Kite Strings of the Southern Cross by Laurie Gough

Author:Laurie Gough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2011-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

I LIE IN MY TENT in the early morning hours, drifting in and out of sleep, listening for the Giant Aunts to make their pilgrimage into the sea. I’ve been watching them all week. But it must be too late this morning because already the new day is ripening into the color of pink seashells. The Giant Aunts must have come and gone while I dreamt of water. At the precise line between day and night they fall flat back on the sea, shatter it like glass, and lie there wide open and vulnerable to the night, protected by the day. It makes me think of Canada, at the time when the darkest, saddest part of winter breaks through into spring. It’s like crossing the Continental Divide of the seasons. Everybody knows the day winter finally leaves and spring comes, just as the aunts know the secret lying between night and day. Borderlines of nature. I like to be there for the crossing, for the privileged moment when summer plunges into winter like a knife, cuts off even the memories of cold and dark. I like to watch the Giant Aunts sink into dawn, blasting the water like trumpets grieving for the dead. In those seconds that the world gives way, some mystery occurs. I never want to solve it.

Oh God. I’m spinning out of orbit.

A scratching on my tent jolts me. I open the flap and see Vaneesa’s face inches from mine—like the dark night on the beach when I was invisible. In the light, though, there are no secrets. Supposedly.

She wants to go swimming. After days of acting mean she wants to go swimming. But Fijians don’t swim; they bathe, or they spear-fish. They don’t swim. They think I’m crazy for swimming.

Vaneesa has mauve lips like cushions. I watch the velvet sounds fall out of her lips when she speaks. She has milkchocolate eyes that tip up at the ends, eyelashes so heavy they weigh down her eyelids, like wet feathers.

We run out into the water, dive in. Something else about Vaneesa: her curved thighs remind me of polished antique wood.

“Do you love Laudi?” she says.

How refreshingly direct. How un-Fijian. She asks this with her head remarkably erect out of the water, eyes on the horizon.

“Yes, I think so. But we’re from different planets.” Five minutes go by, more than that of water time, and her body glides like a sea creature through the waves. She draws closer, brushes against my arm and says: “Can I visit you sometime?”

“Where? On my planet?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.”

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