and I tremble and grow pale
for I am dying of such love
Maybe I can show you someday. The ocean, Anandi says with her shark’s smile. How deep. for I am dying of such love
For one short moment O’s breath catches in her lungs like the point of a knife might catch in marrow: sharp, stubborn, with a flash of pain as bright as sunlight on snow. (As if she’s ever seen snow.) Her heart falls through her feet.
How deep? she thinks. Deeper than quicksand? Deeper than a grave? Deeper than the blackness in O’s stomach that growls and growls, always insisting on eating something more? Deeper than the endless miles of sand in the desert? Deeper than the ache in her bones?
Nothing, O realizes, can be deeper than that.
Anandi aligns herself with O and presses in, close, close, close—and O is startled and thrilled to find that she does not radiate heat, like a living being, but a vaporous kind of cold like the breeze off the sea. A chill that sends a shudder up O’s splashed skin and digs its fingers into her spine. She swallows against the ragged edge in her throat. Her heart bangs against her ribs. And then—
And then they are dancing.
It is like breathing, so willingly does she fall into the sidestep encouraged by Anandi’s weight; it is like breathing, how natural it feels, the rolling muscles, the sliding of her hooves in the sand and the way the kelpie’s hips and shoulders fit into hers like puzzle pieces, carved from the same piece of marble. It is even easier than breathing—to sway here, following the movements of someone else, for once, and not her own stubborn insistences.
She realizes with a start how close they are to the edge of the jungle. The air is thick with the sound of glossy-rustling leaves; it is perfumed with a smell like death but sweeter, cleaner, or maybe both. And the darkness is growing. It is crawling closer and closer. Rising taller and taller. This thing, this monstrous, jungle darkness, is cold and pure and overwhelming. It could smash right through her and blow out the other side like wind.
And for the first time in her life Apolonia is afraid.
Anandi’s lips come down on her spine. The thing inside O’s stomach curls tight and bares its teeth like a snake, and involuntarily a back leg tightens and flinches, kicking out at the sand before it draws up again. It is maybe also the first time she has not felt in control. And she follows Anandi into the dark.
