The Tale of the Girl and the Sea

Once upon a time, there was a girl, and she was drowning.

In the place where she lived, there was the land and there was the sea. The children stayed on the land, and went into the sea when they came of age.
In their schools, they were taught to write words and read words and add numbers and take numbers away and multiply and divide numbers until their heads became filled with swarms of numbers and they swore to never even count, ever, ever again, forever. They were taught science and how to paint and balance ledgers and chequebooks. They were taught how to make marks on paper that came to life and became flowers and faces and animals and sometimes just patterns.

The one things they were not taught was the nature of the sea. Most of the children knew to watch the sea. They could navigate the rough waves, they could gather strength in the gentle calm ripples. They knew how to see the calm that disguised wrenching currents. They could see the dark patches of weed that would drag them down. Best of all, they could fashion boats from things that they had found, which allowed them to seek temporary respite from the pounding, frothing sea.

This girl could not learn the ways of the sea. No matter how she tried, the patterns of the waves eluded her. No matter how she squinted, the difference between a shadow and the dark weed would not come to her eyes. Sometimes she would be on the verge of seeing, of understanding, then the sun on the waves would dazzle her and she would forget. She heard talk of the sea, but the words would not stay together in her head. They became fragments, words, danger dark shadow blue weed big fish don't go craft a danger danger danger. She smiled and nodded, she repeated the words of the other children. They thought that she understood. When she met with her parents at the edge of the water, she mimed the gestures of other children. Her lips moved, and from them came the words of the other children. Her parents were glad. She understood. She would live well in the sea.

There were wolves on the land, wolves and great stinging hornets. The children were given stout sticks and bottles that sprayed smoke, but sometimes a child would be bitten or stung, sometimes badly. The wolves howled and the hornets buzzed. Most of the children learned to ignore this, but this girl could not. Her days and nights were filled with the sounds of howling and buzzing. Sometimes she could hear words in the noise.

The time came to go to the sea, for the children were no longer children, but grown men and women who were tall and strong and who had completed their learning. The girl followed the other children at first, but she soon discovered that she did not like to follow, and they did not like her to follow them. So she made her own path.
She swam through blue and green, through warm lapping, through slate-grey cold. She swam over rough red rocks, past little slipping silver fish. She swam and she swam, and she wanted to rest, but she did not know how. She saw what the sea had to offer, and she knew how to make a raft from it. She saw the rafts of other people, and she could see how they had been made. But the howling and buzzing in her head trapped her in the space between thought and action, and there was no rest to be had.

Eventually she saw a cool dark space. She hesitated, for she was unsure whether it was weed or shadow. She moved forward, and it was shadow. She rested awhile and closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was a dark slimy gripping on her ankle. She tried to move, but her struggles brought her head below the surface of the water so that she had to tip it back to breathe.

She began to tire. She made signals to passing people that she was drowning. They gave her a Drowning Permit Form and instructed her to fill it out in triplicate. Her arms were flailing, she could not hold a pen. Her body was aching, her breath sobbing. Some people came along, and they said that she was a good enough swimmer, that there was no way that she could be drowning. Her arms and legs were burning. Some more people came; this time they said that the water was too shallow to drown in. Her neck was stabbing pain and cracks creaks stabs if she tried to move it. The same people said that this area was not known for the weed that gripped, and that it was all in her head. She choked out a plea for a life preserver, for them to please save her, she was dying, drowning, couldn't they see, were they blind, stupid? They said that there was no call for that sort of talk and if she couldn't be polite well then they would just turn around and go back home. They said that she had done so well with her adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing, her painting and woodcrafting, that she was obviously far too bright to have got herself into a situation where she could drown. She had stopped crying long ago, and her eyes stilled burned hotly. She could hold her head up no longer, and as she sank they told her that she was bright enough to get out of this situation. Bubbles came up from the water, and they told her that they couldn't help anyone who wasn't willing to help themselves. There were no bubbles anymore. The water was still. They said that the forms had not been filled out correctly.

There was a girl, and she drowned.