Avalon returned to Aric his jacket, that, despite his reluctance—for the morning cold had vanished under the sun. She shoved it into his bag. He didn’t feel petty enough to take the jacket out and for her to repeat the act, then, him. He worried again. That’s all he could do. Avalon was oblivious to his worries, because she didn’t consider he would; or that anyone would. The concerns she held, she thought, were well hidden. She’d no clue he thought as she did. In her mind, it was every man for himself. He was no less than a stranger still.
“We can see Gardenia isle now,” he said, and she flew to the edge of the boat. She squinted her eyes; the horizon was much too vast and the closest land too narrow.
“It seems awfully far.”
He clicked his tongue. “No, no, that is hope. A speck in the sea is always hope. Don’t despair at its sight. Rejoice. We’re almost there.”
Avalon opened her eyes to his perspective, that of a sailor, and thought to correct her words. “So close, yet so far.”
He stared at her for a second. “Maybe.”
Aric had been faithful to the concept of hope. As a sailor, he had to. With lengthy isolation eventually came introspection and questions for the universe. He spoke them aloud. He looked to find meaning in what surrounded him. He personified the sea and befriended its entity. ‘It’s breathing,’ he would say at the sight of waves crashing and pulling away from the sand. He thought it similar to how the living inhaled and exhaled. That was proof enough to him that the vibrant sea had life. That it could feel and think like any intelligent being. It perhaps held more complex thoughts and profound knowledge.
“Could you tell me more about Gardenia isle?”
He joined her to the edge of the boat in prudent strides.
“Ah, where to start,” he blew a breath out. “Gardenia Isle, I won’t lie to you, is an odd place. I’ve been there twice. The first time with my family, ten years ago. It’d been a brief stop, because that’s all we were allowed to. And briefly anew, a mere couple of days ago, before I realized I could not obtain this bounty on my own. I am no poison detector after all. Nor am I knowledgeable in horticulture.”
“You’ve left me with more questions than I can count.”
“Can you really not count that high?” he mused, his head tilted towards her.
“Get on with the story already. Explain what you meant by ‘death of nature’, and what it was you were allowed to.” She gripped the railing tight, directing her anger to it alternatively.
“Gardenia Isle,” he drawled. He’d enjoyed seeing her knuckles turn white as her face remained strained, without emotion. “It is a place where people have chosen to honour nature rather than co-exist with it. They’ve built their houses and markets around it. And greenery is present in every corner or crevice. Even if vines trap moisture on roofs, they dare not move them. That beautiful sight is chaos incarnate. For that place is their sanctuary, naturally, they are protective and preservative of it. My father called that place a window. You may look, yet you may not enter, he’d said. The door is closed. No stranger had ever succeeded in settling on Gardenia Isle. It is forbidden. For fear outsiders may not feel as they do for nature and bring destruction. Again, they’re protective.”
Avalon listened with outrage and, in parallel, immense wonder. As for Aric, he all but felt enthralled by her attention and easily perceivable cocktail of emotions. From her widened eyes, to her pursed lips, to her fingernails reaching her palms around the railing.
“As for what I meant by ‘death of nature’, their beloved isle has fallen prey to a plague. A mysterious plague rotting indiscriminately the flora. From early sprouts to aged trees. Their world is turning to ashes, and they’re left standing on remains. It’s inexplicable, and it’s spreading consistently.”
“I’ve never heard of such an event. Is the isle mostly bare now?”
“From what I’ve seen, parts are bare, yes, very few are still as fresh as they should be, and everything else is shrivelling leaf by leaf under the natives’ tenacity. What they’ve tried to plant in the newly bare lands has fallen to the same disease. They’d rather seek a remedy, as miraculous as it may seem, to save the essence of their isle over cutting every infected plant.”
“I can muster sympathy. For nature. Not for the people, but for nature. It is horrible. But you do know that I am only capable of detecting—possibly—the cause. I am not a healer. A plight of this scale might be beyond any of us.”
Aric dropped his head, a smile carved on his face.
“We’ll be paid either way. Our only task is to solve the mystery, not revive the murdered.”
“Spoken like a true bounty hunter. I was beginning to doubt that you were one, or at least that you were passionate about your vocation. The bounty hunters in my novels all appeared money crazed. And once again, real life does not disappoint.”
He lifted his head. “Should I be pleased or insulted?”
“Do you feel shame about being a bounty hunter?”
“No.”
“Then, regardless of my intention, you should take it as you please.”
Despite their striking differences, Avalon found a resemblance. One thing she could relate to. Aric was honest. He did not appease her through honeyed words. He did not stroke her ego. His words fell sharp, and in a sweeping motion brought her clarity. There’s much morality a human could pretend to hold, for the sake of patching every hole.
Both Avalon and Aric had individualistic minds, and for that, they wouldn’t argue about morals. It didn’t matter enough to waste precious time or breath.
She set her hands loose and eyed the redness on her palms. They’d only felt stiff. “Going back to the isle, did you know, controlling people often end up being parents to rebellious children,” she said, a hint of a smile crossing her face.
“Are you speaking from experience?” he guessed, eager to learn more about her. There was more to her. Behind the cold front and the indifference. Something gleamed in the distance. Who was to know of her true colours?
“I am not traditionally rebellious. No. I’ve kept many secrets, not to harm anyone, but to escape a future built for me. I don’t believe one’s future can be sourced from a textbook.
“I am a rebellious child, only because I am their child. A product of their night and a notion of control passed down from generations.” She stepped back, startled by her admittance. She shouldn’t have said this much. Yet she did and couldn’t swallow back the words. They lingered, sprawled in the air, inhaled by his ears.
“Well, rebellious child, what kind of secrets did you keep? Am I stepping on the line? Do you still need to keep these secrets? Without their presence, are you still the rebellious child?”
She stood close to the edge again. “You crossed a line, yes. But my secrets are no longer. That, too, is a question of perspective. I haven’t committed a crime, yet I might as well have in their eyes—if they’d known. Gone are their eyes, and so is their label on me.”
Aric found she spoke almost in riddles. Some people, such as himself, answered in straight lines, while some others, such as Avalon, spouted amorphous figures.
“What kind of child are you now? Perhaps you aren’t a child anymore.”
She inhaled soundly. No longer was she going to be treated as a precious child. For better and worse. She was on the cusp of rebirth, for the first had appeared fruitless. “I’m not,” she drawled with poise and subtle mirth.
She looked at Aric, feeling smaller and colder, as her new reality began to set. The absence of an old life had always been the presence of a new one. She lived thinking the future was yesterday, and what she’d dreamed of would be a blink away, behind her.
“I’m not,” she repeated. “I’m born again, under the sun and moon, over the sea, on this very boat.” She laughed at her own words. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be philosophical. I am not.”
He turned and pressed his back against the railing, but his head was angled toward her. “It’s alright,” he nodded. “I am not as pensive on land as I am on board. There’s much space for silence and slowness here.”
Then followed the exact silence he referred to. Waves had long since become white noise. They were alone at sea. Without a crowd or a mere passerby. Time seemed irrelevant. As did everything else. Life or death could find them without notice or a witness. The quiet had swamped them as it unburdened them.