The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (17 page)

Marika traipsed past the sitting area and flopped down on the big bed. The gesture reminded him of the old days. Of the Marika he knew. He yearned to lay next to her. To answer the words left hanging in the elevator by saying, yes you are here, that is enough. But he thought of Tal telling him that outsiders only wanted an island fling. But this was different. It had to be. 

Marika pulled the pillows out from beneath the soft aqua bedspread, cozied into them, and lit up a cigarette. 

“It’s good to be back,” she said, and took a long pull, causing the orange head to glow strong and bright. 

She exhaled a stream of smoke. One of the first things she had done after meeting him last year was quit. 

“Why did you come back?” San asked. The soft, carpeted floor seemed so strange to him. Yet Marika looked perfectly at ease with the plush surroundings, an inhabitant of an impossible dream world. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be a rich outsider, a big man. The notion both repulsed and excited him. 

She took another disturbingly long pull before answering. “For renewal,” she said, her voice wavering. “For some island peace. Yeah, some island peace. But this time to take it back with me.” 

“What if I want you to stay?” 

He bent down next to the bed and kissed her. Her body stiffened at his touch. She pulled away at first, but then relaxed and met his lips with the openness and ferociousness he remembered. 

Marika’s arms found his back, his shoulders, his arms. She turned sideways and pulled him onto the bed. With the soft swell of her breast against him and her leg around his San forgot where he was. He tasted the cigarette smoke on her and for a second he could have been down at the shore with her a year ago. She pressed herself as close as could be to him before forcing herself away with a gasp. The cigarette had burned an ugly hole in the spread. Marika swatted it out and settled back into the pillows in silence. 

The strangeness of the soft-around-the-edges place had lost its charm, and San yearned for his place by the sea. 

“Come back to the house with me tonight,” he said. 

“San, I can’t.” 

Her eyes said otherwise. 

“It was a long flight. A long day. I need to sleep.” She groped the night table for the pack of cigarettes. “And I won’t if I’m with you.” 

San knew she could not be forced. His easygoing way was the heart of their attraction and what she wanted—what she needed right now. 

“But I’ll be up at dawn,” she said. “You can take me out on the boat.” 

He kissed her gently on the forehead, turned, and went into the elevator. 

He thought of his favorite spot out on the ocean as he descended. A shallow sandbar where they first kissed. First touched.  

The perfect place for our new beginning, he thought.  

**** 

San checked that no one was around and placed the extra gas can, two snorkel masks, a lunch of fresh fruits, and a six-pack of Crystal Reef, Marika’s favorite beer, in his small motorboat at the dock. He’d take it around to the other side of the island, then walk back to the hotel to retrieve Marika, without anyone seeing. 

“Where you going wit’ ’dat boat?” Tal said. She stood in the shade of the dock house, holding a plastic bucket full of jellies. 

She knew where he was going, there was no use pretending. 

“Lynden and Big Rog got da nets for me. They
both
gonna check ’em today.” 

“They are not,” Tal said, punctuating each word. “Get your butt in your boat and go do your job.” 

The jellies sparkled orange and green in the shadow, creating a glimmering outline of her on the wall behind. She stared fiercely, not just with the authority of an older sister, but with the stern wisdom of an elder, of the community leader she was certain to be. 

“I do what I gotta do,” San said. 

“That’s what Charlie used to say, and look what happened to his home, San Raphael.” 

San thought of the nearby island, full of paved roads, high rises, and smoky cars. It was miserable. 

“If everyone did as you do, we’d be another San Raphael in no time. As it is, we are holding onto the heart of our island by just a thread.” 

The image of the Temple filled his mind. A gossamer net strung between the giant statues scintillated in front of the black cave mouth. He felt as if he were passing through it as he walked past his sister.  

“You count,” Tal called after him. “Every one of us does. We are different. Our world is not their world. Even though they come together here, we have to remember that. If we lose even one of us to the siren call, soon we all be falling down like dominos.” 

San started on the rocky path, then stopped and turned toward the way to the pavilion. No sense in hiding or taking the long way now, he thought. 

Twenty minutes later he was back, helping Marika into the boat, Tal nowhere to be seen. 

The sun had just lifted from the horizon and cast an orange sheen on the rippling cells of early morning waves.  

Lynden and Rog were paddling to the nets. They stopped to look as San started the engine and moved away from the dock. Marika smiled and rummaged through her straw bag for sunglasses and lotion. 

San cut the engine just before the nets, flipped it up and let the boat coast so as not to get snared. He dropped it back in and veered the boat to the open ocean. Marika lifted her head to the clean breeze, closed her eyes beneath her big rose sunglasses, and untied her hair.  

Their wake was full of little jellies propelling themselves toward the bay. San had never given the creatures much thought. He knew there was something special about the water—the temperature, high salinity, and mineral content that drew the jellies as well as the tourists and rich spa-goers to the island. The salt-water crocs were more mysterious. A British research team he had once taken diving had yammered on that they were attracted to the pulsing rainbow patterns the jellyfish made at the festival, but he didn’t know exactly how, nor did it really explain anything. Crocodiles and Harat, who wore their reptilian form, embodied the spirit of the island. Leave us to our sleepy, mysterious ways and we don’t bite. 

Marika interrupted his train of thought by sliding her arm around his waist. 

“The world always looks better after a good night’s sleep,” she said. 

“The world always looks good here.” 

San gave the engine more gas and they sped into the blue. Just as the island was almost out of sight, he stopped the boat and eased it onto a green area of shallow ocean, which gave way to a pristine strip of sand. 

Marika smiled. “Our place,” she said. “I can’t wait to go in.” 

San noticed the thick, gelatinous mass of a man-o-war dipping and bobbing a few yards off the boat. Before he could warn Marika to be careful of its tentacles, a dark shape rose from the depths, a big, old croc. It snatched the three-foot jellyfish in its jaws, and for a few seconds swam with it just beneath the surface, only its back ridges visible. More crocs rose from the depths and fought for chunks of the huge jelly with splashes and thrashes. 

Back again
, San thought.
Season after season
. 

He jumped over the side onto the sand bar then helped Marika out of the boat. 

“Don’t worry,” San said. “They like it better at the mangroves during the day.” 

She stood in the foot and a half of water, then sloshed away from the edge. “I’m not worried.” 

San unpacked the sun umbrella and planted it for her. Then he produced the six of Crystal Reef and plopped it in the water under its shade. 

“Shame on me,” Marika said. “I’ve forgotten how good life can be.” 

San watched curious silver fish approach the bottles. Lazy black and yellow striped barbs picked at the sea grass. 

“You can have this every day you know,” he said solemnly. 

“Relax, honey,” Marika said. She kissed his cheek. “Forget about tomorrow. We have this day.” She kissed his other cheek. “We have this moment. Everything is perfect. A completely perfect moment.” 

As her lips touched his, San recognized the words as his own. The very concepts he had taught to her, when she had first met him—a stressed out tourist unable to unwind. But he desperately wanted a string of these moments, a series of never ending islands continuing into the future. 

He took a deep breath and sat with her in the shallow water. They spent the afternoon eating fruit, watching sea birds, and talking intently about nothing. As the day grew late, a cluster of the small jellies floated past, massaging them with their tiny harmless tentacles and gelatinous bodies. 

Marika sprang to her feet. 

“I’m here for the festival, San,” Marika said abruptly, as if brought on by the touch of the jellyfish. “I’m not going to stay. But I want you to come with me.” 

San stared at her beautiful face. Squinting from the sun, her lips were parted in a slight, crocodile smile. 

“And then what?” he asked. “What happens when you leave me and I am all alone in your country?” 

“Have you been listening to them, San? Do you believe I’m an evil spirit here to lure you away? We never have anything more than the now. I’m just offering you the same without this island as your boundaries.” 

It was easy for her to say, San thought. She had everything. 

“How do I know you haven’t come here for your island fling, like they say?” 

“Will you let me try to convince you otherwise?” 

Her kiss smoothed the edges of his fears and brought him back to the moment. He knew the first step towards convincing her to stay was to truly have a string of wonderful moments, so he let the subject rest. 

Late that night they returned to San’s hut and slept on the beach under the stars like they used to. As the last sliver of the moon shone down upon them, San dreamed of stirrings under the water and great tears in the net. He awoke with words eager to leave his mouth. “I can’t go with you Marika. My place is here. It’s just like last time.” 

He thought she heard, but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t wake when Marika left just before dawn. 

**** 

“There you are,” Tal shouted. “Sleeping late when tonight is the Jellyfish Moon. Lynden found tears in the net. Get up right now.” 

San scrambled to his feet. Luckily Marika was gone, the only hint of her presence the imprint on the sand next to him. 

“Any crocs get in?” he asked. 

“None that we can see. Every paddler is out there searching, to make sure.” 

Within minutes, San was in his dugout, paddling a load of tackle and wire to the nets.  

The cave mouth of the temple was covered with nets and colorful banners. Red blindfolds had been placed over the two statues’ eyes.  

San stopped by the buoy where Lynden was diving. The water was thick with jellies brimming with the energy of renewal. San could see the crocs on the other side of the net, their bodies weaving in the flow of translucent creatures. He could sense their hunger. 

San wanted to see the world, but unlike Marika, it was a distant musing of some far away beauty. His place was here and he believed the world would come to him, eventually. But what if he was wrong and his place was with Marika? What then? 

He took three deep breaths, filling his lungs, and rolled out of the dugout. With strong, swift kicks, he was ten, then twenty, then thirty feet down. He slowly released small bubbles from his mouth. The net had been ripped in several places and a stone anchor had shifted on the bottom as if something big had tried to break in. There was a lot of work to be done.  

San stitched, very aware that only a dozen yards away, on the other side of the thin barrier, crocs swam among the jellies. They rolled and swirled erratically, like housecats on the herb. He reached for his knife then remembered it was gone.  

He ascended and retrieved his tools, the tackle, and wire. With a glance to the shore he saw the beaches were already filling. He wished he was there, with Marika.  

San took three breaths and descended again. Consciously keeping his heart rate slow to conserve air, he deftly tied the ends of the first tear together with the wire. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lyndon struggle to keep his stitching closed. He turned back to his work and found himself face to face with a big croc floating on the other side of the net. Its toothy mouth was open just enough to give the impression of a smile. San kicked for the surface. 

“Did you see that big croc?” San said to Lynden. 

“Where?” 

“Down by my tear.” 

Lynden ducked his head under the water, then came right up. 

“There ain’t nothin’ there.” 

“He was right there, staring right at me.” 

Lynden ducked his head under again. 

“Visibility’s perfect. Your eyes be clouded by that woman.” 

Or too many days in the sun and salty water, San thought. Marika has offered me the world. 

San went back to work. He and Lynden stitched and wired till it was late afternoon. Lynden didn’t have a friendly word. San didn’t see the big croc again, though he kept thinking it was just out of sight. The beaches filled with tourists and spa goers. The new-agers were out in force trailing incense and chanting, waiting for Tal and the elders to come to the beach for the festival blessing. 

San wanted to go back to his place to wash off the salt of the day and get some needed sleep. But he had to see Marika. He couldn’t let her go without seeing her one more time. Then he would know what was right. 

He tied his dugout to the dock and walked through the crowd to the Ruby Shores. The pavilion was almost deserted. Most of the vendors had taken their carts and wares down to the beach. He noticed Mr. and Mrs. Henderson pushing their cart away. They were talking to a tall pretty lady in a suit, holding a microphone, who was followed around by a man shouldering a big camera. 

Big Rog’s son was working security at the hotel gate. 

“I’m here to see my wife.” 

“She ain’t here.” 

“Let me in, I’m telling you she’s on the top floor.” 

“I’m telling
you
, she’s at the festival. Left a half hour ago.”