Excerpt
The narrow metal gangway wobbled though I disembarked the ship alone, or perhaps my legs had jellied after five weeks at sea and it was I who wobbled. My rucksack dug into my shoulders, hastily packed in the final hours on board. The heft should mean I hadn't left anything behind.
The dove-grey morning dawned cloudy, misting over the green-brown tangle of young mangroves, the day already heavy with the promise of equatorial heat. Unseen birds twittered, warning each other of my presence. The last time my great-grandmother – my ah-zho – made it back here, the city of her childhood had not yet ceded a third of its land to the rising river. What would she have thought if she'd come back now?
My palms slipped on the dew-coated safety railing. I paused, steadied myself. If only I could lend my body to her long-departed spirit so she could see this, hear this. We had no record of her return after her parents died – and now, decades after her own passing, we'd never find out.
The revelation sliced deep into my gut, a pain with no name.
Mild salt scent from the estuary mingled with root-sweet of damp earth, giving birth to dark green flora. Curiously, a sharp note of fragrant spice sang in the air – food being cooked, somewhere nearby. Cumin? No, much more complex, a whole chorus of aroma. My empty stomach rumbled, a gaping cavern. I hadn't eaten since – since when?
"Walk straight down," Carlos had said a mere two hours ago, white sailor's uniform still unbuttoned, billowing around his muscled body in the dreamy half-light of his cabin. We'd foregone much of last night's sleep. Words went unsaid, but we both knew: once the ship docked, our pleasant little arrangement would be over.
He'd leaned down, planted a chaste peck on my lips. "There's a good laksa stall in the middle of the port – if you need an early breakfast."
Throughout the past five weeks, he'd been the one to make sure I'd adjusted well to life on board, that I ate regularly given the multiple time zone changes, or that I had ample anti-nausea meds.
"Aster." His voice, low, quiet.
"Yes?"
His hand warmed my cheek. "I'll find you in town later when we're done here."
I didn't make him promise then, and now it nagged at me: should I have? He'd be gone the next sea day and I'd rather not know how I might feel. Better to focus on what I came to do: to understand what this place had been like, seen through Ah-Zho's memories, using her memoir as my guide. A relationship would be a distraction, a needless ephemerality.
Brackish water lapped under the metal planks, my unsteady steps rang too loud. I grasped the safety railing and shoved one uncertain foot in front of the other, grateful for the weight of my pack to keep me grounded. It didn't make the dizziness go away but at least I could walk reasonably straight. This must be how a toddler feels, walking for the first time.
The gangway stretched a long way down until it met a wide, wooden pier, flanked by tight clusters of mangroves. I turned and squinted at the ship, its bloated white body a foreign beast, an unnatural assault on this landscape of deep green. At this distance, the passenger door I'd exited seemed impossibly small. A floating concrete limb cut through the water on the far side of the ship, connecting sea transport to land; several automated cranes stood ready to unload the containers stacked-up within the ship's cargo hold. Further beyond, smaller crafts harboured in the small quay.
It had been easy to forget that I'd hitched a ride on a cargo ship to get here, to this island, home to my great-grandmother, my ancestors. No planes flew here any more, but occasional ammonia-powered ships carried cargo, and sometimes someone like me who needed to get here from the other side of the planet.
I indulged in a smile. Over the last five weeks, Carlos certainly made me forget.
Sudden panic gripped me. Shaking the rucksack off my back, I rummaged through rolled up clothing and ephemera, until my relieved fingers found a reassuring rectangular form – the only remaining copy of Ah-Zho's memoir.
I opened to a page, ran my fingers down the fading print.
This. This, I must not forget.
