"To tell you that I LOVE your story seems grossly inadequate. I could not put it down. I gobbled it up.... This story will haunt me forever--but it's a good haunt. It is truly one of the best things I've read in years. The ending is just right. This story is very good. It deserves to be read and read widely." -- Robin Theiss, St. Louis Writers Guild
"Beautifully written--almost nothing I read is so clear & bright as it is? deserves to be at least as widely read as its competition. It reminds me somewhat of D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain--with Hemingway clarity. That's good. I don't mean that it's imitative. It's something new, too. (The) persona is quite different from any of theirs. (Jeff is) an extraordinarily good literary artist." --Eric Chaet
"I loved your book? Thank you! It is a 'page burner'! I started it on the plane and couldn't put it down until I finished it at the hotel pool. Honestly, I am amazed that a 25 year old man possessed the depth of understanding to write the book!"-- Mary Lu Sanders-Zinser (Note from author: I'm not twenty-five anymore.)
"What a nice, mystical little story! This was very evocative to me. I pictured a world set in the Missouri rivers of my childhood, with Arthur Rackham and J.M. Turner taking turns water coloring those pictures. As for the action, let's say . . . George Eliot was transported into the future and, dreaming, was visited by Steven King, O. Henry, and, very briefly, whoever wrote the screenplay for "Splash." -- Christine Frank
Is this sensual story only about skinny-dipping in the moonlight, leading to sex? Or is it love? Or is it something else? What do the fish have to do with it? Or the blue cat?
For the best way to reach the heart of the matter, try this novella, a colorful, strange land that appears perfect. Cynthia is the embodiment of that land. The sensuality of the natural setting is immediate and moves smoothly into a rich collection of unusual happenings and vivid colors, fishing and fury, moonlight and candelight, magical red berries and howling caverns, a land where many of us would like to visit, and a few do, briefly in our youth. We should all explore dreams of blue cats and hearts capable of adventurous and idyllic sensuality. Allow yourself to enter Cynthia's world.
Read the first chapter....
CYNTHIA
AND THE BLUE CAT’S LAST MEOW
by Jeffrey Penn May
"Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses . . ."
---- John Keats
"Choose a firm cloud, before it fall, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute."
---- Alexander Pope
Preface
This is merely what happened. I only hope that whoever may read it will find a place where it will make good fish bait.
I
Cynthia’s cabin is nestled among trees next to a blue river. The river is alternately deep and shallow, running smoothly over amber stones, mottled by an occasional pearl white stone. Cynthia fishes the blue river. The path to her cabin is matted yellow and the nearby grass bright green.
I was hiking into Cynthia’s land when a man, walking from the opposite direction, met me on the trail. He was short, bent over, carefully watching his step, and he wore a sailor’s cap tilted back. Slung over his shoulder, he carried a wicker basket held by leather straps, and he stared at the ground while he walked, nearly bumping into me.
I greeted him, but he grumbled and stepped around me, then tottered off balance. The basket swung to the side and a fish spilled out. The fish was blue with bright orange cheeks. Its colors were vibrant even after flopping about and gathering a layer of dirt.
The man hung his basket on a tree and began hopping after the fish. Maybe by emulating it, he hoped to catch it. The effort did not look promising and he was becoming frustrated, so I went over and, with my foot, pinned the fish against a tree trunk. He grabbed it and returned it to the basket. The basket was full of fish.
"Where did you catch them?" I asked.
"Cynthia caught them," he responded, then added, "I help eat them."
I didn’t understand, not knowing that there was not much more to understand. Cynthia caught them and he helped eat them.
He slung the basket over his shoulder again, then leaned close, squinting his eyes and grinning. "You’ve never been here before, have you?"
"No sir, I haven’t."
He winked, then whispered, "Pay close attention to what you think you are, to what you see, what you hear, but pay no attention to me."
With that, he tipped his cap, turned and skipped once, twice, and off he went, whistling, birds chirping and fluttering out of the trees.
"Is she home now?" I called.
"Cynthia?" he yelled back over his shoulder. "She’s always home."
Perhaps most of the time, but not always. When I met her, she was buying groceries at the general store in town. I had been out hiking for the day and was on my way back to the city when I decided to stop and buy a snack. Cynthia looked at me, I smiled, and she started a conversation that quickly centered on fishing. By the time I drove away, Cynthia and I were friends, and she had invited me to her cabin, which is accessible only by foot. I was skeptical at first, but she was sincere, even gave me directions. Anytime, she said, she was almost always home.
The trees blocked the sunlight and I felt as if I were walking through a tunnel, finally emerging into a field of long grass forming waves in a gentle breeze. I sat, pulled off my hiking boots and socks and stuffed the socks in the boots. I tied the bootlaces together and hung them over my shoulder. I felt like a young sailor, barefoot, walking through the waves of grass.
I was young, twenty-two, and while in Cynthia’s land, I took that man’s advice, at least what I understood of it. I paid close attention to what I saw and what I heard.
Like the breeze stirring the yellow bushes growing tall and wild up the sides of Cynthia’s brown shingled cabin, the front portico stretching across the entire front of the square building, the porch swing moving as if she’d just gotten out of it. I skipped up the portico steps, past the swing, and tapped on the front door. It eased open. I leaned over and stuck my head inside. An old gray couch and an end table were pushed against a big, bay window facing south.
"Hello," I called, but no one answered, so I stepped inside.
The walls quickly took me in – they had a presence beyond those of normal walls. They were murals, landscapes of her land: the cabin, the hills, the limestone cliffs, and the river. They were difficult to fully absorb. In an attempt to do so, I turned full circle. Cynthia startled me when she appeared from the kitchen.
"Do you like them?" she asked.
"Hello," I said, "the door was open . . ."
"Yes," she responded, "I know. Come in." She had long golden hair that only slightly covered her tan shoulders. She was wearing blue overalls.
"Your walls are interesting," I said. "Did you paint them?"
She sauntered over to the painting of the cabin and sat on the floor, her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, and chin resting on her hand. "What do you think?" she asked.
I looked at her. As she sat there she blended into her landscape lifelike. "Yes, I think you did," I said. "Why don’t you use a canvass?"
She titled her head back, rolled her eyes up, looking behind her. "What for?"
"Well, on a canvass you could exhibit them, and share them with a lot of other people."
She wrinkled her brow. "I’m sharing them now."
"Yes," I persisted, "but they’re alive, with movement . . . and color . . . and . . ."
"Fish."
"Fish?" I looked again and there did seem to be a lot of fish.
"I was just getting ready to swim with them," she explained, then added, "That’s why."
"What?"
She stood in one fluid, graceful move. "Want to come along?" she asked. Her smile was enough to convince me. But I didn’t think I showed it, and it surprised me when she said, "Good" and started toward her room, "You may change there, if you like."
Change? Into what? I dropped my boots, unbuttoned my shorts and stepped out of them, then pulled off my shirt. My plain white underwear looked enough like a swimming suit, but it made me wish I had purchased a more flamboyant color. And the outlet in front wasn’t normally on a swimming suit. But my white underwear trunks would have to do.
Cynthia returned wearing an old jumper. She led me through the kitchen to the back door, wide and hinged like a hayloft door. The river snaked to my left upstream along high limestone cliffs with small trees growing from precarious ledges and a small cluster of tall pine on top, moving in the breeze. The water rippled over rocks and into a deep channel just beneath us where the smooth surface glided past and swirled at the corner of the cabin. I was excited, a little apprehensive.
"You go first," I said.
Cynthia stared at me, her eyes big and green and reflective. "You have to go first," she said, "and watch closely the things you see beneath the surface."
"Why?" I asked.
She laughed and pushed me. I grabbed onto her jumper and we both fell splashing into the sun-warmed clear water. The current tugged heavily, and I struggled to keep my head above water.
"When you go under," Cynthia called, "open your eyes!" She swirled at the corner of the cabin and was pulled under abruptly. I tried swimming frantically away from the whirlpool, but to no avail and I felt the water pulling me under despite all my efforts to stay afloat. My eyes were closed at first, but I forced them open.
Sunlight penetrated the surface, filtered by the water, offering prismatic variations of blue, green, and yellow. The water cooled, feeling like silk on a spring morning, making my skin come alive. Cynthia was ahead, skimming along, lying parallel to the stone bottom with her hands and feet outstretched, propelled by the current. I did the same and watched the bottom zip by, sunlight illuminating the stones amber and gold. A long silver fish swam beside me, its protruding lower jaw giving an appearance of solemn dignity, tolerant of my intrusion, but not of my touch. It darted away when I reached for it.
My lungs felt ready to burst. I needed to breathe and the current bore me to the surface, allowing two good inhalations before pulling me under again. I opened my eyes, and passed logs with dark green moss and, hovering nearby, curious bluegill, mottled yellow and orange, dark blue ear fins, perfectly circular red rimmed eyes. They watched me, darting behind a log as I went by, and then swam back out for another look. A fat camouflaged fish was vacuuming the bottom with its down-turned snout. The fish paid no heed to my brief presence. Then, suddenly, the bottom rose to my face; my nose scrapped against the stones. I thrust my hand down and rolled through the shallows into a deep pool, the current pulling me down frighteningly for a moment until I popped to the surface like a bobber.
Cynthia was there, waiting for me in the slow swirling current. Her jumper was discarded on shore. She was lolling about, her body illuminated golden by the sunlight and distorted by the water. My underwear clung to my skin like plastic. I pulled them off, and heaved them toward shore, missing by several yards. I swam into the shallow water, stood and retrieved the under shorts and tossed them near her jumper on a small sandy area. Returning to the water prompted me to loll like Cynthia, floating effortlessly. I lay on my back with my eyes closed, feeling perfectly comfortable naked in the water. Something touched me and I turned defensively, treading water, only to see that Cynthia had rubbed her leg against mine. She splashed and swam away to shore. I followed her and we walked up the sandy side of the pool, then sat in the grass with our feet in the sand, playing. Her body was smooth, water glistening, slender legs, and long hair touching small beautiful breasts. She sat serenely while I stared at her.
Cynthia looked at me and I turned away. "There’s more to see," she said.
"I’m sure there is," I responded, trying to sound knowledgeable. "You have a nice place here." Across the river, the forest stretched out into a long flat valley, the surrounding hills green with occasional rock outcroppings. No sign of any other cabins or homes for miles. "Do you ever get lonely?"
Cynthia turned toward me, hair across her cheek and touching her small round breasts, her close-lipped smile. "Lonely? There’s nothing to get lonely about."
"What about at night?" I asked.
"Do you see or feel anything here to make you lonely? Nightfall doesn’t change that."
I thought about it and couldn’t come up with anything.
Cynthia was holding in a chuckle, perhaps a private joke. "Besides," she said, "I have the caverns."
As if, I thought, that was an explanation. Caverns? They seemed a cold and hollow place. "What about the caverns?" I asked.
Her voice became distant, and she spoke in a whisper that pulled me close, pulled me as the current had. "They sing to me."
I leaned away, puzzled, and stared at her. For a few moments I felt like I might be able to fall in love with Cynthia, but now she seemed too strange.
"I’ve never seen the wind," she said, "but in the evening it comes from somewhere far down river; I can feel that. After the sun sets, the wind starts whistling in the caverns and the fish snuggle on the bottom, lulled to sleep by the whistling. When the wind blows harder, they sing to me."
"The fish?"
"The caverns."
I felt myself disconnecting from her. "No kidding," I said.
"Yes, pretty songs," she said, hesitated, "I think the wind gets caught in the passageways, curving and twisting and narrowing before opening up again, and that passage causes the wind to sing. It’s not a precise lyric, but the sounds are melodious, on the verge of becoming fully enunciated lyrics. I lie in bed listening – it’s while on that edge that I often get excited. Sometimes the trees and the grass and the river under the moonlight seem to be dancing. Sometimes I’ll light a candle and watch the shadows. Occasionally, I’ll paint . . ."
I had been running a stick through the sand, making dark slashes and curves, listening to her more than I wanted.
Cynthia stood, and started walking along the sand, toward a field of long grass, a narrow path running through it. "Let’s go fishing," she said.
Her suggestion evoked the image of that sailor man’s full basket and with it, my enthusiasm. I followed, watching her move smoothly through the field spotted with long-stemmed yellow flowers and flocks of bright blue flowers. The path led back to her cabin -- two fishing poles leaning against it. Cynthia threaded her line and tied on a hook while I kept dropping my line back through the eyelets. She trimmed her near-perfect blood knot, then knelt and reached under the portico, lifting out a jar of red berries.
"What’s that for?" I asked, fumbling with my knot.
She looked at me as if the answer was obvious, then said, "This is our bait."
"Red berries?"
She turned and started walking back to the pool. I followed clumsily while trying to gnaw the excess line off my knot. Cynthia sat upstream from the beach, on a grass ledge that dropped abruptly to the water.
"Now watch closely," she said, then unscrewed the jar lid, delicately took a red berry and routed the hook neatly through it. She swung the line into the river; the berry floated for a moment then sank to where she held it, just beneath the surface.
"Why don’t you fish deeper?" I asked while jabbing my berry onto the hook, juice oozing out and staining my fingertips.
"Try if you like."
I let my line sink deeper than I thought that river could possibly be. The pole bent, line taut, and I jerked back excitedly, reeling in to find the line snapped. My heart was pounding, and I was a little shaky.
Cynthia glanced at me. "Probably just a snag," she remarked.
"No, it wasn’t. I know a four-pounder when I feel one." But I had never caught a fish that big.
Cynthia looked at me and smiled, allowing me to believe a huge fish had just escaped. "Guess it could have been," she said, "maybe even bigger."
A fish hovered near the surface and examined Cynthia’s red berry, then snatched it and tried to swim away. The hook stuck in its lower jaw. Cynthia grabbed the line and lifted the fish, swinging it into her hand. She pushed back the dorsal fins, gripped tightly, and removed the hook. The fish had a brilliant orange-yellow belly, dark blue pectoral fins, and red-orange spotted back. She held it in her palm.
"An orange-spotted Sunfish," she said, then dumped all the remaining berries onto the ground, scooped water into the jar and dropped in the sunfish.
I threaded my line, tied on a hook, baited it with a berry, and swung the line out, dropping the berry where she had made her catch.
"They aren’t particular about where they eat," she said, moving to a different spot.
A bluegill ripped into my berry and tried desperately to swim away with the hook through its upper lip. The line was taut and vibrant. I pulled the fish out of the water and swung it into my hand. The bluegill’s sharp dorsal fin stuck into my palm. I yelped and bled, and Cynthia chuckled. I mimicked her expertise by sliding my hand down over the fin and gripping tightly. Then I ripped the hook out. Cynthia winced. I dropped my catch into the big jar and jumped up and down excitedly before returning to the fishing. Cynthia enticed another hungry bluegill and caught it promptly. A group of them hovered near the surface, maneuvering for position with an occasional stroke of their pectoral fins, their round eyes expectant. They struck in the clear water one after the other in a frantic spree of red berry fishing until all the berries were gone and the jar was crammed full of fish.
"Do we have any more berries?" I asked.
"We’ve caught plenty of fish," Cynthia said, then smiled and added, "In fact, unless you stay for dinner, we should throw half of them back."
I looked at her. She was smiling like a cat, green eyes. I thought I heard something in the forest across the river, but it was just the breeze picking up, then subsiding mysteriously. Did I want to stay for dinner, into the night? Could I find my way out of her land in the dark? What about the caverns? I looked at the jar of fish, and then at her, and shrugged.
"Sure, I’ll stay."
Cynthia carried the poles while I followed, lugging the heavy jar, to the north side of the cabin, where there was an old picnic table with warped boards and only a trace of weathered white paint. I set the jar on the table. Cynthia tied an apron on and handed me one. She chose two knives from a rack hanging on the cabin. While tying on my apron, I scanned the landscape to the north. It was much like the rest of her land – grass, trees, shrubbery – except for a stand of dead trees. They were at the base of the hill that formed a western cliff. I forgot about them as my interest focused on Cynthia. She had chosen a fish, and I leaned closer.
She cut with the tip of the knife, outlining the fillet, then cut fully through the nape, behind the gill cover, through the rib cage to the tail fin, stopping short of cutting the flank off entirely. She flipped the loose flank over and, with the other knife, removed it from the skin. In her hand, was a nearly perfect white fillet. She turned the fish over and repeated the process. Cynthia filleted three while I destroyed one. But, by the time we finished, I could remove a relatively intact fillet from one side. I still botched the second flank.
Cynthia grabbed a hose and cleaned the fillets, laying them neatly onto a tray. I piled the remains and arranged the heads like a choir, mouths open and wide eyes staring at me.
"Look," I said. "They’re still hungry."
Cynthia stared at the fish heads and waited a long time before responding. "Often," she said mysteriously, "Quite often, these fish do not die."
I thought, don’t die? Cynthia warily stroked a fish head while I leaned over her shoulder and watched. "What do you mean," I asked quietly. "They look dead, sort of." But as I looked closer, they didn’t appear dead at all; they looked as if they were singing.
"The only way," Cynthia said, "The only way to be sure is to examine their gills . . . carefully."
She pried the mouth open further and stuck one finger in, touching the gills. I leaned even closer, peering into the fish’s mouth. Suddenly, Cynthia screamed, "He’s got me!" The fish head and remains dangling from the end of her finger as she shoved it in front of my face. My eyes bulged as I jumped away and she laughed.
I looked at her, holding the fish, the intestines bouncing with her laughter. Then I thumped the fish head with the butt end of a cleaning knife. "Got him," I said triumphantly.
Cynthia threw the fish head at me and it landed on my shoulder, then she ran way laughing. I lowered my shoulder and let the head drop, then picked it up and threw it at her. She ducked, and the fish sailed over her head and tumbled into the grass.
"Ha!" she said, "You missed."
I grabbed another carcass from the table. She hid behind a tree. Poised, I crept toward her. She peeked around the tree and I threw. The fish whacked against the tree and, leaving a splat mark, fell to the ground. I retrieved it and stood back against the tree. My plan was to set it gently on her head when she peeked again. I waited. I waited longer. Finally, I became impatient and crept around the tree, but she wasn’t there.
"Hey," she called from the cleaning table, "Over here, come on, we’ve some cooking to do."
She placed all the fillets into the jar and set the jar on the steps, then went back to the table and began tossing the fish remains into nearby bushes. I helped, heaving them as far as I could. Cynthia was chuckling.
"What?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing."
"Something’s funny; what is it?" I was worried that I should be offended, but she eased my doubt.
"You’ve got intestine in your hair."
Running my finger through my hair, I found the fish guts: the intestine and a jelly-like glob. I examined the glob. It looked like caviar: a fish abortion.
"It’s okay," Cynthia assured me. "That’s called roe."
I tossed it into the bushes and suddenly felt wrought by questions of fish guts. "Do you think they mind?" I asked.
"Mind?"
"The fish. Do you think they mind being chopped up and thrown about?"
"Oh," Cynthia said lightly, "No, I don’t think so. They’ve never expressed any resentment. Why should they? Their death is exciting, and it’s put to good use. They live in us. The least part, their remains, provide organic fertilizer for my shrubs, and if you look closely, you’ll see the red berries there. The better part of the fish travel through our own intestine becoming more refined fertilizer and the very best part become an integral part of our physiology. That very best part went to Harvard." She held the hose over the table and squirted off the last of the guts.
I smiled. "Is that something you figured our while listening to the wind in the caverns?"
She rinsed off her hands. "Why don’t you give me that apron," she said. "So I can clean it. You can go pick some apples while I start cooking these fillets."
"Sure," I responded from a safe distance and tossed her the apron, "where do I go?"
She directed me to the apple trees. They were near the incoming path, standing separate from the forest.
Huge apples, shiny red, were clustered among small leaves and dangling on twigs. The lowest branch, however, was at least a yard beyond my reach. On the third leap, I was able to grab the down-turned tip of the branch and, with a loud swish and snapping, several apples jostled off onto my head. I let go, the branch swooshed back, and I began picking them up. But they had been bruised by the fall. I started climbing the tree and became painfully aware of my nakedness. Branches rubbed, poked, and scratched while I made risky moves, but I picked each apple carefully and returned to the ground with as many as I could handle, usually only one or two. I picked apples by naked tree climbing until I had a pile so large that it looked like it would be difficult to carry. Holding them against my stomach and chest, I began walking back.
Soft pink clouds drifted low over the hills and the sky was a darkening blue. I looked for the first star and the moon, but they had yet to rise and I had apples to deliver, so I hurried and arrived at the cabin and the smell of Cynthia’s fried fish fillets.
She was in the kitchen, rolling the fillets in flour and spices, then dropping them into the frying pan. "Set them on the counter," she instructed without looking up and interrupting her concentration. "Did you have any trouble?"
While easing the apples onto the counter and keeping them from rolling off, I answered, "Just a few scratches." I looked at my shin -- a line of dried blood.
The kitchen had one yellow light on, but that was enough. Cynthia still wore her apron, although she’d cleaned it. While leaning over her shoulder, watching, it occurred to me that she must’ve expected me to have some trouble picking apples. Was it some sort of test?
"Did you think I wouldn’t be able to pick apples?" I asked.
That broke her concentration. She looked at me curiously. "I usually do. The branches are high. You’d expect they’d hang lower with all those ripe ones. It’s unusual."
She made me feel like my question was also unusual. "Oh," I said. "Well, I climbed the tree."
"That’s the only way to do it. Now why don’t you peel them and cut them into slices."
Juice dripped on my fingers while I cut and peeled. I tasted a slice and it was sweet and crisp. I had eaten several when Cynthia said, "Here, you cook the rest of these fish before you eat all the apples."
I rolled the fillets in the flour and tossed them splattering into the pan, then jumped back, not wanting to burn my skin. The fish sizzled and cooked brown. Cynthia arranged the apple slices between layers of oatmeal mixed with brown sugar. "What should I do now?" I asked, adding the last fillet to the pile.
"You could," she responded, "if you like, go outside and watch the evening – before it gets away from you."
That made sense. I stood outside and watched the first star and the moon over the hills. Cynthia came out carrying plates and utensils, wearing cutoffs and a gray T-shirt. I was slightly embarrassed, not because of my nakedness, but because of her gaze. "Are you sure," I asked, "there’s nothing I can do?"
Cynthia set the plates and utensils on a small table next to the swing. "No," she responded, then smiled and added, "But I’ll bring your clothes." She went back inside and returned carrying a salad with red tomatoes and melon in one hand, the plateful of fillets in the other and, draped over her arm, my shorts and a clean T-shirt. I dressed while she added the final touch: two candles. Before she sat, she pulled a bottle of catsup from her pocket. "You may not want any," she said. "They taste good either way."
I dished salad onto my plate, then hers, and grabbed a handful of the fillets, quickly tossing one into my mouth. "Delicious," I said.
"Why thank you, they are good, aren’t they?"
They were the best fish I ever ate. I tried the catsup and that sweetened them without obliterating the flavor. The salad was good and the melon, watery and cool. I ate beyond my appetite. I leaned back and looked up. Cynthia was watching me as if waiting for me to say what I had been thinking.
"Cynthia," I started, then pressed on, fortified by a full stomach. "Who is the man who helps you eat your fish."
"What?" She looked perplexed.
"I ran into a man . . . or, literally, I guess he ran into me; anyway, I met a man with a big basket of fish . . ."
"Was he short and nearsighted, wore a sailor’s cap cockeyed?"
"That’s him."
Cynthia stood and stacked the plates. "A sailorman who talks in riddles?"
"Yes. He said some things that didn’t make sense."
"If you listen closely, he makes good sense."
"Well," I asked, "Who is he?"
She stared at me, her eyes blank, as if she were preparing an explanation. "Don’t know him," she said casually and with finality, then smiled and took the plates inside.
For a moment, I was irritated, but that went away when she smiled. I didn’t know Cynthia either, but was learning. I listened to the crickets and pondered the mystery of the sailorman. She returned with dessert – apple crisp.
After dessert, I tried bringing up the subject again. "He told me that you caught the fish and he helps eat them."
"That’s true. I’ve never known him not to speak the truth." We sat on the swing. The stars were brilliant and the moon’s shadow of the cabin stretched out before us. "He was lost when I first met him," she continued, "he leaned close to my face to get a good look, then he told me that if he could keep visiting me, he would regain clear eyesight. He lives nearby and visits occasionally."
It occurred to me while gazing at Cynthia that the man had good reason to visit and to desire his eyesight.
"Let’s go swim with the fish," Cynthia said.
I looked at the black shadows. "Now?"
"Yes, now. Beneath the water in the darkness, there’s a lot to explore. Sometimes I crash into a log, but it’s not fatal."
She was hard to resist, so I willingly followed her through the cabin to the back door and the now blue-black river with moonlight shimmering on the smooth surface. Enthralled, I stood and listened to Cynthia’s soft, melodious voice.
"The moon changes the water, the land, the night itself for you and I to discover for the first time or again and again until there is nothing but the pure reflection of sunlight." Cynthia’s clothes dropped lightly around her feet.
I fumbled at my short’s buttons, let them drop, then pulled off the T-shirt and threw it back into the dark kitchen. I looked back into the kitchen and saw the white T-shirt, paying close attention to it glowing in moonlight, but then realized I was looking the wrong way. I turned and stood next to Cynthia on the edge, our naked bodies white in the white moonlight, lingering. Cynthia took my hand. For an instant, I was sure we were going to glide over the river to the opposite shore as we leaned out and leapt, hurling through the night and splashing into the cool dark current.
Cynthia let my hand go before hitting the water and I was beneath the surface alone taken by the current, eyes wide open, but seeing nothing, not accustomed to the dark underwater. Soon, however, I had my arms and legs extended. I could see and I was flying through a universe of blazing white fish eyes, like stars, trailing streamers of fading afterimages, shooting in and out of the penetrating moonlight. It seemed a paradoxically long yet quick flight.
Cynthia and I popped to the surface, white bare shoulders and smiling faces swirling slowly in the starlit pool. She floated on her back and was partially silhouetted. When I laid back, my head went under, but eventually I balanced and floated, my ears submerged so I could listen to my own breathing while I gazed at the Milky Way.
We drifted into the shallow water. Cynthia stood, the water around her thighs, and she touched my face. I lingered, then stood next to her and we walked across the small beach and sat in the dewy grass.
"It’s freezing," I chattered.
"Not quite freezing," she responded. "Relax."
She rolled over in the grass and I did the same, relaxing and feeling the coolness, until she jumped up and ran, her body spirit-like in the dark. I chased after her, and we sprinted through the field of glowing flowers and into dewy grass, up the steps, and into Cynthia’s warm cabin. She flopped onto her couch beneath the bay window, leaned over the arm and lit a candle on the end table. Candlelight flickered on the walls; the changeable paintings appeared as Cynthia’s land at night. She sat with her legs tucked up against her thighs. I sat on the other end of the couch.
She looked at me. "You can’t go back now," she said.
"Back where?"
"The moon will show you paths where they’re aren’t any. The moon sometimes can act like a mischievous prankster and get people hopelessly lost. I wouldn’t want you to lose your way."
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to spend the night, but wasn’t sure what that involved. After a difficult silence, she stood, reached under the couch, and pulled out a blanket and pillow.
"You can sleep here," she said. "I think you’ll be comfortable."
Cynthia went to her room. I lay on the couch, pulled the cover over me and watched candlelight from Cynthia’s room. She came back, and she knelt beside me. She touched my forehead, then ran her fingers over my face to my chin.
"Will I be able to hear the wind in the caverns sing to me?" I asked.
"Yes, they will sing to you."
I wanted to hold her, to wrap my arms around her and hold on tightly for a moment, but I just looked at her from beneath the cover. Then, I felt as if she were examining me.
Cynthia’s eyes furrowed, and she titled her head. "Listen," she whispered.
The wind came quickly and hard and I heard the caverns.
"Good night," she said and slipped away in the candlelight.
Listening to the caverns, I fell asleep.
