The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

was Max with the pair who had to be rescued by a Jet Ski. The penultimate swimmer arrived on the horizon. When he was pulled on board, he fell in a heap. His eyes were panicked. He panted and heaved, expelling water from his lungs. After five minutes, he was able to speak. “That was rough. Beautiful, though. I took a beating, but it was worth it.” He let his head drop back against the deck. Five seconds later, he bolted upright and looked around him. “Hey, where’s Max?”

“Not in yet. Probably taking one of his long routes,” one of the rescued swimmers suggested.

The other swimmers laughed.

“I saw him out there,” the final swimmer said. “We both got pulled way off course by this monster. Swallowed us whole right near the turn. It was sort of strange. Max stopped swimming and started treading water, looking out at another monster building in the distance.”

His words flowed away, and I felt a spark of fear. If the other swimmers had seen an indescribable beauty at the water’s surface, Max would have certainly known about caves and pockets of wonder deeper inside it. The water’s call was so loud that day, even those who didn’t speak its language had heard its voice. But such enticements were lost on me, and all I heard was the victorious laugh of the ocean.

This was the event I had been waiting for—an oceanic swallow, not a simple disappearance into a rainstorm. Max had been practicing for ages, seeking the combination of current and comfort that had borne him downriver, asleep and unharmed. And all the nights of water whispers, the drowned dreams, had prepared me for his final swim. He had painted a picture for me of his future—a home he knew I would never visit.

I should have told the captain to turn back, that it was pointless to try to reel my brother in. Instead I remained silent, staring into the storm. The CB crackled. Our driver informed the start boat that Max was missing. The coast guard was alerted. Two hours passed. A tour boat radioed to report that Max had passed it five miles farther out, a solitary swimmer cresting the waves. A search party was dispatched. But I knew that by now Max would be looking for his underwater dinner, his mermaid kiss of oysters, his salad of kelp and seaweed. Later, he would bed down on his massive water bed and be rocked to sleep. Night fell. A fisherman’s voice crackled over the CB. Max had slipped past him in the dark water. He said the moon had broken through the clouds as my brother passed, a solitary swimmer centered in its reflection. I felt the ocean rise up over the edge of the boat, and I reached out to accept it—a good-bye kiss.

Fifteen

The chill from falling through the ice remained with me for days. I stayed in bed, shivering despite the tea and medicine Toby brought me. While he tended to me, a collection of objects from his past appeared, refuse from his explorations of the Dissolving World. I would wake to find his children’s editon of Gray’s Anatomy or the nesting dolls from his bedroom next to my pillow. His high school yearbook materialized between the sheet and duvet. Other objects that I did not recognize formed a trail from the bed to the door. The eerie overflow from Toby’s other world amplified the cold that filled me from the inside out. When it became unbearable, I would slip downstairs, where Piet would build a roaring fire.

Toby often sat with me there. He’d hold me in his arms until I stopped shivering. As he did so, I noticed small changes in his appearance. Toby’s edges seemed to have blurred, and the sharp contrasts between his hair and skin had faded. I looked down at the hands wrapped around my body. Moons had appeared in his thumbnails, and pale suns set across the screens of his fingernails. From the jagged tree roots that I loved, a smooth pair of alabaster hands had emerged. I took one of his hands in mine. “Do you miss the way your hands used to look, all dry and desert tough?”

“Miss?” Toby replied, holding me tighter.

“You lost them somewhere between Nevada and Amsterdam.”

Toby fluttered his fingers. “I could find them, I guess.”

I shook my head. “Leave it.” I ran my fingers over his, reminded of how Max’s new body had broken though his childhood shell.

Toby squeezed me tightly, and for a moment his strength subdued my shivering. “I summoned this cold. I should be able to banish it.”

“Some of your tricks are one-way streets,” I said. “You still won’t accept that.”

Toby shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way now.” He turned my head so we were eye to eye. “Let’s go somewhere warm.”

“It’s winter.”

“Not everywhere.”

“No, Toby. I’m not going back in there.”

Sometimes, I slept in the living room while Piet passed through during the night, keeping the fire alive for me. On one such night, Theo and Lucio arrived and settled in the kitchen to wait for Toby. I fell back asleep, waking later at the sound of my husband’s voice.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“It’s been a while,” Lucio said. “We’re wondering if you’re ready to show some of your incomprehensible magic.”

“That depends on what you want to see.”

“There is one thing we are particularly anxious to see,” Theo said. “Piet says the Dissolving World is keeping you busy.”

Toby was silent.

“You make it work?” Lucio asked.

“That depends what you mean,” Toby replied. “It takes me many places. But there are still some that are forbidden.”

“Ah,” the mentalist replied. “In time, it will all work out.”

“I don’t know,” Toby said. “No matter what I accomplish there, when I emerge, it is as if I’ve done nothing.”

“That is one of the rules of the Dissolving World,” Theo said. I heard him uncork a bottle and fill