Alastair Bruce - Wall of Days

When I come to it is dawn. I can taste blood and dust and I cannot breathe through my nose. My eye is swollen and I have grazes along the side of my face. Looking back towards the town I can just make it out in the distance. There is a trail leading across the sand from where I lie. I realise they have dragged me almost a mile away from the town.

Though I can barely make it out I believe the gates have been closed and the people are gone.

After a while I notice that there are more tracks than just mine and those of the two soldiers leading away from the town. They are fresh. People must have passed me in the night. One set of tracks is like a furrow. As if someone was being dragged. Tied-up. I follow them.

I don’t recall the first moment I notice them.

Out of the white noon light they appear, not suddenly but as if by osmosis. A mirage. My legs give way.

I do not speak. I do not think.

Then I get up and run. I start to run towards the tree, the one where Andalus and I stopped, the one where Tora and I spent those hours together years ago.

Andalus stands beneath the tree. I jog up to him. He stands with his back to me but I am not looking at him. I stop a few metres away.

He is looking up at the tree. As am I.

He stands looking up at the body hanging from the dead branches of the tree.

A sound escapes my throat.

Tora. My Tora. She looks the same as she did all those years ago when last I saw her on the beach, looking after me, the salty breeze in her hair.

All I can hear now are waves, like the ocean over the mountains.

There is a drop of blood in the corner of her mouth. A bit lip. A punch. Vomited up from the throat.

I am sorry. I am sorry.

She swings slowly from the branch.

Andalus stands still. He is fading away now.

I feel for my knife. I do not have it.

I reach out for Tora’s legs. I hold on to them. I sniff them. They still feel warm. They smell like her. Like living flesh. I look up at her. The sun, filtering through the branches, blocks her face. She is just a few hours dead.

Another sound from me.

I pick up a stone. I climb into the tree and saw through the rope with the stone. It takes a long time. Her body falls to the ground. Tora’s dress covers her face, her legs naked, dead.

Andalus does not move.

I get down from the tree and go up to him. I put my hand on his shoulder.

And then I hit him. I still have the rock in my hand that I used to cut down Tora. I lift up my arm and hit him on the temple. He sees it coming. He does not struggle. I watch his eyes as I bring down my hand upon him. I watch his eyes, and they widen but he does not scream, he does not say a thing. Again and again I hit him. Some blows slap against blood – a stone dropping into a pool. Some blows miss altogether. More and more miss. After a while there is no more sound. Nothing. And there is nothing in my arms, nothing at my feet. Just nothing.

I fall to my knees again. Then roll over. I am breathing heavily. I cover my face with my arm.

I lie there for a long time.

I stand up.

I stand up and walk away. I do not stop for two hours.

Then I go back.

I go back to the tree, back to the body. There is just one. Where Andalus’s should have been is nothing. No blood. No body. Nothing.

I understand now. What he was.

Or, I already understood but did not know I did. Did not admit I did.

I scrape out a hole in the dirt. I place her in it. I cover her with rocks, starting from her feet. I look at her face with every stone I place on her.

I do not hurry. She looks peaceful. Her skin is grey, tight. She looks dead. A bug crawls from her mouth. I bury her facing upwards, naked, open to the earth. It is our custom.

I lay down next to her. The night draws in and I wrap my coat around me. I feel beetles scraping at my ears. I sleep fitfully, shivering. I dig into the earth with one hand. It is warm. I lie asleep with one hand buried and the dust sifts over me.

In the morning I see them. Twenty, thirty of them. They are far off.

They shimmer. Disappear, re-appear. They carry sticks, clubs, spears.

I begin to run.

Whenever I look over my shoulder I see them. I dare not stop nor think. I grab fruit from trees as I jog past. I drink heavily at streams.

The black bodies on the horizon chase me onwards. At the top of the mountain I see them spread out in the plain below. From the bottom I see them at the top, each one silhouetted against a white sky.

I sleep. I have to. But only for a few minutes at a time. I sleep on my haunches.

I run.

I run until I reach the shore and I put out to sea.

I watch them line the shore. They stand still. They do not gesture at me. I can see their eyes.

I watch them until they are over the horizon.

It is thirteen days since I arrived.

It is like coming home. I cannot deny it. The island, I want to say, looms out of the mist as I approach. But it does not loom. It floats to the surface of my vision early one morning as I lie in my almost becalmed boat.

A home I wished I would never see again.

It has been a hard crossing, a hard time of it. I left with little water, without catching any food. I grabbed as much fruit as I could. I have had one a day. The last were shrivelled. There was one fish left in the boat. It was covered in mould. Three days off the coast it began to rain.

That saved my life. I collected water using the sail. I tied a line to the side of the boat. Once a fish was enticed to the bare lure.

If I passed over the ruins and the statue again I did not notice. I was completely on my own.

I set my course due east. I did not expect to hit the island. Even with a compass, finding a small patch of turf in this immense ocean is a miracle. The island, it seems, has brought me home.

I feel my heart beat a little faster as I get closer. I think of the marshes, of the peat bogs, of the forest. I think of the quiet here, broken only by the occasional gull. I think of my cave, empty now.

I approach from the side of the cliffs. Their collapse has not halted while I’ve been away. Great swathes of rock and mud have slipped into the waters below. I see the large white rock on the sand.

The rain has not stopped either. It is light, very light. I am not sure whether it is rain or mist.

I put to shore in the same spot from which I left eight weeks ago.

The first thing I do is dig up some roots. I eat them raw.

It is like someone else has been here. An axe and a spade leaning against the cave wall. My water container standing out in the open, overflowing. Marks in the sedge. Marks on the rock. Things are where I left them but it seems so long ago it may as well be a stranger who did those things.

The cave smells. I notice in the corners, under the grasses, fish, rotting tubers, a bowl of gruel. I do not wonder at why they are there. I think back to the ghost of Andalus. I clear the food away. I am done with him now.

I come across some of my old notes. Without an almost constant fire, they have absorbed moisture and are damp to the touch, though still readable. I think of all the tasks I have: collecting food, digging peat, making notes. For a brief time I thought my days might not end on this sinking island. But it was not to be. Now I have to work out when the end will come, whether my absence has accelerated the end or postponed it. I lean against the wall. A choke escapes my throat.

I find I am struggling to remember Elba. Tora is the one I remember.

Her black hair, skin so translucent as to be grey. Eyes so dark sometimes you could not see the pupils. It is her I remember, her I think of. Her alive, I mean. I try not to think of the other. She is with me now more than ever.