Read the Island (Part 1) - Discovery here.
Read the Island (Part 2) - Expedition here.
The Island
Part 3
Revelation
The young girl watched Holokai walk away then wriggled on her
grandmothers lap. “Tutu, please tell me the rest of the story. What happened in
the storm?”
He looked at his granddaughter and sighed. “Well kolohe. The storm was a
bad one. It broke the mast and shredded the sail. We lost most of our food and equipment.
Only the solar still and a few other things lashed down on the deck remained. Finally
the storm abated and we were left floating on the current.”
He adjusted his positon and glanced out at the foam capped waves running
up the sand, then silently drawing back as the tide retreated. “The storm blew
us off course. My father calculated we were a long way north of where we should
be and drifting east on the ocean currents away from home.”
“What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, except make fresh water in the still and fish for
food. Finally after several days my father spotted something on the horizon. We
grabbed whatever we had and tried to paddle toward it. It took hours until we
could see it was small island. We paddled harder and finally reached it. We
were exhausted and after we pulled the boat up we just lay down and slept.”
He paused as Kalea got up and walked over to a pile of coconuts and bread
fruit under a nearby tree. She squatted down and began cutting off the coconut husks
with a machete.
The young girl extracted the sugar cane from her mouth again. “What was
on the island? Did it have coconut trees and flowers and birds?”
He rubbed his chin. “It was a very strange island. It was small, only ten
canoes long and six canoes wide. There were small trees and flowers. But there
was no beach, no rocks, only some birds and lots of fish. We though perhaps it
was the top of a volcanic outcrop.” He shook his head. “When we woke up we
hauled the solar still off the boat and began making fresh water for there were
no springs or pools on the island. After several days may father took out his
navigation instruments and calculated our position again. He was shocked. We
had moved from when we first found the island. That’s when we realised the
island was floating and we were heading further east on the current.”
He looked up as Holokai stomped back to them angrily, each heavy step
thumping the ground as he walked. “They have refused me.” His face twisted and
eyes narrowed. “I am a fine navigator, a skilled sailor, my fishing expeditions
sail farther and bring back more fish. I was first of all the men on this side
of the island in the race up the mountain…” He spat on the ground. “But they
want diplomats, negotiators, and traders. And they say they are taking older
men, or those who have not yet married or had children.”
He turned away, “I have no children to leave behind.” His jaw clenched at
the memory of the small red corpse in the healer’s hands. It was an image he
wished he could scrub from his mind. His eyes drifted among the trees and found
Kalea still husking coconuts and his shoulders slumped slightly.
Grandmother looked up at him. “You and Kalea are both still young.” she said.
“Your place is with her now, with your family. There will be other voyages.”
He continued as if he had not heard a word, raising his arms. “They are
as ignorant as the haoles from long ago. Short sighted and blind to the
obvious.” He took a step and kicked the little pile of plastic. “They do
nothing about this. The people over the seas may have a cure for the sickness
that kills babies before they are half born. But no one among them but me will
think to ask.” He fell silent and finally slumped to the ground beside his
mother and toyed with the shark pendant around his neck.
The young girl looked at her grandfather and screwed up her face, puzzled.
“Tutu. How can an island float?”
He nodded. “I asked my father exactly the same question.”
“We tried to dig in the soil but we had no spade. Then we decided to dive
underneath and see what was holding it up.”
“What did you find?”
He held up his arms with hands open wide. “Nothing. No rocks, no coral, nothing
to hold it up. Except when we touched the bottom of the island some of it was
soft. My father grabbed a piece and swam back up.”
“What was it?”
“It was plastic. The floating island was made of plastic just like your
little car.”
The girl stared at the car in her hand. “There must have been lots of
cars.”
He laughed. “I don’t know if here were any cars but there was lots of plastic.
Boatloads of it. Bottles, bags, little pellets from I don’t know what. It all
collected together in the currents and then some wood got caught up and then
some birds came to rest and eventually an island developed.”
The girl nodded. “How did you get home?”
“Well, we couldn’t go far without a sail and proper paddles so we floated
on the island, east at first, then south and then after many months west back
toward home. All the while we plaited ropes, wove a small sail from pandanus
leaves and chose a small tree to fell to make paddles. Eventually when father
decided we were close enough we loaded up our boat with dried fish and the
water still, then pushed it off the island and paddled north for two weeks
until we caught sight of the smoke from Kilauea.”
The girl looked up at him wide eyed. “And you got home safe and sound.”
“Yes, we got home.” He shrugged. “Safe but maybe not so sound. We ate so
many shellfish and fish from under the island I think we may have eaten some of
the plastic too. I read in a book from up in the dry house that lots of the
plastic turns into tiny pieces too small to see that can release poisons into
your body.”
He turned to his son. “I often wonder if that’s why you had an older
brother and sister that you never met.” Grandmother sighed and concentrated on
the combing the young girl’s hair with her fingers.
********
Read The Island - Part 4 Decisions here.
Constructive comments welcome :-)
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