Read by Miranda Harrison
She wakes, gasping, sputtering sea and sand, thrashed by coughs, till the saltwater is out, only air in her lungs, at last.
She breathes.
Alive.
Her eyes focus. A beach. No boats or houses. No people. An island. No lights but the moon and its shine on the sea.
Endless sea. It’s calmed now, a sheet of black metal. Not like before.
The memory of the storm cyclones her head, as if she still reels under house-sized waves and shrieking winds, the terror of the sea depths. Of her death.
She wrenches her thoughts back. She’s here. Alive. Unlike her boat, whose bones nod in the waves, she’s unbroken.
It spat me out.
She slaps her face. Hard. Focus!
Sodden and dazed, teeth chattering, she hauls herself to her feet.
Shelter. Then, in the morning, water.
The thought of water, how there may be none, singes her throat. She clamps back tears. Trudges inland, as gulls scatter.
#
The girls huddle by the stream. Their bodies twine for warmth, young muscles shuddering. It’s an effort not to move, to stay hushed, but darkness and silence are allies.
As always, the youngest cannot hold her tongue. It squirms in the cave of her mouth until she speaks.
“How long must we wait? Where’s mother?”
An older sister pinches her arm. “Shush.”
The older girls are more patient. They know she will come, or someone. Someone always comes, if the sea wills it so.
#
It’s still dark when the woman jolts awake. She had a nightmare with Lucy, her daughter, lost in the storm. Lucy sank to the sea-bottom; the woman watched. Frozen. Unable to save her.
She shakes off the dream. Lucy is at home. Lucy is safe.
She discovers two granola bars in her jacket pocket. She shreds a wrapper and devours one, savoring chocolate’s sweet drip in her throat.
Three bites and it’s gone. She tears the other wrapper, then stops.
She must be smart. Ration. She must find water. Her dizzy head pounds with thirst, her tongue like sand from the sweet oats.
At dawn she walks the island. Rock. Heat. Green lizards. The gulls. Little else.
Till close to midday, a miracle. A burbling stream. The tight fist of her heart unclenches. Water. Simple, sweetwater.
#
At midday, a woman stumbles to the stream and sprawls onto her belly. The girls watch as she drinks greedily.
#
She drinks till her belly swells, forcing herself to stop so she doesn’t vomit. She stretches on her back and laughs out loud. It’s not food but she’s full. She knows she can last a long time with just water.
A shuffling from the brush. Four girls pop-up on the opposite bank, silent as rocks.
She sees their tattered clothes, their long hair, unbrushed and knotted, like gnarled branches. They’re thin like branches, too. The youngest looks the same age as her Lucy.
#
The girls offer tears and trembling lips. The oldest tells of a storm. A shipwreck. Her voice cracks over the death of her parents. She whispers how they’ve been alone for weeks. Famished.
The youngest appears from behind the others. She sobs and jerks at her filthy hair. She’s the best at crying, all the sisters agree.
“Mommy,” the youngest keens.
Her wails tug the woman like a rope as she crosses the stream, to the girls.
#
The woman offers soft words. She offers the granola bar with a gentle smile. They stare at the bar as though they don’t understand, though their teeth grind like millstones.
How long have they been here? How did they survive?
In that moment, the woman decides she’ll save them. All of them. She’ll build a raft from the scattered pieces of her boat. They’ll push past the breakers; find a shipping route. They need a mother to get home. She’ll be it.
Home to Lucy. She’ll make it. Just as she’d promised when leaving. She’d kissed Lucy’s pouty lips, and sealed her oath.
#
The girls clasp the woman’s hands and arms. They hang from her like heavy fruit. They tug her four ways, whispering in her ears.
“Mother,” they speak as one, and tow her to the ground.
#
The woman does not fear four girls lost on an island. Not yet.
Not till the knife, clenched by the oldest, slashes the tendons of her legs, hobbling her. Not till their grasping hands and knobby knees pin her to the ground, till she can hardly breathe to scream.
#
The smallest goes first, because they were all smallest once. Her teeth rip into the woman’s thigh—her favorite bit of meat—and she pulls away, catching the blood on her chin, not wasting a drop.
Then the others feed, a blur of teeth and nails.
Gulls frenzy the sky.
#
The woman fights till she cannot.
She slips past pain and terror, to shadows, to depths that make the ocean shallow, her last thoughts only Lucy, the broken oath, but how she’ll give everything to her, a mother’s love that’s boundless. Bottomless.
#
The girls nap, lazy in the sun’s heat.
Much later, the oldest knocks apart the skeleton with a rock, shooing the gulls. There is still marrow to suck and bones make good swords for play-battle, the rib cage a house for stick dolls. Skulls kick well along the beach.
Bellies full, they play as children. They swing bones and chase, squealing in the chilly stream.
The island is lonely, the youngest thinks, but she has her sisters and the toys they fashion.
She chases a gull. She sings, her tongue at last free.
Soon, she sings, if the sea wills it so, another mother may come.
(c) Michael Harris Cohen, 2018
Michael Harris Cohen’s work is published or forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies including F(r)iction, The Dark, and Conjunctions. He’s received a Fulbright grant for translation and fellowships from The Djerassi Foundation, OMI, and Jentel. He teaches in the department of Literature and Theatre at the American University in Bulgaria.
Miranda Harrison: Credits include More Than This (Bread & Roses); Women Redressed (Arcola); The Mesmer (Dirty Dick Vaults). Classics: Nurse, Romeo & Juliet (Leicester Square Theatre); Mother, Blood Wedding (Barons Court). Voiceover work includes BBC Children in Need; charity & corporate narrations; educational audio. Miranda also runs new writing event Page to Stage.
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