September 19, 2017

PodCastle 488: Crossing

* Author : A.C. Wise

* Narrator : C. A. Yates

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Pria Wood

First published in Lamplight Vol. V Issue III.

Rated PG-13

Crossing

by A. C. Wise

Emma Rose is four years old the first time she enters the ocean alone. All her life, she’s lived with the beach at the end of her street. Her parents carried her into the waves the week she was born. When she learned to stand, they taught her to float. Older still, they showed her how to stretch her body out long, how to reach, and turn her head to breathe, letting the water guide her like a friend.

Now, her parents watch from towels on the shore. Sun reflects off the Dover chalk cliffs so they shine brilliant white. The wind plays with Emma Rose’s curls, and the tide garlands her toes with foam. She steps carefully and the water swirls up to her knees, her waist. There’s a small moment of doubt, but surely the water will keep her safe. She knows it as well as she knows the sound of her father’s voice, the touch of her mother’s hand.

Goose-pimples fade as she adjusts and the water shapes itself around her. Squinting, she pretends she can see all the way to France. Her parents showed her pictures in a book holding frozen moments of their lives before her. Her mother with curls so much like Emma Rose’s, her father with a smudge of flour on his nose, each of them proudly holding up a tray of pastries they made in the cooking class where they met.

Looking toward the land of her parents’ stories, Emma Rose knows she will cross the water one day. Not in a boat; she will swim.

Emma Rose stands on her tippy toes, then lets the water take her. She floats, lying on her stomach, putting her face in the waves. She opens her eyes.

Through the salt sting, the world blurs blue and grey. She lets a few bubbles escape to rise around her like pearls. Just as she’s about to turn her head to breathe, a face appears below her.

The eyes are grey, like Emma Rose’s, the color of waves under a sullen sky. The woman’s hair floats around her head, long and straight, tinted green like she’s been under water a long time. She smiles.

Emma Rose is so startled, she screams, and cold saltwater rushes into her mouth. Panicked, she forgets everything her parents taught her. Her limbs won’t cooperate. She can’t lift her face out of the water. She can’t remember which way is up.

Then hands catch her. Her father lifts her out of the water, and maybe the woman pushes her from below. Her father pats her back and she coughs water.

“Shhh,” her mother whispers. “It’s okay.”

They make a protective circle around her with their bodies, standing knee deep in the waves. Emma Rose cries, shock and fading fear. She clings to her father, her head on his shoulder, while her mother strokes her back. When her sobs turn to hiccupping coughs, her father carries her back to the shore.

“What happened out there, jellyfish?” her father asks.

His eyes are blue, like the water when the sun is bright and borrows pieces of the sky to wear like a gown. Her mother’s eyes are deep brown, like the water under the moon. No one has ever been able to explain to Emma Rose where her grey eyes come from.

Except once, her mother told Emma Rose she dreamed of the ocean the night she was born. Sometimes Emma Rose secretly believes she’s a princess from under the sea. Her parents found her on the shore, curled up in a giant oyster shell. The woman under the water must be a princess, too, a secret one, just like her.

“I…” Emma Rose hesitates.

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