Dagger Key and Other Stories

Having reached the end of one cay, Annie restarts the motor and points the dory toward the next, about two hundred meters away. Then a dazzle hard by the tip of the island, as of the sun off a metal surface. She cuts the outboard and peers toward it, shielding her eyes. There. By that cove. An off-white shape against whiter sand. She unships the oars and begins to row. After thirty meters, she’s certain it’s the Selkie. She quits rowing and assesses the situation. Unless she waits until nightfall, it’s unlikely she’ll be able to catch them unawares, and she doesn’t want to wait. She’s been too long in the body. The tastes of this world are too rich, their joys too poignant. She’s grown accustomed to being desireless and dreamless, the merest stripe of her old self. The memories circling her now, pecking and clawing at her brain…she yearns to have them fade, become as ephemeral as monsters in fog. Even the good ones have their attendant pains.

Her stomach growls. She wishes she hadn’t ruined those sausages. Water seeped through a rip in the foil while she was stowing the watchman’s body beneath the pier, making a soggy mess of the packet. She takes the dagger from her boot. Her best chance of approaching the Selkie without being noticed, she concludes, is to swim. She has a sailor’s fear of the water, and of sharks, but she’s dealt with that fear before. The sun strong on her back, she rows to within a hundred meters of the cabin cruiser, hoping the light chop is sufficiently busy to hide the dory, and drops the sea anchor. She shucks her boots and strips off her shirt, bites down on the dagger’s blade and slips over the side. The water feels like a new, cool skin.

As she swims, rain needles the sea and the leading edge of the squall darkens the sky. Annie’s less than twenty meters from the Selkie, when a figure in shorts appears in the stern. Klose. She stops swimming, keeping afloat by moving her arms. Klose appears to be staring directly at her, but gives no sign of alarm. He has a drink from a plastic bottle, then ducks down, going out of sight. He must be attempting repairs on the engine. She starts to swim again, dog-paddling, not wanting to make a splash, angling toward the bow. Music, faint and jangly, comes across the distance. On reaching the boat, she realizes the bow is too high—she’ll have to board in the stern. She works her way around to the other side of the craft and hangs onto a projection. The music is cut off. Selkie calls out, asking a question in German. Klose’s response, also in German, is curt. Annie waits for the music to resume, but it does not. There is only the slap of wavelets against the hull, the hiss of the rain, an occasional sound of metal on metal. She’ll have to be quick.

She gathers herself, seeking in the stream of time a propitious moment, a moment that summons her, and then she launches herself from the water, jaws clamped tightly upon the dagger, clutching the rail; her feet find purchase and she vaults over it, landing in a half-crouch. Kneeling by the open hatch, wrench in hand, Klose turns toward her, his aghast, grease-smeared face a parody of shock. Annie stabs downward, but the blade is deflected by Klose’s wrench. He calls to Selkie, tries to stand, but he’s twisted around, thrown off-balance by the blow. She slips behind him, bars an arm about his neck, strangling his outcry, and hauls him erect; she bends him backward and drives the dagger into his side, excavating under the ribs with the blade. He stiffens, thrashes about, makes an effort to see her, as if hoping to engage her mercy with his eyes. She stabs again, quieting his struggles, though he pries at her arm, which is slick from his spittle. A third blow quiets him utterly. His fingers unpeel from her arm, the wrench falls, he slumps to the deck. The rain, coming down harder now, sluices away his blood before it can pool.

At the bottom of the companionway, the door to the cabin stand ajar. Selkie must have heard the commotion, and Annie waits for her to emerge, to call to her husband, to peek out.

The cabin cruiser rocks on the heavying chop.

Gusts of wind slanting the rain,

whitecaps pitching,

land and sea gone gray as death.