The Base of the Cliff, Ibutatu Estate
Aremu leaned back; the waves buffeted him, and he shifted away them, not letting himself be pressed against the cliff. When he saw the spot he was looking for, he hooked the fingers of his left hand over the spur of rock, and pressed his right elbow against the cliff. He pulled himself up, a little ways and a little more, and sat on a small protrusion of rock, bare feet pressed into the crevices of it to hold himself in place.
The salt-rich water of the Tincta Basta dripped from him; Aremu rubbed his face with his hand, glancing back down at the water once more. The sight of Aurelie swimming so well should have made him smile; it twitched at his lips, and faded a little, the joy of it mixed and muddled by all the rest.
She was doing well; she had never hesitated to get back into the water, even after being so badly buffeted by the waves. She was a good swimmer, he thought, especially given how little time she’d been at it. Yesterday and today they’d ventured up the coast a bit, where the cliff wasn’t too high; the current started to drift north just past them, Aremu knew from experience, and it was mostly being caught in that which he watched for; Aurelie wasn’t nearly experienced enough a swimmer to fight it, though they’d talked through the idea.
There’s little sense in swimming back directly against it, Aremu had said, sitting on the beach chairs with her and glancing over at Aurelie, her fine soft hair stirring in the breeze. The current pulls you away, and your instinct is to turn back the way you want to go. It’s better to choose a new direction; it’ll still pull you, but you’ll get some control back. The most important thing to stay calm, float if you can, and try to keep your head above water.
I’ll be there too, he had wanted to say. Instead, he had smiled at her, for just a moment, before it flickered and faded, and he glanced out over the water once more.
Aremu had swam that morning, and climbed the cliff; he’d been rising before dawn for it nearly every day. It wasn’t hard; sleep seemed to come in fits and starts, and every one of the last days he had been awake by the time that the light was a gray tinge on the distant horizon. He had dove from the cliff, and let the shock of hitting the cold water drive thoughts and dreams from him; he’d swam, every day, and then climbed back up the cliff, tracing a new path each time along the rocky edge.
Some days he’d run, too; they had gotten in the habit of swimming in the mid afternoon, and once or twice afterwards, when Aurelie went back to the house to bathe, he’d dried himself off and changed and thrown himself into the trails, running until he was gasping for breath and all his muscles burning, and then pushing just a little harder.
There was work, too, and plenty of it, to occupy the moments between meals, to occupy the hours after dinner when he could not yet bear to think of sleep. Aurelie sat with him, then, sometimes, as he frowned down at papers and checked ledgers and sent replies and inquiries. The part for repairing the processing shed would be ready in Laus Oma, and he looked forward to it with a desperate sort of intensity, eager for a project into which he could immerse himself.
Aurelie surfaced close to the cliff, clinging to it, and looked up at him; Aremu didn’t know what he saw on her face, just then.
He shifted; he frowned. He glanced out at the horizon; there had been distant clouds to the north, he thought, earlier, and he had thought – but there was no sign of anything strange. The wind shuddered over him, not pulling hard enough to ripple the damp fabric of his shirt, but powerful all the same.
“Another lap?” Aremu asked. He eased himself forward off the rock, dropping back into the water, treading as he waited. Aurelie agreed, and they went off again, out to the small rock they’d picked as a target, and then back towards the cliff.