Gaia

Chapter 6, The Volcano
conclusion of part II

by Tala Bar

Gaia began in issue 88.
Part II, installment 1 appeared in issue 108.

They negotiated the next stretch of water with a greater ease. Nim had acquired some skill in manipulating the board, relieving Nunez from pushing. He was able to swim around, back and forth, scouting. The next islet, however, was farther away than the first, and their swim took longer. The travelers made a point of taking it easy, sometimes just floating on the water when they had a need to replenish their energy. The day was becoming warmer and the water more pleasant to be in.

Approaching the second islet, however, they noticed wisps of steam rising from the little ponds among the rocks bordering it around. The water lapping the mountain’s slopes was covered with shifting patches of mist. The three swimmers paused a little way away, looking at the sight with some concern.

“I’m not sure we can go to ground here at all, not anywhere close to shore,” Dar said. Even at the relative distance from the islet, where they had paused, they could feel the water getting unmistakably warmer than where they had come from.

“I’m tired,” Nim sighed. The physician thought she looked rather peaked, and said, tentatively, “We can try swimming around, there may be a cooler place on the other side.”

Nunez, saying nothing, led the way as they resumed their swimming around the islet, at some distance from the clump of steamy rocks. As they turned a corner, changing their direction of advancement, the wind rose and the water became unsettled. High waves swept over the tips of the jutting boulders, breaking and creating bubbly foam playing among the rocks. Swimming became harder, and Dar had difficulty in trying to stabilize her plank and avoid hitting the rocks. At the same time, she made an effort to help Nunez look after Nim, who was in a real danger of slipping off her board. Her two friends had to flank the girl on both sides, trying to direct her board to safety.

They were all on the point of exhaustion, having spent the great part of the day swimming. For Dar, the task was gradually getting more than she thought she could cope with.

Still staying the course, they arrived at last at a place where the water felt cooler and no steam was rising between the rocks surrounding the islet. Nunez paused, taking a deep breath. “I don’t think we should go any farther today,” he declared.

It was easier said than done. Though cooler, the water was rough; they had to negotiate their way carefully among the rocks and beware of the possibility of hitting against them. The planks had become a hindrance rather than help and, in the end, they had to discard them. Nunez and Dar took hold of Nim, carrying her between them as they swam among the rocks; the hindrance had turned into aid, used as anchors on to which they hung in turns, helping each other avoid being swept back into the lake by the breakers.

The boulders were partly slippery, partly sharp and ragged, covered in patches by the cooling lava, hard to hold on to. The swimmers’ advance was slow and hesitant, passing from one sharp tip to another, gradually getting nearer the shore, until they finally crawled up on to the lumpy ground. They clung to the crumbly gravel for dear life as if still afraid of the lapping water, even though they were in no more danger.

The ground on shore was still fairly warm, though not too hot to touch or step on. The wanderers took their time catching their breath, Dar feeling happy to be attached again to solid ground, not wanting to move anywhere for a while. Looking at Nim she saw her heaving, retching on the spot where she had come ashore. As she moved over to help the girl, she felt happy, as usual, having somebody needing her help rather than being bothered with her own problems.

There was nowhere to go beyond the ragged strip they had been thrown on. Everywhere, great boulders were strewn around, and a very short distance from the coastline the ground rose to create a very steep mountain slope. Free at last from helping the girl, who had fallen exhausted on the ground, Dar lifted her eyes along that slope to see the peak vanishing among smoky clouds.

* * *

According to the position of the sun, they had landed on the southeasterly side of the islet; the yellow-orange globe was vanishing among strips of clouds over the lake, not much strength left in its rays to dry their bodies. They were not going anywhere from the spot they had landed on, so they made ready to spend the night as evening was approaching so quickly. Dar shrugged off the backpack and they put on their clothes, thankful again for the watertight receptacle; even so, nothing stayed in the good condition they had started with.

The travelers’ mood was at low ebb. Nim was recovering from being too scared, as well as too sick, from being a plaything to the water motion. She could not eat, which helped to save the very little food they had left. They had plenty of water, of course, and a couple of spark lighters, but nothing to make fire with to make anything warm to drink. Feeling dejected, more on Nim’s part than herself, Dar went down to the lake to fill up the bottle; her heart skipped a beat when she saw one of the planks floating between the rocks. Being too tired, she climbed back to land and asked Nunez to get it.

That evening they had a cheerful fire to dry and warm up their bodies, and drink some hot water if nothing else. But Nunez managed to use his hands to catch some of the small fish populating the little ponds among the boulders. Even Nim tasted some solid food well cooked, but Dar wondered how long they would be able go on in this way. Ponderously, she looked at her companions. All three of them had thinned down beyond anything she had ever seen; soon, they would be reduced to mere skeletons, depleted of all strength, having nothing to go on with but sheer willpower.

They did not sit long by the fire after their meager supper. The sun had disappeared, evening turning into night which was not completely dark. Fitful bursts of fire from a volcano lying at some distance broke it from time to time, disturbing them more mentally than physically. They thought it might be their destination, not very far from the islet they were on; it looked impressive, even a little intimidating, with its size and mass, as it loomed through the dusk. ‘If that’s our next goal,’ Dar reflected, ‘who knows what is waiting for us there.’

They prepared to go to sleep early. The ground was warm enough to induce a lasting sleep, though not level enough to make that sleep comfortable; they passed the night with a fitful slumber, echoing the volcano’s activity.

The next day started cloudy with a threat of rain. Under the heavy cast, the water was almost still and swimming promised to be easier. Nim was able to use a plank again, albeit partly burned. The two older swimmers made her float between them, helping her to keep her board stable and supporting her when necessary. Nim was feeling better, seemed to be getting used to the movement of the water. She followed her companions’ instruction conscientiously and, luckily, it was a short swim to the Volcano Island. They made it in just over an hour.

They saw almost immediately the difference between it and the previous islets. This one had certainly not sprung out of the water recently, nor did it look like virgin rock as the others. The Volcano Island was obviously an old piece of ground, which must have existed long before the catastrophe. Dar, remembering the ruined temple and the old traces of ashes around it, thought that the eruption of that mount might have been what had destroyed the ancient building. Before its latest eruption, the little island with its high mountain seemed to have been covered with a thin layer of gray soil collected in crags and crannies, with low, wind-swept but thick vegetation growing on its volcanic rock. When the lava flowed after the latest eruption, it must have been channeled into well- defined gullies, leaving a great part of the island untouched, rather than spread all over it. Dar was astonished to notice a few birds flying about; except in their short, dreamy visit to the Amazon forest, she could not remember when she had ever seen free-flying birds.

The swimmers landed on the dark-colored gravel covering the shore, a strange mixture of old sand and new basalt rock. As they lay, exhausted, on their backs on the beach, they noticed high above, around the hidden top of the mountain, a hanging line of cliffs protruding out as gables.

“Look at those cliffs,” Dar said to Nunez, “do you want to climb them?”

“Not me,” he grunted; “I am a water man, cliffs don’t attract me at all.”

Dar pondered how Bard had taken her to the water; before she had met him, she recalled, she had preferred walking over dry, high land, when she had the opportunity... ‘Bard is gone now,’ the thought dwelled heavily in her mind, ‘and I am here with strangers, on a strange land’; she was doing things she had never thought she would be able to do... She might need to climb this mountain, and maybe she would even have to scale those cliffs, at her late time of life...

“Do you think we can find something to eat here?” Nim asked. Dar turned and sat up, looking at the girl. “I’m very glad you feel hungry, Nim,” she said, smiling. “It shows you are really recovered.”

Nim made a face and jumped to her feet. “I’m quite all right, I feel fine except for being hungry. Let’s go look for something to eat.”

“We’ll go down to the lake and do some fishing, as before,” Nunez said, rising and hugging the girl, relinquishing his fatherly way with her. Nim lifted her face to him and he bent and kissed her.

Having looked after them for a while, Dar then rose slowly and started sifting through the meager provisions they had had left from their turbulent trip. The few clothes they had left in the backpack were suffused with moisture, which had managed to penetrate through a small tear in the waterproof material. She took them out and spread them on the gravel to dry in the sun; they should be ready when Nim and Nunez come back. They had gone fishing without bothering to put on any clothes over their underwear. They still had the water bottle, the little pot and the two spark lighters, but no food to speak of. She had noticed the sparse vegetation on the Volcano Island, but it looked rather miserable and Dar was not sure what use they would be able to make of it.

‘If they catch any fish, we may have to eat it raw,’ she reflected. She had done worse when wandering around the devastated city, Dar recalled, vaguely. She had no idea what Nunez’ experience might have been, but Nim was a completely different case, especially in her present condition. Ruminating on these thoughts, Dar stared at the man and the girl, wading in the shallows among the lava rocks, jumping and skipping like children. It was heartwarming seeing the girl happy and carefree, and she did not begrudge Nunez being the cause of it.

A bluff of land had created an enclosure at one spot, where a number of creatures could be seen playing in the clear water. As Nunez tried to scoop some of them in his hands, Nim put her hands in, playfully disturbing the water. He reacted by spraying her with water, and they continued with the game for a while; for the first time in days Dar could hear the girl laughing. The man and the girl played like a couple of kids released from school, the older behaving no less childishly than the younger; they did not seem to care about getting wet again, under the renewed shining of the warm autumn sun. As they were pushing and pulling at each other, they at last fell in each other’s arms, kissing like two hungry souls right in the middle of the pool.

“There isn’t much chance for breakfast this way!” Dar called out to them, laughing.

Reluctantly, they separated, turning their attention to the more serious matter. They let the water in the small pool calm down again, then put their hands out, enmeshed together in a living net, thus managing to catch a crop of small fish. Nunez had taken off his undershirt, and they gathered them there, wriggling on the wet surface; but when they brought them on to shore, there was, of course, no fire for cooking.

“We’ll have to throw the fish back to the lake,” Nim said, deeply disappointed.

“Not at all,” Nunez answered; “we’ll eat them raw.” Calmly, he produced from his trousers a pocketknife, and proceeded to scale the fish, cut them open and gut them clean, rinsing them in the lake water.

‘It looks better, certainly cleaner, than what I had to eat after the cataclysm,’ Dar thought.

“Ick!” Nim exclaimed; “I could never eat raw fish! Cooked fish is bad enough, but raw? I’d never even eaten real meat before the catastrophe, only synthetic; and now, to eat it raw! Never!”

Nunez shrugged. “You’ll eat it or you’ll starve, because there is no other alternative.” Dar was happy to notice he was not giving way to her as to a little child. Nim pouted, pretending to be offended, watched the two adults in silence. Nunez picked a fish and put it in his mouth, calmly chewing it and taking a bone or two out. Dar used the knife to separate the fish’s flesh from its bones, then cut into small pieces, swallowing them one by one.

“You can eat it this way, you know,” she told Nim pleasantly; “then you don’t have to taste it.”

Sulkily, Nim sat by Dar’s side, accepting a small piece and bringing it up to her nose.

“No,” said Dar, “if you don’t like the smell you won’t be able to eat it. Do it like that.”

She demonstrated pinching her nose with the fingers of one hand and dropping a small slice into her open mouth. Nim laughed and did the same. Soon she gave up pinching her nose, but she washed the fish pieces down with much water. When they stayed down in her stomach, she caressed her bare belly.

“Something may still come out of it, in the end,” she commented, smiling wryly toward her companions. Dar hugged her. When they finished, they cleared the area and put on their clothes.

“Well,” said Nunez; “we are here on Volcano Island, and I don’t see anything of interest here. What would you suggest, Dar?”

“I think we should first go round the shore, look for something which would tell us if there’s anything interesting to see; but I have a suspicion we’ll have to climb the mountain in the end for that purpose.”

They cranked their necks looking up it, but could see very little from their position, except a pinkish smoke which rose here and there from cracks in the cliffs surrounding the peak; they were happy to note there were no signs of flowing lava.

“It does not look very easy to climb,” Nunez commented, “let’s go round the shore first, we may find an easier way up.”

Nim picked up the backpack and shrugged it on, and they set on their way. With nothing much to carry, walking was easy; but Dar thought she would have preferred it otherwise.

Proceed to chapter 6, part III.

Copyright © 2004 by Tala Bar