Turtle Island Dreaming

by Tom Crockett

  She could not say that she had chosen life, but she had chosen to find what was on the other side of the island.

  CHAPTER 3—AN INTIMATE KOAN

  Some researchers believe that turtles navigate by the same senses that have grown dull in people who live cut off from nature. They need no extrasensory organs to explain the turtle’s amazing feats of navigation. It is all smell, and taste, and sensitivity to subtle shifts in water temperature. The turtles of my dreams taste their way across salty South Pacific seas. They smell Fiji and Bali and Maui like delicacies cast off from the banquet table that is ancient Australia, Asia, or the Americas. They find their way through the infinite by attending to the intimate.

  Marina walked all morning and into the afternoon. She moved through a world of only four colors: the dark verdant green of the jungle to her right, the azure blue overhead, the turquoise wash of waves to her left, and the winding path of ivory before her. The necklace of black pearl and white coral the Turtle Woman had tied twice around her ankle clicked softly, creating a rhythm from her steps. The anklet was all she wore, but her nakedness was dreamlike and somehow natural, without the embarrassment that sometimes accompanied even her dreams of being naked.

  Several things occupied her mind and intrigued her as she walked. She noticed that if she set her sights on some distant feature along the beach and walked toward it, she would never reach it. Sometimes the beach curved out and she could not see around it to what lay ahead. Other times it curved inward and she could see a great distance away. But whatever she saw in the distance was never the same when she passed the place where it should have been. If she took her eyes off a landmark, looked down at the sand or out at the water, the landmark would shimmer and disappear. She tried to discipline herself to keep her eyes focused on one feature, walking toward it steadily without removing her eyes from it. But if she did this, if she maintained that level of intense concentration on a landmark, she found that she would never move any closer to it. It felt as if the island was creating itself solely to satisfy her experience of walking.

  And then there was the walking itself. She felt the warm sand molding to her feet. Her toes dug into the damp sand when she drifted into the tidal range. Her narrow graceful feet imprinted the sand as she walked, but her own track disappeared behind her. She discovered this quite by accident. She passed a pink spiral shell and almost stepped on it but did not pick it up. After a moment she decided to go back for it. She followed her own footprints back and saw the distinctive pattern her feet had made in the sand become rough indentations evenly spaced by her stride, then shallow depressions, then smooth sand—all within twenty paces. No waves washed up far enough to have eroded the footprints. Time might have eroded the marks if she had been taking a step every hour or two, but she was walking far too briskly for that. She checked this several times, but it was always the same, and when she followed her footprints back to the furthest point out, the point at which she had turned around, her footprints had faded just as surely, just as quickly.

  It seemed as if her entire existence on this island took place within a narrow window of time.

  Most intriguing was her turtle tattoo.

  It was moving.

  She could not see it move, but it had begun in the hollow of her left ankle and now it was on the back of her calf. It was still small and brightly colored. Marina checked the tattoo carefully, though she had to twist her leg awkwardly to see it. It had not faded. If anything, it seemed brighter, more alive. It did not seem possible that the tattoo could have moved, so she questioned her memory of it being on her ankle to begin with.

  In this landscape of death or dream or some mélange of both, Marina was afraid of what she might conjure up. And so, when she saw the women sitting on the beach ahead of her, she approached with great caution.

  There were three women sitting, facing each other and forming a triangle. They all wore black robes with hoods. One of them rhythmically slapped a skin drum stretched over a round wooden frame. The other two shook rattles made of bone and tiny copper bells. They rocked back and forth in ecstatic trance to the beat they kept with their drum and rattles.

  “Excuse me,” Marina said softly, “I’m sorry to interrupt you but . . .”

  The women continued singing, as if they did not or could not hear her.

  “Excuse me,” Marina tried again, louder this time. She waited, but no one acknowledged her. She stood up and moved toward one of the women. No one looked up as she passed between the women. She still could not see their faces. Their heads were down, hidden in the cowls of their robes, totally entranced by their own singing. Marina knelt beside one of the rattling women and reached a hand out to touch her.

  “Don’t do that!” Marina was startled. It was a man’s voice and it seemed to come from outside the triad of women. At first she was confused and she looked carefully at the women.

  “Don’t touch them.” The voice was softer now, less emphatic, gentle. “It hurts them if we touch them.”

  Marina stood up. A man squatted on the bent trunk of a twisted palm tree that grew almost horizontally out of the jungle growth. She could not say how long he had been there.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you. But it’s best if you don’t touch them.”

  “Who are they?” Marina asked as she stood up and walked tentatively toward the man.

  “I don’t know really. My wraiths, I suppose, my punishment. I just know they are here for me.”

  “Do you talk to them?”

  “They can’t hear us. They’re barely here now. In a few days they will be stronger.” Marina looked back at the women, and indeed they seemed to shimmer and become transparent in places. She could see the ocean and the sand through them.

  The man still made no move to approach Marina so she walked closer to him. He seemed young, perhaps in his twenties. He was lean and muscled and tanned from the sun. His hair was dark. He wore a short, brightly colored wrap around his waist and a smooth circular stone on a leather cord around his neck, but little else.

  For a moment Marina tried to shrink her body down to something inconsequential. She was aware, suddenly, of her own nakedness. A moment before she had not been and now she was, like Eve taking a bite from the forbidden fruit. At the same time it seemed like there was little she could do about it, and her desire to talk to someone overcame her discomfort.

  Throwing her shoulders back and standing proudly, she said, “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Rafael.” He still made no attempt to move from his perch. He did not seem threatening. He seemed calm and still inside and once again Marina felt uncomfortable.

  “Are you an angel?”

  He laughed and it was a rich laugh with only a trace of irony. “No. Are you an angel?”

  And now it was Marina’s turn to laugh. “My name’s Marina.” She wanted to say her last name. She remembered the idea of last names, but she couldn’t remember hers. “I’m . . . ,” she paused, began to form the d for “dead” with her lips, but what came out was different, “dreaming.”

  “Or dead,” Rafael said it matter-of-factly, and Marina realized without having to ask that whatever she was in this place, on this island, he was more like her than the Turtle Woman or the Turtle Mother had been. “I know,” he added, “it was confusing for me at first, too. You just get used to thinking that this is your dream and then you find out someone else is dreaming it as well.”

  “Then you’re dead, too?”

  “If I’m not, I should be.” He said this casually, but Marina caught an undertone of self-recrimination in his voice. “I think I died—was dying—but something happened along the way.” He gestured around him. “This place.”

  “Did you . . . take your own life?”

  “We all take our own lives,” he said, half under his breath, clearly not comfortable with the topic, then continued, “in one way or another.”

  Before she could ask anything else he jumped from the tree and landed lightly i
n the sand. He was not short, but Marina was tall and they stood almost eye to eye. There was something unnerving about his physical presence. She felt the prickling of attraction and wished she had something to cover herself with.

  “Come on.” He gestured toward a path that led between the palms into the jungle. “You’re probably hungry.” She hadn’t been hungry, but as he said it, she realized that she was very hungry. “And you’re probably tired.” She’d not been tired but now she was. Her legs ached from walking and she wanted nothing more than to sit and rest.

  Rafael started up the path, but Marina hesitated, and he turned back to her.

  “What about them?” Marina gestured toward the women, but when she turned to look for them they were gone.

  “Soon enough for them, I think. We have a few days.” He did not explain this but took hold of her hand and gently led her up the path.

  * * *

  The place to which Rafael took her was not far inland, but Marina was surprised at how quickly the jungle sloped upward. They soon picked up a stream and followed it to a clearing. The shelter where Rafael lived and worked was a wooden structure of four posts thatched over with palm leaves. There was a raised wooden floor covered with woven leaf mats and a simple patterned carpet. Three sides were open to the jungle and the fourth side faced a freshwater stream that splashed over stones.

  There was a blackened fire pit ringed with stones in the sand between the hut and the stream, and a loosely woven hammock was strung between two trees. The hut had clusters of fruit and coconuts hanging from the rafters. There was an old wooden chest that looked like it might have contained a pirate’s treasure and several other smaller boxes and bundles that looked like they, too, might have washed ashore. A slab of stone with a smooth bowl-like depression filled with water sat by the carpet and an assortment of little colored bottles were clustered around it.

  But what dominated the space under the thatched roof was the loom. A weaver’s loom stood against one of the open-sided walls. It took up most of the wall. In front of it was a cushion on the floor, several skeins of brightly colored yarn, and some wooden pieces that Marina thought were called shuttles.

  The weaving on the loom was easily four feet wide and almost as tall, though still in progress at the base.

  It was breathtaking. In the same way that the Turtle Woman’s tattoo had seemed alive, more than a mere drawing, this weaving seemed to have a life of its own. Marina had the sense that the weaving told a story, though she could not decode it. It seemed to be bright and full of possibility at the top, then it darkened and the colors grew somber in the middle. Next there was a band of deep blue, then the colors began to return. This was where the weaving stopped, almost as if the weaver had forgotten how to weave with the colors he had once used and was struggling to remember.

  “You wove this?” Marina asked, still in awe.

  “Yes.” Rafael answered simply but seemed unwilling to talk about it more.

  “Is that what you did before? Weave?”

  “No! No, I was never much good at making things, only at tearing them down. Would you like something to eat?” He seemed uncomfortable talking about the weaving and was clearly trying to change the subject, so Marina did not press it.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Here,” he said as he handed Marina a bundle he had pulled from one of the boxes. “You might be more comfortable in this.” It was a short jacket that belted in the front. It was soft, like silk, but had more body to it, and she recognized that it was the same fabric that Rafael wore around his hips. She also recognized the weaving style from the loom.

  She slipped it on. It felt good, but it also made her more aware of her skin at the places where the fabric touched her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, tugging the jacket down between her legs to cover herself. She could not explain it, but she felt more sexual wearing the jacket than when she had been wearing nothing. Somehow, by acknowledging her nakedness he had broken a spell between them. In an instant, the fact that she was a woman and he was a man had gone from being inconsequential to being charged and significant.

  Rafael set about gathering fruit from his rafters. He sliced and seeded fruits that Marina almost recognized and laid them on a large, shallow wooden bowl in front of where she sat. The fruits were salmon and pale green, deep purple and creamy yellow in color. They glistened with their own sweet juice where they had been cut. They were sensual foods and Marina was famished. She could smell them and the smell alone was intoxicating.

  “Be careful. You haven’t eaten in a while and food here is . . . well . . . potent.” Marina laughed at this description as she lifted a handful of what appeared to be melon to her mouth. She wondered if every exchange between them was going to take on this air of eroticism.

  “I think I can handle it.” She took a bite of the melon and it seemed to both melt and expand in her mouth. It was sweet like honey, but it was also tart and there was another flavor that she could not identify. It washed over her and made her dizzy. She wanted another bite and she took it. It was incredible. She had never tasted anything like this before. She took another bite, then another, barely chewing the soft fleshy fruit before swallowing.

  “Slow down.” Rafael reached a hand out to her and she backed away like a threatened animal guarding her food. She took another deep bite of the fruit. The juices ran down her chin and dripped onto her chest. She bit into it again and again.

  Rafael started to move the bowl away from her, but she quickly grabbed a handful of soft, wet fruit. He took hold of her wrist, gently but firmly. “Please,” he said, “be careful.”

  Marina jerked her hand away, amazed at the instincts that seemed to possess her. She slid back and tried to stand up. She felt dizzy and intoxicated. She dropped the rind of the fruit.

  Everything spun, then went black.

  When she woke she was lying on the carpet, her head supported by one of the cloth bundles she had seen. She saw Rafael by the fire ring building a small fire.

  “What happened?” she croaked. When he saw that she was awake he came over and sat down beside her.

  “The fruit,” he began, “it’s the first food you’ve taken here. It’s like you’re tasting for the first time. It happened to me, too.”

  “Is it safe to eat?” She realized this was a stupid question even before it was completely out of her mouth. What am I afraid of, she thought, being dead and being poisoned?

  “You’ll get used to it. What’s important is to take it slowly for now. You’ll find that all your senses are heightened. I don’t know why or how, but I think it is part of the path.”

  “You know about the path?” Rafael nodded his head but didn’t speak. “I mean, are you on the path? Are there others? Where is this place? How long have you been here?” The questions poured out of her.

  Rafael smiled. He seemed gentle and compassionate, and he stroked her head softly. “I don’t have very many answers. I don’t know where this place is, but I understand it is somewhere . . . in-between. I have met others. Not many, but a few. They moved on. I’m . . . not ready to move on yet. There is something I need to learn—something I must complete.” He gestured to the weaving on the loom. “Perhaps soon.” She detected a note of sadness in his voice as if perhaps he did not relish completing his task.

  Marina started to ask another question, but he stopped her. “First eat, then ask questions.”

  “Can I eat? Will it happen again?”

  “The trick is to eat slowly. Experience each bite—each flavor—fully. Pay attention to what you’re eating.”

  He held a small piece of the salmon colored fruit up to her lips, and she opened them. She let him slide the moist fruit into her mouth. Again the flavor of it seemed more intense then it should. This fruit tasted like figs but with a sweet center that reminded her of ripe pineapple. She held it in her mouth and let it dissolve. It was exquisite.

  She let herself be fed this way, slowly, one piece at a time while he
named the fruits. The names he gave them were Spanish, and she did not ask for translations. She liked the strange ringing sound of the names and imagined that she was memorizing the taste of each name. They played a game where she closed her eyes and identified the fruits he gave her by taste alone. He was right about her senses. If she took it slowly she was not overwhelmed by the flavors. It was decadent and sensual to be fed like this. They were like children, and they were like lovers. She could not recall a moment in her life more erotic than this and yet the closest they came to touching was when his fingers would brush her lip.

  * * *

  She woke in the morning, still lying on the little carpet. Rafael was at the loom. The shuttle flew from hand to hand, silently gliding down the channel of alternating yarns. With each toss he leaned to one side then to the other and she watched the muscles in his back flex beneath his skin.

  She watched him do this for a long time, but eventually he seemed to be aware of her watching him. “So, how did you sleep?” he called, without turning around.

  Marina took this opportunity to stretch and yawn. Her legs were stiff and a little sore, from walking the day before, but otherwise she felt good. “I slept fine, thank you.”

  Rafael turned to her and smiled. “There’s some tea in the clay pot by the fire and a little broth in the bowl next to it. Just remember—”

  “I know,” she interrupted, “take it slow.”

  “Listen, I have to work for a while.” He stopped and looked around at the jungle. He was fleetingly uneasy about something, as though he was being watched. Marina looked around, too. “I just have to get a certain amount done.” Marina had the sense that he was trying to explain something to her without having to be explicit about it.

  “It’s okay. I’ll make myself scarce.” She wanted to ask questions. There was so much she wanted to know, but he had been kind to her and now he seemed distracted. “Can we talk later?”