by Kerri Sakamoto
EXCERPT
EIJI KNEW MY secrets. Even the things I hid from him, he knew, though he said nothing. Things Stum would never easily comprehend. One morning we were there early on the beach at Port Dover; the hung heavy and grey as curtains. The moon dangled above us, more and more a shadow as the sky lightened. Eiji ran ahead, his feet tearing up wet brown clumps of sand. My little legs stretched to step into each dark hole he left. He slammed into the water—I heard the slap of his legs against the wall of it—then dived under. His head bobbed to the surface, slick and black on the colourless water, out where it was smooth. The giant saw in the mill started up then, razor sharp, searing the air; so sharp it made me grit my teeth.
I suppose that as I grew up, the happier I was with Eiji, the more I trusted in him, and the greater my fear of losing him was. It was my dark nature that Mama and the others saw in the large brooding adult face I wore as a child. But that was not what Eiji saw when he looked at me.
He was waving to me, calling. I slid into the water, paddled out calm as could be. Then a wave crested in front of me, high as a cliff, it seemed. It broke and sent me tumbling, water churning through my nose and mouth; my hair whipped my face and blackened the water. Even then, in those seconds of panic when I could not breathe, could not see, a part of me was serene and waited for him. Then his fingers gripped me, pulled me up; when I broke the surface to sky, everything was keen and still except for the lashing of my own breath, in the air where Eiji held me like a ball or a trophy. The sun was rising, barely brighter than the fading moon.
Eiji swung me on his back to play seahorse, the way we did in bed, only now the covers were waves. I was crying and I was laughing, hysterical thing that I was then; each time he dipped down, I saw my feet disappear into the water and screeched. It was like a ride: each time knowing in your heart that you would come back up, but not knowing when. But when I felt Eiji’s body separate from me once more on the ride, it seemed to drift down farther than before, limp. I tried to pull him up but I was slipping, the water cuffed my neck; I arched my back to keep my head up. Suddenly I was frantic, climbing him like a tree in a flood; under my feet, his body went down the slightest bit more, and still I held him tight, trying to save us both, I told myself, but I was the dead weight. At last he surfaced violently, head thrust back. “Let go! Let go!” he sputtered, wrenching my fingers from his neck. I did what he said, and as I let go I could only stare at my hands in shock. All along, I’d been holding too tight, making him go down. Eiji laid me on my back and let me go with the waves. “I was playing, Asa,” he said “just playing.” I struggled at first, then surrendered. “Now look at the sky,” he said as we both floated face-up, and that was all there was. Sky. Everything that held your body in this world, and nothing.