The Thousand Year Beach

by TOBI Hirotaka

  “Come on, this way! Hurry up!”

  Still gripping Jules’s shoulders, Julie dragged him with her as she turned toward the Spider and ran. They rolled under it, just barely making it through its legs. The flailing Spider lost its balance and brought its legs down heavily on the ground to keep from falling.

  “Get behind me!” Julie shouted to Jules, starting to cry. Her knees were shaking so hard they almost knocked together. For all that, she remained in control of herself. “Out of the way, now! Behind me!”

  They faced the Spider, the cliff at their backs. The hunger howled at them stronger than ever. The tension of a predator about to seize its prey filled the Spider’s legs, right down to its claws.

  As they watched, the joint at the top of the spider popped open and a white liquid sprayed out. Reacting to contact with the air, it rained down on them.

  The Spider’s silk looked the same as the kind that came from the familiar little Spiders. Tangled up with itself, it came down on them as a sheet of webbing.

  Jules struggled desperately to free his arms, but the web was too strong to tear. It wrapped around his extremities, heavy as a wet sheet. Soon he would be unable to move at all.

  Julie was unfazed. She paid no attention to the web, even as it landed directly on top of her. She simply leaned forward slightly, holding Cottontail before her chest with both hands.

  “Julie, what are you doing? We have to run.”

  “Where to?”

  She was right. There was nowhere to escape to now. Behind them was a wall of rock; before them, the Spider.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she murmured to the Eye.

  Its fur of light rippled in response.

  “It’s not your fault. You grew up so big, ready to play outside, and now this happens.”

  She was planning to use Cottontail against the Spider.

  “I’m so sorry about dragging you into this mess all of a sudden.”

  Her murmuring voice dropped lower and lower as she concentrated, putting everything she had into the effort. The deeper the sympathetic connection she could establish with the Eye, the more effective her attack would be. Silk continued to rain down on them, but failed to break her concentration. Talking to Cottontail was a way of both maintaining concentration and arousing its sympathy.

  “Lend me your power. I won’t pretend I only want a little. I want everything you have. Save us.”

  Her gentle, stroking voice enfolded the Eye. Its fur of light stood on end. It looked like a cornered and terrified baby animal.

  “Let’s drive that monster away together, you and me. Don’t worry. I know you can do it.”

  The cloud cover was dense. It was as dark as night where they were. The only brightness lay in the palms of Julie’s hands, and only her two eyes, illuminated by that light, were alive.

  The Spider paused for a moment, apparently sensing something interesting about the light from Cottontail, but eventually shook itself as if with disgust; a moment later, it had already closed the distance between them. Unbelievable agility.

  What happened next? At least three things, all in the blink of an eye.

  First, the Sands soared fiercely into the air. This despite the absence of any wind. They tore the Spider’s web to shreds, then whipped themselves into a spiral, forming—for just an instant—a tornado of sand between the two of them and the Spider. Some power other than wind had been wielded and stored there; the Sands made it visible, the way iron filings showed lines of magnetic force.

  Next, Cottontail went into action. Its fur of light withdrew, and its mineral skin twinkled as it absorbed something reflected in it.

  Finally, the Spider vanished. Just like the rock the Spider itself had eaten, it simply disappeared, instantly and without a sound.

  By the time the tunnel of sand had crumbled and fallen, it was all over.

  “Thank you,” Julie said to Cottontail.

  Jules understood very well what had happened. He grasped the mechanism by which the Spider had been erased—which even Julie probably did not understand correctly—as clearly as if he were seeing it before him. His mind raced furiously, assembling and dismantling strategies for fighting the Spiders.

  They had to survive. The Spiders would soon be here en masse … Could they be stopped?

  “We have to go,” said Julie, pulling her clothes back on. “If we don’t hurry, the town …”

  Jules looked up at the top of the cliff. Black smoke was rising in the distance beyond, in the exact direction of the center of town.

  “Mama …” Julie trailed off, smoothed the wrinkles out of her shift. Her mama had made it for her. “She’ll die.”

  Tears welled in Julie’s eyes, but her expression remained resolute.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Jules looked on the Singing Sands one more time.

  They were as silent as the grave. The sea, too, had turned the color of lead.

  Before long, the Spiders and their hunger would fall, blanketing the Realm of Summer like dark snow.

  Suddenly, Julie stopped in her tracks.

  “Tonight’s the chess tournament, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re entering?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Of course.”

  Julie wrapped Cottontail in her handkerchief and tied it to her forearm so as not to lose it.

  “Well,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Boy and girl ran toward the cliff.

  Tangent to the summer sea and the winter sky.

  Driftglass.

  The omnipotent Glass Eye.

  The phantasmal assembler.

  The controller of providence.

  No one even knew what it was like. There were only whispered rumors. It was one of the traditions that had been born in the Realm of Summer after the Grand Down. Yes—before the Grand Down, there had been no Glass Eyes at all in the Realm of Summer. What connected the two phenomena was unclear. The AIs couldn’t help but feel that the Glass Eyes were compensation for the vanished guests.

  The Grand Down had been an unusual shock. The world of the Costa del Número had been constructed as a virtual resort for their guests. So what if, one day, without any warning whatsoever, guests stopped coming? They knew nothing of why. There were rumors that the guests had completely died out, theories that the group operating the resort had gone bankrupt. Some claimed that the Realm was actually illegal and had been closed off after discovery by the authorities.

  There was no basis for any of these theories. They were more like fantasies than hypotheses. The fact was that the AIs didn’t know a thing about the physical, real world the guests called home. But there was one oddity that nobody could explain.

  Why did the Realm still exist? If it had been abandoned, who was keeping the power on?

  When the guests disappeared, the AIs felt both a sense of freedom and a sense of loss. In one sense, it was a change very much for the better. But it could not simply be called good fortune. The psychological makeup of the AIs, their mentality, depended on the guests at a deep level.

  Each Glass Eye was, during the painful period in which the AIs adjusted to the absence of the guests, a rare point of light.

  The first one had been discovered by a small child.

  The child had found the Eye at home in the garden, nestled in the birdhouse just like a bird’s egg.

  That Eye had spun out lines of pearly light like a silkworm. As cute as a quail’s egg, it eventually ended up in a glass display case in the mayor’s office.

  It was some time before the next Glass Eye would be found. It eventually turned up in an old chest of drawers in a house in the traditional rustic style—a small stone of purest blue, threaded somehow on a long-neglected strand of p
earls.

  Soon they were being found one after another. It was as if the whole Realm of Summer had become Treasure Island.

  People examined the roads, the hedges, the tips of every tree’s branches. They stirred the ashes in their ovens, flipped through the books in the library, crawled into grottoes in cliffs with the sea wind howling at their backs, giddy with the thrill of the search. They had all the time in the world on their grandes vacances, and hunting for Eyes was a pleasant enough diversion.

  Nobody tried to buy or sell them at inflated prices, or lock them away in vaults. There was no point. They were all out searching for Glass Eyes at that time, like children with butterfly nets, wanting only to discover and proudly exhibit new specimens. They praised each other’s collections, swapped finds, made donations to libraries and schools. Eyes were catalogued, classified, and exhibited by teachers and librarians trained in geology, art, and biology. The number who could use them grew, and the techniques grew more advanced.

  The richest vein of Glass Eyes ran along the coast.

  It was particularly easy to find high-quality Eyes in the sands of the beaches.

  Families, lovers, elderly couples: all flocked to the shore in the cool of morning, searching for precious jewels as if digging for clams.

  Yes—new Glass Eyes were always found in the morning.

  Eventually, from nowhere in particular emerged a rumor: Glass Eyes grew in the Singing Sands, taking shape there in the dead of night.

  That was around the same time that rumors of Driftglass began to circulate.

  Who had told them the rumor no one could remember. A family member, a friend, a lover—in any case, they had heard it from somebody. Attempts to retrace the rumor trail to its source were fruitless; no matter how far back you went, the answer was the same: “I know, right? I heard it from somebody too.”

  A Glass Eye that stood above all other Glass Eyes, containing all their powers within itself.

  A phantasmal assembler that could reconstitute the things and phenomena of the Realm at will.

  A providential controller that could access even the Realm’s fundamental parameters, intervening in the very laws of existence.

  Was it big or small? White or black? Nobody knew. It might not even have the same form as a Glass Eye.

  Glass Eyes that nobody had ever seen.

  A summer of absence, a thousand times over. A town where nothing and no one was new. These were what drove the feverish hunt for Eyes.

  They were something that nobody had ever seen.

  With everyone sifting dreams from the sands, the beaches soon ceased to be such a rich source of Eyes. It had been a long time now since the town had seen the sort of ecstatic excitement it had after the Crystal Chandelier had been fished out of a large tidal pool.

  Everyone had been sure it was Driftglass at the time, and quite reasonably so. But since nobody knew what Driftglass was like, they couldn’t say definitively that this was it. The farcical dilemma was resolved by the fact that the Crystal Chandelier was not Driftglass.

  The discovery of the Crystal Chandelier was a kind of peak after which the craze for Glass Eyes gradually faded, but the way the AIs felt about Glass Eyes themselves didn’t change.

  They thought: We received the Glass Eyes in exchange for losing the guests.

  And everyone wanted to know: why was it called Driftglass?

  Anne Cachemaille’s arms were equal to those of any man who fished these waters, from her tan to her tasteless tattoos to her biceps.

  Right now she had the sleeves of her crew-neck shirt rolled up to her shoulders as she sat on the cement landing place smoking a cigarette. She had finished cleaning up after the catch that had come in that morning and was now enjoying a break. She gazed at the gigantic rainclouds above. They had been amazing in the morning glow, she recalled, bright red as if on fire. And then the unforgettable beauty of the rose they turned afterward. I ain’t got much learning, but I bet José would call that intoxicating beauty, she thought.

  She took a drag and narrowed her eyes.

  Her crow’s feet were deeply carved. She had little time for so-called skin care, which in any case was no more use against the sun and salt wind she faced than a veil of gauze would have been. The ridge of her nose and her cheeks were scattered with sun spots and freckles. For a fisher, these were a badge of pride.

  Just a few minutes ago the landing place had been bustling with people come to carry away the morning’s catch, but it was quiet now, almost deserted, as if fallen for a moment between the cracks.

  The area around Anne was still lively, though, because of the children playing there. These were Anne’s children. The oldest was a girl of eight. Next came a six-year-old boy, then twin boys of four, then a girl of three. Then there were two more girls: a two-year-old and one not yet weaned. She was mother to all seven, and had given birth to none of them.

  Every one of them was adopted. Babies abandoned at birth by friends of friends, children that a fellow fisherman had been raising on his own until he died in a storm—after a while, it added up. For a thousand and fifty years, Anne was the only mother these children knew.

  Anne herself was unmarried. “Never been so hard up for men that I felt the need to marry one,” she would say.

  Her oldest girl was carrying the baby on her back. The twins were playing with the two-year-old and three-year-old. All under the watchful gaze of the sun. Anne lit a new cigarette and puffed contentedly. She reached into her shirt to produce a small book damp with sweat and sea salt and began to read, still cross-legged. It was a book of poems by some distinguished figure from the past—or so she had been told. There was a man, twenty years her junior, who pressed reading material on her. Like Anne, he hadn’t gone to school, but he read difficult books and was very good at chess. Probably the second strongest player in town.

  Some of the harder words she didn’t know, but she had a taste for stylish turns of phrase. Her favorite parts she had read any number of times. She had them memorized by now, but she read them all the same. That was just how Anne did things.

  To the sea their hearts they vow. They will not come again. And even if they came would you recognize them now?

  …

  They will not come again. They choose waste seas to roam. And even if they came would they have really come?

  Suddenly Anne’s finger stopped tracing the lines of verse. The day had darkened, the page fallen into shadow.

  She felt a foreboding. Looking up, she saw how dark the sky was already. It had been filled with the muddy flow of the clouds.

  Slapping her knees with both hands, Anne rose to her feet. Thighs like cranes hoisted her sturdy frame upward. She was nearly two meters tall. Atop her rugged, towering shoulders, her long neck was beautiful. She had hair like tousled copper wire and skin like a well-used copper pan.

  Anne wrinkled her heavily freckled nose. What was happening was not normal in the least. Quickly tucking the book back into her shirt, she yelled at the children. “Be careful! Come to me, and don’t let go of the little ones’ hands!”

  Her six-year-old was playing with a fishing harpoon. She scolded him and snatched it out of his hands, but stopped before she put it back in the shed where it was kept. Might need this, she thought. And that was when it happened.

  A swooping buzz rang out. The noise sounded like a housefly—except the housefly was as large as a dog—as whatever it was flew behind her, just skimming the edges of her field of vision. Brandishing the harpoon, Anne whipped around with electric speed, but the Spider had already eaten her eldest daughter’s head.

  Mom …

  It had happened so fast that her voice still drifted in the air. Already the Spider had slipped out of her field of vision. Anne used the handle of the harpoon to send her eldest daughter’s body flying—so that the infant on her back would not be eaten. Then s
he swept the handle in a circle around herself, low and even. Understanding her intent, the children dropped to the ground. Her eldest son threw himself on his older sister’s back to cover the baby. And beyond them she saw the Spider.

  The Spider was the size of a mastiff.

  It had jaws like a stubby alligator snout,

  five short legs—

  and that was all.

  A second and a half had passed.

  With something between a grunt and a moan, Anne gathered her strength into her throat, her chest, her shoulders and upper arms, and then released it with explosive force. The harpoon’s point struck the Spider dead-on, but bounced off its thick, slightly springy hide. The Spider did not even recoil from the monstrous strength behind the blow. Anyone else would have dropped the harpoon at this point.

  Another second passed.

  The Spider’s oversized jaws seemed to Anne to be sneering. Its mouth was open wide, and her daughter’s head was still inside, covered in some sort of viscous, semitransparent secretion. The hair Anne had brushed just yesterday was now soiled and filthy. She had been very fond of her daughter’s long, straight black hair, her own being so coarse and wiry. Mom, you need to put some ointment on those hands—the lips that had given Anne this advice last night were pale and still.

  Anne opened her mouth to call to her daughter.

  But in that moment her name wouldn’t come.

  Inside her head, Anne heard something snap.

  By the time she came to her senses, she had bounded over the other children to drive the harpoon directly into the Spider’s yawning mouth.

  Running her daughter’s head through, the harpoon sank deep into the spider’s throat. Anne put her full body strength into her arms and pulled. The Spider had to weigh at least two hundred kilos. Anne’s biceps bulged as thick as a man’s thigh. Still pulling, she lowered her center of gravity and swung the harpooned Spider around her like an Olympic hammer. Halfway through her second spin, she leaned forward and slammed it into the cement. The rubbery impact she felt through her hands told her at once that the Spider was undamaged. She leapt forward immediately, still gripping the harpoon, positioning herself directly over the spider, then let her own 110 kilograms of body weight bear down. The harpoon was forced even farther in.