Seven Tears into the Sea (6 page)

No, I told Dr. Cates, I'd seen all of him there was to see. He'd looked quite human.

I took an elective class called Myths and Monsters during my freshman year at Valencia High. I didn't try to fool myself. I knew I was still looking for answers. When we had to do a term project on a myth or monster, I chose selkies, and the thing I discovered is that selkie stories are almost prehistoric, pre-Christianity for sure, and details vary.

Legends only agree upon three things. Selkies are friendly, heroic, and so handsome they take your breath away.

Lots of stories mentioned the number seven, and though they never recounted that rhyme, I'd never forgotten it.

“Beckon the sea, I'll come to thee,” I whispered to the room. “Shed seven tears, perchance seven years.”

I'll come to thee.
The language was old-fashioned. It sounded formal, too, although my sophomore English
teacher had told us that Shakespeare and people who'd lived in those days would've used
you
to talk with someone formally.
Thee
was reserved for friends.

Whatever.

I hadn't called him back. I never would.

Still, reciting those words into the silence had given me nonstop chills.

The sure cure for silence was television, even if it was a miniscule black-and-white set from my parents' college days. I ran downstairs with Gumbo at my heels and plopped onto the brick-colored couch.

TV did the trick.

I was two hours into a
Brady Bunchathon
and a bag of nacho chips when Gumbo jumped on the sill of the big living room window.

The couch was on the same wall as the door, facing the shelf that held the TV, and the window was on my left. If I concentrated on the screen, I could ignore those sheer curtains.

Gumbo didn't find it quite so easy. Switching her tail, she stared out into the night. If I hadn't already been startled by my own reflection, the sight of her golden eyes, mirrored by black glass, would have freaked me out.

“Knock it off, kitty,” I said forcefully. Of course she didn't.

In fact, she vibrated with a rumble which rapidly turned into a growl. This wasn't the hunting hum she
reserved for birds. Gumbo sounded almost vicious.

I couldn't help looking, but I didn't get up and go to the window.

Suddenly she darted at the glass as if she wanted to leap through. She banged her nose hard enough that she fell, twisting to get her feet beneath her.

This had gone beyond creepy, but there was no way I'd go outside. Not to investigate. Not to run for help.

I couldn't call the Inn, because I had no phone. Even if I had one, I wouldn't want Nana or Thelma running down here for a false alarm. Not that Nana could run these days.

After awhile, sinking into the couch, I convinced myself Gumbo had only seen another cat. She was quite the flirt, my Gumbo. She sounded fierce, but she liked yowling in the moonlight, twining around tomcats, driving them crazy. Maybe she was just playing hard to get.

My eyelids were drooping when I heard her hiss.

“You're spayed,” I told her gently. “Get used to it.”

But then I remembered the footprint. And “that lot” from the village. And Zack McCracken.

I sat up straight and released the breath I was holding, when I saw Gumbo had turned her attention to cleaning a paw, with her back to the window. I forced myself to turn back to the Bradys, and a few minutes later Gumbo was curled on my lap.

“Boy, that Marsha makes me glad I'm an only child,” I told her.

Pushing off my thighs for a single leap, Gumbo returned to the sill.

Even though I knew the deck around the cottage creaked, and I'd hear anyone who came near the house, I thought of the shoulder-high blackberry bushes. They'd make a great hiding place. Feeling brave, I left my safe couch and crossed the room. I felt vulnerable and exposed as I removed Gumbo from the windowsill.

“Bedtime for you!” I said, and when she tried to squirm free, underlining her request with claws, I held her at arm's length and carried her upstairs.

I should have tidied downstairs, but my hands were shaking. I wasn't going back down there until dawn.

At least I'd be in bed, under the kissing-fish quilt, if someone broke in. Vain as it sounds, if there was an ax-murderer out there, I did not want my body discovered amid a bright orange litter of nacho chips.

I made it through the night.

Gumbo survived her crisis of nerves and passed out on my chest. I could feel her weight as I surfaced from sleep.

Opening my eyes in the loft was like waking up inside a rainbow. I rolled from beneath Gumbo, pulled myself upright, and just stared.

The loft window showed silvery ocean all the way to
the horizon. An iridescent sky glimmered pink, green, and blue like the inside of an abalone shell.

Last night I'd set the bedside clock radio for six fifteen, though I didn't have to be at the Inn until seven, to help with seven thirty breakfast. It was 5
A.M.

I couldn't believe it. The last time I'd been up this early, I'd been waiting for Santa Claus. There was no time difference between Valencia and Mirage Beach, or that would have explained it.

A gray and white gull skimmed right by the window, turning its head to study me. I gave a wave, amazed at how quickly my life had rolled back in time. As a kid, I'd begged to take my nap upstairs.

The only thing missing was the sound of the ocean. When I was little, I could hear gulls calling and the
shushing
of the ocean.

Then I remembered the skylight.

I reached under the bed, found the hooked pole right where it was supposed to be, and wound the window open until the morning air brought the sea sounds inside.

Waves broke, then sighed as if they were searching, not finding, then coming back, never giving up the search, returning again and again.

Gumbo jumped to the floor, stretched, and inflicted a cursory clawing on my parents' old Persian rug.

“Mrow?” she asked, inquiring after breakfast.

“Downstairs, remember?”

Waving her tail, she waited for me to lead the way. When I did, her paws touched my heels at every other step. Once we reached the kitchen, she crunched and gorged as if she hadn't acted like a possessed animal just last night.

Morning's great that way. You can cry yourself to sleep and wake up wondering what the fuss was over.

Since my suitcases were still in my old room, I dressed there in a sleeveless white shirt and a navy blue pull-on skirt.

I couldn't wait to go outside. If Mom were here, she'd tell me to eat breakfast. But I was in charge of myself, so I grabbed an apple from the fruit basket and opened the door carefully.

As I did, a swallow burst from the mud nest. A dart of blue-gray and ivory, she sailed over my head, then soared with pointed wings.

Was she out to catch breakfast for herself or were there babies inside? I'd have to make sure Gumbo stayed locked up. A featherless, fallen hatchling would be just her style.

That's my kitty. It didn't matter that she was sleek and well fed. Show her quick-moving prey and, assuming it's smaller than she is and helpless, she was all over it.

I shut the door firmly behind me, then surveyed my domain.

Three paths led away from the cottage.

One went left to the driveway. Standing a couple steps out from my deck, I could see my yellow Bug was still there. Whatever Gumbo had heard last night, it hadn't been car thieves.

From the driveway, I could turn left and go up to the highway or turn right and go over the dunes, through the sea grass to Little Beach. From there, I could turn south, and, if I were in good shape—I am, but not as good as when I was diving—I could jog to Siena Bay.

I hadn't been to Siena Bay in years. According to Nana, it had changed from a fishing village to a tourist town. While that was sort of a shame, I bet it meant I could get a whipped cream-topped mocha at an espresso bar. I weighed that against the possibility I'd be late for my first day of work, and considered the second path.

That trail ran hard north, straight to the Inn. By Dad's calculations, I'd reach the Inn in two minutes, and though I've never had a real job besides babysitting, it's my opinion that anyone who'd show up an hour early for work is trying too hard.

The middle path began as part of the Inn path, then veered left to Mirage Point.

That's the path I took. As I walked, tossing the apple like a juggler, I looked ahead and my steps slowed.

Mirage Point was a finger of earth that pointed toward the Orient.

A sturdy wooden fence marked the end of the path,
to keep Inn guests from tumbling down to a watery death. There's a rounded apron of dirt just beyond that fence, where you could watch the waves rock over the black boulders below.

But it's not all boulders and jagged rocks. If you stood there long enough, concentrating, you'd see a misty green circle of open water, surrounded by petals of white foam. It would take guts and a kind of faith I didn't have to do it, but if you dove
right there,
you'd be safe.

I dashed a hand over my forehead, surprised I'd remembered that spot so clearly. But I'd always wanted to dive from Mirage Point. Anyone could see it was the ultimate diving challenge. It would be exactly like flying.

As a child, I'd talked all the time about trying it. Of course, my parents vetoed the idea. Repeatedly.

Looking at it now, I could see why they had. The Point is as high as two two-story houses piled one on top of the other.

When we moved to Valencia, my parents used my desire to leap as an incentive to give me diving lessons. They never actually said that if I got good enough, they'd let me plunge off Mirage Point, but I thought it was understood that's what I was building up to.

One night I found out they had other motives.

I'd been upstairs doing homework and had come down to sharpen a pencil. I overheard them talking in
the kitchen. Mom was making pastry, and Dad was stirring nutmeg into pumpkin pie filling, so it must have been November.

“It's perverse,” Mom was saying, “the way I keep asking myself what would have been worse—if she'd jumped off the Point, head first into the darkness, or been alone longer with that man. Neither of them happened,” she said, sounding as if her throat was raw and sore. “Why do I keep wondering?”

“It's human nature,” Dad comforted her. “Parents rehearse their nightmares so that if the worst happens, they can go on.”

Mom gave a grim laugh. “Our paranoia keeps them alive, I guess.”

There'd been an avalanche of cookie sheets from a cabinet then, so I didn't hear every word, but it turned out Mom and Dad hoped diving would tire me out. They wanted me to sleep deeply and dreamlessly.

They also hoped I'd grow into the kind of scholar-athlete who earned scholarships, and for a while it looked like that might work out.

I had a knack for diving.

After those first lessons, my teacher asked me to be on the rec-center diving team. Next I made the school team. By the time I was a sophomore, I was the second-ranked diver in my region. And that's when I quit.

I convinced my parents I'd just lost interest, so it
didn't occur to them to caution me not to dive off the Point this summer.

Now that I was here, without them to yell “no,” did I want to try it?

Suddenly it was as tempting as shedding those seven tears to see if that Gypsy boy would return. If I wanted to take that dive or squeeze out those tears, no one could stop me.

I walked down to the Point. With each step, the sound of waves on rocks grew louder.

Three-quarters of the way there, yards short of the fence, I changed my mind.

A faint trail showed in the weeds. It was no wider than a rabbit's body, and it led down to the cove. Once the trail started down, the sea grass vanished, leaving bare rocks slick with sea spray.

That's the path I took.

Ever since I'd climbed out of the VW yesterday and started up Nana's porch, I'd wanted to go to the cove. When I saw the wet footprint on my porch, I wanted to go to the cove. When I breathed the salt air this morning, I wanted to go. No big deal, except it wasn't an ordinary “want.”

It was as if I were falling. A rare gravity pulled me to the cove.

I heard the gentle morning
arfs
of mother sea lions caring for their pups.

The trail twisted like a spiral staircase. With each step the sounds became clearer, but a stone arch blocked my view. I saw the cove in my memory, though: a tiny beach studded with rocks next to a grotto full of swaying green light.

Before, I hadn't been allowed to go there for fear the tide would come in and trap me.

The cove's sand was pink with dawn, and it was hard to tell the difference between sea lions and rocks.

Their “arfs” grew louder, but they weren't really afraid. Glistening silver, black, and dark mink brown, the mothers edged their pups away from me.

Trying to be inconspicuous, I sat on a boulder facing them, with my back to the grotto.

I loved watching the sea lions move. They're not like seals, which drag themselves along by front flippers. Sea lions really walk like lions. Actually more like dogs. They get up and use all four of their flippers.

There were about a dozen mothers with babies. The cove was shallow and warm. Pups paddled around, learning to swim. They were so cute you wanted to hug them, to nuzzle your face into their plush fur, but you'd be taking a real chance.

Sea lions are a protected species, and they rarely hurt anything unequipped with gills. Walk too close, and they'll launch into the cove and swim away. Usually.

The bulls were exceptions.

For as long as I can remember, Nana has called every big male sea lion who's protected the cove “Bull.” This summer's Bull must be out for a swim, but I stayed alert. Those big males weighed hundreds of pounds and flashed terrifying teeth.