Amahle and Joy stand at the edge of our small island and look out into the infinite ocean.
Justin and Charlie haven’t arrived yet on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge.
Suzy and I watch silently from the porch while Master Mind is standing guard on the docked ship. I, for one, am very interested to see what will happen. It is not like Joy can make Amahle gain her sight for the first time in her life. That’s impossible.
And yet…
It is not like Amahle has been able to see the color orange in the waking world. She herself says that she hadn’t.
And yet…
She had been born blind, and a girl in a dream cannot change that.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
“Ready?” Joy says.
Elvis, Amahle’s seeing eye dog, disappears. “Ready, Joy.”
“Think about the ocean in front of us,” Joy says.
“Ready.”
Joy touches Amahle’s hand.
Amahle is silent. She does not gasp the way she did when registering the color of the setting sun.
“Deep,” Amahle finally says. “I feel everything is deep.”
“Do you see it?” Joy asks.
“I don’t know what it is like to see, Joy. I can’t tell you. It is just… a feeling of something very deep. Over there,” she motions ahead with an open palm.
“Yeah. It is deep.”
Amahle raises her head. “Why is it deep up there?”
“Huh?”
“It feels deep.”
“That is also blue,” Joy says. “Just like the water.”
“It’s deep,” Amahle talks as if in a stupor, clearly experiencing something she’s never felt before.
“Do you see waves?”
“I feel depth. I want to experience more of it.” She takes a step forward and into the water. There’s hesitation on Joy’s face, but she walks with her, getting her shoes wet. “I want to feel it all around me,” Amahle takes another step and another. Joy walks with her.
“All around me,” Amahle says.
It’s so surprising and it happens so fast, that I realize too late what happened. Amahle has just taken two more steps. Joy tried to stay back, but her hand was in Amahle’s grip. She was dragged forward, and now Joy is underwater.
“By my evil maker!” Master Mind exclaims from the deck of Bonny’s Revenge. He is her guardian, and even he was caught off-guard.
Amahle takes two more steps, and now she also disappears underwater.
Joy!
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt