by Rebecca Huggins
When Gabriel Martinez was just nine years old, he
watched his father’s fishing boat sink off the coast of Nameless Island, one of
the nineteen Galapàgos Islands of
Ecuador. Ever since he would hold his breath when a ship would sail by
the neighboring island of Floreana, hoping somehow that by doing so his father
might be able to use the breaths he was not taking, and come back to life on
one of those empty vessels. Now fifteen, and not nearly so naïve, Gabriel
worked at the local fishery, cleaning, gutting, and otherwise preparing the
fish for sale to the locals who bought up the delicious, fresh catches
greedily.
One day, a stranger came to Floreana. No one in
the small town had seen him arrive, nor did anyone in the town seem to know
what had brought the visitor to the small, secluded island. Whatever had
brought him to Floreana was as great a mystery as the man himself, who the
locals had simply begun to call Innominado, because no
one knew his name, and for that matter, no one seemed to make any effort to
find out what the man’s name was. He would come and go from Azucena’s
Bar, always ordering the same thing, then sitting by himself, reading Ecuador
Mundo in the same dark, forgotten corner.
And as harmless as this may seem to some, the
residents of Floreana began to whisper things when the stranger had his back
turned or late at night in their dingy abodes. Who is that man? They’d
wonder, And what does he want here? Did you see him, ordering
his drink and reading that paper? Always the same, and never any
explanations. What does he mean by coming to Floreana anyway?
These questions and many others the locals would ask, trying to discover who
this intruder was, though never did any of the people of Floreana bother to ask
the strange man who he was, or why he’d come to the island town. Yet
everyday, just the same, he would come into Azucena’s Bar and read his paper
and drink his drink, never once acknowledging the sideways glances and the
whispered words.
One day, when Gabriel was walking along the cool,
white beach of Floreana Island, he noticed the stranger standing out in the
middle of the ocean. It took him a moment to realize that his eyes
weren’t playing tricks on him and that the man was in fact in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean , arms stretched out at either
side, though the cool, placid waters were only waist deep on his tall, lean
frame.
Worried that the man might drown, just as his father
had done six years before, Gabriel called to the man, but his voice was carried
up and away by the rolling winds and the undulating waters. Again he
called, again and again, until his voice cracked from the strain, and still the
stranger did not return to the shore, nor so much as acknowledge his cries.
In desperation, Gabriel began to walk into the crisp, blue waters, but the
moment the waves crashed against his legs, he retreated for the safety of the
shore. Ever since The Drowning, Gabriel had not returned to the Ocean as a
great, suffocating fear had overcome him and kept him from the deceiving waters.
Averting his eyes from the waves, he looked back
towards the horizon; still the stranger waited, unmoving, unknowing. And
then something horrible happened; the water began to rise about the stranger’s
body, slowly at first, then gradually faster. It was now up to the man’s
chest, and still he made no effort to return to shore. Gabriel was seized
by an immense panic; what if the man was tied down to the water’s bottom, a
great iron anchor, rotten with age, keeping him cast out in the middle of the
ocean? What if he couldn’t swim back to shore because he was bound to the
anchor, hidden beneath the dark blue waters? Worse still, what if a great
Horn Shark had encircled him and was simply waiting for the apt moment to
strike?
Gabriel no longer could wait; he had to try and get
help. But just as his calls to the stranger had gone unanswered, so did
those to the townspeople. It seemed as if every other person in the
entire village were hidden in their houses, windows bared and doors locked up
tightly, unaware of the great tragedy that was about to take place.
Then a most terrible thought occurred to Gabriel; what
if the people already knew the stranger was drowning? What if it was one
of them who had tied him to the anchor,
buried in the bottom of the ocean? He had heard their whispered musings,
seen their sidelong stares; he knew the unspoken words they thought whenever
they happened to see the stranger; the man in the water was drowning and no one
was going to save him.
Without another thought, Gabriel turned back to the
unrelenting waters that were now swallowing the man whole. He sucked in a
breath—as he’d always done when he had been a boy—only this time, he offered
his breath to the stranger. He thought that if only that one breath could help
that poor man, out in the middle of the ocean, than he should have it; let it
be his, for he would need it to swim back to shore. Then in an instant,
all was black.
Gabriel dreamt of a great fish, with many colorful, translucent scales, each
reflecting a different color as the great creature moved through the shimmering
ocean. He dreamt that he was a great worm, caught on a line, and that
giant fish was approaching him, closer and closer, yet Gabriel felt no fear. The
fish was beautiful, and though twice his size, seemingly harmless.
Gabriel reached out his hand as if to touch the great creature, when he awoke
to a blurred face, smiling down at him, the warm sun heating his frozen
limbs. For a moment, he thought he was young again, and his father had
come back from his long fishing trip so many years ago. But then the
illusion was gone and Gabriel remembered what had happened to him and the face
slowly became someone else’s—the stranger, Innominado! He was still
alive!
Gabriel tried to speak, to ask the man if he was
alright, but his parched voice cracked and he coughed up a good deal of salty
sea water instead. All that time had passed—all those moments, which
seemed like an eternity to Gabriel in his weakened condition; and what had he
forgotten to do? He’d forgotten to breath, forgotten until now. The
man smiled and placed a reassuring hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“You saved me, Good Friend,” he said, and when he
spoke, Gabriel heard his ears ring as the man’s voice was like the delicate
lull of a lazy summer’s wind against faint, hollow bells. “You sacrificed
yourself to help me and for that you shall be greatly rewarded.
When all the other people in this town shunned me, you
showed true mercy by pulling me from those equally unforgiving waters.
Even as they watched, frozen with fear from afar, you came to my aide.
For this, Gabriel Martinez, a great gift shall await you.” And with that, the
stranger was gone.
It was a few hours later that Gabriel woke up again,
only now he was in his own bed, his ailing mother by his side. She looked
unwell, concerned about her son as she was, her brow furrowed, her face
worn. With a start, Gabriel sat up in bed and demanded to know where the
stranger, Innominado was.
“But he is gone, my child!” his mother said, after
much unsuccessful coaxing to get her son to lay back down. “He left many
days ago as unexpectedly as when he’d arrived.”
It was then that Gabriel learned what had really
happened to him. That he’d been walking on the shore of the Nameless
Island when a great wave came and swept him into the very middle of the
ocean. And it was there, on the white sandy shore, that he’d been
discovered, much later, unconscious on the beach.
Gabriel regarded his mother with great incredulity,
yet even as she recounted the tale, Gabriel remembered the great, choking
weight of the waves as they crashed over him, filling his lungs with salty
ocean water.
And so it was that Gabriel’s encounter with the stranger on the ocean had never been told, not to any of the locals on Floreana Island. Yet even to this day, Gabriel knows that it was not the stranger who was drowning that day, but it was he, himself, lost as he was for so many years until an Angel came to his town, though no one else could see, and had lifted a broken boy from his grave and held him in his wings, gently whispering of better things and a life not yet begun.
© 2010 Rebecca Huggins. All rights reserved.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Huggins is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Black Lantern Publishing, as well as its imprints, Crow's Nest Magazine and Broomstick Books. She resides in a decisively dusty town, where strangers are outcasts in an otherwise close knit community. You can see more of her works in previous issues of Black Lantern, and you can learn more about the writer here.
