And I hope we never see land again.
I stop tracking the days.
I no longer care.
It’s probably been five months, maybe six, since we last saw the mainland—since I saw James.
There is a rhythm and a routine, an ease to each day, that becomes as knowable and steady as Clay’s heartbeat when he sleeps. The mornings are mild, but the nights are windy. Clay says we’re likely somewhere in the middle Atlantic, where it rains nearly every day, but the sun always reveals itself in the afternoon—so we know it hasn’t forgotten us. It’s spring, early summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and I’m thankful for the effortlessness of the weeks and months.
Some evenings, my mind strays, and I catch myself wondering how many years have passed on the mainland since I last saw James. Eight years, maybe nine. He will be in his sixties now. The night he saw me on the beach, only a distant memory to him. I wonder if he told anyone about that night, or if it wasn’t worth stirring up old mysteries.
I try not to think of it. I try not to think of how different the world might be now, how unrecognizable.
In the evenings, Clay and I sit on the porch together, a quilt folded over my shoulders to keep out the chill. The horizon shivers in hues of honey and orange soda, then turns a strange phosphorescent purple, like a field of lavender touching the surface of the sea. The sunsets have been more vivid, more electric in recent months, peculiar shades I never saw back in Seattle. I remember reading once that as the climate deteriorates, our sunsets will become more breathtaking. Spectacular and unnatural. Toxins in the atmosphere will reflect the setting sun, giving us a vibrant show as the world slowly dies. How poetic and violent. Beauty up until the end.
“Where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world?” I ask, tilting my head back against the wooden chair, watching the world silently crumble in front of me.
He raises an eyebrow, then settles his features, pondering the question. “Greece.”
“Really?”
“My father took a trip there when he was young, said the food was the best he’d ever had.”
“Well, if we had a sail, we could chart a course. Although if my geography is correct, we’d have to travel through the Strait of Gibraltar, and I’m not sure what they’d think of an island drifting through the channel.”
Clay laughs, then nods.
Our days and nights pass simply this way, easy—too easy.
Because the sea always washes things in.
And one afternoon, it shows us how terrible it can be.
I think it’s a strip of land at first. Flat, featureless.
It’s not until the third day, as it moves closer, that we know it’s not land. It looks like oil slicked across the surface of the sea. It rises and falls with the waves, pulsing. And it’s wide—whatever it is—several miles across, a great sweeping darkness that mars the horizon.
“I dinnae like the looks of it,” Clay says, squinting through the morning mist.
Within an hour, it reaches our shores. Not oil.
But fish.
Thousands of them. All dead.
Bloated, eyes swollen, smelling of rot. I cover my nose, stepping back from the shoreline. “What the hell?”
Clay shakes his head, scrambles down the rocks to get a better look, then heads back up to my side. “Canna say what it was. Toxin maybe, algae.”
“Water temperature,” I add, thinking of the rising sea temperature reports I would often read, the bleached coral reefs, the dying sea life. Back in Seattle, there was constant talk of the threat to our oceans, of changing coastlines and unpredictable weather patterns. Of things getting worse.
It’s been over twenty years on the mainland, since I left. Perhaps worse has finally arrived.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“Nothing to be done but wait for it to pass.”
We stay indoors, windows closed. And when we do venture out, we tie handkerchiefs across our faces to dull the stench—but it’s hardly enough.
