Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

  ‘Kel?’ asked Rose suddenly. ‘Do you see what I see?’

  They both stopped and looked on toward the bright, welcoming circle of brightness.

  ‘Is there somebody up ahead do you think?’ Rose shuffled forward a little. ‘Has somebody got a fire going?’ She giggled as she said it and Kel knew it was because the thought of other people being here all along was madness.

  ‘Good big fire if they do.’ Kel thought about the spirits and she started to laugh.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Kel thought for a moment. ‘Looks like sunlight.’

  Rose stood close and looked straight into her eyes. ‘Do you think?’

  Kel shook her head. ‘Can’t be.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We int gone further than the middle of an island.’ She bent to look up toward the radiant amber light. ‘Besides, we int seen proper sun in forever.’

  Kel watched Rose limp and shuffle forward and she followed. Slow laboured steps towards the thing of beauty that had her scared the most. She watched as Rose’s hair came back to life with golden hues reflecting, and all around them colours came and permeated everything that had not known colour before. It was as if they had found the centre of the island and the centre of the earth combined, a circle of heaven buried within the circle of hell. In Kel’s mind the enclosure was what a garden might look like; it was full of vegetation and secret sitting places.

  They stood in full sunlight and tilted their faces straight up for a moment’s warmth and Kel closed her eyes to let them run red. Colours were everywhere. Even the baby stretched out a plump fist full of fingers in the hope that he might catch the essence of rainbow.

  ‘The sky is blue,’ said Rose and when she looked at Kel it was as if she had asked a question.

  Kel nodded and they hugged and the baby put both arms in. The storm had gone.

  They rested for a time on a gathering of rocks crawling with plant life and perfect for sitting.

  ‘It’s a shame we didn’t know about this place before,’ said Rose. ‘We might have lived in here just about.’

  Kel agreed, it was an oasis of calm and beauty. She imagined that the sun always shone there, its rays dipping low and out of sight of the island’s grey gravel beaches, escaping and reaching down to blossom. They warmed themselves and drank the clean rock water that sprang from the cliffs and when it was time for heading neither of them wanted to go, but what else was there. The heart of the island was a good thing and needed, but Kel knew their future did not lie there. Rose’s leg was bad and getting worse; each step she took pained her close to stopping and Kel feared that once stopped she would stop for good.

  They went on into the new cave crossways from the one they had exited and Kel lit a second torch for the last part of the journey. Everything was much the same. The dark saline drip of island rock was back and Kel kept the memory of pure light alive in her mind. Good had come to them when they had least expected it, and by that fact alone it would come again.

  The second half of the island was easier to navigate. The path was wide despite the low smack ceiling and they walked with their backs bent and buckling. Step after step they held on to each other, and when Rose slipped Kel was there to catch her. She told her that it would not be long until they exited the island rock, that she knew it in her heart and she told herself the same thing.

  Now suddenly time that had stopped mattering mattered greatly; Rose was close to forever sitting, and more than once she told Kel to go on without her and to promise to love the baby and help it to have a good go at life. Kel ignored her and eventually they pushed and pulled themselves clean to popping out the other side of the stubborn island rock and back into the air.

  They lay on the beach and gasped breath back into their lungs. A marathon run and a marathon won all in a moment, a heartbeat flutter no matter how it beat wrong.

  Kel untied the baby from her back and placed him happy-as on her lap and that was when she saw it.

  ‘The raft,’ she shouted. ‘It’s the bloody raft! Maybe we int so unlucky after all.’ She looked at Rose and pointed her toward the perfect fixed and bound vessel that bobbed there proud and rock-pool neat.

  Rose smiled and she lay back into the sand and closed her eyes. Their final journey on the island had taken its toll on her. Kel could see it in her everything, the way she took in air, and her fingers light as feathers against the wind.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ Kel said and she nodded toward the tide that was snaking its way up it to greet them.

  It was time to go and it was time to go forever. Let the island be and leave it to make of itself what it wanted. It was time to go for good.

  Kel looked at Rose and asked if she was ready to set sail, then she got up to pack their nothing stuff into every last rubber boat remnant they still had and she lashed these to the raft and all the plastic-bottle water she’d collected recently she balanced and knotted at every corner.

  When everything was ship-shape done and dusted, Kel carried Rose to the raft that she had anchored with a boulder rope and she laid her down best she could and she cut the rope and set the oar that luckily she had remembered to tie to the vessel and set it to water. Kel kept her mind to the culvert that she knew ran gauntlet between the rocks, and she told herself she knew this enviroment well enough, this island had become more of a home than any she had known.

  Seated within the dusk-dark Kel could see the island’s thrust and punch against the sky, could see the spirit shadows gathering out on what was left of the slip-trip edge of the cliff. She could tell the spirits had something of a celebration whooping about them. She could hear their cat-call cries and see small spark-fires burning crazy in their eyes, mad things and madness combined, and Kel recognised that they were a part of her.

  She went on with the oar lifting and pulling from the ocean and she watched the ripples catch what remained of the light and felt the raft turn stubborn from the island. The tide was coming in but the wilful boat wanted shot of land; just like Kel, it wanted to leave the devil earth behind.

  Kel knew exactly what lay out to sea. Beyond the gully lay a plateau of rocks and nothing but a full tide could help them skim over and out. She looked at Rose for an opinion not her own, but the girl was gone with pain after the exertion of walking wounded and so she decided to leave her be.

  Kel knew matters of life and death didn’t wait for thinking time, things either were or they were not. She could either go now, with a million known risks wondering, or stay for high tide and a full moon busting out with caution. But then the spirits might just succeed in bothering her all the way toward mad, or the pumping poison in Rose’s veins might put her out for the gulls.

  ‘I’m goin,’ she said to herself and she dug the oar deep into the water and spaded for all she was worth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They met the tide at full depth; the watery world where they had spent so much time rose up to greet them like an old friend. Kel worked hard to keep the paddle pushed in water, the horizon her goal, every minute better than the bullying island.

  Occasionally the rising moon caught in the rocks and revealed their angles; like daggers they came at them and Kel was quick to navigate the raft away.

  She would row out into the darkness and back into the light, another day and a lifetime of days paddling toward the forever horizon. Kel knew now that she would never give up in this life, and if her heart granted her respite then on into the next. Kel rowed until morning. She rowed them out of trouble and she rowed them toward safety for now with a good light rising.

  She told Rose they had a great deal of paddling yet to come and she told her whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  ‘I said we still got long to go, rowin and whatever.’

  ‘Where are we heading?’ whispered Rose.

  ‘The strait, remember? We’re gonna hang out in the ocean and wait for a bigger boat to come along.’ She looked at Rose’s leg, ‘Or maybe head to the mainland
, take our chances back on land.’ Kel told the girl again how she was going to get her to land in one piece one way or another, that she would be back home before long.

  ‘What about you?’ asked Rose.

  Kel shrugged. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘What about your plan? What about your heart?’

  Kel thought for a moment. The plan she had set for herself so perfectly had been taken from her ten times over but it did not bother her one bit. She told Rose not to worry about her and smiled when the girl joked that she was not worried. Kel could see she was fading fast; nothing but thin-trace pencil tracks marking her out when she used to be all about the colour.

  She told Rose to sleep some and when the baby started to cry she picked him up and kissed him and he squealed with delight. Kel continued to row with the boy lying in her lap and he giggled and spluttered joy and it was as if he were the happiest child alive.

  ‘Rosen,’ she said to him, ‘I’m gonna call you Rosen.’ She looked into his eyes and he looked into hers the same. ‘It’s a good Cornish name and it’s a girl’s name, but I’ll tell you bout the reasons when you’re old enough to understand what it is to be named after beauty and courage and grit.’

  Kel thought about happiness and she thought about it a good while. There had been moments during their chaotic journey when she had been close to contentment. Near enough happy in the brief moments when she did not fear for her life, when thinking was allowed. Rose had been a part of that, she was certain. She wondered what in reality the world had in store for her now, and it was with newfound optimism that she thought this. There were things she did not know but what she did know she took as truth above all else: she would stay straight and good of the law and would not think about her heart, except to fill it with a little hope occasionally. Life would be for living now, not for thinking and planning and worrying over, and life was not for looking back at either. She glanced across at Rose and she asked a god she did not believe in to keep her safe, please God, keep her breathing.

  At certain times during the day and through the night she leaned in to listen to Rose’s breaths, or else she’d rest her head briefly on Rose’s stomach and take comfort in its rise and fall, the touch of another reassuring and devastating in the same moment.

  ‘We made it past the rocks,’ she told her. ‘Made it past the rocks and we int never gonna see the island again.’

  Kel said these words many times throughout the coming days. She said them but sometimes she didn’t believe them. There were nights when she looked to the horizon and saw the dancing, goading spirits, just the same small neat figurines beckoning for her to come closer despite the million miles of sea between. Sometimes they called for her to come home, but Kel didn’t have a home and so she’d shout that if they knew her then they would know this. In daylight she would convince herself that she finally had them sunk, but come night-time when the rowing became too much, there they were again, monsters in the dark.

  On the final morning Kel had had a night as bad as any. She couldn’t sleep for fear and she couldn’t row with any great meaning because the spirits now floated and flaunted themselves on the crest of every wave. She lay on her back with the oar resting across her chest and one hand trailing the water to let her know that she was still alive. All the water bottles were gone and she wished for a little rain, enough to soften the thorns that grew tangled in her throat. She hadn’t drunk in a long time, little wonder that she was seeing things more than just sea and sky. Kel could imagine her veins pumping with the salt-sap, her arteries clogged with crystals stacked close and closing; her huge heart hardening to rock salt.

  She spread herself starfish and held the sides of the raft, a way of grounding, settling.

  Kel missed the earth beneath her feet, no matter how sodden soft, the idea of good soil and the dewy smell of morning come good. Childhood memories, but fine ones all the same. New beginnings. All she’d ever wanted was a fresh start, the one step forward without the two steps back. She stared at the sky and checked it over for gaps in the clouds and there were none, the gloom had the sky tied corner to corner.

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ she said to Rose. ‘Any day now.’ She looked across at the girl and she was half gone with chill and fever combined and Kel thought she said something and sat up.

  ‘What you say?’ Kel asked, and she wondered how the girl could speak without moving her lips. She sat forward and continued to stare until something soft and melting appeared on the horizon beyond Rose’s head; a smudge that rubbed up and down and was everywhere.

  The smudge thing melting in-out above the waves was land, and it was growing in size. Kel stumbled to her feet and she shouted for Rose to wake. She watched the smudge stretch and circle them like prey and all the time she kept up with the shouting, until the last blow filtered from her lungs and her knees gave way to buckling.

  ‘We need to keep paddlin,’ she said to baby Rosen. ‘We made it, we bloody made it.’ But as she watched, the mark of something more than sea dissolved into the soup-slip horizon, and then she watched it disappear completely.

  Kel sat down and rubbed her eyes clear, but when she opened them everything had been clogged thick with fog.

  She lay down and put her head to Rose’s chest and listened for signs of life and maybe there was something and maybe there was nothing at all.

  ‘I’m sorry for not savin you,’ Kel said and she closed her eyes, and for a moment she thought maybe the girl had put a hand on her head and she took comfort in it despite knowing it was just the wet fingering damp. They would lie together at death’s door and wait to be let in.

  Kel allowed the ocean waves to rock her thinking silent. There was nothing to fight for and nothing to fight against. A quiet drift of motion; it was only the ocean after all. She would fall to sleep and she would die in sleep.

  Time passed as it always had, with fits and starts and backward ticking. Frenzied and apathetic all the same, and still the two girls and the beautiful baby lay in the holding bay before death as they had been in life, close but not close.

  Two girls unaware of anything except the long drawn-out wait. Kel was near to opening the door to doing it, the door to dying, and then she heard it. The sound of a warning horn that as good as jumped Kel from her skin and that was when she saw it, a land of sorts. Real this time, she could smell the earth, taste the wet soil on her tongue. She held the baby aloft and told him that they had done it, they had found land. She knelt beside Rose and she shook her and told her the same, and then she settled back to rowing toward the low-sling cliff beach.

  As the raft drew closer Kel narrowed her eyes to the detail of things. The land was dark from constant water, and rising from the earth came smoke and it was as if the ground itself was burning, and the acrid tang cut into her throat like a blade. Maybe this was it, the end of the world, just like the old man and the pirate kids had warned her so many lives ago.

  Kel tucked the baby best she could into her jacket to keep him from breathing in the toxic fumes and she kept on rowing with her eyes filtering out the smoke and suddenly she saw movement, one and two, and the people came down to the shoreline to pull them in. She called out to them and all her words came out coughed and jumbled and as she reached the beach she thanked them over until her voice gave way and it was replaced with tears so forceful she thought she might suffocate in the suck.

  Kel lay on the sand with the baby gripped tight in her arms, and when somebody bent to take him she shouted them away because he belonged to her. She loved him and had protected him and to have him taken from her even momentarily would feel like forever now.

  She sat up and looked to Rose and the man who carried her from the raft and she shouted for him not to hurt her, she was all she had in the world besides the baby.

  The man stopped a moment and looked at Kel, his arms cradled loose with the little dangling light weight in his arms, and he nodded, smiled.

  ‘You hear me?’ she shouted again. ‘She
needs medical attention. Don’t go dumpin her in the sand.’ She got to her feet and shuffled towards them and she told him the girl’s name was Rose and that she had money to pay for what was needed.

  The man carried Rose to the slipway and set her down on a line of fishing pots and he told Kel payment of any kind would not be necessary.

  ‘But she’s from the towers,’ said Kel. ‘She’s somebody.’

  Kel knelt beside her friend and she told her to wake up, and when the man told Kel the girl wasn’t nobody no more she shouted out the girl’s name over to drown out all other noise and replace it with hope. When hope went it was replaced by rage, a fire that lifted her off her feet and dumped her burnt, busted and bruised and back where she belonged, alone.

  She lay where she had fallen, and when they carried Rose away she let them, and she let the woman that was the man’s wife take the baby toward the promise of warmth and shelter. Occasionally a lamp grew wide with cylindrical light as it swung her way and in her mind she told the couple that she would come in from the storm soon, but in reality she was mute to sense and she barely felt them load blankets upon her, and when the tide rose and came clawing at her feet she let them carry her inside because she knew those claws belonged to the island sea spirits come to pull her back in.

  For what seemed like forever Kel lay mute and unmoving in a stranger’s bed. The baby gone from her and Rose gone from the world complete. She could hear the clock on the bedside cabinet, its constant ticking a reminder that life went on, kept moving, but to Kel the sound was like a bomb waiting to go off.

  She listened to the noise of the family and occasionally the baby cried, and each time he did a little of her came back to knowing that he cried out for her.

  He called to her day and night and it was as if he were putting pieces of her back together bit by bit, but some days were better than others. The hounding ocean spirits had gone, but occasionally through the daze she imagined Rose standing at the bottom of the bed; there were times when the girl came closer, bent to kiss her, her hands in Kel’s and her beautiful calm eyes smiling, all all right. Other people came too, the strangers from the beach, and she asked to see baby Rosen but they never answered her and soup was all they had to offer.