(Author's Note: Dedicated to the incomparable EyeofSerpent: may your tapestry find the immortality it so richly deserves)
She bent down and touched the water. It was warm. She smiled wide because Everyone knows the water near the mouth of the Amazon is as cool as the Atlantic.
But it was warm to her. As warm as His touch.
She laughed. Loudly.
Touched herself down there, just to compare. Even warmer. But still not as warm as His touch.
She had come a long way. For someone who had traveled the world by boat, airplane, balloon, dog sled, bicycle, mule, submarine and foot, she still felt that special tingle down there every time she found a new way to get from one place to another. But nothing like this. She gave a small gasp, despite herself. And touched herself again. Her guide looked at her peculiarly. "You want I should leave?" he asked, in broken English.
She put her hands to her head, as much to keep her yellow hair from whipping this way and that in the wind as to shield her eyes from the harsh glare of the sun as she peered out over the endless expanse of the ocean. "Yes, please," she answered without looking at him. "When should I come back?" he asked, bending down to pick up his pack. "Never," she giggled. She couldn't remember the last time she giggled. How she was looking forward to this.
He looked at her incredulously, even as he slung his sack across his shoulder and took a step backwards. "Pardon?"
She smiled and turned to him, her hand lowering to unclasp her belt. "Here," she said as she tossed him the belt with the pouches attached. "Five thousand more, American. No argue!"
She turned back towards the ocean and bent down on her knees again. "Buy your family a new house."
"But...Miss Sutherland...?" He stooped down to pick up the belt.
"You heard me," she whispered in the same tone as the crashing tide; without turning, closed her eyes and smiled as she heard his footsteps in the sand. Five minutes later, she could still hear them as they stepped from the sand to peat soil. Ten minutes later -- the sound of oars chopping the waves. That made her wonder if she could hear the Sunday church bells back in Toronto if she had a mind to.
She gasped for air once again, and fell to her knees in the sand. Her hands dug deep into her trousers. No, no church bells.
Better.
* * *
"Where did you hear about me?" His voice. His blessed voice. Low as the rumbling of the tuba her father used to play, but twice as deafening. Her first instinct was to cover her ears.
Didn't help.
She began to have second thoughts. This was not at all what she had expected. This...Thing in the hospital bed. Fucking hell, his wrinkles had wrinkles. His right eye was swollen shut from some disease or perhaps simply because he was just so bloody old.
But that voice? It pierced her hands. Deep, endless as the echo you hear when you hold a seashell to your ears.
"I asked you where you heard this from?" He asked again. "What? Are you deaf, woman?"
Her mind reeled from the contradictions. An East Texas accent? But that voice was surely older than any of the six flags that flew in front of the government hospital overlooking Galveston Bay. Hell, maybe this WAS who she was looking for after all.
"Money," she answered, finally, drawing a notebook and pen from her purse. "I'm a fairly rich woman." She flipped open the notebook and swept back her hair with her other hand. "I pay very well for information I'm looking for."
"Bah, money," he made a gurgling noise deep in this throat that startled her a bit. "Never had much use for it myself." He lifted an arm. It was so thin that a small layer of flesh hung down an inch from the bone and swung back and forth as he moved. His fingers was knotted in places where there were no joints. She turned towards the window that overlooked the bay.
"I always bartered for stuff I needed." He chuckled. It sounded to her like, of all things, waves hitting the seawall. "If I ever needed stuff."
Sensing he had finished whatever he was doing with that ghastly arm, she turned back. "The nurse said your name is Rihaku?" She looked down at her notebook. "Pardon me for asking, but you don't look Japanese to me."
He turned his head slightly. His right ear was gone. "I've had so many names that I can't remember 'em all. But I always liked that one best - Umi no Rihaku." He smiled. He had two teeth left. She turned back towards the window again. "Know what it means?"
She grinned despite herself as she watched gulls circle a shrimping boat in the distance. "Rihaku the sea," she answered.
"Yep," he chuckled again. "You're pretty good for a youngster."
She took a deep breath and turned back to him. "Well, let's just say I've been around the world more than once." She tried, she really tried, but found herself focusing on the wall above his head. "How many names DO you have?"
"How many languages you speak?" He smiled again, but she wasn't looking.
"Was that a question?"
"No, darlin', that was an answer." He made that strange gurgling noise again. "I reckon I got a name in just about every language you speak and probably close to a dozen you don't." She forced herself to look at him and her eyes narrowed as he continued.
"Not counting those new made up ones like Esper..."
"Esperanto?"
"Yeah, that one." He coughed. "Stupid people ain't got enough different ways to talk past each other, they got to go looking to make up more of 'em."
She jotted down some notes. "I guess you've been around a while," she said without looking up. "Exactly how old are you?"
He drew a breath. "Now, that's a really good question." He closed his good eye for a moment. "I'm gonna have to think on how to answer that one."
She noticed a chair near the window and pulled it over to the bed and sat down while he lay there silently for a few minutes. "Depends," he answered, finally.
She crossed her legs and peered at a spot on the wall behind him. "On what?"
"On how bad you wanna know?"
Oh, yeah, she thought, here it comes. She reached for her purse. "I told you I got no use for money," he said, making that strange noise again. It was starting to sound a bit familiar to her. "You listenin' to a word I say?"
"Of course..."
"Well, you sure as hell ain't lookin' at me, so I gotta ask."
She stood up. "Look, I'm sorry if I wasted your time, but I really don't know if I can do this..."
"Of course you can, darlin', you got the waves in your eyes. Your pretty ass ain't made for sittin' and your feet got a lot of miles on 'em. I can tell, darlin', 'cause I've seen thousands just like you, though maybe not quite as good lookin'. Hundreds of thousands in my time. Maybe millions. Hell, they used to pray to me, you know."
She sat back down.
"You liked that last part, eh?" He grinned. "Yeah, okay, so maybe some of that money of yours found the right hands. Not many of those left, I reckon. Who was it?"
She put the pen to her book and forced herself to look at his good eye. "Is it really that important?"
He smiled and it only grew wider when she didn't look away. "Naw, I guess it ain't." He looked at the window and reached for the bed controls. "Not much left to fear, anyway." He continued to stare out of the window as the bed rose to give him a better view. "And I kinda figured once I couldn't move no more it was just a matter of time before someone tracked me down." He wiggled what was left of his eyebrows. "I'm just happy it was someone as pretty as you."
* * *
She tossed her bra behind her and heard it fall on the sand a foot to the left of her shirt. She could feel the very salt in the air as it swept across her breasts. It tickled her nipples. But it didn't make them hard. They'd been like coral for a half hour now.
Ever since she heard His voice.
Even now it carried from wave crest to wave crest and every bill of every gull and egret for miles around sang His opera.
Slowly, solemnly, she stepped into the water. Even through her boots and trousers, she could feel His touch. He called to her, begged to her, cursed at her, but she simply smiled. She was no slut. Sandra Marie Sutherland was no mere whore to be commanded, even by one such as Him. She had always loved playing hard to get and He would have to work for her.
But she tweaked her nipples and giggled just to give Him a proper incentive.
Stepping up to her knees, through her leathery boots, she felt His hands around her ankles, His lips upon her toes. This was more like it. She laughed. She called his name, taunting him playfully. Wondering aloud how the Master of the Deep could be thwarted by mere cowhide and human engineering.
But just as the last of her words escaped her lips, the sand beneath her turned to ice and she fell backwards onto the beach, her back descending onto sheets of silt and salt, her head cushioned by a pillow of brackish water hollowed suddenly in the sand and her yellow hair caressing the shells and pebbles at His command.
She lifted her head and laughed loud and hard as she watched the waves flow over her legs, invisible fingers tugged at the laces of her boots, a strand of seaweed, long and thin and strong, slid underneath her and snaked between her legs. She felt him rush between her socks and her pants and jet up her legs and his teeth grasped hard on the metal of the zipper and she heard a gull cry in victory overhead as the fabric ripped itself from her waiting hips in all four directions.
She broke into fits of giggles as she brought both hands down to the front of her panties. "No, no, please, no," she laughed as she watched her boots sprout fins and finally swim off her feet.
"Help me!" she tittered as the strand of seaweed slid across her stomach and between her breasts and silty fingers rose from the sand to warmly caress her earlobes.
