Echo Island

by Jared C. Wilson

  “Oh, perhaps,” said Jack. “But it was you who needed to get to the fields. The charge was for you, no other.”

  “I had a part to play,” Jason said.

  “Have,” Jack corrected. “You have a part.”

  “Is that the story, then?” Jason asked. “Good versus evil, that sort of thing?”

  “A good story isn’t one thing, lad. But yes. Good versus evil, if you prefer. But there are readers right now, reading these very words, taking a bit of something else here and there for themselves. Like all myths, it may work elementally like that. One story that encompassed many.”

  “It’s a love story,” Beatrice suddenly said.

  Jason looked at her again, but she was still staring at the window.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Certainly. I think you feel that most keenly, don’t you? But not the kind of love story many expect, or even desire. Not a romance in the modern sense. The great lover is indeed invisible to the plot.”

  Jason cocked his head, confused.

  Jack said to him, “Consider that it was love that led you out of that cave. It is love that makes the story worth going along with, in the end. It was love that drove Bradley to Tim’s side, and you to Bradley’s. It was love that saved you in the battle. It is love that makes all the pain and toil worth it. And, I should add, it is the pain and toil that make the love real.”

  Bradley broke in then. He’d been listening. “What about Archer?” he asked. “We have to find him.”

  Jack frowned. “No, I don’t think so. His part in the story is done. He could not cope with it, you see.”

  “But I know where he is. He’s at his house, reading that notebook.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not at the moment. He is wandering. And he will be for quite some time. No, he cannot go on with you. I will remain here to help him should he ever recover, but he will not share the ending with you, I’m afraid.”

  “And how does it end?” Jason asked.

  “I was only told until the previous chapter, and even that point only at the last moment. I did not know until then if you were to prevail through victory or through sacrifice. And from this point on, like you, I am but a character in discovery.”

  The bird flew away. Beatrice turned to Jack. “Is the world still gone?”

  “Yes, dear,” Jack said. “The world you knew, yes. Perhaps you could make the world anew in this place. The mystery of this island runs deep. There is much more to discover. But alas, not by the three of you. As for what is beyond, I do not know.”

  “I want to know,” Jason said. “I want to know what else the Author has out there.”

  Beatrice now looked at Jason. What he’d said set off a spark inside her chest, warming her all over, far more than the fire at her back. She released his hand and lifted her arm to link it with his. “So do I,” she said.

  Bradley shifted nervously. “Um, you guys wouldn’t leave me behind, would you?”

  Jason grinned at him.

  “I mean,” Bradley said, “love story or whatever.”

  Jason limped over to the corner and gave his friend a hug.

  Soon they were at the ferry landing, the sun at noon position in the sky, a halo over their procession.

  “The sailboat, I think,” Bradley said.

  “No,” said Jason. “We should row.”

  “It’s the ocean, man.”

  “I know. We should row.”

  Bradley shrugged.

  There was a rowboat in the shallows, and Beatrice was already onboard, sitting atop a tiny perch in the stern. Bradley steadied it in the gently lapping waves.

  Jack stood nearby, puffing on his pipe, overseeing the proceedings.

  “Here,” Jason said to Bradley. “I’ve got it. Watch your hand.”

  Bradley clambered in and settled portside, taking up the oar in his left hand, his right arm pinned against him in the sling, his shriveled hand in his lap.

  Jason held the boat steady. To Jack he said, “So you really aren’t coming?”

  “No,” Jack said. “I must remain.”

  “But you have to come with us. We don’t know what’s out there. What if we need you?”

  “You have what you need for the next part. And I cannot go with you anyhow. Beatrice will lead your way from here.”

  “But what if everything’s really gone? What if there’s nothing out there, and the island is all there is?”

  “Then you will discover that. But if there is more, if there is another world out there, you won’t know unless you go, don’t you see?”

  Then they heard it again. A low moan rolling in from the horizon, carried by the wind and waves.

  “There’s something out there,” Beatrice said.

  “What if it’s not safe?” said Jason.

  “What if it’s not?” she said with a glimmer in her eye.

  And then, without another word, they were rolling out to sea. Jack grew small behind them. When they’d cut through the breakers, they turned westward, circling the southern part of the island until they couldn’t see land anymore at all.

  Jason on the right, Bradley on the left, they rowed steadily into the eternal horizon.

  Beatrice sat up in the stern, elevated and beaming, her blue dress gleaming in the sun and rippling in the wind. Her hair flew in a long trail behind her. There were more birds suddenly, gulls swooping down into the water around them, the gentle waves yielding their feed and glistening in the sunlight as if they bore on their ceaseless currents an infinite field of diamonds.

  She was queen of the sea.

  The boys were her courtiers, rowing and rowing, fueled by the future and its suddenly boundless possibilities. Scared but together, they were smiling big smiles now, and the sun had never felt so warm on their faces.

  They were rowing to the immense edge of the unknowable world, the great hearth of that new earth, the end of a page they could not read.

  Jason looked up and beheld Beatrice as she stared off into the sky, her face fearless and free. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he thought to himself if he must plunge off the end of the world, down some vast waterfall into the void of outer space, out of this world and into another or into nothing at all, he’d gladly do so with her. She was worth it. It had all been worth it.

  But it was more than that, greater. He felt born. He felt new. He felt oddly and splendidly, finally, himself.

  Was it a dream? A story? Something else entirely? Something for which he had no words and no knowledge? It didn’t matter.

  The boys rode the writing, cranking their strong arms, each stroke a turning of a page, willing the rushing to the end.

  Jason faced the blank line where the island used to be, the end of that story, and he rowed backward with Beatrice as his eyes. Beatrice was now his guide, the beacon of some beatific vision still ahead.

  There is more to see.

  Jason looked up now, up and out to the sky that overlooked, as far as he knew, a big blank world. He looked all the way up.

  I see you. I cannot see your face, but I see you. Don’t put down the pen just yet. I have energy left and more to see, further to go.

  I know. I see. You will not fall at the end of it all. Keep rowing.

  And he did. He kept rowing.

  NOTES

  1. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, II, 53–54.

  2. C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 201.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This story is the product of stories upon stories. Many were read to me as a child, many more were read by me—on school buses, in waiting rooms, behind textbooks in class, and under the covers at night with a flashlight.

  I am grateful for the teachers along the way who nurtured my draw toward stories and gave me good stories that bo
th satisfied me and stirred the hunger all the more. When I was in the fifth grade, Mrs. Larke introduced me to both Middle Earth and Lake Wobegon. In the seventh, Mrs. Dosher let me read Les Misérables. In high school, Mrs. Woolley foisted Faulkner upon me and set me free to write and write and write without apology.

  A select few authors are more responsible for this tale than the wide world of others who are only generally so. Astute readers will recognize the scattering of mythology throughout, and cast over the entire novel are, of course, the shadows of Dante Alighieri, George MacDonald, and C. S. Lewis. I trust the latter will forgive me in the world to come for the liberties I have taken with his character here. But it felt right for him to serve Echo Island as MacDonald served The Great Divorce and as Virgil served Dante’s The Divine Comedy.

  Many thanks are due to all the kind folks at B&H and B&H Kids for their helpful guidance in and support for this story, including Michelle Freeman and especially editor Anna Sargeant, who asked a million annoying-in-the-moment questions that served to make the story stronger and clearer, as all good editors are good at doing.

  I am grateful also for the friends (like Bill Roberts) who read the first part of this story fifteen years ago and waited all this time for the rest of it. And for my wife, Becky, who did the same.

  Mostly I am grateful for the real Author of the true Story and for the incarnate Word. Because of Him, we need not fear pushing out to sea, even if the clouds are foreboding and the waves rough. He is able to stride upon them.

  Don’t be afraid; keep rowing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jared C. Wilson has been obsessed with stories since before he could read. In grade school, he wrote a work of short fiction, stapled the pages together, and tried to sell the product to classmates. Numerous teachers cultivated his love for storytelling over the years. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a bachelor of arts in English, he landed a literary agent with his first novel.

  Today, Wilson serves as the Author in Residence at Midwestern Seminary and as a professor at Spurgeon College, Midwestern’s undergraduate school, where he teaches pastoral ministry and writing. He has authored over twenty books. Echo Island is his second novel.

  Wilson lives outside of Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Becky. They have two teenage daughters and a teenage dog named after Indiana Jones (who was himself named after a dog).