“Can I jump in and swim with it?” Henri says.
“I don’t know,” I say, watching as the dolphin swims toward the harbor entrance and hoping it will decide to go.
“Please, Papa.”
I can’t think of a reason to say no. We’ve jumped into the water with pods of dolphins dozens of times before and never once had any problems. I sigh and say, “Go ahead.”
Henri gives me a wide grin, yanks off his T-shirt and shoes and jumps from the boat.
As soon as he splashes into the water the dolphin alters course, turning, swimming straight for us. “Come here, girl,” Henri says, treading water by the side of the boat, patting the water’s surface in between strokes. “Come here, girl.”
I doubt that the dolphin either hears or understands his words, but its speed increases so quickly that the water boils behind it. Watching its rapid approach, my heartbeat speeds up too. Just moments before the beast reaches my son, I lean over the side of the boat and grab the boy.
“Hey!” Henri shouts as I yank him from the water.
The dolphin shoots by only an instant later, then dives from sight. “Why’d you do that?” Henri says, staring at the water, trying to spot the dolphin. “She just wanted to swim with me.”
“She was coming too fast,” I say, concentrating on slowing my heartbeat.
“She would have stopped.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Henri says.
“My father taught me to never ignore my instincts. It’s something you should learn too. It just didn’t look right,” I say. “Even more important, it didn’t feel right.”
Henri glowers at me. “You watch. Now she won’t come back.”
“Go below and dry off,” I say. “I think we should go check out the lighthouse. Then we’ll see if she comes back or not.”
To Henri’s disappointment, we see no sign of the dolphin when we return from the lighthouse, nor does it reappear to follow us home from Boca Chita. He goes to our island’s harbor each day after that and watches for it. But each evening he informs us that she hasn’t visited again.
After a week passes, he declares, “I don’t think she’s ever coming back!”
“You never know. They’re wild creatures, Henri,” I say. “She could have gone anywhere. She could come back tomorrow or in three months or never.” I don’t share with him that my choice, if it were up to me, would be never.
8
Chloe and I have finished most of the maintenance needed on our machines and equipment and we’ve selected almost all the clothing we plan to pack before Ian Tindall finally calls. I expect him to give me our travel plans. Instead he says, “Is it okay if everything’s delayed a few weeks more? I’m afraid Bartlet House can’t be opened just yet—unless you want me to hire a new crew for you.”
I say nothing.
“Peter, I called down there just like you asked. But it seems that your man, Granville Morrison, can’t make himself available for at least two weeks more.”
“Why?” I say. “He’s still our caretaker, isn’t he?”
Tindall clears his throat.
“Ian, damn it! What’s going on?”
The man sighs. “I was just trying to save you money. It’s been years since you’ve gone down there and we’ve been carrying both him and his wife on the payroll—for doing almost nothing. So I made a different arrangement with them.”
I think of the big Jamaican and his wife, Velda. I’d hate to have to replace either one of them. “You didn’t fire them, did you?”
“No, Peter, nothing like that. I just cut them back to part-time status. They agreed to watch over the property on weekends. That’s more than it needs. Believe me, they were still well paid for the little bit of work they had to do. When we worked it out I told them they could get other jobs but they had to promise they’d be available whenever you needed them. Granny swore it would be no problem. But now his wife tells me he has a job in Montego Bay. The man insists on giving them two weeks’ notice.”
Shaking my head, I say, “Damn it, Ian, you should know better than to cut costs at my expense.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was just looking out for you. It’ll just be a few more weeks, okay?”
I turn to Chloe and explain the situation to her. “If you want, we can get someone else for the first few weeks,” I say. “Or stay somewhere else until the house is opened.”
She thinks a moment, then shakes her head. “No. You told me how much Henri likes Granny. It won’t be any big deal if we wait here, Peter.”
“Okay,” I say into the phone.
He lets out a relieved breath. “By the way,” he says. “I sent your letter out four days ago. The one to Jordan Davidson. We haven’t heard anything back yet.”
“It’s early,” I say. “Was there anything more in this week’s
Dish
?”
“No. Claudia’s been watching for us. She said this week’s was DelaSangre-free.”
“They should all be,” I say.
In truth, neither Chloe nor I find staying on our island for a few extra weeks to be any hardship. With all the extra time we have, the few remaining chores we have to perform to ready our house for our absence become easy tasks. Without any need to take Henri to and from school on the mainland each day, five days a week, it begins to feel like a mini-vacation.
Chloe, who has never loved rising early, stops setting the clock’s alarm. We get up when the children wake. In the evenings, after both Henri and Lizzie go to sleep, Chloe and I turn to each other and make love in our human forms, exploring each others’ bodies, taking time for each other, like we did when we first met.
Other than the usual daily cleaning the house needs and tending the garden and Elizabeth’s grave, we have little we must do but wait for notification that our home’s ready in Jamaica. The weather conspires to lull us into relaxation. The blustery winds of early March give way to calm spring breezes. The regular visits of cold fronts and the showers they bring stop, each new day of mild weather and sunny skies becoming a monotonous repeat of the last. If it weren’t for the disappearances still being reported every few days and the increase of the boats patrolling near our island, I’d just as soon not bother going anywhere else.
I count it as a gift to have my son home from school each day. We set aside the afternoons for each other, fishing some days, boating or sailing on the others, Henri growing good enough that I readily give the helm to him. In the evenings, with no safe possibility of either flight or hunting, I begin to teach him chess, as my father taught me.
On nights when his interest flags, I turn to telling stories of our family’s past, Henri usually saying at some point, “Tell me about Don Henri’s pirate fleet!” I smile and point out Don Henri’s old cutlass on the wall, the boy’s eyes growing large as I pull out the old log books and nautical maps that still remain stored in the same wooden chest that Don Henri had placed in the great room long before I was born.
Henri peers at the old maps and leafs through the log books. He touches the raised ink of my father’s script—the words written in Spanish and equally incomprehensible to both of us.
My father may have been Spanish-born, but he never spoke the language at home, speaking French with my Hungarian-born mother whenever they felt the need to converse in a foreign language. Other than a few phrases and a few curse words, I’ve long forgotten whatever Spanish I learned in school. Like far too many English speakers in Miami, I’ve just been too lazy to truly learn the language.
They’d terrorized the Carribean for over a hundred years, each ship commanded by a person of the blood—Captain Jack Blood from Jamaica, Captain Giscard Sang from Haiti and, of course, Don Henri, their leader. Still, the boy frowns when I point to Jamaica and Haiti on the maps and then show him the tiny ink spot that signifies our island. “We should have as big an island as they do,” he says.
I smile and say, “We have all we need.”
Each day blends into the next so that after only another week passes, I could swear we’d been living like this for months. We’re outside, under the gumbo limbo tree, Lizzie sitting between my legs, leaning back against my stomach, Henri sitting cross-legged at my side, Max’s huge head in his lap. Both children listen, open-mouthed, as Chloe retells the ancient story of the great war between the four castrylls—the giant, flame-breathing Zal, the seagoing Pelk, the airborne Thryll and our castryll, the Undrae—that once made up the People of the Blood.
Unlike my mother, who spent most of her youth being raised among humans, Chloe has been taught all the history of our people and the necessity to pass it along. I know when my daughter’s older she’ll be taught even more of it—as well as the uses of every herb and plant in our garden and how to prepare them.
Since I’ve heard the story before and know the fighting was over dwindling food sources after a cataclysmic explosion ripped through the earth—a battle the Undrae eventually won—I pay only partial attention to Chloe’s words. My eyes wander down to our harbor and out to the bay.
I smile when I spot the dark blue speedboat racing toward our island. If it stays on course it will soon arrive at the entrance to our unmarked channel. I’ve taught only two humans how to negotiate the channel’s treacherous twists and turns, and I know which one of them owns a speedboat of this color. I wonder if Arturo Gomez knows his daughter’s out on the water on a workday.
Two patrol boats speed toward her boat and intercept it before it reaches the channel. I frown, wishing that boats could come and go on the water as they did before. By now I’ve been stopped so often that I know many of the people on the patrol boats by name.
Fortunately, such stops are usually brief. It takes only a few minutes before Claudia’s on her way again.
She’s still wending her way through our channel when Chloe finishes her story. “Are all the others gone?” Henri asks. “Aren’t there any Zal or Pelk or Thryll anywhere anymore?”
“All the others were defeated,” Chloe says. “Most either were killed or married Undrae. My mother told me some small groups from other castrylls still exist. But not one of our kind has ever reported seeing any of them.”
The breeze brings with it the low rumble of Claudia’s outboards, and Max’s ears perk up. He lets out a loud woof, scrambles to his feet and runs toward the dock.
Henri looks toward the harbor, sees the dark blue speedboat and shouts, “Claudy!” He jumps up, turns to me and says, “Can I, Papa?” I nod and he runs off after his dog.
A few moments later a dog barks from the other side of the island. Another follows, and soon the whole pack fills the air with barks and yelps. One beast after another scrambles over the sand dunes and through the brush, until the whole pack crowds the shore near the dock.
They number over twenty now—more than enough to guard our small island. Standing, picking up Lizzie, I look at Chloe. “We really shouldn’t let the pack get much bigger,” I say.
“It’s not time yet,” she says, her emerald-green eyes staring into mine. “We can afford to let them have a few more litters. You know how much the kids love the puppies.”
“I know how much you love them,” I say and begin walking toward the dock, Chloe walking at my side. “But we already have enough.”
She brushes against me. “Just a few more litters and then we take care of the older ones, okay?” she says.
I stop, look at her. She’s always made a face every time I talked about how Father and I used to cull the pack.
“No.” Chloe shakes her head. “There’s no need for that. You can take them to a vet. Get them fixed.”
“I’m sure that would go over well,” I say, grinning, picturing the commotion that would ensue if I ever tried to bring one of our half-wild beasts to an animal hospital. Even if we could control the dog in such an unfamiliar setting, I doubt any other pet owners would feel comfortable in its presence.
“So,” I say. “Weren’t you the one who recently killed four humans on Andros because you were too hungry to wait until you could take just one?”
“Peter, I said I was sorry about that. . . .”
“And yet you’re worried about doing away with some guard dogs? Don’t you find this a little inconsistent?”
“And don’t you love that about me?” she says, bumping her hip against mine.
I nod, put two fingers to my mouth and whistle a sharp, loud burst. The dogs look in my direction, their ears flattened, their tails tucked in. Slowly, one by one, they slink into the underbrush. “At least you haven’t spoiled them completely yet,” I say.
With all of our dock space taken up by our boats, Claudia pulls her boat alongside my Grady White. Henri places fenders for her and has her tied off by the time we arrive. Killing her outboard engines, Claudia grabs a briefcase and makes her way from her boat to mine and then to the dock.
I wait while she hugs and kisses Henri, saying, “Thanks for the help,” then hugs and kisses Lizzie, finally embracing Chloe before she turns toward me.
Staring at her powder blue spaghetti-strap T-shirt and matching shorts and bare feet, I say, “Did your Dad give you the day off?”