Cover

Dark touched the tips of the jungle trees as I arrived at Hotel Cha-Kan. A full moon painted a pale road of light on the Caribbean Sea. Clouds hugged the water, south, tinted orange by the bright falling orb of the sun.

The dark-skinned and dark-eyed bellboy in white cotton seemed confused by my one bag. He looked around, as if he expected someone else. Surely women traveled alone along the Riviera Maya--but apparently not often, even in 2012. The sultry beauty behind the counter looked me up and down, not like a lover, but as if I were a strange species. "One key?"

I nodded.

The red ribbon tied around her black hair twitched as she nodded back, frowning. As if against her better judgment, she took my credit card, and the bellboy dragged my bag up the chipped red tile stairs to my suite: a light sitting room and a big bedroom with a large private balcony. I nodded, pleased. Two hours of hunting the Web for someplace that felt like the old Yucatan, like Mexico more than like Las Vegas, had paid off.

I had spent winter breaks on the Yucatan Peninsula when I was in college, and now, fifteen years later, I needed a place so different from Portland, Oregon, that thinking of the Northwest would be nearly impossible. Someplace with bright yellow and blue fish in cerulean water, the mystery of Mayan ruins, and lots of quiet. Someplace alien to my recent self.

Someplace with no memories of Laura.

I splashed cool water on my face, then stood on the balcony, looking over a rocky lagoon lined with coconut palms and gum trees. Movement in the water drew my eye. A thin seal-like figure glided between two rocks. I squinted into the low light. As near as I could tell, it was a dark-skinned naked woman. The bare cheeks of perfect buttocks rose in and out of the water as she swam. A tail seemed to flip out of the water behind her.

I held my breath.

She glanced up once, looking directly at me, the whites of her eyes visible, and then a flash of white teeth, although her features stayed smudged by shadow. I smiled back at her, an instinct, and then regretted it. I had come here to avoid that kind of temptation. She boosted herself up on a moonlit rock and stepped daintily into darkness, my last sight of her the flashing white of her palm and the arch of her foot as she slipped off her flippers.

I watched the darkness she had disappeared into for a long moment, then went down to the bar. A round man with two missing teeth played keyboards with more enthusiasm than talent. Sweat dripped from his forehead and cheek and chin and bare shoulders. Ten or twelve black-marble tables surrounded a scuffed wooden stage. People filled half of the chairs.

I walked through thick cigarette smoke to a table in the back with a good view of the room, ordered a white wine, and sat back to wait for the result. It turned out to be a chardonnay, fairly dry, and surprisingly good.

What did it mean that a beautiful naked woman was the first wildlife I'd seen? A sudden yearning to see her face struck me like poison.

A tall man with perfect white teeth and a loose white cotton shirt over designer jeans climbed up to the stage. The fat man's jovial smile thinned. He finished his song and left the stage. The tall man took the same low seat, legs crossed in front of him, and surveyed the room like some kind of jungle cat. His eyes glinted in the light. A second form of wildlife. Well, I did not come here to be in America. I liked being alone, liked watching from the back. Acclimating.

His rich, deep voice filled the room, hushing most conversation. Spanish lyrics rolled from his tongue like dark chocolate, the tune familiar enough for me to hum along.

Halfway through the second song, a woman came in and stood by the bar, laughing softly with the bartender. The subdued bar light softened her short brown mane of sun-streaked hair. Her skin contrasted, dark as my mermaid. She did not look my way.

The singer stopped after five songs, looking directly at me. "Intermission," he announced, and threaded his way to my table. He held out his hand. His fingers were long and bare. "Alejandro," he said.

"Eryne." I took his hand briefly.

He stood with his hands behind his back and his legs spread a foot or so apart, leaning slightly toward me, smelling of tequila. "Er-eeen?" He drew the "e" out. "An unusual name. You are from?"

I did not feel particularly like giving information. "Los Estados Unidos. "

He nodded, not pressing. "I should have guessed. You are a vision--such blond hair, such clear, white teeth, such a bright smile. Will you let me buy me you a drink?"

I evaluated him: beautiful to look at but bitter to taste. Laura would have called him a piranha. Some women are like that, too, but most piranhas are male. I shook my head, feeling no need to make an enemy. "Thank you, it is a gracious offer. But I came here to be by myself."

His speaking voice was nearly as good as his singing voice. "That is a shame."

"You sing very well."

He nodded. "I will not expect more if you allow me to buy you a drink," he said quietly, looking around, and I thought that perhaps it was a point of pride for him. There were enough people in the bar that I judged it safe and nodded.

He sat down and began talking about himself. On another evening, I might have enjoyed learning his version of his story: asking questions had been a hobby once, long ago. Funny that I remembered that now.

The possible mermaid sauntered over and stood by us. I was apparently drawing bees like a honey spill.

But she looked at him instead of me. "Alejandro? May I join you?" It was not a request. In the half-light of the bar, a silver chain with thick links glittered against her slender wrist. A large amber nugget set in the same silver rested in the hollow below her neck, glowing warmly.

He stood and completed an exaggerated little half-bow, looking directly at me, ignoring her the way she ignored me. "Perhaps I will see you again, and you will take my offer?" He turned and sauntered back toward the stage as if he had received exactly what he wanted at my table.

Her slightly husky voice had a New England accent, someplace softer than New York. "Now I will have to sit here for a moment." She slid into the seat next to me soundlessly, and I felt her there, pulsing, like the amber at her throat was now glowing in our candle. Her presence was twice as bright and twice as noticeable as Alejandro's had been.

The tips of her short hair left a trail of water drops where they curled under her ears, and I suspected that meant I knew the shape of her buttocks. "Is he always so forward?" I asked her.

"Only to new women who come here without men."

I sipped my wine. "Have you been here long?"

She pursed her lips, watching Alejandro croon an American love song. "I live just down the road. I started here with the Peace Corps."

An answer about her past, not exactly an answer to my question. I tried to assess her age. A few tiny wrinkles spread from her eyes; otherwise her skin was smooth and clear. Her hands were criss-crossed by the white of old scars, and looked older than her face. She might be in her early thirties--a few years younger than my thirty-seven anyway. She did not ask me return questions, and I didn't want to poke at her.

The silence gave me time to notice figures cut into the wide flat links of her silver chains. This was the last year before the Mayan Calendar ended, and Mayan jewelry had been the rage in New York this winter. The woman's chain looked like the more expensive pieces had looked, except it appeared old rather than like someone had tried to make it look old. Surely it was the yellowed light.

After Alejandro finished his song, she turned to face me, her wide-set blue eyes the color of the Caribbean sea torched by morning sunshine. Her lips were slightly chapped. "He truly is a great singer. He imagines that he is also great with women, and he will try to acquire you."

I shook my head. "I do not acquire easily. "

"Perhaps." She licked her lips and stood up. "Perhaps that is a challenge?" She looked at me the way one looks at a potential lover, and I shook my head, quickly, a denial. I could hear Laura in my head--the softness in her voice as she talked to her new lover on the phone, the knife-blade of that voice sliding down my spine. I was not ready to risk.

She walked back to stand by the bar, hips rolling, her hands loose by her sides. I set my empty glass and a handful of pesos on the table and went back to my room, suddenly dizzy with wine and wild things.

I pulled off my clothes and left them in an untidy heap before stretching out on the bed, cooled and lulled by an overhead fan.

Laura would have hated the heap of my clothes on the floor.

I picked them up, making a neat pile, then threw them back on the floor, making my own mess a second time. I opened the patio door, then stretched out on the bed, naked, listening. At first, the night seemed quiet except for an incessant background hum of insects. Other sounds began to emerge. Leaves rustled--softly in puffs of wind (slight as breath), and harder as birds landed on branches, or larger animals walked along them. Soft plops of leaves falling into water--probably the large fan-shaped chit leaves. Farther off, something screeched: monkey, maybe, or even a man. Laura would have hated such an unpredictable place, so I listened for every sound, falling into each one, accepting each one, embracing it. Water lapped at the rocks under my balcony, and somewhere, maybe from a neighboring room, a flute played.

When the sun woke me, the mermaid seemed neither so mysterious nor so attractive. I dressed in a swimsuit and light blue dress, grabbed a towel, and my book of Mayan stories, and headed down the wide red steps to breakfast. As I read and sipped orange juice, I imagined the land younger and cleaner, before we came, before white men came at all. Wild.

Hotel Cha-Kan was big enough to boast a sport equipment rental service. After breakfast, I went there to get snorkeling gear. The mermaid sat behind the desk, dressed in the official hotel uniform: knee-length white cotton shorts and a loose button-up shirt of the same material with a blue pocket and buttons. I stopped, taken aback for a moment, slightly angry. So blocking Alejandro may have just been hotel business? Did they think I could not handle his type, that I needed protection? A deep breath, and I walked up, keeping my voice businesslike. "Size eight fins, please, and a mask and snorkel."

She smiled up at me. "If you like, I can show you the best spots in the lagoon."

I shook my head. "No thanks. I'd rather be alone."

A half-smile played at the corners of her mouth. She pulled out a copied line-drawing of the lagoon from the desk drawer. "Are you a strong swimmer?"

My cheeks flushed hot. It was surely in her job description to suggest where to swim.

"All right. Here is where the waves break over the reef." She drew a blue-pen line across the paper about halfway up. "You should never go that far without a guide and a boat. Some of the coral there is high enough and sharp enough that low tide combined with wind waves can cut you up." She smiled briefly at me, then returned her eyes to the map. "It is pretty--you can hire one of us from the hotel to take you in a power boat or a kayak if you like." She pointed below the line. "Down here, you can get along all right on your own. Here," she circled two more places, "and here, there is good shallow reef." Her hand moved down toward the bottom of the page, near the rocks below my balcony. "And near the hotel, there are plenty of angels and damsels and sturgeons and parrots--about everything that likes living near shallow rock."

I nodded. "I've been here before."

She raised her right eyebrow. "To this hotel?"

"No. To Playa and Cozumel and Cancun."

She smiled. "Playa used to be wonderful."

"I know. "

She handed me gear, and then her eyes met mine. "Enjoy yourself." She turned to help the next customer before I could respond. I muttered "Thank you," both vaguely irritated with her for not making it clear the previous night that she worked for the hotel, and embarrassed with myself for reading more than she meant into her offer of help.

She was right about the fish. French angelfish and queen angelfish hugged the rocks in small groups--not really schooling so much as hanging around together, and blue tang poked at rocks, hiding and appearing, apparently playing. I identified rainbow and midnight parrotfish, and one fish I thought was a yellow damsel.

I stayed close to the hotel, down in the bottom corner of the mermaid's map, dipping in and out of the water, napping after having lunch on a beach chair beside the lagoon, then swimming again. Near dusk, my body rimed with salt from sweat and salt from the ocean, I stretched belly-down on my towel on a huge slab of limestone. Water lapped five inches below me. I ran my fingers over a fossilized brain coral embedded in the limestone, feeling the sharp edges, the twists and turns that seemed so much like real life. You'd be going down a path and then it would change on you. Like Laura and me, in love, getting married before it was common for women to marry each other, and then her leaving me ten years later to the day, and a week afterward, dying when terrorists blew up a street in downtown Los Angeles. It was so unlike her to leave me, and so unlike her to die so untidily.

I couldn't rail against her, couldn't sweet-talk her, couldn't hate her or love her. I could only miss her. I trailed the tip of my index finger in the water, the simple act somehow cooling my whole body.

I jumped at the sound of the mermaid's voice. "Did the map help?" She stood on a faint path a few feet away from me, dressed in khaki shorts and a white tank-top instead of her uniform.

I hadn't really used her map much, except that it did give me a sense of confidence with the lagoon, a frame to set the waters I swam into. I sat up. "I didn't want to do anything hard, not after a full day of travel."

Her eyes brushed my body up and down, then flicked to my fins and snorkel. "It's too late to return your gear. The desk closed at four. I just checked you through another day. If you are going to be here a while, you might want to go to Isla Dive in town and get some of your own equipment. For four days rent, you can buy better than ours. Tell Maria I sent you."

"I don't know your name."

She laughed, a low husky laugh with no meanness in it. "Nan." She kept going, her hips swaying over lean well-muscled calves and small feet. Would I see her swimming naked if I went up to my balcony in a few moments? I shook my head, my gaze fixed loosely on the empty path until an iguana scampered across it, visible because it was moving. It stopped and cocked its head, as if to say, "Notice me!" then faded into the gray and sand color of the path for a moment before showing itself by darting away.

A week passed. I did purchase my own equipment--bright yellow flippers and mask and a yellow and black snorkel. Each morning Nan asked if I wanted a boat, and I shook my head. I explored and re-explored so much of the lagoon I began to name individual fish.

I walked and ran up and down the nearby coast, learning that much of the beach just south of the hotel was not really sand, but instead tiny complete shells so small that ten or fifteen of them fit, glimmering wetly, on my pinky fingernail.

I watched for Nan in the water every night. Although I never saw her, there were two nights when I swore I heard flippers rising up and down and a sleek naked body gliding through the water.

The closest ruins were small; Mayan temples and Spanish churches excavated or half excavated with signs stuck in the ground in front of them, generally on hotel grounds. Resort money thrown at haphazard archaeology to draw visitors. They did draw walkers and scientists and amateur Mayan anthropologists. A trickle of people. The flood of tourist buses and street hawkers still preferred Tulum and Chitzen Itza. But I didn't. I took the crowded little local red bus filled with hotel workers, and carried art supplies for an excuse to wander the small sites.

One afternoon, sometime late enough that slanted sunlight painted the air gold and drove the shadows long, I sat with my pad in the lap, struggling to remember my college art class well enough to capture the hundreds of shades of jungle greens and temple-stone grays.

My hand kept wandering to bright blues and reds. Sleepy, I let it go even though the colors of the pencils I picked up didn't match anything I could see. Blues and reds and yellows emerged from the jungle, adding life to the temple steps, pulling out the contrasting greens of the jungle, which itself became fuller and deeper and more riotous. More alive. After a half-hour, I held my pad a little away and squinted at the nearly-finished product. My skill level showed: perspectives looked skewed, some trees were too tall for this low jungle, far too many birds flitted through the picture.

It wasn't what my eyes saw, but the colors looked and felt right.

I taped the picture up on my bedroom wall as soon as I got back to the hotel. Later, lying across the bed in heat and sweat and darkness, I heard something gliding through the water. It had to be Nan. I stood and padded over to the balcony, but the water below was so still I couldn't imagine anything so big as a human had been there a moment before. I sighed and stretched and, finally, slept.

I woke sweaty and moaning from a dream where Nan turned into a true mermaid, her tail glistening black and silver scales with sea-slime and salt shining on the edges, and tiny white barnacles like those that grow on a whale's skin dotting her thighs. She sat on a tall piece of brain-coral in the breaking waves where the sea rushed into the hotel lagoon, her left hand beckoning.

Blinking away the dream, I decided the only way to stop her from becoming an infatuation was to actually go with her, to have her take me out to the further reef on a boat, to destroy the mystery of her by knowing her. I wanted to think of myself, of Eryne, and not of Nan.

I asked her that morning, swallowing first to wet my throat. "Nan--can you take me out to the reef today?"

She consulted a schedule behind her on the wall. "Jorge can take you in a half-hour, or I can take you after I get off, at 3:00." She grinned, and her gaze flicked up and down my body. "Jorge will cost you fifty dollars. I'll take you for free if you don't mind if I swim with you. We can take a kayak and tie up to the buoy out there." Her smile glowed even more than her sun-brown skin.

I had fifty dollars. I swallowed, my mouth tasting like metal. "Where should I meet you?"

"At the beach, by the kayaks."

I had been to the hotel beach: a small restaurant, just five tables and a covered kitchen and bar to serve the tables from, an outdoor chemical toilet, ten or twelve boats, all on a fifty-foot by twenty-foot patch of white sand with rocks on the landward side and mangroves on the seaward side. "Are we going to use the hotel's kayak? I can pay."

She shook her head. "I keep my boat here, where it's easy to launch." She smiled, her teeth white bright and small in her elfin face.

Another customer cleared his throat loudly behind me, and I left. Anticipation, maybe mixed with a little fear, hollowed my spine. I tried sitting out on my balcony and reading, but the heat eventually drove me into the lagoon. I swam without gear, just cooling off, then curled on my favorite rock. Surely it was okay to look forward to an afternoon, to be interested in someone.

My usual drowsy afternoon siesta escaped me--the rock below me was too hard, the waves too noisy. The birds in the trees seemed to speak with Laura's voice, telling me not to go anywhere with someone I hardly knew; surely I would get into trouble. I finally went to my room and paced and braided my long hair and unbraided it and braided it again and wished I'd gone out with Jorge, and cursed Laura's ghost in my mind and told it to just stay behind. By three o'clock, I had come full-circle to anticipation.

The beach was in the northwest part of the lagoon, a good five minute hike from where I usually swam. As I walked, a light wind pulled wisps of hair from my braid and slapped my skin with them, and rattled the fan-shaped chit-tree leaves against each other. As I emerged from the path to the beach, a dark-skinned man--maybe Jorge?--helped a father and two teenaged sons from a powerboat. Nan was nowhere to be seen. I squatted on my heels, watching the water, absorbed in the shifting blues and greens, in the wind-patterns and wave-patterns. The sea here beckoned, so different from the standoffish Oregon ocean with its cold dangerous beauty.

As usual, Nan seemed to materialize with no sound to forewarn of her presence. "Are you ready?"

I nodded, following her to the pile of boats. Hers was near the back, a faded green plastic kayak that looked more like a flat plank with seats on top than a typical boat. She tossed her fins on the forward seat and I threw mine on the back, and we picked up the boat, front and back, and carried it down to the water. I started to climb in, and she put a hand out. "Put on your fins first."

I must have looked puzzled, because she added, "That way they won't fall off the boat."

So we paddled out, looking for all the world like ducks, me with bright yellow feet like Daffy and Nan with long black feet. She led well, her strokes strong and even. "I hear that you haunt the local ruins," she called back over her shoulder.

"That makes me sound like a ghost."

She laughed. "Just a mystery. Some of the locals want to know why such a beautiful young woman is always alone."

She was the mystery, not me. I frowned and missed a stroke, so the kayak turned a little off course. She compensated easily, naturally.

"I lost someone recently."

Two strokes, three. "I'm sorry. You don't feel like you're in mourning."

"I was mad at her when she died." Why was I telling her such things? Maybe because we were moving like one person to keep the kayak skimming easily over the water. I could not remember the last time I'd felt like one person with anyone. Maybe the year I met Laura. The thought made me lose my rhythm again.

This time she noticed. "We can rest here for a moment."

I swallowed and laid my paddle across my knees. "It's beautiful out here. Why don't I see more divers out on the reef?"

She sat still as well. Her upper-back muscles were thick and well-defined, ruggedly beautiful. "Because you have to stay at the hotel to use this beach. Did you know that the wing your room is in was built on unexcavated ruins?"

And I'd been drawing living Mayan cities.

The waves bobbed us up and down, the wind cooling my face. "Surely you're kidding?"

"Would you like me to show you how to tell?"

"Can you tell me?" Why did I say that? Surely it would be more fun for her to show me.

"You really do prefer to be alone, don't you?"

The tide carried us slowly back toward the beach. I picked up my paddle and asked, "Are you ready?"

She answered by picking up her own paddle and starting again, only now we paddled in silence, less attuned, until we reached the buoy and tied the boat up, a hundred yards or so inside the break. The waves were only a foot or so high today, gentle rollers under the kayak, breaking seaward of us over the high points on the reef, making a dull roar from this close.

Nan turned to look at me, her face all business again, as if my last answer offended her. She twisted off the boat, a mermaid's twist and glide into the water. I followed, not quite as smoothly. She bobbed, treading water, and pointed to the break, her voice sounding like a tourist guide, cool and intentionally commanding. "I'll swim slowly out that way. Try to stay within a hundred feet of me, and be sure to make eye contact every few minutes. We shouldn't stay out much more than an hour."

Her talk was all business again, too. I nodded, put on my mask, and plunged my face into the crystal blue Caribbean sea. Schools of silvery-blue fish swam close to me, curious, then darted away, moving as if all the hundred or so fish were one being. Five feet below me, parrotfish and more angels hugged brain coral five or six feet wide, and branch coral reached so high that I had to watch carefully to avoid kicking it in the troughs of the waves.

When I poked my head out of the water to look for Nan, the sea appeared deserted in all directions. The boat bobbed alone, one paddle trailing by its shipping rope. The little beach we'd left looked tiny from this distance, and the hotel's red and yellow building stuck out from the jungle like a shout. Farther south, a construction crane ruined the view.

Where was she?

I started a second scan, then I heard her pop up right behind me, blowing her snorkel and then laughing. "Isn't it beautiful?"

I pulled my mouthpiece to the side. "It is." Her mood had shifted again. Perhaps we were both sensitive and raw with people.

"Dive down," she said. "You'll see more." She took a deep breath, not bothering with her snorkel at all, and jackknifed down. I followed her toward a sandy depression. She grabbed a rock with two hands and pull herself down, looking below it. I did the same. She pointed at the outline of a two-foot-wide ray nearly buried in sand, then reached her hand out, tickling the sand near the ray. It sailed past us, brushing my bare skin with the triangular edges of its body.

Back on the surface, she grinned, and I grinned, and it felt like kayaking out had at first, like we were doing something together. That such simple communication seemed a symphony of sharing illustrated again the off-pace nature of the last few years with Laura: the little fights, the tense moments when we said the right things in the wrong tones and her eyes looked as hard as dark wet river stones.

Nan pulled her mask up off her face, and gestured for me to do the same. She reached a hand out and I put mine into it. Her hand was slightly warmer than the water. Our linked hands kept the rolling waves from separating us as she asked, "Are you a strong swimmer--can you make it through the break?"

I nodded. "I do mini-triathlons at home."

"Follow me, but stay close. I know some good places to get through the coral safely." She let go of my hand, pulled her mask back down, and swam away. I followed, imagining myself a mermaid following a mermaid. We were at the break in about ten minutes and she signaled a stop and then a dive. We took deep breaths and I dove behind her into a canyon of purple and yellow fan corals. A school of gray groupers darted between us, seemed to swim momentarily with Nan, and turned as one, flashing past me. Holding my breath had become hard when she finally angled up. Surface air tasted like nectar. The sea on this side of the break looked darker, a sign the water was deeper.

"There are other ways through," she said, "but that is the most beautiful."

I smiled at her. "Now what?"

Her return smile looked slightly mysterious and tempting. Her answer was to swim away, out, and I followed. Looking down, the back of the reef fell away and sand glittered below us, dotted with occasional fan corals and larger, duller fish. We swam another ten minutes, and suddenly a new round of coral began to rise under us, measured, geometrical. She stopped and pulled off her mask. "My first treat for you. An artifact. A ruin in the ocean."

"A city? Like Atlantis?" I shook my head. Mayan ruins were not cities. "A temple?"

"Four buildings and a wall. The wall encloses a square about a thousand feet long and five hundred wide. A small complex, and covered now in coral and fish. But there is much to see. You explore, I'll follow you. Five or ten minutes, and then we need to start back."

I had never heard of sunken Mayan ruins. In many ways, it was like a reef. A man-made reef, built by a lost civilization that understood stars and mathematics, covered now by star-colored fish and the wild geometry of life. The floor was too deep to dive down to, the tops of the wall visible as a large square coral garden, also too deep to swim all the way down to. I kicked down hard and the colorful top of the wall met my curiosity with some of its details. At the low point of my dive, looking across, the top door of the highest temple made a dark splotch just opposite me. I surfaced, Nan right behind me. "You do swim well," she said.

"Have you been inside the temple?"

"Of course." She grinned and her hand touched mine, although she didn't actually take it this time. "I think you can make it."

I took her words as a friendly challenge, filled my lungs, and plunged down into the warm sea. Purple, orange, and gray coral clung to the top of the temple and fish darted in and out of the opening at the top of the stairs: a wide doorway, also crusted with coral. Maroon sea-fans undulated softly like great feathers, welcoming us. I kicked down into the door, peering inside. Small round objects that looked like stones dotted the sandy floor. Nan streaked past me, smooth and strong as a seal, and palmed one of the round objects, pointing at me.

I shook my head. Take something from ruins?

She spread her hand over the pile, encouraging.

I reached and closed my fist over one of the smaller nuggets. I could look at it on the surface and bring it back. Nan surged past me and I followed her, breaking through the sun-glittery surface, gasping. In the sun, the stone looked like pictures from undersea treasure hunts, as if the coral held a secret inside. This time I spoke first. "We can't keep artifacts."

"We won't. We'll just take it for now. I promise we'll bring it back. Is that okay?"

Curiosity and guilt fought each other in my head. "Is there something in here?"

She smiled, that same mysterious smile, the one that felt both alluring and a little dangerous to me. "You'll want to bring it back. Now, we'd better go."

We'd been swimming almost twenty-five minutes with no break. I tucked the rough nugget into the waistband of my bathing suit, hard against my belly-button. It might scratch the skin, but I wanted my hands free. My fins had grown heavy and I found it easier to kick with both legs together, putting my hips into it, a mermaid's stroke. We swam side by side until we neared the break. Nan signaled that she was about to go down but I held my hand up. "Wait, let me breathe a minute."

She nodded, an odd look on her face, her blue eyes reflecting the sea and the horizon and the sun, which had fallen so far that only a few feet of sky separated it from the horizon. The Mayan temple, the artifact, the swim, all together they'd left me tongue-tied and tired, so I struggled to get good control of my breath and to let my body relax before plunging into the deep dive through the break. If I came up too soon, I stood a real risk of getting picked up by a wave and dropped onto sharp coral.

Ten breaths later, I gave Nan a thumbs-up signal and she pulled her mask down and dove under. From this side, the coral canyon looked narrower. Less light reached it since the sun hung lower above us, and sharp arms that reached toward us looked more like gray knives than coral, the darting gray-blue groupers like projectiles. The bright colors of angels and parrots still flashed here and there, dulled a bit, but comforting. The water above us roiled under the breaking waves. My chest ached and yet Nan kept angling down. I started to feel a little dizzy, and reached further with my arms, kicking harder, struggling to keep up. Two strokes. Three. Four. I needed to breath. Six strokes. I wanted to go up. Eight strokes. Nine. Finally, Nan powered up ahead of me, and I followed her to the light. The blue sky and its oxygen felt like the first oxygen ever. I turned and floated on my back, gasping like a fish, letting the softer swell here pick me up and down.

"Careful," Nan called. "Let's get further from the main reef." Worry threaded through her voice.

I rolled over and opened my eyes, fastening them on her, stroking toward her. I focused on the rise and fall of her flippers, of her back and her buttocks and the bob of her head. My legs dragged through the water, heavy. Finally she stopped and rolled onto her back, and I stopped near her. This time I reached for her hand, my water-logged fingers holding hers lightly, keeping us near each other as we watched the deepening blue sky. Waves lifted us and let us go, lifted us and let us go.

The warm Caribbean water felt cool, a sign I'd been in it too long. I turned to find the boat. It wasn't there.

"The kayak?" I scanned the surface of the water, looking for the yellow buoy the green kayak was tied to. Nothing. I turned toward Nan.

She was watching me, not the water.

Nan knew the kayak wasn't there.

I looked again. The waves were too low to hide the buoy or the boat.

Fear lanced through me. The beach was a scary distance away. But Nan hadn't stranded me; we were both stranded. I turned away from her, trying to gather my thoughts, scanning the water for any signs of a boat, for anything. Smoke twisted up above the jungle south of the little beach. I hadn't looked behind me as we paddled out, but the shore looked--well, wrong. Shouldn't I be able to see the hotel? I squinted. There were colors where the hotel should be, but instead of the red and yellow building, a larger building rose, bright with blues and greens and a brighter red than the hotel's brick-like hue. South, the construction crane no longer graced the horizon.

Or maybe "no longer" wasn't right.

I blinked. It looked . . . it looked like my pictures from the ruins. Bright and fresh and clean. Maybe we were in some time before the crane, before the buoy, before green plastic kayaks.

I licked the salt from my lips and tried for a deep, calming breath. I got a shuddering gasp.

Nan's hand landed on my shoulder. "It's because of the stones we have."

I blinked. "Then I'm going to drop mine."

She laughed. "Don't do that--you'll need it to get back. But didn't you feel it change?"

Feel what change? The rock? "I . . . no. It's tucked in my suit."

"Look at it," she said.

I hooked a finger in the waist of my suit and closed it on what felt like a thick chain. I yanked it up, and held my arm above the water. Sure enough, a thick chain of silver metal hung from my hand. At the end, a bright round chunk of amber caught the light. I pictured the amber necklace against Nan's skin the first night, in the bar. The stone I held glowed darker than Nan's necklace, and looked almost like a dragon's teardrop.

I wasn't ready to understand. "How do we get back?"

She looked at me, eyes wide and warm, the blue of them deepened by the darkening ocean. "Do you want to go now, or do you want to explore first?"

I was suddenly, immensely angry with her. Like the day I realized she worked for the hotel, but she hadn't bothered to tell me when she chased Alejandro from my table in the bar. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Her eyes widened at the tone of my voice, but when she answered, her voice was soft, matching her soft smile. "Would you have believed me?"

I couldn't go back. The pictures on my wall looked like this: alive and vibrant and lived-in. I wanted to make her tell me how to get back, but I didn't want to go back. Not yet. "Let's go." I slipped the necklace over my head and tucked the amber through the shoulder-strap of my suit, knotting it carefully so it couldn't slide away from me in the water. Then I pulled my mask down and started kicking for shore, my anger giving me strength. I felt her near me, but I didn't look back. The warm water sucked at my anger and wonder crept in to replace it.

Why had she brought me here?

Visions of sacrifices ran through my head. I wasn't exactly a virgin sacrifice, although maybe that was Hawaii and volcanoes. She'd been nice, been protective, hell, she'd been trying to get me to open up ever since I got here. Laura's voice screamed at me to run back, run away, drop the amber amulet. Was I mad at Nan or at Laura or at myself?

Choked sobs started up my throat and I accidentally pulled seawater in through my snorkel and came up sputtering and tender and scared. Enough anger still laced my heart that I didn't reach for Nan, but waited, treading water, for her to stop near me.

She did, pulling off her mask, resting easily in the water. "We don't have to go there today," she said.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"Because I travel between here and there." She pointed at a pile of rocks on the far side of the lagoon. "I don't know how it happens. It started when I was in the Peace Corps. I walked down a jungle path and at the end was a living Mayan temple. I found this gateway two years ago, and took the job at the Cha-Kan." She held up fingers which looked wrinkled as prunes. "We need to get out of the water. It's your choice. You'll have to follow me, but do you want me to lead you to the kayak and to the time we left, or take you to shore long enough to rest and sleep? I have clothes stored in a hut. We can return to Cha-Kan in the morning. I have the day off tomorrow, so we won't be missed."

The shore beckoned. Nan's slick wet hair curled at her earlobes. I bit my lip and looked from the shore to woman and back again. My leg muscles screamed exhaustion and my shoulders burned. "Why did you want me to come here?"

"Because I need someone to share this mystery with." She panted lightly, pausing. "Because I want you to know me. You are the most fascinating woman to come here for years."

I fingered the amber. Nan's eyes looked troubled and a little afraid; not something I would have thought of her. I thought her an icon, a mystery, a wild thing. More by bringing me here. Except now, she looked tired and almost vulnerable. Beads of water rested on her lips and her cheek, glittering in the sunshine.

Time for me to decide. She stayed silent, watching me, her body a shadow under the water.

Gentle warm waves picked us up and lowered us, picked us up and lowered us. Laura's voice played in my head, "She's dangerous. Stay safe. Stay safe. Go back."

I looked around the lagoon. The bright colors of the temple glowed beautifully against the greens of the jungle. As a teenager, I'd done what I'd done this trip--sat on the old stones at Palenque and Tulum and Coba and Chitzen Itza and imagined living in them. And now, I could see a living temple, feel the old jungle. Feel the chunk of amber between my fingers. Maybe it was crazy, or maybe it was because the Mayan calendar ended, or maybe it was because I needed to imagine. It wasn't really Laura's voice in my head. She was gone.

I was my own voice.

I looked at Nan, saw the little lines of tiredness around her eyes, the way she gasped quietly and struggled more to stay afloat. "I'll stay."

She smiled, then turned and pointed to two rocks reaching toward us like fingers. "It's about five minutes swim, and the very last part is a little tricky. Do you have enough strength?"

My stomach twisted as a huge smile broke across my face, unbidden, almost childlike. A feeling I hadn't felt in a long time. "I do."

She twisted away toward shore, feet together in undulating kicks. I swam beside her, knowing we would hit shore soon and no longer be mermaids for a time.