by Chris Vick
‘What?’
‘Why do you cry?’
I didn’t know I was. I had been asleep. Not asleep. I didn’t know which.
‘There was this girl… At school. Liked her. But can’t… remember her name, her face. I’ve tried. I keep trying. Again and again. But I can’t see her face and…’ I stopped. Aya’s eyes closed. She wasn’t listening.
I thought of school again, this girl who I couldn’t remember. School, home, my books on Pandora, soaked in seawater, disintegrating.
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ I whispered. ‘I shouldn’t be lost.’ I thought back to the life of someone called Bill. I’d never been lost before, only once when I was a kid on holiday, in Italy, and how even then, I’d been safe. How I had always known what was happening, one day to the next. How my future was laid out like a carpet and all I had to do was walk along it.
And what made that carpet? Forces I couldn’t control and had never even thought about. It was the same here. The storm wasn’t random; some freak, chaotic spin of nature that the forecasters hadn’t seen, and couldn’t understand. It was something else: a demon.
And the sun was another demon.
I heard it laugh, saw it floating high above me, vague and shapeless. It was there. Grinning. Waiting.
All the demons had come out of the vase. But there was no hope.
I wondered which of us would die first.
*
In the middle of the day, when the sun was giving us its full fury, a shadow flicked across the hull.
I crawled from beneath the shade, on all fours. Saw nothing. Then—
‘The demon. It’s coming. No… a b—’ The words clogged in my throat. Aya crawled out, squinting.
There it was. Flying in circles. A bird.
Aya smiled. The effort pulled her face tight; her head was a skull with paper skin stretched over it. Her eyes sank, two dark balls in her eye sockets.
I drank, just to get enough moisture to speak.
‘It’s coming,’ I croaked.
It floated down in circles. I saw white wings and a yellow beak. A gull. It flapped and crawked, then bombed down. When it was close it veered and flew away.
It did that a few times, getting closer then flying off.
‘It wants to come to us,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Aya. ‘It wants for us to die.’
My heart shrivelled. It was just a gull, like the ones in Brighton that steal your chips. This gull was bold like those. But we didn’t have chips, we had eyes and tongues.
‘It knows we’re weak,’ I said.
‘We… can… trap,’ she said. I nodded.
I wasn’t sickened by the idea. It wasn’t a turtle. I knew I could kill it and eat it. Easily.
‘You sit. I lie,’ Aya said.
I saw her plan. I hunched into the bow with my back against the hull. She undid the tent. I rolled up the blanket and held it.
Aya lay with her head at my feet.
We froze. And waited, statue-still.
I wanted to check the sky, to see where it had flown. But I couldn’t move. I looked down at Aya.
One eye opened a sliver, and shut.
‘Do. Not. Move,’ she whispered, through barely opened lips.
I waited and waited. She seemed to have stopped breathing. I pushed the idea of death away, telling myself: She’s alive. It’s just a trick.
The bird arrived with a flap, landing on the aft.
Aya twitched a finger. A signal. I let out a long trembling sigh, keeping as still as I could.
The bird made a clumsy hop and jump onto her stomach, and turned its head.
Its cold marble eye seemed to laugh.
What do you want? I said, in my head.
Diamonds, it crawked. It lunged for Aya’s eyes. She dodged its beak and grabbed its leg.
I threw the blanket over it.
We wrestled till we had it bundled and pinned and lay on top of it, panting, drained by the effort.
‘Eat?’ I said and mimed, my hand to my mouth. Would it taste better or worse than turtle? I didn’t care.
‘No,’ said Aya. ‘No kill.’
‘Then what?’
Did she want the bird to hunt fish? How could we train it to do that? And why not kill it? We were starving.
I held it tightly. Using the blanket to protect my hands I grabbed it by the wings. Its strength almost matched mine. That’s how weak I’d become.
Aya fetched the fishing line. She felt under the cloak for its webbed claw, tying the end of the line around it. She unreeled the other end – a good length of it – and tied it to the oar.
Aya nodded.
‘One, two, three—’ I flipped the cloak back. With a crawk and a fierce flurry of wings the gull pitched skyward, higher and higher, until the line pulled taut and we held it like a kite on a string.
‘Why?’ I asked.
It tried to fly north, pulling, failing, then circling lower with the line loose, until it turned north again, straining until the line was tight.
Aya looked to where the sky met the sea.
‘The bird is high.’ She pointed. ‘The bird can see.’
‘See what?’
She smiled.
I knew the answer.
Land
i
We followed the path of the bird. Sure as a compass.
I paddled.
Aya stood, making the boat rock.
‘THERE! Regarde.’
In the distance was a hump, sticking out of the ocean like a whale’s back. But it wasn’t a whale. Not a cloud either. Not a trick.
We hugged and cheered and roared. We almost fell overboard dancing and jumping. Aya grinned and cried, I held her face. I kissed tears off her cheeks. I tasted the salt of them.
I paddled then, forcing myself not to use all my energy, but needing to urge myself on, afraid that my strength would run out, and we would die with the island in sight. Aya used the seat to paddle on the other side. The swell and wind had picked up, so it felt tougher.
After midday we got close enough to see the land fully. There was a lighthouse. It was in ruins, only half of it was left. The top of the tower was long gone. But it was proof: of people, of the world.
The lighthouse sat on a cliff of rock about two thirds of a mile end-to-end. As we neared the land, the purple blue became shallow turquoise. Black lava rocks jutted out of the water, jagged shapes that my tired mind formed into monstrous beasts guarding their world.
I saw a shadow. Something large and powerful, skitting between rocks, visible over patches of sand but disappearing in the deeper parts. It didn’t surface, and I soon lost sight of it among the seaweed and rocks. I didn’t say anything to Aya and told myself my mind was twisting what I saw. But I paddled that bit faster, even though I was exhausted.
We steered along the coast, keeping a couple of hundred metres offshore, looking for somewhere to land, a bay or even just a less-steep bit of cliff.
We came round the headland and saw the curve of the coast. Between the rocks and jagged reefs, a light blue sea made its way to a thin inlet, ending in a beach. Beyond it was a sloping hill.
We could see it clearly now: an island. I scanned its coast, desperate for any sign of life. It seemed to be one large barren rock, but along from where we’d land there were trees.
Life.
*
We navigated carefully to avoid the rocks. Shoals of tiny silver fish darted through the shallows. Big ones too. Purple shells and yellow coral decorated the ocean floor. Fronds of seaweed danced in the current.
‘What food is down there?’ I said.
‘Yes, there is food. Also beauty,’ said Aya hanging over the side, her jaw and eyes wide. The water was so light and clear it was like it wasn’t even there, as if the fish were flying through air.
And it was beauty. After the desert of the open sea, it was heaven.
When we reached the beach we climbed out and waded, pulling the boat. We used the las
t of our strength to get the boat free of the water. It was heavy, but we pulled and scraped over sand and shingle to rock. Not as far as it needed, just as far as we could manage.
We lay down, panting and sighing. I grabbed a fistful of dusty sand.
‘More precious than gold,’ I breathed. Aya laid her head on the ground. She reached for me and we held hands. We cried tears of joy.
‘Must… water,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Soon… and… and…’
Her eyelids closed. I felt mine go too. A weight of weeks bore down on my head.
We fell asleep.
ii
I woke with a burning thirst.
I remembered my deck shoes in the hold. I’d taken them off on the first day after the storm and hadn’t worn them since. My feet felt clumsy inside them. I grabbed an empty bottle, then started up the slope. I fell over, stood up, stumbled, fell again. My legs wouldn’t work. I hadn’t walked in so long.
But hope lit a fire inside me. I stood and staggered, getting used to it with every step. My head forcing my legs to do what they didn’t want to.
I stumbled over sea-smoothed rock, onto dusty ground and up the hill.
At the top there was a rock about head high. I climbed onto it, and sat down, wheezing like an old man.
I looked around. The island was barren. There was no village or road. No people. Nowhere they could be. Just rock and sand. The mists had cleared in the sun. Beyond the shore there was sea in every direction. No boats, no other islands or sight of a distant shore.
I crumpled on the rock. We’d found land, but we were as alone as ever.
‘There’s nobody here,’ I shouted to Aya.
To the east was a long spit of land and beyond that the black rock of lava reefs. At the base and highest point of the spit was the lighthouse. Birds darted and dived above it.
Along the western coast was a bay, and set back from its small beach were the trees we’d seen.
‘Trees need water,’ I said. I could see Aya below, leaning against the boat. Gull was crying a high-pitched ghost song, trying to get away.
‘Aya!’ I shouted. ‘Come, follow!’ She waved back.
I stumble-walked along the cliff, looking back to make sure Aya was following. I was about to start the climb down when I stopped and swivelled. I’d heard or seen something in the corner of my vision. But I couldn’t say what.
‘Hello?’ My voice echoed.
I told myself I was imagining things.
I clambered over the lumps of warm rock down to the beach. When I hit the sand I had that same feeling. Only stronger. I spun again.
I planned to wait, but when I turned to face the trees, it was like seeing the fish in the shallows. Dazzling. I stumbled on, having to see it, to feel it. My dizzy head filled with the wonder of it.
The palms and coconut trees nearest the sea grew straight out of the sand; giants with arms whispering in the wind. Living miracles. I put my hands on the hard bark, feeling the tree, making sure it was a real thing.
There were green coconuts in the branches. The sand was littered with dried leaves and scrubby plants. A line of ants ran up the base of a tree. A crab scuttled through the undergrowth.
I wandered through all of it, gawping.
My foot broke through twigs and squelched in black ooze. The ground became muddy and marshy.
Further back the trees ended at a steep rock face. At about double head-height, but reachable with an easy climb, was a cave. Its mouth was a couple of metres high and wide. Dark and still.
Inside it was cool and dead black. I heard the tap-tap of dripping water.
‘Hello?’ I called. I got onto my hands and knees and crawled inside.
The cave tapered, levelling out. My hands explored smooth rock then I fell forwards, up to my wrists in water.
‘Please, God,’ I murmured. ‘Let it be rainwater.’ I scooped some up. It was clear and clean. I drank handful after handful, then filled the bottle.
‘Bill?’ Aya’s voice echoed. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Aman!’ I crawled eagerly back to the entrance. Aya saw the bottle and reached for it.
She drank and drank and drank, careful at first, then gulping, letting it wash over her face. We drank till our bellies bloated.
We waddled along the beach and climbed the rocks, drunk on water.
‘What now?’ I said.
‘The lighthouse,’ said Aya.
‘Right, might make a good shelter. Then we have to think about food.’
We walked the ten minutes or so it took to cross to the southeast corner, where the lighthouse sat at the island base of the long spit.
From a distance we could see: the top was long gone, there were gaps in the stone. At the base was an old stone hut, half-ruined, but it had potential.
‘You know, if we got some of those palm branches we could… Aya?’
She’d stopped dead still, watching the lighthouse like a hawk.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘See.’ She pointed.
Logs and branches were piled against the wall of the hut. There was a fire pit too, black with ashes, surrounded by stones.
We made slow steps towards it. As we got closer I saw a tarpaulin was slung over a corner of the roof.
We stopped outside. ‘Hello?’ I said.
There was no answer, only a strange, quiet clinking coming from inside.
What was inside? Someone, no one, a skeleton?
There was no door, just a gap in the collapsed wall. I peered inside. There was a bed on the floor made of dried palm leaves and seaweed. A shelf was lined with tins filled with water. There were ashes on the floor, where there was another fire pit. A part of the roof was missing. Piles of seashells. A wind chime made of bones and feathers, tied with grass, clacked and tinkled in the breeze.
‘That’s what we heard,’ I said.
‘Is there food?’ said Aya. ‘Look outside.’
I went out and scoured the island for a sign of whoever lived here.
Aya searched for food but didn’t find any.
Next we checked the lighthouse, all the time looking around and behind us. It felt eerie. The stone was old and weather-battered. There was a heavy door with a keyhole. I tried to budge it, but it was either stuck or locked.
I walked all the way round it. The door was the only way in.
‘If there’s someone here, they’ve got food,’ I said. ‘In here probably.’
‘Maybe hide, when see us?’ said Aya.
I didn’t want to think about food. I wanted to think about rescue, and who this person was and if they had any contact with the world. But I couldn’t help it. If someone was alive, they had food, and if they had food they could share it. My mouth watered.
‘Where are they?’ I said.
‘Maybe not here, maybe they are dead,’ said Aya.
‘I don’t think so… I had a strange feeling earlier, as if someone was watching us, right after we left—’
‘The boat!’ we shouted at the same time.
We ran, holding hands, helping each other.
I heard gull crawk. An alarm.
We reached the inlet and saw a figure in the boat, burrowing through tins and bottles from the hold.
Gull was in the air, still tied to the line, flapping and crawking.
‘Hey,’ I shouted, but immediately felt afraid, thinking: They might be violent, they might not be alone. Whoever they were, they hadn’t hesitated to go through our stuff, on our boat.
Aya ran a few steps ahead, but stopped before she reached the boat.
‘Hey!’ I shouted.
The figure stood up. He had a dark face and burning eyes. His hair was black and wild, his body thin, like a starved wolf. He jumped over the gunnel and stood in front of us. He was wearing shorts and nothing else. He put his hand to his mouth, miming eating.
I knew things about him from one look. He was older than me, almost a man. He had been here a while. And he was
desperate, even a bit mad.
He’d rifled through the hold, pulling everything out and scattering it across the hull. I saw empty tins and bottles, not our last tin of okay-to-eat turtle meat, just tins of bait. Bait we had held off eating.
‘I hide turtle meat,’ Aya whispered. ‘And knife.’
iii
The boy-man walked up to us.
‘Hello,’ I said. He nodded.
We stood, staring at each other. I held a hand out and said: ‘Hello,’ again. I didn’t know what else to do. He looked at me hard before shaking. It felt strange.
‘Deutsche?’ he said, in a thick accent.
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘German? Netherlands? England boy?’
‘English.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘A yacht,’ I said. ‘The storm. We’ve been at sea. A lot of days.’
‘More people?’
‘No. Just us.’
‘Tambien. Same. The storm.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you from?’ I asked. He didn’t answer, just looked me up and down. And Aya too. She stood close behind me, holding my right arm with both hands.
‘You have food?’ he demanded. Aya squeezed. I wanted to say yes and tell him about the turtle; and to ask him what he had. But she squeezed so tightly I knew not to say anything.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘But we have a fishing line.’
‘I see the line. You have bird on line. Why?’
‘The bird led us here. How have you survived?’ I said, thinking: You’re thin, but you’re alive. You must have eaten something.
‘Before with food from boat. Now shell animal from sea. Coconut also.’
‘I’m Bill,’ I said. ‘This is Aya. You?’
‘My name is Stephan. I am hunger-y. Tengo hambre. Entiendes. If you have food you give.’ He stated it as a fact, as though he was in charge.
‘We have no food,’ Aya said, eyeing him warily. He smiled and gabbled a string of words at Aya, in Arabic I think. She stared at him, her eyes hard and unblinking. But she didn’t answer. He fired questions at her, before changing back to English.
‘Maroc? Libya? Syria?’ he said to her. Aya squeezed again, harder. I didn’t answer. It wasn’t up to me to speak for her.