David looked at me from the distance of a vast ocean of years. There were times - rare, but striking - when I realized just how old he really was, how full of experiences. “Sometimes you should try walking away,” he said. “In the old days, honour said no one could back down from a fight without bringing disgrace on themselves. Today, you have a choice. You should exercise it once in a while.”
I kissed him. I couldn’t help it; his lips were close, and parted, and warm. It was lingering and sweet and had the dark, yummy promise of a whole lot more yet to come. “How about over there?” I asked, and pointed down the beach, alluding to an area just around the bend, where it was deserted. “Out of sight, out of mind?”
“Seems prudent,” he agreed. We set off across the hot, sparkling sands, dodging around a few blankets and beach umbrellas and people who were standing around, still watching the show. “Are you going to leave him there?”
“Oh, he’s OK. I didn’t squeeze him or anything. They can dig him out, if they want.”
“Jo, you—” David stopped talking, and he also stopped walking. He turned to look out over the water. “Do you hear that?”
I concentrated. All I heard was the constant rushing roar of the surf, with the continued ranting of Muscles floating over the top. “Hear what?”
“Someone calling for help.”
Even as David said it, I spotted a human shape stumbling out of the waves just a little further down the beach - a boy, maybe sixteen. He fell to his hands and knees in the hissing foam and vomited up an impressive fountain of water.
I grabbed a towel out of my bag and raced to him. “Hey! You OK?” I got the towel around his shaking shoulders and rubbed vigorously as he choked and coughed and got out the rest of the sea he’d swallowed. There was some white spittle around his mouth and nose. He’d come really close to drowning. “Here. Sit. David, help me with him.”
We got the boy up the beach and settled on dry sand, covered in towels. He was still shaking. His skin - a light cocoa, normally - had an unhealthy ashen pallor to it, and his eyes were blank and traumatized.
I took his hands in mine and squeezed. Slowly, his gaze refocused away from whatever horrible memory he had been seeing in his mind’s eye. “What’s your name?” I asked, keeping my voice low and gentle. “I’m Joanne.”
“Cal,” he said. “Calvin Harper.” As if that was some kind of key to the lock on his mind, his face suddenly filled with emotion. With panic. “Where’s Parker? Did you get Parker?”
“Who’s Parker?”
He didn’t answer me. He tried to struggle to his feet, but I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down. Skin-to-skin contact woke my Earth powers, which travelled up in a slow, warm pulse from the soles of my feet and out through my fingertips, ghosting through Cal’s body in a golden wave. He was all right — exhausted from fighting the ocean, and he still had water and foam in his lungs, but I concentrated for a moment and cleared that out. Otherwise, he was just full of pure anxiety.
“Parker,” I repeated. “Who’s Parker?”
“My girl,” Cal gasped. He rubbed his face and close-cut hair with both hands, trying to scrub off the feelings of misery and fear. “I left her. I couldn’t get her. She’s in trouble out there.”
I turned and looked at the waves. I couldn’t see anybody out there.
I turned on my heels to look at David, who dropped the picnic basket on the sand. “I guess we’re going swimming,” he said.
I didn’t see any way around it.
The thing that surprised me was that swimming felt good. It had been a long, long time since I’d voluntarily waded into the ocean. The first cold splash of the water was a livid shock, but then my body adjusted and, by the time the surf was cradling my knees, I felt comfortable.
David, next to me, was scanning the horizon. His eyes had taken on a hot golden shine - a whole lot more than human just now. A shimmer of bronze crept over his skin, giving him the appearance of living metal.
“See anything?” I asked.
“She’s there,” he said, and pointed. “I’ll bring her in. Wait here.”
That wasn’t the agreement, but blip, the next wave that crashed down erased him right out of the picture. David could go anywhere he liked at a whim, but he couldn’t take me with him. I had to travel the old-fashioned way.
Which was why he’d told me to stay put. The problem was, David was going to have to bring the girl back the old-fashioned way, too - faster than a human could swim, granted, but he couldn’t blip her from point A to point B without leaving pieces of her behind.
I hate to wait. I wasn’t intending to swim out there, but I kept pushing forwards, and suddenly I was floating, so it seemed like the thing to do. The cool rush of water over my body was exhilarating, and the little-worked muscles on the insides of my arms began to burn in a pleasant kind of way. As each wave rose towards me I dived into it and came out a little further out, a little deeper. I still couldn’t see David. White clouds drifted by overhead, a few scudding at the horizon like steam from the waves.
Pretty soon I was swimming steadily out in the direction David had indicated.
My awareness spread out around me, like sonar through the water - an instinctive kind of thing, nothing I planned to do. At first I was only aware of the darting shapes of fish near me that stayed well clear of both the roiling surf and my kicking feet; but then my sense of the ocean deepened, focused, and I felt the vast network solidifying around me. It was different than living in the air - closer somehow. More connected. I was an alien element in a world where I wasn’t necessary, and it was a very odd feeling.
I felt the rushing heat of David’s approach across the water, and adjusted my course to meet him. Something odd was happening near him - no, around him. He was slowing down.
David was slowing down. That didn’t make much sense. I swam faster.