anjoufic

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The water is always cold at Aquinnah, the surging rush of it
a sharp contrast to the warmest summer sun. The waves would
push at him as he tried to enter the water, forcing him
backwards toward the shore, then grabbing at his feet with
hungry force, trying to pull him into their embrace. Past the
breakers and the rocks, the falling away to the deep ocean
just offshore is as steep as the cliff itself. He distinctly
remembers the feeling of slowly sinking through the cool
turbulence, vainly reaching with his feet for the sandy
bottom. He and Caleb had decided to see how far away it truly
was one summer's day. Caleb grew tired of the game early on,
but he had never given up trying to achieve that goal, sinking
down into the dark blue depths of the churning sea, always
searching.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It is unbearably frigid on the beach, the wind howling off
the water in the pre-dawn. Although sleep was restful the
night before, she woke early and passed the time reading the
history of the island. She was ready to go when he knocked
softly on her door, surprised to see her awake. Her
curiousity, combined with the rough wind off the surf, has
blown away whatever remnants of sleep remained.

He is bouncing up and down on the heels of his feet, then
bending, stretching out the long muscles in his legs. She is
unclear why he needs to warm up after the walk up the cliff
path then down the long wooden staircase to the beach, but she
is also unclear on just what the agenda is today. Jacob was
already waiting for them when they got to the beach and Caleb
is nearby, stretching out as well. She turns her back on the
ocean and stares at the cliff face, wishing that it were light
enough for her to see. From what she has read, the cliff is
striated with different colours and of an extraordinary age.
Time and water have gouged away chunks of the earth and left
the interior exposed. She wants to watch as the red clay
becomes visible in the daylight. In her imagination, the
cliff looks like the shimmering reflection painted on the
water by the setting summer sun as it slides below the
horizon, a fancy she has taken from the book she has been
reading. She wants to see its colours awaken with the dawn.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" She is not surprised that Jacob has
returned to her side. "Do you know about the legend of
Moshup?"

She nods in the cold winter light, not ready to pull her
face out of the comforting warmth of her scarf.

"Ah," he says, "you've been reading Katje's books." He
smiles. "She'd have liked that." He regards her again.
"She'd have liked you."

She feels a sense of rising panic at his statement, which
she tamps down by redirecting the conversation. "What is
Mulder doing?"

"Mulder," he says with a short laugh, shaking his head
disapprovingly. "The Aquinnah Wampanoag are called the People
of the First Light. Fox is here to greet the sunrise in his
sister's memory, then he and Caleb are going to run around the
cliffs past the Light around the point, by Menemsha Pond, the
bogs and then back down Moshup's trail."

"Is that part of a ritual?" she asks.

"The second part is purely Fox and Caleb's invention," Jacob
says dryly. "The first is part of who we are, an observance we
have made for unknown numbers of generations. We watch as the
general starlight fades and reflect on the rise of the star
that brings us life. It's a simple act of veneration." He
turns to face in the direction of the still unseen sun and she
joins him, cliff on one side, ocean on the other.

Mulder comes to stand behind her, his view of the dawn not
obstructed by her. She can feel the warm heat of him
sheltering her from the sharp ocean breeze. Caleb stands
beside his great-grandfather. In silence, they watch as the
midnight blue sky lightens then transforms with the dawn of
the new day.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He has forgotten this as well, the beauty of the sunrise as
it hovers below the horizon, obscured by the cliffs. He
watches as the twinkling stars wink out one after another,
seeming to be extinguished by the encroaching daylight, but
knows that they are merely hidden by the larger light that
rules the day. Samantha is there amongst the stars, obscured
from his view, but present. He feels the brush of a gloved
hand against his cheek and he looks down into her troubled
face as she brushes the tears away. He clasps her hand
tenderly and drops his head closer to hers, looking deep into
her blue eyes. Without breaking his gaze, he peels the fabric
away from her wrist to press a kiss on the white plane of her
skin. Although his eyes return to the firmament above them,
he does not relinquish her hand.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She and Jacob have only walked a third of the way up the
cliff staircase when Caleb and Mulder disappear from view,
running around the bend. They are climbing slowly, she out of
deference to Jacob's age and because rushing would seem hasty
and disrespectful. Her wrist still burns where Mulder kissed
it; the soft warmth of his lips next to her veins sent the
blood soaring to meet his kiss. When the sun was fully risen,
he had looked at her for a long time before letting go of her
hand and jogging to where Caleb waited for him. He had turned
twice to mark where she was before he disappeared around the
bend.

"Fox was a lifeguard at this beach, you know," Jacob says to
her conversationally. He has been observing her for a while.

"Really," she answers.

Jacob nods. "Only the strongest swimmers get assigned to
this beach. He always ended up having to save the fools and
the drunks from dashing themselves against the rocks."

She ponders that statement for a moment, hesitating before
she speaks. "The legend says that the rocks on the beach are
Moshup's children, that he changed them into stone when the
Europeans landed on the island."

Jacob nods at her. "Moshup was a hard father," he answers,
"cruel and unforgiving, meting out a harsh punishment on the
innocent due to some misguided sense of protection. The
legend says that he believed it was the end of the world." He
pauses, shaking his head. "It wasn't."

"Where was the mother in all of this?" she asks, raising her
voice to be heard over the sudden rush of the wind.

Jacob smiles, raising his hand to touch the swirling air.
"Squant retreated around the bend of the island, where she
weeps and howls for her lost children."

"She didn't try to save them?" she asks.

"Maybe she did," Jacob says, "and we don't know about it.
We do know that she retreated from the world, leaving them to
the fate their father decreed." He looks at her quietly for a
moment, then begins to climb the stairs again.

"Do you know why it is that Fox hates his name?" They have
traversed silently to the next landing on the staircase.

"I assume that it was because he was made fun of."

"That is true," Jacob says slowly, "his name was sport for
some of the children on the island, although not to us. My
people believe that the other animals revile the fox, calling
him cunning when he is just clever. Our legends teach us that
the other animals prefer to believe that they have been
tricked, rather than admit they have been outsmarted." He
pauses, collecting his thoughts. "Do you know much about
spirit lore?" When she shakes her head, he continues. "In
many different Native American cultures, the fox is charged
with the protection of the family unit. His role is to keep
the individuals safe and to keep the family intact. It is his
destiny, the role that he was born to fulfill."

She is silent as he relates this cruelly ironic tale, its
hearing bitter to her.

"Fox has always felt the burden of his name, even before he
knew the tale. Fate is often capricious with people. Fox was
born on the day your people associate with the trickster." He
glances over at her. "Born on Friday the 13th into a family he
felt compelled to save, even when it was beyond his power."
He nods, looking out at the water. "You should read up on fox
lore," he tells her. "I believe Fox will be successful with
his own family, one of his own making, now that he has been
released from the bonds of the one he was born to."

She is left standing alone on the steps in the cold wind as
he turns and continues the long climb to the top of the cliff.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The land has changed vastly since he last saw it, testament
to the passing of time, the vagaries of the storms that shape
the shoreline with no reference to the past, eroding memory
with land. Several times he and Caleb have to stop and walk
around inlet streams to keep their feet from freezing in the
water and he is struck by how old they are now, remembering
how fleetly they negotiated obstacles in their youth. Once or
twice they have to backtrack to find a new path. The second
time, they laugh until tears come to their eyes, leaning
against each other weakly, then burst into a sprint at exactly
the same time, racing, reclaiming the boys that they were.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She settles on the floor next to the fireplace, intending to
continue reading the history of the island, but perusing the
other options on the bookshelf in front of her. An elderly
edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica lines two whole rows
and she plucks out the volume that 'fox' can be found in. Her
conversation with Jacob is rattling around in her head,
needing to be pondered and considered, but she pushes it away,
looking for distraction. On the bottom shelf of the bookcase
she sees a row of unlabeled photograph albums, leather bound
and heavy.

She pulls out the first of these to find elderly pictures of
Katje and Leo nestled in white corners with yellowed glue
holding them down. The pages are heavy black construction
paper, rigid with age. The earliest pictures are beginning to
degrade toward sepia. The names, places and dates of the
occupants of the pictures are inscribed on the white borders
of the photographs in an old-fashioned and European-looking
hand. She flips ahead in the book and there are entry papers
at the port of New York for Leo, Katje and their daughter
Teena. Their papers are dated 1939. With a suddenly heavy
heart, she turns back to the previous pages and notes how many
of their silent occupants have closed parentheses after their
names, their abruptly abbreviated life spans evidence of a
cruel fate. The early photos of Leo in the United States
capture a desolation of spirit that she has seen more than
once, on the faces of those who have escaped a doom that their
loved ones have not.

Closing her eyes against the pain, she flips to the end of
the book where she finds more pictures of Teena, now a
graceful and lovely young woman. She returns the book to its
shelf and takes the next volume, turning the pages until she
finds photos of Mulder. Amidst the standard record of
babyhood, she is startled to see many photos labeled 'Fox at
Aquinnah' that depict a naked and brown toddler, frolicking
among equally naked adults on the beach. There is a clay-
daubed Mulder being chased by a laughing Caleb, both running
past adults unconcerned by their own lack of clothing or the
public airing of their wrinkles and scars. It does not
surprise her that Bill and Teena are not in any of these
pictures. Her eye picks out Katje and an older Leo, along
with Jacob. Even in these early photos, his hair is mostly
white.

Eventually, Samantha appears with her own record of
childhood events. She begins to be able to discern a pattern.
The smaller, colour photos seem to be ones taken by others,
probably Bill Mulder. The larger photos that capture Mulder,
Samantha or the others candidly seem to be taken with an
artistic eye. These are Katje's photographs, mostly in black
and white. Her eye lingers over one of Mulder, who must be
about ten years of age. He and Caleb are straddling a tidal
pool at Aquinnah, the ripples carved in the sand visible below
them. Mulder is long-limbed and coltish, tanned only one or
two shades lighter than his friend. They are holding a
starfish between them, lowering it so that Samantha can look
at it. They are naked and innocent in the sunshine, Mulder
turning with a smile to the camera, catching his grandmother
in the act of taking the picture. His hair is falling in his
eyes and he is squinting in the bright light. He has never
known sorrow. She shivers at the thought and cannot bring
herself to turn the page to look at the rest of the book.

On the other shelves she finds more books about the history
of the island and Aquinnah specifically. She adds these to
her pile of reading, curling up on the rug under a blanket,
right in front of the fireplace. She is just out of range of
any embers that might escape the fire screen when a knot pops
in the flames, but close enough so that she can feel the
tremendous heat on the surface of her skin. She opens the
encyclopedia and reads the entry about foxes, learning that
they are the smallest of the canids, known for their cunning
and ability to adapt to any environment. Her head grows heavy
on her hand as she reads and she lies down, propping the book
up against the stack.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He has begun to tire of the journey at a certain point,
somewhere after they passed the Menemsha Pond and the bogs,
moving over the land to Moshup's Trail. The air is a cold
knife in his lungs and his muscles are burning. A glance in
Caleb's direction tells him that his old friend is feeling
much the same as Caleb grimaces then grins, urging them to
move the pace forward. The faster they run, the sooner they
can go home. He pictures her laying on the hearth, curled up
with a book in the firelight, or perhaps dozing in its warmth.
She is waiting for him. The image spurs him on and he passes
Caleb on the narrow muddy track, ready to be there with her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Her first thoughts upon awaking are simple: she is warm, but
she is thirsty. Her eyes adjust to the firelight and she
realizes the inadvisability of having left the books so close
to the fireplace and she jerks up, moving them away. She
hears a snuffling sound behind her and turns to see a sleepy
Mulder lying on the rug. He is outside her cover, looking as
if he stumbled in from his run and just collapsed there next
to her. His arms are crossed protectively across his chest,
his heavy sweats mud-spattered. His cheeks are ruddy from the
cold and under the clean smell of the winter air that
surrounds him she can detect the scent of his exertion. He is
blinking at her slowly, still half-asleep.

"Hi," he rasps. "Nice nap?"

She nods, wondering when she became so tongue-tied. She
tosses the blanket aside making sure she covers the
encyclopedia from view and stands, offering him a glass of
water. He groans as he tries to get up and when she returns
to the living room, he is stretching, trying to work his sore
muscles into cooperating. She watches him for a few minutes
and then wordlessly goes to get the Advil from her bag in the
bedroom, making him take them on her return.

She returns to the kitchen and begins to rummage around for
some food. There are an astonishing number of choices.
People have been leaving food on the back porch all day and
she can see that more has been left outside the sliding doors.
Mulder stumbles into the kitchen after her and makes himself a
sandwich, watching her as she tries to organize the
refrigerator. She is unable to figure out what his mood is
and refuses to analyze things too closely, preferring the
activity to silent contemplation. She makes herself a
passable lunch, glancing up at the clock. She is astonished
to note that it is after two o'clock in the afternoon. When
she turns to make note of this to Mulder, she finds that he
has left the room. She returns to the living room and sees
that he has fallen asleep again, splayed out on the rug with
one of the couch pillows under his head. He has stoked the
fire, but she picks the blanket up off the floor and covers
him with it, running her hand through his soft hair.

She keeps guard over his sleep while she reads the pile of
books about the island, curled into a corner of the couch.
She has returned the encyclopedia to its place on the shelf.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He is climbing hand over hand up the cliff face, just as he
did the summer he was thirteen. In reality, he climbed with
Caleb, but now, in the dark of his dreaming, he is transformed
into his adult self. He can feel the smooth damp of the clay
under his hands and feet, the occasional pinch of fossil or
bone. He looks over the outcropping above him, realizing that
it is mostly sand and not clay. It will not hold him. He
moves laterally, trying not to be frustrated that it is taking
so long. He can see how far he has come, knows that he is
almost to the top, but his muscles are straining and he is
tired. He could let go, but the fall is long, and, now and
then, he gets a glimpse of her curved white leg where it
dangles over the cliff edge as she waits.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After Mulder wakes for good and showers, he insists that
they go out to dinner at a nearby restaurant, despite the
abundance of food in the kitchen. They are waiting for their
dinner in a tiny restaurant in a tiny town called Menemsha.
Her reading has told her it is the center of the small fishing
fleet that remains on the Vineyard. The town looks as if it
has come right out of central casting in Hollywood. There are
ragtag trawlers docked along the harbor with broken lobster
pots, coiled ropes and torn nets decorating the docks. Buoys
are piled haphazardly everywhere and there is the sound of a
clanging bell from the harbor as the channel marker bobs on
the tide.

The restaurant itself is off one of these docks and the
fishy smell of the air, even at high tide, is penetrating. To
complete the scene, outside their window that overlooks the
placid harbor, a fisherman sits on the round pylon of a dock,
repairing a net with a thick needle and assured stitches. If
he were only smoking a pipe, the picture would be truly
perfect, but, because this is reality, he is smoking a fat
cigar. The stink of it is probably the reason that he is
sitting outside in the cold air, mending a net under a walkway
light, rather than at home.

Across the no-frills room, he is waiting to pick up their
order of chowder. He is engaged in a conversation with the
cook that she can occasionally overhear. They seem to have
attended high school around the same time and are catching up
on classmates. Mercifully, the cook seems not to know about
or not to be acknowledging the tragic history of the Mulders.

He spends the meal telling her how the Aquinnah Wampanoag
believe Martha's Vineyard was created. Even though she has
spent the day reading these tales, she lets him tell her again
without interruption. In his voice as he relates the genesis
tale of this place that seems enchanted, she can hear the how
of the man he has become, this seeker of myths and oddities.
He tells her of the giant Moshup, creating the islands off the
coast of Cape Cod by dragging his foot through the rich soil
at the bottom of the sound. The clumps of earth dropping off
his toes as he pulled it from the water became Martha's
Vineyard, Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands. Of all of
these, because it was the most beautiful, Moshup chose
Aquinnah as his home, living in a cave hidden around the bend
of the mile-long cliff face. For food, he would grab the
whales out of the water by their tails and smash them against
the cliff; their blood stained the clay red.

She eats her chowder and listens while he moves from tales
of the ancient past to ones of his own. He tells her how he
and Caleb used to dig for fossils in the clay, finding shark's
teeth and embedded bones. They would present them to his
grandmother and Jacob, proud of the evidence they had gathered
to support the myth. As the stars come out somewhere in the
night above the roof under which they sit, he tells her that
Jacob is 102 years old and sailed on the last fleets of
Aquinnah whaling ships.

In the car on the way home, he tells her how he came to live
at Aquinnah the summer before Samantha was born. Instead of
going to Quonoquotaug in July and August with his parents when
they usually rented the house to summer people, he went to
Katje and Leo. His mother had been uncomfortable in the
summer heat and she had stayed home, alone in the house at
Chilmark resting, while she waited for Samantha to be born.
That was the summer, just before his fourth birthday, that he
met Jacob and Caleb and the rest of the Wampanoag.

By the time they arrive home, she is dizzy with listening,
dizzy with the knowledge of his unknown life and the history
of this place she has never thought much about. She has a
creeping sense of trepidation about what it is that he wants
from her and she wants to flee, to find a way to get on a
ferry or a plane and get away from this island. The words
from the encyclopedia are running around in her head, mingling
with her conversation with Jacob and she excuses herself to
sleep, refusing to heed them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here is something else he has forgotten, the clean smell of
the ocean air underlying everything. In D.C., the river often
permeates the air, but its essence is filled with the scent of
earth, less pleasant than this sharp tang of salt. Perhaps,
despite the years he has lived by the river, it is still less
familiar. On the back porch, wrapped in the blankets from the
bed he is not sleeping in, he contemplates the seemingly
endless light of the stars. His whole life has been spent
looking toward them, wondering what secrets they hold. His
long curiousity about them seems like foreshadowing for these
past few days, now that he has been transformed from someone
who wanted to believe in eternity to someone who does. He
wonders how she can sleep with the moon so full and bright
above them. It has called him from his warm but lone bed,
compelling him outside to stare up at it, baring his throat to
its light.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When she wakes, she is still dizzy, but this time it is from
lack of oxygen. She has been burrowing her head under the
covers, trying to escape the soft brilliance of the moonlight
that has crept into the room. She sits up in the swath of
silver that falls across the bed and listens. Somehow, she
knows that he is not in the house. This knowledge startles
her, but does not truly surprise some secret part of herself.
If she knew that he was not dead across thousands of miles,
not once but twice, why wouldn't she know when he leaves the
house in the middle of the night?

For the first time, she consciously acknowledges that some
part of her does not want to know these things, that some part
of her, the larger part of her, wants to remain singular.

"I am happy," Jacob had said to her when they got to the
cliff top, "that Fox has finally found his mate."

She had stiffened at his statement and his assumption,
replying tersely, "He was married once."

"Was he?" Jacob had answered sharply. "Married is not
necessarily the same as mated. His whole life, Fox has been
denied his family. Would you deny him his mate?"

She pulls the covers up over her head, trying to will
herself to go back to sleep but her mind will not rest. It is
too primal an idea to contemplate, this idea of being mated.
It carries with it an implicit idea of fatalism that she does
not believe in, one that she resists.

"I cannot give him a family," she had informed Jacob
tensely, feeling the rebellious tears coming to her eyes. She
hated exposing what was her own very private pain to this man,
even if he fancied himself Mulder's grandfather.

"Are you so sure of that, Dana?" Jacob had answered her.
"You really ought to explore the meaning of your own name.
Fate is capricious, yes, but you are still named after the
Goddess your people believed was fertility herself. You don't
know what kind of family you can have until you try." And
then he had walked away, leaving her alone on the cold moor.

She is not sleeping, merely pretending to and she cannot
stop wondering what he is doing in the middle of the night.
She creeps out of bed, shivering in the dark living room. She
can see the light of the moon flowing into the kitchen as she
walks past the embers in the hearth, pausing to draw the heat
of them into herself. Through the glass kitchen doors, she
can see him standing still on the porch in the argentine
light, his head tilted back in a reverent pose, as if he is
bathing in the abundant moon and starlight that spills from
the heavens above. He is wrapped in a blanket, his hair
painted silvery white by the light, his sharp features
softened by his beatific expression. Her reading of the
encyclopedia comes back to her and she remembers that the
common fox changes its fur from its reddish brown summer hue
to winter white, a changeling's skill, a clever trick to fool
its predators. She shivers again, creeping closer to the
glass. The fox mates in midwinter, her mind quotes back to
her. The fox mates for life.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here is something he knows. There is a change in the
atmosphere when she is nearby, a magnetic shift that draws him
to her as unerringly as gravity. He can feel her watching him
in the moonlight, worrying about him as she has these past
days, these past years if he admits it. She is small, white
and serious, with her heart-shaped face and her marine eyes,
and he longs to envelop himself in her. Even if she will not
have him, he will have no other.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She is suddenly sure that he knows she is here, that he has
sensed her presence, tracked her from her bed to where she now
stands. She also knows that if she turns and leaves he will
not follow her, that he will wait forever for her to come to
him. It irks her that he is so suddenly ready to change the
nature of their relationship, as if he has moved forward
without her, although it is to step toward her.

She does not want to be ruled by her primal self, does not
want to be given by a fate she does not understand to this
man. She has little left to give and if he takes what there
is, she fears she will collapse into dust. She wants to turn
and walk away from him, walk away from the cold seeping in
around the doorway, walk away from his compounded sorrows.
Although he has suddenly shed them, they still oppress her.
She wants to, but she cannot.

She opens the door of the porch and steps outside with a
gasp, the cold assaulting her senses. She has a sudden urge
to call him by his true name, but the word is heavy and
strange on her frozen tongue and she cannot form it. He is
turning now in the bright moonlight, his hair a silvery corona
bristling around his head as he smiles gently at her. He
steps toward her, opening his arms and wrapping her in the
blankets he is wearing.

"Scully," he says quietly, "aren't you cold?"

She thinks that she has been cold for a very long time, but
she says nothing. He has gathered her up against him, sharing
his warmth with her, not taking anything from her, but she is
poised, waiting for the trap to be sprung. Her arms are
between them, bent up at the elbow, her fingertips facing her
own body in a defensive posture. He brushes the hair from her
face with his large warm hand, then runs it over her back,
generating heat wherever he touches. He lifts her gently and
places her cold feet in their thin socks on his warmer ones,
so that she is standing on him.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asks and she looks up at him.

He is tilting his head back again to watch the swirl of the
universe above them, exposing his throat to her. An act of
trust this gesture, one that places him at her mercy, should
she so choose. He touches her with these simple statements,
mesmerizes her with his faith in her and the sensual beauty of
his form. She aches to touch him where he has made himself
vulnerable to her, her own throat closing with longing. She
hesitates, then gives in to this impulse, her hand reaching up
from where it has been resting against her chest to touch the
silvered line of his throat. She feels the shiver her action
provokes and waits for the change to occur, waits for the
emergence of the primal self she is sure lies under his skin.

When he looks down at her, his expression is heavy-lidded
and she can sense the whirling emotion in his eyes, even if
she cannot see them. Under her hand, the beat of the pulse in
his neck is jumping, although she cannot be sure it is not her
own. As he begins to lower his head to hers, she lets her
hand smooth up his face, trying to assure herself that he is
still a man and has not been rendered into the spirit self she
fears.

His kiss, when it comes, is startling to her. No bruising
pressure, no vulpine lunge for her throat greets her. He
bends over and nudges at her lips with his nose, parting them
slightly, then plucks at her upper lip with both of his,
kissing it gently. His hands are cradling her head, covering
her ears and closing her off from that sense, making her feel
liquid in this silver world of his kiss. She is cognizant
only of his touch, his thumbs rubbing her cheekbones as he
pulls away from her mouth and looks at her, then returns to
kiss her lower lip, savoring her. He draws back from her, his
thumbs running across her mouth as he watches her silently,
waiting for her response. He bends to gently kiss her nose.
His fingers still caress her face, holding her like she is the
most precious thing in the world. The blankets have fallen
open over her back and she should be feeling cold, but she
cannot feel the air around her anymore, cannot feel the draft,
because something is moving inside her, seething like a hot
spring trying to burst through the surface.

He kisses her fully this time, his lips pressing against
both of hers and her eyes drop closed. She realizes that he
is not taking something from her, he is not demanding anything
with his kisses. He is telling her how he feels. She
collects his kisses, lets them trickle through her skin into
that nearly empty reservoir inside herself. He whispers her
true name against her lips and she feels that stirring again.
His voice is harsh and low with longing, as if he is calling
her out from the most secret place inside of herself, the one
she keeps hidden even from herself. His kiss is longer this
time and when she answers his call, opening her lips to
receive him, the feel of his tongue slipping into her mouth
makes her shudder; she wraps her arms around him, pulling his
warmth closer.

When they part again, she is breathless, her skin tingling
where his hands have touched her, her mouth longing for more
kisses. She cannot speak aloud, so she whispers his given
name into the air between them and he drops his face to the
curve of her neck, groaning with pain and longing against her.
"Mulder," she says then aloud, running her hands through his
hair, using the familiar name of his own choosing, "Mulder."

In answer, he kisses his way across her breasts through her
clothes, urging her back toward the open door. "I want... I
want..." he is saying against her and she knows what he wants.

Together they blunder to close the door, catching the
blankets in it and fumbling to remove them. She reaches up to
him and kisses him feverishly, trying to get closer to him,
needing to receive his kiss. He urges her into the living
room, soothing her, trying to calm her hectic movements. She
understands suddenly that she has been afraid of herself all
along, of the vastness of the emotion now searing through her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The waves at Aquinnah are fierce as they pound against the
beach. Catching one of them to ride is an exhilarating, but
delicate, enterprise. A second's miscalculation and he would
end up tossed in the surf end over end with no sense of
direction, until he was dashed against the shoreline, dizzy
and breathless. It is a feeling he well remembers, one he
does not want to revisit tonight. He has waited far too long
for this moment to have it swept away in an antic rush of
emotion. He tries to force his heart to slow down its
frenetic pounding, tries to ease the urgent rushing of the
blood in his veins.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She can sense that he is struggling with something as he
breaks away from her kiss. He wraps his arms around her and
murmurs her name again, running his hands up and down her
back. He is trembling in her arms, but he quiets and pulls
away, then picks up her hand, pulling it lightly as he takes a
step backward, toward the bedroom. His eyes are an
invitation, his expression serious and watchful. He wants
something different than a mindless surrender to the feelings
that are suffusing them both. When she takes a step toward
him, his lips curve in the soft smile that she has seen so
much of in these past hours, the one she has seen so rarely
over the years. He turns away only to make his way through
the patches of darkness, but stops when he nears the bed.

The room is still awash with the brilliant light of the
moon, a blaze of it falling across the bed. The edges of the
room have fallen away into the shadows, lost in the lack of
illumination. She holds him at the side of the bed with a
hand on the small of his back, stopping him from turning
toward her. She slides first one then the other of her arms
around his middle, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing,
the tension of his muscles apparent through his clothes. She
presses her face into his back, into the indentation of his
spine near his heart. Her hands drift underneath his
sweatshirt, gravitating toward the warmth of his skin. She
travels around him without letting him leave the circle of her
arms. She leans against his chest in the moonlight, her ear
stopping to rest a moment over his heart. She can feel how it
beats for her. She listens for the span of a few heartbeats,
then smoothes the material up and away from his skin and
kisses him there. "This is what I want," she says, laying her
hand on his heart. She can feel his heartbeat echoing low
against her belly where he lies pulsing, waiting for her.

This time he does swoop down to kiss her but there is no
fear when he gathers her up in his arms because there is
nothing being taken here that is not being given back. She
feels a line of congress opening up between them, feels the
sparks as they pulse and flow across the connection. He
breaks away from her long enough to pull off the shirt that
she has bunched up under his arms as her hands explore the
warm, smooth planes of his chest. As he sits down on the bed
and moves to pull her into the space between his legs, she
unbuttons her pajama top, dropping it to the floor.

If she lives to be one hundred years old, she will never
forget the expression on his face at this moment. His hands
are still, frozen in their extended pose toward her. His eyes
sweep over her torso, then up to her face, then back to her
breasts in a hungry and astonished rush. Time is at a
standstill for just this instant, stuttering to a halt while
he regains his momentum. Then she feels the first contact of
his fingers against her skin, the tips skimming over the
sensitive skin of her belly as he circles her waist, pulling
her close to him. She loses the ability to see his expression
as he presses his face into the small valley between her
breasts. His arms are sliding up the skin of her back,
roaming from side to side, feeling every inch of her flesh
that he can. She closes her eyes and revels in the sensation
of his skin pressed to hers, of the freedom she feels right at
this moment.

He trembles against her breast as her arms close around him,
issuing a shuddering breath. He pulls away from her slightly
and whispers her name. She opens her eyes. He presses an
open-mouthed kiss over her heart. His eyes never leave hers
as he nuzzles her breast then kisses it slowly, circling
around her before his mouth latches onto her nipple. She
cannot keep her eyes open for the pleasure of it, her hands
cradling his head against her as she feels the pull of his
mouth reflected in the clenching of her womb, long undisturbed
inside her. One of his elegant hands has come around to the
front of her body and he covers the breast he has not drawn
into his mouth, molding her, overwhelming her senses. She can
hear her own sighs and murmurs of encouragement as she urges
him to her other breast. She is bent backwards again, but
this time by the languidness of her own sensual desire.

His mouth falls away from her breasts and she feels him
kissing the skin of her abdomen, a trail of sparks against her
flesh. He picks her up and lays her on the bed. Everywhere
he touches her she is warm, finally feeling the cold of these
last weeks being banished by his hands and his mouth. He is
unhurried in his movements, seemingly content to listen to her
cry and whisper, legs and arms moving restlessly as he peels
her clothes from her. She feels the heat, but she wants it
everywhere, wants to feel the press of him against and inside
of her. He is maddeningly distracted by each bit of skin he
discovers; removing her sock and marveling at the fact that
her foot is only slightly larger than his hand, cradling it.

"Come here," she whispers, half-sitting up and reaching for
him. He strips his remaining clothes off and crawls into her
arms, his body flushed and ready for her. He bends down for a
kiss, his pelvis finally making contact with hers. "Here,"
she says, arching up under him and taking him in her hand. He
is resting his weight on his elbows, his hands cradling her
head as he kisses her hairline. When she grasps him in her
hand, his mouth opens in a silent groan and his head drops
down next to her. She can feel his ragged breath against her
skin. She kisses his temple and shifts lower in the bed,
urging him inside of her with a nudge of her pelvis against
the head of his rigid penis. He raises his head and looks
down at her with an expression of disbelief as she feels him
begin to slide into her body.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He moves his hands in her hair and her eyes flash up at him.
They are the colour of the darkest depths of the unfathomable
ocean just now, and he is sinking, sinking ... but this time he
knows exactly where he is, grounded in her. As he moves above
and within her, he is shedding the sorrow that has followed
him like a shadow all these years. He smiles at her, then
bends to kiss her, closing the circuit between them,
connecting to her in every way possible. He is spilling
outside of himself, the feelings in him too vast to be
contained.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She has never felt this way before, never had the sense of
sharing a skin with another person. She feels him moving
inside her and the last vestige of the coldness that has
resided in her for so long is melting, trickling away from
her, leaking out through her pores. All the cruelty that she
has seen, the horror of mundane and casual brutality, she had
encapsulated inside herself like a stone in her soul. The
weight of these things has been like an abscess, burning like
frostbite. She was sure that there would be no remittance
from this pain, that there was no force on earth strong enough
to drive out what has been done to her. Now, however, she is
being confronted by a form of elemental alchemy, transforming
her from something singular into something complex. She
raises her head to kiss him, needing to feed this feeling that
is building within her.

He is chanting to her now, words of love and promise pouring
out over each other urgently as he moves faster, compelling
her on with him. She tips her pelvis up to feel him more
sharply, pulling her legs higher. He groans at the new angle,
the sound a warning. The sight of him so close to ecstasy,
his face a grimace of pleasure, and the knowledge that this is
something he feels because of her, runs through her like a
wave and she finds herself right on the edge. He whispers
that he loves her, loves her, loves her and she knows that it
is true, knows that it is forever, then she feels the heat as
she surges out of herself in a blazing white hot flash. From
a distance, she can hear the sound of him groaning as he
erupts, another burst of heat inside her.

He is watching her when she opens her eyes and he bends to
kiss her, his hands cradling her head. He has tears in his
eyes but he is smiling, a mixture of pride and awe on his
face. He loves her and she can feel it radiating through her
everywhere. He is still supporting his weight on his
trembling arms, but she pulls him down on top of her, wrapping
her arms and legs around him. She wants him to feel this,
wants him to be aware of her surrounding him when she says the
words. She can feel his smile against her neck as she tells
him that she loves him, as she promises him forever.

As their bodies begin to cool, she realizes they are not
under the covers. He is a solid weight atop her, his
breathing steady and even. She rubs his back to rouse him
from his post-orgasmic daze. He kisses her as they part.
When they meet under the covers, she kisses him on the chest
before she turns, lying on her side. He curls around her, one
arm clasping her at the waist, the other tucked under the
pillow they are sharing. As she falls asleep, he is peppering
her neck with kisses.

She dreams that he is making love to her, his hands and his
mouth raining fields of tiny stars all around her. He is
pressing their radiant light under her skin, to keep her warm
forever.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

The ashes are dissipating as they drift along the cliff
face. Not many of them will make it to the sea. Fewer still
will settle on the rocks that stand lonely sentry against the
surging tide, far below. He has a sudden impulse to fling the
urn itself into the deep waters off the edge of the island but
he does not act upon it. He has wasted too much of his life on
impotent rage. He looks inside the urn. It is only an empty
vessel. She looks at him with a hesitant expression, as if she
is unsure about what to do next. He has let go of her hand to
complete his task. As the ashes dissolve in the mournful wind,
he claims her hand again and watches her as she looks out over
the ever-changing sea. After years of wandering and searching
for his family, he has finally come home.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

end

written and edited 2.00

Author's Extremely Long Notes:

The myths and tales that I relate in this story are part of
the Aquinnah Wampanoag oral tradition. The Aquinnah Wampanoag
(the People of the First Light) live on Martha's Vineyard
(Noepe), primarily in the up-island towns of Aquinnah
(formerly referred to as Gay Head), Chilmark and West Tisbury.

The character of Jacob Lester is based on the storyteller from
whom I first heard these tales. The fox lore (as Jacob says)
is not associated with the Wampanoag, but is more common to
the western tribal nations. The Celtic myth of Dana and the
minor corruption of the Greek myth of Danae that I obliquely
refer to are also consistent with historical renderings of
those ideas.

This story is one possible explanation of why Mulder is the
way he is: capable of seeing many worlds in one, accepting of
a multitude of ideas. Martha's Vineyard is an unusual place
to have grown up in. Its year-round population of about
15,000 people is surprisingly ethnically diverse for small
town, rural New England with the Wampanoag, Europeans and Cape
Verdeans intermingling for generations. It is a place of
striking beauty, full of fresh water ponds and bogs,
vineyards, forests and moors -- all surrounded by the
incredible ocean. It is impossible to describe how beautiful
Aquinnah actually is, but I tried to convey it to you.

The only factual error in this story that I am aware of is
this: there is no lifeguard at Aquinnah. It is, however, a
nude beach as are many of the up-island beaches on the
Vineyard.

Thanks to Suzanne for the editing, the structural assistance
and the general willingness to help me. Thanks to Miss Moe
for the back-up and the support.

Feedback to Anjou@rocketmail.com.