In the open water, the spires’ protrusion was bizarre, suggesting a cavernous cathedral of the deep. Luce wondered how long ago the church had sunk, how deep it sat below.
The thought of diving down there in ridiculous goggles and mom-bought underwear made her shudder.
“This church must be huge,” she said. She meant I don’t think I can do this. I can’t breathe underwater. How are we going to find one small halo sunk in the middle of the sea?
“I can take you down as far as the chapel itself, but only that far. So long as you hold on to my hand.” Daniel extended a warm hand to help Luce stand up in the gondola. “Breathing will not be a problem. But the church will still be sanctified, which means I’ll need you to find the halo and bring it out to me.”
Daniel yanked his T-shirt off over his head, dropping it to the bench of the gondola. He stepped out of his pants quickly, perfectly balanced in the boat, then kicked off his tennis shoes. Luce watched, feeling something stir inside her until she realized she was supposed to be strip-ping down, too. She kicked off her boots, tugged off her socks, stepped out of her jeans as modestly as she could.
Daniel held her hand to help her balance; he was watching her but not the way she would have expected. He was worried about her, the goose bumps rising on her skin. He rubbed her arms when she slipped off her sweater and stood freezing in her sensible underwear in the gondola in the middle of the Venetian lagoon.
Again she shivered, cold and fear and indecipherable mass inside her. But her voice sounded brave when she tugged the goggles, which pinched, down over her eyes and said, “Okay, let’s swim.”
They held hands, just like they had the last time they’d swum together at Sword & Cross. As their feet lifted off the varnished floor of the gondola, Daniel’s hand tugged her upward, higher than she ever could have jumped herself—and then they dove.
Her body broke the surface of the sea, which wasn’t as cold as she’d expected. In fact, the closer she swam beside Daniel, the warmer the wake around them grew.
He was glowing.
Of course he was. She hadn’t wanted to voice her fears about how dark and impassible the church would be underwater, and now she realized, as ever, that Daniel was always looking out for her. Daniel would light her way to the halo with the same shimmery incandescence Luce had seen in many of the past lives she’d visited. His glow played off the murky water, folding Luce inside it, as lovely and surprising as a rainbow arching boldly in a black night sky.
They swam down, holding hands, bathed in violet light. The water was silky, silent as an empty tomb.
Within a dozen feet, the sea became darker, but Daniel’s light still illuminated the ocean for several feet around them. A dozen feet more and the façade of the church came into view.
It was beautiful. The ocean had preserved it, and the glow of Daniel’s glory cast a haunting violet sheen on its quiet old stones. The pair of spires above the surface punctuated a flat roof lined with stone sculptures of saints. There were panels of half-decayed mosaics depicting Jesus with some of the apostles. Everything was thick with moss and crawling with sea life: tiny silver fish flitting into and out of alcoves, sea anemones jutting out from the depictions of miracles, eels slipping out of crannies where ancient Venetian bodies used to be. Daniel stayed beside her, following her whim, lighting her way.
She swam around the right side of the church, peering through busted stained-glass windows, always eyeing the distance back up to the surface, to air.
At about the point that she’d expected, Luce’s lungs began to strain. But she wasn’t ready to go up yet. They’d only just made it down to where they could see what looked like the altar. She gritted her teeth and bore the burn a little longer.
Holding his hand, she peeked inside one of the windows near the church’s transept. Her head and shoulders ventured in and Daniel flattened as much as he could against the wall of the church to light the inside for her.
She saw nothing but rotting pews, a stone altar split in two. The rest was shadowed, and Daniel couldn’t get any closer to give her more light. She felt a tensing in her lungs and she panicked—but then, somehow, it released, and she felt as if she had a luxurious expanse of time before the tension and panic would return. It was as if there were breathing thresholds, and Luce could pass through a few of them before things would get really dire. Daniel watched her, nodding, as if he understood that she could go on a little longer.
She swam past one more former window, and something golden gleamed in a sunken corner of the church.
Daniel saw it, too. He swam to her side, careful not to press inside the church. He took her hand and pointed at it. Only the tip of the halo was visible. The statue itself looked as if it had sunk through a collapsed portion of the floor. Luce swam closer, clotting the air before her with bubbles, unsure how to wrest it free. She couldn’t wait any longer. Her lungs blazed. She gave Daniel the sign to go up.
He shook his head.
When she flinched in surprise, he pulled her fully outside the church and took her in his arms. He kissed her deeply, and it felt so good, but—
But no, he wasn’t just kissing her. He was breathing air into her lungs. She gasped in his kisses, felt the pure air flow into her, sustaining her lungs just when they felt like they would burst. It was as if he had an endless supply and Luce was greedy for as much as she could get.
Their hands searched each other’s almost naked bodies, as filled with passion as if they were kissing purely for pleasure. Luce didn’t want to stop. But they only had eight days. When at last she nodded that she was sati-ated, Daniel grinned and pulled away.
They returned to the tiny opening where the window used to be. Daniel swam to it and stopped, directing his body to face the opening so his glow would shine in to light her way. She squirmed slowly through the window, feeling instantly cold and senselessly claustrophobic inside the church. That was strange, because the cathedral was huge: Its ceilings were a hundred feet high, and Luce had the place all to herself.
Maybe that was the problem. On the other side of the window Daniel seemed too far away. At least she could see the angel up ahead—and Daniel’s glow just outside. She swam toward the golden halo, gripped it in her hands. She remembered Daniel’s instructions, and she turned the halo as if she were steering a Grey-hound bus.
It didn’t budge.
Luce gripped the slick halo harder. She rocked it back and forth, putting all the strength she had into it.
Ever so slowly, the halo creaked and shifted a centimeter to the left. She strained again to make it budge, sending out bubbles of exasperation. Just as she began to feel exhausted, the halo loosened, turned. Daniel’s face filled with pride as he watched her and she watched him, their gazes intertwined. She was barely even thinking about her breath as she strained to unscrew the halo.
It came off in her hands. She yelped with delight and admired its impressive heft. But when she looked up at Daniel, he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was gazing upward, far in the distance.