by Anthology
Blake stares at me. In his eyes, I swear I see a sea of swaying poppies, exactly like the flowers that will one day cover these fields of Flanders. “And you?” he asks.
I lean closer, to be better heard. “I came here to save a man.” Then I toss my head back and laugh like an ass. “And it turns out to be me.”
I show Blake my broken homing device. “I can’t return. And tomorrow’s the most devastating battle of this war. Time is literally running out. I don’t want to die.” I can hear the tremor in my voice. “I came here to right a wrong, but now all I want to do is save my own skin. It’s futile trying to change history. You can’t. No matter if your intentions are good or bad. And I’m only now realizing this. I’m alone to suffer my fate like all the other men here.”
Blake reaches into his trench coat again. He shoves a photo of a young woman into my hands. “She’s a looker, isn’t she? Nice legs, too. That Mrs. Blake knows how to ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross.”
I smile, but it’s a little forced.
Blake shoves me. “Ah, come on, where’s your sense of humor? Jesus and Mary, you’re making me weep with your drama.”
He furrows his brow, which makes him look exactly like his painting of Nebuchadnezzar.
Rain. Mud. The coils of barbed wire slick. Each barb the cold bite of reality stretched out inside of me.
Dawn is approaching. The stand to order came hours ago in the fug of night. Not that day is any clearer. It’s just less ambiguous. Stark reality glares all around us even without the sun. The dead bodies. The craters. The bloating mules. The endless barbed wire. The screaming and crying of wounded and dying men.
I can’t believe I let Blake talk me into this. Maybe he is as mad as history makes him out to be. But what other choice did I have?
The Timeshares homing device is dead. And Blake says he doesn’t have one.
My mouth goes dry. But it’s not the cottonmouth I experienced time traveling to the trenches. This is produced by fear.
Blake chants at my side. “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
“Is that a passage from the Bible?” asks an ashen-faced young Tommy.
“Shut it,” commands the sergeant.
The long line of soldiers becomes deathly silent.
My heart feels like it’s an hourglass sifting my life away.
The major’s whistle shrieks. “Charge,” he screams, leading the way.
Over the top I go with the rest of the battalion.
The rattle of machine guns. Blood. Screams. A severed leg. A madman cackling in a crater.
And I’m running and flinging poppy seeds like Blake instructed, like he saw in his vision. I don’t even remove my revolver. Just toss the seeds among all the carnage, expecting a bullet in the skull at any moment.
A blinding flash. A loud bang.
Someone’s shaking me.
“Hey buddy, you okay?”
The smoke clears. I’m sitting on a highly polished sanitized floor. The clicks and zips and metallic beeps of computers bombard me.
“Did you have a blast or what?” asks the young tech, his bright, white-gold tooth shining like a piece of shrapnel in his mouth. “Shit, you did, didn’t you?”
NO SHIPS PASS
Lady Eleanor Smith
“I am glad, thought Patterson, “That I’ve always been a damned good swimmer . . .” and he continued to plow his way grimly through the churning, tumbled argent of the breakers. It seemed hours, although it was actually moments, since the yacht had disappeared in one brief flash of huge and bluish flame; now the seas tossed, untroubled, as though the yacht had never been; and the boat containing his comrades had vanished, too, he noticed, glancing over his shoulder—had vanished with such swiftness as to make him think that it must have been smudged by some gigantic sponge from the flat, greenish expanse of the ocean. The strange part was that he was able, as he swam, to think with a complete, detached coherence; he was conscious of no panic; on the contrary, as he strove with all his might to gain the strip of land dancing before his eyes, his mind worked with a calm and resolute competence.
“I always thought we’d have a fire with all that petrol about . . . Curse all motor-yachts . . . I wonder if the others have been drowned? . . . Good job I gave the boat a miss . . .”
He was not even conscious of much regret as he thought of the probable fate of his comrades—his employer, his employer’s son, the members of the crew. Already, as he swam on and on through gently lapping waves, the yacht and those who belonged to it had become part of the past, remote and half-forgotten. The present and the future lay ahead, where a long line of sand shimmered like silver before his eyes. Yet it was funny, he mused; there had been no sign of land seen from aboard the yacht, and it was not until the actual panic of the fire that he had noticed the dim shape of this island, “near enough to swim to,” as he had cried to the others, but they swarmed into the boat, taking no notice of his cries. And so he had embarked alone upon this perilous adventure.
He was a strong swimmer, but he was growing tired. Were his limbs suddenly heavier, or had the sea become less buoyant? He clenched his teeth, striking out desperately, then floated for a while, lying on his back, the huge arch of the sky towering a million miles above him like some gigantic bowl, all fierce hydrangea-blue. When he turned to swim again, he was refreshed, but more sensible of the terrors of his situation. And yet, was it his fancy, or had the shores of the island loomed nearer during the moments of this brief rest? At first he believed himself to be suffering from hallucination, then, as he looked again, he realized that he was making remarkable progress . . . He was now so near that the beach glittered like snow in the tropical sunshine before his eyes, and the sands dazzled him, yet he could perceive, lapping against them, a line of softly creaming surf, and above the sands there blazed the vivid jewel-green of dense foliage. The gulls wheeled bright-winged against the brighter silver of sea and sand. Then he was prepared to swear that his ears distinguished, sounding from the shore, a harsh and murmurous cry that might have been—for he was very weary—something in the nature of a welcome for the creature trying so desperately to gain this sparkling and gaudy sanctuary.
And then exhaustion descended upon him like a numbing cloak, and his ears sang and his brain whirled. His limbs seemed weighted, and his heart pumped violently and he thought he must drown, and groaned, for at that moment life seemed sweet and vivid, since life was represented by the island, and the seas were death.
“Well, now for death,” he thought, and as he sank, his foot touched bottom.
He realized afterwards that he must have sobbed aloud as he staggered ashore. For a moment, as he stood ankle-deep in warm, powdery sand, with the sun pouring fiercely upon his drenched body, the surf curdling at his feet and the cool greenness of a thickly matted forest cresting the slope above his head, he still thought that he must be drowning, and that this land was mirage. Then the silence was shattered by a shrill scream; and a glowing parrot, rainbow-bright, flew suddenly from amidst the blood-red shower of a tall hibiscus-bush, to wheel, gorgeous and discordant, above his head. Beating wings of ruby and emerald and sapphire. Dripping fire-colored blossom. Loud, jangling, piercing cries. The island was real.
Patterson fainted, flopping like a heap of old clothes upon the smooth, hard silver of the sand . . .
When he came to himself, the sun was lower and the air fragrant with a scented coolness that seemed the very perfume of dusk itself. For a moment he lay motionless, his mind blank, then, as complete consciousness returned to him and he rolled over on his face, he became aware of a black, human shadow splashed across the sands within a few inches of where he lay. The island, then, must obviously be inhabited. He raised his eyes defiantly.
He could not have explained what he had expected to see—some grinning, paint-raddled savage, perhaps, or else the prim, concerned face of a missionary in white ducks, or
, perhaps, a dark-skinned native girl in a wreath of flowers. He saw actually none of these, his gaze encountering a shorter, stranger form—that of an elderly, dwarfish man in what he at first supposed to be some sort of fancy dress. Comical clothes! He gaped at the short, jaunty jacket, the nankeen trousers, the hard, round hat, and, most singular of all, a thin and ratty pigtail protruding from beneath the brim of this same hat. The little man returned his scrutiny calmly, with an air of complete nonchalance; he revealed a turnip face blotched thick with freckles, a loose mouth that twitched mechanically from time to time, and little piggish, filmy blue eyes.
“Good God,” said Patterson at length, “who are you, and where did you appear from?”
The little man asked, in a rusty voice proceeding from deep in his throat:
“Have you tobacco?”
“If I had it’d be no use to you. Do you realize I swam here?”
“You swam? From where?”
There was silence for a moment, a silence broken only by the breaking of the surf and by the harsh cry of birds, as Patterson, more exhausted than he had first supposed, tried idiotically to remember to what strange port the yacht, Seagull, had been bound.
He said at length:
“I—we were on our way to Madeira. The Southern Atlantic. The yacht—a petrol-boat—caught fire. And so I swam ashore.”
“Petrol?” the man replied, puzzled. “I know nothing of that. As for the Southern Atlantic, I myself was marooned on these shores deliberate, many and many a year ago, when bound for Kingston, Jamaica.”
“Rather out of your course, weren’t you?”
The little man was silent, staring reflectively out to sea. Patterson, naturally observant, was immediately struck by the look in those small, filmy blue eyes—a singular, fixed immobility of regard, at once empty and menacing, a glassy, almost dead expression in which was reflected all the vast space of the ocean on which he gazed, and something else, too, more elusive, harder to define, some curious quality of concentration that, refusing to be classified, nevertheless repelled. He asked:
“What’s your name?”
“Heywood. And yours?”
“Patterson. Are you alone here?”
The narrow blue eyes shifted, slipped from the sea to Patterson’s face, and then dropped.
“Alone? No; there are four of us.”
“And were they also marooned?”
As he uttered this last word he was conscious that it reflected the twentieth century even less than did the costume of his companion. Perhaps he was still light-headed after his ordeal. He added quickly:
“Were they also bound for Jamaica?”
“No,” Heywood answered briefly.
“And how long,” Patterson pursued laboriously, “have you been on the island?”
“That,” said his companion, after a pause, “is a mighty big question. Best wait before you ask it. Or, better still, ask it, not of me, but of the Captain.”
“You’re damned uncivil. Who’s the Captain?”
“Another castaway, like ourselves. And yet not, perhaps, so much alike. Yonder, behind the palms on the cliff, is his hut.”
“I wouldn’t mind going there. Will you take me?”
“No,” said Heywood in a surly tone.
“Good God!” exclaimed Patterson. “I shall believe you if you tell me they marooned you for your ill-manners. I’ve swam about eight miles, and need rest and sleep. If you’ve a hut, then take me to it.”
“The Captain’ll bide no one in his hut but himself and one other person. That person is not myself.”
“Then where do you sleep? In the trees, like the baboons I hear chattering on the hill?”
“No,” Heywood answered, still looking out to sea. “I’ve a comrade in my hut, which is small, since I built it for myself. A comrade who was flung ashore here when a great ship struck an iceberg.”
“An iceberg?” Patterson’s attention was suddenly arrested. “An iceberg in these regions? Are you trying to make a fool of me, or have you been here so long that your wits are going? And, by the way, tell me this: how do you try to attract the attention of passing ships? Do you light bonfires, or wave flags?”
“No ships pass,” said Heywood.
There was another silence. It was almost dark; already the deep iris of the sky was pierced by stars, and it was as though a silver veil had been dragged across the glitter of the ocean. Behind them, on the cliffs, two lights winked steadily; Patterson judged these to proceed from the huts mentioned by his companion. Then came the sound of soft footsteps, and they were no longer two shadows there on the dusky sands, but three.
“Hallo, stranger!” said a casual voice.
Patterson turned abruptly to distinguish in the grayness a sharp, pale face with a shock of tousled hair. A young man, gaunt-looking and eager, clad normally enough in a dark sweater and trousers.
“And this is a hell of a nice island, I don’t think,” the stranger pursued, thrusting his hands into his pockets. He had a strong Cockney accent. Patterson was enchanted by the very prosaicness of his appearance; he brought with him sanity; walking as he did on faery, moon-drenched shores, he was blessed, being the essence of the commonplace.
“Name of Judd. Dicky Judd. I suppose you’re all in. Been swimming, ain’t you?”
“Yes. And this fellow Heywood won’t take me to his hut. Says it’s full. Can you do anything about it?”
“You bet,” said Judd. “Follow me, and I’ll give you a bite of supper and a doss for the night. This way—the path up the cliff. We’ll leave Heywood to the moon. Come on.”
Ten minutes later, Patterson was eating fried fish and yams in a log-hut, with an open fireplace and two hammocks swung near the rude doorway. He had noticed, as they climbed the slope together, a grander, more commodious hut built a few hundred yards away amongst some shady palms. This, he surmised, must be the home of the elusive Captain. No sound came from it, but a light burned in the narrow window. As he ate his food he speedily forgot the existence of these fellow-castaways. He asked instead, gulping down water and wishing it were brandy:
“How did you come here, Judd? With the others?”
Judd eyed him swiftly. For one second Patterson imagined that he detected in the merry greenish eyes of his companion the fixed, almost petrified expression that had so much perplexed him in the gaze of Heywood. If he was right, this expression vanished in a flash, yet Judd seemed to withdraw himself, to become curiously remote, as he answered coolly:
“Not I. I came here after them—some time after.”
“Do you mean that, like me, you were the only survivor from your ship?”
“That’s about it,” Judd answered, with his mouth full.
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh . . . there’s nothing much to tell. She was a great liner—I had a berth aboard her—and she struck an iceberg in mid-Atlantic. There was not room for me in the boats, so I jumped . . . But she was a lovely ship, and big as a city. Titanic, they called her.”
“You’re pulling my leg. And for Heaven’s sake chuck it—I’ve had about enough for one day.”
“S’trewth, I’m not!” Judd told him energetically. “But no matter. You don’t have to believe it.”
And he whistled, picking his teeth.
Patterson asked with a shiver:
“Look here, joking apart, do you mean to tell me that you honestly believe you were cast ashore here from the wreck of the Titanic?”
“On my oath,” said Judd. He added, jumping up: “Bugs is bad here to-night. Wait while I swat a few.”
“Just answer this,” Patterson interrupted. “Why in Heaven’s name, when you think you were wrecked in mid-Atlantic, should you have landed here on a tropical island off the African coast? Bit of a miracle that, wasn’t it?”
Judd was silent for a moment, flicking at the mosquitoes with a palm-leaf fan. He said at length, sucking his teeth:
“Not being a seafaring man, I take it, you don’t hap
pen to have heard a fairy-story told among sailor-boys all the world over—story of a mirage island that floats about the seas near wrecks bent on collecting castaways?”
Patterson thought desperately:
“This man’s as mad as Heywood, and that’s saying a lot . . . And I’ve got to live with them . . .” Aloud he said: “No, I’ve never heard that one. But there’s one other thing I want to ask you . . . Who’s this Captain that Heywood was talking about? Has he been here for many years?”
“I’ll give you this goatskin for a blanket,” said Judd, “and you can doss near the doorway, where it’s cooler. So you know about the Captain?”
“I’ve only heard his name. I asked you, has he been here for very long?”
“Many years,” answered Judd, with a peculiar inflection.
“Tell me more about him.”
Judd laughed.
“You don’t half want to know much, do you? You’ll clap eyes tomorrow on Captain Thunder, late of the bark Black Joke, well known (he’s always boasting) from Barbados to Trinidad and back again. But you may whistle for the Captain to-night!”
Patterson was sleepy.
“Sounds like a buccaneer,” he muttered into the goatskin, and was soon unconscious, oblivious even of Heywood’s noisy entry into the hut.
By early morning the island’s beauty seemed more exotic even than the radiant plumage of the parakeets darting to and fro in the dim green light of airy tree-tops. Patterson was refreshed after a good night’s sleep, and consequently less depressed. He bathed with Judd, leaving Heywood snoring in his hammock. The beach was a shining snowdrift, the sea a vast tapestry of hyacinth veined and streaked with foam, glowing, glittering in the brilliant sunlight.
They swam for twenty minutes and then lay basking on the sands.
“Hungry?” Judd inquired.
So delicious was the morning that Patterson had quite forgotten the eccentricity manifested by his comrades the previous evening. Rolling over on his stomach, he was about to reply in an enthusiastic affirmative, when he surprised once more in his companion’s gaze that bleak, fey look that had already disconcerted him. He could not understand it, yet it was as though a somber shadow fled across the beach, obscuring this gay and vivid world of amber sunshine, creaming surf, tossing sea and glowing, brilliant blossom. Beauty was blotted out when Judd, the commonplace, looked like that; he felt suddenly lonely, humble and scared.