep descent, the way the water welcomes her home. She’s shooting toward the bay, diving for the deeps where the crushing pressure will knit her skin and the freezing dark will soothe her burns.

I need to go back to the house. There's blood to scrub off the floorboards. I have to figure out what to do with the dead monster in my kitchen which really just means finding a shovel and burying the damn thing myself.

But I don’t move.

I just stand there, boots sinking deeper into the creek mud. My wet clothes cling to my skin. The last of the adrenaline finally burns away, leaving me shivering, hollowed out, and aching in the cold.

Ten minutes pass. Twenty.

The tug on the line gets fainter. She is miles away now.

An hour passes.

The sun is fully out, steaming the moisture off the land. The floodwaters have dropped another foot. The creek is returning to its banks.

I am still standing here.

I close my eyes and listen. The roar of the ocean is still there, inside me. It’s lonely, vast, and terrifying, but it’s her.

“I’m here,” I whisper to the muddy water. “I’m right here.”

I pull my boots out of the muck with a wet, sucking sound and turn back toward the broken house. I have a lot of work to do. I have to be ready for when the tide comes back in.

CHAPTER 12

Jack

The sound of Deception Point rebuilding is a specific kind of music. It’s the aggressive, two-stroke whine of chainsaws chewing through fallen cedar, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of hammers hitting fresh pine, and the groan of heavy machinery dragging debris off the asphalt.

It’s been a month since the storm broke. Down in the town, the air rings with the constant, grinding noise of rebuilding. I’m making my own racket, but my head isn't in it.

I’m on my knees on the veranda, wrestling a new plank into the gap where the wind splintered the deck. My hands do the work on autopilot. My beard is an overgrown, itchy mess, and I'm running on weeks of garbage sleep. Even my clothes don't fit right anymore; my belt is cinched to the last notch, the denim sagging on my hips.

I drive the next nail home with too much force. The wood splinters around the head. I mutter a curse, drop the hammer, and sit back on my heels to stare out past the railing.

The tide is out. The exposed mudflats bake under the afternoon sun, smelling of salt and decay. The creek is just a slow crawl of brown water winding toward the bay.

I close my eyes and listen.