The Island of the World by Michael O'Brien

Author:Michael O'Brien [O'Brien, Michael D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781586172169
Google: -kUGaAEACAAJ
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2007-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

THE WALKER OF THE WORLD

21

The singing wakes him.

He forces his eyes to open, then closes them immediately, for they are encrusted with salt, and stinging. All his flesh is burning from the seawater. Still, he feels warmer, and he opens his eyes again.

It may be, after all, that he has come only to the borderlands of paradise, for a little girl is approaching along the shore, singing to herself, dabbling a stick in the water. An orange cat strolls a few paces behind her, its tail pointing straight up. It does not like to get its paws wet, but it is willing to endure it when a dead minnow is spotted in the surf that washes onto the beach of white stones.

The girl is about five or six years old. She is wearing rubber boots and a heavy sweater. Her dress is bluer than the sky. She is blue upon blue. He knows this color, its meaning is returning after all these years. She is the essence of blue—that shade halfway between water and sky on bright days.

“Josipa!” he croaks.

The cat hears him and turns its head to stare suspiciously at the creature lying in hummocks of grass between a tumble of rocks at the base of the hill. He rises unsteadily on one elbow but can do no more than this. In this shelter, there is no wind, and the newly risen sun is cresting the mountains. His scraps of clothing are dry. The bura has declined to fitful gusts, no longer fierce but still capricious, winnowing westward over a rippling light chop farther out, leaving a band of near-calm by the shore. Where it strikes the sea, there is no spume on the whitecaps, no sea foam. In the distance lies the naked island, shining brilliantly in the morning light.

“Josipa!” he croaks again. The cat meows and saunters over to investigate. The girl does not hear because she is standing with the toes of her boots in the lip of surf, laughing and singing to something splashing offshore.

Dupin, dupin, dupin,

play with me, one, two, three,

dupin, dupin, dupin . . .

“Josipa!” he cries.

Startled, she turns and stares at the hill, searching for the source of the voice. She is not Josipa. Now she sees the creature in the rocks and gives a little cry of alarm, turns on her heels, and trots away along the beach.

In the water, three fins cut the waves as they drive out into deeper water and plunge beneath.

He closes his eyes and falls back onto the grass, unable to move.

Later, a man’s voice:

“No, no, the dupin cannot turn themselves into people. You imagined it—they and the man are your pretends, no? See, there’s not a soul to be seen. Isn’t this where you say you found him?”

“I can’t remember, Tata.”

“Besides, the dobri dupin swim only far out. Never have I seen one here, nor anyplace else along this shore.”

“But I saw them—one-two-three.”

“O Jelena, Jelena, what a girl you are! Was the man you saw one of the three?”

“No, he was another.

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