On Island

Charlotte Gross
| Fiction

 

With purposeless steps, she let the trail lead her. She didn’t hear the roar of waves until she stumbled from the shelter of trees onto pebbled beach. Surf crashed, alive, reaching for her, spraying her face.
Something shone in the dark. A light. A ship? The spark danced above the waves, hidden, revealed, hidden again. Zan watched it, unmoving. Swells veiled its reflection. But there—dark in the darkness. Horns. A head. A tinkling bell and bleating voice.
Zan saw the figure bob, tossed closer to the shoals. She had to be sure. She watched it drift nearer, nearer, until she could not bear to let the shadow resolve itself into a goat. She dropped the lantern, ripped boots from her feet. Stone cut her soles. It was just another slickness, just another sting as she waded into surf that threatened to pull her into itself. She dove.
Waves carried her deeper, farther from shore. Battered, barely able to inhale before each crest crashed over her, Zan fought.
She was so close to the bobbing head. With a final burst of effort, she lunged forward. Her hand grasped something slick and hard: not a breathing body. It was a twisted driftwood log.
Waves closed over her head,  filled her with salt. With sobbing breaths, she dragged her failing limbs into motion. Back, back to shore. Each wave sent her under. Water was a living beast, tearing her from herself.
Her toes scraped bottom as she flailed forward. On hands and knees she crawled, knocked flat again and again. She dragged herself out of reach of the grasping sea and into the trees. The lantern waited, its light a sputtering pool.
She crumpled when she reached its faint circle. Unmoving in the leaf litter, she lay with nothing in her mind but the crash of waves pounding rocks. In and out, the sea’s breath was her own. She drifted in its rhythm. Only when human voices rose from beyond the trees did she move.
With no memory of raising herself from the ground or of how she found her way, Zan emerged from the north side. Back on the dirt road, she swayed over washboard gravel. Headlights swung around a bend, catching her in their glare. She raised a hand to shield herself. The lights stopped. A shape crossed in front of them.

 

Charlotte Gross works outside on traditionally Washoe, Nisenan, and other tribal land. When she’s not watching for fires from a Sierra Nevada lookout, she’s Nordic ski patrolling, mountain bike guiding, leading backpacking trips, and facilitating writing workshops that connect people with their landscapes. She is a fiction finalist in Narrative Magazine’s 30 Below Contest and The Masters Review Flash Fiction Contest. You can read her stories in Whitefish Review, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Green Mountains Review, The Hopper, and elsewhere.

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