They spoke again two days later, impulsively and spontaneously and more thoroughly, as if they both knew, without needing to think about it, what to say. She had long dark hair and pale, but not unhealthy, skin. He liked looking at her, though it made him shy, too; and, as he looked, he felt not only an excitement—the racing of his heart—but something else; a tenderness, a kindness, toward her. He had said something that morning in English class that the other students had laughed at and that the teacher, a conscientious woman, had praised, but with a look on her face that suggested she hadn’t perhaps understood it. The girl had not laughed, which told him that she was not afraid to be alone in the world or pursue in her life what she believed was right.
Standing there on the Ninth Grade patio again, she asked about his own life, where he lived, what his parents did, and what he enjoyed doing most—what made him “happiest.” He answered the first questions easily—the way other boys and girls would answer them (something he was learning to do)—but the last question left him silent until she said, “If it’s against the law—if you like to shoplift and that’s what makes you happiest—you don’t have to tell me.” It was a joke, he saw. There was a light dancing in her eyes, which meant she was being playful. He said, “I love the sea.” It was not an answer to her question; but he did not know how else to phrase it.
“I do too,” she answered quickly, and he could tell she meant it. She had touched his hand, a hand whose raw skin would have frightened many. Should he ask her to come to his house after school? She lived only a few blocks from the military base, from the beach were he spent so much of his life, the one that was always empty because even the sailors never used it, and that always displayed on its sands the seashells of the bay, the Chiones and Tellinas and Turitellas. His father could get her a pass so she could visit, so the guards at the gate would let her through; but he didn’t know what she would think of his seashells, or the Kingdom, or whether she had a place in it, or even wanted one.
That night, as he lay in bed, a voice said: Be careful, my soldier. Remember, you are in my service. In her beauty this Volute of yours may be a subterfuge. The King Helmet will, I am certain—and this haunts my sleep—never relinquish his plans of empire.
Two nights later, however, as he began to fall sleep, the same voice spoke, with a sigh: I advised you poorly, Soldier. An innocent and a commoner, she may not be a spy. . . .
I believe this, too, Your Majesty, the boy answered, but is she the one? Is she the one that I, simple servant that I am in your service, have been waiting for all these years, stationed with the other Fighting Conchs on Your Majesty’s northernmost Barrier Reef, here to repulse what may threaten you, our bodies wounded and yet prevailing for your sake? Is she, pretty and pale as she is, the one I will fight and perhaps die for if I do not die for you—for love is worth nothing, is it not, unless the lover is willing to risk everything for love?
The boy waited, very awake. He would go to the Kingdom this night, as he did every night, and fight for his Queen. He would go as soon as she ordered. But the voice did not speak, and its silence made him shake. The next morning he still did not have his answer. Not knowing what else to do, he wrote about the girl in his diary. In his story, where the boys and girls he knew were all seashells, each with a role in the story of the Ancient Sea, she was indeed a young, impulsive Juno’s Volute, pale, with beauty marks, though she might as well have been the Black Cowry, Cypraea nocturnis, in its enigmatic, starry beauty. He could not make up his mind, and he could not be certain of her role. He wrote about her five mornings in a row, posing again and again to himself and to his silent Queen the questions of who this girl might be in the great tale the Kingdom was and would always be, and whether his body would ever be truly his; but on the sixth morning he stopped, put down his pen, and stared at the page, which no longer made sense. She—Carey—her name was Carey—was a girl. Was there anything more important than this?
At school that day, near his locker on the bottom floor of the main building, he asked her if she would like to come over sometime, after school or on a Saturday, to do homework together, if she wanted, and also, if she wanted, to see his seashells.
She cocked her head. Then she laughed, though not unkindly, touched his hand again, making it tingle and burn as any touch did; and, with the light dancing in her eyes again, said, “Sure!”
As she did, he saw suddenly that all was well at last in the Kingdom, that a peace not easily ruined—one that might prevail for years—had at last been achieved by the most willing of hearts; and that, because it had, his Queen might no longer need him and might soon (if he listened carefully enough for her voice) let him go. Only then would he stop bleeding from the battles he engaged each night in another body, returning with countless small wounds to his own. Only then would he stop having to clean spots of blood from his sheets after his parents left for work in the morning; stop worrying about the venomous bites of the Cones and Augers (which made his body burn); stop hiding his wounds with every trick he knew; and let his body heal at last, his once more.
She was looking at him still, and she had, he could tell from her eyes, which were darker than any sea, no intention of looking away.
Copyright © 2010 by Bruce McAllister
illustration by Eric Fortune