Epilogue 1


Sunscreen mixed with salt water in Rick's eyes. He was pushed up and down between the waves, his visor tilting above the horizon. Something gray rose over the edge of the world, the edge of an annular typhoon coming this way. Trees rustled behind him, the wind whistling through trunks like eroded sandstone, almost a thousand kilometers from the nearest submerged atoll. Straddling the international date line, halfway between the Marshall Islands and nowhere, the floating island was covered with an acre of thick forest. This was his final swim before the wave height reached ten meters.
  He hovered over a void. A brick would take an hour to reach the Central Pacific Basin. Far away, he saw the huge dorsal fin of a whale shark following the algal blooms. Neither of them wanted to debate who was on top of the food chain.
  The storm approached fast, a few cirrus scratchmarks to announce the onrushing cloud wall. Far in the distance, he saw a saucer-shaped Bull's Eye Squall rotating in a whirlpool of air. The wind was a Chubasco, an inhalation in the edge stream. He was lifted over a plowed seascape packed with dark trenches, then down with a splash. As his ears filled with water, flaming antlers towered in the sky, a trinity of light. His eyes stung in the holy silence before the thunder, not a rolling sound but a drawn-out roar.
  He didn't fight the waves, but welcomed them. People had to enjoy fear, or they would avoid risk. There was nothing like danger from a distance. The hardest part was coming home.
  He couldn't keep his balance, and a sliding wave formed a sudden ceiling of air. It looked solid as it rippled, cool and playful with a million lenses. Floating on his back, he didn't need to breathe. As he fell, the water darkened from green to murky gray. He was surrounded by transparent emptiness cooling to night. His vacation was almost over. Drawn by his monofilament tether, he landed on the bright porch of the diving bell.