The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

by Jillian Webster

  “Lucas?”

  “I’m here.”

  She turns towards the sound of his voice, but she can’t see a thing. Despite herself, her hand searches along the soggy terrain for his.

  When she finds it, she is surprised at how tightly he grabs hold.

  And he does not let go.

  Thirty-Five

  Loose scraps of rubble shuffle just beyond the black abyss of Maia’s closed eyes. Sharp pains resonate from both her lower back and calf. She’s contorted awkwardly; the side of her face digs into the layers of debris and sand while her lower half has twisted into the fetal position. She slides her arm out from under her hip, grimacing from more bruises, no doubt, protesting from the underside of her body. Bruises from falling into thick layers of garbage blanketing the ocean. Falling from the ship she’s fought so desperately for months to stay alive on.

  The ship she willfully jumped from.

  More shuffling.

  She has been awake for a few minutes now, reluctant to open her eyes and face the grim reality of her situation. Seagulls call from their circles in the sky and savagely squawk at one another from the heap.

  Whatever is next to her face twitches again. She can’t open her eyes just yet. Not yet. The early morning sun is so warm on her body. She savors the heat, trying in vain to ignore the growing threat of its intensity while still being so low in the sky.

  Maia’s eyes flutter open and are met with the curious glare of a small sand crab. She is momentarily stunned; she was sure these didn’t exist anymore. His two seedy black eyes extend like antennae from his knobbed shell the color of pale lemon. A permanent grimace stretches across his white face. His claws rest before him on the amalgam of sand and plastic. A few pieces of debris litter his thin, almost translucent shell. A speck of sand is stuck to his left eye. Sand?

  Maia sits up and the crab scurries off sideways in a panic. She surveys the spot she spent the night sleeping on, the netting beneath her now mostly dry. The thick layer of debris once swaying with the waves now appears solid. She grabs a small pipe and stabs it into the layers of garbage. Solid.

  Shielding her eyes from the sun, she scans the gruesome scene laid out before her, feeling her heart break into more pieces than this Great Pacific Garbage Patch could ever hold. Even though she has witnessed the decaying span from both above and below, the shock from where she stands is no less deplorable. The stench of a dead bird wafts towards her and she stares at it through the blur of her tears. Its matted body decaying, its left wing is broken—wrapped in a clear plastic twine.

  He was right. Her grandfather warned her about this world, but she went anyway. And now she is stuck with a stranger on an island of garbage.

  Off in the distance, Lucas is stumbling around, shifting and wobbling on the uneven ground like a toddler just learning to walk. He has a black rubber boot on one foot and a faded blue sandal on the other. A small collection of shoes is piled in a netted bundle on his back. He leans over and pokes into the rubbish with a long plastic tube, pulling an old buoy from the mound. He tosses it into a pile of other buoys as he stumbles towards her.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks as he approaches.

  Maia quickly wipes the tears from her eyes. She gathers her hair and wraps it high into a knotted bun, her back beneath already drenched in sweat.

  “I’m okay … considering.” She looks around. “Are we on land?”

  “Looks like it. I think we’re on an old flooded island somewhere around Hawaii. I think. A lot of islands in this area that used to be inhabited are now mostly underwater except for a few. And even some of those only exist during low tide when small slivers of land pop back out of the ocean. That would explain why last night this mound got thicker—it’s sloping up the coast to a small patch of land. And why we were floating last night and now we’re not. I think we stopped just in the tidal zone. It drops off again just over there.

  “Here.” He chucks the bundle of shoes towards her. “I’ve found these. Sort through and find something for your feet. Some of this rubble is sharp.”

  Maia surveys his finds. Some of the boots are way too big, the shoes too small, the sandals too broken. Eventually, she sorts out a large sneaker with a thick rubber bottom and something called a “Croc,” according to the branded imprint, which fits her right foot perfectly. She grabs a reflective red shard and scrapes off the crustaceans stuck to the bottom and inside the sole, leaving a slimy layer she is all too happy to ignore considering she now has something to protect her feet.

  She slowly stands, half-expecting to fall through. But just as Lucas said, the ground is solid. Half-dry. She, too, seems to have mostly dried out. The only remaining dampness is on her chest and left hip where she was curled on the ground.

  Shielding her eyes again, she scans the area. The rubbish moves with the ocean waves, lapping against the mound where they now stand. A few bits and pieces shift in sporadic bursts across the land, more sand crabs she can only assume. A bird coasts in the breeze above.

  Maia’s empty stomach roars in protest, and her mouth is dry as a bone. She looks over to Lucas. His face is somehow more alarming than it was yesterday. New hues of purple and red swirl around his swollen eye.

  She flashes him a sympathetic look. “What are we going to do?”

  For a while, he can only shake his head as he examines the wreckage. He lifts his hand to shield his eyes, flinching when grazing his broken brow. He notes for the first time the cuts and bruises across his knuckles. “We’re alive, aren’t we?” he finally mumbles without looking up.

  A few seagulls rest on one leg near the shore.

  “Think we could fashion something to get one of those birds?” Maia asks.

  “Like what?” Lucas chucks some rope in a pile. “And cook it how? Even if we could start a fire, we’d poison ourselves from the melted plastic.”

  “There must be a way. There’s always a way,” she says while scanning the litter.

  “I saw a few crabs wandering about. I tried chasing them but couldn’t move fast enough on all this shit.” He kicks a broken skeleton of a computer monitor.

  Maia looks up to the sky. “We should probably think about water. And shelter. We’re definitely far from New Zealand. The day has barely begun and it’s roasting.”

  “So, it was New Zealand, then? That’s where you joined us?”

  “Yes.”

  He nods, staring at her with blank eyes as if computing something in his head. He quickly snaps out of it. “Yes, it’s going to be really hot from here on out, we’ve moved much closer to the equator. And it’s summer season over here, versus your winter.” He shakes his head. “I understand the temperatures are not always that cool where you’re from, but it was so refreshing. And beautiful. Why the hell would you want to leave that?”

  Maia picks up an old water bottle, covered in grime and lumps of green moss. “Considering the predicament I’ve landed in, I’m not so sure how to answer that right now.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before. You want to go to The Old Arctic Circle.” He chuckles as he shakes his head.

  Maia looks at him in dismay, slighted by his blatant cockiness. “I’m not sure why you’re mocking me, but I don’t need your judgment right now.”

  He raises his hands in a gesture of truce. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be—I’m just a bit shell-shocked right now.”

  Maia pulls another bottle from the sand. A large hole has broken through the top. Annoyed, she tosses it back to the ground.

  “Let’s start over. I’m Lucas … you know that already. I am from Brazil. I joined the ship a few years ago.”

  “Why? You always wanted to be a pirate?”

  He shrugs, ignoring her jab. “I guess I needed to start over. When I saw Davies’s ship come in, I didn’t know where they were going or where they came from. I didn’t care. I just knew I needed to go with them.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “So, you were running—t
hat’s why you left?”

  “Not exactly. I was alone. I guess a part of me was running … that’s another story. But I’ve always felt called to The Old Arctic Circle, even before I knew it existed.”

  “But you know nothing about it.”

  “I know enough.”

  They stand apart, staring at each other with words hovering on their tongues, unwilling to release them. She can’t quite read this man, the look of frustration across his face. It’s clear he’s holding something back, but what, she can’t figure out.

  Lucas finally looks away. “Let’s get our water sorted.”

  They search the rubble in silence, sifting through the shredded mess for any solid bottles with lids intact. Maia keeps her distance until she has an armful, careful to avoid the shoreline, a difficult task as land and sea blend into one continual expanse.

  She wanders over and drops her bounty of bottles next to Lucas, who is working on cutting the bottom off a large bottle with a triangular metal shard. Maia unties her knife from her leg and offers it to him. He stops sawing at the plastic and looks at the covered blade. He flashes her a humbled smile.

  She returns to her search, stopping every so often to watch him. He cuts off the bottom of each bottle and folds in the rims to form a deep lip around the inner circumference. Then he rips off the lower half of his pant legs and cuts the fabric into pieces, soaking the strips in leftover puddles of stagnant seawater and placing each inside makeshift vessels he’s found around the island. After lining them up, he places the bottles carefully over the top of them. He stands and surveys the lot with a look of uncertainty across his swollen face.

  He looks up to meet her gaze and his hardened demeanor softens. “With the heat of this sun, we hopefully won’t have to wait long before these condense fresh water to drink. It won’t be much but it’ll be something.”

  Maia drags a tattered blue tarp over to Lucas and drapes it over her head. “We should build some sort of shelter.”

  “We should. I’m just not sure yet how far up this tide goes. I think we’ll have some land left up there but I cannot be sure. If we lose it, we will have wasted precious energy building something the tide will come in and destroy.”

  Maia follows his gaze up the mound of garbage behind them. The blanket of debris slopes up the coast to what seems to be a small hill. “Well then … maybe we should build a boat.”

  Lucas inspects a moss-covered buoy, then glances at her from the corner of his eye. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Thirty-Six

  Another bead of sweat glides off the tip of Lucas’s nose as he whittles a piece of driftwood into nothing. Maia watches quietly from the corner of her eye. A delicate shaving of wood falls in a curl to the ground. She swipes the pile of scraps and adds them to their kindling.

  He’s taking it too far.

  She goes back to securing a small rope through the slivered end of a plastic rod, then ties it to the other side, forming a loose bow. They have already carved a small plank from driftwood with a triangular sliver cut from the side where the spindle will sit. They have even found a clunky piece of coconut shell to protect Lucas’s hand from the friction. Now that she has fastened a bow, all they need is the spindle and they can work on making a fire.

  Lucas continues to carve. His face is intense, focused. His jaw clenched. His eyes are far away, like he’s in another world.

  “Lucas.”

  Carve. Carve. Carve.

  More shavings fall to the ground. She bites her tongue. He’s going to ruin it.

  “Lucas, I think it’s good.”

  Carve, carve, carve.

  Driftwood is scarce on this island—every piece matters.

  “There will be nothing left … if you … Lucas!”

  The top snaps off. He drops his head, then whips the stick across the mound.

  Maia stands, unimpressed. She tosses her bow into the pile.

  Lucas grabs another small stick. “Were you not going to hunt for crabs?” he mumbles without looking up.

  Two days have passed since they crawled onto the shoreline of this tiny island and they’ve been hard at work. They’ve assessed the borderline of the tidal zone, which has left them a small sliver of island that does not submerge beneath the water. The only way to judge the shoreline is by the movement of rubbish on top of the lapping waves, so to make it easier, they’ve placed pole markers into the garbage to measure high and low tide.

  They’ve also dug out as many layers of rubbish as they could and have set up a small makeshift camp at the top of the hill. A hole dug deep into the sand is now filled with the wooden shavings from their bow drill. Behind it lies the tattered blue tarp, propped into an open tent where Lucas now huddles. An eclectic assortment of old water bottles are condensing water in the midday sun. It’s a slow process but steady. They’ve already successfully gained a few decadent cups of water each.

  A substantial pile of netting and buoys wait next to their camp, along with detergent bottles, petrol cans, a few large pieces of driftwood, slabs of plastic, deflated rubber tires—anything that could be condensed and tied together to form a raft. They’ve even started a pile of lids for the lidless bottles, finding that with thousands of tops around, there is sure to be one that fits. It must float, and it must seal. These are the only requirements.

  Maia slides on a pair of mismatched rubber boots and grabs some netting, heading back onto the beach. Every step must be methodical. An infection from a single cut could kill. She piles a few more buoys and a jug into her netted pack and then drops the bundle to the ground. The heat is overwhelming. She wipes her forehead with the back of her arm and arches her aching back. She and Lucas lock eyes. Again. He looks away.

  This has been their day, watching each other in silence. Glances, eyes meeting before one of them turns away. No words. No smiles. Last night they passed out on top of the rubble with their backs towards each other, with some sort of unspoken affliction growing between them. Mostly from Lucas, and Maia could feel it … whatever it was, rolling off him like steam. Some sort of weird conglomeration of sadness and anger. Possibly attraction too, but she just can’t read him. They’ve known each other for months, yet are complete strangers.

  Lucas has finished his spindle. She watches him with the bow drill. The cord is tightly wrapped once around the spindle and he saws back and forth, constant and methodical. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, grinding the spindle into the small wedge in the plank. All he needs is a little dust to catch fire and he can drop it onto the kindling.

  Maia’s stomach growls. It’s certainly not easy to hunt for crabs, especially as she’s never done it before, but she’s comfortable with the patience and stillness required. She wades out into the soggy tidal zone where she knows they are hiding.

  Two antennae pop up from the rubble, next to a square container labeled “Tupperware.” She shifts each boot into the layers of scraps, careful to be as quiet as she can, and makes her way closer. Now she waits. Slowly crouching down, she watches the spot where the crab hides below.

  Her eyes flicker up to meet Lucas’s. This time he does not look away. He looks pensive, almost sad.

  The rubble moves, stealing Maia’s attention. The crab sits just beneath a clear shred of a tarp. Maia moves like lightning. Grabbing the crab by its back foot, she whacks it against a large container, temporarily stunning it. She chucks it into her net. Food. She proudly looks up, but Lucas is no longer watching.

  Within a few hours, Maia has a full net of squirming, wriggling crabs.

  A large wave pushes a pile of rubbish against their high-tide marker. She picks up Lucas’s broken spindle, slipping and sliding through the wreckage back up to the tarp where Lucas continues to work unsuccessfully on building a fire.

  “It’s high tide,” Maia says as she approaches.

  “I know.”

  “I got us some food.”

  “I know.”

  She proudly sets her bag of crabs next to h
im but he doesn’t look up. She clears her throat. “Lucas, I never thanked you for saving my life.”

  Exasperated, he sets down the bow. “What are you talking about?”

  She is taken aback. “On … the boat. With that man … Bode. I can’t imagine how horrific that could have turned out.”

  Lucas doesn’t speak. He picks up the bow and begins to drill again, faster and faster as Maia talks.

  “And for the food. The blanket … the hot wat—”

  Lucas slams the bow back down and wipes the sweat from his brow. He looks up at her and says straight and stern, “I should have never said anything to you. I should have stayed out of it. I should have kept my head down. Now we are both going to die.”

  She is stunned. He’s clearly angry … and at her. “Because of me … right? Is that what you’re saying? This is all my fault?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. You didn’t force me to do anything. This is my fault. I made the decision to go down there, in the middle of the day … to see you.” Their eyes meet. “And Bode followed me.” He looks back to the ground and starts to saw the bow. “If it were not for me, you would still be on that boat,” he says through gritted teeth. Sweat drips off his nose onto the rubble. “No one would have ever known you were there.” He looks up at her, his eyes pained. “I didn’t save you, Maia. I handed you a death sentence.”

  “If it weren’t for you, I would have slowly starved to death in that closet. Or gotten really sick. You saved me.”

  Lucas shakes his head.

  Maia doesn’t move. “Lucas?”

  He continues shaking his head.

  “Lucas—”

  “And after all that … how could you jump off that boat?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “You are right; you didn’t think.”