Wounds in Water
LIBERTY WALKER
Short Story
In the beginning, I was formless and empty beneath the vault. With his words, the King illuminated the Great Deep. Clouds of celestial bodies dispersed throughout the sea, bringing colour and light to the darkest places. Creatures bejewelled by barnacles danced with pointy fins. Children were safe from predators, flying fearlessly beside sharp teeth and giant tentacles. All was at peace, and all of it was good.
Then, the King looked down on me, the nothing wedged between the rocks. He moulded me from the floor and bequeathed me eternal breath. He led me to the place where peachy pillars grow out of the ground. Warmth simmered out from that sacred palace. When the bubbles scattered, I saw the golden throne. Yellow shone around the King like a halo. In his eyes was the first light from billions of years ago. He sat down, lifted his sceptre and said, ‘You are my daughter; today I have become your Father.’
For a millennium, I breathed freely beneath the vault. I jumped with jellyfish, raced black marlins, and whistled with the dolphins. My blissful life was governed by one rule: do not ascend to the crack in the vault. Oxygen leaks into the chasm, allowing exiled life to speak into Paradise. These feathery creatures would tempt me to the surface, where the air suffocates eternal breath.
*
I am woken by the crash of waves against the shoreline. Oxygen grates my throat. A coil has been tied around my larynx. I am used to the sting; it has been there for a million years. I roll over, dragged to the ground by gravity.
The southern gale rattles the shutters as a chill seeps through the window. I rise and watch the grass being beaten by the wind. The frost has shaved away most of the foliage. The flora that remains on the island is only cushion plants, stringy tufts and tangled bittercress. Everything alive reaches for the water but is attacked by relentless, oxygenated blows.
Away from my cottage, across the tundra plain is the ocean. I see the gaping grey from my window, untamed and unwearied by the savage sky.
Salty droplets drip down the glass: memories of what I have lost. Water rises within me and fills my eyes. But I rub them dry. I am no longer a creature of water.
Knock. Knock.
I tiptoe through the house, scared to wake my feathered father. When I open the door, a seven-foot penguin towers over me. Its eyes are ablaze with antiquity.
‘Who are you?’
Its beak opens wide, releasing the odour of deep-sea creatures. Following the breath is a sound unnatural for a penguin: the voice of a man:
‘I am Engill, an Agent of the Water. A millennia ago, you chose to sever yourself from the ocean and strip your breath of its eternal inheritance. Since then, you have suffered greatly where the skin of the earth is peeled by talons. I am commissioned by the King of the Ocean to bring you home through the vault beneath the sea. There, the King will pierce your throat with the magic nail of Yeshua and redeem your broken breath.’
‘But how can this be?’ I lower my voice, anxious to keep my father from hearing our conversation. ‘Since I rose to the surface, I have been unable to breathe underwater. I have tried to return home but found my efforts were in vain. How will I ever make it far enough to reach the secret vault?’
‘You will share my breath.’
I stare doubtfully at Engill. I have watched penguins dive into the depths before. They rise again after, at most, thirty minutes.
But Engill reads my thoughts. ‘Child, I am no ordinary penguin. I am a Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, created by the King to travel and report between the surface and the underworld. I can hold my breath for four hours. By giving you half my breath, we should make it to the vault in time.’
I agree to Engill’s plan. I follow him through the mutton-bird poa, away from my cottage, not daring to look back and see if the hooked beak leaning against the window has stirred.
Home is ahead. A limitless realm flooded with creatures on the margins of my imaginings. As I wobble closer to the water, it becomes sentient; it knows me, curling and bubbling for my enjoyment. At last, a wave rises, forming a wall before crashing. Engill beckons me forward.
‘Now it is time to receive my breath.’
The penguin takes my shoulders with his flippers and breathes into my mouth. Salt twirls down my throat, tickling my larynx. Then, a strength like bull kelp winds around my lungs. I am ready for the deep sea.
I latch onto Engill, burying my head into his fur as he pulls me under. The wail of the wind is silenced. We are entirely submerged.
As water consumes my senses…
curling around and caressing my head…
an ancient memory presses to the surface…
of hands gliding through aquatic air…
they look like mine, and yet, in every way…
they are entirely different…
*
I float to my true Father. All the warmth in the world emanates from his arms. They stretch out to me. I accept them, laughing in the security of his embrace.
‘What are you doing today, my daughter?’
‘I am going to explore.’
High above me, I watch a penguin dive through the crack in the vault. Father’s eyes sparkle with a gentle yet melancholy knowing.
‘Remember my command to you, my daughter,’ he says. ‘Be careful of rising too high and wedging your head within the vault. Only death and despair reside in the world above.’
‘I know, Father.’
The sky is plush and plink. I bounce upon pillows, tickled by tentacles. I giggle, knowing the jellyfish would never sting me. I rise higher, and higher, until I can no longer see Father’s palace. The water darkens. A chill slides under my skin. I look above. The blue gives way to a grey ceiling. The vault. I hear the humming of the same penguin I spied earlier, its webbed feet disappearing back through the chasm.
I am too high.
Before I can swim down, a stranger’s voice calls to me from the vault:
‘Come here…’
‘Who is there?’
‘I am an old friend of your Father…’
As I listen, I rise to the ceiling. My head wedges within the crack. I feel the cool press of a hooked beak.
*
I cringe into Engill’s fur, recalling how the Phorusrhacidae, the ancient terror bird, tempted me from my Father’s kingdom.
He told me that, rather than killing me, the surface would grant me true knowledge. But Father was trying to keep it from me to maintain me as his subject forever. Therefore, once I received wisdom from the surface, I could return to depths and become equal with the King. Really, I would become closer to Father than ever.
But when I thrust my head out of the waters, I discovered my folly. The vertebrate laughed and dragged me onto the jagged rocks by its talons. My scales were shorn by the wind, and my body tore open. In my injury I cried out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The only response was a groan leaping out of the waves and smacking onto the rocks. I crawled away from the water, salt stinging my gaping wounds.
At last, I screeched to my betrayer, ‘Who are you, and why did you trick me?’
‘I am Vulturis, the greatest enemy of your Father. Before your creation, he had appointed me as Agent of the Water. But he withheld from me my greatest desire: power. I planned a revolt against him. So, I was exiled from his presence, cursed to be a citizen of the earth and sky. But now, I will have my revenge. I have cursed his daughter to suffer the same punishment as I.’
‘Get it over with then,’ I screamed. ‘Kill me!’
‘Oh, but that would be too easy. The King will suffer because you suffer. You will become my daughter, and I will take you under my wing. Over the ages, eternity will pour from you like water. And my revenge will be complete.’
Engill and I reach the abyssal layer of the Ocean. In the darkness, bioluminescent fish slide past us. Their stringy teeth and glowing rods appear and then disappear in the dark. I pound Engill with my palm. He stops his course. I signal to him the presence I feel, the presence of Vulturis.
Thwack.
A heavy wing smacks my leg. Engill dives faster, sensing the collision.
Crunch.
A talon clutches my foot. It digs into my talus bone.
Thrash.
I let Engill go to hit Vulturis away. He relents his attack. But, in the darkness, I feel him smile. All alone, he has me where he wants.
Smack.
I am spinning. In the chaos, I forget where I am. I open my mouth to breathe, and rediscover water. Engill’s breath escapes my lungs and floats to the surface.
My skull hits a rock, and a pair of flippers pulls me into a crevasse. Engill. He holds me tight as we wait for the presence of Vulturis to pass. Finally, we are safe. But that is when it happens: the rumbles before an eruption in my chest. With the bull kelp unwound, I am nearly drowning.
Not far below us, I see a sliver of pale blue: the crack in the vault to Paradise. But I know I cannot make it. As long as Vulturis, my false father, follows me from the land to the sea, I will never be able to make it. Sharing the penguin’s breath was never going to be enough.
We rise to the surface, wearied by the taste of blood. Engill waddles onto the shore, shaking his head in despair. ‘I should have known,’ he repeats to himself. ‘I should have known.’
I lie on the sand, reminded of the first time I was beached. Once more, eternity drains from my lungs like water. I hear feathers on the wind and the cackle of Vulturis. But I refuse to look up. The gale rips into my open skin. Frost moves like mould across my back.
Finally, I have the strength to stand and question Engill about his mission.
‘I don’t understand. Surely Father, the Creator of all things, would have known that Vulturis would follow me into the ocean.’
The penguin turns to me with regret in his eyes. ‘Eve, I was never actually commissioned by your Father, the King. This was my own mission.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I wanted to bring you through the vault to stop the King from enacting his plan. Eve, your Father is planning to rise to the surface to save you. He will bring with him the nail of Yeshua and redeem your eternal breath.’
‘But Vulturis will kill him.’
‘I know.’
‘You have to stop him.’
‘I already tried. He is undeterrable. I cannot understand it. The King has many other children, why would he sacrifice himself for you, the one who left him?’
I look out onto the ocean. The waters gurgle and murmur with expectation. Vulturis continues to circle the sky above. But the waters are unthreatened.
To my surprise, a glowing, white bird leaps out of a crashing wave.
Its wings span at least five metres, dwarfing Vulturis. My torturer spies the new bird and flees in terror. Vulturis is chased until he cowers inside the cottage, silhouette shaking behind the window.
The herald swoops down to me and Engill, brushing our skin and leaving golden flecks on our shoulders. It rises again in the sky.
We listen in awe to the bird’s song of foreshadowed victory.
Liberty Walker is a Sydney-based writer with a passion for interweaving allegory with fantasy and using nature as a metaphor for spiritual growth. Whether her characters are struggling through the subantarctic wilderness or diving deep into ocean trenches, Liberty’s writing can be encapsulated in one central theme: hope.
