Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

‘Can’t miss em.’

  ‘But something doesn’t look right.’

  ‘You only just realised? Things int bin right for forever.’

  ‘The lights, stupid.’

  ‘What lights?’

  ‘The towers, where are all the lights?’

  Kel slowed the boat and looked and as she looked she felt the buzz of a job well done seep away. The horns were the first thing that reached their ears. They burst from the water like tiny explosions springing from the sea bed and were angled at every turn.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kel let the engine bubble some and stood when she saw lights firing up and growing on the mainland and she knew that these were not the glitter-ball glow of harbour lights. The world that she had only recently left behind had been washed clean by firelight and the constant wet earth dried bright, beautiful.

  Kel swallowed hard, fearful.

  The first part of the plan was so close to completion. Why this? Why now?

  She watched Rose settle the baby into a circle of blanket in the bed of the boat and then took down the oil lamp from its staff above their heads. The girl held it up toward Kel’s face as if to check the expression there and then she put it to her lap and cradled it like it was the only thing worth knowing in the world.

  ‘I don’t think I like this,’ Rose said suddenly. ‘I don’t think I like this at all.’

  Kel didn’t speak. She couldn’t: all she could think about was her plan, all she could see was it slip from her hands and slowly fall away.

  ‘What do you think is going on?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I said I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I can smell fear on you.’

  ‘That int fear,’ said Kel as she sat back down.

  ‘You think something’s heading our way?’

  ‘I know it,’ said Kel and with one hand she slowed the boat to a nothing speed and with the other she felt for the gun. She watched the dock for the usual line of boats but it was all motion – what vessels weren’t tearing away full pelt from the docks were bobbing and listing rudderless in the bay. She remembered how things were on the land days earlier. She had thought it was another low-level riot but now she wasn’t so sure.

  ‘I can hear screaming,’ shouted Rose.

  Kel turned her head out of the wind, she could hear it too.

  ‘And look,’ Rose leaned forward of the boat with the lamp dangling close to the water, ‘there’s people everywhere.’ She looked back at Kel in horror. ‘You see them?’

  Kel nodded. Yes she saw them, a dozen plus screaming heads and flailing arms floating in the distance, grappling at the sucking, vacuum sea.

  ‘They’re getting closer,’ said Rose.

  ‘No they’re not.

  ‘They are, they’re floating towards us.’

  Kel sat forward and focused, suddenly she could see them all; some bodies moved on their own accord, others bobbed like bottle corks, directionless.

  ‘I see em.’ She looked at Rose and nodded in disbelief.

  The land that Kel hated and loved in equal measure was burning out of control and the people she may or may not have known were in and on and everything about the ocean. The bodies stretched all the way back to the docks and jammed between the boats, Kel knew it would be impossible to navigate.

  ‘There’s no way through,’ she said. They sat in silence and the dark kept them and slung fog and rain into the mix; enough of hell on earth to make Kel feel like screaming too.

  ‘We’ve got to help them,’ said Rose.

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘They’re going to die.’

  ‘There’s too many people.’ Kel tipped the boat a little ready for the turn, they had drifted too far into the bay and had reached the first of them. A boy no older than them was trying to hook himself to the back of the boat and his pulling and punching had the tiny vessel threatening to go under.

  ‘Get off,’ shouted Kel, ‘you’re gonna pull us in.’ She let the engine shudder to a stop and reached across to unpeel his pinching fingers and as she did so she saw the compass that had been beside her on the seat bounce out of the boat and into the sea.

  ‘Help!’ shouted Rose. ‘We’re trapped.’

  Kel looked across to the front of the boat to see more fingers grip the side of the boat, it was in danger of capsizing.

  ‘We’re going to go under.’ Rose looked at her in horror.

  ‘No we int,’ Kel reached into the floor of the boat to grab the gun and she raised it and fired it into the ocean. One and then two and then a dozen more for luck. Each time the bullets hit the water it rocked them close to the hell that was fingering them under and the fierce heads and hands that crawled toward them.

  ‘We gotta get gone,’ said Kel.

  She yanked the cord over until the motor kicked into life and she spun the boat away and flying from the carnage until the only scream was coming from the baby in the centre of the boat.

  Out into the dead of night and back into the unknown; two girls and the tiny baby with nothing but questions circled around them.

  Now what?

  Kel hoped the girl wouldn’t start up with the why why why so she could take a moment to think straight. She couldn’t stand to hear Rose’s questions and more than that she didn’t have any answers.

  How could she, when she didn’t know what had happened on the mainland? It could have been anything or it could have been nothing. All Kel knew was her plan as she’d plotted it was dead in that same water, she needed time to set it on a new course. She felt in her boot and took out her notebook and pushed it into her back pocket.

  ‘So what now, swamper? Surely that wasn’t part of the plan?’

  ‘All I know is we gotta get away. We’ll head down the coast a little, find a quiet bay to pull the boat in.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Walk the coast path back to the docks.’

  ‘Hell, why? Didn’t you just see what I saw?’

  ‘Yes, but I gotta get back there.’

  Rose sat back and folded her arms. ‘I get it. You’re still planning on handing me over. After everything we’ve just seen. Brilliant.’

  Kel turned to the stern of the boat, let a little more fuel into the engine.

  ‘Brilliant,’ continued Rose. ‘Just brilliant.’

  Kel ignored her, there were still options available to her, of course there were, she was so close to finishing the deal. She had kidnapped the girl, the hardest part was over.

  ‘Things will soon be back to normal.’ Kel looked at the girl and nodded.

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Rose. ‘I mean really?’

  ‘I know so, probably just an explosion on the docks, happens all the time.’

  ‘And the people in the water?’

  ‘Panic is all, it’ll be over soon enough.’

  ‘If that’s so, why are we heading down the coast?’

  ‘To be on the safe side.’ Kel looked at Rose and nodded. ‘Everythin will be fine.’ It was to herself that she said this. Small-scale unrest or a catastrophic uprising she didn’t know.

  ‘But all of those people,’ said Rose.

  ‘Don’t think about it.’

  ‘What happened, really?’

  ‘I told you already.’

  Something was wrong with the engine and Kel bent to listen.

  ‘Things can’t get too much worse right now, can they?’ said the girl and she bent to pick up the baby and cuddled it close.

  ‘I dunno.’ Kel slowed the motor, its ticking was off.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘The engine int right.’ It was spluttering and jumping sporadic.

  ‘What you mean the engine isn’t right?’

  ‘It’s as I say.’

  ‘But it was fine.’ Rose crawled forward toward her.

  ‘Maybe somethin happened back there, somethin got s
tuck or somethin.’

  ‘What like? Oh God, maybe an arm or a leg.’

  ‘Maybe a bit of clothin, all sorts was floatin round, why you gotta think the worst?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, maybe because the worst just happened? Can you tell me otherwise?’

  ‘Bout what?’

  ‘Is the engine bust?’

  Kel pulled out the throttle a little but it was no good and the cord sat long and loose in her hand. No matter how she tried to start it over, the motor was no more.

  ‘Is it?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kel. ‘The engine’s bust.’

  Chapter Five

  Kel was always running from something. Running from or running toward, but in any case it was all escape. Escape from the here and now, from the world she inhabited within and the world that bullied her from the outside.

  The two girls sat in the deep dark down at opposite ends of the boat. Kel dug and stretched the oars into the ocean like her life depended upon it because it did. She bent toward the water, sweating and paining in the battle. She looked at the girl and the girl looked away.

  ‘Just so you know, it’s your fault,’ said Rose. ‘Everything – and I mean everything – is your fault.’

  Kel ignored her and she rested the oars on her legs and sat up to inspect the coastline in the dark but it was all rock.

  ‘You’ve decided not to talk now, have you? Mouth like a gun and then nothing.’

  ‘Int got nothin,’ said Kel. She shrugged off the ache in her arms and continued with the one-two one-two rowing, keeping one eye on the burning horizon they floated away from.

  ‘Wish there was one place close we could go in,’ Kel admitted at last. There might still be time to get to land, return to Falmouth via the cliff path, get back on track. But the tide was against them. However far Kel thought they had gone the waves dragged them back and what progress they made was taken from them.

  ‘Could just be the calmest place on earth,’ said Rose suddenly and she sat back to watch the sea pull them further out to sea. ‘Calm if we hadn’t seen what we just saw.’

  Kel wished the girl would be quiet awhile, it was getting harder to keep the dinghy close to land. She leaned from the side of the slippery boat to slap water on to her face, made a point of ignoring her companion because there were things she needed to set straight in her own mind.

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere,’ Rose said, shaking her head and Kel noticed the slow-crawl panic as it slunk from the pool of lamplight and into her eyes. ‘We’re stranded.’

  Kel continued to dangle from the little orange boat. In the lamplight the water was all the shades of black-blue-green and as calm as level card.

  She ran the water in finger cups to the blisters that were forming on her palms and then leaned back and kept a hand trailing for the beauty of the sea just being, closed her eyes for a moment’s rest. The effort of the past few days had her beat. Her arms hurt from rowing, her eyes ached from staring down the dark.

  ‘You’re not going to sleep are you?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I won’t.’ Kel snatched her hand from out of the water and sat up. She looked up at the sky and wished there was moonlight for guiding but there was none. The black of forever night was up and down and everywhere complete. She took up the oars again.

  ‘So what now?’ asked Rose. ‘Like what really and not just bull.’

  ‘We’ll head down the coast a bit, as I said before,’ said Kel. ‘Down the coast and see what’s what. That hasn’t changed.’

  ‘But how long will it take us to get to someplace that isn’t water?’

  Kel shrugged and said she didn’t know and she wished the girl would quit with the words awhile.

  ‘And nothing but oars for rowing.’ said Rose. ‘I guess your plans are truly scuppered now we’ve got no engine, I could give thanks for that if nothing else.’

  Kel kept her mind on the rowing and when Rose finally grew quiet Kel took that to mean she was settling somewhere toward peace.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kel finally. The word did not belong to her and it dangled from her tongue in a pincer-grip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  Kel kept from looking at the girl because she knew she was crying but there was nothing more she could do or say except that Rose should try for some sleep and she would continue to row through the night and she set right about it. Her eyes stayed on the horizon until it tempted her with the promise of colour; a new day dawning, drawing itself into their picture.

  She’d been rowing she didn’t know how long when she felt her heart shudder and stop a moment and she held her breath and waited for it to fall back to beating. If she could’ve reached down into the cavity to squeeze it back to size she would have done so. Have it grow good and strong in her hand, tell it she had a future planned for it, a map drawn that featured happiness if it would just hold on a minute.

  The place Kel had set secret for herself was a bit of dry fantasy scrubland far from the road, and a truck to ride out on that land that would be hers and nobody else’s. In her imagination she had her own piece of land for food and wood for heat and shelter and with nobody around to know her, because those who did would try to take it away.

  She supposed this was her dream, the dream she carried with her since childhood.

  But now all hope and fear and everything else between lay out there, beneath the fractal this-way that-way any-way surface of the water. Her destiny distilled into small drops of chance. She was at the tide’s mercy and that of the changing winds and the craggy, cagey moon.

  Whatever would be would be and if anything like a revelation had ever happened in Kel’s mind it happened in that instant; perhaps to live in the moment was the only way to live at all. All else was wasting time wallowing in self-pity when things didn’t go the way of imagination. To plan was to fail at the first stage. Better to be bobbing mindless in a boat than be running and planning and getting it all wrong.

  All bets were off. She was stuck with a girl who she didn’t like and unable to get to shore and everything that was wrong about her life was still in it and worse.

  Kel brought the oars into the boat a moment and slid her hand up her sleeve to feel the comfort scars but found no solace there and she wished for the privacy that would enable her to cut through skin just a little, to let out heat and steam off the pressure that was building within.

  She crossed her hands quick into her lap and focused on the waves and to the song the girl had started singing to the baby beneath her breath. Kel listened to it from start to finish and the beauty concealed within it made her wish for everything she had never known.

  ‘You make that song up?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You got a nice voice,’ said Kel. ‘More un nice.’

  The girl shrugged and said it was just a voice.

  ‘Still,’ said Kel.

  Rose sat up and nodded toward the horizon. ‘I’m glad to see daylight coming.’

  Kel agreed.

  ‘Have you been rowing all night?’

  ‘Best part.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Further down the coast.’

  ‘You think we’ll be able to get in?’

  Kel shook her head.

  ‘You must be tired.’

  ‘I’m OK.’ Kel sat forward and took up the oars and put them back into the water. To be rowing was to be doing something better than nothing.

  A little of the early rising rainbow sky danced on the surface of the sea and when Kel split the oily surface with the oar the colours divided into the depths like fish from another, friendlier dimension.

  ‘You look tired,’ said Rose again. ‘You can take a break if you want, sleep or whatever, I’ll take over.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Kel pointed toward where the rising sun was meant and told her companion that at least they knew which way was east.

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘If we know east then we know west the sam
e, Cornwall isn’t so far away, if we keep pushin against the tide we’ll hit land eventually.’

  ‘Shame you lost the compass.’

  ‘We lost the compass.’

  ‘Is that right. So which way are we heading?’

  Kel thought for a moment. ‘South-west,’ she said. ‘We’re headin south-west.’ She bent to the sea to splash herself alert with the water and kept at it until her hands became cuts of deadbeat meat. She could hear Rose talking about food and hunger and dying and she kept her face to the water a moment longer.

  ‘We’ve got to eat something,’ said Rose when Kel sat up, ‘What else do you have in your bag besides bread?’

  ‘Nothin.’

  ‘Well that’s good. Great, in fact. I thought you were a planner? Not much planning involved here.’

  ‘We weren’t meant for long at sea.’

  ‘So we starve. Brilliant.’

  Kel looked out at the ceaseless sea. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We fish.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Hook and line.’

  ‘You got a hook and line?’

  Kel nodded and she pulled her bag toward her and tipped the contents until she found the tin she was looking for.

  ‘At least one of your swamp momentos might prove useful.’

  Kel ignored her and set about rolling a pinch of bread between her finger and thumb and threading it to the hook and she passed a corner of the loaf to the girl and Rose thanked her and they sipped a little from the only canteen of water between them.

  When Kel had finished chewing on the blunt stale bread she asked Rose if she had a maid back home to cook her food like most tower folk.

  ‘Maybe I did,’ said Rose.

  ‘What was she called?’

  ‘Mother.’ Rose smiled and the way she laughed made Kel not like her all over again. ‘She does most things. So, are you going to throw that line out?’

  Kel checked the bait and then lowered it into the gobbling gloom and sat back.

  ‘Do you think we’ll catch anything?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky.’

  ‘If I was a praying girl I’d pray, but I’m not so I won’t.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘What?’

  Kel looked up at the bedraggled girl, the pink of her dress drab with dirt and water. ‘A prayin girl.’