The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

by Jillian Webster

  Maia looks down and Lucas tenderly lifts her chin. “You thanked me for saving you, Maia. But I didn’t save you … you saved me.”

  A distant wave of thunder rolls across the silver sky. Maia’s breath catches in her chest as Lucas leans in, slowly, until his nose grazes hers. He hesitates, his breath hot against her lips. And then he pulls her to him, softly kissing her as sporadic raindrops pelt against the tarp.

  Thirty-Eight

  In the dead of night, Maia awakens. Lucas sleeps soundly next to her. The features of his face, so often worried or focused, are at peace. His chest rises and falls as soft breaths escape his gently parted lips. In. Out. In. Out. A few dark curls hang across his face. She fights the urge to touch him.

  Sitting up, Maia rests her arms on her knees and gazes out across the dark blue expanse of decay. The full moon casts stunted shadows across the shallow banks of rubbish and a blanket of twinkling stars scatter across the sky, awakening memories of her beloved glowworms back home.

  Home. Seems like a lifetime ago.

  Last night Lucas kissed her. He kissed her with a tenderness that took her breath away. It was her first kiss—her only kiss … stranded on an island, surrounded by garbage.

  And it felt like coming home.

  She softly brushes her lower lip with the tip of her finger as if some part of him was still there. Something has happened; something has evolved between them that has changed everything.

  Crawling out from under the tarp, she stands beneath the array of glistening stars, breathing in the soft whispers of a faint ocean breeze. Was this horrific nightmare all meant to be? Is this fate? This is certainly the first time in her life she has felt its hands so strongly molding the course of her days. Does that mean the appalling chain of events leading up to this moment was all written in the stars? Like robots, they have been programmed to a predesigned lifeline of events?

  She inhales and she knows. No, she had a choice in the matter. She could have stayed in New Zealand. But, like magnets, she and Lucas gravitated towards each other, and the events fell into place as they found each other among the decay.

  Tomorrow they will build a boat. Tomorrow they will work hard, all day, on leaving this little island. It’s not so bad anymore. A crab scurries across the debris. She smiles to herself. Okay, it’s awful. But somehow, in this one peaceful, drifting moment in time, it seems safer than out there.

  Out there. Something still calls to her out there. Something real. Something strong. Is it her destiny? This force to be reckoned with? Maybe she didn’t have a choice after all. This something … whatever it is, has caused her more pain, more despair, and more loss in one short glimpse of her life than in all her days combined. All choices she has made, on her own, that could have been avoided. Choices that have now caused a ripple effect across the lives of others. She could have been home, safe, next to a fire with Huck by her side. Lucas would still be on his ship, and the battle wounds on his face would have never been broken.

  “Maia?”

  She turns to find Lucas sitting up under the tarp. His eyes search through the darkness for hers.

  But then, they would have never met. This undeniable, unspoken connection between them would have remained a rift—an unmet void in the great expanse. Lucas would still be an empty shell, and they would have lived out their days without each other. Never knowing. Deep lines would trace between her brow from age and worry. Her hair would gray and her back would hunch. She would have lived out her days in New Zealand, safe. Alone. Ending every day looking out into the horizon with wonder.

  And deep regret.

  She wanders back under the tarp and curls up next to him. They lie facing each other and she sweeps a strand of hair off his face. He closes his eyes and she shifts so close to him that their foreheads meet. She puts her hand in his.

  Yes, pain. So much more danger and pain.

  But also … life.

  The following day, Maia awakens to a headache. Not knowing when rain may come, they have rationed out their water to the least amount needed each day to keep them alive.

  Lucas crouches along the shore with his back towards her. She walks towards him, crushing broken plastic beneath her.

  Lucas turns around. “Morning.”

  “Good morning.” She rubs the tiredness from her eyes. “Another hot day.”

  “Sure is. Today is massive. Are you ready for this?”

  Maia squints across the mounds of rubbish. The romantic evening has disappeared with the moon, leaving the sun to highlight the appalling wreckage in all its grotesque horror. “I am.”

  “I want to be gone within the next few days. Are you any good at knots?”

  “I am.”

  “Okay, so everything we have collected to make this boat must be put together and secured with nets, triple knotted and secured again. First thing we must do is separate our stack of netting into one pile that is in great condition as is, and another for broken or frayed pieces to be taken apart for rope. Can you do that? I will go hunting.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He holds up a hollow metal pipe. “Have you seen these before?”

  “A tube? Yes, I’m familiar.”

  “No, the things attached to it.”

  She stumbles over to him and grabs the pipe. Attached to the bottom are clusters of what looks like dinosaur nails. The finger-like tubular growths extending from the metal have a long, ribbed neck the color of rust, gradually darkening to black. The ends are adorned with a sharp plated shell that looks like layers upon layers of shark teeth.

  She squints at them in disgust. “I’ve never seen these before. They must be poisonous.”

  “They are not. They are called ‘gooseneck barnacles.’”

  Maia lightly pulls at one. It doesn’t budge.

  “They are normally stuck to cliffs and rocks along the shores,” Lucas says. “I can only guess they are out here because a lot of this stuff used to float close to land and have drifted here. I can’t imagine it’s common, but it is our best shot.”

  “Best shot to fish?”

  “Fish? Fish for what?”

  “What else then?”

  “We’re going to eat them.”

  She looks at them again and her stomach churns at the sight. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. Besides, you don’t have any other options.”

  She pulls at the slimy appendage, grimacing. “And where will you be hunting for these … things?” She pokes at the hard-shelled tip.

  “They are around the sludge of this island, the parts that generally stay wet.”

  “You can’t go out there. It will pull you under.”

  “Not with these floaters I’ve made.” He proudly lifts a few buoys.

  She smirks. “Cute. And how do you presume we eat these things? We don’t have any spare wood to burn.”

  “Raw. It’s safe, they were a delicacy for years. We can net them up and keep them behind the boat beneath the water so they stay alive. We will have to ration them out, but they may be our only guaranteed food source for a while.”

  She lifts the pipe. Jingling the appendages back and forth, they clink together like a wind chime. The corners of her mouth pull down into a grimace.

  Lucas grabs her hand. “Maia, every day we stay in this rubble is another day we risk getting hurt. Even a minor cut could become infected and kill us. Every day we spend here is another day we could be drifting in the currents towards land. I think we are somewhere between the old Hawaiian Islands and North America. Getting out of this garbage patch and back to the currents is our only hope. Otherwise, we die here in this graveyard.”

  “So. Knots, then.”

  “Knots.”

  Maia sits cross-legged with mounds of netting surrounding her. Pulling, sorting, tying.

  Lucas walks up with a large net full of assorted objects with barnacles attached. “I’m going to find a secure spot outside the tidal zone to keep these beneath the water. We don’t
want them getting distressed.”

  “What about taking them off the garbage to save space and weight—is that an old basketball in there?”

  “Yes … how do you know about basketballs?”

  “I’ve read a lot of books,” Maia says with a smile.

  “Yes, that one is loaded with barnacles; it was my best find. But no, I do not want to take them off until we eat them. I’m not experienced at pulling them off and may kill them in the process. Don’t want to do that until right before we eat them.

  “I have brought you a gift,” he says as he reaches into his back pocket.

  “Please don’t say it’s a doll head. Those things are really starting to freak me out.”

  “Better.” He pulls out a bright yellow rubber ducky.

  She gasps as she snatches it from his hand. “Where did you find this!?”

  “Under the rubble down there. I had to give it a good polish but she is as good as new.”

  “I read a children’s book once about these, when I was little. I’ve always wanted one.” She cradles it in her hands and looks up at him, beaming. “You’re sweet.”

  Lucas heads towards the shore to secure the barnacles and Maia returns to her task. She places the yellow duck in front of her like a mascot, stopping to smile at it every so often.

  After a while, Lucas sits down next to her. “You mentioned you had read about rubber ducks,” he says as he grabs some netting from the pile. “So, you’ve been educated?”

  “I have. My grandfather had just started as a university professor when The End hit. He believed very strongly in education.”

  “You were close? With your grandfather?”

  She looks down, a wave of grief crashing over her. “Yes, we were very close.” She swallows hard. “He was everything to me. It was just the two of us, and we had our moments, but it was pretty effortless.”

  “And your grandmother?”

  “It’s complicated. My grandpa wasn’t actually my real grandfather. My real grandfather didn’t survive The End, the same as with my grandmother. He worked with Grandpa; they were at the university together. He asked Grandpa to take his one remaining child, my mother, and leave the city. To protect her. Grandpa never had any children and his wife had passed away, very young from what I gather. They hadn’t been married long.

  “So, Grandpa took my mother and escaped into the mountains of the Southern Islands where he had some land as a spot for hunting. He rebuilt a life for my mother and himself. They were hiding away when The End hit.” She stutters a bit, embarrassed she still doesn’t know. She looks for a spark of familiarity in Lucas’s eyes.

  He waits for her to continue.

  “My mother met my father years later. She died giving birth to me.”

  “I am so sorry, Maia. Is your father still alive?”

  “Yes, but I never knew him. He’s a drunk. He’s still on the island … it was actually him who secured my spot on your ship. He made a deal with Davies—I don’t know what—and showed up at my cabin in the middle of the night to tell me. He knew I was trying to get to The Old Arctic Circle. I had twenty-four hours to pack up my life and leave.”

  “What did your grandfather think about that?”

  “He didn’t. He had already passed away.”

  Lucas looks down, shaking his head.

  “I was all alone.”

  Lucas fidgets with the netting. “I am sorry, Maia. I judged you when I accused you of the sort of ‘deal’ you would have had to strike with Davies to come on board.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry. I told myself what I had to about you to not get involved.”

  “I didn’t … I wouldn’t.”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  There is a long silence. Maia tugs at a frayed net, trying to separate the cording.

  “I am sorry to hear about your grandfather. How did he die?” Lucas asks.

  “It was his lungs. I don’t know what was wrong with him but it was a very slow and painful death. He was sick for a long time. I did everything I could, but in the end, there was nothing I could do but sit by his side and watch him die. I burned his body in the corner of our yard.” She sighs and drops her knotted net into her lap. “And I finally got it. I finally understood what it meant when my books mentioned a ‘broken’ heart. That sort of pain, the kind that guts you, hollows you from the inside out … You will your heart to stop beating, you think surely it can’t bear another minute of the immense emptiness from loss. But somehow it beats on, unwavering and cruel. And suddenly, nothing is the same. And you know it will never be the same again.”

  There is a palpable sadness in Lucas’s gaze, but he says nothing.

  Maia stands to survey the piles of nets. “Anyway, this is it. Everything is separated and ready to go.”

  Lucas rises to his feet next to her. “Somehow, from all this mess, we will have a boat.”

  “Think it’ll work?” Maia asks.

  “It will. I know it will. It’s just going to take a hell of a lot of netting and tying, but we can do it.”

  “There’s always a way,” she adds.

  Lucas and Maia stand side by side over their collection of scraps … the driftwood and the bins and the buoys and the wide slabs of plastic that kept them afloat on their very first day in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Quite possibly, the greatest adversary to lead to their demise could also be their salvation.

  Lucas chuckles beside her and Maia follows his gaze. She giggles. With their hands on their hips, they marvel as a brave little sand crab lifts his claws in defiance of Maia’s yellow rubber duck.

  Thirty-Nine

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Maia says as she glares at the prehistoric barnacle sprawled out across her palm.

  “You can. And you must. You need all the strength you can get before we start building.”

  Maia holds back a retch, swallowing hard. A swell of queasiness rolls about her hollow gut. Somehow this thing has become even more grotesque since being torn from its home. It looks more like a severed limb with gangrene than a “delicacy” to be devoured. Eggshell-colored meat spills from the ribbed, leathery tube, which morphs from a reddish brown into a deadened black. The shell of layered teeth at the tip is laced with red in the middle where it opens like a mouth.

  Maia’s stomach churns. “So … what do I do?”

  “Hold the tip with one hand, like this.” Lucas holds out a barnacle in front of him. “Then grab the sheath just under the head and sort of twist and pull down in one motion.” He grimaces as he slides the sheath down, revealing a sliver of goopy meat inside. He quickly bites it off and tosses the shell. “It’s only a mouthful but we have plenty. I will load our raft with everything we have and we will pick up as much as we can on our way out.”

  She watches him chew, then looks down at her hand.

  “Go on. Don’t let me eat them all,” he says with a wink.

  Maia holds the tip. Then, as directed, she twists the black, ribbed coat from its shell and pulls down. Seawater squirts across her face. She thrusts the barnacle away from her. “What was that?!”

  Lucas chuckles. “Here, let me help.” He tenderly wipes her cheek as her eyes flutter from the assault. “Sorry, they can do that sometimes.” He swipes again, his face inches from hers. “I should have warned you.”

  Her eyes focus on his. He hesitates, leaving his hand on her cheek. A smile curves from the corner of his mouth. “You are up, darling.” He motions at the barnacle.

  Darling. That’s the first time she’s heard the word since her grandfather.

  She wavers, unconvinced, then hastily bites into the flesh. Chewing as rapidly as she can, she swallows it down.

  Lucas looks amused. “And?”

  She stares at the claw.

  “It won’t help you to look at that. Just chuck it.” He swipes it from her hand and throws it across the mound.

  She swallows. “It’s not bad. It tastes like the ocean.�
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  “Good.” He looks relieved. “We feast. Here are some more.” He hands her a deflated basketball.

  She rips a handful from the bottom. “God, why do they have to look like this?”

  “Just close your eyes and eat up. Tomorrow is a big day.”

  Maia braces herself as she interlaces her fingers through the waxy weave of netting. She digs her heels into the rubbish, placing one foot behind the other.

  Lucas stands across from her, mirroring her stance. “Ready?” he asks with a large grin. “Just pull as hard as you can. If your knots are strong enough, this will tighten them. If not, it will show us where the weak links are so we can retie them.”

  “This better work,” she says as she braces herself.

  “Pull!”

  Together, they heave against the weave of nets. Maia arches her back, putting her weight into it.

  Lucas laughs in spurts through gritted teeth. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  The nets creak in their resistance. Maia’s knots are holding.

  “Stronger than you,” Maia says with a flicker of playfulness.

  Lucas yanks the nets with an unexpected jolt, flinging Maia into him. “Are you, now?” he teases as he catches her. He holds her against him and for a moment he doesn’t let go. His face just inches from hers, a bead of sweat drips down his temple.

  Maia recovers her footing and he lets go, flashing her a flirtatious smile.

  “Nice one,” Maia smirks. Dusting off her shirt, she regains her composure. “So, they’re good. My knots?”

  “They are excelente.”

  She smiles. “Good, I don’t think my fingers can handle any more tying,” she says as she wipes the sweat from her brow.

  “Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. We are ready to build and the success of this thing will depend completely on our weaving skills.” Lucas gathers up the nets and sets them in a heap beside their boat supplies. “Let’s just start with the basics and build a frame. We will have to clear this patch of sand as best we can to have space. We have three large pieces of driftwood. I think we should lay two along the edges and one across the middle and then fill in the gaps with buoys. We have some large pieces of plastic to place on top as well. I think we can give ourselves a bit of a gap between our raft and the water by placing the floor on a square row of bins beneath us—anything large that can float can be tied together. We can assemble the rows of bins first, pack them tightly together, and then wrap them with rope and netting. Same with the raft. Then we can weave the pieces together.”