The Beach

The boats breasted the small waves that rolled into the narrow bay. The day was bright blue and yellow; a hot sun seared the beach and boiled the sea. As the boats moved farther away, riding the small waves, the women chanted and sang. When they had finished, all but three left the beach and returned to the village.
    Talla, Brega and Vallan sat alone, watching the boats slowly growing smaller on the blue sea, melting beneath the blue sky and the hot sun. Talla stared, seeing nothing but the boats. Vallan also stared, mechanically scooping sand with her hands, tears beginning to form. Brega saw the boats, but also the sea, and the way the sun dazzled on the wave crests. She saw the gulls turn and wheel, glide low over the waves, and then, with a sudden snap of wings, ascend. She could hear the waves scrabbling up the pebbles, could hear them quietly die, could hear the gentle breeze winding itself sinuously between the grass and palm fronds. She could hear the birds in the trees. And the boats slowly disappeared into the hazy, shimmering blue.
    Talla said: "And so. Here we wait until they return.” Brega and Vallan said nothing. This much they already knew. Talla spoke again: “How many days and nights will that be? This beach. Our world until they return.” Vallan could hold back her tears no longer. "If they return. Oh, why must our men always fight? All he wants is to hold our children and me. To work on the land. Why must they always fight with those across the water?" She bent forward and cried freely, creating meaningless patterns in the sand with hands that seemed to live a life of their own.
    Brega, still feeling and hearing the beach and bay around them, said: "It is not those like your beloved Ghaba that want to fight. It is only the men like Shaan. Men built like oxen who think like oxen. They see the other men across the water, and think only that they must be destroyed. Such is the pattern of their thoughts. Like oxen that having dug a furrow follow that furrow forever. Ghaba would be content to sit here happily in life and love, content with you Vallan, and his crops and fields, happy to let the other men live their own lives, as long they never threatened his. Shaan must seek out new places, but feels threatened by them, and must shape them in his image. A new man is something he cannot shape, and so must destroy. After all, the gods do tell us that we are the hub of the world." Talla stood and walked down to the pebbles. The sea, a shy lover, would steal up, kiss her feet, then retreat. She continued to stare out at the sea, in the direction of the boats that were no longer visible. "What other men?" she said. "If the words of the priests are to be believed, there are no other men. We are the only true men. We are created in the images of the gods. Any others may have our aspect, but not our powers. So why are these other men not cowed? Why are those other... those animals… not already our slaves, just as the oxen are?" Talla paused a little while, enjoying the cool sea between her toes. "We pray to the gods for help, and the tranceman always foresees great victory. Yet sometimes only half of our men return. Sometimes none... The tranceman never sees that. Sometimes... sometimes I want to deny our gods, deny that they exist. When I see the wounded, I want to deny them. I want to spit in their faces. If they exist, why do they not make it easy for our men?" The air had become still and sultry. "I fear Manaan will not return. The boats will come back, we will have done what was required of us, but when the men disembark, Manaan will not be there."
    "You think and fear too much," Brega sighed. But Brega, aware of the bay and the whole of nature this day, could already see, climbing above the horizon over which the boats had vanished, a vast billowing thunderhead.
    Vallan sat, rocking, her arms folded around her knees, no longer crying, but with eyes red-rimmed, and her face swollen. Minutes passed across and through that face, every minute adding to Vallan's frown and wrinkled face. "We cannot leave this beach until they come back to us," she mumbled. She looked around with her sad, red eyes. "I already hate this beach. I cannot believe that Ghaba will return. So why do I stay here? What do I care if the others come home, if they come home without Ghaba?" Talla and Brega made no reply. There was none they could make. The thunderhead loomed ever higher above the horizon. And, beneath the cloud, the sky was black where it reached the sea.
    All were quiet now. Vallan still rocked gently, eyes blank, seeing nothing, all dead within her, waiting to die. Talla, at the water's edge, watched the warm sea advance rattling up the pebbles, then retreat down its rattling path to be roiled to white and foam by the gentle fall of another wave. Brega could only hear the wind and birdsong. And her eyes were filled with the distant growing anvil, and the encroaching black.
    Night. And Talla was the first awoken from a fitful sleep by a dream of blue. She sat upright, drew her hands over her tired face, looked at the sea. She heard the long, low, distant rumble of thunder. A moment's silence. Then wings beating, cracking into the black night. The night was dead calm, humid. She looked at Vallan beside her, who tossed, turned and moaned on the hard sand. Lightning flashed again. Talla saw, in the brief illumination, the sweat on Vallan's brow and breasts. Brega slept slightly apart from Talla and Vallan. She seemed calm, curled up, breathing shallowly. Thunder rumbled in from the sea again, slightly louder this time. Vallan suddenly shot upright, eyes wide and screamed to the sea. She breathed heavily and stared across the dark beach toward the even darker sea. She began to relax. Talla also stared out to sea, remembering her dream. Orange lightning stabbed from the sky to the sea. Vallan jumped, whimpered, then clutched her arms about her legs, rested her chin on her knees, and began watching, waiting for the storm. She heard the subdued grumble of the distant thunder, almost immediately followed by a searing blue flash that reflected in the sea. The flash revealed the sea to be a black, patient potentiality, waiting for the storm's lash to turn it into seething, boiling death. The thunder followed sooner this time, drumming from the cliffs of the bay, crashing tinny off the sea. The noise woke Brega, who sat up slowly, shook her head, then stood up to look out over the sea. She said, quietly to herself: "The storm!" She had watched the giant thunderhead grow throughout the day, watch it slowly move toward them, until the thick black cloud that had preceded it had brought to the beach an early dusk. Talla looked up at Brega. "You knew?"
    "I have watched it grow all day. From which direction does it come?"     "From the island of the other men. From our husbands." The wind suddenly began to blow about them, and Talla shivered. She could hear the waves crashing on the pebbles, louder now than earlier, when she had watched the gentle sea kiss her feet. Lightning lit the bay again, and Brega could see the mounting black waves. In that brief blue light, the black, rolling, night sea looked so different from day's blue calm. Talla said: "If there is a god, he is out there." She nodded unnoticed toward the night before them that was almost immediately lit up by lightning. Talla felt a cold shiver down her spine, jumped as a loud crash of thunder followed almost instantaneously. The wind was increasing, and pulled at Talla's long black hair.
    Rain began to fall. Slow, ponderous, heavy drops at first; then a frenzy of hard, stinging pellets were driven against her naked breasts by a wind that roared up out of the night, from out across the sea. The rain hissed on the water, lightning flashed, thunder crashed hard, loud and close, and the leaves rustled, sang and moaned in the wind.
    Talla spoke loudly against the sudden roaring: "Now the gods are all about us - they are showing themselves." Neither Brega nor Vallan spoke. "I dreamed," Talla continued, talking loudly into the wind and rain "of gods. One came up out of the sea, drops of water glistening on his naked body. His skin was pale, not like ours. The moon was shining, full and bright, and his body seemed to absorb the light, then radiate it out again. He was all light, apart from his eyes, which were dark. He was a big man." She scooped up wet sand. "He saw the three of us lying on the beach, but only I was awake, only I was alive to him. He turned his eyes upon me, and I felt like the moonlight, I felt like I was being absorbed by those eyes. All was being drained from me." She laughed nervously. She narrowed her eyes against the stinging wind and rain. "He said he had come for me. He walked across to me, then lay on top of me. He said 'There is no god.' And so I asked him who, then, he was - he was surely no mortal. 'I am this,' he said, and I saw the cliffs, I saw the sea, I saw the storm begin, and I saw the trees, and I felt him entering me, pushing between my legs, and he felt so big, so hard, I wanted him to take me. It felt good having him there, yet it frightened me too. I wanted him."
    Lightning. Thunder. The sea pounding on the beach. The rain drumming across the sand. "I remember it all," Talla continued. "We made love. I remember feeling him on top of me, his massive weight, I remember opening my legs wider, letting him into me, letting him in deep. I remember how hard it felt inside me, and wanting it so much, and wanting him to push it deep within me. I can still feel it now. The warmth in my thighs and belly, the waves rippling up through my body, and as he pushed harder I begged him to come, to feel him come inside me, and I could see the sea over his shoulder, and could see the boats returning, and I knew then that Manaan would be alive on the boat, and looked forward to his return, and still the great man was in me, and then we came together and I closed my eyes and laughed and cried to think I was making love with a god, and it felt so good, and then I opened my eyes, and it was Manaan on top of me laughing, and I hugged him close. The sky was blue, and I loved Manaan, but the black clouds in the distance flashed lightning once to remind me, and I woke up." Talla finished abruptly, suddenly embarrassed. But smiled secretly to herself.
    Around the three women, the storm still raged. Brega stared out to sea. Vallan, eyes closed, rocked gently, said: "Your dream frightens me, Talla. It is as if the gods have promised a safe return for Manaan to you. But I only dreamed broken dreams of Ghaba. Ghaba, before he left. Lying beside me, scared of dying. Seeing how scared Ghaba was as he boarded the boat. How he cried when he heard that he had been chosen for this battle. He isn't a fighting man. Oh, he is a big man, sure enough. And strong. He alone could knock over two or three of the other warriors on the boat. But fighting is not his way. And finally I dreamed of him dead, a spear hanging from his side, shouting through the blood in his throat, shouting for his children and me. And then the other men marched past his body, knowing him, but they were jet black and had no faces. Then metal clashed together, drums rolled, and I awoke to find myself on this beach, alone. Still not sure if he would ever return. But then I hear that a god has entered you, and seems to have promised Manaan's return. I ..." Vallan trailed off, chewing her bottom lip, staring at the sea.
    Lightning. The crash of thunder. Had the storm sunk those small frail boats? Or were their men now fighting on the other island? Talla, smiling still, felt she already knew. Vallan, frowning, felt she already knew. Brega, alone in not having dreamed, knew that she knew nothing. The wind increased its fury. Lightning cracked close overhead. The rain was hard and cold, stung them, made them shiver.
    Talla said: "Why don't the rest of our village come with fire, food and clothing?" Vallan almost screamed: "You know the answer, god's chosen one. We stand for all the womenfolk of the village. We must stay here alone, nothing must disturb us. This is the way the men left us, so this is the way they must return to us. To change the ways would affect our men. All the village is here within us. To the rest of the village, we do not exist. We are the village."
    "But it is so cold," said Brega, "in this wind, with this rain. If we could shelter under the trees, then we would be warmer "
    "Brega!" Vallan exploded. "You know the ways. The boats left this beach. To this beach they must return. We are their guardians. They can only return to this beach if we are here." Brega shivered uncontrollably, wrapped her arms tight around herself. "I cannot stand this cold much longer, Vallan. I feel that this is somehow wrong. That we do not need to be here. That I know my man returns safely."
    "But you have not dreamed as Talla has!"
    "So I know nothing. Only what I feel. Do any of us talk of real knowledge? Only magic and ritual. The tranceseer, and what he sees. But he has seen wrong before. I only feel. And I have felt wrongly before. But feeling is enough. When it is time for knowledge, then I will know. I feel Shaan returns. And that is enough."
    Brega turned and strode away from the beach, seeking shelter in the trees. Seeing her leave, Vallan leapt to her feet, screaming "Brega! Don't leave the beach! Don't condemn our men to death!" But Brega strode on, up the beach, toward the trees. Vallan ran after her, grabbed her arm. "Don't go!" Brega struggled with Vallan, threw her to the sand. Wide-eyed, Vallan watched Brega go, disappearing into the dark wood. Then she cried.
    The next morning, the sky was blue again. Brega walked out from the trees to see Talla asleep on the sand, Vallan sitting with her arms around her knees, staring out to sea. Brega followed her gaze. There, in the middle distance, were the boats returning. Brega went down to Vallan, and put an arm around her. Vallan did nothing. Just stared. Time passed.
    The small reed boats moved closer to the shore, then they were on the beach, and the men were jumping out into the clear blue sea, running toward the village. First up the beach was Manaan. He saw Talla lying on the sand, and lay on her, kissing her. She opened her eyes and smiled softly. "So. My god has returned." Manaan looked puzzled, but then stood, pulled Talla up, and led her away toward the village. Brega and Vallan waited patiently. A knot of warriors walked up the beach. Shaan broke away from them, ran across to Brega, lifted her in his arms, carried her up the beach. Vallan looked at the others. Ghaba was not among them.
    When Shaan reached the trees he put Brega down gently. Brega held his arm tight and smiled, kissed him. Then said: "What of Ghaba?" Shaan sighed, his eyes back out to sea. "Ghaba died. He died to save the rest of us. He was no fighter, but took ten of them with him."
    Vallan saw Brega and Shaan heading into the trees, close together. Full of sorrow, jealous, and still deeply disturbed by what Brega had done, she ran after her, caught her, pulled her roughly by the arm. "Brega! Look what you have done! You killed my man!"
    "I did not kill your man. The others killed your man!" Brega, as the night before, roughly threw her down. But Vallan stood again, now holding a stout branch that had fallen from a tree during the night's storm. "You killed Ghaba. It was you." She swung the stick. It smashed into Brega's temple, fractured, her skull. Brega fell, dead.
    "What?" cried Shaan. He grabbed Vallan by the arms. " Why did you…"
    "She left the beach."