Castle of Water

by Dane Huckelbridge

  Barry cut straight through the palm forest and past the rocks to save time, taking notice of the damage with an exclamatory whistle. Palms were rent, debris all a-scatter. Then he was pushing aside some downed foliage and emerging by the campsite, or at least what remained of it.

  “Honey, I’m home!” he croaked out from his parched throat, the smile on his face splitting open his horribly chapped lips.

  And there she was … standing beside a palm tree, with a rope around her neck.

  “Sophie, what on earth are you—”

  And before he could finish she was upon him, shedding the noose and tackling him to the ground, in the most colossal hug he had ever received in his life. She sobbed for quite some time, and so did he, and at some point they were both laughing, and at some point after that, they both said they were sorry.

  For everything. And Barry didn’t regret for one moment turning that log back around, back toward Sophie, back toward home.

  24

  The salad days of Barry’s return were sweet indeed, but truth be told, their island was in absolute shambles. The joy of their reunion quickly gave way to the realization that there was lots of work to be done to get things back to working order. The hammock was beyond repair, but Sophie was able to recover the tarp and refashion the shelter; harvesting the palm fronds took time, but layer by layer, over the course of several days, she rethatched their tropical home. While she kept busy with the house, Barry took on the unpleasant chore of bailing the salt water that filled their two rain cisterns. It was a grueling endeavor, dumping water bag after water bag of brine out onto the sand, but it had serious ramifications—getting the pools refilled with fresh rainwater was paramount, because without them, they had nothing to drink.

  Well, almost nothing. For in the initial kit of survival supplies was the solar still. And it was fortunate indeed that Barry had been able to salvage the bag and bring it back to the island, because in the miserable weeks that followed, it was the only thing that kept them alive. The amount of potable water it was able to distill from the sea was never more than a few cups per day. Those measly sips, however, were enough to keep Barry and Sophie going through three grinding weeks of thirst, until at last, heralded by a symphony of thunder, the clouds burst once again, filling their water pools all the way to the brim. The two of them leapt and danced in celebration, Sophie a “rock and roll” dance her father had taught her as a girl to a Beatles’ record, Barry a sort of improvised Irish jig he made up on the spot.

  Food, however, was also a problem. The tsunami had done severe damage to the island’s banana trees. A full quarter had been ripped from the ground and washed away, and another quarter still damaged and browned by the poisonous salt. The winds had loosened nearly all of the existing bunches as well, leaving only a scatter of serviceable bananas left to be eaten. With time, a few months, perhaps, Barry believed that the trees would recover. But in the immediate future, they were at risk of starvation—they needed a plan. Eggs were not a possibility, as the colony of terns was slow in returning; clams had never been all that plentiful to begin with; and the sparse supply of remaining coconuts could do only so much. The energy bars that Barry had rescued from the sea—the ones Sophie had been farsighted enough to insist that they save—did keep them going through the first few days, but even those were finally gone.

  Which left only one option. And that one option was very nearly impossible, thanks to the eight-armed leviathan that lurked in the shadows. Barry did attempt fishing again in their only fishable cove, with the hope that the cyclone had pried the monster out of his hole and sent him skittering to the open sea.

  But no such luck. Sure enough, at the first nibble, Balthazar resurfaced with a sickening surge, dragging the delicious-looking fish and precious lure back down to his lair, precisely as he had so many times before.

  Damnit. Barry gazed down with a contained but simmering rage at the small puffs of fish scales that periodically escaped from its cave. He returned to camp empty-handed, his belly cramped into a ball of hunger. They weren’t starving just yet, but if things didn’t change soon … well, the outlook wasn’t good.

  “Did you catch anything?” Sophie called out, kneeling by the fire, struggling to sort anything edible out of a fly-ridden heap of moldering bananas.

  “Pas de tout,” Barry answered in the comically bad French he had begun to pick up, shaking his shaggy head to emphasize the point.

  “Was it Balthazar again?”

  “Mais oui.”

  Sophie released her trademark puff of air. “Merde. I checked the trees, there are no more bananas at all. Rien de rien.”

  “These are the last of them?” Barry looked down at the pathetic little pile of rotten fruit.

  Sophie nodded. “There’s nothing left to eat. Absolutely nothing. Qu’allons-nous faire?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” he answered, tousling her matted hair, although in truth, in the back of his mind, he already had the first inklings of a plan. The idea had come to him almost a full week before, but its genesis went back even further than that. Because that first night when the palm shelter had been resurrected following its destruction in the typhoon, Sophie had asked Barry, now hammockless thanks to the storm, if he would like to join her beneath its watertight roof. Barry pretended to give it some thought, shrugged his shoulders, and said, Sure, why not?

  And so from that day forth, Barry and Sophie were roommates. Not lovers—just roommates. When the Polynesian sun dipped beneath the waves and the last of whatever paltry morsels they could scrounge was eaten, they would retire to the hut and lie side by side on their mat of palm leaves, listening to the growling of their bellies and whatever station they could find on the shortwave. Then, in the darkness of their primordial night, they would sometimes talk. About anything, really, but mostly memories of what their former lives had been. It was therapy of sorts, although they only dimly realized it. Keeping the past a part of their present had become crucial to both of them; the idea that that world was both real and attainable was the only thing that kept them from abandoning hope completely.

  One such night, after the radio had run its charge, Sophie spoke.

  “Did you understand the radio announcer?”

  “No, it was in Spanish,” Barry answered. “But I liked the tango music.”

  “You didn’t hear what he said?”

  “I heard it, I just didn’t understand it.”

  “You Americans really don’t speak any other languages, do you?”

  “Not if we can help it,” he replied with a teasing nudge.

  “Well”—and she took a breath as if preparing for a plunge—“he announced the date when he gave the news.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s May Day. We’ve been here for over a year, now.”

  Barry considered that thought for a bit. More than 365 days. Thirteen months, to be exact. Shit. He sighed in the humid night, not even sure what to do with that number. “I figured it had been about that long, but I didn’t know exactly.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sophie swallowed. “Do you think we’ll ever get off of this island?”

  In truth, Barry pondered that question almost every minute of every waking hour. Sleep was his only reprieve from it, dreams the only place he could ever forget—although increasingly, his dreams were being visited by three sparks of light that glimmered their way across the horizon.

  “I sure as hell hope so. I’m getting charged by the day for leaving my car at the airport parking lot.”

  Barry didn’t see it in the darkness, but Sophie smiled. At first, his little jokes had offended her Gallic sensibilities—they struck her as juvenile and irresponsible given the serious nature of their situation. But with time, she had come to see them as the outward projection of a quiet and dependable fortitude. As long as they persisted, she knew he was strong, that he hadn’t given up.

  “You know…” An
d Barry trailed off, not quite certain how to tell her. “I saw something during the storm, when the wave washed me out to sea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think I saw ships. You know, like, boats. Three of them.”

  Sophie sat bolt upright, just as he was afraid she might. “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “They were a long way off, I could barely see them.”

  “Why didn’t you use the flare gun?”

  “I did. They were just too far away. They kept on going until they disappeared.”

  “And you’re just telling me this now?”

  “Yes, I’m telling you now because it just came up. I fired all the flares I had, but they didn’t stop. I suppose I could have gone out after them, but I came back here instead.”

  Sophie lay back down on their shared palm mat, puffing out an incredulous burst of air through her lips. “Merde. I can’t believe it.”

  “What? That they didn’t see me, or that I used up all the flares?”

  “Non. I can’t believe you chose me over the boats. I would have gone after the boats in a heartbeat.”

  She gave him a jovial elbow to the ribs, and Barry chuckled with relief. He’d been afraid she might not take the news well, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

  “There’s something else, too,” he went on.

  “What? Did a Montgolfier float by as well?”

  “No, there were radio transmissions. You know those strange voices we hear on the radio once in a while?”

  “Sure, but we don’t hear them very often.”

  “I know. But when we do, I think it’s transmissions from the ships. When I was out there, there were tons of them. More than just the three I saw. And they were all talking to each other. They sounded close.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying…” And Barry hesitated, to make sure there was actually some sense to what he was trying to explain. “Is that maybe there’s a sea lane out there. I mean, if we’re getting radio transmissions once in a while, and I saw three separate ships just while I was in the area, maybe there’s something like that. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But it could have just been a onetime thing.”

  “Could be. But then again, it could be something else. I heard those voices over the radio the first week we got here—I remember listening to them in the hammock. And suddenly, I started hearing them again the week before the storm hit. It seems like they come in bursts, like there’s some kind of reasoning behind it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing, maybe it has to do with weather patterns, maybe it’s an annual regatta race. Beats me.”

  “So how far away do you think it was?”

  “Forty or fifty miles from here, maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “Miles? Why can’t you just learn the metric system, putain de merde?”

  “Well, it’s not that far, either way.”

  “You think fifty miles, or however many kilometers that is, over the open ocean isn’t that far? I don’t think I drifted more than five kilometers after the crash to get to this island, and that felt like far enough.”

  “True, but you were drifting, not paddling. I think with both of us using oars, we could do it in a couple of days.”

  “What about storms? What about currents we don’t expect? What if we get blown off course, or the raft starts to deflate in the middle of the ocean?”

  “Look, I’m not saying we have to do it, I’m just saying it’s an option. Like you said, it’s been a year now, and it’s not like we have crowds of people coming to look for us.”

  “I don’t know.” Sophie put her hands over her face, not so much in anguish as in exasperation—the exasperation of trying to answer a question to which there was no single correct response.

  “Let’s not worry about it now. We have enough to deal with just trying to eat for the time being, and I’m not ready to make another trip out there just yet—my arms are still sore from the last one. And besides, I’ve been listening to the radio every night, and I haven’t heard any of those transmissions since I got back. So maybe it was just a fluke. The ships are probably all gone now.”

  “Good. So let’s talk about something else.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  They took a moment to listen to the waves and to the low chatter of tree frogs that they could never quite place. Sophie shifted onto her side, using the crook of her arm as a makeshift pillow. She tucked up her legs, and even though Barry wasn’t aware of it, she looked right at him in the darkness. “Next week is my birthday, you know.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oui, oui.”

  “You didn’t tell me that last year.”

  “I didn’t even want to think about it at this time last year.”

  “So the big three zero?”

  “Yes. I’m turning thirty.”

  “Well, we’ll have to celebrate.”

  Sophie snorted. “Sure. Bake me a croustade aux pommes and I’ll blow out the candles.”

  “No, I’m serious. What do you want for your birthday?”

  “Pfff. I don’t know. What did you get for your thirtieth birthday?”

  Barry struggled to remember. It had been more than five years. He seemed to recall his parents giving him a novelty birthday card that chimed out a tune when you opened it, and his ex-girlfriend Ashley treating him to some rather unenthusiastic fellatio. But he wasn’t sure. He did remember a few of his co-workers took him out to Smith & Wollensky for dinner.

  “I went out for steak,” he finally replied.

  “Oh, God. Steak frites. That would be wonderful. My father used to grill the meat in our fireplace. My mother always fried the potatoes in duck fat. It was the best.”

  “I don’t know, I’m somewhat partial to my dad’s country-fried steak myself. He made it with cream gravy and mashed potatoes, with some corn bread and green beans with bacon on the side.”

  “You put lardons in your haricots verts?”

  “Damn right.”

  “Normally, I’d say that’s dégueulasse, but right now, I think I would eat a whole plateful.”

  “And then for dessert, banana pudding!”

  “No! No more bananas!” Sophie squealed rather comically, and they both had a good chuckle at their staple’s expense. Their laughter died down, and the waves resumed.

  “But seriously, if you could have anything, what would you want?”

  “Anything?”

  “Yep.”

  The one thing she truly wanted she knew she could not have or say—Étienne pulled from the sea, a crash to never happen, a blissful return to their little architecture studio on rue des Vinaigriers. But anything else?

  “If I could have anything…” And she paused briefly, to do perfection justice. “I think I would like one more night in Lisbon. I’d like to take a warm bath with a real bar of soap, put on a dress and a pair of nice earrings, and I’d like to go to a little café in the Alfama for a big plate of octopus salad with a glass of vinho verde. And after dinner, I’d like to go on a walk down by the water and look at the stars.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Oui. C’est tout.”

  “And how do you say ‘happy birthday’ in French?”

  “Joyeux anniversaire. That, or bon anniversaire.”

  “Banana-versaire?”

  She giggled, as was her habit by that point, at his horribly mangled French. “Close enough, Captain America.”

  “I’ll have to practice saying it before the big day.” He leaned over and gave her a peck on the forehead. “Good night, Sophie.”

  “Bonne nuit, Barry.”

  He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, but in the silence and darkness, his mind was racing. And those double r’s—God, her accent was cute when she said his name.

  25

  The earrings were by far the easiest variable to solve in Sophie’s pe
rfect birthday equation, and making them proved a convenient distraction from the fact that they were running out of food. Barry had made a habit of keeping the prettier of their clamshells and using them for the odd bowl-like task—there was one whose nacreous swirls Sophie had always been especially fond of. A few careful whacks with a volcanic rock and he had himself two similarly sized mother-of-pearl fragments. Throw a pair of fishhooks with the barbs ground off into the mix (he found two from the remaining assortment that were too small for use in the cove), attached via a little fishing line, and Barry had a pair of earrings on his hands that were actually quite passable. Tiffany’s probably wasn’t going to get their skirts ruffled over the competition, but they were nice, and he was proud of them. He nervously hoped that Sophie would like them, too.

  Nor did the soap portion of her wish provide too much challenge, although there was some trial and error involved, and he could work on the project only while Sophie was on the other side of the island, swimming or searching in vain for bananas. One of Barry’s most vivid childhood memories may have been seining for catfish with his grandfather on moonlit nights in Macoupin County, Illinois. But the other contender was the image of his grandmother and aunt making homemade soap in the farmhouse kitchen. The process consisted of two basic parts, one of rendering fat from a slaughtered hog and another of extracting lye from fresh ashes. For the latter step, both women would don, in addition to their calico housedresses, handkerchiefs tied about their faces bandit style as a means of fending off the fumes. For the handkerchief, Barry resorted to his trusty—and by this point quite tattered—Charles Tyrwhitt dress shirt. As for the lye and the hog fat, however, well, Barry had to get creative. Had he been marooned on the island during the days of Tu-nui-ea-i-te-atua-i-Tarahoi Vairaatoa Taina Pomare, he would have found no shortage of soap-worthy swine. Given the dearth of pigs some three centuries later, he had to locate another source of grease. And after much brain racking, he did just that, in the form of the humble coconut. Using again his weather-beaten shirt, he was able to mash and strain from what little coconut meat he could find a thick coconut milk. That, when rendered in one of their stainless-steel cups over the fire and left to settle, produced a layer of nearly pure coconut oil. Once the oil was scooped out, it was a relatively simple process of boiling some water and ashes in the second cup to produce lye. It took Barry a few tries to get the concentration just right, but when he felt confident that the iridescent substance swirling in the cup was alkaline enough, he added it to the coconut oil, cooked it together, and lo and behold!—when left to cool, a fresh cake of coconut soap. He smiled to himself, certain that his grandmother, who had never held a coconut in her life, would have been proud.