Treasures Lost, Treasures Found

formations that had existed under the sea for centuries. Kate discovered shapes and faces in them.
    No, she could never dive alone, Kate decided as Ky slowed his pace to keep rhythm with her more meandering one. It was so easy for her to lose her sense of time anddirection. Air came into her lungs with a simple drawing of breath as long as the tanks held oxygen, but the gauges on her wrist only worked if she remembered to look at them.
    Even mortality could be forgotten in enchantment. And enchantment could too easily lead to a mistake. It was a lesson she knew, but one that could slip away from her. The timelessness, the freedom was seductive. The feeling was somehow as sensual as the timeless freedom felt in a lover’s arms. Kate knew this pleasure could be as dangerous as a lover, but found it as difficult to resist.
    There was so much to see, to touch. Crustaceans of different shapes, sizes and hues. They were alive here in their own milieu, so different from when they washed up helplessly on the beach for children to collect in buckets. Fish swam in and out of waving grass that would be limp and lifeless on land. Unlike dolphins or man, some creatures would never know the thrill of both air and water.
    Her beam passed over another formation, crusted with barnacles and sea life. She nearly passed it, but curiosity made her turn back so that the light skimmed over it a second time. Odd, she thought, how structured some of the shapes could be. It almost looked like…
    Hesitating, using her arms to reverse her progress, Kate turned in the water to play her light over the shape from end to end. Excitement rose so quickly she grabbed Ky’s arm in a grip strong enough to make him stop to search for a defect in her equipment. With a shake of her head Kate warded him off, then pointed.
    When their twin lights illuminated the form on the ocean floor, Kate nearly shouted with the discovery. It wasn’t a shelf of rock. The closer they swam toward it the more apparent that became. Though it was heavily corroded and covered with crustaceans, the shape of the cannon remained recognizable.
    Ky swam around the barrel. When he removed his knife and struck the cannon with the hilt the metallic sound rang out strangely. Kate was certain she’d never heard anything more musical. Her laughter came out in a string of bubbles that made Ky look in her direction and grin.
    They’d found a corroded cannon, he thought, and she was as thrilled as if they’d found a chest full of doubloons. And he understood it. They’d found something perhaps no one had seen for two centuries. That in itself was a treasure.
    With a movement of his hand he indicated for her to follow, then they began to swim slowly east. If they’d found a cannon, it was likely they’d find more.
    Reluctant to leave her initial discovery, Kate swam with him, looking back as often as she looked ahead. She hadn’t realized the excitement would be this intense. How could she explain what it felt like to discover something that had lain untouched on the sea floor for more than two centuries? Who would understand more clearly, she wondered, her colleagues at Yale or Ky? Somehow she felt her colleagues would understand intellectually, but they would never understand the exhilaration. Intellectual pleasure didn’t make you giddy enough to want to turn somersaults.
    How would her father have felt if he’d found it? She wished she knew. She wished she could have given him that one instant of exultation, perhaps shared it with him as they’d so rarely shared anything. He’d only known the planning, the theorizing, the bookwork. With one long look at that ancient weapon, she’d known so much more.
    When Ky stopped and touched her shoulders, her emotions were as mixed as her thoughts. If she could have spoken she’d have told him to hold her, though she wouldn’t have known why. She was thrilled, yet running through the joy was a thin shaft of sorrow—for what was lost, she thought. For what she’d never be able to find again.
    Perhaps he knew something of what moved her. They couldn’t communicate with words, but he touched her cheek—just a brush of his finger over her skin. It was more comforting to her than a dozen soft speeches.
    She understood then that she’d never stopped loving him. No matter how many years, how many miles had separated them, what life she had she’d left with him. The time in between had been little more than existence. It was possible