As he talks, I pick my way along the sandy shore beside him.
“This fish was curious about the light at the top of the world, up where the water met the air,” Linus says. “He didn’t understand what air was, though. To him, the light was a barrier he couldn’t swim past, and it puzzled him. So he swam up and tested the surface of light with his fins and his fish mouth, but the air burned his lungs. He tried putting his eye to the barrier, but the air stung him. In time, he learned that he could see into the light if he rested just below the surface, staying very calm and still. He learned to study the sky beyond the barrier, and gradually, he came to discover a different world on the other side, inside the waves of air.”
“‘Waves of air.’ I like that,” I say.
“That’s how he made sense of it,” Linus says. “Anyway, the curious fish was watching one day when a bird came soaring overhead.” His sandy thumb brushes over mine. “She had beautiful colored feathers and sharp talons, but what amazed him most was the perfect way she glided through the air. She was swift and graceful, as graceful as any fish he’d ever seen, but completely different. He longed to join her in the sky, but all he could do was hover there below the surface and watch her.”
I look up to see if any gulls are in sight, but there’s only a small dark bird, maybe a swallow, out over the water.
“Does this have a sad ending?” I ask. “If she eats him, I don’t want to know.”
Linus laughs and lets go of my hand. “She doesn’t eat him. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Go on. Please, I’m listening.”
He squints at me and brushes the dark hair back from his forehead for a moment before the wind messes it wild again. Then he picks up a stone and continues his story. “After a while, the bird noticed him down below. How could she not? And she was curious about him, too. She liked the way he swam. He didn’t wear any pants.”
I laugh. “Come on.”
He spins the stone out toward the waves. “Okay, I added that part. In my dad’s version, they found a way to learn each other’s languages,” Linus says. “It’s a mystery how, but they did. She gave him a feather. It clumped together in the water, but he kept it anyway. He gave her one of his scales, but it grew brittle and dull once it was dry. She treasured it anyway, because, by then, you can guess.”
“They were in love,” I say.
“Yes, but there was a problem,” he says. “They could only be together at one place, at the exact surface where the air meets the sea.”
He nods toward the water, and I follow his gaze toward the bright, undulating waves to study the way they reflect rolling patches of sky. In all that restlessness, it’s hard to imagine a still place for opposite creatures to meet.
“They met there every day, as often as they could, for as long as they could,” he says. “Neither one could live in the other one’s world. They could never swim together or fly together. They could never even breathe together, but they still loved each other.” He picks up another stone and visibly weighs it in his hand. “And that’s the end.”
I glance up at him, dubious. “There has to be more.”
He chucks the stone over the water and it’s swallowed in a churning curve of white. “Nope. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”
I’m not going to pretend I like it. What kind of father tells such a story to his boy?
“That’s a horrible ending. It’s a tragedy,” I say.
Linus laughs and turns his face into the wind so his hair gets blown out of his eyes. “I love that story.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Of course I could,” he says. “In the first case, the bird has sharp talons. That’s terrific right there.”
“But they could never be together!”
He leans toward me and takes my hand in his sandy one. “They were together as much as they could be,” he says. “Isn’t that all anyone wants?”
And he kisses me lightly on the lips.
He’s salty and soft and slightly cool. My heart dips and rebounds. I lean nearer to kiss him again, enthralled.
When I finally look down the beach to check on my sister, she isn’t watching us, thankfully. Linus slides his arm around my waist and shifts to walk beside me again. A wave rumbles in, casting spray into the air. My Linus is a storyteller. How great is that?
“I like your sister,” he says. “Do you remember how you once said family starts small?”
“Yes,” I say, thinking back.
He keeps walking beside me, adding nothing more, but I know. I feel it, too.
*
When we return to the cottage, Lavinia still isn’t back. We check Linus’s phone, but he has no new messages. Dubbs lies down on the couch with a book, and by the time I come out of the bathroom with my face washed and my hair brushed, she’s asleep again. I smooth a bit of clinging sand off her foot and cover her with the white blanket again.
Linus is in the kitchen washing the dishes with bottled water, and he passes me a towel for drying. Below his shorts, his feet are still bare, like mine, and we both move quietly so as not to disturb Dubbs.
“Are we going to get cancer from staying here?” I ask. “From the radiation?”
“We’d have to be here longer than a few hours, I think.”
“What about all those dreamers?” I ask. “Aren’t they contaminated?”
Linus looks at me oddly. “They’re dead, Rosie. Getting cancer after you’re already dead isn’t going to be a problem.”
“My parents aren’t already dead,” I say. I glance over my shoulder at Dubbs. “Let’s go back outside.”
Moving quietly, we head out to the porch, where we won’t bother Dubbs. The view of the water is incredible, and the sunset promises to be spectacular. It must have broken Lavinia’s heart to move away from such a place.
“I’m worried about them,” I say. “Six days is a long time.”
“Somebody’s got to be taking care of them,” Linus says.
I suppose he’s right. Whistler talked like he didn’t know where my parents were, and I couldn’t find them in the vault, but that doesn’t mean much.
“Tell me about the vault,” Linus says. “What was it like?”
I describe the odd, ancient cavern with the holes in the ceiling, and the circular rows of dreamers. Linus listens intently, asking occasional questions.
“There’s something that puzzles me,” I say. I haven’t thought about it since I left the vault, but it’s very strange. “After I escaped from my cell, when I was looking for Dubbs in the vault, all the dreamers’ warning lights came on over their sleep shells, like they were disturbed. I was frantic, and I yelled out for Dubbs, and then all at once, all of the lights went out except for one. And that was Dubbs.”
“Are you suggesting the dreamers heard you?” Linus asks. “Do you think they actually told you where she was?”