by Chris Vick
We fished too, early morning and late evening.
We wore our ridiculous homemade hats when the sun was strong.
And all the time we looked east. Hoping.
I felt brave then because none of this had beaten us. None of it.
I said a thank you to the ocean when the fishing line pulled.
And a thank you to the sky when the wind was good.
But there were other times when the wind had a hard breath, when it howled and we thought a storm must be coming. Then I saw fear in Aya’s eyes and knew I had that look too.
*
‘You okay?’ I asked after a long day when the wind had taken us far and fast. ‘It’s been hard, we’ve worked like dogs.’
‘I am a little scared.’
‘You wanted to leave,’ I said. But I said it softly. We’d both chosen this.
‘I am not only scared of this,’ she said.
‘What then?’
‘Everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
She didn’t answer.
I was scared too. All the possible futures seemed scary.
*
In the morning light I woke to see her kneeling at the bow, hands open, palms up. She was speaking in her language. Sounds more song than words.
Prayers.
I prayed too, silently. But not to one god. I thought about all we’d been through, about how the people on Aya’s boat and the crew on Pandora could be dead. I prayed to the sea and sky. I prayed to Tanirt and poured a drop of coconut juice on the deck, and spilled a drop of fish blood in the water. I felt that there were gods and demons and djinns all around us. And if we didn’t respect them, they could take our lives.
These gods, these forces; they weren’t good or bad. Out at sea, there’s no good or evil. There is only chaos and order. Things going well or against us. I thought maybe life back in the world is like that. It just seems as though there’s order. And then I thought, we might think we’re in charge of Tanirt and our destiny, but we’re kidding ourselves.
iii
Days passed.
Food began to run out. Aya put us on quarter-rations.
How far had we come? How far was there to go?
We knew we were heading east, to Africa. The sun told us that. But there were currents and squally winds, and they seemed like demons, playing games with us.
iv
One day the wind hit us from nowhere, stretching the sail hard. The mast creaked, groaned then cracked loudly. I leaped up and held it fast so it wouldn’t break more, but the wind was so strong I had to hold onto the mast to stop it from flying into the water. A vicious gust yanked at the tarpaulin, and it tore.
I took the rig down.
The blustery wind whizzed away across the sea, like some djinn conjured from nothing that had caused its chaos and buzzed off.
I knelt with the torn tarpaulin in my hands, staring at the broken mast.
‘I told you!’ I shouted. ‘I told you, Aya, you can’t keep taking risks. Just because you’ve won every toss of the coin, it doesn’t mean you’ll keep winning. This was always going to happen. Always, Aya. Always!’
Aya huddled in the prow, crying.
I shouted to the sky: ‘Why can’t you give us a chance!’
*
We threaded coconut rope through the sail. But Aya had to put more holes in it. It was okay for gentle sailing, but weaker in a powerful wind. There was a chance it would tear even worse.
I cut a section off the line to bind the mast. The wood had dried and become brittle. That’s why it had broken. I didn’t know how much longer it would last.
v
‘Are the sea and sky trying to kill us?’ I asked one night, as we ate. ‘Or giving small gifts to keep us alive?’
‘I do not know,’ was all Aya said.
We weren’t lords of the sea any more. We were lost kids in a boat.
In the morning the winds lessened. It started getting hot again.
It was calm enough to set up the aman-maker.
When I ate some coconut and fish it was hard to bite. I felt a tooth wobble, and tasted blood. I felt my teeth with my fingers. I could move some of them.
After that I used the knife to cut up our food as small as I could.
Gull had fished before, but only for himself. Now he was weak. We would eat him when he died. But I wasn’t going to kill him. I swore that to myself.
vi
Hunger ate my body and mind. It was a serpent in my head and stomach and I was disappearing into it, bit by bit.
Dreams came and went. Dreams of the boat. Dreams of the sea. The island. Where I had dreamed of a yacht called Pandora. There were people on it. Aliens with big heads and fat stomachs (and a captain – Wilkinson? Wilson? I couldn’t remember). When I was on this Pandora boat I’d had a dream of the Canary Islands. And when I had been on this Canary place I had once dreamed of home.
My head was a boat that had sailed, all the way from England. And that old home was so far over the horizon that it had never been real.
I saw the sultan swooping, his great coat flying, filled with stars.
I sat up when I saw that. Called to Aya to see it too. But I had no voice. I shouted but there was no sound. The sea was frozen solid. The waves were on pause. They were still, but the stars flowed in the sultan’s cape as he rode, like specks of dust in sunlight. Every star was a shooting star.
By day there was a grey-green sea under a cloudy sky. Feathery waves and chop. Lively jumping fish. But when I looked at them, or started to prepare the hook and line, they disappeared.
The water held crazy patterns that looked like shark fins. One shark or many? Hundreds. I didn’t know if they were real, or if I’d imagined them.
Then I saw beyond the patterns and shades a break in the water. And beyond that, in the place we were slowly drifting to, the endless, dark, deep.
And behind the last cloud, burning fierce, as if it had never left, taking off its mask…
The sun demon.
We had escaped to the island. Found a place it couldn’t reach us. Got lucky. But we were only hiding, for a time. In a game of hide-and-seek. Now we were here, in its court.
It saw us and it wanted us.
vii
We scooped water with the turtle shell and tins, to wash and cool ourselves.
When evening came, we ate.
Mouthfuls. A few. No more.
We drank. But the store of water was less than the day before. And I knew, when the food ran out, we’d be drinking more than we made. Just to stay alive.
Then there’d be no aman.
No anything.
*
I saw a fin in the distance. I fixed my gaze where it had been, staring so hard that tears came to my eyes. But it was gone.
‘I’m imagining things,’ I whispered. ‘I think I’m going mad, Aya. Do you hear?’
She looked at me as though I was a stranger, speaking in a language she didn’t understand.
In the night it got cold.
In time we’d sleep. But we had hours before then. And nothing but stars to look at.
‘Tell me a story,’ I whispered.
‘I cannot. I am tired.’
‘Shahrazad had to tell stories. To stay alive. She had no choice.’
‘A story will not give us food, or aman. A story will not give us home, or wind to take us there.’
I couldn’t make her tell me a story, any more than I could have made her stay on the island. I just wanted some distraction from what we both knew in our hearts, but we didn’t dare to say: our time was running out.
‘How do you tell your stories?’ I asked, in a scratchy voice. ‘How do you learn them and remember them?’
‘It is not so easy, Bill,’ she said.
Even in the dark I could see the tiredness in her eyes.
She turned so she was lying on her back, gazing at the stars. Staring and staring. Without blinking, hardly breathing. A waking sleep.
I nudged her. She didn’t move. I nudged her again.
‘Are you okay?’ I said. And I was afraid then, because I thought she was slipping away.
‘Some water,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you some aman.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It is only a dream.’ She smiled. ‘Sometime it is like the stars.’
‘What?’
‘A story. There is this person and this thing that happen, then another thing. Each is like a star. But this is not a story. You see this.’ She pointed.
‘Yes, the north star.’
‘No, below.’
‘The frying pan, the big dipper? You take the two to the side of the pan and make a line to the north star.’
‘Yes, but this is not why I say. It is a bear. This is the story.’
‘What?’
‘The shape of these stars is like a bear. The stars are only light in sky. It is the lines between make the story.’
‘There is no line between.’
‘Not line you see. You make with yourself. In here.’ She tapped her head.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘Okay, this is one way. Another is like a map on the sea.’
‘Chart?’
‘Yes, chart. You know begin, you know the end. But you do not know the journey. This is like you and me, in Tanirt. And the story is like a boat on the sea. May go this place. May go that place. You do not know. Wind and sun will take the boat. We sail but we do not make a choice. Wind and sun choose.’
‘You mean you tell a story but you don’t know exactly what will happen?’
‘Yes. And also some of the story is remember.’
‘You remember the story, or things you remember that you put in a story?’ I thought of us in the hut, Aya telling me about Sakkina and her uncle and the men who wore black and carried guns.
She smiled again, and seemed to have some strength left, some hidden pocket of life she was reaching into. ‘I remember many stories my uncle tell. Some is short and I know every word is the same as my uncle say. Some is like how I remember the stars, but I must make the lines with words. You see? To make the bear. The sultan. The djinn.’
‘You never did finish the story of Shahrazad. What happens to her? Does she tell stories forever, to stay alive?’
‘You want to know?’
‘Yes, like the king, or is it the sultan? The one who Shahrazad is telling the stories to?’
‘Yes. King. Like him.’
‘I remember it all, Aya. Thiyya has defeated the demon, and he has given her a stone, a ruby. And its name is Fire-heart. That was the story Lunja told the sultan. And Shahrazad told both these stories to the cruel king.’
‘You know this well.’
‘I remember.’
I could see she was pleased.
‘Did he spare her life in the end?’ I said.
‘You want an end. You want the end to be happy, yes? It is the way of story not of life. But yes, Bill. Here you have an end.
‘Shahrazad and the king have in the nights and years one child, a boy.
‘Yet soon after he is born the child dies. Then Shahrazad she say to the king that she has no more tales.’
‘That’s it?’ I say. ‘That’s how it ends?’ My heart crashed. ‘It can’t be. It can’t!’
Aya looked sorry and sad. I think she was weighing up, whether to say: Yes, that’s how it ends, or if she had the strength to go on.
She turned to face me and said: ‘I will tell.’
The Final Tale of Shahrazad
In the kingdom, many years ago, the woman Shahrazad had told her stories under the stars of a thousand nights. She had made her stories of sun and moon, water and earth, fire and air, of monsters and djinns that are vanished from the land, but who we still fear in our hearts. She had told many tales of treasure found, treasure lost, then found again. In her days and years with the king, the sun had set one thousand and one times and the sun had risen one thousand times.
She lay beside the king.
‘Tell me a tale, Shahrazad,’ said the king. ‘Tell me a tale. For my heart is breaking now my son is dead. Take me from this hell. Tell me a story of our son, and let us give him a name, for we will only know that he has lived if he has a name. We shall call our son Anamar. Tell me a tale of how Anamar is become an angel. I demand this.’
‘Lord,’ Shahrazad said to the king, ‘I told you I have no more tales. You shall have me killed and I will die in peace. Will you make ready your executioner? And tomorrow you may take a new bride.’
‘I command you.’
Shahrazad’s heart was as a stone. She had no pity for him. And he saw this. He left the bed and knelt on the ground.
‘Very well, I beg you,’ he said.
‘Then I shall tell you a tale, but it is not the one you wish to hear. And it shall be my final story. And then you will have me killed. Do you understand?’
The king does not answer. He only listens.
‘You will like this story, O my great King, for it is a tale of endless treasure, and what is more – a great secret is shown, for this tale is true, Lord. Yes, true!’
But the king does not sit up, so eager to know, so eager to hear. When he speaks it is only a whisper: ‘Will the tale mend my heart?’
‘Heart! What need have you of a heart?’ Shahrazad spits, and makes a fist, shaking it in the face of the king. ‘You, who desires above all, land and gold, silks and saffron, and other fine things. Listen, now, to the tale of the greatest treasure there ever was. The chest of gold and diamonds. The trove of jewels and metals that shine like the stars, sun and sea under the moon, the most valuable treasure in all the world.’
The king stood, and his eyes opened fully, as if he had woken from a living dream.
‘Yes, my King! It is a treasure blessed with magic. For the more you give to your people, the more you will have. Now I have no more of this tale to tell. Only this. Though the treasure is real, I cannot tell you where it is, my King. Only you can find where it lies. And as I say, if you find it, the more you give to your people, the more you shall have. I wish you luck, I pray you will not spend the rest of your days searching.’
The light of dawn filled the chamber. Shahrazad left her bed and went and knelt upon the ground with her head bowed: ‘So, call your men. I am ready.’
The men come. They are sad to take Shahrazad for they love her and they love her stories. Many of them cry. But they know the king will not have mercy and they cannot beg for her life.
But then… then, the king who has been a murderer and a thief, but also a husband and a father, and who is dying with grief, he says: ‘The treasure you speak of is love. It lies in our hearts with the shadow of fear. Its light will not defeat the shadow. But it may be like a fire in the night, or the moon in the sky. It will light the darkness, until the new day will come.’
And he loved his queen Shahrazad and he loved his people. And now, after one thousand tales, he listens to this story and he promises to tell this story each day to his people, forever more, and he says to his queen, Shahrazad: ‘This is the story that will never end.’
*
I saw the moonlight shine in Aya’s eyes.
‘Why are you crying?’ I said.
Aya pushed words through the tears. ‘Because this story does not matter. And I will never see Sakkina again. This is the end of the story. This! Death.’
Cold empty fear pitted in my gut and spread through my whole body.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t say that. After what we’ve been through we have to live.’
‘I say we must leave the island. And I am sorry.’
viii
Water almost ran out. We made more. The sun demon was good for that.
It was slow, we made less than we drank.
We sat apart, in the shade of our hats, the cloak, the storm-cheater.
I looked for the fin. I searched and looked. But I didn’t see it.
*
But next day:
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It came behind us. The curving arc of its fin trailing in the wake of the boat. I always thought a shark had to move fast, but this monster swam slowly, almost lazily through the still blue. As it got close we saw its fin properly. White and black-edged above the water. Its body a huge, grey shadow below.
I closed my eyes.
‘It’s not real,’ I said. ‘I’m imagining things. Seeing things.’
‘No, Bill. See.’
It was there, lurking and waiting.
‘No, no, no. It can’t be.’
But it was. It was real.
It followed us when we paddled. It did that for hours, till night.
I didn’t sleep.
Then, in the first light, it bumped the boat. Gull crawked and flapped.
‘Bill!’ Aya shouted. We both sat bolt upright. I grabbed the oar. Aya found the knife and held it, ready.
I looked over the side, careful to hold steady to the gunnels with one shaking hand. The bump had been a nudge, a test. It was coming. There was no doubt. We saw it close as it swam by, a few metres off starboard side. Black eyes, white teeth. A face with no expression.
Gull watched, hopping from one leg to the other, moving around to keep an eye on it. Gull knew this thing. He knew to be wary of it.
It went away and came back, again and again. Every time we held each other with one hand, braced, with the oar and knife in our other hands. And each time I felt the same cold, sick lurch in my gut.
Then it vanished. We did nothing for hours, except watch the flat water.
*
In the early evening I fished. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do anything that might make it come back. But we had to find food if we could. I got a bite. The first in days. A good size fish. We reeled it in.
The shark came gliding through the water. I reeled fast. But it came and took the fish, and the hook too. I held the oar, gripped it with all I had.
‘You’re not having it.’
The line pinged and snapped, leaving me with nothing. I remembered the rope holding the raft to Pandora. How the storm had broken it.