The Waterfall
When we reached the end of the world on our sailboat-turned-houseboat, Mama said--shouting to be heard over the roar of the giant waterfall--that maybe we should turn around. All we could see were great clouds of mist, and through them, a smoky, velvety blackness that could have been the sky.
"I told you so!" my uncle shouted, jumping up and down. "I told you the water flowed right over the edge of the world!" My uncle was a realist, but his version of reality tended not to match most people's.
My oldest brother, on the other hand, was more of a dreamer. "Yes," he shouted back. "But where does the water go?" He stood on tiptoe right by the rail, trying to get a glimpse over the edge. "Can you see anything, Mayra?" he asked me, and I shook my head.
The boat's lone engine thrummed underfoot, working hard to keep us from being swept off the watery cliff. Occasionally something struck the side of our ship with a dull thud, bounced off, and went sliding over the edge of the waterfall. It was mostly trash from the civilized world we'd left behind: tree branches, plastic bags, spare parts, a shoe. Once I was sure I spotted a dead body, bloated and strangely pale, before it too drifted over the edge. I didn't point it out to my sisters--they were either too young or too squeamish and would have fussed about it for hours. Instead I pointed out the red plastic bucket, a child's toy, probably lost after a day of building sandcastles on the beach.
Papa steered us carefully away from the edge. When we were far enough that the force of the water lessened, we argued about what to do.
"We have to see what's next!" said my oldest brother. He was all for letting the waterfall pull us over. He reasoned that the water had to return to the world somehow, to fill up the rivers and lakes and oceans, so we should be able to get back when we wanted as well. All we had to do was follow the water.
"We don't have to decide yet," said another of my brothers. He wanted us to turn back. We had left behind a lovely island ages ago, our last glimpse of land. He thought we should return there and relax before we made any decision. There were tropical fruits and wild animals we had never heard of. We could learn more about that place, he suggested.
My sisters wanted to go all the way back. The oldest, wearing her long hair in a braid over her shoulder, was willing to stop at the island to stock up on fresh food, but she missed the comforts of civilization. She wanted new clothes, new activities, and new company. The twins, only seven, missed their school friends. They were bored silly on our boat. Even begging to be allowed to steer or help raise and lower the sails had lost its charm after a couple of weeks. Now they moped and whined to us and each other, asking the same questions over and over: "Where are we going? Are we there yet?"
I was torn. I desperately wanted to go on, but the roar of the water was so very daunting. I had the strangest feeling that over that edge would be fantastic wonders more strange and amazing than anything I'd ever imagined. But the falling water was a warning, saying, "Keep away! Danger!"
Our journey had already been dangerous. There were times we almost ran out of food and times we experienced violent storms. We argued with and fled from other water-worn sailors, probably pirates and fugitives. Then there were the fierce fights within our group. But our lives before the journey had been just as risky. My sister might ignore the facts, but the truth was that civilization wasn't really civilized anymore. Nobody could even explain why. Some people claimed it was a virus. Others said it was aliens, or an ancient prophecy, or some new kind of radiation. Lots of people blamed the government. One group even thought it was the earth itself, taking revenge.
My parents said it was just the ugly side of human nature, and that it had finally gained a life of its own.
When I was still going to school I read a quote by a man who survived another holocaust: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. It was about all the people who stood by silently and allowed a bunch of people to die. He was on the right track, I think, but there's more to it than indifference.
Fear.
Fear is the loudest voice; it drowns out everything else. Fear tells anger to strike and despair to hide. It says you're wrong, you're irrelevant, and you'll be next. The less power you have, the more power it has over you.
The chaos was worst in the big cities. My aunt was one of the early victims when she inexplicably joined a mob intent on destroying the police station. We never saw her again, but we could guess what happened. We moved to the outskirts of the city, but the fear and the madness followed us. No place was safe. It claimed my youngest brother, and we knew it was only a matter of time before it got the rest of us, too.
So my family, from my mother's father on down to my cousin's little puppy, boarded our MacGregor 65. The long white boat had been floating in the bay for years, sails furled, waiting for us to take it on a family trip across the sea. Instead, it would be taking us to what might be the end--or the beginning--of everything.
The day we left, it was raining.
"Nooo!" wailed my youngest sister that day, sitting stubbornly in the car. The twins wore matching yellow sundresses, and they didn't want to get wet. Mama gave me an exasperated look, clearly ordering me to do something about the twins. She had her hands full with Grandpa, whose legs couldn't cope with much moving around, and who complained about everything just to hear himself talk. Even though I was the middle child, I'd always been the best at handling the twins, and I was good at following directions. As long as I didn't have to make any big choices, I could do what needed to be done. Mama knew she could rely on me to help. So I found a big old umbrella and turned my sisters into imaginary princesses parading aboard their ship, with their faithful servant girl (me) keeping them dry. One of the twins dropped her worn plastic doll in a puddle before we reached the boat, and the little girls squealed loudly when the water splashed their legs. Soon they were giggling and stomping through puddles on purpose, their fear of getting wet forgotten.
We cast off while it was still raining, so there was less chance that anyone would see us and make trouble. Trouble usually stayed indoors during bad weather. We only had to go back once, when my cousin realized he had left his pocketknife in the now-abandoned car. He threatened to jump overboard and swim back to shore if we didn't turn around for it.
Eventually we were really on our way. We sailed out of the bay and into the choppy water of the unprotected ocean, and that's when I discovered the meaning of seasickness. My first couple of weeks on the boat were a hazy blur. I spent most of my time leaning over the rail, lying in bed, or being taunted by the twins, who chanted, "Mayra's turnin' green, Mayra's turnin' green!" anytime they came near me. And then one clear, sunny day, I simply wasn't sick anymore. I made my way out of the cabin among my family, noticing their darkened skin from weeks in the sun already, and my uncle told me I'd found my sea legs at last.
My uncle was a physicist who had once been a sailor, and it was his research into unexplained ocean phenomena that inspired us to take this trip. Most people dismissed my uncle as crazy, especially since his wild, uncombed hair and stain-flecked shirts gave him the stereotypical appearance of an absent-minded professor. Regardless of how scatterbrained he was, what Uncle Ruben thought he had discovered was our only chance to live a decent life with the world the way it was.
He explained it to us before we left.
"I've been all over the world in some ship or another," he said and looked at us significantly. We were all appropriately awed and impressed. "I've seen a great many things that shouldn't exist in the world the way we've ordered it, so somewhere along the line we've gone wrong. Strayed off the path, if you know what I mean." We didn't, but he continued anyway. "All those stories of sea monsters and giant floods--well, they were true when they happened, but the world has changed since then, and those things don't exist anymore. At least, they don't exist here anymore," and he had slapped the table for emphasis.
When he went on, it was in a much quieter voice. "The sea is a link to our past," he said. "It has been there since before our creation, and will be there long after we are gone. Out there where the water is oldest, things still exist that went extinct thousands--maybe millions--of years ago. The water, except for humanity's trash, has remained untouched for all these years. It is in the sea that we will find our salvation."
Whether or not Uncle Ruben really was crazy, my parents saw some kind of sense in his words. Perhaps we could escape our imminent destruction in uncharted waters, if any still existed. I had a vision of being adopted into a tribe of island natives and eating fish and tropical fruit for the rest of my life. At least it sounded better than being blown up unexpectedly by some attack in the so-called civilized world. I wasn't sorry to leave that world behind, but I was sad I couldn't do anything for the people we left behind. What difference could one person--or even one family--make?
We sailed for weeks, never seeing anything but the endless blue water and endless blue sky. We went ashore only on some tiny islands with few inhabitants and lots of sand, and then only to restock our food and water supplies. I thought the boredom of those weeks would never end. We played card games and made up songs. We read the same books and invented new endings. We all had chores, like cooking in the cramped galley, sweeping the hot deck, and checking over the lines, but it left plenty of time with nothing to do but stare out across the wide and unchanging expanse of water that stretched before us.
The only break in routine came when other ships crossed our paths, ships that contained the kinds of people we had most wanted to escape in the world we had left--the ones who only wanted to change us for the better. To make us see truth. Their truth--or else. When we encountered them we smiled and nodded and escaped as soon as we could, and then we sailed and stared into empty water once more.
And then everything changed.
Without ever setting a specific course we discovered the Last Island, the one my brother later wanted to go back to. When the sun rose that morning, we saw the island on the horizon. It looked different than the islands we had stopped at before--cleaner, clearer, somehow untouched. No buildings, not even stick huts, marred the crisp shoreline. The greens of the trees were more stunning than I had ever seen, and the turquoise water between our boat and the island glittered jewel-bright in the sun. When we arrived we understood why the place seemed so remarkable. There was not a single human being on the entire island except us.
In all the time we were there--and we stayed for weeks--we saw no sign of people. There were animals aplenty: strange, dazzlingly colored birds with loud, squawking voices; huge lizards with sharp teeth and long tails; and miniature monkeys with vivid yellow fur that would come right up to us and steal food. None of the animals were afraid of us--they just treated us like we had always been there. A family of monkeys even adopted my cousin and his puppy. The monkeys followed the pair everywhere, chasing each other around my cousin's shoulders and climbing onto the puppy's curly-haired back, chittering wildly at each other.
Gradually we relaxed in the island's embrace. Fear's voice quieted, having nothing to feed on, and I began noticing something else, maybe for the first time in my life--hope. Or possibility. Or maybe, quite simply, peace.
That's not to say everything was perfect. We're still human, after all, and we carry our grievances like a turtle wears her shell. But long spells of quiet in my mind gave me space to listen, to look around, and I saw the island for what it was: a holy place, a place out of legend, born somewhere in the space between stars and dreams.
The abundant fruit was sweet and juicy, and when we craved meat the stream was filled with leaping, wiggling fish. The stream water was pure and icy cold, and slid down our throats with an ease that made us shiver. The place was so beautiful it hurt. When I woke up every morning and saw that glory in front of me, my heart felt squeezed.
When I made up my mind to say something, the fear came slamming back into me, curving my spine and snatching my breath. I might be wrong. I might doom us.
"We shouldn't stay here," I whispered to my parents one morning. "It's not meant for us."
I was lucky my parents agreed, because I could say no more.
We gathered enough food to sustain us for several more weeks and then said goodbye to the friendly island animals. Out of respect for that hallowed place, we cleared away every sign that we had ever been there. We placed the branches we had used for a fire carefully back into the forested part of the island, scattering the wood among the trees. We left behind only our footprints, and even those will be washed away by the tide.
Sailing away from the Last Island was painful. Even the twins were quiet as we gazed at the disappearing perfection behind us. My fear diminished as we sailed away. It didn't let up entirely, but now I could hear around its edges. Maybe if more people had an opportunity to visit the island they would learn to hear things other than fear, as well. But the island wasn't for them, either, and I knew they would never find it.
Three days after the Last Island disappeared beyond the horizon, the sun stopped rising. It didn't set, either. In fact, we could no longer see the sun. The sky was perfectly clear, purply-blue and unmarred by clouds or stars. A soft glow lit everything as if from within. Even my family seemed to be slightly glowing. It was always twilight, or perhaps it was always dawn. The water rippled as the boat glided by, but the ripples stopped before they passed out of sight, and then the water was perfectly still.
We continued on in that strange stillness for a long time, not knowing if it was day or night except by the ticking of my Grandpa's old pocket watch, the only timepiece that still worked on board the boat. Everything else, like the sun, had stopped. We sailed onward, the little boat tirelessly pushing forward, or backward, into nothing. Nothing moved, nothing changed. It would have scared me before, but now I had seen the Last Island. Now it seemed natural to experience something so completely inexplicable. It made sense for it to not make sense, and I watched the stillness with a calm heart.
Finally, though, something did change, although we didn't realize it at first. The sound built so gradually that we didn't notice until we were shouting to be heard. Then we looked ahead and saw that the water stopped before it reached the horizon, or what had once been the horizon. The water rushed in a deafening roar over the edge of a giant waterfall.
We gathered at the prow, peering through the swirling mist cast into the sky by the waterfall. Grandpa grumbled about the damp, but it was a half-hearted complaint, born out of habit, and it died quickly. Even he stared in awe at what lay before us.
When Mama suggested that we turn around, I felt something inside me rebel. "We can't go back!" I protested. Mama looked at me sharply, and I realized that I'd hardly voiced an opinion about anything in years. It wasn't my place. I had no power to make things happen, no way to overcome the fear that deafened my thoughts and froze my mind.
Or did I?
We argued for hours, watching the mist create patterns and pictures over the edge of the waterfall. Finally Papa and Mama, captains of our voyage, were ready to give us our choices.
Returning to the Last Island was not a possibility. It was too holy, my parents said. I didn't think it would matter if we tried to return--I doubted we could find the island again anyway. Instead we had three options. We could go back, tell the world what we'd seen, and let them convince us we hadn't seen it. We could turn away from the edge, keep searching, and maybe find another place to live out our lives. Or we could go on, over the edge--risk it all, see what came next, and perhaps never go back.
I stood up, surprising them, surprising myself. "We can't go back." Fear surged up my throat and bubbled around my heart, but I shut the door on it. My voice was strong. "We should go over the edge."
They stared at me, eyes wide. I'd made my stand, but we were a family, and they all had votes to cast. Going over meant uncertainty. Going back meant returning to fear and madness. Going on, continuing to search, meant clinging to a forlorn hope that the world might have something left to offer.
I watched the waterfall as they debated. They knew as well as I that returning home wasn't a true choice. We could do nothing for the world we'd left behind except let it destroy us. Maybe if we kept searching we could find a cure, a magic word, or a forgotten god to fix everything. Or maybe all that was left was to save ourselves. Go on, or go over. The only certainty was that we couldn't stay there, floating at the edge of the great waterfall, at the edge of the world, soaked to the skin from the dancing mist.
"Eeny, meeney, miney, moe..." I chanted softly to myself, remembering the rhyme from a simpler time. The boat, its sails hanging limp in the damp air, drifted slowly toward the waterfall.
Nobody moved to stop it.
"I told you so!" my uncle shouted, jumping up and down. "I told you the water flowed right over the edge of the world!" My uncle was a realist, but his version of reality tended not to match most people's.
My oldest brother, on the other hand, was more of a dreamer. "Yes," he shouted back. "But where does the water go?" He stood on tiptoe right by the rail, trying to get a glimpse over the edge. "Can you see anything, Mayra?" he asked me, and I shook my head.
The boat's lone engine thrummed underfoot, working hard to keep us from being swept off the watery cliff. Occasionally something struck the side of our ship with a dull thud, bounced off, and went sliding over the edge of the waterfall. It was mostly trash from the civilized world we'd left behind: tree branches, plastic bags, spare parts, a shoe. Once I was sure I spotted a dead body, bloated and strangely pale, before it too drifted over the edge. I didn't point it out to my sisters--they were either too young or too squeamish and would have fussed about it for hours. Instead I pointed out the red plastic bucket, a child's toy, probably lost after a day of building sandcastles on the beach.
Papa steered us carefully away from the edge. When we were far enough that the force of the water lessened, we argued about what to do.
"We have to see what's next!" said my oldest brother. He was all for letting the waterfall pull us over. He reasoned that the water had to return to the world somehow, to fill up the rivers and lakes and oceans, so we should be able to get back when we wanted as well. All we had to do was follow the water.
"We don't have to decide yet," said another of my brothers. He wanted us to turn back. We had left behind a lovely island ages ago, our last glimpse of land. He thought we should return there and relax before we made any decision. There were tropical fruits and wild animals we had never heard of. We could learn more about that place, he suggested.
My sisters wanted to go all the way back. The oldest, wearing her long hair in a braid over her shoulder, was willing to stop at the island to stock up on fresh food, but she missed the comforts of civilization. She wanted new clothes, new activities, and new company. The twins, only seven, missed their school friends. They were bored silly on our boat. Even begging to be allowed to steer or help raise and lower the sails had lost its charm after a couple of weeks. Now they moped and whined to us and each other, asking the same questions over and over: "Where are we going? Are we there yet?"
I was torn. I desperately wanted to go on, but the roar of the water was so very daunting. I had the strangest feeling that over that edge would be fantastic wonders more strange and amazing than anything I'd ever imagined. But the falling water was a warning, saying, "Keep away! Danger!"
Our journey had already been dangerous. There were times we almost ran out of food and times we experienced violent storms. We argued with and fled from other water-worn sailors, probably pirates and fugitives. Then there were the fierce fights within our group. But our lives before the journey had been just as risky. My sister might ignore the facts, but the truth was that civilization wasn't really civilized anymore. Nobody could even explain why. Some people claimed it was a virus. Others said it was aliens, or an ancient prophecy, or some new kind of radiation. Lots of people blamed the government. One group even thought it was the earth itself, taking revenge.
My parents said it was just the ugly side of human nature, and that it had finally gained a life of its own.
When I was still going to school I read a quote by a man who survived another holocaust: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. It was about all the people who stood by silently and allowed a bunch of people to die. He was on the right track, I think, but there's more to it than indifference.
Fear.
Fear is the loudest voice; it drowns out everything else. Fear tells anger to strike and despair to hide. It says you're wrong, you're irrelevant, and you'll be next. The less power you have, the more power it has over you.
The chaos was worst in the big cities. My aunt was one of the early victims when she inexplicably joined a mob intent on destroying the police station. We never saw her again, but we could guess what happened. We moved to the outskirts of the city, but the fear and the madness followed us. No place was safe. It claimed my youngest brother, and we knew it was only a matter of time before it got the rest of us, too.
So my family, from my mother's father on down to my cousin's little puppy, boarded our MacGregor 65. The long white boat had been floating in the bay for years, sails furled, waiting for us to take it on a family trip across the sea. Instead, it would be taking us to what might be the end--or the beginning--of everything.
The day we left, it was raining.
"Nooo!" wailed my youngest sister that day, sitting stubbornly in the car. The twins wore matching yellow sundresses, and they didn't want to get wet. Mama gave me an exasperated look, clearly ordering me to do something about the twins. She had her hands full with Grandpa, whose legs couldn't cope with much moving around, and who complained about everything just to hear himself talk. Even though I was the middle child, I'd always been the best at handling the twins, and I was good at following directions. As long as I didn't have to make any big choices, I could do what needed to be done. Mama knew she could rely on me to help. So I found a big old umbrella and turned my sisters into imaginary princesses parading aboard their ship, with their faithful servant girl (me) keeping them dry. One of the twins dropped her worn plastic doll in a puddle before we reached the boat, and the little girls squealed loudly when the water splashed their legs. Soon they were giggling and stomping through puddles on purpose, their fear of getting wet forgotten.
We cast off while it was still raining, so there was less chance that anyone would see us and make trouble. Trouble usually stayed indoors during bad weather. We only had to go back once, when my cousin realized he had left his pocketknife in the now-abandoned car. He threatened to jump overboard and swim back to shore if we didn't turn around for it.
Eventually we were really on our way. We sailed out of the bay and into the choppy water of the unprotected ocean, and that's when I discovered the meaning of seasickness. My first couple of weeks on the boat were a hazy blur. I spent most of my time leaning over the rail, lying in bed, or being taunted by the twins, who chanted, "Mayra's turnin' green, Mayra's turnin' green!" anytime they came near me. And then one clear, sunny day, I simply wasn't sick anymore. I made my way out of the cabin among my family, noticing their darkened skin from weeks in the sun already, and my uncle told me I'd found my sea legs at last.
My uncle was a physicist who had once been a sailor, and it was his research into unexplained ocean phenomena that inspired us to take this trip. Most people dismissed my uncle as crazy, especially since his wild, uncombed hair and stain-flecked shirts gave him the stereotypical appearance of an absent-minded professor. Regardless of how scatterbrained he was, what Uncle Ruben thought he had discovered was our only chance to live a decent life with the world the way it was.
He explained it to us before we left.
"I've been all over the world in some ship or another," he said and looked at us significantly. We were all appropriately awed and impressed. "I've seen a great many things that shouldn't exist in the world the way we've ordered it, so somewhere along the line we've gone wrong. Strayed off the path, if you know what I mean." We didn't, but he continued anyway. "All those stories of sea monsters and giant floods--well, they were true when they happened, but the world has changed since then, and those things don't exist anymore. At least, they don't exist here anymore," and he had slapped the table for emphasis.
When he went on, it was in a much quieter voice. "The sea is a link to our past," he said. "It has been there since before our creation, and will be there long after we are gone. Out there where the water is oldest, things still exist that went extinct thousands--maybe millions--of years ago. The water, except for humanity's trash, has remained untouched for all these years. It is in the sea that we will find our salvation."
Whether or not Uncle Ruben really was crazy, my parents saw some kind of sense in his words. Perhaps we could escape our imminent destruction in uncharted waters, if any still existed. I had a vision of being adopted into a tribe of island natives and eating fish and tropical fruit for the rest of my life. At least it sounded better than being blown up unexpectedly by some attack in the so-called civilized world. I wasn't sorry to leave that world behind, but I was sad I couldn't do anything for the people we left behind. What difference could one person--or even one family--make?
We sailed for weeks, never seeing anything but the endless blue water and endless blue sky. We went ashore only on some tiny islands with few inhabitants and lots of sand, and then only to restock our food and water supplies. I thought the boredom of those weeks would never end. We played card games and made up songs. We read the same books and invented new endings. We all had chores, like cooking in the cramped galley, sweeping the hot deck, and checking over the lines, but it left plenty of time with nothing to do but stare out across the wide and unchanging expanse of water that stretched before us.
The only break in routine came when other ships crossed our paths, ships that contained the kinds of people we had most wanted to escape in the world we had left--the ones who only wanted to change us for the better. To make us see truth. Their truth--or else. When we encountered them we smiled and nodded and escaped as soon as we could, and then we sailed and stared into empty water once more.
And then everything changed.
Without ever setting a specific course we discovered the Last Island, the one my brother later wanted to go back to. When the sun rose that morning, we saw the island on the horizon. It looked different than the islands we had stopped at before--cleaner, clearer, somehow untouched. No buildings, not even stick huts, marred the crisp shoreline. The greens of the trees were more stunning than I had ever seen, and the turquoise water between our boat and the island glittered jewel-bright in the sun. When we arrived we understood why the place seemed so remarkable. There was not a single human being on the entire island except us.
In all the time we were there--and we stayed for weeks--we saw no sign of people. There were animals aplenty: strange, dazzlingly colored birds with loud, squawking voices; huge lizards with sharp teeth and long tails; and miniature monkeys with vivid yellow fur that would come right up to us and steal food. None of the animals were afraid of us--they just treated us like we had always been there. A family of monkeys even adopted my cousin and his puppy. The monkeys followed the pair everywhere, chasing each other around my cousin's shoulders and climbing onto the puppy's curly-haired back, chittering wildly at each other.
Gradually we relaxed in the island's embrace. Fear's voice quieted, having nothing to feed on, and I began noticing something else, maybe for the first time in my life--hope. Or possibility. Or maybe, quite simply, peace.
That's not to say everything was perfect. We're still human, after all, and we carry our grievances like a turtle wears her shell. But long spells of quiet in my mind gave me space to listen, to look around, and I saw the island for what it was: a holy place, a place out of legend, born somewhere in the space between stars and dreams.
The abundant fruit was sweet and juicy, and when we craved meat the stream was filled with leaping, wiggling fish. The stream water was pure and icy cold, and slid down our throats with an ease that made us shiver. The place was so beautiful it hurt. When I woke up every morning and saw that glory in front of me, my heart felt squeezed.
When I made up my mind to say something, the fear came slamming back into me, curving my spine and snatching my breath. I might be wrong. I might doom us.
"We shouldn't stay here," I whispered to my parents one morning. "It's not meant for us."
I was lucky my parents agreed, because I could say no more.
We gathered enough food to sustain us for several more weeks and then said goodbye to the friendly island animals. Out of respect for that hallowed place, we cleared away every sign that we had ever been there. We placed the branches we had used for a fire carefully back into the forested part of the island, scattering the wood among the trees. We left behind only our footprints, and even those will be washed away by the tide.
Sailing away from the Last Island was painful. Even the twins were quiet as we gazed at the disappearing perfection behind us. My fear diminished as we sailed away. It didn't let up entirely, but now I could hear around its edges. Maybe if more people had an opportunity to visit the island they would learn to hear things other than fear, as well. But the island wasn't for them, either, and I knew they would never find it.
Three days after the Last Island disappeared beyond the horizon, the sun stopped rising. It didn't set, either. In fact, we could no longer see the sun. The sky was perfectly clear, purply-blue and unmarred by clouds or stars. A soft glow lit everything as if from within. Even my family seemed to be slightly glowing. It was always twilight, or perhaps it was always dawn. The water rippled as the boat glided by, but the ripples stopped before they passed out of sight, and then the water was perfectly still.
We continued on in that strange stillness for a long time, not knowing if it was day or night except by the ticking of my Grandpa's old pocket watch, the only timepiece that still worked on board the boat. Everything else, like the sun, had stopped. We sailed onward, the little boat tirelessly pushing forward, or backward, into nothing. Nothing moved, nothing changed. It would have scared me before, but now I had seen the Last Island. Now it seemed natural to experience something so completely inexplicable. It made sense for it to not make sense, and I watched the stillness with a calm heart.
Finally, though, something did change, although we didn't realize it at first. The sound built so gradually that we didn't notice until we were shouting to be heard. Then we looked ahead and saw that the water stopped before it reached the horizon, or what had once been the horizon. The water rushed in a deafening roar over the edge of a giant waterfall.
We gathered at the prow, peering through the swirling mist cast into the sky by the waterfall. Grandpa grumbled about the damp, but it was a half-hearted complaint, born out of habit, and it died quickly. Even he stared in awe at what lay before us.
When Mama suggested that we turn around, I felt something inside me rebel. "We can't go back!" I protested. Mama looked at me sharply, and I realized that I'd hardly voiced an opinion about anything in years. It wasn't my place. I had no power to make things happen, no way to overcome the fear that deafened my thoughts and froze my mind.
Or did I?
We argued for hours, watching the mist create patterns and pictures over the edge of the waterfall. Finally Papa and Mama, captains of our voyage, were ready to give us our choices.
Returning to the Last Island was not a possibility. It was too holy, my parents said. I didn't think it would matter if we tried to return--I doubted we could find the island again anyway. Instead we had three options. We could go back, tell the world what we'd seen, and let them convince us we hadn't seen it. We could turn away from the edge, keep searching, and maybe find another place to live out our lives. Or we could go on, over the edge--risk it all, see what came next, and perhaps never go back.
I stood up, surprising them, surprising myself. "We can't go back." Fear surged up my throat and bubbled around my heart, but I shut the door on it. My voice was strong. "We should go over the edge."
They stared at me, eyes wide. I'd made my stand, but we were a family, and they all had votes to cast. Going over meant uncertainty. Going back meant returning to fear and madness. Going on, continuing to search, meant clinging to a forlorn hope that the world might have something left to offer.
I watched the waterfall as they debated. They knew as well as I that returning home wasn't a true choice. We could do nothing for the world we'd left behind except let it destroy us. Maybe if we kept searching we could find a cure, a magic word, or a forgotten god to fix everything. Or maybe all that was left was to save ourselves. Go on, or go over. The only certainty was that we couldn't stay there, floating at the edge of the great waterfall, at the edge of the world, soaked to the skin from the dancing mist.
"Eeny, meeney, miney, moe..." I chanted softly to myself, remembering the rhyme from a simpler time. The boat, its sails hanging limp in the damp air, drifted slowly toward the waterfall.
Nobody moved to stop it.
