Sky-Water

The Island on the Sky-Water

"My flower bud!" Maypop sat on the edge of the bed in the infirmary with a mirror in one hand and her other hand feeling her baldness around her ear. "I was really excited to see it bloom," she said. Her bottom lip stuck out, revealing a sliver of green on the inside.

"But you're feeling okay, right?" I sat down next to her and put my hand on her arm, partly to get her attention and partly to feel her blackened skin. It looked so papery that I knew even before I touched it that it'd break off like ash. Underneath it was skin so white and smooth that it looked almost like bone.

Her vines were gone--left on the upper decks looking a lot like dried rolls of tobacco. Her leaves and her precious flower bud were nothing but dust. I had never seen her look so bare.

"Are you okay?" I asked again after she didn't answer.

She nodded her head, but under her eye, I saw her burned, papery skin soak up a tear like the desert ground in a light rain. She tried to wipe the wetness away, but only smeared the blackness off her face, revealing more of the white skin underneath. Looking at herself again in the mirror, she gave into crying and threw her head on my chest.

"It's okay," I said. "It might not be permanent. Plants are very good at regrowing." I put my arms around her, trying not to rub off any more skin, but failing miserably.

"But it's taken years for me to flower at all!"

I nodded and held her close, rocking back and forth like my mother used to do with me when I would cry on her like this. But then I got an idea that might cheer her up. "Wait here, Maypop," I said, gently separating myself from her and getting up from the bed. It was strange to not have to pick vines off of me. Her embrace felt rather bare. But she let me go, giving me big, sad eyes as I went, but not saying anything or following me.

Down in the hold of the ship, I opened my dresser drawer to find the jar of soil that I had collected for her, and ran back up to give it to her. "Here," I said as I walked back into the room. "Brought this from my village for you."

"You brought me another gift?" Her eyes lit up, and she held out her hands for the jar, then, taking it and realizing what it was, she gasped and smiled so wide that flakes of her dead skin fell off into her lap, leaving large splotches of bone-white skin underneath. She unscrewed the lid in a hurry and plunged her hand into the jar, spilling out excess soil onto her lap. "It's so smooth and cool," she said gazing up at me with delighted eyes. Then, pulling a handful from the jar, she began rubbing it on her arms like lotion, but stopped abruptly and looked down at her dirty fingers with a new look on her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked, looking at her hands to find what she was looking at. Something looked odd about her hand, but I couldn't understand what I was seeing until I brushed the dirt off and looked again.

At her fingertips, tiny roots had begun to grow.

"That's never happened before." she rubbed her fingers together to feel the roots. "But the soil is very good. I can taste it through my..." she held up her hands and wiggled her fingers, "finger roots. I think it'd taste better with some water."

"I'll go find you some."

I headed to the mess deck to get her a pitcher of water.

On the upper decks, I could hear the sailors calling to each other and running back and forth. They were turning the ship 45 degrees to carefully shove the man-o-war off the telescope. From the things they were shouting, it seemed that we had a cosmic wind on our side.

I caught a glimpse of pink out the windows as I went back down with a pitcher of water, but nothing more distinct than that.

Maypop had laid out a sheet on the floor and sat down like she was at a picnic, except that instead of eating, she was rubbing dirt on her skin, which brushed off all of the blackness. The skin underneath was changing. Though still white, it had begun to sprout little nubs of roots that held the soil and made her look rather alien.