Island

My family was an odd one, to be sure. Our parents were long gone, so far away that no one left in the broken town across the hill even remembered their names. I had three sisters and the whole village raised us. We moved from house to house whenever we chose but we were the closest to Old Mother Bird. Blood related to no one, she had washed onto the island years ago and rather than the village adopting her, it seemed that she adopted it.

This was a patchwork, haphazard sort of childhood, but it was ours.

Everyone on the island had little enough to call their own. For myself, I had only a single piece of paper with my name scrawled across the bottom.

Ganymede.

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Old Mother told me that my name comes from Greek myth, the tale of Aquarius. Ganymede was loved by the King of the Gods and pulled up into the heaves to bide there, forever.

In turns I thought that this was a blessing, to be pulled out of mediocrity, and a curse, to spend eternity at the side of a god that over time may forget that you are even there. Did Ganymede always bear cupfuls of water to the gods, or were they sometimes filled with tears?

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We lived on the beach many nights, my sisters and I. We imagined the pull of the sea, going out into the dark, washing under, to another world in the deep. One full of mermaids and sea beasts. We played there, collecting shells and building sculptures in the sand by moonlight.

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My oldest sister had a hole in her heart that nothing could cure. She would look anywhere to try to patch it. When she was seventeen, she left us.

A young man came to our island. He spoke with big words and even bigger ideas. Civilization, he said, as if it were a good thing. The world moving on, he said, but I knew that the world wasn’t going anywhere. It was here in the salt air and the night sky.

He tried to explain his world to us, the wonders of technology, the differences in the people. It was lost in a haze. Words like Internet and Generation Z. It all meant nothing to me, but he put stars into my sister’s eyes. His own eyes glowed back at her. When all his plans for our island failed and he left us, she went with him.

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I missed her but time went on. I took care of my remaining sisters and I helped the other villagers.

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The dreams began quietly. Sometimes I would see my missing sister, laughing on a porch, cradling a child in her arms. Sometimes walking across a field with more flowers than I had ever seen. These dreams lasted for years until they changed.

The dreams became full of storms. I saw her in hail, I saw her flower fields cut down, shredded by the falling ice.

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I went to the Old Mother. She told me that she had the same dreams. Dreams that my sister was cold, frozen to her marrow, and afraid to move. Old Mother told me that I must go out across the water, that I was born in the Year of the Snake and that it was time to call upon its strength. With her guidance, I imagined a serpent shining with steel scales and willed my spirit to put on that armor.

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Now plans are being made and supplies hobbled together. I am given a talisman, meant to guide me wherever I need to go. I do not know how long I will be gone or if I will ever return. I go down to the shore and listen to the water crash and feel the sand between my toes. I walk for the simple joy of walking, in case it is the last time.

I look down towards the shoreline and I see the memory of my oldest sister there, crouching at the edge of the waters, trying in vain to wash the sand away from the hem of her dress. Always looking for the impossible, she was. And now here I am, preparing to do the same.

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I thought that I would always be here. The island is my home.

I leave two sisters behind to go to the aid of one. But blood calls to blood and I can feel her waiting.

As I begin my journey and the waves of the ocean rock the raft, it comes to me that the world may not be moving on but I am.




Prompt ▼

The Writer's Cramp was born on January 23, 2002 - which makes it an Aquarius born in the year of the Snake (Chinese Zodiac) and a member of Generation Z. You may write about whatever you wish - just make sure you include all three of the following, bolded, somewhere in your story or poem -

Generation Z
Aquarius
Year of the Snake

You must choose (and include) Family as one of your genres.