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In the beginning there was water. God, fed up, emerged from it and created an island. He filled it with lush green grass, tall trees loaded with the juiciest fruits, and flowers so sweet their fragrance swept the entire island.

All manner of wondrous creatures ran loose in the island. They shared the gifts of the island in peace.

Then God made people in his own image. He loved them very much, so he threw them into the water, far from the island.

God’s people thrashed about in the water. Nobody knew how to swim and everyone wanted to live. Having never really known land, except in a faraway dream sort of way, all life remained to them was thrashing about.

One among them was a boy called Blue. Blue thrashed about the same as everyone else he knew. Many around him grew tired and drowned. They went down complaining, “There was nothing to hold on to.”

Blue grew tired as well. But he thought about what was to come and realised that sooner or later, they would all drown. As he watched the thrashing all around him, he saw people trying to prolong their surface time by any means possible. Some had found logs to sit on (which won’t be much help once they fell asleep), and refused to share them for fear of drowning. Others were holding on to corpses and floating with them.

One floater passed Blue by. He was clutching a dead woman. His face was white with anger and fear and frustration. Yet he snarled at him with energy, “Don’t wait boy! Kill someone! That is the only way you will live!”

Blue pushed him away, sweating. But the floater was not alone. Blue saw plenty of people wrestling with their neighbours. Then he saw what he had been looking for. Nobody was going anywhere!

He swam this way and that inside the thrashing and saw that except involuntarily drifting this way and that, none of the people were moving in any direction at all.

“Who knows what might await us beyond the thrashing?” thought Blue. He called out to everyone in general and asked them to follow him towards the sunset (it seemed as good a direction as any) but nobody could hear him over the splashing and the screams.

So Blue decided to go all by himself. With luck, he would find something everyone could hold on to.

He swam as hard as he could towards the sunset. As the lights dimmed and eventually disappeared, he feared he would lose his way.

But then, there was no way. All he had to guide him was a belief. So he imagined himself standing on something solid. He thought what it would feel like to walk. He pictured everyone around him, standing and talking to each other.

His legs pedalled harder and his arms sliced through the water with renewed vigour. He hardly felt the cold pressing in on him. The darkness that threatened to devour him appeared no threat at all.

When dawn came at long last, Blue found his arms had gone limp and his legs were dead. He lifted his face and spat out sand. He rubbed his eyes on his sleeve and saw a deer (or something) near the edge of the forest. He saw people too, on the beach, milling around huts and boats. Children, men, and women in beach clothes.

After resting a while, he started walking towards them and was greeted with cheers as they noticed him. Someone sat him down and he was offered a cold drink. A small crowd assembled around him, but did not press in. There was a lot of space.

“You are the third one today,” he heard someone say. Blue looked around but didn’t see anyone he knew.

“There were others?” he asked. Maybe some people did follow him.

“Oh yes, of course! People come in all the time from all over the sea. We all weren’t born here you know!” said a woman as she took the empty mug from him. Everyone was smiling at him.

“All over?” Blue was confused. Then he braced himself for his task.

“I need one of those,” he said to no one in particular as he pointed towards the boats lined some distance away.

“Sure thing. Take two if you want. But where do you want to go?” asked an islander.

“To my people. They have had it bad. They are killing each other. I must bring them here as soon as I can.”

A few islanders followed him as he ran breathlessly to the boats. They helped him push it into the water. They kept talking to him though.

“You know, your people are not killing each other because they have it bad,” said an old man.

“Yep. It usually works the other way around,” the woman said. “They are all doing what they want. We all do what we want. That’s the way it works.”

Blue took it all in without making much sense of it. He jumped on to the boat and breathlessly thanked the islanders, promising to return. Soon the island disappeared from view.

By noon, Blue realised that he didn’t really know where his people were, having swum the previous evening in utter darkness. But he kept going. Towards sunset, by sheer luck, he found the thrashing. It was enveloped in a thick fog and he could hardly make out the people inside it. This is how it must look from outside, he figured.

As his boat moved in closer, he found the clamour had never died. People were still screaming. When Blue called out to them to swim towards him, nobody could hear him. He raised his voice as loud as he could but to no avail. No one had ears for him. Blue wondered if he should jump into the water to try and get people out but thought he would lose track of the boat in the fog. Besides, there was a good chance someone would kill him before he could get his point across.

Just as he was losing heart, Blue felt a tug from behind. There was someone. A young girl, and an old man with a child on his shoulders. Blue helped them all on to the boat.

“You could hear me?” asked Blue.

“I saw you actually,” said the man. “I was holding on to a plank of wood with this child on it.”

“I heard you,” said the girl. “I just wanted to get out of here so bad. I guess I was looking for a boat.”

They kept trying to get people’s attention for some time and got two more on board. As the sun went down, Blue looked around at his crew, “Let’s come back tomorrow.”

“Yes. Let’s get more boats,” said the man.

Posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 12:24 am and filed under stories.

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