"Pearl Diver" by Ami Hendrickson

Pearl Diver

            The waves wash over what remains of New York City. The coast of Long Island is long gone — six years, now. Brooklyn two years afterward. Then, as the waters rose faster than anyone, even the doomsdayers, had dared to predict, the skyscrapers turned to islands. Then shoals.
            I row.
            In the endless ocean, calm today, with pink-tinted foam floating on waves dull as steel, our flat-bottomed boat bobs above what was once Broadway. At least, that’s what Amberly claims. Who am I to argue?
            “Stop here,” Amberly says.
            I waggle the oars in figure eights, holding our position as best I can while she breathes in, filling her lungs to capacity with air that has never passed a purifier.
            Soon, depleted of whatever oxygen it contained, that breath is expelled back into the atmosphere and Amberly inhales again.
            She dives, her lithe brown body disappearing in the gunmetal sea. A trail of silver bubbles traces her journey.
            Amberly's been bad lately. Real bad.
            Ask her what’s wrong and she’ll tell you.
            “Remembering.”
            I know she tries to stave off the memberies. Huffs the fumes from corroded batteries or uses pieces of broken glass to concentrate the sun’s rays and burn words on her skin. Plié. Fouetté. Adage. Battu. En arrière. Once, she drank seawater.
            But the tears never leave her eyes.
            That’s why I agreed to come with her today. She was up before dawn, humming old showtunes while mending her string bag, her body swaying like seaweed, casting graceful shadows on the walls in the guttering firelight.
            “What are we doing?” I automatically included myself in her adventure.
            “Going pearl diving,” she said, her voice whisper-soft so as not to wake the others.
            Before I could argue, explaining all the reasons why we shouldn’t risk the waters right now, the fire’s glow lit her face. Her eyes shone clear as stars.
            I nodded, grabbed my oars, and said, “okay.” Might be the last decision I ever make, but no matter what happens, I won’t consider it a mistake.
            I tell myself this while tracing an infinity of eights with the oars, their nicked and scratched blades hidden in the murky sea. I say it again and again, like a mantra, while I look for bubbles making their way up from the depths of the city streets.
            But nothing moves.
            Nothing buzzes or caws or splashes, though Amberly swears there used to be clouds of both bugs and birds. When she says such things, clouds darken her eyes, filling her mind, she says, with everything we’ve lost. Then the storms break, and she cries, staring straight through me.
            In the silence, bobbing on the swells, I keep a lookout for sharks and pirates. We shouldn’t be out here. We shouldn’t have come. I know this. I knew before we left.
            So did Amberly.  
            So I sit. And I row, going nowhere. And I wait.
            With each passing moment, the worries creep closer, first on velvet cat feet, then with talons bared.
            We are out too far.
            She is in too deep.
            A chill seeps into my toes, then creeps through my feet. The temperature drops a few degrees. Off to starboard, a shadow moves through the water, impossibly large, gliding through the depths.
            Slo-o-o-w-ly I pull the oars into the boat, quieter than Amberly’s morning song.
            Frost fills my bones. Shuddering, I hold my breath as the shadow begins to pass beneath me. I count the seconds: One catastrophe. Two catastrophe. Three catastrophe. Four . . .
            At “twenty-seven catastrophe,” the shadow finally passes. But the chill in my soul remains.
            She’s been gone too long.
            Then . . .
            A silver fin slices apart the horizon at the same time a tiny bubble fizzes near the bow.
            My eyes follow the fin, but I strain my ears listening for another bubble. When one pops nearby, I bite my tongue to keep from shouting.
            Amberly resurfaces a few feet away, eyes streaming, gasping for air.
            “Got them!” She holds up her string bag full of conch shells, their inhabitants still inside. We will eat well for days, if we make it to shore.
            I hold out the oar for Amberly’s slim fingers to grasp, trying to focus on her and not on the fin. Or the shadow that recently passed. Or the wintry foreboding that still chills me.
            I pull her into the boat and turn for shore, scanning the sea around me.
            The fin has disappeared.
            Amberly laughs, so childlike and pure it warms every cell like an ember. “I got ‘em,” she grins.
            That’s when I notice she is wearing the ultimate prize — a pair of ballerina slippers slung around her neck, pink as the conch shells, dripping into the boat.
            I turn toward land and start to row, Amberly’s joy infecting me with foreign optimism. Tonight we will feast. And sing. And for the first time in forever, she will dance.

Ami hendrickson

Ami Hendrickson's work has most recently been featured in F(r)iction 14, Barren Magazine, and The Cabinet of Heed. She also writes for famous horse trainers and equine organizations including the United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA) and the United States Polo Association (USPA). She lives on a farm in southwest Michigan with her daughter and assorted rescue animals. Life is good, but she still pines for a working TARDIS.

Headshot: Scott Gane Photography

Photo Credit: Staff