Pearls

The night was dark and cool. Above our heads the stars shone with a clarity unheard of in the city, set against a backdrop of pure blackness. A slight dampness clung to the grass, left over from the morning’s shower which had cleaved through the humidity, leaving the air crisp and light. Crickets chirped their country songs and the occasional splash of a frog in the nearby pond heightened our awareness of the deep silence all around us.

My cousins’ property faced a narrow dirt road that rarely bore the imprint of passing cars. It was bordered on one side by tall, stiff grasses, and on the other by a small wood, both deep enough that our secluded patch of land seemed to expand outwards indefinitely. The property housed a comfortable two-storey cottage, an overgrown badminton court, and the small, reedy pond.

We had come to the country, Chris and I, to escape the frenzy of the city and enjoy a few refreshing days of near-total solitude. That morning we had sat together under blankets on the shaded porch, sipping steaming mugs of coffee and tea brewed with fresh mint leaves, watching the rain. We had emerged at night and were shocked by the vibrancy of the moonlight in the clear sky.

There was firewood in the grate indoors which we carried outside to the fire pit, lined with dirt and rock. As Chris lit the kindling, I served our dinner; a simple salad of green apples, cheese, and the tiny wild strawberries that grew in abundance in the low grasses surrounding the cottage. We sat on the roughly hewn tree trunks which circled the pit and ate our simple meal, digging our hands unceremoniously into the crusty round bread we had bought from a bakery along the way. The fire crackled and let off puffs of white smoke, the heady aroma mingling with the fragrances of freshly baked bread and red wine drunk out of unsophisticated plastic cups. Our conversation was minimal, both of us smiling sleepy, contented smiles. For dessert we shared small bowls of vanilla ice cream and canned peaches sweet with syrup which did nothing to forestall the warmth slowly creeping into our young bodies.

It was still early, despite the darkness, and the fire warmed us thoroughly, prompting the both of us to remove our sweaters and abandon our empty dishes on the ground. We held each other in silence, until the heat pressed around us from all sides.

Overcome with a sudden joy, I pulled away. An overwhelming sense of freedom washed over me, and I felt light and restless. Fuelled by that frenetic energy, I stripped to bare skin and dove into the chill waters of the pond. A laugh, unbidden, bubbled forth from my mouth, shattering the pristine silence like the glassy surface of the pond. Laughter soon turned to nervous giggling as I felt my skin tingle and tighten, my nipples hardening from the cold. My feet reached the pond’s sandy bottom and I waded some ways in, until finally I was treading water in the deep center.

Sputtering water from between my trembling lips, I watched Chris preparing, apprehensively, to join me. As he removed his shirt, I recalled suddenly the astonishing softness of his smooth white back the very first time I touched him.

“It’s not so bad,” I called out, tracing fingertips over the goosebumps blossoming on my skin. I turned encouraging cartwheels in the water, diving deeper and deeper, hoping to acclimatise myself to the cold. My hair clung wetly to my face as I re-emerged. It was through this wet veil that I watched him steel himself to the cold, easing himself in. In a pond like this it was impossible to sit on the bank, the extremities being populated by lily pads and stiff rushes, a place called home by frog spawn. He waded in, though not far enough to reach me, not yet.

I dived again, opening my eyes in the murky water. It was only as I turned my gaze upwards to the pale moon distorted by the surface of the water that I registered a peculiar sight, a flash of something unnaturally luminescent half-buried in the sand.

I tried not to think about the multitude of pond life spawned in these waters, the dragonflies and water-spiders that made my skin crawl, and plunched back under once again, determined to re-examine my finding. My hands brushed something unusually smooth and obviously foreign and I grabbed it, fingers clasping the round contours of what appeared to be a small necklace. I resurfaced with my prize; a string of pearls. Juding from their weight in my palm, these were real. They were polished to an impressive sheen, and although they had been partially buried in the sand had emerged from the depths as clean and as elegant as though they had been nestling rightfully ina jewellery box all this time. I wound the rope around my hand as I swam back to where Chris had settled, just beyond the embankment.

“Look,” I said, uncoiling the strand.

I held it up to the light in front of my face, and we both noticed the curious way the slippery pearls caught the moonlight, gleaming unusually brightly as though lit by an inner bulb.

Shivering now under thick blankets, we returned hastily to our place in front of the fire and examined my discovery. It was nothing that my cousins would have owned, much less lost in their tiny pond. This was my find, and mine alone. Again the firelight reflecing off the polished surfaces seemed otherworldly somehow, and this peculiarity was mesmerizing.

Time passed, the air grew colder and neither of us moved to stoke the fire’s flames. Chris decided he was ready for bed and, bending to pick up our discarded dishes, headed for the warmth of the cottage.

“Are you coming?” he asked from the doorway.

“Not yet,” I replied, pulling my blanket tighter around me and leaning in towards the fading flames. I could smell, faintly, the ripe strawberries pushing rebelliously through the grass all around me, and the subtle, heady sweetness made me reluctant to move. I took another sip of wine from the nearly empty bottle at my feet. The strand of pearls gleamed in my hand, momentarily forgotten. I examined them again; there was definitely something unusual about them. Their glow was warm, as though the necklace possessed a benevolent force of its own.

I lost track of time, staring at the delicate string of pearls in my hand. I contemplated their shape, their size, the physical presence of their weight in my hand. I ran my fingertips gently over the rippling surface. I contemplated the way my tan wrist accentuated the pearls’ whiteness. I ran my tongue over the cool beads, savouring the sensation, this strange ritual validating my discovery, the very existence of this necklace.

And then it was dawn. I opened my eyes and noticed that suddenly only one lone ember glowed in the pit, and suddenly the sky was awash with watercolour shades of pink and orange and palest blue. The blanket had fallen from my shoulders, but a humidity had settled in overnight and I did not shiver. I stretched, feeling unusually comfortable for someone who had spent the night sleeping on a crude bench.

As I shook off the film of a surprisingly deep sleep, I felt a moment’s panic, fearing that thtat reassuring weight, the strand of pearls I had so lovingly examined the night before, had disappeared. It was then that I felt the foreign pressure against my chest, an unnatural coolness. The necklace was securely fastened around my neck. I couldn’t remember having done it myself, but coolly I chased the thought from my mind.

As I made my way, finally, back to the cottage, I caught sight of my reflection in one of the windows. The necklace gleamed against my skin, looking for all the world as though it only belonged exactly where it was. Nice, I thought, very nice.

As I climbed into bed, pressing against Chris’ warm back, I thought of the return trip we would soon make, of the smoky-swseet smells and the crisp, cold water we would soon be leaving behind, and sighed.