The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Ellen Datlow ed.

  After a few minutes, I raise up as high as I can but I can’t make out whether there are any cliffs or palm trees or grass houses in the distance.

  Of course not very likely they’d help me even when I get someplace. But I’m so thirsty and there’s no fresh water around here that I can see. They’ve got to have some.

  I crawl for what seems a long time. Then I hear, “Hey, look how far it got.”

  “Not bad.”

  “Let’s help it.”

  And so they grab me again, one on each side. (There are only two of them this time.) They try to hold me up, but they’re not very strong. Still, they keep me on my feet, which I wish they wouldn’t. I say, “Slow down. Please.”

  They don’t and I didn’t expect them to.

  They bring me to a steep-sided pit in the sand. They throw me…or rather let me fall, slipping and sliding, down into it. And there is…I suppose it is…Ma.

  “What in the world have you dragged in now?”

  “It chatters. It’s wearing clothes. It can do lots of things. Maybe it can help.”

  “It’s useless. Its leg is all swollen up.”

  “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “We can sell it.”

  “Poosh.”

  “Can we have it?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Yay.”

  They all begin to dance and kick up sand.

  I say, “Now, listen for once. I’m no different from you. I’m talking your language. Can’t you see that?”

  “Maybe we can tame it.”

  “I’ll do anything you want if you just give me a drink. I’ll give you my silky blouse and my silver bird pin. I’ll give you my turquoise ring.” (I wore these especially to give to the natives who might rescue me.) “I’ve lost my shoes but I’ll give my socks, though I’d like to keep my underwear.”

  “It’s trying to give a speech.”

  “Wonder what it thinks it’s saying.”

  “Let’s listen.”

  But they don’t.

  “I wish there were two of it. Then we could both have one. Where can we get another one?”

  “Hang out on the beach is where. Things get washed up all the time. Maybe we could even get a better one.”

  They tie a piece of frayed twine around my neck and I have to scrabble out of the sandpit—as much sliding down as climbing up. One pulls me along while another pushes. I’m not worried about getting choked. I think the twine will break any minute.

  But how to get a drink? I wanted broth and a caring hand lifting my head to help me drink it.

  We’ve been going slightly up for a while, me crawling and them pulling on the string. I turn around and see the view of the shore beyond. It’s a spectacular view now that the fog has burned off, but right now I don’t care. If I could drink a view…

  Later, here come the other three. One asks, “Can it dance?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Well?”

  “We don’t know how to make it do it.”

  “Drink,” I say. “I’ll dance if you give me a drink.”

  I keep pointing at my mouth.

  They start slapping their hands on their thighs and making clicking sounds. One finds two stones to pound against each other.

  They sing, “Diggity thump, diggity thump.”

  I wave my arms to show them I’m willing.

  We do that for a while until one says, “Whoa. Ma’ll be mad.”

  “Is it getting dark already?”

  Suddenly they all run off. I’m not sorry. A little peace and quiet. Maybe I can find a drink by myself. I pull myself along, but to the side where I think I see a bush. Maybe I can find a hiding place.

  Natives! At least not cannibals. So far, anyway. Why didn’t I think twice about leaky boats instead of just once. I was taking a bigger risk than I thought—heading off toward nowhere. Nowhere is exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t want this kind of nowhere.

  I always thought, especially recently, that I was born to be washed up someplace odd and lost and unknown. A place unlike anyplace I was used to. Or perhaps born to crash in an airplane in a jungle, or on the top of a mountain. Someplace with rushing streams and gnarled thousand-year-old trees. Surely a spectacular setting of some sort.

  And I was born to start over, to have a whole new life, a second chance, new friends, new surroundings, even new ideas. Especially new ideas. Born to not, anymore, think my same old thoughts that I’ve been thinking over and over. Even born to speak another language. One I never heard of before, full of glottal stops and hisses.

  The more I saw the recommended movies, read the bestsellers and the book reviews, went to plays I couldn’t afford, saw the latest art shows, the more I knew that I was only marking time. That something more important awaited me.

  But now I suppose you could say the moral of my adventure would be “There’s no place like home.” Even so, no matter what happens, I won’t believe that. No matter how this ends up—it’ll probably end up with me dying for lack of water and food—anyway, no matter how, I’ll not believe it. Home is never best. Home is everything as usual. Who wants that?

  It is a bush. Just one. It’s not as big as it looked to be from down the beach. I hunker down next to it. It’s a wonder I sleep at all, thirsty and hungry as I am, but I do. In the morning my leg feels some better. I guess it isn’t broken. I’m going to try and stay off it and I’m going to try to avoid those…whatever they are. I crawl yet farther, sideways along the beach. I hope away from them. There’s another bush. I head for it when…

  “Hey, here it is.”

  “Yay, I thought it was lost.”

  “Don’t worry. Even if it was, we could look for another one. If one gets washed up, other ones must get washed up, too.”

  “Well, then how come this is the first one we ever saw?”

  They prop me up again, one on each side. By now I know it’s useless to say anything.

  It looks like they’re chewing gum. Is this a sign of contact with the outside world? Or has this always been the outside world, so that I’ve not really moved that far from my usual surroundings—as if I’d gone to Coney Island on a cold day when hardly anybody else was there?

  They bring me back to that sandpit, me crawling and hopping, and at last give me a drink and food—in a dog’s bowl. In fact it says DOG right on it. And the food looks like kibbles. I’m grateful anyway. I say, “Thank you.”

  The ma says she doesn’t want me in the house, but where is the house?

  “Can’t we have it inside? Please. Just this once.”

  “We don’t even know what it is. Besides, it’s too sandy.”

  Actually, there seems to be nothing but sand all over everything anyway.

  I feel so much better after having eaten and drunk, I curl up around the water bowl to fall asleep, but they don’t want me to.

  We spend the day at all sorts of games. Hide-and-seek. They hide me under sand. Not my head, thank goodness. And: Can they crawl as fast as I can? (They can.) How many periwinkles can they eat?

  Then one says, “If we can find a male, we could have babies.”

  “And we could watch them do it.”

  “Yay.”

  They all (and I also, pulled and pushed along) go back to the beach to look for a male. They walk up and down, but not very far.

  I’d have a fellow feeling for anyone washed up. I hope they find somebody, though I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.

  They find shells they like. They make a little sort of harness with a plastic bag on each side of me. (Is this another sign I haven’t gone far or have plastic bags blown all over the whole world?) I carry them, crawling.

  Back at the pit, the ma asks, “Did you feed it?”

  “We forgot.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to do it.”

  They bring fresh water and food. I say, “Thank you. You’re very kind.” I’ll
be polite. Maybe something will get through to them.

  I want to stay awake to see if they go anywhere outside of this sandpit, but I’m too tired.

  In the morning they forget to feed and water me. Talking hasn’t helped so I bark and meow. I even say a couple of big “baaaaas.” It feels good to do it.

  I don’t know if they hear me or not, but they do feed me.

  Then it’s back to the beach to look for more like me.

  They forget why they’re there. They get to playing a sand-in-the-face game. I crawl away and they don’t notice.

  I stay down on the harder wet sand. It’s easier going. Maybe I can get out of sight.

  I think I see, way, way down the beach, that there’s a rowboat pulled up on the shore.

  I crawl even faster.

  I hope the oars are still there. I’ll be off to some other, better desert island. I’ll sing as I row.

  “Hey, don’t let it get away.”

  Here they come.

  I get up and hobble but they catch me before I can get to the boat. And even if I’d made it, I’d have had to push off. I never would have gotten away.

  They see the boat, too, and forget all about me.

  I follow, but slowly. They’re all jumping around in it. I sit down beside it.

  “Not bad.”

  “And look, the oars are still here.”

  “Too bad nobody’s here. I thought maybe we’d find another one and then you others could have one, too.”

  “There’s got to be another one or even two around here someplace. Maybe three. Maybe we could all have one.”

  I look around for tracks leading from the boat, but they look around for tracks, too, and kick up so much sand there’s no way to tell anymore.

  Escape was so close it gives me hope. A boat is all I need. Or maybe even just a log to float away on.

  I search the sea and the beach for signs of driftwood. There’s only small stuff, but I collect a pile, anyway. Maybe I can build a fire and a ship will come, though there’ll be the problem of matches. I wonder if these creatures have any.

  My pile is getting bigger. It takes me a long time crawling to gather stuff, but at least they’re not bothering me.

  Then they notice my pile. They love it. They crawl in and out of the branches and old planks and mess it all up.

  I say, “You could make a nice bonfire,” and one of them says, “Hey, we could make a nice bonfire.”

  Do I actually have some influence? Except it is, clearly, the makings of a bonfire.

  I say, “What about matches?” and they say, “Let’s get some matches,” and off they go.

  I crawl over to the rowboat. I try really hard, but I don’t have the strength to push it back into the surf. I wonder if I can get them to do it. I climb in. Fall onto the bottom. Could I hide here? Of course then I wouldn’t have any chance of getting water and food.

  The sound of the water lapping nearby is restful. I wake when I hear them coming back—good grief, they’re noisy—but I don’t move.

  “Oh no, where has it got to?”

  Meaning me, of course.

  And then I see their heads all along the gunwale. Five of them. They smile and wave when they see me.

  I say, “Push the boat off. We can all go for a ride,” but they turn away to the pile of driftwood.

  I look over the side and watch them. It lights instantly.

  Playing with fire. Not a good idea. I hope they don’t all get burned up. They’re my only hope for water and food.

  But someone is striding down the beach toward us. At first I think he’s naked, and I feel good because, for sure, he’s one of those native brown people I was hoping for, but then I see he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt, everything tan, and he’s just a regular person. I hope he can hear what I say.

  The creatures all run and hide behind the boat while I climb out and crawl to greet him. He’s a long way off so I manage to get well away from them before we meet.

  When we get close, I sit up. I straighten my blouse and brush some of the sand off. I try to do something with my hair though I know it’s a lost cause.

  He’s good looking and about my age, though, unfortunately, not my type.

  He sits down beside me, and right away he says, “I’ve been all the way around it, and there’s nothing here,” as if he’s not surprised to see me. Not even surprised to see me crawling first and then sitting here with my swollen leg stretched out in front of me.

  I don’t tell him about the others. I just say, “Oh.”

  He had come on shore early in the morning and it had taken him all day to get back around to his boat.

  “This isn’t much of an island.”

  The good news is, he, also, had wanted to be washed up on a foreign shore.

  I say, “I presume you’re looking for a whole new way of life, with adventures and interesting natives, in an exciting setting. I suppose you wanted naked ladies, but this isn’t the place.”

  “You’ve made a bonfire. You want to be rescued.”

  “This isn’t where I meant to come. I’m starving and thirsty and I’d like to leave with you.”

  “You’re not what I’m looking for.”

  “No, no, nothing like that, though, considering, we must have a lot in common. I just want to get away. Actually if I had a comb and could wash my hair I’d look a lot better. But I just want out of here.”

  They’re still hiding behind his boat. I hear them giggling. The man hears, too.

  “Are there other people here?”

  “Sort of.”

  They jump out and run to us yelling, “Yay, yay, yay, another one.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Before he can stop them they feel at his crotch.

  “Yay, it’s a male.”

  They dance around us and kick up sand until he’s as sandy as I am.

  He wants to get out into the surf to wash off, but they keep getting in the way.

  I say, “It’s useless.”

  He starts hitting out at them but misses every time. How can that be? He’s using up all his energy and it looks to be as useless as trying to tell them something.

  “Stop. Wait,” I say. “We need them. There’s no water or food except if they give it to us back at their pit. I have to crawl there, but at least you can walk.”

  He stops.

  And then the creatures do it again. Yell, “Oh no. Ma will be mad.” And off they go.

  What if they get so distracted with him that I can leave him here instead of me? Maybe they’ll forget about me even though they want to have babies. Maybe if I had enough time, I could push the boat off by myself. Maybe I could even take days to do it. They might not notice that it was inching out little by little. Then I could be starting off on my real adventure.

  “Go on,” I say. “Follow them. It’s your only chance for food.”

  He trots off, but I head back to his boat. I wonder if he left any food or water in it.

  First I push at it. And push and push. I do move it a little. About a half inch every push. If I didn’t have a bad leg, I’d do a lot better. I keep pushing until I’m exhausted and it’s dark. I’ve gone about three or four feet. Then the moon comes up—not a full moon, but I can see fairly well except in the shadows. I get into the boat and look around for supplies.

  There’s a dirty backpack tucked under the backseat. It’s wet. I find wet crackers in it. I think they’re cheese crackers and might have been good once. I eat them all. There’s an inch of stale-tasting water left in a plastic bottle. I drink that.

  The bonfire smolders outside. I wonder if anybody will see it and come. Maybe I should be working at keeping it burning, but I don’t.

  I sleep in the boat, though it’s not as comfortable as the sand. At least with sand you can make yourself a hip hole.

  In the morning they all come rushing back. I hear them a long ways off. The man gets here first and they trail after. First th
ing he looks over the side and sees the empty water bottle and cracker wrappers.

  But even so he’s relieved. “I thought you might have taken off in my boat.”

  I say, “Their water tastes a lot better than yours.”

  I hope he doesn’t notice that his boat was moved a few feet.

  Maybe he is my type after all. He looks less like a boy and more like a man than I thought. Or is it just that he spent a sleepless frustrated night? The circles under his eyes make him more attractive, and there’s something pleasantly worried about his face.

  He hops into the boat and sits beside me—says, “At least you can hear me.”

  He’s found out what it’s like not to be able to say anything.

  All five of the creatures follow him into the boat. There’s hardly room for all of us. The way they’re crowding around and pushing at us, they obviously want us to sit closer to each other. He moves to the front of the boat to be farther away.

  “Hey,” they say, “how about it?” and make lewd gestures.

  “Sorry I didn’t save any crackers for you. I couldn’t help myself.”

  I wonder if I look better to him this morning, just as he looks better to me. Can we already have gotten to the point where anybody of the opposite sex starts looking good?

  They crowd us and push us so much we leave the boat and sit down, one on each side of the ashes of the bonfire.

  He says, “My name is Brad.”

  I wonder who I should be. I say, “My name is Melody,” which of course it isn’t—any more than he’s Brad. (I don’t know why that name popped out. I don’t even like it. And I don’t even look as if my name is Melody.) I’m sure he doesn’t believe me, either.

  This night they don’t let me stay in the boat by myself. I try hard against their pulling. The boat only needs another three or four feet. But then there’s the dog food and more or less clean water. I go. Three stay with me as I crawl back, and two go on ahead with him.

  Ma is really mad when she sees two of us. “Out! Out! Both of them! I never even wanted one. What will you be dragging in next?”

  She makes them push us out of the sandpit.