20 April 2021
Fiction
3087 words
Did you wonder if I was dead, when you first saw me there on the beach?
Did you even notice me lying in the sand? You looked like you were waiting for me on the second day; standing still at the shoreline, staring fixedly in my direction – I assume you must’ve seen me and were waiting for me. Or were you as surprised as I was?
I did actually wake up on that first day, but you wouldn’t have known that. As soon as I shifted in the sand I felt waves of pain, all over. Aches from head to toe, battered bones, the kind of headache that makes you cradle your head in your arms. Moving was a mistake. My face felt so battered I don’t think I could’ve opened my eyes if I’d wanted to, but my lids still glowed red in the blazing light. And the heat, every bit of my skin that wasn’t already stinging felt scorched. I’ll just lie here, I thought, as I passed out again, in the sand and the heat and the glare. Maybe you were worried about me, lying in the sun like that, slowly burning. But you probably thought I was dead, I expect.
I wonder if you saw me get up that first night and stumble into the brush, or did you just look over at some point and notice me missing? Did you spend all night on the beach to watch over me? I think you like the nights. There’s something about the way you sit by the glowing ashes of your fire, draped in woven grasses, looking up at the glittering universe. It seems cosy from where I am. I hated that first night though, I couldn’t believe how cold it was. I wanted to start a fire but felt too broken and disorientated to do anything more than find fresh water and collapse again. Surprising how badly I wanted to sleep after being unconscious for most of the day.
Fresh water was thankfully easy to find; I could see a stream coming from out of the treeline and trickling into the sea. It wasn’t much but I followed it up to a large pool under a head-height waterfall. You must have a spring as well, otherwise you wouldn’t be alive. Unless you’ve figured out a way to take the salt out of the seawater? I doubt you have the tools for that though; apart from things you’ve made out of grass and palm fronds, and the clothes you washed up in, I’ve never seen you with anything. Just as empty handed as I am.
You definitely seemed to be waiting for me on the second day though, the way you started waving at me as soon as you saw me. That’s how I spotted you; a tiny bit of movement in the corner of my eye. You could’ve been a breaker – I think that’s what the white foam at the crest of a wave is called – but you still managed to catch my attention. You kept waving until I waved back, then your arms fell to your side and we both just stood there. Then you shouted to me, I think. You put your arms up and your hands either side of your mouth, but at that distance, and over the sounds of the endless waves and the chattering of the birds and the wind in the palm fronds behind me, I couldn’t hear a thing. So I tried, I cupped my hands and I yelled so loud and so long that little lights danced in my eyes and I was out of breath. But you didn’t move, and I knew you couldn’t hear me either. And then you sort of crumpled, and just sat there in the sand and I knew just how hopeless you would’ve felt.
I’m still trying to figure out who you are. I did think that maybe you’d been here a lot longer, but it looks like your clothes are in the same dishevelled and torn but-not-yet-completely-ruined state as mine. You must’ve been on the boat, there’s no other way you could’ve got here. I wasn’t aware anyone else had gone overboard that night, unless the entire boat was sunk. Is that what happened? I know the storms where we were have been getting worse, more unpredictable. Did you swim for safety as the boat went down?
At this distance I can’t tell anything about you. I tried putting my fingers together to make a tiny triangle to see through – I don’t remember where I learnt that, but it’s supposed to refract the light or something, bring things into sharper focus, and it apparently works best if you have distorted corneas like I do. It barely made a difference. You’re just a tiny figure on a distant island, the sole inhabitant and monarch of your own little realm.
You’ve never tried swimming over to me, so you either can’t swim or you can, and you’ve been in these waters before and know all about the jellyfish. I guess that would’ve been when you went overboard. Or down with the ship, if it was sunk. I woke up covered in painful welts on that first day. I didn’t know how I’d gotten them at first but when I saw the clouds of little pink blobs floating in the sea I suddenly had a memory of choking on salt water and feeling a hundred stabbing stings all over me. I’m not the strongest of swimmers but the sea is fairly calm and even though it’s a long distance, I think it would be swimmable if I took it slow and steady. But not through swarms of jellyfish.
I did worry about sharks when I first thought about trying to reach you, but I’ve never seen a sign of them. In fact, I’ve never seen any indication that these waters have anything in them other than plastic and those jellyfish. My island has a lagoon to the south, where two coral reefs stretch out like arms, almost in a complete circle, and the shallow waters between them are crystal clear. But there’s no life there; the coral’s bleached white like bone, and there’s not even any algae floating around. Just an empty lagoon and, beyond the coral boundaries, the jellyfish. Then, of course, there’s your island, just like mine, then nothing but open sea to the horizon.
You must have a lagoon too. You swim in the sea most days, but always close to the shoreline, back and forth. I was too scared to go back in the water at first, not until enough time had passed that my scars had healed and I was certain the jellyfish never came in the lagoon. Then I joined you, wading into the warm waters and splashing around. You’re always more of a lap swimmer though. Back and forth, back and forth. When I tried it, swimming from one side of the lagoon to the other as fast as I could, I came up at the end and turned, saw you watching me. You held your arms up above your head and clapped. I think you were proud of me, like I’d started to take my exercise seriously. I stood up in the shallows and bowed in your direction, watched as you launched forward and swam across your little lagoon. At the end you stood and we caught our breath together, then you raised your hand up, punched the air one, two, three times, and dived into the water again. There was a second before I realised you wanted to race. I dived in too, swam as hard as I could across the lagoon and hauled myself out of the water to find you already stood up, waiting for me. I applauded you for your victory, you waved to the imaginary crowds cheering you on, and I laughed and I cried. I wanted to reach out to you so badly then, to give you a high five and say well done, and thank you, because for the moment I feel a little less alone, a little less hopeless. We race a few more times and you win each one. Maybe your lagoon is smaller than mine.
I think we both feel that there’s more to it than just a fun exercise though, like we need to train ourselves to get through this. Every now and then I see you slowly wade out into the shallows on a different part of the island, and crouch down until you’re submerged up to your neck, before you suddenly leap up and hurriedly turn back to the beach. When I realise that maybe you’re trying to get yourself used to the jellyfish stings, I try and do the same. But it’s awful. I don’t know how badly you were stung, or maybe they affect you less, but I felt red hot pain for days after I washed up. It’s hard to face that again.
We’ve settled into other routines too, besides our regular races. We tend to stick to set meal times now, which I like. In the early days I just ate whenever I was hungry. I’m not sure when or where you ate but you probably did what I did – eat wherever the food was found. I assume you have pretty much the same plants on your island. I eat most of the fruits available, and all the seeds and nuts I can gather. I’ve practiced climbing the palm trees so much I can practically run up them to get a coconut. And that grain that grows in the meadows, I’ve been harvesting that and trying to figure out how to make bread. I haven’t had much joy yet. I don’t eat the seabirds that nest here – it seems like too much effort to hunt or trap any and I actually quite like them, although they’re poor company. I guess I’m vegan now.
You’ve had more culinary success, I think. After I started eating on the beach, you joined me pretty quickly. Some days I watch you build a little fire, wrap something in a broad leaf and place it in the embers, then take it out and scoop it up to eat. I can’t see what you use though, maybe a coconut half? That’s what I’d use. But I can’t figure out what you’re cooking though. I’ve tried everything, I built a big fire and baked one of each of the fruits I think are safe to eat, and they’re…fine. Maybe you have something on your island I don’t, or maybe I’m missing a step. Maybe you just really like baked fruit more than I do. I’m just happy we get to eat together now.
The days can still feel pretty empty though. If there was wood maybe I could occupy myself with projects, build things I need, like a little shelter so I wasn’t sleeping under palm fronds every night. Maybe one of us could’ve built a raft by now, and rowed across the sea so we could be together. We could live on your island, and then take holidays on mine. But the only trees here are palm trees, and I have no way of chopping one down. I keep waiting for an old one to just fall, so I could haul it to the sea. Do palm trees float that well?
I can tell it bothers you too sometimes. I’ve learnt to read you fairly well. Some days, if you’re in a good mood, you do cartwheels on the beach, or we race on the sand, 50 large paces measured out between the start and finish lines. You’re not so active on bad days. I watched you try to build a raft once: you spent so long painstakingly lashing together the thickest parts of the bushes that grow everywhere, but it didn’t work, and you tore at it in frustration until you’d ripped apart the whole thing. I feel like that too sometimes, when the hope seems to drain away.
We don’t race each other in the sea any more. The jellyfish invaded my lagoon, and they must’ve done yours too because you don’t ever swim now either. We both still occasionally take a dip with the jellyfish to try and shock-proof ourselves, but I don’t know that that will ever work, and I think the sea levels must be rising. The ghostly reef seems deeper, and my beach seems a little smaller. When the tide’s at its highest there’s actually not much beach at all.
What happens if it keeps on rising? I can’t see your island when I’m in amongst the palm trees and the bushes and grasses. Both our islands have small rocky hills in the centre, mini mountains that I think are maybe old extinct volcanoes. I called mine Mt Everest; it’s the tallest peak in my world, just as your mountain is in yours. Some days we watch each other from the rocky peaks, but is that all we’ll have left? Or will we have to clear some of the brush so we have space to build campfires and race each other on the sand?
Until we lose the beaches I want to keep dancing with you. Those are the days when everything feels a little less hopeless, when the distance between us seems irrelevant. I danced on the sand to an old song I half remembered, waving my arms and twisting my legs and spinning and ducking and diving. You stood and watched me, and when I finished and looked up you threw yourself into a dance and I loved you then, in some indefinable, immovable way, and then I danced too, and we danced to the sound of the waves until we collapsed in the sand. We taught each other new moves after that, and came up with our own routine. We would’ve had a secret handshake in another life, I’m sure of it. One we secretly practiced for hours so it seemed effortless.
Will I ever find out what music you listen to in your head when we dance? Do we even speak the same language? It seems like a lifetime ago now, my memories becoming a bit hazier as time goes on, but there were all sorts of people on the boat, lots of languages and dialects, so maybe we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other. I don’t know if that matters? We have our own way of communicating now though – it seems like we can read each other despite the distance between us, despite everything keeping us apart.
It’s clear now that the waters are definitely rising, so our dancing days are numbered. Unless we clear some of the brush away. There’s a swathe of tall grasses I could clear, a meadow almost, and they’re no good to eat. They’re only useful for making into rope and I don’t have much use for that. I waited for you on what’s left of my beach; I was going to start clearing some and hope you got the same idea. But you didn’t show up.
I thought it was one of those bad days, those hopeless days when it’s hard to even get up, and that maybe you’d stayed on the other side of the island, or in the central region somewhere, but you didn’t show up on the beach the next day, or the day after that. I started to panic. I waded into the sea a short distance but those evil little jellyfish swarmed and I turned back. I don’t know what’s happened to you, maybe you toppled off your mountain or had a heart attack or one of those palm trees finally fell and it fell right on top of you, but I can’t help you, I can’t get to you. I didn’t know what to do and I’d never felt so alone, so I just sat there and wept. And then suddenly you came out of the treeline, a little unsteadily, but then you turned a cartwheel in the sand and I knew you were okay, and I laughed and shouted and turned cartwheels in return.
You know those low-growing berries, the ones that look almost like small red blackcurrants? When I tried a tiny nibble of one it made me ill, so I never ate them – except for one time when I nearly ate a whole handful of them by mistake. I think I just stopped paying attention after a while. Is that what happened with you?
The beach is now completely gone. Even at low tide the sea is lapping at the tree
line, and at high tide it’s flooding the edge of forest. The grasses in the meadows there are dying off. You’ve left the beach and settled now on your mountain, just above the trees so I can still see you and you me. But you don’t move around as much as you used to, and when you do it’s only small, weak movements, like everything takes so much more effort than it did before. When you didn’t show up on the beach for three days I thought perhaps you’d just been a bit ill, but since moving to the mountain I’ve realised you haven’t fully recovered. Or maybe you’ve just given up hope.
But I haven’t. I’m coming to you. All those thousands of shocks I’ve endured, every sting, maybe they have prepared me for this after all. And if I wrap myself in palm fronds and broad leaves and woven grass, if I cover myself from head to toe so barely any skin is left exposed, maybe I can get to you. It hampers my movement in the water, but it’s worth it if it gives me some protection. As I swim out I’m surrounded by clouds of floating pink jellyfish, but they can’t reach me through the leaves.
I watch the ghostly reef glide underneath me before I feel the first sting, on my ankle where the leaves are coming loose. It hurts, but I can see you on your mountain, standing at the edge of an outcrop, watching me. I keep my eyes fixed on you as I swim, and the leaves are pulled away one by one in the tug of the currents, and the jellyfish swarm, and I’m stung again and again. But I can barely feel them now.
There is nothing but the waves and you.
btverran{PROOFREADING} 