Page 127 of The Wild Beneath

Now

It’s a wave that awakens her.

Annie knows without opening her eyes: She’s no longer drowning. She’s in a bed and wearing dry clothes. A soft cotton blanket rests over her shoulders and down to her feet. But somehow, she’s moving—­floating—­as if the mattress underneath her might give way to open water.

She opens her eyes. The sun is bright through a copper porthole. Tattered sailing books fill an overhead bookshelf.

Here’s what I know about the sea, Annie. It’s Walker’s baritone voice in her head. The taste of salt water lingers on her tongue. Her mind holds the image of indigo water.

Is she still alive or is this some kind of afterlife? She probes the skin beneath the thin cotton of her shirt, surprised to find everything there: fingers, toes. All warm and intact.

A whale was underneath her. Was a whale underneath her? Its sleek grey skin was against her palm, its solid body under her legs. Didn’t water slide into her mouth, her lungs, her arteries?

People think she’s lots of different seas with different names. But she’s one sea with one song.

Annie’s eyes are drawn again to the porthole. Morning light streams in and she somehow knows without seeing that she’sinside a boat anchored in a protected cove. A green expanse of Douglas fir and Sitka spruce covers the mountainside. Songbirds hum in the branches. It is the exact moment of highest tide, she is sure of it, a stilling of the water below.

This is the in-between moment.

She likes to tell stories, but she doesn’t tell them all at once. Her stories spread thousands of miles, borderless, folding into each other, harmonizing. Expanding until they’re everywhere. She told us the story of you.

She remembers Aiden speaking about the movement of animals before a large earthquake: “No one could ever prove this,” he told her at sailboat school, at the galley table. “But chickens stop laying eggs, bees flee their hives, dogs get restless, and they often escape the wake area of tsunamis. They save themselves. It’s like they’re attached to the ground, to the sea. They can feel what most people have forgotten how to feel.”

Annie is remembering.

She wants your story, too.

Walker is here, above her on deck. She can feel his exact proportions, as if she could touch him from here. The sound of his footfalls patter above.

She props herself up on her elbows.

And then he’s here, he is right here, climbing down the companionway, walking across the galley and standing in front of her, a concerned look on his face. He’s wearing dark jeans, a brown leather belt, and a blue cotton T-shirt. Bare feet.

Annie has difficulty keeping him in focus.

“Don’t get up too quickly,” he says.

Annie’s breath is shallow. “You had my clothes here.”

“I packed everything you need.” He sits on the edge of the bed.

She shakes her head. “I can hear you inside of me. It feels like a dream.”

He reaches over and touches her hand. Annie closes her eyes to a vision of water, clear blues and greens. A rocking sensation.

Annie opens her eyes and she is back in the berth, still under the blanket.

She wants to know everything he knows. “You tell me things without saying them.”

“It’s not me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s never been me. It’s the sea.”

This makes her hide her face in her hands. She’s not sure why. Her eyes are welling up. “Why couldn’t I hear it before?”

“You could always hear it. But now you’re ready to listen. Come up on deck?” he asks.