How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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From the edge of the dunes, it was only a couple of hundred feet to the water. It was either the Currituck Sound or the Pamlico Sound. I didn't remember which, but it was definitely one of the two. They're both out there on the other side of the island, but you can never really know where one starts and the other one ends. There's just blue‑green water leading into more blue‑green water. I know that the names on the map change as the water deepens, but really everything just blends together. If the Pamlico was moved a little to the left or to the right or shifted up a few hundred feet, then the Currituck would fill in the space. That's the only thing that would happen and no one would know the difference. So, I guess it really didn't matter which it was and it was stupid to worry about it.
When Crow stopped being dizzy, he said, "Come on Starling, let's walk all the way to the water on the other side of the island."
Like I said, it was just a few hundred feet and you might think it would be easy to get there but it wasn't because there was a thicket of bushes and trees in front of us with a thousand openings but no actual trail. It's like we were stuck in a maze and every exit was blocked by a short dense copse of pines. That made me think about the story of the man who built the maze that held the Minotaur. His name was either Icarus or Dædalus, but I can't remember which. It was just one meaningless name or the other, but nobody every forgets the Minotaur. He was half-man, half-bull, and all-monster. He killed everyone who entered the maze.
It was a terrifying thought.
Truly, the only thing blocking us was a bunch of short trees but still I felt trapped. Then when I looked behind me, I realized that it was worse than I thought because the trees were right next to the sand and the slope of the dunes seemed to be creeping toward them. It was slowness swallowing greenness and there was no way to stop it. If we stayed there too long, we'd end up like Icarus or Dædalus or maybe even Henry Hudson freezing to death in the middle of nowhere.
Crow looked at the trees in front of us and smiled at me. He said, "Starlin,' if we had a machete, we could slash our way through."
I just shook my head. It seemed like a crazy idea and besides neither of us thought to bring a machete.
"Crow, we don't have a –"
He cut me off with a smirk. "I know. I know. I'm not that stupid. But I bet we can crawl all the way to the other side. There's has to be a way to get through."
Crow got down on his knees and started crawling. In less than a minute, he called back to me. "Starling, can you hear it?"
I didn't hear anything at first.
"Listen, Starling. The sound is getting louder. We have to be close."
Then suddenly, Crow shouted. "Look, Starling! It's a little stream."
But he was wrong. It was way too small to be a stream. In fact, it was barely a trickle. Rivers, brooks, streams, and even rivulets are always larger. I think the smallest and most useless body of water that goes from one place to another is called a rill. Or anyway, that's what my mother told me. From the size of this one, I was sure it had to be a rill. It was a tiny horseshoe dribble that curved toward us and then away. It came from nowhere and then went nowhere.
Crow said we were probably the first people ever to see it and since we were the first, that meant we were allowed to claim this new territory like we had just landed on the moon or Mars or even Pluto. So, he stuck a dried pine branch in the sand and saluted it like it was a flagpole. Then he started to make some crazy proclamation about the stream. He said he claimed this stream for all the people who are stuck and can never get out. Then he made me stand and salute the flagpole, too.
I didn't have any more energy and I could barely stand. Finally, I apologized to Crow and just laid down on our newly conquered territory. I wanted to fall asleep. Right there. Right on that spot and not wake up until all my memories were gone. I'd let the wind and the sand wear them down like mountains eroding into plains.
The last thing I remembered was hearing Crow's feet sloshing through the water. And I heard him say, "We don't have to go all the way to the other side. Right here is good enough."
