Hide and Seek

The dive was clean and powerfi spouting, long dark hair plastered

smoothly back from the high, widow's peaked forehead.

I knew immediately she was not a native.

I remember her face looked so very naked just then, so clean and strong

and healthy. She could not have been bred around here. Not around

DeadRiver.

We're all of a type, you see. Or one of two.

We're all as poor and stunted and miserable as the scrub pines that

struggle up through the thin hard cliff side soil. Or else- like

Rafferty and me you grew up long and lean as the runners that crept

along the ground each spring and tried to strangle them. Either

But this girl showed you nothing. She was all smooth lines and

breeding and casual vigor. With skin most girls just dream of.

Surfacing sleek as a seal, laughing. In water the temperature of which

only a seal could love.

She opened her eyes. And that was another revelation.

They were such as hade of pale, pale blue that at first it was hare to

see any color in them at all. Dead eyes, my brown-eyed father calls

them. Depthless. Like the color of the sea when the sand is coral and

the water's calm and shallow. Reflecting light, not absorbing it

The cold must have been amazing. I watched her roll once through the

water and turn to face us again. Just her head and neck showing. I

could see her tremble, lips parted, blue eyes blinking, blind-seeming.

The sun was warm on me, but I could almost feel the ache in her

bones.

They say that very cold water can make a kind of ecstasy. Bi first

there's pain.

I saw the face muscles contract and knew she had the pain.

I watched the drops of water roll down her body as she wa dec back to

shore, sliding from muscle to muscle across the tight browr surface of

skin. The bikini told you everything about her but the color of her

pubic hair. Mostly it told you she was strong.

She walked right past me.