''Pit pat pit pat'' goes the rain on my window.
Our memories betray us,
''Shut up'' goes the voice in my head.
The sea carries us,
''Did you take the garbage out?'' goes my Gabe.
There is always more to lose.
''Shut up'' goes the voice in my head.
''Molly, I said take the garbage out!''
''No you didn't'' goes the voice in my head.
Me. I'm the voice in my head.
''Pit pat pitpat pitpatpitpatPITPATPITPATPITPAT'' Goes the rain.
I climb out my window, drop down onto the muddy grass already running, which only seems to get me wet faster. I make it to the little red boat, beached upside down in the sand. I push her out into the sea, making sure to grab both paddles from where I had left them under her before I hop in, then rowing rowing rowing, getting away from the ground. My Gabe runs out of the house, and for a second I think he'll run into the water, but he doesn't. Just stops on the beach, water lapping at his boots, water dripping down his glasses. He looks so forlorn for a second that I almost turn back, but then he turns, hunching against the rain, and trudges back inside. It was probably just my imagination anyway.
I have to fight against the waves now that I've gotten further out, they're not so much lapping as they are hitting me broadside, and the wind keeps pushing me back inland-but I know that as soon as I get to the the South side of the point I'll be out of harm's way.
And on I go.
''Morning and evening
Maidens heard the goblins cry:
''Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy,'' I sing as I push my paddles through the sea, trying to drown out the sound, the clickclickclick; like a straw stuck in the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
''Trust the sea,'' They say, ''but paint your boats red.'' And I'm almost there - almost in the patch of water in the shadow of Nose Pt. that is protected from the big winds.
''Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck'd cherries,
Melons and raspberries,'' and on the list goes. So many things that we can't get on this damned,
ruddy island.
It has been two years, two years, since my mothers died. They were shot, you see, when they went over to the mainland. Shot because someone thought they were 'wrong'.
No one told me that though. Because that would have been 'too hard on me'.
''Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab apples, dewberries,''
The rain lets off a little, though the wind keeps pressing, pushing at Ms. Mead's side. Ms. Mead is the boat, just so you know, not my imaginary friend. I'm not that crazy.
Yet.
''Mmmmmmnnnggg,'' sigh the monsters. ''Trust the sea,'' people say, ''but paint your boats red.'' Well, it's not the sea I don't trust.
Then all of a sudden, the wind stops. And I know I shouldn't have left I know I should have taken the goddamned garbage out when my Gabe asked me to (shut up) I know what will come up to escape the storm and I know that our's is the closest house to the sea because my moms were the only people in this goddamned ruddy place who were brave or crazy or stupid enough to live on the West side of the island (shut up shut up shut up), at the edge of the beach.
At the edge of the beach.
Clickclickclickclick.
Hush, say the waves, hush, hush,
It's the first day of September. Do you know what that means?
It means that creatures will start coming out of the sea any day now.
We paint our boats red so that the monsters don't attack us. The deepwater fish, huge eyed, with fins almost like hands that will grab you from the side of your boat, the gilleyants, with their long curling tusks, the mantizacs-huge fish, twealve feet long at least, with wicked sharp teeth, and the Requiax, which are hardly fish at all. We never see those, though. Thank the gods.
And then there are the demons.
''Mmmmmmnnnggg,''
I've grown up with stories of how these creatures, starved and looking for entertainment, will ravage a town like a hurricane, how our streets have run with blood and salt water, how livestock, children, parents, go missing in the night. But they're not just stories.
I sigh, and begin my row back, rain still pit patering on my shoulders. I've made my decision.
They look almost like people, sometimes. But with big, begging eyes, and mouths full of sharp teeth, and long, grasping fingers. I sure they aren't truly demons, or Devils, or our dead come back to settle the grudges of their past lives. They're just more animals - just like the fowl we eat, the fish that eat us.
The sea keeps her hold on us, you know, and no matter how many bells and red ribbons we tie above our thresholds, or how many iron chains we string around our ankles- the sea will always have some hold on the people of this wretched, beautiful isLand. Beautiful and wretched because of this: sea that feeds us, feeds on us.
