The gangway onto the Sea Spirit is wobbly. Or I am wobbly. Or both. A member of the crew who is welcoming people aboard notices my hesitancy. 'First time at sea?'
'Um …'
'Don't worry,' she says. 'You'll have your sea legs in no time!'
'Hopefully,' I say, and step aboard, feeling the ship lurch beneath me.
The movement, back and forth, is tender. Both gentle and painful.
I'm shown to my cabin. Its walls are made of dark wood with smooth varnish. I flop back onto the bed as an announcement comes on over the speaker calling all passengers into the main cabin for a safety briefing.
In the main cabin, everyone takes a seat in armchairs that are bolted to the floor. This ship is made for big waves.
The woman who welcomed me aboard walks up to the front of the room and introduces herself as Salma, the expedition leader. She's tall with broad shoulders and long black hair. There is something about her that makes me feel safe; it's not her size, but the way she speaks about the Drake Passage. She has an acute awareness of the ocean's unknowability that instantly reminds me of Mac.
As she runs through the weather forecast, a woman sits down in the chair beside me, whispering an apology to Salma for her tardiness.
Salma smiles and introduces the latecomer. 'Everybody, this is Brooke, she's our resident glaciologist.' She then goes on to introduce the rest of the crew.
After the initial briefing is over, members of the crew hand out life jackets.
Brooke turns to me. 'Have we met?'
'No,' I say. 'I don't think so.'
'You look wildly familiar. Are you famous?'
'Not at all,' I say, laughing. And then she laughs too, and with the curve of her smile, a scar appears. It stretches from the edge of her lip to the corner of her eye. I tilt my head and ask, 'Are you?', because in the crease of skin, in the depth of her laugh, I too find something familiar.
Brooke shakes her head. 'Sometimes, we just know, right?'
I think of Maggie. How meeting her felt more like a returning. Two rivers meeting, flowing from the same spring.
I extend my hand. 'My name's Oli.'
Brooke doesn't shake my hand. She leans across and hugs me. And I have this strange feeling that we've been here before.
When the briefing is over, Brooke invites me to the bar for a drink. 'Sorry,' I say, 'I'm exhausted.' I'm playing nervously with a ring on my finger. My hands are shaking.
Perhaps she notices, because she asks, 'Have you been at sea before?'
'Not for a while.'
'You anxious?'
'Just worried I'll get seasick,' I lie, and I think she can tell, but she doesn't push me further.
'Rest up,' she says.
I smile. 'Yeah, see you round.'
***
From the porthole in my cabin, I watch rigid mountain peaks soften into smooth, sloping hills, the earth unravelling into the sea, until land is a mere smudge on the horizon. And the sea is all around me. Opening out. Closing in.
I climb into bed, my legs trembling. Dinner is called, but I can't move. I pull the blankets up to my neck and squeeze my eyes shut, but all I see is ocean. And it's suffocating. Because the weight of the sea is oppressive. I feel it everywhere, like I'm on the ocean floor. In ocean mud. Wrapped in coils of seaweed. Tied up. Blue-bound. Buried in an underwater cemetery.
My cries silenced by a water so vast I feel it will take centuries for my words to reach the surface.
I roll over and turn on my bedside lamp. Finding my purse, I pull out the sleeping pills my doctor prescribed for the plane. I go to the bathroom, fill a glass and swallow the pill with a mouthful of water. Shuffling back across the room, I get into bed and lie down on my back. Staring at the ceiling, I wait for the pill to draw my eyelids down. For it all to empty out.
***
Hours later, I wake with beads of sweat strung around me like a necklace of pearls. I sit upright and wipe the sweat from between my breasts with my nightshirt. It's awfully hot in here. I need air. Real air. Night air.
I switch on the lamp and get up, pulling on my thermal stockings and snow pants, my thermal top, fleece and down jacket. I put on my gloves, snow socks, beanie and hiking boots. Lastly, I wrap a scarf around my neck.
I'm burning up.
He was in my dream.
Four years later, and he was in my dream with the pungency of fish guts raining down from the heavens.
He was in my dream the way he was in me. Unbearably. Then, now, forever? Cum dripping down my thighs.
He pulled out, but he never left. That's what it is. That's what kills us. It's the incessant lingering, the hanging on, so that in still and silent moments, I feel him. When I'm stopped at a traffic light. Or in the pause before the shower turns on, waiting to feel something else. I feel him inside me, still there, spreading himself, spreading himself wide red, making himself big. And there's an expanding inside me, an expanding like a pipe is pumping air into my lungs so that they fill with someone else's breath, filling, filling, my ribs pulling apart. Skin stretching. Skin tearing. Blood and cum. Someone else's breath in me, breathing for me. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.
I scramble up the stairs to the upper deck, push through the door, burst out into darkness.
We choose to breathe, don't we?
I stumble, roll my ankle, trip, hit the deck with a slam that echoes through bone, a slam that makes me feel alive. I clamber to my feet, grip the handrail; drag myself along the starboard deck to the bow of the ship. I seize the railing with both hands as the boat sails over a peak in the swell, surfs down the back of it, smashes into the oncoming wave, sending sea spray flying like a flock of silver birds in a frenzy. The sky is pressing down, leaning in on me. The ship lifts on another wave, and the sky seems so close I think I might puncture it, burst through the skin of the night, disappear into the beyond.
The ship shivers. Surfs down. Slams into him. He's here. He's always here. He stalks me. Still. In the sanctuary of dreaming. He stalks me.
I cling to the rail, blood pulsing, my knuckles white. The night is wet velvet. I inhale. The air cuts my lungs, slices open flesh.
The boat lifts, surfs down, slams. My body is thrust against the rail, and out of me, in the darkness, comes something animal, something feral. I scream.
I scream not in the way the damsel in distress screams from the tower. I scream the way tectonic plates tear apart on the ocean floor, silt and sand and cracked rock. Lava spewing from the abyss. Hot lava spewing from me. I roar.
Feel myself split open. Flesh cleaved apart. Silt and sand and cracked rock. Lava bubbles up. He bubbles up. I ROAR. The sound rips open my throat. He's scratching, clawing, still holding on.
And I realise. Here I am. I've been here. Tied up, blue-bound, for years. On the ocean floor. In ocean mud. But now, the ocean floor is moving. Lava pours. It courses through cold purple caves, spreads, I am all spreading. I am moving. I am rising.
I scream, 'HERE I AM. I AM HERE!' And in that instant, I feel him explode through the surface. Hot red sprays across black night.
'HEAR ME!' I scream. 'HEAR ME NOW!'
Tears are pouring hot pink. Here I am. I am alive. I am open. I am here. I wipe my eyes on the back of my sleeve. Here I am. I survived. I survived!
I breathe in and the night sky fills me up with seashells and salt.
Sick yellow flowers into stars. Here I am. I choose to breathe.