Time and Tide

Stories for Another Day

Once, in a small house on a small island in the middle of a vast, sparkling, blue sea, there lived a small family. The mother’s name was Shalinda, and there was a boy named Rush and a girl named Esha. Their father’s name was Kopp. It was such a small island that if you stood on the very highest point, in the hills that ran from one end of the island to the other, you could see the shore on both sides of the island at the same time.

Shalinda and Esha and Rush worked hard, collecting shells from the seashore every day. The most perfect shells, ivory, pink, or brown and white striped, they sold to people in fast boats who came from the other islands. The rest they made into necklaces and bracelets, which they also sold. When the moon was right, Kopp would take his long, barbed spear and stand on the rocks at the tip of the island, or in the waves as they crashed ashore, and spear fish for them to eat, or to be smoked in the tall smoke-houses so they would keep for the times when the fish were not running.

When he was not fishing or teaching Rush and Esha how to fish, Kopp spent his time gathering seaweed to burn for fuel. Some of the seaweed he even sold to the people in fast boats, to be made into creams for their rich wives to put on their faces.

Twice a year, at high tide, the sea came rushing up the beach, past the line where the old dry seaweed and broken shells lay, up and up, even to the doorsteps of the houses closest to the shore. These were known as king tides. Anyone who could afford it, built their houses on tall legs, with steps reaching up to the door so that the sea did not sweep away their cooking pots and fishing spears.

One day Rush noticed that the sea was creeping higher and higher with every high tide. “It must be the season for the king tide,” he said to his father.

“No, that is another month away,” said Kopp.

“But see,” Rush said, “the waves are reaching up past the high tide mark already.”

Kopp looked up and down the beach, and he could see that Rush was right. He called all the people together. “The tide is rising higher and higher,” he said. “It is almost as high now as the king tide.”

Others had noticed the same thing. “There are fewer and fewer shells to collect. The sea has swept them all away,” said one.

“The sea is beginning to come into my house,” old Vanca said. Her house had been built at the very edge of the shore many, many years ago by her grandfather.

“What can we do?” everyone said, looking to Kopp for an answer.

Rush said slowly, “I have heard of an old king, in ancient times, who took his throne to the edge of the shore and commanded the sea to go back.”

“Truly?” said Kopp. No-one could think of any other way of stopping the sea, so they decided to try it. Each person took a chair or a stool, or even an upturned bucket in Rush’s case, and sat at the high tide mark as the tide was coming in. “Go back! Go back!” they chanted together, but the waves still came in. The sea rushed in, in small waves at first, then in bigger and bigger waves. “Go back!’ everyone shouted at the very top of their voices, but the sea rushed on, in higher and higher waves that lapped the very chairs they were sitting on. It swept Rush’s bucket out from under him, and would have taken it out to sea if Kopp hadn’t swum after it and brought it back.

That night old Vanca’s house was swept away completely, and old Vanca with it.

The people cried and protested, but nothing would stop the sea. Eventually men in suits came in the fast boats, and told everyone that they would have to leave the island.

“It is not safe for you live here,” they said. “Before long, the island will be under water.”

“But where will we go? What will we do?” Kopp asked.

“It will be all be taken care of,” the men in suits promised.

Kopp and Shalinda gathered their pots and the fishing spears, but the men in suits said, “No, leave all those. They won’t be needed where you’re going. “

All the people from the island were loaded into fast boats. They were taken to a place a long way from the sea, where there were shops and big houses. Kopp and Shalinda found work in a factory that made plastic boxes, and Rush and Esha went to school. They both worked hard at school and in time they both got very good jobs, Rush as a teacher and Esha as a doctor. Rush married a beautiful, clever woman who was an artist, and they had two children of their own. Every night at bedtime, Rush told them stories about the sea, about shells and fish, sea creatures and rock pools, swimming and fishing and playing in the sand. But after a while his wife said, “Leave it, dear, they don’t understand what you’re talking about,” for the children had never seen the sea.

One day Rush said to his eldest son, Tali, “Tonight I feel like eating fresh fish for dinner.” Tali ran off and came back smiling, with a can of fish in his hand, and gave it to his father.

Rush looked at the tin of fish, and he looked at his son and daughter. He went to his wife and he said, “I asked my son for fish, and this is what he brought me.”

He and his wife sat up talking late into the night, and for days afterwards. Then Rush went to see his father Kopp, whom time had turned into an old man. His fingers were permanently bent and scarred from years of work in the factory. His wife, Shalinda, had injured her eyes in an accident at the factory and now sat at home all day, rocking in her chair.

“Come,” said Rush, “come with me, back to the sea.” He went to his sister, Esha, and told her what he and his wife wanted to do. “I think about the sea every day,” Esha said, “the feel of shells in my hands and sand under my feet. I will come with you gladly.”

They sold everything they had, and Rush and his wife and their children, and Esha and her partner, Talesh, and their father and mother travelled to a distant country, where they bought themselves a long stretch of land close to the sea. They built a house big enough for all of them, on tall legs to keep it safe and dry when the king tides came. Kopp went fishing every day and taught his grandchildren how to catch fish, and Shalinda and Talesh collected shells and made them into necklaces. And at the end of every day, they gathered to watch the sun set over the sea at their doorstep.