Imagine these words are blue.
Creation is a process of division: at first all was blue, before being split into two with heavens above and waters below. We, the first people, fell down from the sky to land on a floating island, a forest, alone in a vast sea. Any memory of who we are or where we are from was lost. At first, life was tough, but we were blessed with gifts; we made strings to fish with and built houses between the sheltered trees. However, in all the time on the island there has not been a single child to walk its surface.
For each anniversary of our arrival, we have a feast, a celebration of our collective birthday. We gather where the tree-roots extend out to float on the water and eat as the sun goes down. As we feast, seabirds cast out to glide over sapphire waves, and a million points scatter to flash like stars as they catch the dying light. The air is alive with colour; ambers and ochres swing through to metallic silvers and deep blues. Cakes of seaweed and fruits decorate the long table, along with prawns, mussels, and squid. But the conversation is low and the mood is sombre.
The village leader raises his arms for quiet, and speaks: “Something has to be done. Soon we will grow old and die with no heirs to the land. We will become merely a memory of the island.” He looks to the sea and frowns. His face is carved from ocean winds, his salt-speckled hair wiry and long.
“What can we do?” a woman shouts. “We’re trapped here.”
“We’ve never been trapped,” I say. “You’re just afraid.”
People murmur. Somebody laughs, briefly, before being cut off. “Nobody is to go in the ocean.” The leader stands, “we have lost enough people already.”
Whoever laughed speaks up: “Do you even know how to swim?” Others join him, sniggering.
“So you’re going to sit here until you die?” I ask.
The man who laughed jumps up but is held back by the others.
“Stop. None of us are to go in the ocean,” the leader repeats, looking at me. “If you no longer want to be one of us, that is your decision.”
“I’m sick of this place anyway.”
The laughing man spits in his food. “Good riddance, then.” Several others yell agreement but most get up to leave in awkward silence.
The wind moves and leaves move with it. The leader walks away, calm in the quiet hush beneath the trees. He whispers something but I cannot hear it.
“You should be grateful,” Chelle says to me, “that you weren’t hurt.” We have the table to ourselves now, the white cloth stained and littered with half eaten meals. A couple of the wooden chairs have been knocked over to lie amongst the grass.
“I feel it calling to me. I always have.”
“You can’t go there. You’ll drown.”
“I have to.”
“You must be the only one who isn’t afraid of the ocean.” Her face flushes red as she speaks. “Life’s not easy for us left behind. We’re at our limit,” she stops for a moment to collect her breath. “We caught my friend trying to drown herself last night. Life is far from perfect and it’s not like we have a choice, either.”
I look away. “I’m sorry.”
She gets up to go, pauses, says: “It’s not your fault,” and leaves.
Rain chisels the island. Droplets curl and curve as light fades, takes its last breath, and dies. I don’t sleep; the beating of my heart overpowers the beating of the rain. My hands shake as I imagine the turbulent seas outside beyond the edge. Cyclical, churning and churning in my mind.
Chelle finds me again just before I go. We sit on the edge of the island with our legs in the sea as her eyes, like bottles of light, blink away my reflection. Out at sea the water ripples under a lavender sky.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said those things.”
“It’s too late now. We can’t change this.”
“I know.” I lean forward, and she pushes me in. Fear blinds as water covers me to fill my mouth and lungs. Frozen by panic, waves crash me by.
And I discover I can breathe.
Gasping, water becomes air as the surface shimmers above me. The island seems so far away now, a world apart, and I can no longer see Chelle. I turn, as if I am a stationary point and the two worlds pivot around me. Darkness moves below, so far beneath like a bowl of black ink. My legs begin to kick.
I descend further as the darkness absolves me. Cold water warms to body temperature, and boils over into sensory deprivation: it’s as if salt water runs inside my veins. The adrenalin wears off and I begin to relax, hearing only the slow rush of blood in my ears.
These words are black again; any memory of colour has been left behind at the surface, at the top of the page. Weightless, I can no longer tell which direction is up. Where I end and the water begins becomes impossible to judge. I keep kicking, for what feels like hours, but never see another hint of light. Even time seems to have disappeared.
Dread starts to move along my skin. I stop to collect my thoughts, but my mind refuses to focus. I keep thinking back to the island, and to the first days after we landed. How we introduced ourselves to each other, and they did the same. How we felt the same disorientating panic, the same sense of the unknown. No, it’s not dread: my skin tingles, burning. I begin to dissolve. Fear grips and rips me apart while I divide and divide again. I am aware of my body the whole time, even as parts of me float away. I feel them all. I continue dissolving, until I lose myself and become a cloud, a mist, lost to the sea. Panic and fear drift away also, lost to someplace else.
The sea carries me back to the surface, where I rise as spores too fine to be seen. On the island, flowers bloom for the first time and the people become hopeful. At last, some of the women fall pregnant, but the people can only ask, “why now?” Something in the water, they say, as the leader watches on. Before long the children grow, and generation succeeds generation. New islands grow too, and each cast off to create stories of their own.
Once a year a male of the right age sacrifices himself to the ocean. Some say that it is just superstition, but those who go, they feel the ocean calling to them.
2019