She bit her lip, tempted to say she believed him just to keep him in the boat. “Just don‟t drown trying to prove anything.”
Sudden laughter lit his eyes. “I can promise you that.”
He stood, one foot on either side of the rocking boat, balancing with an athlete‟s ease and a dancer‟s grace. His toes spread.
Gripped.
Liz caught her breath. Surely that wasn‟t . . .
In one smooth move, he dove over the side. The boat lurched and wallowed. Water sprayed. She closed her eyes against the
splash.
When she opened them again, Morgan had disappeared.
Still gripping the sides, she peered into the cloudy water, relieved when she saw him gliding below, the pale, smooth curve
of his shoulders and back flowing into his long, dark legs. His body appeared almost cut in two, black and white, light and
shadow, his pale hair almost green in the half light. Watching him swim, it was easy to understand the old legends of halfhuman creatures under the sea.
Even though his story was nonsense.
She waited for him to surface.
Time slowed.
Waves rolled the boat.
Morgan remained underwater. She watched his shadow slide under the boat and hung anxiously over the other side.
Shouldn‟t he come up for air?
A great gray body erupted from the water, all smooth speed and flashing curves.
She cried out and recoiled. Shark.
Horror gripped her. Morgan was in the water. He would be attacked, eaten, killed.
“Morgan? Morgan!” she called desperately, praying for a glimpse of him, searching for signs of life. Or blood.
A plume of spray shot skyward. The creature arced and leaped. She glimpsed the long jaw, the curved fin, and her heart
resumed beating.
Not a shark. Her pulse drummed with fear and excitement. A dolphin.
It reared from the water, almost dancing on its great fluke, its massive body gleaming against the sky. Its round eye was
deep black with a glint of gold.
Recognition squeezed her throat, quivered in the pit of her stomach.
Her mind slammed shut. No.
The dolphin plunged, a shining pewter arc disappearing in a burst of speed and foam. She stared, transfixed, as it
shimmered, darkened, spread. The sea rippled and flashed.
She blinked.
A shadow, as wide as the boat was long, glided like a kite through the depths below. Her brain fumbled. A ray. Magic,
alien, other, moving with primitive purpose and grace, breaking the planes of space like a bird.
It circled the boat, once, twice, drifting close. One wing tip slid above the surface, furled in a lazy salute. She inhaled in
shock and fear and amazement.
Sunlight struck the water, striped its back in patterns of light and shadow, black and white. She stretched out her hand.
“In the sea, we take the form of creatures of the sea . ”
Her breath shuddered out. Impossible. Her fingers curled into a fist.
She watched the shadow grow bigger than the dolphin, bigger than the boat, pushing through the water. Blood rushed in
Liz‟s head. The shadow shot past, developing length, strength, bulk. The boat rocked. A black dorsal fin rose like the sail of a
pirate ship cutting through the water, rose and fell, rose and . . .
Orca.
White gleamed against black, a patch of cheek, a flash of tail. She should have been terrified. She was terrified, her mouth
dry, her pulse racing. And yet . . .
Joy, power, freedom surged just beyond her reach, too huge to understand or encompass. What her mind refused, her heart
welcomed in awe and wonder.
“Morgan,” she whispered. Not a question, not a warning this time.
The whale broke the bounds of the water, its motion like flying, like dance. White and black, dark and bright, magic as the
night sky over Copenhagen sixteen summers ago.