You Are Always Safe With Me by Merrill Joan Gerber Read Free Book Online Page A

making sounds of glee and jollity. Her head and Izak’s floated above water like bodiless creatures.
    She gripped the lower step of the ladder and held steady there, feeling the blue water swirl between her legs and up her back.
    He smiled at her. “Good water, is it not?”
    “Very good. Very restful to be in it.”
    “Holiday is for rest,” Izak said.
    “You never rest,” she said.
    “Not my time for holiday now. Time for work.”
    “What’s odd,” she said suddenly to him, “is that we live here all together on this boat like a family and when the trip is over we’ll never see one another again.”
    She didn’t know if he understood that much English, or could grasp what she meant. The words came forth as if they were waiting to spill out of her mouth.
    Izak said, “I know this truth. “Here we together”—he patted the water—“and then no more.” He flung a handful of water out toward the horizon.
    She nodded, treading water.
    “Like family,” he said. “Then no more family.”
    He hovered there, watching her, and she felt the ocean currents churning beneath them. “Very sad,” he said to Lilly. “I sometimes feel this.”
    A head came over the railing of the deck above them. Fiona called out, “Can you help us get the kayaks into the water, Izak? Harrison and Gerta want to take them along the edge of the cliffs.”
    *
    After Izak had dispersed the two green kayaks into the sea, and Harrison and Gerta had paddled away around the bend and into another cove, Lilly remained alone in the water.
    She took in the vista of cliffs and sky, the bowl of water in which she floated; she considered the amazing thought that she was here, in Turkey, in the sea in which Ulysses had sailed on his great adventure.
    She could stand upright without moving to stay afloat; the water lifted her easily above the surface, held her like silken wrappings, but in no way confined her. She felt as close to a sense of flight as she ever had—a sense of swimming and flying, an absence of gravity, giving the illusion of weightless freedom.
    From her position below, their little boat, only 80 feet long, seemed as high and huge as an ocean liner. The gulet, as they called this kind of boat, was built locally; she had seen many sailing by, all with people happily clustered on the aft deck, sunning on the cushions, or reading, or waving from the rails. The world as it could be seen from the deck of a gulet was a world of peace and friendship. Why not live on such a boat forever?
    After a while, Lilly saw a bobbing presence, a white sphere coming through the water toward the Ozymandias . Lilly watched it till it took on the outlines of Marianne as she cut her way—with strong breast strokes—toward the boat.
    With each rise of her head, water streamed down her face. As she came close to Lilly, it seemed a waterfall of tears was coming from her eyes.
    At first she didn’t notice Lilly, but paused in the water, looking around to get her bearings. She pulled off her rubber cap and her short blonde hair sprang out in ringlets. She did look as if she truly could be crying, her brow was furrowed and her mouth quivered slightly.
    “Are you alright?” Lilly called.
    “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t see you there…. I’m okay.”
    She swam up to the ladder. “I found some kind of temple ruins up there on the cliff. There was an altar. There were some cliff tombs. You know why they put them up so high? So animals couldn’t get to their dead. And robbers couldn’t rob the graves and take away objects they had buried, so their dead could have precious things with them in their next life.”
    “Did you go inside them?” Lilly asked.
    “Yes, but of course they’re empty now. You can see where fires have been burned, the walls are all charred. The tombs may have served as shelter for shepherds who kept their goats on the mountain.”
    Marianne hung onto the ladder, making no move to climb it.
    “I’ll tell you something, Lilly. I buried