ODD DREAMS

If Marin knew what lay ahead of her, she might not have made the trip; but then again, she might have. Secretly thrilled to be in Cornwall, she was also exhausted. The trip from the northwestern corner of the United States to the southwestern tip of England had been a travel marathon. One more hour and she would reach her destination. Slouched in the front seat of an old tour bus, her dark blue mohair coat wrapped around her and her light brown hair a tousled mess, she watched the scenery slip by as if in a dream sequence. Pastures and hedgerows in all shades of green appeared and disappeared in the window frame of the bus. Mint-green field. Forest-green hedgerow. Kelly-green pasture. Beyond the tidy fields and hedgerows lay the highland moors, with patches of rusty green and burnt yellow.

Marin was headed to a resort on the scenic coast of Cornwall to attend her aunt's wedding. Ten years older than Marin, Trish had always seemed like an older sister rather than an aunt. Now Trish was about to marry into wealth—a lot of wealth. Trish, who had always been ostentatiously proper and pathologically competitive, wanted to share—or more likely show off—her good fortune. So Trish had invited twenty-five relatives and friends to spend a one-week vacation, all expenses paid, with her at a small seaside resort. The week would culminate with Trish's wedding to Franklin Farnsworth Deheubarth III and Trish's metamorphosis into Mrs. Franklin Farnsworth Deheubarth III. Being a mid-September wedding, the theme was "The Harvest." Marin smiled wryly as she reclined in the bus seat. Yes, Trish was definitely harvesting her man. Knowing her aunt Trish, Marin thought a Halloween wedding with the theme of "Trick or Treat!" would be more appropriate.

To get to this point on her journey, Marin had awakened at 4:00 a.m. on the previous day, taken a one-hour ferry ride from the island where she lived to the mainland, ridden an airport shuttle bus for three hours, navigated airport ticketing and security lines for another two hours, endured a monotonous ten-hour flight shoehorned into the heart of the economy section, anxiously waited an hour for her bags to appear, and now had spent five comatose hours on the bus with a brief rest stop somewhere along the way. At first there had been the white noise of babbling conversations as seatmates got to know each other, but now it was just the hum of the bus engine and the occasional shifting of gears. Marin had started to wonder if the effort to attend her aunt's wedding was worth it.

As much as Marin had dreaded the long trip, her pumpkin-colored bridesmaid dress, and some of her relatives, she was looking forward to the down time and introspective distance the trip would provide. Work had been incredibly busy that summer. As a freelance grant writer for several clients, she had pulled long days for weeks on end in order to meet deadlines. Now she was having second thoughts about a profession that kept her too busy to enjoy the brief Pacific Northwest summers. As if that weren't enough, she also taught a night class at the local community college. The heavy workload had left her exhausted and numb.

At age twenty-seven, Marin had also broken up with her first serious boyfriend since college. Duane left her for an old girlfriend who just happened to be visiting the small town where she and Duane lived. His ex-girlfriend had no reason to be in town other than to get reacquainted with Duane. Marin kept consoling herself that if he was the kind of guy who would dump her for a flirty ex, it was best she found out now. Marin stared at the dirty floor of the bus. It still hurt.

While Marin hoped to forget her ex and work, at least temporarily, she was also looking forward to spending a week by the sea; she loved the ocean. Her earliest childhood memories were of visiting her grandmother's beach house. She could recall running on the cool sand first thing in the morning when there was no one else on the beach, building sand forts that melted in the waves as the tide crept in, and collecting shells along the edge of the land, sea, and sky.

This one-week vacation on a foreign shore would make the grueling journey worth it. It would rejuvenate her. What made it even better was that her sister Genevieve, who was asleep in the seat behind her, had been able to join her. Gen was her best friend, and together they would be able to laugh at the gaudy bridesmaids' costumes and the other indignities of their aunt's wedding. While Gen was three years older than Marin, Gen's lighthearted nature made her appear to be the younger of the two. Marin peeked over the back of the seat at her sister. Gen was cocooned in a light blue overcoat; only the tangle of her strawberry-blonde hair was visible.

Marin turned back in her seat and studied the green landscape through the bus window. As an amateur plein air artist, she had brought her sketchbook, watercolor pencils, and oil pastels with her, hoping to capture the trip in drawings. Scenes reeled by under a gray, overcast sky, one pasture after another. This emerald-green field filled with cows the color of powdered cocoa. That one filled with puffy white sheep reminiscent of marshmallows. A crumbling stone house. More marshmallow sheep. A collapsed stone tower. Black-and-white ponies on a kelly-green field. No people. Where are the people? she wondered. More cows, dark chocolate this time. The dark-chocolate cows reminded Marin that she had not eaten anything since the stale breakfast sandwich on the airplane. She fished around in her backpack for a bag of chocolate raisins. As she sorted through toiletries, travel papers, and other trip necessities, she was vaguely aware that the bus was shifting into lower and lower gears as it labored up a hill. Finding the bag of chocolate raisins, she sat up just as the bus crested the hill. The sight that met her eyes made her sit up several inches taller.

An immense, shimmering silvery sea stretched to the horizon and merged with a watercolor sky in shades of blue and gray. Sunlight, streaming from rips in the clouds, created burnished patches of light on the lustrous moving surface of the water. On the horizon, curtains of rain hung from misty clouds. Where the land and sea met, a long strand of white beach curved between two promontories of charcoal-colored rock. Trapped between the white-sand beach and steep bluff that the bus was cresting was a mosaic of wetlands. Their sinuous channels of water snaked between the muddy brown banks of small islands matted with dark green rushes and sedges. Marin took a deep breath. Even the air had changed. The stale smell of rusty bus and damp earth was gone. Clean, salty air greeted her.

The thin, wizened bus driver with a face like a walnut noticed Marin's newfound interest in the scenery. Like any good tour bus driver dispensing bits of information, he volunteered, "The locals call it the Bay of Merrymaids—or Mermaids, as you call 'em."

"Why do they call it that?" Marin asked, stretching her neck to get a better view...