The Lady of the Island

The tired, old wind now only wheezes out a few dry breaths, and the sun has gone away leaving the sky gray, dark, and cloudy while the grass becomes brittle and stiff. There is a small, abandoned road in the middle of a field leading up to a house far away from everything. In fact, it’s on its own island. The road is rough and rocky, though from a distance one can hardly tell that it is there. The woman and her husband who were left shipwrecked here ten years ago had built the house.

There was a plague that struck, killing her husband, leaving the woman alone and sick herself. We find her today in this condition. She is alone in the field, her dark hair a mess. Her bun is falling out, and as the wind blows ever so gently, it brushes the hair from her face. However, it falls back into place after the wind stops to catch its breath. After ten years, she is malnourished and her once pink pastel dress is tattered and worn. She is so malnourished, one is not sure if she is half mad from hunger, grief, or the illness. The illness had been raging through the land and had just about killed everything in it. It had no name for her husband was the only one creative enough to name it, and he had died along with everything else. Therefore, she just called it the illness or death. Her shoes are ruined from dirt and mud. Resulting from her time stranded, her shoes had worn extremely thin to the point of having holes in the soles. She had tried to save them with animal fur but she had just worn through this as well, and her socked toes and heel began to show through. The socks had not lasted long with their exposure to the rough terrain. The once white stockings were now different shades of brown with patches of animal fur and dried leathery leaves. As she stumbles to the house, her feet fail her, and she trips over her own feet, falling to the ground. Trembling, she tries to get up, but her strength fails her; angrily she swears and slams her palms to the ground. However, she does not see the small stone on the ground and she cuts her hand. Fascinated she stares at the bright red blood. It strikes her as odd that she is dying and the area around her is dying and yet blood, her blood, gleams full of life. She stares at it a while longer looking at the contrast between life and death. Hallucinating, she believes that the blood is mocking her and she looks away.

Lying there propped up on her cracked, dry, and bloody palms, she studies the land around her. The grass is green in areas, but the grass around the house has dried and is now brown. The grass around her is in different hues of brown and green, with brown being the more prevalent color. As she observes the colors, she sees multiple hues of brown and almost brown. These are the different colors of death, she thinks to herself. The woman then turns her attention to the house in the distance. She can remember all of the good times she and her husband had in that house, the sweat, toil, and back breaking work that went into making each and every room down to their wooden pegs. She remembers the splinters, broken tools, and the many discussions of missing home, family, food, civilization, and convenience. Smiling, she remembers trying to make the tools, there was a lot of trial and error. She misses the companionship of friends, and the markets at which to buy food. She misses the basic spices such as sugar and salt. She sadly sighs and a tear forms in her eye. Thinking of all of the things of the past she had lost, she slams her palm into the ground and yells aloud. Crying for her lost homeland, love, and health, the lady’s face is streaked with tears. She misses her husband's optimistic views and gentle, uplifting words. When she had lost hope, he would pick up her spirits with a joke or kind word.

Suddenly the thought comes to her that the island itself is dying just as she is dying. What if the sickness had infected her island as well? She decides that if the island was dying, it would crumble and buckle under a massive earthquake, sinking into the ocean around her. Therefore, she might drown before she died of the illness. She begins to contemplate the faster way of death drowning or sickness. She had seen her husband’s pain before he died and decided drowning would be infinitely better.

She decides to try and get up again, but failed and when she fell, something inside her broke. Great, a broken leg and a broken spirit. She decided to whistle and maybe her dog would be able to come to her aid. Though she doubted it as he was sick as well. If he had not already died, she would be shocked. She pursed her parched lips and tried to whistle; however, she had not had water in so long only a weak blow came out and she coughed up blood afterwards. I’m going to die without seeing my homeland ever again. My family will never know when I died. I am going to die alone and in misery. She began to look at the house again. It was blue from age and the distance she decided. It was a grand old house, made with love and hard work. She was content, she decided. She realized that she had lived a full life with her husband on this island of death, and she was ready to go. Looking around her, she studied the buildings in the distance, her house, the sheds, and the birdhouse. Smiling, she thought of the birthday she had received the birdhouse from her husband. He had said that now all of the beautiful things that she attracted would now have a place to stay. She observed her tattered look and the grass around her. Then taking a deep breath, she died; with her death, the island disappeared into the ocean burying all her tragedies in a watery grave.