The Island

The Island

by Roger Ley

Roger Ley  was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. He worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger Ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM

Blue. She’d never seen a sky so deeply blue, as she lay floating in the warm, calm sea. The water tasted very salty; perhaps that was why she felt so buoyed up by it. Bethany rested, enjoying the sunshine, the comfort, the silence, not concerned about how she got here. She dimly remembered her room at the nursing home: the drips, the drugs, the feeding tube, but the memory was vague and slipping away. Rolling over onto her front, she looked around. There were small islands in the sea surrounding her, each with a house at its centre. She began swimming towards the nearest one, conscious that she was naked, but enjoying the feeling of freedom as she slowly approached the shore. Her feet touched the sandy bottom; she stood up and walked through the shallows to the beach, where a young woman was standing by an old wooden jetty.

‘Hello, Bethany, my name is Alice. Welcome to our island. I brought you a robe.’ The young woman held it out.

‘Alice was my mother’s name,’ Bethany said as she took it and put it on.

The young woman smiled, took Bethany’s hand, and led her through the low, grassy dunes. ‘Walk this way, Bethany. I will take you to our home.’

*

The house was stone-built, rustic, and generously proportioned. Alice showed her to a room with simple furnishings: a bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe. Through an open door she could see a small, white-tiled bathroom.

‘The clothes are for you,’ said Alice, opening the wardrobe to show her. ‘I’ll leave you to rest after your journey. Come down to the kitchen when you’re ready, no hurry.’ She closed the door quietly behind her as she left.

Bethany showered away the salt that crusted her skin, dried her hair with a towel, slid between the white cotton sheets on the single bed, and slept.

She was woken by a young girl placing a steaming mug on the bedside table, then drawing back the curtain. It seemed to be early afternoon.

‘Hello,’ said the girl, ‘I’m Celia. You’ve had a good long sleep. I’ve brought you a drink. It’s hot water flavoured with herbs and honey. I hope you like it.’

‘I’m sure I will,’ said Bethany as she sat up and smiled at the child. The child who had her grandmother’s name. Bethany was beginning to question her situation. Everything had been rather dreamy before, but now her head was clear and questions were forming.

*

She went down to the kitchen. Alice was setting the table for lunch: cheeses, olives, salads, and bread. ‘Try some of the local wine,’ she said. ‘It’s quite nice but not very strong.’

Bethany was ravenous and ate a fast plateful. ‘You know,’ she said as she sat back, sipping the wine and picking at the olives, ‘you look very like my mother when she was a young woman.’

Alice was preparing a casserole for supper.

‘Yes, Bethany, you’re right. I am your mother.’

‘But you’re so young.’

‘I know it’ll seem strange to you, but things work differently here; we get younger as the days go by. You are in your eighties now, but time will pass quicker than in your past life, and soon you’ll be in your seventies, then sixties, and so on.’

‘So Celia is my grandmother? I recognised the name, but I didn’t recognise her; she was so old when I was a girl, and now she’s young and pretty. But how does it end, if we get younger and younger?’

‘Don’t worry about it, dear; this is your first day. It’s a lot to take in.’

*

Bethany found it easy to fall in with the family routine; there was always plenty to do: collecting eggs from the henhouse, milking the goats, hoeing and watering the vegetable garden. Every week the boatman came, tied his boat up to the wooden jetty, and left a basket of goods, always the things they needed, although Bethany didn’t know how Alice ordered them. He was a tall, weather-beaten man dressed in shorts, sandals, and a tee shirt. The old-fashioned wooden boat had no engine; he rowed it between the islands. Bethany asked him where he’d come from, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

‘Yes,’ said Alice later, when Bethany asked her, ‘he seems to be deaf and dumb, or he might be under orders not to talk to us.’

‘So we’re supposed to just live here in ignorance?’

‘Yes, dear, but don’t worry; time will pass more quickly than you think.’

And it did. Working in the vegetable garden, wholesome food, the comfortable bed, swimming in the warm sea, and the unvaryingly sunny days blended together. ‘I should have kept a note of the days passing,’ thought Bethany. She’d noticed how much shorter Celia had become, and when she looked in the mirror her own face was less wrinkled. She even had buns to hold her trousers up now.

‘The trouble is,’ she said to Alice, one evening as they sat in the kitchen finishing a bottle of wine, ‘nothing dramatic ever happens. There aren’t even any books to read, let alone television or films to watch. The most exciting thing is when the boatman, whatever his name is, comes.’

‘I don’t know his name,’ said Alice.

‘Have you asked anyone?’

‘How could I? We have no boat and I’m not a good enough swimmer to get to one of the other islands. I’ve seen people on them and tried waving, but I can’t be sure if they wave back.’

‘That’s my job for tomorrow then,’ said Bethany decisively. ‘I’ll swim to the nearest island and introduce myself.’

The next morning she tried. Wearing a one-piece costume and a rubber swim hat, she set off with a gentle breaststroke towards the nearest island. Alice stood on the shore, watching. After about twenty minutes, Bethany stopped and trod water. The other island didn’t seem to be any closer, and she was only two hundred yards from where she’d started. She put her head down, changed swimming style to a crawl, and kept it up for ten minutes. When she stopped to check, she was no further on, so she swam back.

‘We’re prisoners then?’ She asked Alice as they walked back to the house.

‘I prefer not to think about it too much,’ said Alice. ‘Just let things flow and try not to worry.’

‘But why are we here?’

‘I’ll tell you what I think, but it’s only conjecture. I don’t believe any of this is real; I imagine that it’s some sort of simulation,’ said Alice.

‘You think we’re inside a computer?’

‘Well, somebody once said that a sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic. Maybe we’re in the hands of an advanced technology, maybe it’s magic, or maybe it’s supernatural with God in charge.’

‘But that doesn’t explain why we’re here,’

‘Rest and recuperation? I think we’re being given a holiday before we move on to our next life.’

‘Well, we’re obviously being rejuvenated, but do you think we’ll be reincarnated?’

‘How could I know? I’m just speculating from what I’ve seen here. I think if we just went from birth to death to birth, it would be too shocking, too stressful for us. This simulation could help us come to terms with the cycle of life. But I don’t know. I’m just guessing.’

They carried on walking in silence. When they got home, Celia was toddling around the backyard, playing with the chickens.

‘We’re going to have to keep a close eye on her from now on,’ said Alice.

Over the following weeks, Celia slowly turned from a toddler to a baby, then to a very small baby.

‘She looks newborn,’ said Bethany one morning as she looked into Celia’s crib.

‘It’s time,’ said Alice. She picked Celia up and walked down to the jetty. The boatman had just arrived and was unloading a basket of goods. He looked up and nodded as the two women approached. He took the baby carefully from Alice, placed her on a nest of blankets near the bow, and pushed off. Both women cried and hugged one another. Bethany noticed how much shorter Alice had become. She resolved to take over some of her duties; she was, after all, only a young thing now.

*

A few weeks later, Bethany had a sudden urge to walk down to the beach. She stood on the sand next to the jetty and watched as somebody swam slowly towards her. A grizzled old man reached the shore and stood up. He was naked. She wasn’t surprised to see that it was her son, Robert. He’d been middle-aged when he’d last visited her in the care home.

‘Hello, Robert, my name is Bethany. Welcome to our island. I’m sorry, I don’t have any shorts with me. Borrow my apron.’

Robert covered himself as best he could, and they walked back to the house.

*

Time passed, Alice grew younger, and eventually, when the time came, Bethany and Robert walked down to the jetty and handed her to the boatman.

Robert’s son, Frank, arrived. Bethany was a juvenile by then. Time passed, and Robert took over many of her duties, although she still fed the hens and collected the eggs. But eventually, even this was beyond her. Robert took over the chickens as Frank became head of the household. The days slipped by, and she slowly lost her motor skills, her memory, and her mental faculties. She walked down to the beach holding Robert’s hand one last time, but was too tired to walk back. He carried her to the house and laid her in the cot in the nursery. Now, her life was dominated by her bodily sensations: hunger and discomfort, or warmth and the taste of milk. The day came when Robert and Frank carried her down to the jetty and handed her to the boatman. The boat rocked her gently to sleep as he rowed her away.

Soon afterwards her world became warm and dark for a strange, timeless period. Suddenly there was a feeling of pressure and violent movement. She was forced through a dark tunnel into bright lights, strange noises, and blurry shapes.

Although she didn’t know it, she’d just been born in a Paris hospital to a woman called Delphine.

As a boy this time.