Shipwrights

I’m falling, I’m falling through an endless sky. As my eyes blink open, hues of lavender, orange, and an impossible blue fill my vision. I feel wrapped in light, wind, and warmth until I hear the sound of something breaking, the deafening crack of lightning. I gasp; the air intake is a vacuuming vortex that seems to accelerate my descent. My lids blink rapidly, trying to ascertain my surroundings, but the wind begins to throw me. It pulls my feet above my head over and over until I’m flipping.

Then I see it…the smoke…the sky…the black cloud, blue lightning breaking through it like veins. Then there’s blue again, vast and open, now vignetted by this black, creeping mist. Then black, bright white, blue…black, then blue, then black again, gray, bright white again, over and over as I fall faster and faster. Then I hear it..the roaring, the crashing. I can smell it, the salt. I can feel the cool spray of water against my bare arms, my bare feet. It’s the sea.

I hit the water hard; the impact feels like it must have split my skin, but soon all of my senses are subdued. The cracks of lightning are reduced to distant booms, the grays and bright whites blur into soft auras. Sound is so close here, beneath these waves, thoughts sound clear.

I can hear myself think.

Where am I? How did I get here? Why…can’t I breathe? A surge flows through my body, violent and furious. My arms and legs flail, fighting the water. I find my way to the surface and gasp for air, but the intake is merely a whisper amongst the chaos. Before I can exhale, a wave topples me over the head, throwing me beneath the surface again. Instinctively, I fight, climbing slowly, reaching feebly for the surface again. When I find it, I’m coughing, seizing sips of air, and trying to keep myself from gulping more seawater.

Just when the fatigue begins to set in, I feel a small reprieve; the waves seem to calm, but they pull me backward. When I spin to face the direction of the pull, a mountain of sea stands against me. The shock strikes me violently, my gasp is inaudible, drowned out completely by the roaring of this monstrous wave. The sound of it is cosmic, cacophonic greatness. It forces me beneath the surface with such a force that I cannot move my limbs, I cannot fight or flail. The pressure is crushing. I feel that it will reduce me to nothing, that I will disappear.

Light fades fast; not even the lightning flashes can be seen behind my eyelids. I’m sinking and shrinking, growing smaller until the space between mass feels like oblivion. I feel so tightly pressed that I can’t move my jaw to scream. Fear sets in, then panic, then finally a terrible dread. Just when I think that I’ve lost all feeling, all body, I can feel something touch my fingertips. It’s small, meaningless piece of driftwood in these depths. My fingers strain to curl around this object, but once I do, I feel a small relief. I focus on that feeling, letting it permeate my awareness, and then something changes. I can remember…

“Angel…Angel,” the memory plays in my mind like a song. Streams of blue color fill my vision and dance along my eyelids, and from a distance, for a moment, I hear rich laughter.

Suddenly, the force breaks above me, the pressure subsides, and I feel myself ascend faster than I sank. Slowly, I begin to feel my limbs again. I move my arms slowly, feeling them unlock from the stiffness. Eventually, my ankles release, and I can move my feet. My senses steadily return, and I realize that I am embraced. I am being carried, lifted to the surface. Once we finally break the surface, I am confronted with the creaking of wood. Before me is a ship, towering over the waves, rocking with their flow.

“You can’t help out any?” the one carrying me spoke.

I turn my head and blink past the ocean spray. It’s a woman carrying me.

“At least move your arms so you can get to the ship,’ she yelled over the storm.

I stare for a moment longer before nodding rapidly and fighting against the water. We moved closer to the ship and finally reached the ladder hanging over the side.

“Climb, girl!’ she pushes me toward the ladder.

I listen and move to climb. She climbs after me, always at my heels, ensuring I don’t fall back into the raging sea. Once I finally get overboard, I fall onto the deck, exhausted. When the woman boards, she quickly gets to work, running about the ship. She pulled on ropes with unbridled strength, setting free a massive sail that flew open above my head. As it flew out, the sky parted, and the white sun peeked through the black clouds.

Then we sail, flying across the waves, clear out of the storm’s dark skies and into a blue paradise. The woman finally stopped dancing about the deck and settled to stand over me, still sprawled out on the deck.

“You look awful,” was her cold, but probably true reply.

I groaned in response, feeling a bit queasy from the ship’s rocking.

“And I haven’t seen you before. Did you just arrive?” She asked.

“A-arrived?” My voice was monstrously hoarse. “Where am I?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re at sea,” she fanned her hand out to the open air.

I furrowed my brow. Was that all she had to say? The sea? “How do we get out?” I asked, trying to climb to my knees.

“It’s just all sea,” she shrugged. “As far as you go, trust me, I’ve been out here a while. It’s not so bad, though, if you know what you’re doing.”

I groaned again as I stood to my feet. The ship swayed playfully, turning my guts to jelly. I stifled a gag.

“Not on my ship!” She yelled. “Do it over the side.”

I ran to the edge of the desk and emptied my stomach over the side. My misery didn’t cease, though.

“You’ll get used to the swaying,” she called behind me.

“Who are you?” I wiped my mouth with my arm. “How’d you get here?”

“I’m Kendra, and I got here the same way you did. Fell from the sky,” she pointed up.

I looked up at her and took in more of her person. She was older than me, maybe twice as old. Her salt and pepper hair was short and curly, and her skin was dark. She wore a long-sleeved green tunic and simple brown pants with a belt to match. She looked like she was on her way to some daily market affair, not to be the captain of this mighty vessel. Even her shoes, a pair of blue flats, seemed unreasonable.

I, on the other hand…When I looked down, I was in a yellow moisture-wicking tube top and orange board shorts. I suppose I expected to swim. I just hadn’t a clue why or what I was doing before I fell.

“Why’d you come here?” I asked Kendra. Maybe if I heard her reasoning, her answer could help me recall my own.

“No clue, I’m not even sure I existed before I fell,” she divulged happily. “And you won’t remember either, none of us do.”

“There are others?” I probed. “Where are they?”

“At sea. Where else could they be?” Her tone was laced with slight irritation.

“What are their—” I tried to ask another question.

Kendra groaned. “Could you not?” She snapped. “Asking me all these questions without even telling me your name or what you remember about yourself. Why don’t you focus on that first?”

I suppose she made a fair point. It was only polite to properly introduce myself to my savior, but I didn’t know who that was, who I was. My hands gripped the small piece of driftwood I still carried after all this time. “Angel…Angel,” it seemed to sing in my mind.

“I think…” I was still running my thumb over the damp driftwood. “My name is Angel,” even if it wasn’t true, I had to call myself something anyway.

“It feels familiar, so you might be right,” Kendra said before she turned, headed below deck, and beckoned me to follow.

I did as I was bade and followed her into a shabby stateroom. It wasn’t very large. There was just enough space for a single bed, a desk, and two chairs. On the desk were maps and charts of what I assumed was this sea. As my eyes scanned over them, one map had something that piqued my interest: an island.

Kendra moved to a chalkboard on the wall and wrote ‘Angel’ on it underneath the names ‘Erin’ and ‘David’. Her own name was written away from the list of three, along with the acronym ‘H.W.A.N’. I frowned at the last inscription, already annoyed with the questions spilling into my head.

“There’s an island?” I started with the most pressing one and touched the corner of the map that depicted it.

“Don’t worry, we’re headed there now,” she sighed.

I noticed she had a way of shutting down conversation, which felt odd to me. My instinct was just to keep talking to her…to take her lead for some reason more than her rescuing me. I disregarded the strange feeling and shoved the piece of driftwood into my pocket and zipped it closed.

She looked at my pocket, and her face seemed to soften. “You found a piece of wreckage that speaks to you,” she stated.

I did, but it felt like a shameful thing. I didn’t know why, so I just shrugged. “I found it when I was drowning.”

“What did you see?”

“See?”

“When you touched the wreckage? It’s small, so I doubt you saw much of anything,” she shrugged, but her eyes narrowed. “What did you see, if anything?”

I thought back to that panicked time when the weight of the water was crushing me. How the driftwood seemed to slip into my hand like it wanted to hold it. “I remember blue,” I closed my eyes. “Then laughing…I don’t know, it was barely anything before you rescued me.”

“Well, you’ll find more, you’ll build your ship, and then you can find more wreckage and see more memory-visions,” she tried to organize the maps on her desk. “Whatever they are, but that’s what we do out here. We’re shipwrights.”

“Shipwrights?” I stood away from the desk, out of her way.

“Yes, we build the ships, we collect the wreckage, we store the memory-visions. I’ll teach you how on the island where it’s safer for you to avoid drowning and the storms, of course,” she pulled a satchel from under her bed.

“Why don’t we just stay on the island where it’s safe?” I asked following her to the deck and below it to another stateroom. This one just had a bed in it and storage barrels. She pulled several items from the barrels and shoved them into the satchel.

“Because the sea is where we’re meant to be. That’s why we were cast into it and why the wreckage shows us the memory-visions. We were meant to discover them.”

“Is that a law written somewhere or…?” I wondered.

I watched Kendra’s shoulders rise and fall as she let out another steep sigh. “How long have you been here?”

“Uh,” I thought for a moment. I wasn’t quite sure. “Maybe 20 minutes.”

“20 minutes,” she turned to me with wide eyes, transparently sarcastic. “Wow, you know, that's a long time, but I’ve been here before anyone else. Don’t you think I would know how it works?”

I nodded, my lips forming a straight line. “I’ll follow your lead then.”

“That’s great,” she handed me the heavy satchel and moved back to the deck.

I slung the satchel over my shoulder and reluctantly followed her back up the creaking stairs. I wanted to peek in the bag while she steered the ship, or at least ask her why she gave it to me, but questions didn’t seem welcome. Even taking a look felt like it would undermine her authority somehow, so I fought the urge.

Soon, the island was in sight, and I moved to the front of the ship to get a better look at it. The beach was ivory with its white sands. The palms that grew from the forest behind the beach had strange, green, twisting trunks. As we got closer to shore, Kendra let down her anchor, and we took her tender boat to reach the beach.

My feet rejoiced in finding solid ground. I would have smiled, maybe even let out a joyful whoop if I thought it wouldn’t disturb Kendra. She seemed upset at the whole ordeal, having to teach me the way of the shipwright, and that she had to be on the island. I looked back at her massive ship as we beached the tender boat. I wasn’t sure how I was going to learn how to create something so imposing.

“Well, we’re here,” she inhaled and wiped her hands of sand. “The sun sets in these waters near the island, so we’ll need a fire soon. Do you know what a fire is?”

“Yes, I can build one,” I replied. “Is there a fire starter in here?” I tugged at the satchel I’d been carrying.

She raised her brows, surprised at my answer.

“Did the others not know? Erin and David?”

“I didn’t even know when I first arrived…had to figure it out, but once I got the spark, I remembered the name fire,” her eyes seemed to smile as she recalled the experience.

“What else did you end up remembering?” I asked, feeling comfortable to be curious again.

“I remembered the most when I found wreckage, which is why learning how to build your ship is paramount…” she went on about the importance of my duties as a shipwright.

It was obvious to me that she didn’t want to share too much of her memories, but what was less obvious was why not. She had asked for mine and had expected me to share more than colors. I knew that much from the dejected look on her face when I couldn’t recall more from the memory-vision my small piece of driftwood gave me.

Apparently, it was more important for me to find memory-visions of my own than to learn about another’s. To do so, I needed to be taught how to build a ship, how to dive to search for more wreckage. I was going to need to be a strong swimmer, and I needed to be better at meditating.

Kendra spoke of more details about being a shipwright, but by her thousandth word, I wasn’t listening. The sun had set, and we lit our fire, and I took in more of my surroundings as she continued. I felt the sand on my legs, and between my fingers, I felt the warmth from the fire. I felt…at peace, strangely. The night sky was starry and expansive, and the waves lapping at the shore were a lullaby. How could I not feel at peace in this place, simply savoring its existence?

“Are you still listening to me, girl?” Kendra asked, and I snapped out of my mesmerization.

“I’m listening,” I half-lied before replaying the speech I heard in my head. “You think I’ll be able to find enough wreckage for a whole ship tomorrow?” I looked out at her ship, its presence massive on the sea.

“You won’t be able to build something like that by tomorrow,” she chuckled. “Yours will be more like a raft, but it’ll get you into open waters. We’ll spend the morning focused on your swimming, then you’ll do a dive, and the last step is the ship, so don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I nodded and lay down, already feeling sleep taking me.