Page 74 of The Otherworld

“Sorry,” Orca apologizes with a little amused smirk. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine. I just didn’t hear you coming.”

She looks even more beautiful in the sunlight, her hair crowned by a halo of gold. I wish I could run my fingers through it.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks, eyes sparkling as she looks up at me.

I shake my head. “Not particularly. You?”

“Not particularly.” A blush colors her cheeks as she looks down, trailing one fingertip over my forearm until her hand slides into mine. The gesture is easy and comfortable, like we’re an old married couple who have done this a hundred times.

Damn.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” I force myself to say, turning back to face the view.

“Mm, it certainly is. The sun feels good.” Orca leans her head on my arm, and I feel the warmth of her cheek against my bicep.

I clench my jaw, staring at the horizon with the concentration of a sailor trying not to get seasick. The water is as calm as a lake this morning, calm enough to hear the telltale PSSSHHHH of a blowhole somewhere close by, sending up a plume of white mist in the sunshine. The unmistakable exhale of a whale coming to the surface.

Orca gasps, squeezing my hand, when she sees a swirl of movement in the water below us. Just beyond the rocks, a pod of killer whales porpoise gracefully through the swaying kelp, their dorsal fins piercing the surface of the water as they come up for air.

Orca drops my hand and takes off running down the slope of grass to the rocky shore.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“To say hello, of course!” She laughs over her shoulder. “Come on!” She skips down the flagstone path, her hair rippling in the wind.

I follow her down to the shore, cautious of where I step with my bad ankle. The rocks are staggered like natural steps, leading down to the tidal pools below. Sea mist splashes the hem of Orca’s nightgown as she hops from stone to stone, featherlight and barefoot, finally stopping on one massive rock surrounded by whales.

Geysers of mist spray up everywhere, punctuated by the sound of massive lungs exhaling, inhaling.

PSSSHHHH, WOSHHH…

Orca laughs from where she stands on the barnacled rock, looking like a siren with legs—a divine, mythical creature born from sea and stardust. No sooner does the thought cross my mind than she cups her hands around her mouth and cries out a siren-like vocalization so authentic, I wonder for a second if it came from one of the whales. I can only hear the difference when one of them calls back to her.

She reaches down as an orca swims by, her fingertips gliding across its shimmering black skin before it vanishes beneath the water.

I watch in amazement, enchanted by the beauty of her soul. A wild beauty unlike anyone else I’ve ever known.

Perhaps she is a siren, and I am Odysseus, wrestling with temptation, fighting to ignore the seductive music of her song. Perhaps this is my challenge: to resist the spell that draws me towards her, to keep my willpower stronger than my emotions, to remember that one moment of weakness will end in shipwreck and tragedy.

When the whales move on, Orca skips back over the rocks and meets me on the shore. I ask her how she learned to vocalize like a killer whale, and she only giggles and says she picked it up by listening to the pod. She takes my hand, leading me back up the slippery rock steps to the lighthouse. That’s when she stops and looks up into my eyes, an expectant smile curling onto her lips.

There’s a strand of hair hanging in her face, and everything in me wants to brush it away, to feel the wind-flushed skin of her cheek, the curve of her neck, her shoulders. I want to kiss all those places, too; I want to pick her up and carry her inside and kiss her, kiss her everywhere—

“I should, uh… go get my stuff together,” I say, releasing her hand and taking a step back.

Orca nods solemnly, the light flickering out of her eyes.

I don’t have much stuff to “get together.” I just need to distance myself from her before I do something I shouldn’t. So I take my time making her father’s bed, leaving it as creaseless and shipshape as a military bunk. When I finish, I pick up my journal and open it to the last page I wrote on—the poem for Orca, stained by the pink flowers that slipped out of her hair.

You are the butterfly

who so innocently flutters her wings

And stirs winds

Strong enough

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