Luke slipped from his bunk and, through the darkness, felt for his watch. It’s face glowed 5.30 a.m. He took jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt not knowing if they were his or Mick’s and silently left the cabin.
Creeping up on deck he was just able to see his way as the dawn began behind the rocky hills of the island before him. The boat was deathly still on a flat, slate grey sea and her prow pointed due East. He lowered himself into a sitting position in the bow and, gripping his knees up to him against the chill, he watched the island slowly some to life.
The mountains were black, silhouetted against a sky that was dark grey above him, washing to lighter grey then almost white before becoming a dusty, dim orange on the horizon. Stars were vanishing imperceptibly, except for one bright one to his right.
From the distant island he could hear the dawn greetings of dogs. One bark was answered by another from a mile away. Another joined in until the whole scene was underscored with the sound of arguing, barking animals, each with a point of view to make heard. Some were yelping faster, some louder, some were keeping a rhythmic howl as they said their piece over and over again. The noise rose to a crescendo until he felt the barking would wake the entire island. In the emptiness of the dawn it was amplified and echoed from the mountains on the stillness of the air. And all the time, in the background, was the crowing of desperate cockerels, strangled but persistent. He heard the sound of a fish bubbling the water below him and saw the silver sky reflected in its ripple.
From high up on the mountain ahead a single light from a motorbike appeared and wound down through the sound of the yelping dogs. He heard no engine, no unnatural noise, just the animals. The light became lost in the folds of the hills that were beginning to grow brown and reveal shades of shadows where tiny white houses picked themselves out from the night.
The sea began to change colour, from grey to silver then orange as, over the island, the sun marched closer on the world. Still the bright star, solitary and unmoved, still the dark canopy over his head.
A donkey joined the debate booming across the island. At first Luke thought it to be a ship’s claxon sounding as she came into port but there were no other boats to disturb the marble flat sea. He could hear the donkey bray and then breathe in. A rough intake of objection like a cancerous gasp before it blasted out its point of view with a single volley which echoed across the valleys.
And then, suddenly, there was silence for a split second which seemed to last forever. No dogs, birds, donkeys, no breath of wind, no ripples. Just his own breathing in the chill of the dawn.
Layers of mountains were coming into view. What was recently one black mass was now several hills stacked one on top of the other, each further one lighter as the orange sky, tinted red now on the horizon, crept over them. A whisper thin cloud of deep amber shot through the orange to underline where night ended and day began. And still the lonely star burned.
Alone in this still and magical moment Luke remembered a camping trip dawn of his childhood. A lake in Wales, cold in the height of summer, the same sun creeping up on the hills and firing the lake with crimson so that it became like molten rock at his feet.
The same sun, the same colours as now, the same loneliness he had felt ten years ago. He felt the same confusions and worries, the same uncertainty about himself, his future and his past. The same feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt were churning around inside his empty body. Nothing had changed, the dawn colours were the same and his feelings were the same. Only now the silence seemed more intense.
His tired and stinging eyes closed slightly against a bright dawn and a bitter tear. Above him the single star was fading as the sky took on a paler shade. The sea in the bay shimmered now with patterns of grey on gunmetal waves as more light brightened the view.
A small boat inched from the harbour and out into another new day as the air began to stir once more with the sounds of morning. The dogs had finished their debate, even the cockerels had given up, their job done. A monastery bell took over and rang a continuous call from its eyrie way up on the mountain’s edge. Another bell, closer, struck six. A breeze fingered across the bay to him announcing its silent arrival by stirring up light waves. It breathed up from below and dried his eyes.
His lonely star was now no more than a pinprick in the yellow dawn. He saw it as a light from another world beyond this one stealing in through a tiny hole in the sky. He imagined another place beyond this loneliness that he could only glimpse at this time of day. If only he could fly up and dive through that opening into the other world where deceptions were not needed, where childhood and adolescence were the same thing, happy, secure and to be fondly remembered. If only there were some way out of this terrible confusion which cluttered his head and made each day less bearable than the last. If only.
Although the sky was light now and the mountains warming in a misty shroud of gold and desert sand red, the breeze remained chill and he gripped himself tighter. Innocent hands grasping strong arms, a boy’s legs tucked up beneath them onto a man’s chest. His adult kneecaps were rough, scraped during horseplay on the rocks yesterday.
But there was still no answer. Where did he want to be? Did it matter if every dawn was as lonely as the last? What did he want to be? Did it matter if he was always only what someone else told him to be? If only he knew how to shift out of this life and into another. If only there was some place he felt he could belong.
On the island a donkey gave one final, rasping bray, signalling to the world that time was up. Dawn was over. The new day starts here, everyone get on with it.
More boats left the harbour, motorbikes could now be heard, people could be seen and car horns bleeped. The Andreas Two shifted her position around the anchor fathoms below as if on a turntable pointing to the west and out to sea. There she stopped, telling him that he had seen the dawn and must now look to his future, which was the grey expanse of water before them. The same old grey, the same old sea, the same old story.
He heard a footstep behind him and turned to see Nikos approaching, a blanket in his hand. He put it around the boy’s shoulders silently and held him in his arms as Luke cried.
When the tears stopped, as unexpectedly as they had begun, Luke looked back to his lonely star. It had gone and the doorway to the other world had been closed behind it. |
