As if the ocean is where they’d taken the road to get to, the band of travelers stood and gazed out across the vast Pacific at a listless sunrise, at the end of the road.
Dahu, Hafay, Umav, Anu, Detlef and Sara all got out of the cars and stood at the edge of the road that led into the sea, speechless. And the resolute Pacific kept delivering wave after distant wave.
Having set out a bit earlier than Dahu and Anu and the others, Alice was now helping Atile’i slowly push his boat into the sea. Alice cocked her head and looked at Atile’i, wondering whether all of this had really happened or if it had been a figment of her imagination. Had she really spent the past while living with a youth who had come here across the Pacific on a floating island of garbage?
The sea was indistinct in the darkness, like a grainy old photograph. It was as if there was finally something to grasp hold of out there in the void. Alice sat in Atile’i’s boat. Staring out into the distance, they were both preoccupied. Time passed slowly, and Atile’i didn’t show any sign of rowing. It wasn’t until a flock of gulls flew past that Atile’i finally spoke. “Alice, can you pray for me?”
“Sure. But to whom should I pray?”
“Anyone. Kabang, or your god, or to the ocean.”
“Will my prayer make any difference?”
“Maybe not. The Sea Sage … my father says that you never know what will happen in the face of the sea, for the sea taketh away and the sea suddenly giveth another day. This is why we must pray.” Atile’i slipped into Wayo Wayoan halfway through, leaving Alice a bit in the dark as to what he was on about.
Dahu and the others sat down like there was a beach at the end of the road. They did not want to leave too soon, even though they were certain there was no going on to the old trail. Dahu was rambling on about the time he’d hiked it many years before. He talked and talked, his voice trailing off until not even he could hear it anymore. Umav kicked at the waves. Sara took samples of seawater. Detlef was recording the scene with his video camera. Anu just took off his clothes and jumped in for a swim.
Dahu noticed Hafay was wearing sandals today instead of boots, exposing her extra toes. He felt that each extra toe was like an adorable millet sprout.
Hafay started to sing. They all stopped what they were doing the moment they heard her voice. Even the sea seemed to cease slapping at the shore. All that remained in the world was her song.
First she sang a Pangcah ballad, then an air she’d composed herself, then an English folk anthem from many years before. This was a song she had learned from a CD that man had given her. She had memorized every verse of every song on those CDs, even though she had no idea what the lyrics meant.
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
This was a song from such a long time ago. But even Dahu, who had heard Hafay sing a lot of songs before, felt like Hafay’s voice replenished something inside his empty soul. Even Anu, who did not understand a word, felt like he was responsible for the sorrow in the song. Even Detlef, who had really been to the heart of a mountain, felt like something had been hollowed out and a cavern had appeared, a cavern so deep and vast it could never be reinforced. And even Umav, who was just a girl who did not yet know the ways of the world, felt that a hard rain was really going to fall.
Her red hair flying like a flag, Sara was stunned by Hafay’s voice. The raindrops in Hafay’s song seemed to shatter in the gale, making the rain seem much heavier than it actually was. Sara and Hafay exchanged a glance, and then Sara took over the lead, with Hafay singing harmony:
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’,
I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’,
I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Just then the Wayo Wayo islanders were waking up. They had the impression that last night’s wind had been particularly strong. As a matter of fact, the night wind on Wayo Wayo was always strong, but what the islanders did not know was that every night for the past several hundred years, Wayo Wayo had been losing a hand’s worth of surface area and moving north one ten-thousandth of the length of a sand worm. And that this morning, a silent flotilla was monitoring some remote area of the great ocean and lining up like a firing squad. Each crewman stood at his post, gazing toward the horizon. Before long a beam of light leapt up into the sky, flew level for several thousand kilometers, then dove. Just getting up, the Wayo Wayoans thought a massive shooting star had crashed into the sea.
The beam of light plunged beneath the waves and kept boring its way down into an abyssal trench. Never seen before by man, the trench was home to bizarre creatures who could have come from outer space. Suddenly, every creature in the entire ocean heard a deafening sound, like no sound that had ever been heard before, as if some mighty being were departing. A great gash opened up deep in the trench, and a shock wave was transmitted toward the two ends, raising a tsunami of unprecedented power. Of iron will, that wave pushed another piece of the Trash Vortex toward Wayo Wayo. In three minutes and thirty-two seconds, it would, like a gargantuan carpenter’s plane, peel away everything on the island, the living and the nonliving, into the sea.