Queens of All the Earth by Hannah Sternberg

Author:Hannah Sternberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781610880336
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Published: 2011-01-20T22:00:00+00:00

The ride of five stops was agonizing, and so was the strenuous walk from the closest stop to the beach, toward the twin high-rises that towered over the sand. Perplexing curvaceous artwork and blocky hotels shot up around them, crested, and ebbed away, and Olivia broke into a jog, charged with a childlike impatience, until she was stopped by the pavement railing that overlooked the beach and the sea.

She waited there until the others caught up, but as soon as they did, Olivia dashed off again, down along the rail and past an advertisement asking swimmers if they were thirsty, and tripped down the slide of sandy dirt and stringy grass to the beach, warm, glowing, and alive.

A green bird flew from a tree.

The water was blue and white.

The air smelled like fish.

Black and brown rocks neatly cut the coast into groomed partitions.

A thickset woman in a forest-green bikini sunned herself on the sand, alone, while passing walkers laughed at her or pretended to ignore her.

Olivia threw herself down the beach, gathering up with swaying arms every gift thrown to her—like the wind that blew off the water and made her clothing mold against her body, shift, and cling again, and made her cheeks bright and her eyes fill. She felt the sea throwing swells toward her that billowed and fell and grew again to crash as waves and cast out shy, quiet, shallow washes, eaten again by the following waves. She stumbled out of her shoes, leaving them somewhere upside-down behind her on the sand.

She felt the water beating against her hips, under her feet, under the palms of her hands, encircling her waist, sliding down the taut muscles of her legs, smoothing over the curves of her waving arms. It created something: a solid body that arose from the waves, panting and smiling, alive. He rolled toward her, legs awash, dripping with the many rivulets that composed his body, blue and white, green and brown and black. The sun struck him and made him real.

“Olivia! Olivia!” he yelled. The form that had emerged from the waves was Greg Brown.

“Olivia! I will wade out!” Wade out? He was already out. He spoke too soon; the sea tossed another wave up at him and knocked at his knees, and he fell into the water, dissolving and resolving, standing, laughing, his mouth full of laughter, while she crept slowly into the water toward him.

“Olivia! I will wade out, ’til my thighs are steeped in burning flowers!” he called to her. He emerged again from the water after another dunk. “I will take the sun in my mouth.”

Now, his feet encrusted with sand and water streaming down his slicked masses of hair, his eyes were filled with the sea and the sun and with her. He leaned toward her. His smiling mouth spoke.

“I waded out, ’til my thighs were steeped in burning flowers. I took the sun in my mouth, and I leaped into the ripe air.”

Alive, the sea answered. With closed eyes.

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