In the morning, gulls greeted the two solitary figures as they walked arm in arm down the beach. Cara felt soft and quiet and perfect, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. The wind made his hair wild, and the way his eyes watched the watery horizon, almost searching, made her wonder what it was he saw when he looked out there.
“The sea is our soul,” he had told her on his first visit, “and the stars our destiny.” She wasn’t sure whether it was a poem or not. Whatever he said was poetry enough to her ears.
Two dolphins leapt out of the water not far from shore, mist spewing from their blowholes, and turned in unison to dive back beneath the waves. She could almost feel his awe at this sight as he took a sudden breath and held it.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “I must never forget.”
They walked on for a time before he gestured and they moved toward a trio of boulders that lay propped up against one another not far above the shoreline. In the shade, small animals rustled as they approached but were gone by the time they got there.
“It’s a perfect day,” Cara said, turning to tug on his hands and marvel at the way the sunbeams brought out such strength in his face. Other girls dreamed of Captains, as she once had. They watched them walking in the streets of the village, on their rare appearances, those girls who giggled and pointed, their pink nipples straining against their blouses, and perhaps they went home telling each other stories of how it would be to love a Captain. What did they know? What could they know of this kind of love?
“Rafael.”
They’d been hunting sand dollars, and the basket she carried smelled of kelp. He grinned as she went through the collection, separating the broken ones and discarding them.
“I brought you something,” he said.
She looked up from the basket. He was smiling, his eyes flashing as they had the night before. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box.
Cara’s heart pressed against her throat. Her hand trembled as she reached out. He opened the box. She sighed, more surprised than disappointed.
“It’s called a Rohn stone,” he said.
Cara reached out and picked it up. It was a sphere about two inches across, and it glowed a milky blue in color. Its light was very bright when she held it cradled in her hand in the shade of the boulder.
“One of a pair,” he said. He pulled out another such stone, which was attached to a chain he wore around his neck. “The brighter they get, the closer together.”
Cara looked at the stone again. “Magic?” she asked.
He smiled. “Natural tachyon emitters. They resonate when brought into proximity.”
It only dawned on her slowly. “Then I’ll always know when….”
They held each other for a long time, sharing the cool air and the sound of the wind rushing through the grasses that lined the hillside.
“Last night, you said something.” Cara spoke softly, not looking at him until after she had begun. “What did you mean?”
She was wearing a red T-shirt tied off above the midriff. His windbreaker was unbuttoned down the front. As he held her tight she could feel a thin stretch of his exposed abdomen pressing against her own bare skin. His skin was warm and slightly moist over hard muscle where it touched her, and somehow that touch was the most sensual feeling she could imagine, even more so than the ways he had pleased her the night before. This was more mysterious, like him, with so much more left to the imagination.
To love a Captain was to love a shadow, it suddenly seemed to her. For who but a Captain could ever fully know what it was to be a Captain?
He had not spoken, and she feared she had offended him. One never asked things of a Captain. Favors were bestowed. To ask was unthinkable. But the message, the pain beneath the joy in his eyes….
“Rafael? Is it someone else?”
He looked at her blankly for a second, as if that were the last thing he had expected her to ask. Then he laughed. For a whole minute, he laughed, that robust series of explosions from deep inside him, his head thrown back and his mouth open wide, that had first made her fall in love with him. For a man to live so fully each moment, for him to feel so intensely alive every second of every day. Was that the gift of being a Captain? Or was it just Rafael?
Finally he looked down at her again, smiling. “No, my love, it’s not that. It’s not that.” By now his laughter had faded to a smile, and as he spoke even that faded until he was staring into space, his expression vacant.
“There’s something out there, Cara. It… wants something from me.”
She waited, listening hard, searching between the words for something that would tell her more. Then the moment passed, and her Captain took her hand and pulled her with him as he moved away from the shade of the boulders.
“Let’s take the boat,” he said.
The water was choppy, and not many boats were braving the high wind that often came in the late hours of the afternoon this time of year, but Rafael handled the catamaran with ease, taking them far out into the mouth of the bay where you could see forever until the world ended and the sky began. Only the horizon, dotted with agriforms and roving eco-patrols told her that they weren’t alone on all the seas. Captains loved their worlds, cherished them like precious jewels. It comforted Cara to know that what intrusions she could detect existed to maintain the ocean as near to its natural condition as possible.
“It’s so simple,” he said once, cutting the boat into the waves just so, sending it flying from the crest of one to the crest of the next. “Like skipping stones.”
She wondered how it was out there, what rudder he used to guide him through the sky, what sails could run on starlight and dreams. She asked him, but he only laughed and held her close as he trimmed the sails and took them even farther out. Finally, when the lighthouses alone were visible as dull gray blobs on the ocean horizon, he brought the boat about and lowered the sails.
They drifted, watching the Sun set.
“It’s so good to be here,” he said quietly after a few minutes had passed in a silence that almost lulled Cara to sleep. “I wish it could last forever.”
There it was’again. Never before had her Captain’s voice held such pain. She lay beside him on the deck, and now she turned toward him and propped her head up with one arm. “It is forever, Rafael. Each time, it’s forever.”
He stared up at the darkening sky, his gentle smile tinged at the edges with a regret so bitter that it stung in Cara’s eyes. Still, he told her nothing, and only one incident gave her any hint that her Captain was not the same man she had known on his earlier visits.
They had just rigged the lights and started in when the boat entered a large school of jellyfish swimming near the surface. They glowed translucent blue in the lights of the boat, their bodies pumping and their tentacles floating like red hair all around them.
“Gods!” Rafael hissed. He hoisted the mainsail and turned the boat into the wind with such abruptness that Cara was nearly knocked overboard. Only when they’d traveled far from the jellyfish did he turn again toward shore. His face glistened with sweat, and she was certain she saw his hands tremble as they pulled on the lines.
“You’re still working at the institute?” Rafael asked from the kitchen.
Clad only in denim cutoffs and a sweatband, he was preparing dinner while Cara sipped wine and looked through the album of holograms he’d taken on an iceworld somewhere in Canis Major. The holograms showed hexagonal crystalline structures like snowflakes but a million times bigger, bigger than mountains.
“Yes,” she called. “But they promoted me to supervisor of my department.”