White and Other Tales of Ruin

It was strange leaving the beach. Just under the trees there was a line of rotting seaweed stretching along the sands, drawn there by the last storm. It marked the demarcation line between sea and land, a barrier between two utterly different worlds. Roddy did not want to cross it. He looked around at his bedraggled, hungry companions, and saw that the feeling was mutual.

“What’s wrong?” he said, but with awkward questions came hard answers.

“You tell me,” Max replied.

Nothing more was said. Each buried in his own thoughts, the four men moved away from the beach and into the island.

2. INTO THE TREES

Roddy had expected a long, harrowing journey through dense jungle. Snakes dipping down from trees to kiss his shoulders. Spiders in his hair.

They were all equally surprised when, within five minutes, they emerged from the cover of trees onto a wide, undulating plain. The four men paused to rest and take in the view, their bodies weaker from their ordeal than they had at first thought. Hearts thumped, blood pumped through muscles jaded by five days of inactivity, hunger and thirst. The sun continued its attack, relentless and indifferent. Burnt skin peeled and revealed raw pinkness below to the heartless rays.

Roddy knelt on the ground and ran his hand through the rich grass. It looked almost like a meadow or hillside back home in Wales, but there were no daisies here, no dandelions. The grass felt sharper than it should, angry to the touch. It bent stiffly and sprang back with a rustle, shaking itself at his audacity.

“Anyone for cricket?” Butch asked, but he received no reply, not even a rebuke. Instead, they walked out into the grassland.

Ernie was dead. So were the rest of their crew, but Ernie had been a survivor. He had been one of them, if only for five days. That length of time had set them apart from the rest of the ship’s compliment, and losing Ernie was like losing the ship all over again. Their hopes, however vague and troubled they were, seemed to have sunk with him. The men were silent. They walked immersed in their own worlds. Ernie was with all of them, in all their thoughts; either lifelike and spouting prayers, or dead and bleeding into the sand.

For Roddy, Ernie was still the gibbering shadow in the night, talking himself into a hopeless death while a shape moved under the trees, trying to shout out and encourage him. Or perhapss to tell them something through the silent dark.

Roddy had not mentioned his hallucination. He put it down to hunger, but subconsciously there was something else there. Something with a pleading mouth and flayed, torn skin.

None of them had been able to say a prayer over Ernie’s grave. Roddy hated that. He felt as if they had let Ernie and themselves down. God must not be too happy with them today.

Four sets of feet whispered through the grass, kicking up angry puffs of insects. From the position of the sun Roddy could tell that they were moving north, towards the highest point they could see from here. He reckoned the mountain — hill, really — to be a thousand feet high, its gentle lower slopes wooded, the higher parts splashed with clumps of colour like an artist’s well-used palette. It was smooth topped, well worn by time, speckled with outcroppings of a dark, sharp rock. It dominated their view in one direction, hiding whatever lay beyond. In the other direction, west and south-west, the grassland drifted away towards a hilly, heavily wooded area. Steam rose from this jungle, drifting straight up into the air until it was caught by an invisible breeze and condensed into wispy clouds. A few birds swung to and fro high above the island, rarely flapping their wings. They circled higher, swooped down, circled again. Roddy felt observed.

“This is a horrible place,” Norris mumbled.

“Why so?” asked Max. His voice was a drone. It sounded as though he needed to hear other voices, without caring what they said. Even if it was Norris doing the talking.

“Don’t know,” Norris shrugged, apparently disappointing him. They walked in silence for a while, then Norris spoke out once more. “Just feels horrible. Like a hillside before rain. Loaded.”

“Loaded with your bad luck,” Butch muttered, but for once Norris did not retort.

“Where are we going?” Roddy asked. He looked back the way they had come and saw a series of wavy lines marking their progress. It could have been scattered dew, but the grass was dry.

“What, you want a plan?” Butch said, almost smiling.

“To the top of the hill,” Norris said, nodding north. “If it’s a small island we’ll see all of it from up there. If we’re lucky enough to have landed somewhere more substantial — ”

“What, like the moon?” Butch quipped.

“- then we’ll be able to see where to head for,” Norris finished. He ignored Butch, much as an adult disregards a permanently annoying child. Maybe that was why Norris was not really liked. He had no humour.