Molten, this world. And I think, yes, I know this world. As it had been when it first formed. Volcanoes, their rivers of lava like the planet’s blood.
This new world is where I lie and have awoken. The shape of the shark is still dark in my dream and the prize bears are floating on the tide, and everywhere the smell of rot. Deep down, the stink of rottenness. And a child’s shoe floating by.
8.
I lie where we always walked. It was a place famous amongst us. Others loved it, yes, generations had walked here, had been drawn to the red beach. There are patterns of white quartz that children always said was writing. I’d thought and said the same myself when I was young, when I looked at the quartz in the rock, a white language in the red sandstone, and tried to make sense of those hieroglyphics. As if it was an explanation. Yes, when I was eighteen I was certain the quartz said and meant something. If only I could decipher it. Which would be the challenge of a lifetime. And become my great work.
I’ve slept here once before, when I lay tracing with a wet forefinger the secret language. Who’s to say it wasn’t a warning? Who can be sure we haven’t already been told what will happen? The white lettering, gleaming, like crystal milk, ignored all this time. And now it’s too late.
That was the first flood. ‘The inundation’ they called it on the news. These days the waves are higher and come further in. But the fairground reopened, as it always does. And the Blue Dolphin started up again, selling its cheap food. That food people around here were brought up to eat, the chips, the faggots and peas. Twice to my knowledge it’s been flooded out, and twice tried again.
When Zigmas died many other people drowned, but I remember only Zigmas. That strawberry birthmark on his cheek, his hair so blonde it was almost white. Yes, it’s only Zig I dream about, a boy running into the ghost train tunnel, thinking he’d be safe. People say the water rose to the roof, the hounds of hell floated away when their chains came loose. The hounds’ eyes were yellow as the quartz in the cave.
Most days now I’m out on the peninsula. Yes, the tides can be huge, but when the water’s low I explore the caves. Chilly places, even when it’s hot. And dark as dungeons. Once I found a drowned porpoise, its beak a mattock of polished bone. But when the sun is in the right place the light shines directly into the cavemouths. That’s when you see the starfish, the anemones. Violet and red, those creatures. I listen to their breathing, the music they make.
Yes, since the inundation I’ve been relearning the old skills. Teaching myself what we should never have allowed ourselves to forget. That’s the reason I’ve decided to live here. Because my father told me he was a beachcomber. Or that’s what he said I’d become. Yes, he used to say, all of us will be beachcombers, one day. Almost a prophet, I might say. That was my father. And I am his prophecy.
But there’s no food here. And all the world tastes of salt. The caves so smooth, so cold, taste of salt when I lick the crevices in the limestone. The rocks, the starfish, they all taste of salt. Have you ever eaten starfish? Or sea anemones? Boiled or fried I can’t make them taste of anything but salt. Even with a samphire garnish, a side of coralweed.
So we’re all scavengers. Yes, that’s what they call me but that’s merely another word for beachcomber. And if you know your history you’ll be aware how people around here lived. They took whatever washed ashore, the brandies, the silks. Everything a staved hold supplied. They were wreckers, I suppose. Old skills passed down the generations. How often was the riot act read to clear the beaches of men days drunk? In World War Two a cargo of Guinness was lost and divvied up. And there is so much else afloat these days. The ocean’s become a rubbish tip, burning, steaming. Yet still it teems with bizarre creatures. That shark gives me nightmares, but there are sunfish now, swollen like zeppelins. Mola mola they call the sunfish, fat and round and silver with blue tattoos. More like the moon.
I look at the moon from the cavemouth where I camp, sometimes from the red container where the lifeguards kept their gear. All those surfboards and paddles? I burned them on the beach. There are so many camps now in the dunes, or out on the sand, it takes time to learn the protocols of fire.
Last year I came upon a sunfish of monstrous size. Over a ton, it surely was, and stranded on rocks. When ripped open, its belly was full of plastic bags. I dined for three weeks off the creature, as long as I dared. Salty steaks, but that’s how the world tastes now. I had to use my stick against the dogs. These days I carry a piece of lead piping. Perfect heft in my hand, that bludgeon. But there are so many dogs now. Even in the caves I hear them baying at night. Those Alsatians look and sound like wolves. Big as the hounds of hell. Of course I need a weapon.
Nights, I’m sometimes in the cave. The same place Lizzy kissed me, though maybe, look, maybe it was mutual. Or maybe I might have touched. Her. On the breast, perhaps. That’s natural isn’t it? No reason to run away. Was there? But it’s a different world now. I don’t have time to worry about that. The old laws don’t apply.
9.
Zigmas loved the forest. The sawn wood that washed ashore? Those thousands of white staves? It might have been his home over there in Litland. He came to the fairground, beside a foreign sea, to a place where no trees grew and only salt thrived. A world of caves and a prophesy in quartz. Somewhere he could have never imagined. The frayed edge of a continent. Where the land is drowning.
Now look, twenty miles across the bay is the Meridian tower. A splinter, the colour of cuttlebone, built for those who thought they owned all they surveyed. I’ve been there once, a week’s expedition. The dogs are bad but people are worse. There are places where the land’s officially abandoned, but I ignore all that. I picked a way through the rubbish brought ashore by the new tides. Such adventures I’ve had. The faces of the drowned…
But I can’t get Zigmas out of my mind. That’s why I dream about him, he’s one of my ghosts, a boy brought up in an ocean of trees who had never seen a beach. They said he couldn’t swim for that reason, and I see the filthy water rising in the tunnel, Zigmas in the dark with all the glass cases smashing as they topple about him, the flood reaching his chin, his eyes. Zigmas in the tunnel with the worst things in the world…
10.
The stars have vanished. As they do. I’m awake now on a painted beach. Yes, the stone is breathing. I know the stone is alive. Under my body what’s written in quartz spells out this world’s fate. I feel the letters burning into my skin. Yes, it’s agony, but I will lie here as they brand me, those words, and one day people will come to read the living prophesy.
I used to look at the sky and the jet trails there. I thought that was writing and it was written for me. The white lines were like quartz in the sky. But I was wrong. The prophecies have been here all along, given to me alone to understand. When I move I will be ready. And I am almost ready....
Acknowledgements
Versions of some of the writings in Island of Lightning have previously appeared in Poetry Wales, Planet, New Welsh Review, Lampeter Review, I Know Another Way (Gomer), and the play A Few Little Drops (Volcano)
Well chosen words
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