Savage is the Dawn

Botany Bay

A few hours later, Tom and I got on a bus and I looked out at the desert that took so long to cross, and that I thought had no end slip silently by outside the window so fast that all the world seemed to run as one color and slid along the glass as a mixture of paints. Day and night turned over for one another like playmates and occasionally Tom would tug on my arm and take me off one bus and put me on another. Then he led me into the woods and over some hills, those felt more familiar to me, then we got back on the buses and did it all over again, until Tom was leading me down the dirtiest looking town, I had ever seen till then. Everything was grey and green and smeared with brown and black until the city seemed to sink and spill out into the sea that was just blackness. Tom found a boat and with several boxes we entered and set out for the open sea. The boat splashed and rocked so as I was slammed into the bottom of the boat several times every wave.

After half a day, the water became a bright blue lighter color. I haven't seen that color anywhere other than the feathers of some birds. Before us were thousands of scattered islands of sand and strange trees, they were scattered out to match the patterns of the stars above. This was the place of the wedding, and we traded the dollars Oswaldo gave us for rides from and to one another, searching for the large blue-bellied ship. Once Tom grabbed my hands when I was offering the money to switch the type of paper I was offering the rower, he turned the pile upside down. The rower looked quite upset.

Island to island, the palm trees rustling with a stiff breeze. The people there, they were like me mixed with Tom's skin. I couldn't speak to them, nor could tom, but they were natives, unsheltered by tree cover exposed to the wiles of this new age of nuchness and manyness slowly tending a fire doomed to die for the force of the prevailing winds blowing in from the sea.

The ship was there, caramel colored lights shone from its every side framed against the fading light of a mixed and far passed sundowned world.

We paddled little more than wood out against the current and the tides. I had prepared a shoot of bamboo with a downward notch for grabbing the railing. Thg beast of the sea rose before us. It obscured all its lights as the waves banked upon its metal sides smooth as glass rubbed by the waves.

Tom beckoned as we raised the pole and hooked a high railing way above. Tom shook his head and whistled and by that we said our goodbyes. We was to go back and fetch a canoe and rower for the escape. He paddled away into the darkness towards the faint light of the island as I pulled myself up out of the water. The pole was gripped fast and my hands were wet so I slid back into the waves once, twice, then I found a grip and pulled up towards the deck of the craft with Nagaina strengthening my heart, nerve, and sinew. I had not used all those muscles in some time, yet I must ascend and crest to her side. She was there, I knew it and I paused to look and see who was there to witness my climb onto the ship. There was no one, I stepped onto the wood of the ship and moved swiftly inside a door and fell under a table to hide my stay.

Then I thought someone might see my pole and so I stepped outside to throw it into the waves. There were two people there to greet me, but they did not seem to mind my intrusion as I dropped the long rod into the black. They yelled as it flipped into the water then stumbled along to the far part of the ship and I returned to my stow under the table.

I pulled the bag from my side and opened the phone from it. I called Oswaldo. There was no answer. There was always an answer until now. I crawled out and went to the other side and looked out the window, there were crowds of people pushing and swaying in the electric lights.

I looked for Nagaina, I would know her form and her eyes anywhere... She was not out in the moonlight and so I felt enheartened that I might find her within the ship. I searched door after door. Doors with rooms to windows, doors with rooms that had pipes without windows. There was no one. I walked out onto the deck of people, passion embarrassed me. People bumped into my wet clothes and moved back. The festival lights swung in the breeze as music played. I was squatting down looking about. A hand was placed on my shoulder. A man said something loudly and ushered me into a lone room very violently. Once he was gone, I saw no reason to stay in the small room and so I left shortly after. When I opened the door there, in strange clothes, was Oswaldo.