The Key Between Stranger Realms - Day Twelve

On this hellish morning, I’m carrying forty pounds of water on my shoulder for money. Something is strange about this neighborhood. None of the house numbers are in order, and there are no doors, and I don’t know where I’m going. So I sit in the dry basin and crack open a bottle. There’s a tree in the distance. A little kid chases flies around it. When he notices me across the way, he screams, “Wake up!”

“What?” I whisper.

I’m delirious in this heat. Yet, I’m certainly awake. I sip the steamy water as he scampers closer. I can’t move. My body is sweaty and sapped. Perhaps he’s right. Am I drifting? When he stumbles into the basin, reaching for my hand, I taste a hint of grapefruit in the air. Then, I remember.

“Where is your mother?” I ask, wrestling against my own weakness to stand.

Upright, perception twists, turns, whirs, and roars. Suddenly, I am in the stranger realm.

“Key! Wake up!” Garfield urges.

I recount the missing days like high tide reconnecting with the shore. He found me on the beach, stranded together. But what happened afterward? There was a ship. We feared pirates, but the captain was once an orphan, and she was determined on returning Garfield home.

Three weeks I reckon we had been sailing with the seafaring falconer and her crew. And not once had we encountered hostile waters. Now, the eve before reaching Garfield’s grove island, the upper deck is shaking in a kind of chaos that can only mean one thing.

We are being boarded.

“Hide,” I insist, spilling out of the hammock.

“Where is he?!” a cracking voice above deck demands.

There is no time to panic and not enough room in the half-empty storage crate for us both to fit. I hoist him into the box atop the cushion of overripe oranges and close the lid, leaving only a sliver of space for air. I reach for the lyre, then a shiver runs over the half-healed welts in my flesh.

Careful. It was your own foolishness that did this, remember?

I grasp the neck carefully just as a torrent of heavy boots descend. My heart feels as if a battering ram cracking at the walls of my chest. And before I face the attacker, I think of Leon. Will he remain lost after my demise?

“Please, show him to me,” the woman begs.

She wears a crimson dress, black hat, sage green boots. I am frozen in shock at the turning of these strange seconds. My captain follows, limping expertly down the steps. And when I see her unbreakable demeanor has softened, I lower the lyre.

“Mother?” Garfield cries, peeking from the crate.

I step aside, consumed in awe at the woman’s bravery. She storms over and captures him in the safety of her arms. Blade belted to her side, I know that nothing would have halted this mother’s determination. How luck had favored her that it was this captain and crew, this cast-away who found her son. I shiver at the thought of other plausible misfortunes.

Hours later, we join Garfield and his mother, Scarlet, on the shore of their citrus island. The township gathers in celebration at the reunion of their lost little prince. Garfield recounts tales of his adventures before and after we met. He makes me promise to return one day, and I do.

By the raft, Scarlet gifts a crate of fresh fruits, and I heft it onto my shoulder, all forty pounds.

***

Hello, wanderer,

This flash fiction, surreal poetry series started around this time last year. You can start reading here:

I have decided to continue it for fun. Please let me know if you enjoyed this piece, and we can keep learning more about Key and her adventures between the realms.

xoxo, for now

-your friend, dreaming about the sea