Chapter 59: True

Not even twenty-five hours into our new life, it became clear that our bodies were entirely unprepared for the relentless existence of sea-harvesting with Heather. When we awoke after that first night’s sleep, early morning’s glow was faint. What’s the rush? It was Heather who had roused us, and despite various attempts to roll over and slumber away the deep soreness that pervaded every cubic inch of my limbs, she would not allow it.

I finally yawned, struggled to sit up, and gave her a look as I rubbed my aching legs. ‘You’re going to kill us... ‘

She raised a brow at me. ‘You wanted the real version!’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, and no take-backs... ‘

In typical fashion, Lara was the hardest to get going, but eventually we emerged from the tent and managed to put on our bathing suits. A breakfast of crisp vegetables followed by some handfuls of bliss collected from the blueberry fields provided a significant boost to our energy. A new addition to the sustenance was some shiny pickled herring that Heather drew from a glass gallon jar that lived in the workroom refrigerator. After we downed a few tangy-flavored filets each, Heather packed some extras into a plastic container to take with us. By the time we were walking down the trail to reach the patient rowboat, we were halfway to being alive again, even if not sprightly. Well, Heather was all the way there, for sure!

She cut us a break and took care of the rowing while Lara and I relaxed as best we could, occasionally adjusting our wetsuits. Our first major effort was to stand up and leap into the waters in her little corner of the sea by the silver and blue buoy. Somehow, we then had to put up with looking into those sapphire eyes that flashed at us. At first, the struggle of countering the swells was almost overwhelming. The ocean wasn’t particularly feisty, but several times I found myself submerged, lacking the energy to keep up with things. But somewhat oddly, as we spent time focusing on each other and allowing the sea to move us around, I started feeling much more relaxed, almost as if my body was finding some harmony with the undulations. In time, I felt as if I could float there forever.

But the sea never waited, draining itself out to the far reaches of the Earth. Heather took us to a new location for the morning’s collection. The water level was nearing its lowest, allowing us to do our work in relative calm. Again a trancelike state settled over me as I put every bit of concentration into the task at hand. The combined memory of Heather’s deep scar and the profound reverence she had for these plants gave me extra impetus to make sure it was done right. Maybe it was the exhaustion that prevented my mind from wandering, but for whatever reason, the harvest went far better than I’d expected. The kelp seemed to swish away from me a little less often today, perhaps growing more accustomed to my presence. The rocks never quite threatened us. Mostly, I enjoyed Lara’s determined smiles and Heather’s serene expression as she watched us follow her lead in everything.

Before we headed ashore, Heather rowed us out to the buoy once again. It seemed odd that we would jump in and swim again so soon, and a part of me wondered what new oath we might be asked to join this time. As it turned out, her purpose was far more practical. After donning a pair of thick gloves, she started hauling up one of the ropes that was suspended from the bottom of the float, putting some effort into it. Lara soon helped her coil the accumulated length into the boat while I watched to see what secret she was dredging up from the depths of the sea. It should have been very obvious, but I was still surprised when a netted, sectioned box came into sight. I quickly helped her lift it onto the central thwart where it sat, dripping. Lara and I both gaped at what looked to be our next meal: four lobsters caught in the pot. ‘Lucky lunch today!’ Heather smiled at us. After extracting the creatures and setting them gently on the bottom of the rowboat, she pulled out the container of silver herring and glanced at me as she pointed. ‘Grab the bait trap there... ‘ With some fiddling, I managed to replenish the lure, amused that the lobsters enjoyed the same food that we ate.

Upon inspection, one of the lobsters contained a thick clutch of eggs nestled within the swimmerets of her tail. Heather very carefully set the mother into the sea, where it soon pulsed its body and disappeared back to the depths.

After we dropped the trap to the bottom, Lara volunteered to take hold of the oars and started bringing us inland. Heather and I kept an eye on the trio of crustaceans, occasionally preventing one from investigating Lara’s heels with its claws. They were very amusing, one being quite tricky in particular. ‘That one’s a bit like you,’ I even teased with my pointing fingers, which garnered me a swat on the arm from the back of Heather’s hand.

Once the boat was beached near Birgitte’s staircase, Heather set off with the three lobsters in her grip. They fought desperately to get a piece of her, but with easy confidence she walked them toward our camp trail. Lara and I went about filling the bushels with the seaweed, occasionally glancing over her way and eventually watching her drop the squirming catch into another netted box that she then re-submerged in one of the deeper tidal pools.

‘Looks like we eat after we finish,’ Lara pouted.

‘I’m starved already!’

We both eyed the seaweed with a slightly exasperated look, stretching our limbs for the hundredth time that morning. As usual, expectations were a bitch, because the hauling was indeed brutal. Even though we opted for smaller bushel loads, that meant more trips on the staircase. Once we had it all topside, our bodies were quite beaten. Thankfully, the cleaning of strands was somewhat easier on us, although it still involved standing and reaching and bending and lifting.

By the time I collected Heather’s giant cooking pot, filled it with a good amount of water, and lugged it to camp, I was thoroughly ready for a couple of night’s worth of sleep, even though the sun had only recently crossed the noon line. Lara fired up the camp stove and we set the pot to boil while Heather set off to retrieve the lobsters from the halfway house where they were chilling.

Lunch was incredibly satisfying, even if it was the simplest of meals: a small handful of raw vegetables was all we needed to accompany the poached lobster. We ate messily, because we could, having shed our wetsuits before digging in. After a visit to the purple dessert fields, we rinsed off in the shower. I was practically falling asleep in the warm water, though. Each step that we took down our private path brought more and more relief as Heather gently led us to the tent, where we disrobed and collapsed onto the comfortable bed, completely spent.

Very quickly we stopped basing our lives on the cycles of the sun. Instead, it was the moon that drove us, since it was that heavenly body that consistently parted the sea and allowed us to reach into underwater worlds to harvest our silky catch. As the tides cycled and we started emerging from the initial fog of deep physical aching and utter exhaustion, it was clear that our entire existence was going to be determined by this shifting window of opportunity. I became aware of how the harvests continued slipping later relative to the sun’s timepiece.

Indeed, the blessing of the tides was not quite twice daily. Our sixth gathering began in early darkness rather than with the blaze of sunset like it had the first day, and the tenth outing surely commenced near the midnight hour. At these times, the light was minimal: from stars when the clouds cooperated, and if not, from the local glow of the colored sidelights or pure white sternlight, depending on how the currents cared to caress the hull of our craft at any given moment. The moon never helped much at night, since it was always at the horizon at the time of collection.

Heather seemed oblivious to the difficulties of this darkness. We could only marvel as we tried to keep up. But even there, it was the sea that showed the way. We preceded every single harvest with a visit to the buoy and a lengthy float in its surrounding waters. Somewhat peculiarly, this gave us a sense of the ocean’s mood. Much like my surreal swim in Montauk, when I’d let go of the fear of everything for a short time, I found that perhaps the currents were on my side after all, as long as I let them. Indeed, once we took stock of the sea’s disposition by letting it move us this way and that, we would row to some new stand of seaweed. When it was dark, we couldn’t easily glance at approaching swells or track the swaying of the kelp, so there was little to do but dive in and find out what ensued.

After doing this for some cycles, the lack of light didn’t matter quite as much as we thought. It happened too many times that I’d reach out for a slippery holdfast with the better part of blindness only to find my fingers forming a perfect grip. Before the flow could separate us again, my other hand had already severed the strand with a slice of the oft-sharpened blade. An easy toss onto the toothy bulwark followed and then it was onward to the next dance partner.

To be fair, Heather seemed to choose less dangerous tracts for the dark outings. And I knew it was foolish to pretend that everything would be okay simply because we thought it might. It paid to be highly alert, even if I did allow the flow to guide me. As a result, the concentration and effort of harvesting was all-consuming for the hours that we worked in the water, both physically and mentally. I thought of nothing else except what I was doing at any given moment. To do otherwise was to risk injury, or worse.

My admiration for my sister grew with each outing, as she set herself to the task with as much verve as I’d ever seen in her. Although the most cautious of the three of us, she was continually trading hesitation for determination as we worked. Her bushel basket grew a little heavier each time we climbed those stairs, and more of its contents had been harvested by her own hand.

Time passed, perhaps a week or more. I lost track, because the sun seemed to go about its business in a parallel universe to what we were concerned with. We slept during high tides, regardless of what hour was chiming on clocks in the normal world that felt ever more distant. The night harvest continued to delay itself until it occurred in earliest morning, even as the opposing outing slipped through the light and into evening’s twilight, and beyond. As we molded ourselves to life along this quiet mile of coastline, the time went by quickly and slowly, both with intense sensorial richness and also a haze of dreamlike wonderment. Nothing prevented our labor, neither rain nor wind nor the cold heralds of autumn that swept in from northern lands on occasion. We took advantage of every cycle, all the while speaking silently, in a language we’d learned when we weren’t paying attention.

The aches and sores slipped away ... Our stamina grew, never quite matching Heather’s, but that girl had infinite energy, after all. We worked hard, ate intently, and when the cycles of this life lined up just right, we occasionally found some free time that we filled with hiking, photography, and the simple enjoyment of each other’s presence. But mostly, we dedicated ourselves to Birgitte’s business.

Following one of our early evening outings, having set the harvest to dry in the arbors, Heather left us to finish tidying the area. She made her way to the shed, soon emerging with an armload. In the gathering dusk, it appeared that she was carrying a mass of netting; indeed, as she approached it was clear from the excited glint in her eye that some type of fishing seine was the next tool we would learn to use. ‘Follow me, my loves.’ We’d been quite successful with our line fishing, so this puzzled me at first. Then I realized that our supply of herring was getting low; there remained about an inch of filets in the large jar. Fully accustomed to the luxury of frequent lobster meals by now, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about gathering more bait for them, not to mention that I looked forward to eating the pickled treats myself. We set off down the wooden staircase that led to the cove as the last of the sun’s echoes continued to diminish in the west.

Lara now carried a small hand net and the fishing bucket. In time, we were wading through the cove, swishing our feet along the sandy bottom as patches of stars pricked the gently distorted surface. The moon remained hidden behind the world; we would perhaps see her at our next harvest, before dawn, if the gathering clouds didn’t enshroud her. Heather came to a stop and indicated to Lara, ‘Set the bucket and small net on that rock.’ Then Heather pushed the bundled seine against me. A pair of rounded two-by-twos slept between the coils of netting, each of them a little taller than I was.

‘Take one... ‘ I gripped one of the posts with my hands and Heather did the same with the other. After she demonstrated to Lara that she should remain in place and hold the center of the net firmly, Heather and I started backing away from each other, unrolling the bundle. One edge of the net was periodically encircled by ringed corks, a series of flotational earrings, while leaden weights pulled the other edge down to the seafloor. Heather and I ended up about fifty feet from each other once the length had been unfurled across the narrow channel. The woven wall stretched between us. Nothing happened for a while; we did as Heather did, as we always did, and watched the lightless waters around us.

Night grew and was further deepened by the accumulation of thicker sheets of clouds that hid the stars away. Time seemed to slow further, as the cycles of little waves flowed past us. The sounds of the sea changed imperceptibly. The tide continued to rise. Still we watched. I held the post steady, prepared for anything. The net was a ghost now, a dark gray line in the field of black. Only the instantaneous parabolic mirrors created by the movement of the surface collected enough faint light to spark the seascape, and even that competed with the internal random noise of my own optics. Out of this ephemeral sensation came new stars, possessed of a luminescent aquatic hue. Seemingly the hallucinations of my brain, these flashes swished into and out of existence for mere seconds, little chains of supernovae exploding beneath the surface of our cove. Sparse at first, they grew out of my imagination and then became real. I stared, a shiver exploding down my spine as I realized what I was seeing. Incredible... They were tracers of swirling currents, the reactive echo of something large and unseen that was moving in the waters.

Instinctively I started moving, the bioluminescent turbulence spreading this way and then that way. I could just make out the quiet sounds of Heather and Lara wading through the water as well. Abruptly, the sound of a loud splash broke the night. It was a stone dropping through the surface on the far side of the budding blue-green cloud. I imagined that Heather had thrown the projectile, and now the electric glow panicked. Arms of light shot out in various directions, disappearing like contrails. The movement spread towards the goal that Heather and I slowly started drawing closed. Another splash exploded into the night; this one I saw, because it left its own phosphorescent crater. In another moment, the bulk of the living aurora spread around us and bolted away. A flash of anxiety surged in me, but then the ripple of hundreds of tail-splashes spattered into the mouth of our entrapment. I didn’t waste another second, pulling on the post with all my might, even as the clouds above started parting and allowed some light into our world again.

The gray ghostline was formed into a horseshoe as Heather and I drew near to each other. I could see her now, and even Lara was visible as more and more stars revealed themselves. My sister still held the midpoint away from us, and all around us the water was electric with the movements of the dance. I followed Heather’s lead as we pulled our ends towards the nearby shoreline. Once we’d each dragged about fifteen feet of the net ends onto the sandy landing, I could hear the frantic splashing of fish that were being crowded in the shallows, caught by our fence. I dropped the post and met Heather and Lara by the central loop that remained in the water, and gasped. The water was alive with a seething mass of treasure, living silver coins that flashed in the faint starlight. It was a year’s worth of sustenance. Lara quickly waded out to where she had left the net and bucket.

Upon returning, she held the bucket out toward me. Then she gently dipped the rectangular bracket into the school of herring and lifted out a quivering load of them. Heather had stayed my attempt to fill the bucket with water, so they went into the empty container in a pile. Heather touched Lara’s arm after the sixth teeming scoop was deposited. ‘That’s good... ‘ The rest would be freed to swim another day, and it was with a deep feeling of gratitude that we flattened the seine to let the survivors flit and scatter away. The three of us watched the luminescent trails as the herring roiled up the startled plankton yet again. Then they dissolved into the night as they fled to pelagic safety, and it was back to work for us and them. We set about rolling the net back onto the two posts, carefully picking off any seaweed and sea creatures that had gotten caught in it. Heather deftly handled a large rock crab that had its claws caught in the netting.

The crustacean certainly didn’t appear to appreciate the intrusion on its evening activities, but Heather calmly released it into the waters with a smile. Once rolled up, Lara offered to carry the bundle. With a deep breath, I took up the laden bucket of suffocating herring and we set off around the edge of the cove, Heather swinging the hand net around in the air as if catching nocturnal butterflies. Her evident giggle never materialized in the cove, even if it filled my ears the entire way back to the fish cleaning rock. Once there, Heather produced two extra sheathed knives from the interior of her wetsuit. After pouring the catch out onto the bare rock nearby, she rinsed the bucket. ‘First we scale them,’ our fishmonger demonstrated, using the knife on an angle. ‘Tail to head ... Just the sides. Then cut here, behind the head, and filet right down to the tail.’ We set to cleaning, her demonstration echoing in our vision.

We were no match for her precise speed, especially in the gloom of night, but we did the job what justice we could and added to the bucket that slowly filled up with thin lengths of flesh. In time, the work was done, capped by the disposing of the carcasses and cleaning up of slimy knives and hands. Heather led the way topside where the capable seine was put to bed in the shed and then the preservation of our catch began. It was simpler than I’d imagined: Heather retrieved a sextet of glass gallon jars from the storage area, four of which we filled halfway with the filets. The other two jars were filled with water and a cup of salt added to each.

Lara and I stirred until dissolved, and then the saline was distributed to the fish for brining. As we set the quartet in the refrigerator, I stifled a yawn, the slight edge of tiredness creeping over me. Heather patted my shoulder as we exited the work area. ‘Shower and then a nap,’ she indicated with her head and hands and smile. Lara and I wasted no time in stripping down, and in another minute we were rinsing off the night’s labor. We didn’t linger, though, despite the comfort of warm waters and each other; we would soon be waking up with the waning crescent moon for the pre-dawn outing, and therefore it was not long before we were inside of our tent, ready to dream of phosphorescent herringboned aurorae. It was heavenly to slip between the sheets and under the coze of the comforter.

Indeed, by now sleep had transformed from a way to escape exhaustion, to being a much-desired moment of contentment. Blessedly, we could simply sink into the bed and fall into the sweet feeling of nearness. For the time being, we needed nothing more from each other. The rediscovery of having a shared goal before us was thrilling enough.

Sleep was an act from which we would wake with vital arousal for working the next iteration of our cycles. The herring filets moved from the brine into salted vinegar that was spiked with onions from Birgitte’s garden, and as the tides continued to call to us, bringing songs sung to us by the sea, my desire to repeat that reunion kiss from our first day receded into memory. There was much to build between us, since it was all new for me. New for both of us, really, because I could see Lara’s entire being transforming before me as well. Her eyes took me in with growing adoration; her body further toned itself into a picture of fitness and health as the pure foods and intensely focused activity refined it thusly. Early on in our first days of vocal solitude, I’d missed Lara’s voice, but now I could hear her sing to me, simply by holding her hand.

The arbors and their myriad drying lines filled up, the product of the consistently honest work that Heather had invited us to participate in. One day after waking, as I scanned the long rows of hanging seaweed and took in the salty mineral aroma, I was infused with a surge of pure gratitude.

I realized my own life was full too, overflowing, even.

As was our way, we rowed out and moored the trusty rowboat to the buoy for our swim and float. The weather was heavily overcast, but it was still apparent that the sun had risen very recently. Heather seemed different this day, her eyes sparking more than usual with an impish look of old.

Indeed, before setting out, she’d surprised us by taking the Canon out of the long-sealed dive bag. After winding the crank, she popped open the back lid. I knew we’d reached thirty-seven exposures, certainly very near its end. ‘Time for a new roll... ‘ But as usual, Heather didn’t do what I expected. She grinned at us as she released the canister from the camera. Oddly, a length of film still stuck out of its slot and remained in the take-up spool. Carefully she pulled it loose, and once she’d set the SLR on the stone, she suddenly yanked the rest of the film out of the canister with two broad swipes of her arm. Lara and I both gaped at the coiled ribbon that dangled from her fingers, collecting image-ruining light from the world and completely leveling every tableau we had imprinted on there.

I eyed her, mostly amused. ‘Why?’

‘That was just practice,’ she grinned.

I had to laugh silently. The poor crabs will be pissed...

Lara and I had simply shrugged at each other, as Heather marched to the tent. She returned with a fresh roll, and in another minute, the camera was reassembled within its housing, ready for a new run of photos. A run with a decidedly more uncertain future, now!

Yes, this tidal cycle was certainly feeling different.

Maybe our silence is coming to an end...

While descending the trail to the tidal flats, I’d been wondering what our activity would be. I was fairly certain that we wouldn’t be collecting any sea vegetables, since there wasn’t room in the arbors for even one more strand of the slippery seaweed. We’d have to wait for Birgitte and Maryanne to take some down for processing. By now I’d seen the rate at which the dried product was removed for cutting and packing, and I figured that we could forsake the next dozen tides and still have a significant buffer remaining.

It was strange to suddenly realize that my mind was wondering about what was going to happen, instead of what was happening. Uncertainty of late had been limited to the details of each little moment. How will the sea move me next? What will I find within this sensual fold of foliage?

Now this was a different, larger form of ambiguity ... But as the ruined film episode had so clearly reminded me, I never knew what this girl was going to do next, so I let idle speculation slip away, out of my mind.

Apparently, lobster season had an end date, because the first thing Heather did upon reaching the buoy was to raise the trap, release the two frisky lobsters that had been caught within, and then dump the remaining bait into the ocean. After rearranging the netting so as to completely close off the entry holes, we lowered the non-trap to the seafloor once more. I sent a silent thought of thanks to the creatures, having provided us with such sustenance. At the same time, the uncertainty flared up in me once more. Is today our last day here? And if so, now what?

We passed around our thermos of water, even as Heather reached into one of the many containers she kept in the boat and pulled out a small plastic bag. Giving us an amusedly apologetic look, she took the contents out and handed us each what appeared to be a mask of sorts.

She eyed us each in turn. ‘Do you trust me?’

Lara and I glanced at each other, reading the slight apprehension in each other’s eyes. ‘Is she serious?’

‘She always is... ‘ With growing trepidation, I examined the item, clearly a blindfold. Heather remained impassive as she watched us. ‘It’s up to you... ‘

Up to us... But it was immediately clear that this little gift was a part of Heather’s life up here. This was no joke, and unless we wanted to switch to the tourist version of the tour, we were going to be following along with this new current, as always. Still, it seemed unlikely that—

Oh my god... !

Abruptly, Lara and I stared at each other as we realized that there could only be one reason for this odd turn of events. Indeed, I was taken back to a vision center that was far away from here, where the cross-product of blindness and talent had led to unbelievable work, but also had delivered incapacitating panic...

We shifted our gaze to Heather. My throat tightened with each passing moment.

‘Is this why you came here?’

Heather had a small smile now, confirming that it was at least partially thus.

Without further ado, and with more than a little bit of panic mounting in my own stomach, I gave Lara a look, mustering my courage. ‘We said we were all in!’

‘No take-backs,’ she smiled, somewhat uneasily.

‘And ... more masks!’

With a steadying breath, we put the blinders to our eyes. The twin Velcro bands easily held mine in place, and at once I could see nothing at all; not even a hint of light seeped through the thick fabric.

For a time, I took this situation in, my mind quickly revisiting every activity we’d done since arriving in Maine. The list was not lengthy, and by now all of our tasks had become richly engrained in me, given the days of focused practice. And yet... How long are we going to wear these?

With even more unease, I realized I’d get no easy answers. Our main method of communication had been quickly silenced out of us upon first arrival. Now the replacement method was so rapidly stolen, too, with no time to prepare! Is Lara still wearing hers? What about Heather? Someone has to row us back! So easily my mind started flooding with thoughts of the past and the future as I stared into the patterns that my retinas tried to hold on to. Scenes of our boat, of camp, of endless waves ... But even that remnant stimulus was fading by the moment, a sinking memory.

Breathe...

I reached out carefully, finding Lara next to me. With gentle touches, I probed the state of her vision. She has it on... I found that my fingers were trailing down her cheeks, over her mouth. She’s ... smiling! I could tell, and it was startling to suddenly feel the contours of her features in this way. Something so simple, but completely foreign because I’d never thought to do such a thing to her. And yet, it brought me an unexpectedly deep joy to feel her like this.

I moved my hand out toward Heather. Again I marveled at touching her, everything from her ears to her nose, chin and forehead... No mask ... She can still see ... How many days did she do this? And how could she ever do so, on her own... ? I shivered as Lara’s fingers joined mine in the exploration of our love’s mien.

Then I felt a brush of fabric. I rubbed the offering, finding a third mask in Heather’s grip. Immediately it was going over her eyes. Before I could think of the meaning of this, she took my hand and raised it. The gesture was familiar even if I’d never felt it before. ‘Up... ‘ I realized we were standing in the usual spots, ready to jump into the water. Heather’s hand slipped out of mine, and it was all I could do to gain a semblance of blind balance as the craft bobbed uneasily beneath my feet. Certain that I was going to find myself tumbling backwards onto Lara, or smash my head on the transom, I was surprised when I didn’t. Hurry up and jump, then... ! My heart started pounding as I imagined the vastness of the sea, just one little step in front of me. The craft bobbed beneath my feet again, another swell urging us on... ‘Three ... Two... ‘