I'd forgotten all about this one to the point where I don't recognise it but I wrote it... It was published. I suppose this is one of the horrors of a poor memory!
Sole Survivor
Solitude, searing sun and sweeping tide were my lot. I gathered my strength and dragged myself along above the tide line. Sand became my sunshield, seaweed and driftwood my splints and crutch. The vessel’s cargo was my hope. The Company would not abandon such cargo if it could be found. Cases and barrels were strewn along beaches and a few coils of rope. Despite the pain of my injuries, I gathered all I could: salt pork, ship’s biscuit, oil and rum. I could ration this for months at need and there would surely be fruit trees and fish. I only had to tell myself to wait, and I did.
The shadows of day were my companions and in them I confided my hopes. Gradually I became aware of shadows when the sun was yet too high. Colors distorted and shifted at the edge of vision. I concluded the bump on my head was responsible and it would pass.
A stream from the beach led me to a cave. There was kindling enough for fires washed up each day. I dried it and only set it alight when darkness and shadows encroached. I was increasingly aware of their shapeless forms, never there when looked for directly.
A barrel of diamonds washed to the shore. But the richest pauper cannot eat diamonds and diamonds offer no defence.
I became strong from the work I did. I paid heed to my security, sharpening sticks, gathering stones. If these Creatures decided to attack, they might be too many but I would die defending myself. My shelter had a small opening and a high shelf where I slept, but only in the day. At night I kept watch by my fire. Creatures I thought them. They were not human and they could not be ghosts, there where none had lived.
I began to discern their form as one sees a magnetic force by its effects. The shifting of the sands beneath them suggested fleshy appendages. From the brushing of lower branches, I perceived them as about six feet in height. At times I heard them, their communications consisting of clicking sounds and high pitched screeching as from a saw blade or the sounded rim of a crystal glass. Yet always, when I attended to these phenomena, they eluded definition and it struck me that I might be going mad. I had not thought to reckon the tally of days.
Then today I woke to see a man approaching. “At last!” I screamed. I cried. I danced up and down, laughed at myself for ever doubting. I waved my arms frantic that he might see me. I grasped the heft of the flag I’d made and waved it too, the better to be seen. Oh, that this day had arrived! They would take me back and take me home. Tears unbidden streaked down my happy smiles.
“You found me,” I said.
“We found you.”
“I have survived. I am safe.”
“You are safe.”
“But I suppose, in a way, I would not have survived had I not had to defend myself against the Creatures.”
This stranger looked around, laughed and melted away. The clearing rang with anvil sounds of laughter, so I thought, and was obscured by shadows moving dimly, all around. Real or imagined, only the rope can save me now.
Copyright: © 2008 Oonah V Joslin
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