At first nothing. Nothing at all. Then . . . there1. He threw himself forward into the water, thrusting his body down through the chill darkness toward her. Then he was kicking for the surface, one arm gripping her tightly.
Gasping, Ben broke surface some twenty feet out from the rocks and turned onto his back, cradling Meg against him, face up, her head against his neck.
At first the waves helped him, carrying him in toward the rocks, but then he realized what danger he was in. He turned his head and looked. As the wave ebbed, it revealed a sharp, uneven shelf of rock. If he let the waves carry them in, they might be dashed against that shelf. But what other option was there? If he tried to swim around the rocks and into the cove he would be swimming against the current and it would take too long. And he had little time if he was to save Meg. He would have to risk it.
He slowed himself in the water, trying to judge the rise and fall of the waves, then kicked out. The first wave took him halfway to the rocks. The second lifted them violently and carried them almost there.
Almost. The wave was beginning to ebb as he reached out with his left hand and gripped the ledge. As the water surged back a spear of pain jolted through his arm, making him cry out. Then he was falling, his body twisting round, his side banging painfully against the rock.
For a moment it felt as if his hand were being torn from his arm, but he held on, waiting for the water to return, his artificial fingers biting into the rock, Meg gripped tightly against him. And when it came he kicked out fiercely, forcing himself up onto the land, then scrambled backward, pushing desperately with his feet against the rock, away from the water, Meg a dead weight against him.
Ignoring the pain in his hand, he carried Meg up onto a ledge above the water and put her down, fear making his movements urgent. Her lips and the lobes of her ears were tinged with blue.
He tilted her head back, forcing her chin up, then pinched her nose shut with the finger and thumb of his left hand. Leaning over her, he sealed his lips about her open mouth and gave four quick, full breaths.
Ben moved his head back and checked the pulse at her neck. Her heart was still beating. He watched her chest fall, then, leaning forward again, breathed into her mouth, then, three seconds later, once more.
Meg shuddered, then began to gag. Quickly he turned her head, allowing her to bring up seawater and the part-digested sandwich she had eaten only an hour before. Clearing her mouth with his ringers, he tilted her head back again and blew another breath into her, then turned her head again as she gagged a second time. But she was breathing now. Her chest rose and fell, then rose again. Her eyelids fluttered.
Carefully, he turned her over, onto her front, bending her arm and leg to support the lower body, then tilted her chin back to keep the airway open. Her breathing was more normal now, the color returning to her lips.
Ben sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath. She had almost died. His darling Meg had almost died. He shuddered, then felt a faint tremor pass through him like an aftershock. Gods! For a moment he closed his eyes, feeling a strange giddiness, then opened them again and put his hand down to steady himself.
Below him another wave broke heavily against the rocks, throwing up a fine spray. The tide was still rising. Soon they would be cut off completely. Ben looked about him, noting from the length of the shadows how late it was. They had slept too long. He would have to carry her across, and he would have to do it now.
He took a deep breath, preparing himself, then put his arms beneath her and picked her up, turning her over and cradling her, tilting her head back against his upper arm. Then he began to climb, picking his way carefully across the mound of rocks and down, into shadow.
The water was almost waist deep and for the first twenty or thirty feet he lifted Meg up above it, afraid to let the chill get at her again. Then he was carrying her through horseheads of spume little more than knee deep and up onto the shingle.
He set her down on the shingle close to where they had left their sandals. She was still unconscious, but there was color in her cheeks now and a reassuring regularity to her breathing. He looked about him but there was nothing warm to lay over her, nothing to give her to help her body counter the shock it would be feeling.
He hesitated a moment; then, knowing there was nothing else to be done before help arrived, he lay down beside her on the shingle and held her close to him, letting the warmth of his body comfort her.
MEG WOKE before the dawn, her whole body tensed, shivering, remembering what had happened. She lay there, breathing deeply, calming herself, staring through the darkness at the far wall where her collection of shells lay in its glass case. She could see nothing, but she knew it was there—conch and cowrie, murex and auger, chambered nautilus and spotted babylon, red mitre and giant chiragra—each treasured and familiar, yet different now; no longer so important to her. She recalled what Ben had said about shells and memory, sealed chambers and growth, and knew she had missed something. He had been trying to say something to her; to seed an idea in her mind. But what?
She reached up, touching the lump on the side of her head gingerly, examining it with her fingers. It was still tender, but it no longer ached. The cut had been superficial and the wound had already dried. She had been lucky. Very lucky.
She sat up, yawning, then became still. There was a vague rustling, then the noise of a window being raised in Ben's room. For a moment she sat there, listening. Then she got up, pulled on her robe and went softly down the passage to his room. Ben was standing at the window, naked, leaning across the sill, staring out into the darkness.
Meg went to him and stood at his side, her hand on the small of his back, looking with him, trying to see what he was seeing. But to her it was only darkness. Her vision was undirected, uninformed.
She felt him shiver and turned her head to look into his face. He was smiling, his eyes bright with some knowledge she had been denied.
"It has something to do with this," he said softly, looking back at her. "With dark and light and their simple interaction. With the sunlight and its absence. So simple that we've nearly always overlooked it. It's there in the Tao, of course, but it's more than a philosophy—more than simply a way of looking at things—-it's the very fabric of reality."
He shivered, then smiled at her. "Anyway . . . how are you?"
"I'm fine," she answered in a whisper.
She had a sudden sense of him. Not of his words, of the all-too-simple thing he'd said, but of his presence there beside her. Her hand still lay there on the firm, warm flesh of his back, pressing softly, almost unnoticed against his skin. She could feel his living pulse.
He was still looking at her, his eyes puzzling at something in her face. She looked down at the place where her hand rested against his back, feeling a strange connective flow, stronger than touch, aware of him standing there, watching her; of the tautness, the lean muscularity of his body.
She had never felt this before. Never felt so strange, so conscious of her own physical being, there, in proximity to his own. His nakedness disturbed her and fascinated her, making her take a long slow breath, as if breathing were suddenly hard.
As he turned toward her, her hand slipped across the flesh of his back until it rested against his hip. She shivered, watching his face, his eyes, surprised by the need she found in them.
She closed her eyes, feeling his fingers on her neck, moving down to gently stroke her shoulders. For a moment she felt consciousness slipping, then caught herself, steadying herself against him. Her fingers rested against the smooth channels of his groin, the coarse hair of his sex tickling the knuckles of her thumbs.