All is luminous, but still unknown

Effie sat on the colourless grass, eating colourless strawberries she’d bought from a colourless supermarket, the latter being nothing to do with her colour blindness. She watched as ant-like visitors returned on foot from the tiny island poking out of the sea a few hundred yards offshore. Most of the time, access could only be gained by boat, but at low spring tide a footpath is revealed, a path which the turn of the tide would totally submerge again. If she was lucky, the unwary would get caught out and she would leave her grassy dune, race down to the shoreline and jump into her dinghy to race out to rescue them—for a price!

The dinghy was only large enough for four people, but its outboard engine easily had the power to get out and back in minutes. Usually, visitors became stranded on the opposite shore, left staring dejectedly at seawater that hadn’t been there when they’d made their way across on foot an hour before. But there had also been occasions when the tide had caught the slower folk midway across, and the sooner she could get to them, the bigger the tip she would receive.

As a child, Effie had fantasised about what would happen if all the seas in the world dried up; what wonders would be revealed, what cultures, what lost communities? The bay where she lived had once been a prehistoric submerged forest, and sometimes, at the lowest tides of the year, petrified trunks and branches would be revealed. She’d seen them a few times and thought they looked like bones, giant teak knuckles of a massive hand that had once gripped the land and refused to let go.

Finishing her sandwich, Effie looked back at the notes she had taken during her interview with a local resident who’d been walking her Jackapoo, Murray, on the night in question. Victoria Jackson was a retired nurse who’d moved to the coast with her husband, formerly an accountant, now deceased, some ten years before. She had an excellent memory, she insisted, and although she couldn’t tell Effie the exact time it had happened, Murray’s bowels were as regular as clockwork so it would most definitely have been around 10.25pm. What she had seen, she claimed, was a strange glowing light out at sea for three nights in a row, and she thought it was very suspicious. Effie suspected Mrs Victoria Jackson was someone who would enjoy the warmth of the attention and interest she’d receive if the interview were published, and wouldn’t have given it much more thought if Mrs Jackson hadn’t added as a parting shot:

‘I think I heard a noise as well, just before I noticed the light; an odd noise, like a distant boomf or bang out at sea. Maybe like a gunshot? Quite a way off, but I definitely heard it. I didn’t remember it until I got back home. I’d just made my hot milk and put a tot of whisky in it–my husband always made it like that--and then I remembered. Do you think it might be smugglers? That would make an interesting story for you to sell to the local newspaper, wouldn’t it?’

Effie agreed it would, though she was sceptical, and thought Mrs Jackson might be embellishing her story for dramatic purposes, but Effie said she would certainly go down to the shore that night, dinghy at the ready so she could investigate. Privately though, she didn’t hold out much hope that the elderly lady’s sighting would amount to much.

She looked at her watch. The light was starting to dim, and the tide had turned, but there was no sign of day visitors to the island being caught out and needing a lift in her dinghy. And she had no real desire to hang about on the off-chance Mrs Jackson’s strange glow reappeared.

‘Might as well pack up and have an early and penniless night,’ she said ruefully to herself.

Walking down to her dinghy which was now afloat on the shoreline, still tied to a mooring ring that had been driven into the concrete slipway decades before, Effie was thinking more about the cost of the fuel for the boat, despairing at how she was going to make next month’s rent with no water taxi fares and no story sold to the local paper, when a shout caught her attention.

Instinctively she looked behind her, thinking she may have dropped something, and someone was trying to attract her attention. But there was no one there. She turned back toward her dinghy, and that was when she saw him, up to his waist in the rapidly rising water, waving his arms above his head and struggling to keep upright. Effie ran the last few feet to her boat, jumped in, loosened the hitch knot, and yanked at the engine pull cord. It sputtered but didn’t fire. She pulled hard again, but nothing.

‘Come on,’ she yelled, glancing over her shoulder at the stranded man who was now splashing frantically, barely able to reach the path with his feet.

‘Fire, you bastard, fire.’

She was about to give up and dive in to swim out to him when the engine spat in disgust and gave a weak cough. She jerked the cord again. The engine coughed twice more, then roared into life. She grabbed the tiller and aimed the dinghy full tilt at the flailing figure.

She reached the man in less than a minute, grabbing the back of his clothing and hauling him to the front of the boat, away from the idling engine, so he could pull himself over the inflated tubes. He landed on the floor of the dinghy like a fish on a plate, drenched from head to foot and gasping for breath.

‘Lucky for you I was here,’ she said. ‘The currents can be treacherous. Have you back on dry land in a jiffy. Hold on.’

‘No. Out there.’

He pointed out toward the horizon.

‘Please,’ he added.

‘There’s nothing out there. And anyway, I’m low on fuel so….’

‘Please. Out there,’ he said again.

Effie cut the engine to an idle and looked the man full in the face. That was when she noticed his eyes. There was something odd about them, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Their shape? An expression? The irises seemed veiled, like he had cataracts.

‘It's nearly dark. I have no lights for night sailing. This is just an inflatable. Little more than a tender. Let me get you back to shore so you can get dried off and find some warm clothes.’

‘No,’ the man said again, softly. ‘Not the shore.’

He hesitated, then added.

‘I didn’t come from the shore.’

‘Do you have your own boat then? I mean, did you fall off?’

Effie looked out at the horizon, but there was no boat in sight. The sun had now dropped behind the headland and the cooling air caused a breeze to stir.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’d like to help but I’m just trying to earn a living. Part-time water taxi service, part-time feature writer for the local rag, and when the weather’s rough, and there’s nothing newsworthy to sell, part-time barmaid. That’s me. Given that you don’t look like you have any dry cash on you and I’m probably on a wild goose chase as the old lady I just interviewed is likely seeing and hearing things …’

‘I can reward you,’ The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of what looked like silver coins.

‘Okay, now we’re talking.’ Effie said.

‘But only if you take me out there.’

The man again pointed away from the shore. Effie followed his gaze. There was nothing out there. An awful thought occurred to her.

‘Are you planning to end it all?’ she said.

The man looked at her, puzzled.

‘End it all?’

‘You know, die, kill yourself. Because if you are, I want nothing to do with it. I just saved you, for Christ’s sake. And assisted suicides are against the law. I could be prosecuted.’

The man gave her a strange look and pointed toward the shore.

‘If you take me there, I will die. If you take me there,’ he pointed out to sea, ‘I will live. Please.’

Effie looked at the fuel gauge. Just under half full.

‘Okay, here’s the deal. I will take you out there as far as I can before the needle on the fuel gauge reaches the number ‘2’, see?’ Effie pointed at the gauge. ‘Then I turn the boat around and we head straight back to shore. Agreed?’

‘I agree.’

‘And you pay me?’

‘I will reward you, yes.’

Effie hesitated for a moment, then nodded. She would at least earn something today. She turned the nose of the dinghy, and gently accelerated. The fuel gauge needle flickered to ‘4’. Sitting back on the air-filled tube, she kept the tiller in her right hand and watched the man in case he did something unpredictable, but he just looked ahead, gazing out toward the darkening horizon.

‘If the Coastguard catches me out here after dark, I’m in deep shit,’ Effie said to the man’s back.

‘Which number is the needle on now?’ he asked.

Effie looked down.

‘Nearly '3'.’

‘That’s good. We are almost there.’

‘Wherever there is,’ she muttered.

‘It is there,’ he said, pointing.

‘Where? I can’t see anything.’

‘That red glow, hovering above the surface. Take me there.’

Effie eased the throttle abruptly. Maybe the old lady was right. Maybe it was smugglers.

‘I can’t see a red glow.’

‘Straight ahead. It is quite small now, but it will get larger as you get closer.’

‘No, I mean, I can’t see red. Or green. I’m red-green colour blind.’

‘Colour blind?’

‘Since I was eleven. Or at least, that’s when they found out. I’d learned that strawberries were red, and grass was green because that’s how people described them. But I didn’t know red. And I didn’t know green. They were just describing words.’

‘Then let me,’ the man said, and he moved to the other side of the boat and took the tiller out of her hand.

‘No!’

‘Yes. Just until we reach ‘2’.’

Despite her protests, he held firmly onto the tiller, and they moved forward through the inky water for a few minutes more and then, as the needle on the fuel tank reached ‘2’, the man eased off the throttle and passed it back to Effie.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have helped me more than you know.’

‘Right, well, what about that reward you promised me, then?’ Effie said, a little nervously. ‘I think I've earned it.’

The man smiled, and stood, then threw the silver he had been holding in his hand high up into the air.

Effie cupped her hands like an eager child to catch what she thought were coins, but the pieces glittered for a moment against the dark night sky, fell against her face, then just melted away. She turned back to him, enraged.

‘You tricked me!’ she cried.

But there was no-one in the boat.

There had been no splash. No sound at all. There were no ripples on the surface of the water. The man had just disappeared.

‘Now what the hell am I supposed to do!’ she yelled.

And then she saw it. The glow under the water. The myriad of green lights creating a trail as far as she could see toward the shore, like a pathway. For a minute she couldn’t make out what it was. Then she remembered hearing her father talk of the bright green light some marine creatures make.

‘It’s bioluminescence! I can see the bioluminescence. I can see green.’

Then she turned, tears blurring her gaze, and blew a kiss to the fading red light.