Days on the isle are quiet and static and recur in muddling succession. He leaves the lavender fields only to scavenge for food and return to eat in silence. A spring storm churns the sky and he considers making a home again of the Green Hills. But in the end it was decided he would stay with Caracal.
Work is portioned for each day. He takes the task of gathering abalones when the rain is light and ends early. Shellfish are gathered at low tide and carried ashore where his jaws cut red flesh from their armor. The gulls are always swarming and he cautions them back with snapping teeth. Their grating caws signal other roaming packs that had moved to colonize the island in the absence of wolf. Foxes and martens watch hungrily from their lee in the woods, growing bold. They knew he was disadvantaged and could steal from him when diligence slips or his attention is on the gulls.
The emptied shells are strange and incandescent. They are brought to rest on his father’s grave where they cast an unworldly glow over the face of the earth when flecked in sunlight.
On three legs, birds are quick and hard to catch. He has only slightly better luck easing down the headlands to root razorbill eggs from their nests while provoked mothers peck his hide.
Fishing is easier. On land he is slow and clumsy. In the water he moves as one born to it, masterfully pedaling his paws in such a way that it did not matter he was missing one. The boy keeps himself fed. He is faring far better than his time of purgatory on turtle island. Life on Wheeling Gull should be peaceful, but it is not.
His father is always with him. Everywhere he goes on land or sea, whether he is fishing or eating or sitting beneath the dark at night, he is there. The island is haunted. Memories play out in his mind but as the days pass each one is recalled with less certainty, one-by-one lost to the annals of time. He can no longer remember what his family sounds like. He no longer remembers Abel’s face. Remnants of everyone who has gone burdens his heart.
Nights are torturous but not so much as the hours just before sunrise when he feels transported back to childhood, enveloped in the familiar warmth of Mal and Dinah, only for a gaping loneliness to flood his cheeks with tears upon waking. Those moments he hates the most.
In this faithless alternate, the boy fights with his grief. He stops believing there is any purpose beyond this fractured life, that outside the island, other dreams could be waiting. Worse still is the wretched reality that they’d all failed dad, abandoning him when he most needed their faith.
What kind of love is that?
Rage is silent and spills from the boy as an invisible force that tears through the isle. He saturates the trees with his scent and scatters a flight of seabirds over his path. Against the risk of his limp a sprint takes him along the rocky coast, past the reef and down into the western cove where two winds collide in a fierce updraft. All the while his howl is raw and vile and sounds a message to every island indweller and well across the turquoise tides:
Wheeling Gull Isle belongs to Judah Redhawk.
Work is portioned for each day. He takes the task of gathering abalones when the rain is light and ends early. Shellfish are gathered at low tide and carried ashore where his jaws cut red flesh from their armor. The gulls are always swarming and he cautions them back with snapping teeth. Their grating caws signal other roaming packs that had moved to colonize the island in the absence of wolf. Foxes and martens watch hungrily from their lee in the woods, growing bold. They knew he was disadvantaged and could steal from him when diligence slips or his attention is on the gulls.
The emptied shells are strange and incandescent. They are brought to rest on his father’s grave where they cast an unworldly glow over the face of the earth when flecked in sunlight.
On three legs, birds are quick and hard to catch. He has only slightly better luck easing down the headlands to root razorbill eggs from their nests while provoked mothers peck his hide.
Fishing is easier. On land he is slow and clumsy. In the water he moves as one born to it, masterfully pedaling his paws in such a way that it did not matter he was missing one. The boy keeps himself fed. He is faring far better than his time of purgatory on turtle island. Life on Wheeling Gull should be peaceful, but it is not.
His father is always with him. Everywhere he goes on land or sea, whether he is fishing or eating or sitting beneath the dark at night, he is there. The island is haunted. Memories play out in his mind but as the days pass each one is recalled with less certainty, one-by-one lost to the annals of time. He can no longer remember what his family sounds like. He no longer remembers Abel’s face. Remnants of everyone who has gone burdens his heart.
Nights are torturous but not so much as the hours just before sunrise when he feels transported back to childhood, enveloped in the familiar warmth of Mal and Dinah, only for a gaping loneliness to flood his cheeks with tears upon waking. Those moments he hates the most.
In this faithless alternate, the boy fights with his grief. He stops believing there is any purpose beyond this fractured life, that outside the island, other dreams could be waiting. Worse still is the wretched reality that they’d all failed dad, abandoning him when he most needed their faith.
What kind of love is that?
Rage is silent and spills from the boy as an invisible force that tears through the isle. He saturates the trees with his scent and scatters a flight of seabirds over his path. Against the risk of his limp a sprint takes him along the rocky coast, past the reef and down into the western cove where two winds collide in a fierce updraft. All the while his howl is raw and vile and sounds a message to every island indweller and well across the turquoise tides:
Wheeling Gull Isle belongs to Judah Redhawk.
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