Veronica McDonald

Islands of Raba

 

 

The girl was born in a tattered dress, white with a red satin bow, on the sand-covered shore of the island of nowhere. When she woke into consciousness, she soaked in all around her without knowing where she came from, who she was, or how she was birthed onto that beach. Like all newborn babes, her mind was a clean slate, filled with the spectacle of the world around her. Her eyes opened slowly, and all was blank. She took in the burning light until she could make out the blue of the sky, cloudless and clear, and the gray silhouettes of the creatures flying high above her in a graceful swirl.

 

The air was heavy and hot and stuck to her skin like the salt that permeated everything around her. She lifted her head slightly, and then dropped it back into the sand, her mind swimming and swirling with the breeze. There were pins in her hair, holding long brown tendrils back against her scalp, and she pulled at them mindlessly, letting them drop into the sand around her. The hair had been pulled out in some places, and her head burned under her fingertips, but she continued to grope, taking in the feel of hair and pins and the painful skin underneath. She could only take in short breaths, her chest ached and felt as if something were weighing down on it. Water caressed her bare feet, at first reaching only the tips of her toes but extending their reach further and further until they were touching the backs of her knees.

 

She lifted her head again, her large blue eyes searching, and she could see the ocean at her feet, vast and endless, grey and blue and green and white, sparkling in the sunlight. I am alone, she thought before she even knew it to be true, and as she thought the words a desire grew inside her that turned her stomach as intently as hunger. This desire had no name or shape, only a feeling as vague and as vast as the ocean she observed. Without words, she named the desire “mother” with the knowledge that such an entity surpassed all the boundaries of words. And this desire, having nowhere to go in her first moments of birth, spread itself like fire along the sand and trees and water and sky, and the island became her mother, and all the creatures on it her brothers and sisters.

 

The girl lay for a long time staring at the creatures flying above her, and taking in the blue of the sky. She thought curiously about her body, as it seemed that every small movement carried a new pain and she did not know why. She was small and thin, with the body of a ten year old, and olive skin that framed areas of purple, black, and red along with several scrapes, some nearly extending the length of her arms and legs. Her movements were calculated and testing, she was careful not to move everything at once for fear that she would lose the clarity of the sky to the pain. But even without moving, the pain would come in waves, as if her body were also an ocean, and it would beat upon her, full and swelling with all the mysteries of her creation. She listened to the water smacking with more force against the sand, and feeling the cool water travel up her thighs now. I have to move, she thought, but she could not. She was afraid of the pain. She knew if she moved the pain would overtake her. She turned her face to the sand, and nuzzled the granules with her nose, searching for its warmth.

 

A noise stopped her. “Raba,” it said, and then said it again. “Raba.” It was soft at first, sounding like small cracks in the wind. “Raba, rah, rah, rah-oo-bah-bah.” Whatever the voice was, it moved her. It stirred something inside of her and made her move from her spot, no longer afraid of the pain or of losing the clarity that comes with blankness.

 

“Raba, er-rah, rah, rah, rah-oo.” It is my name, she thought. It must be. She felt the noise ring inside of her, and her body reacting to the sound coming from the unknown. It awoke her and filled her. She lifted her head out of the sand and sat upright, searching the beach for the source.

 

She spotted him almost instantly. He was down the shore a little distance from her, drowning in the waves. A rope pulled tightly at his neck, the other end caught on a large jagged driftwood stuck fast in the water. The water was rising around him, the waves reaching his head, and he could not free himself. She tried to get to her feet, but found that her legs were wobbly and would not hold her weight. She began to crawl, dragging her body towards him.

 

“Raba, bah-bah.” He was struggling to hold his head above the water, the waves were becoming more violent, crashing over his head as he struggled. When he could manage to pull his head out of the water he would call to her, “raba, raba, bah, bah, oo.”

 

The girl realized that she was moving too slowly, dragging her alien body through the sand, and that he would not make it much longer under the crashing of the waves. She got to her feet, but it was as if she had never used legs before, she was unsteady and wobbly, her legs shaking beneath her as if they would let her fall at any moment. She ran on these legs, though they felt more like lifeless sticks, and stumbled into the water next to him. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed his head and lifted it above the water, then let it go to pry at the rope that gripped his neck. Her head no longer felt clear, but heavy and spinning and her vision blurred as she worked her fingers around the thin wet rope. He kept the rope tight by struggling against it and against the broken tree that held it firmly on the other end. The girl could not loosen it from his neck as he struggled, so she left him to try the other end and clawed at the water-soaked wood with her fingers, as her brother continued to call her name. It was tangled quite hopelessly in the grooves and cracks and broken branch stumps of the dead tree, which held fast in the sand as if it were growing there, and the hopelessness of the situation increased with dull dizziness that coated every thought emanating from her mind.

 

The girl abandoned her efforts at the tree, and went back to lifting his head above the water as best she could. She was filled with such horror as she looked in the small creature's terrified eyes, and she resolved that his drowning would throw her into the most utter state of despair that her short life would no longer be worth living, and that she must save him at all cost. She dove under the rising water and lifted her brother's wriggling body into her arms, but the movement all around her made her lose the grip she held with her toes, and the waves pulled the girl's small body back out to the sea that had birthed her. She dropped her brother in a panic and gripped frantically at everything and nothing as the sea pulled at her. In the chaos her arms slapped against the driftwood, and she managed to hold on as more waves came to batter her mercilessly. Her eyes were open but all she could see was blue and green and the white of light. Her ears were filled with the numb roar of the water world. She became aware that she could feel his body rush past her own, his small frame carried faster and more dangerously by the force of the waves and thrashed more violently by the pull of the rope. His neck will break, she thought, but would not allow her mind to dwell on it. She hugged the tree with her legs, freeing her arms, and dug her feet into the sand. She pushed her head above the water between the waves, her lungs burning and her throat a ravaged wreck of ocean salt. She groped frantically with her hands along the wood and found the rope. With her feet still buried in the shifting grit of sand, she held her knees tightly around the tree, and grabbed with both hands the rope that held her brother. She pulled with all her might, past any strength she could conceive of herself, and became the immovable unbreathing wood as the waves pushed and pulled at her viciously.

 

She could not see him. She could not see anything except the blue and green and white. But she felt the pull of his body against the tight rope and that was all that she allowed to fill her blank mind. The fraying rope burned her palms like hot coals, and everything inside of her burned like fire. The heat became so intense that the blue became red, and white became the source a heat so pure and strong that it was no longer painful, but unclouded and powerful and clear. An exquisite blankness. She nearly allowed herself to be taken by the white, until the rope slackened and the body of her brother came crashing into her own.

 

The feel of his body in her arms caused her to react quickly, and her hands immediately moved to the rope around his neck. She wrapped her burning hand around it and ripped it off over his head with a deliberate strength that would not allow itself to be defied. She dropped the rope, hardly believing that he was now free, and held him tight to her body. She pushed with her legs hard against the dead tree, throwing her body towards the shore. They did not go far, but she she could feel the shifting grit beneath her feet again, and it was enough for her to jump into the next wave, and then the next. It wasn't long until the waves pushed them back into shallow waters, and the girl could hardly believe it when her face skidded across the ground and she could take in the salt air.

 

She coughed roughly as she crawled out of the water, heaving until all the water she had swallowed was expelled. She tried to stand up, but fell to her knees, and realized that she was no longer holding on to her brother. She turned her head sharply back towards the water, but saw that he was laying beside her, moving also in a strange crawl and whimpering. She willed herself to stand and picked his body up into her arms. Small as she was, he was smaller still, only the length of her leg, and she could hold him easily since he did not fight her. She walked clumsily across the sand, stumbling but still feeling awake and alive from her battle with the waves. She walked as far away from the water as she could, and then collapsed at the edge of what looked like a forest of thick green trees.

 

The rush of her almost drowning left her as she fell to her knees, and the terror sunk in. Her lungs and throat burned, and she still could not catch her breath. She rolled her brother's body into the sand next to her and she curled up next to him, closing her eyes tight. The peace she felt waking on the beach had twisted and contorted into an unbearable anxiety that rushed upon her suddenly and would not allow the air to enter her lungs. She could not catch her breath. Where am I? She asked herself over and over. Each time the question rang through her head something twisted tighter and tighter in her chest. Where am I? Where am I? Why am I here? She began to sob as she clung to her brother, long heaving sobs into his back. He whimpered softly, but allowed her to cling to him. He did not move much, but stared at her sympathetically with large brown eyes. The pain of the question became too much for her, and she passed out into a strange sleep, full of images and fractured pieces of the past that could not find their way back together again.

 

(END OF EXCERPT)