Chapter Six - The Beach
Water. All I saw. All I heard. All I smelled. All I felt. All I tasted. It filled my mouth, my nostrils, my ears. If not for the fact that I knew I still had a mouth, nostrils and ears, I would have sworn I’d died and been reincarnated as water.
I surfaced and spat out some water, then tried to orient myself to swim. The current was almost stronger here than it had been when I’d jumped off the cliff. I looked around and tried to find Sari, but she wasn’t anywhere near me. I tried to swim again, but it was difficult. It was like the water was… Guiding me. I stopped trying to swim and concentrated solely on keeping my head above water, and it was almost as if the current slowed.
No, it wasn’t my imagination, the current had slowed. I was able to wade through the water now, and made my way toward what looked like the beach. It was deserted, but I needed land. I made it to the beach, crawled out of the water and collapsed. Every part of me ached.
I stared up at the sun above me, and watched as it arched across the sky. The moon replaced it, then there was someone standing over me.
“Sari!” I coughed out, my mouth drier than it should have been, considering I’d crawled out of the ocean. I grabbed at her, and then realized it wasn’t Sari at all, it was a completely different girl, somewhat taller, with scruffy green hair.
“What are you sorry about?” the girl asked.
I let go of her and backed away. “No,” I said, feeling like sand was falling out of my mouth. “Sari is my friend, we jumped into the ocean to get away from people trying to kill us. Is she around here?”
The girl shook her head. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Who are… Who are you?”
She shook her head again. “I don’t really have a name. I live here, I grew up here.”
“Here?” I looked around at the beach. It seemed to go on as far as the eye could see. “There’s nothing here.”
She nodded. “I know. It gets pretty lonely here. I don’t get to talk to anybody.” She rubbed at her arm. “How long are you gonna stay here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see any way to go. And Sari might wash up here, like I did. I don’t want to leave her.”
“You like her?”
Suddenly, I felt slightly embarrassed. “Not… Not in the romantic sense, if ya get what I mean.”
“Do you hate her?”
“What? No. What? She’s my friend. She’s looking to kill the white dragon, and I want to do the same.”
“What’s the white dragon?”
“You’ve never heard of the white dragon?”
She shook her head. “I’ve lived here my whole life, surviving on salt water and dead fish.”
I sighed. This wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. A sheltered life didn’t even begin to explain this girl. I sat down on the beach and looked out at the ocean. “So you’ve never met anyone who mentioned the white dragon?”
She shook her head again. “No. I haven’t seen anybody in a few years. Nobody comes to the beach anymore.”
“How do you stand it?”
She sat down beside me and rested her head on my shoulder. It felt weird, but not entirely unpleasant. “I always knew somebody would show up again. So I’ve just kept waiting.” She put her arm around my waist. “I’m glad I was right.”
I had gone at least seven miles along the beach, and it didn’t seem to end. Sari was nowhere to be found, but I had so much more of the beach to travel, I could only hope I found her before she decided to leave without me. The beach seemed unnatural, like there was someone beside me at all times, despite the fact that the girl had fallen asleep a little while ago.
I was starting to get weak. I fell forward, then rolled over onto my back. The night sky was clear enough to see most of the constellations. It looked peaceful, quiet. I heard the ocean crashing into the beach, and I almost wanted to fall asleep. I felt my eyelids slowly closing, and relief began to wash over me.
I forced myself to open my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. Had to find Sari. I threw her into the water while she was barely conscious, if she died, it’d be on me. I got back to my feet and continued on my path toward the opposite end of the beach. The place had to end somewhere.
I continued to walk, and walk, and walk. For hours, I walked, and still I found nothing. No sign of anyone or anything, not even a shack somewhere. The only things on the beach were me and the girl who claimed she lived here. I turned around and made my way back to where I’d come from. Maybe if the beach didn’t end one direction, it would end the other.
“Where are you going?” the girl asked. When had she come up behind me? I’d never heard or seen her. I turned and saw she didn’t look happy, but actually looked concerned. “Weren’t you at least gonna say goodbye before you left?”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving. I’m looking for my friend, she should have washed up here by now.”
“Oh, you mean that Sari girl you were talking about? I know where she is.”
“You do? But before you said - “
She cut me off. “That was before. She washed up while you were sleeping before.” She giggled. “You don’t expect me to just spend time around you, do you?”
I sighed. It was no use asking her anything else, she’d just give me more vague answers. “Is she okay?”
The girl nodded. “She’s a little weak from all her wounds and can’t get up, but otherwise, she’s okay.”
Sari was groaning a little when the girl led me to her, obviously in some serious pain. At some point in time, the girl had set up a tent, with some small cot that looked like it had just been bought somewhere. “Why’d ya havta drop me like that?” she asked, then coughed. “Swimming doesn’t come easy to me when I'm in pure pain, y’know.”
“Actually, I didn’t drop you.” I sat down beside her. The other girl was busy picking up seashells on the beach. “How you doing?”
“I’m sore,” it was an obvious lie, but I was glad that she could at least pretend to be okay, “but that’s it. You?”
“I’ve had a splitting headache since I washed up, but that’s about it.” I sat down beside her. “Sorry about what happened in that town.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Cres. So, where we go now?”
“I’m not sure. We need to rest up, first, especially you. After that, maybe that girl can give us directions to the next town, or something.”
Sari sat up, winced, and then laid back down again. The current must have screwed her up worse than I thought. “Does she seem kinda odd to you?”
“She grew up here, she said. Doesn’t even have a name.”
“Huh? Yeah she does, her name’s Kalena.”
“She told me she didn’t have a name.”
Sari shrugged. “Well, she grew a name sometime between when you washed up and when I did.” She coughed a little. “It’s not like I named her, or anything. Maybe she heard it somewhere before we showed up and decided she liked it.”
I rubbed at my chin. The girl had had plenty of time to tell me she had a name now, and she still hadn’t. Something was just weird about her. I stood up and left the tent to find Kalena, wherever she was.
She was sitting at the edge of the beach, her legs in the water and her arms keeping her from falling back. The sun was starting to set on the horizon, and the water looked an almost mind-entrancing shade of orange. I walked over to her and sat down beside her, but I couldn’t tell if she even noticed me. Her eyes were closed, and she sounded like she was humming.
“Kalena?” I asked. She didn’t respond, which made me wonder if she even heard me in the first place. “Kalena?” I repeated, just a little louder.
“Shh.” She raised her index finger. “Can you hear it?”
“What?”
“The water.”
“It’s just water, it’s not a living creature.”
She looked at me as if she’d just been told the sun will never shine again. “How can you say that? Water grants life, Cres. If it weren’t for water, none of us would be here.”
“Yeah, I get that, but my point is that the only sound it makes is that of ocean hitting the - “ Why it hadn’t hit me sooner, I didn’t know. “I never told you my name.”
“Huh?”
“You just called me Cres, but I never told you that was my name. And Sari only said my name after you were out of the tent.”
Kalena looked nervous, frightened even. She stood up and backed away from me. “I… I’m sorry…” She turned and ran, faster than she should have been able to on the beach.
I stood and watched as she retreated into the horizon, then sighed. This was getting weirder than I wanted it to be. I turned back toward the sunset and saw that the sun had been completely replaced by a moon far larger than it should have appeared. That was when it hit me that it had been nightfall when Kalena told me Sari was here, and the sun was beginning to rise when we’d gotten to the tent.
Whatever was going on here, Kalena was the center of it.
“So what do you think is going on?” Sari asked as I checked the bandage on her leg. Kalena may have been a little strange, but at least she knew how to bandage a wound. “I’ve met magic users with potions that create illusions, y’know.”
I finished my inspection. “I imagine you stole said potions from said magic users?”
“No. That was how they got away from me without losing a single coin.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Right.” I stood up and walked over to the edge of the tent. “You didn’t tell her my name, did you?”
Sari shook her head. “No, I washed up, she brought me to this tent, wrapped my leg, told me her name and then said she was gonna go get someone. I didn’t know it’d be you.”
“I’ve never heard of an actual mind reader before, though I’ve heard stories. Maybe that’s what she is.”
“Be careful, if she is. We’re partners, y’know, so I don’t want you getting hurt or anything.”
I nodded. “Yeah, right.”
I wandered the length of the beach, hoping to find Kalena somewhere nearby. Just as I’d noticed before, there seemed to be no end to it, and that made me consider the possibility that this was all an illusion even more. Miles upon miles upon miles of beach, as far as the eye could see, and I didn’t think I saw anywhere near this much beach before I passed out in the water. Was Kalena doing this on purpose, or was something else going on?
I kept my blade ready, on the off chance that I’d have to fight someone or something. I didn’t want to hurt or scare Kalena, but if this wasn’t her doing and something worse was hiding somewhere, I needed to be on my guard.
I watched the sun pass again, just another day or night or whenever it really was. Had the time truly passed at all while I was here? It felt like I’d been here for days, but at the same time, I didn’t feel like I’d experienced full days here.
I heard something, I couldn’t quite tell what it was. I stopped and looked around, then listened for a moment. Crying? Was I hearing crying? “Kalena?” I called. If she was the one crying, then I could get answers. My hand drifted to the hilt of my sword. “Kalena, I need to talk to you.”
“Go away!” she shouted from wherever she was. I still couldn’t see her.
“Please, I need to know what’s going on here. How did you know my name?”
“I said leave!”
“Can we leave? Where even are we, Kalena?”
“This isn’t want I wanted…” she said, her angered tone replaced by depression. “I just wanted…”
I knelt down and closed my eyes. Maybe if she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d show herself. “What did you want?”
Something gripped my neck. I opened my eyes and saw Kalena, her eyes bloodshot and full of hate. Her hands were around my neck, but that wasn’t what it felt like, it felt like sand was grabbing me. I struggled to grab my sword, but something blocked me, something that felt like more sand. I struggled to take my eyes off her face, but I had to see what was stopping me from pulling out my sword. There was nothing there! I felt the sand, but there was nothing but air.
My vision was starting to double, and it was getting hard to breathe. I grabbed Kalena’s arms and tried to pull her off of me. Even her skin felt like sand, and I kept losing my grip on her. My eyes started to cloud over a little bit, everything blurred into pure white.
I had no concept of waking up, suddenly my eyes were open and I was sitting up. I just added it among the many weird things that were happening on this stupid beach and took in my surroundings. I was sitting in a cave that looked out on the beach, probably a quarter mile above it. I stood up and walked to the edge and looked down on the beach, but I recognized no landmarks.
There was a sound behind me, a fire. I turned around and saw Sari and Kalena, Sari asleep and Kalena just sitting there, looking depressed. Both of them were wrapped up in blankets, but Kalena was reaching out to the small campfire she had going. Sari looked like she’d been brought there and set down, then covered with the blanket.
I drew my blade and cautiously walked toward them. Kalena’s eyes flicked toward me, then returned to looking at the fire. “You’re not really holding that,” she said, a sombre tone to her voice.
“What?”
“You and Sari both already figured out that none of this is real, it’s not like it’s hard to figure out.”
I lifted the sword and looked at it in my hands. It felt real, it looked real, but according to her, I wasn’t holding it at all. That couldn’t be right, even if none of this was real.
“Your mind fills those details in,” she said, and that cemented my belief that she was a mind reader. “You know what holding your sword feels like, so your mind tells your hand that you feel your sword.”
“What am I actually holding?”
She stood up and drew the blanket tight around her. “Your dick, for all I care, it doesn’t really matter.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sighed. “Why are the cute ones so dumb? I’m not real, this cave isn’t real, the beach isn’t real.”
“So I’m hallucinating?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re experiencing this, but it’s not real. Same with Sari. You’re both laying on the real beach, completely unconscious, just like you have been for the last few hours.”
“Hours? That’s all this has been?”
“Time passes differently in your head than it does in my world.”
“And what is your world? Why is it nothing but a beach?”
“My world is all I know. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d never left the beach. I am the beach.”
Kalena slept against the cave wall. It was the first time I’d seen her sleep in the days - hours - that I’d been there. After dropping her bombshell, she’d sat down next to Sari and went right to sleep, leaving me alone with my thoughts - which I guess was all that this place really was anyway.
I held my hand out toward the fire. I felt warmth, real warmth. Could some mystical beach cause that? And if it could, how would we leave? Everything looked and felt real, so how would I know whether or not I’d left this weird beach world?
I stood up and walked over to the entrance to the cave. There were some natural steps leading from the cave to the beach, which made it easier to go back there. I wandered the sandy shore for some time, or no time, depending on which perspective I was thinking of at any given time. This place was weirder than it had any reason to be.
I found a rock on the ground, the first one I’d ever seen on the beach. I picked it up, felt its weight. It was only the size of a small fist, but it weighed significantly more. I turned it over in my hands, then positioned myself to throw it, but then I felt sand grip my hand.
“Don’t,” Kalena said, taking the rock from my hand and playing with it, almost as if it had no weight at all to her. Then again, considering she was supposedly the whole beach, that shouldn’t surprise me. Everything about this place surprised me, though. “Throw this out there, and I’ll never remember you.”
“What are you talking about?”
She touched my forehead. “You keep all your memories here.” She touched the rock. “I keep all of mine here.”
“That’s the only rock I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“That’s because I can choose what I want to keep and what I want to remain vague.” She waved her hand and the sand shot upward, taking the shape of an abnormally large sand castle, complete with giant yellow flag sticking out of the top of each tower. “Somebody used to live in one of these. I don’t know who, and if I did, the odds are good they haven’t been here recently.”
“They used to live in a sand castle?” I asked.
She scowled at me. “No, stupidhead. They used to live in a real castle, and that’s my point.” She waved her hand and the castle disintegrated, every grain of sand dropping to the ground in an instant. She waved her hand again after touching the rock, and the sand once again raised upward, this time in the form of my house. Unlike the sand castle, the house wasn’t just some poor construct that looked like it was made of sand. If I hadn’t seen it created myself, I’d think somebody transplanted my house to the beach. “If I didn’t have this rock, your house would just be sand in the shape of a house, like that castle was.”
I walked up to the house and touched it, felt it under my hand. “It feels real…”
Kalena walked up to me and put her own hand on the house. “Because you remember how it feels. It feels real to me, too, but only because youremember how it feels.” She held up the rock again.
“You mean all of my memories are in that rock?”
“Every last one. From the day you were born to the day the white dragon destroyed your home to just a few days ago when you met that girl.” Suddenly, Kalena morphed, into the spitting image of the girl from the drugstore. “Something in your mind connected her to another memory, but I can’t tell which one or why.”
“How do you do all this?”
She changed back to her ‘normal’ form, or at least the form that I was used to. “Near as I can remember, I was born at least seven centuries ago, from the memories of a young girl named Kalena.”
“So that name didn’t come from nowhere?”
She shook her head. “No, it can just take me awhile to remember it. She died here, on the beach, when her father beat her to death. As her body deteriorated over time, her soul sank deeper and deeper into the sand, and made me.” She sat down against the wall of my house. “All I remember is the pain, the horror that Kalena felt. I don’t remember her mother, or any bright parts of her life, and every time I try, it just makes the pain hurt more.”
I held out my hand for the rock, and she gave it to me. “Why is mine the only one here?”
“Because of your sister. Your memories of Circi are so pleasant, and so pure. They’re the happiest things you hold on to.”
I knelt down beside her. “And you want memories like that, too.”
“I do. It would make this place a little more bearable.” She slipped her hand through the sand. “There haven’t been people here in over a hundred years, all because of the reputation the beach… that I’ve garnered. If I remember you and Sari, then I won’t be alone anymore.”
I finally sat down. “Kalena, the only way you can have happy memories is if you try and make them yourself.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy for me. The only way I can meet people is by knocking them out and invading their minds. I can’t leave the beach when I am the beach.”
“You can’t make a physical form outside in the real world?”
“No. I’ve tried. Do you know how fast people run from a girl made of sand who looks like a long dead person?” She let out a dry, sad laugh. “Can you imagine how many memories would be here if people stumbled upon me the way you guys did?”
I leaned my head back against the house. “I understand, but at the same time, they’re just memories of people’s memories.”
She nodded. “I know. But when that’s all I can have, I’m not gonna complain.”
I had nothing to say to that. She was right. “I’m sorry,” was about the only words that my mouth could form.
“It’s not your fault.” She took the rock from me again. “When you guys are in here, in here,” she pointed at her head, “that helps me feel more like me instead of just the lonely girl on the beach.” She hugged the rock to her chest. “You two and all the people you know are my friends.” She looked at me. “And long after you die out there, you’ll be alive in here.”
“That’s kinda creepy.”
She giggled. “I said that to be creepy.”
I laughed now. She reminded me of Circi in a way. Maybe it was intentional, maybe she was using my memories of Circi to make me feel better. Either way, I didn’t care. I felt better, that was all that mattered.
“Your wounds should be healed by now,” Kalena said, helping Sari to her feet. “One of the people who happened upon the beach a couple centuries ago was a healer, and he passed his touch onto me when he died, so I’ve been healing you since you washed up.”
“Wow, that’s nice,” Sari said, with a slight sarcastic twinge to her voice, “I don’t suppose you put some gold in my bag, too?”
“When you wake up, go twenty paces straight ahead of the way you’re facing. Some pirates left that there long before I was born, and never came back to claim it.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Thanks, Kalena. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a little weird.”
She smiled at me. “I’m sorry for leading you on as long as I did. It’s been so long since I collected any memories that I forgot how long it took to do it.” She held out a piece of paper. “Here, take this. When you wake up, it’ll be in your bag.”
“What is it?”
“A letter, from me. I don’t want you to read it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Wait until a moment when you feel really down, and really defeated. If you guys are going up against that big dragon I saw in your memories, I bet you’ll feel that way at least once. No offense.”
“None taken,” Sari said, “we know it’s practically a suicide mission, but we’re still gonna kill that piece of shit.”
“I hope you do. I’ve seen what it did to Cres’s family, and it was horrible. And I saw what it did to yours, too.”
Sari looked slightly nervous. “Um… What else did you see?”
“I saw everything, but don’t worry. Cres has things he’s hiding from you, too.”
I wasn’t too sure I liked that Kalena knew our entire life stories, but she wasn’t lying. There were things I didn’t want to tell Sari, and the idea that there were things Sari didn’t want to tell me wasn’t a surprise.
Sari hugged Kalena, which surprised her as much as it did me. “You’ve got friends, Kalena, don’t worry. We’ll always be your friends.”
“Um… Thanks, Sari. That means more to me than you realize.”
“Just don’t forget us, y’know?”
“Never.”
I slipped the paper in my pocket and pulled Sari back. “Okay, Kalena, we’re ready to go.”
She nodded. “Don’t miss me too much, because I won’t have a reason to miss you. Hopefully, I’ll see you both again some day.”
“If we survive our mission, this’ll be our first stop,” I said, smiling at her.
“I’m gonna havta admit, it’ll be tough for me to realize that you’re the real you guys when that happens.”
Sari took Kalena’s hand. “I’m gonna do something now.” She touched Kalena’s arm at the joint, then traced down her arm and made a small circle in the palm of her hand, then capped it off with a poke. “That’s a sign of sisterhood in the Plains Tribe. You’ll know it’s the real us when I do this to you again, because your memories of us would know that’s the only reason I’ll have to do it.”
“Okay, I’ll remember that.”
“We’ll be back, Kalena,” I said, “I know we will.”
She smiled. “Okay, guys, you ready?”
“I am,” Sari said.
“Me too.”
“Then as soon as I’m done talking, you’re going to wake up in the real world - “
My eyes shot open, and I sat straight up in less than a second. Sari was already up, away from me a little ways, digging into the sand. “Hey! There is treasure here!”
I coughed out a slightly sand-filled laugh. I must have ended up with sand in my mouth at some point. “I think she’d know if there was treasure here.”
“I know, I’m just sayin’, is all.”
I stood and brushed sand off of me. It almost seemed as if the sand shifted when it hit the beach, like Kalena was accepting part of herself back. In a way, I guess that was true. I picked up my sword and walked past Sari, pulling her to her feet. She was almost like a kid in a candy store, counting all the gold she’d stuffed in her bag. I whispered, “Thank you, Kalena,” just before we left the beach.
And I just barely heard, “Thank you,” as a response.
