The deepest shore, p.7
The Deepest Shore, page 7
The afternoon passed and it wasn’t long before the sun, heavy from the day, dropped down and extinguished in the sea. On this cue, people began to gather for the ritual and electric sparks of anticipation filled her. She found Gerwalt through the net of needle fingers and moved to stand beside her. In place of Gerwalt’s tattered shirt was a vibrant purple gown that flowed to her ankles. ‘I found it nine suns ago and waited until tonight to wear it.’ Although it was very large on someone so thin, it really brought out the colour of her eyes, a strikingly deep purple that glittered in the starlight.
This dress had many frayed edges, but Dew now understood that this was natural for the onion-people. It must have been a lucky find for Gerwalt, whose joy in wearing something so rare and beautiful brought a smile to her face. Dew looked at the shirt she wore, a rag that undoubtedly had floated down from the sky too. With Gerwalt next to her, she didn’t feel so alone.
‘Short-fingers catch something?’ said Gerwalt, not thinking to hide her surprise.
Dew smiled nervously. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t easy.’
Gerwalt laughed. ‘I cannot think how it is possible!’
Before Dew could tell her story, silence swept over the clearing with everyone’s attention now focused on the Chief’s hut. Dew struggled to see over the crowd of limber onion-people. Her main glimpses came from between their reed-like legs, giving her the feeling of witnessing a dark ceremony in a deeply wooded forest.
From the hut appeared a group carrying objects of all shapes and sizes, which they began to beat until a combination of thumps, clangs, and knocks filled the sky thickly. It felt as if the earth itself was rumbling. Dew’s heart beat in time to their playing, the primal rhythm tugging at some deep part of her long lost to history.
To this beat, the doorway of the Chief’s hut lifted open and he emerged, resplendent in a red cloak, his hair jingling with jewellery flickering in the light. Burning at the end of each fingertip was a flame that left yellow trails as he moved, swirling and criss-crossing in an intricate and complicated dance. Each bellowed smoke that rose into the darkness.
When the Chief reached the pile of debris, the drummers ceased at once, creating a vacuum of silence. The Chief raised his hands and spread them out, holding eight small lights of vibrant colours high above the crowd. ‘Tonight, below this luk of fire, we create our own dreams!’ he said in a voice that boomed through the air. The Chief then swung his arms down and the pile burst into flame. It spread, devouring and growing until it consumed the night sky. What Dew saw terrified her and yet she couldn’t stop looking. The flames pirouetted and twisted into the air, inviting her to join in with their magical dance.
Next to the Chief appeared a rickety trolley piled high with fish caught earlier in the day. Some she recognised from her time with Gerwalt on the rocks, but many she hadn’t seen before, bigger and with more teeth than she deemed appropriate. Some were tiny, likely caught by young children. Dew frowned. If she had known, she would have looked for one of those instead. The fire reflected on each round, bulbous eye, animating them to life. Don’t look at me, one seemed to say, you got into this mess yourself.
The Chief turned to the trolley and nodded his approval at the catch. He then pierced the topmost fish and suspended it over the fire. Dew couldn’t be sure, but as the flames caressed it, she thought she could see it faintly glowing. It crackled and spat, and for an instant, its eyes bulged to a great size.
And then-
It launched into the air, and with a great boom, it exploded in a blast of rainbow light. Stars burst out from the centre, growing from a small bud into a grand blooming flower. As quickly as it began, the glittering lights faded into wisps of smoke that dispersed in the night breeze, colours twinkling in the eyes of everyone watching.
One after another, the Chief took a fish and lit it over the fire. Each burst into sparks that painted the night sky with patterns and pictures that Dew believed the whole universe could see. Some created galaxies of blinking stars, while others split into streams that fell like willow tree branches. One snapped into spurts of light that dashed and spun like mice trying to escape from a hungry cat. Another separated into increasingly smaller lights that criss-crossed between each other in every possible direction. The beauty of it left Dew breathless. She couldn’t believe that all this came from the slimy, goggle-eyed creatures of the sea.
Her chest tightened. She was so absorbed in the spectacle that she had completely forgotten about her fish, recognisable by the pink cloth that covered it. Her mind raced; there had to be a reason why they didn’t allow yellow. What was it? Would it not fly? If it just burned on the fire, what would they think of her? She didn’t know what to do.
Time moved slowly as the Chief held it over the fire. The fish started to glow like the others and the tension in Dew’s body eased. But something was wrong. The fire burst and caught hold of the shirt until it seared into a golden ball of flame. The crowd turned to each other with confusion. Alarmed, the Chief dropped the fish onto the bonfire and it sank into the flames. For a moment it looked as if it had gone, until the fish suddenly reappeared, spat out of the smoke onto the beach.
Chaos erupted as the flaming ball bounced towards the tents. Many ran, kicking up smoke-filled sand, while the more vulnerable crouched down and shielded their faces. The few chasing the fireball ran as fast as they could, but before they could catch it, the first hut was already alight. Those who remained to fight the blaze grabbed anything that could hold water and formed a line along the banks of the red river. They filled their makeshift buckets and passed them along to the person at the front, who then threw the contents onto the fire. The sun, combined with the dry landscape and the falling objects, would have caused many fires in the past.
In all the confusion, Dew ran. Her body boiled with fright and guilt, panicking and too angry with herself for despair. She didn’t think of helping those fighting the blaze. She didn’t think of anything at all. Running was all she could do, away from the heat, the smoke, and the dust. She became aware of something chasing her, a voice whispering in her ear. This is all your fault. Regardless of how fast or far she went, it was there, never fading, just following with persistence.
This is all your fault.
On the desolate beach appeared a mound of smoke resembling a dragon, its jagged scales flickering in the distant orange light. It watched her as she ran towards it, rasping with sobbing, tears marking her path on the sand.
You certainly know how to make friends, it said.
Dew’s legs trembled, but fear prevented her from stopping. She was a strange creature from far away, in a place where she no longer knew who she was. She pictured herself bound atop that pile of wood, trying desperately to explain her actions as the flames licked higher and higher. Perhaps she would explode in the same way the fish did, firing up into the stars and creating a beautiful pattern. She wondered what it would be.
No, that wouldn’t happen. She just needed to run.
Everything Dew had learnt about the onion-people tumbled from her head and all that remained were those primal feelings of revulsion she felt upon meeting them. The kindness they had shown her darkened into fear. As her body tired, these thoughts quickly gave way to guilt, a feeling of betrayal towards the friends who had taken her in and made her one of their own.
She tripped and fell headfirst onto the sand. Smoke in the shape of a dragon stomped over and dropped its bulk on her. It curled its pointed tail around its claws and went to sleep, crushing her beneath its weight. She pushed as hard as she could, but it was useless. Trying to move beneath this plume of smoke was about as effective as taking a hammer to the earth and expecting it to shatter into fragments. As it squeezed her lungs, she breathlessly succumbed to choking darkness.
Shimmering Sand
At the edge of night, as the sun slowly broke the dawn and burned the clouds with pink fire, a gathering of ghosts took place. They stood in a circle around a lost girl, who slept as lifelessly as all the other discarded objects that surrounded her. She opened her eyes and saw them, wrapped in cloaks of smoke that licked the burning sky. Their scent permeated everything, floating so thickly she thought it would linger forever, clouding around her wherever she went, obscuring whatever she did. Whatever the invisible envoys wanted to tell her, it reminded her that it wasn’t a dream after all. Her throat stung, her lungs burned, and her body ached.
The same voice haunted her and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get away from it. There was no one else to blame. Her need to be accepted was so imperative that she went too far. What possessed her to disguise that fish? Why didn’t she listen to her friend? She needed to find out what happened, to know with certainty if she should be feeling these emotions at all. Reality and belief are two very different things. Her memory of the evening was a series of fragmented snippets blurred and obscured through the cloud of grey mist that clung to her skin.
Dew had run far in the night. The familiar patchwork huts now appeared as a rainbow smear on the landscape, haloed by a dark stream of smoke circling above them. Carried by her guilt, Dew crept closer, feeling her lungs squeezing with every step. From atop a dune she could see an ashen lump where the bonfire had fizzled away in the night. From there led a charred trail across the sand to the frayed remains of two huts, where a group of onion-people writhed on the ground with pale faces and tearful eyes. Dew had burned down their homes.
This is all your fault. The voice in her head was wailing now, so painfully loud that everyone should have been able to hear it. She watched the villagers working together to help clear away the mess. Many had already begun rebuilding, stitching together spare rags and scavenging the surrounding beach for new ones. What did it mean to think of others, to help and let them help you? In her heart, she wanted to go to them, to be a part of making someone’s life better. But she couldn’t move. Her body felt like stone sculpted into the sand.
Gerwalt walked towards them carrying a pile of rags. Dew’s heartbeat sped up. She pictured the disappointment on Gerwalt’s face and found it to be the most awful thing her mind could conjure up. Unable to look anymore, she turned away to face the sea. For the first time since she arrived, she truly saw how beautiful and serene it was. The devastation felt worlds away, non-existent beneath the soft splashing of the tide.
She lay down on the hot sand and tried to remember the last time she had looked at the sky like this, searching for shapes in the little puffs of white. Fractured images and colours peppered her thoughts, emotions simmering away in the heat of the day.
On that invisible line between the sea and the sky, she searched for Gaw. Somewhere, out there, he was sailing alone. The giant turtle was probably fine without her, she knew, but still, she always liked to picture their journey as a partnership, even if he didn’t think the same way as her. What is this bug that keeps patting me on the head and making weird noises? he might have thought. She had to be hopeful that she would find him again one day.
Dew wondered how it was possible for there to be so much going on in the world and yet not see it on this peaceful patch of sand. While she was lying inert, people far away were living, experiencing hardships and joys she couldn’t have begun to understand. Even life in the village felt distant when looking at the frozen landscape around her.
Running away in the night was easy, even if part of her heart tore away and remained with Gerwalt. Dew didn’t have much concept of right and wrong; without other people, such ideas were as free as water, but a big part of her knew that she would never forgive herself for leaving the onion-people behind after the kindness they had shown her. She spent much time puzzling over this feeling and what it meant.
Somehow, she knew she had to find a place in this strange new world. There was too much she didn’t know to survive out here alone. She needed a friend. She needed Gerwalt. Running would only get her so far; eventually she knew she had to return to the village and own up to what she had done, taking whatever the consequences may be. She collected whatever scraps of courage she could find and pushed back her fright.
Then the ground trembled.
Dew froze. There was a reason the onion-people didn’t come out here alone. In her need to escape the fire, she had forgotten all about it.
The ground erupted in a geyser of sand, cracking open with such force that it almost threw her over. Faintly, through all the dust, she could make out the spectral features of the luk’s face.
A deep thud followed as it hit the ground. The dust cleared and a sand archway stood before her. At first nothing happened, only silence returning from behind the dunes. Twinkling specks of sand then began to fall, slowly at first, soon pouring in a shimmering waterfall. The veil started to warp and distort, the sheet transforming into a soft blue, dark green, red, white-
It was too real to be true, she knew it, and yet she desired it more than anything. The beach, the sky, and the village disappeared; existence paled and the sky emptied. A trembling hand hesitantly reached out. A single step forwards. She knew it was a dream, but she couldn’t stop herself. Gerwalt had warned her. Why would they rescue her if they didn’t care?
Another step forwards. The grains of sand bounced on her fingertips as she prodded the shining curtain. It was the only sensation left. The image crinkled and curved with light connecting each dot like a spider’s web. Behind it, she could see something else, something imperceptible.
Before she knew it, it pulled her through in a flash of brilliant golden light.
Dew could no longer feel her body. She was floating, suspended in an infinite pale space. Bubbles floated past as it darkened to a deep blue. Had she fallen into the sea? She panicked and held her breath, feeling a lack of body to hold the air in. There was nothing, only her consciousness and the water.
The rocky seabed moved at speed beneath her. She checked again. No, it couldn’t be rocks. They were statues. Features such as eyes, noses, and mouths became clearer to her as she drifted closer to them. They had arms, legs, and faces, each frozen in a variety of expressions and movements. They were all unique. It was a world – or at least an imitation of one – carved in stone, a secret gallery of life.
Something grabbed hold of her and pulled upwards. The colours of the sea faded into a warm orange space streaked with streams of white light flowing all around her. In the centre was a white dot. As she floated closer, it became a sphere, a ball hanging alone in space. The smooth, pale surface appeared lifeless as she orbited around it, but there was something else, a building or a house, with a great tree growing out of a small patch of grass in front of it. The sight was familiar to Dew. Here was a home, hidden on a great white sea, where infinity stretched whichever way she looked. Attached to the tree on a thick, protruding branch was a wooden chair, dangling on two lengths of rope. Sitting on it was a small glowing figure. This person looked younger than Dew with a face that resembled a flower, flat and round, with their features framed by petals. Other than this flower-person, they were alone.
The child hopped from the swing and ran across the lawn with the tips of grass nearly touching their knees. They reached the door and stood unmoving as its shadow draped over them. They stared at it with pitiful longing.
The scene felt heavy with emptiness, more on this green patch than the whole of the great white sphere it inhabited, more than the vast space in its entirety. The presence of a single life was enough to make a grand space feel isolating. Only when someone is there can loneliness exist. Dew felt it too, what she had always known but could never put a name to.
A sharp gust of wind swung down from the sky and rolled over the garden. The tree rustled. When it passed, everything was silent again. The leaves stopped singing and the swing was motionless. Another followed. It wasn’t much, no more than a trickling brook weaving its way between the greenery, but slowly it began to speed up. Leaves fell around the child as they sat back on the swing, only a few at first, but then a monstrous howl shook them from the branches.
Startled, the child ran towards the house and pushed at the door. It wouldn’t open, no matter how hard they tried. A further torrent sent them reeling into the open garden, almost over their feet. They closed their eyes and covered their ears. A branch snapped and flew away in a long curve around the sphere and out of sight. Soon the child struggled to stay upright and fell.
Dew tried to reach out, but she was unable to move and kicked the air in frustration. The wind raged but she remained perfectly still, unaffected and forced to watch this unfold in front of her. She wanted to tell the child that they were not alone, but no words could form in her throat.
In an instant, the wind took the child with it, away from the garden, away from the sphere, away from her.
Everything dissolved in a flash of light.
The Invaluable Red Rug
Upon the beach of a desolate land, a spirit was born for the first time. On returning to the corporeal world, it felt the chill of breath rushing down its throat and the stinging of acid sloshing in its stomach. It felt the aches and crunches of its bones, the chemical reactions fizzing in its brain, and every burned millimetre of skin covering these grinding cogs. It had gone from feeling nothing to all these things at once. Every nerve burned with the tentative fire of life.
For a mind returning to a body, it must remember who it was before it left, and Dew struggled to recall herself as she tumbled to the sand. The archway towered over her, silent and menacing, exhausted of its twinkling rain and now standing as lifelessly as the other crumbling sculptures that littered the scenery, nothing more than a remnant, a trace of the past.
