Searching for Sky
Authors: Jillian Cantor
For Grandma Bea, in loving memory
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.
—Edward Lear
Contents
On the afternoon of my sixteenth birthday, River spears a fish. “Happy birthday,” he says, and he’s grinning as he holds the fish out in front of me. It is large, the length of River’s wide, outstretched arms, and I’m both surprised and impressed by his catch. He is, too, I can tell, because he’s still grinning as he places the fish on Cleaning Rock and begins to scale it with a sharp stone.
It has been weeks since we have eaten fish, and this one will certainly be enough to last us for a few days. Truthfully, I am the better fish spearer of the two of us, but today River insisted he would catch me one. I was doubtful when he left this morning because lately, the fish have been coming less and less, even for me. But here River has gone and pulled it off, just as he said he would.
“What a catch,” I say to him now. “How’d you get her?”
He shrugs a little, smiles at me, then uses the jagged tool to cut a line down the fish’s belly. “I went past Rocks,” he says.
“River”—I shake my head—“you promised you wouldn’t.” Past Rocks, Ocean grows deeper, cooler, darker, and the water pulls you hard, so if you aren’t careful, you could easily be swept out, swept away into the deep, great nothingness that lies beyond us.
He shrugs again. “It’s your birthday,” he says. “And besides, I’m starving.”
I can’t stay mad at him, because I’m starving, too. When one of us doesn’t spear a fish or catch a bird or a rabbit in my traps, we eat purple flowers, blue berries, and green leaves that we keep stocked inside Shelter for emergencies. Every plant in our world is valuable in that it can be eaten, drunk, or used in Shelter in some way. Except for the mushrooms. Now, we know better.
For the past three days we’ve eaten mostly purple flowers and drunk warm coconut milk, and we were still hungry last night when we crawled into Shelter and curled up together to go to sleep, the way we have now for so long, both of us lying on our rabbit pelt mats on our sides, our backs touching. I almost can’t remember sleeping any other way, without the warm feel of River’s back hugging mine. I almost can’t remember what it was like when my mother and Helmut were still here.
The air is cooler this afternoon but heavy, and the moisture beads against the skin of my bare shoulders. It will rain soon. I can smell it, the dewy scent of salt water rising, even by Cleaning Rock. I hope it won’t rain before the darkness falls, before it is time to eat the fish.
“Well,” River says as he slices the head off the fish with one swift motion of the jagged stone. He grins again, so pleased
with this fish, with himself for bringing it back to me. My birthday gift. “Do you feel any different today, Sky? Older?”
I shake my head. And for a moment, I consider telling him how, this morning, as I came out of Falls, I noticed how much my body, without my rabbit pelt, looked the way my mother’s had looked once.
I am sixteen now, not at all a child anymore
, I’d thought. Then I remembered all the things my mother had said I’d feel someday for River, and I began to wonder if that someday was today. But I didn’t say anything to him when I’d made it back to Shelter, and he announced he planned on bringing back a fish for my birthday, and I don’t say anything to him now. I’m not sure why not, because River and I tell each other everything, and we have for as far back as I can remember.
“Come on,” River says, picking up what remains of the large fish. It is missing scales, a head, a tail, and guts, and my stomach rumbles in anticipation of our feast. “Let’s clean her off at Falls and get the fire going.” He looks up at the sky, which is filling fast with thick gray-and-white clouds. “We should eat her now, before the rain ruins your birthday, all right?”
I nod and stand up to follow him. Cleaning Rock, where we clean and prepare our food, is about halfway between Ocean and Shelter, and Falls is only twenty paces down Grassy Hill from Shelter, so we can hear the soft rushing of the water even as we sleep. Shelter is a cover of palm fronds woven low and held between two tall trees. Someone—maybe my mother, Petal, or River’s father, Helmut, or maybe both of them together—braided the fronds so tightly that the ground beneath them always remains cool and dry. Even in the heaviest of storms or heat, we
are comfortable in Shelter, where we lie on soft rabbit pelt mats and cover ourselves with soft rabbit pelt blankets.
We walk by Shelter now, then the twenty paces down Grassy Hill to Falls. River holds the fish up high above his head, careful not to drop her, and then I stand at the edge of the clear, cool water that shares River’s name while he wades in, ankle deep, to clean the fish under the water that rushes down from Falls.
River is so tall now, taller than me by at least two heads, and his shoulders are wide and strong, the way I remember Helmut’s being. His straight blond hair hangs nearly to his waist but is tied back in a braid, and his cheeks, once smooth and dark like mine, are now lightening with blond hair.
It won’t be long before a full beard grows in, like Helmut’s
, I think, and I’m not sure why that thought makes me sad. Once, not so long ago, I was the taller one.
River and I live on Island, in a great blue-green expanse of water that my mother once told me was called
the Pacific
, but we just call it Ocean. I’ve lived here nearly my entire life, and I don’t remember or know of anything else, if there is anything else. My mother sometimes, late at night, would whisper things in my ear about a place called California, where, she said, the people were cold and broken, skeletons.
“What’s a skeleton?” I asked her once, when I was much younger, maybe six or seven.
“A skeleton?” she said, her voice rising softly in the darkness of Shelter but still in a whisper so she wouldn’t wake Helmut. Instinctively I knew that he would be mad at her for telling me
this, for talking about this other place somewhere, another world, away from Island. “A skeleton is just your bones,” she said. “Nothing else.”
I imagined bones walking around in some otherworldly place, tall and harsh and frightening, and I began to cry.
“Oh, Sky,” my mother said, holding my body to hers tightly so I could feel the warmth of skin, of her life. So much more than a skeleton. “It was just a metaphor. I don’t mean actual skeletons.”
But I didn’t understand what she meant by a metaphor, and sometimes, even now, I picture that very far away across Ocean, there is this other world where people like River and me walk around without their skin, their hearts, their souls. And then I walk to the edge of Ocean and stare out as far as I can. All I see is blue, blue, blue, until that point where the water meets the sky, and then the blue softens a shade. Beyond us, there is nothing but water and sky, I tell myself.
“Come on,” River says to me now, his wet toes curling on the grassy edge. He holds the fish out in front of him, and she is pink and bloodless, ready to be cooked.
We walk back up Grassy Hill, just past Shelter to Fire Pit, where we cook our food and we sit for warmth when we need to. It’s the only place we ever start fires on Island. Near Shelter would be too dangerous, and on Beach was always forbidden by Helmut. Even now that he’s gone, River and I abide by his rules, except for the one River broke this morning, about swimming out past Rocks.
River starts a fire with our fire stones, and the orange flames leap out of Fire Pit. He takes our searing stick out of its hole and glances at me.
“You better let me,” I tell him, and he nods and hands me both the stick and the thick, slippery fish. The last fish River cooked over the fire he left it too long, too close to the flame, and the meat began to smoke and burn. We ate it, but the black meat made us both feel sick.
I push the stick through the fish and then hook it on top of Fire Pit. I stare into the glow of the flame, watching the meat slowly turn from pink to a silvery white. River is across Fire Pit from me, and his face looks younger in the glow, the way I remember him looking as a little boy, still shorter than me, running across the sand, laughing, as I chased after him.
In the distance, I hear the first rumble of thunder, soft and not at all menacing, but I look away from River and turn the fish, willing it to cook faster, before the rain comes.
River glances anxiously up at the sky, and the first cool drops begin to fall, splashing against his cheeks. “Good enough,” he says, pulling the stick from atop Fire Pit and holding on to it tightly. The rain comes down faster, harder, extinguishing the fire. We run to get out of the rain, and by the time we are inside Shelter with the fish, my hair hangs damp, falling out of the braid and tangling down my back.
But I’m too hungry to care, and River and I pull at the meat of the fish and put it in our mouths, chewing so fast we are barely tasting how delicious it is. Outside Shelter a torrent of rain floods our world, dampening Fire Pit, Cleaning Rock, and Grassy Hill. Inside Shelter, it’s only River and me and dinner.
We are dry and warm, our bellies finally losing that horrible, hungry ache.
We both eat until we can eat no more, and then suddenly I’m so tired. I lie down on my rabbit pelt mat, and River lies down beside me. He’s on his opposite side, so it’s not the warmth of his back touching mine, as it usually does, but his front, and he wraps his arms around me tightly in a hug.