First Version of Tristan Story

[fizzawrites]

It’s strange that when she’s on the island, Sophie can’t stop thinking of London. She can hear the rushes of traffic in the waves. But there’s no traffic in Tristan da Cuhna, where there’s no cars at all.
Sophie’s a Glass. Her father, like all Glasses before him, all the centuries back to William Glass himself, has never left Tristan (except for the volcano, but they never intended to leave then, and they never will). Their blood is mixed in with the very land, and he never lets her forget that. On her 10th birthday, Sophie sat on the pier and her father skipped stones out into the Atlantic, and he told her that there were only two places in the universe. Tristan and the rest of the world.
And then at 20, she left for the rest of the world.
“If you love London so much” he says casually over potatoes and yard work, “Why didn’t you stay there?”
Sophie shakes her head. This must be the millionth time she’s explained it. Mostly to her friends in London.

“Because it isn’t home.”

*
The volcano came alive in 1961 and the settlement of Edinburgh disappeared. On the evening of October 11th, James Glass looked back towards the island from the boat and saw the first trickles of lava flow toward the town and circle his garden. He turned his eyes away and found his wife, Marjorie. She sat on a wooden bench, staring past the ship hull, into the water.

“Did we really need to leave?” She said.

James sat down next to her and rubbed her back through the blanker wrapped around her shoulders. He shivered a bit as he looked back to the smoke billowing around the top of the island.

“We’re not going far, just to Nightingale for the night.” He said, looking at the jagged edges of the neighboring island.

“What? Do you think the lava will stay in during the day? Do you think it’ll magically go away tomorrow?” Her voice shook.

“We’re safe. We’ll go back.”

*

Sophie stepped off the fishing boat and welcomed the air that was not laden with the salty smell of crawfish. Her backpack was weighed down with her most valuable possessions. The rest of her things hadn’t fit on the boat. They were still in Cape town, and wouldn’t arrive until weeks later, on the next boat to land.
        The island looked like the forest had taken back what their little civilization had kept at bay. Remnants of waves driven higher by the hurricane winds crashed over the wooden docks.  Leaves, branches, and little items blown away from front yards were scattered everywhere, and most of the activity of Edinburgh seemed to be centered around the port, everyone checking up on each other instead of going back to their houses, all in various states of wreck. The hurricane had done more damage in a few days than the lava had done in two years.
But this was life in the roaring forties, the area the Atlantic susceptible to violent changes of Mother Nature’s wrath. There were so lucky to for this not to happen more often. Trees littered the road, and she walked on, stepping over a branch. Steve Rogers stood by a larger branch, its very ends coiling around the stone road that it had fallen on to.

“Jumpy Steve?” she called.

He looked up, surprised to hear her voice. “Princess Sophie.”

“God, I hated that name.”

“Well the daughter of the longest serving administrator is like a princess.” He teased back. “Guess I won’t be going down the canning factory today…at least what’s left of it.”

“The canning factory got wiped out too?” she asked.

He pointed toward Edinburgh. “Hurricane nearly ripped the island in half. You come back to help your folks out?”

Sophie paused, not sure of the real answer. “I’m back to stay.”

Steve looked back towards the fallen branch, and Sophie, realizing her delay, started to help him.  “That’s good to hear, Sophie. I guess the Glasses were never meant to live anywhere else.”

“It’s either that or a curse.”

“Yeah, I’d go with curse.”  He laughed, and with a heave, they lifted the branch on to the grass.

*

“I told you, we don’t use any money on the island. Not even the pound. Doesn’t make sense for the most remote island in the world to use money.” Marjorie Glass yelled into the phone at the British immigration official.  A car horn, the bright arugah sound of a Beetle, sounded in the street below. She moved away from the window.

“… Mrs. Glass, the British government does not just hand out money. Well, we do, but not in these cases.” The immigration official said slowly, as if English was Margories’s second language. “We can only give you British pounds if you have some other form of currency to go through the exchange office.”

Marjorie walked back to the window, staring at the cityscape in front of her and the cars parked below. It was the beginning of summer here, at it was the end of summer in Tristan. She remembered nothing but hot and slow days and the sun burning. The air hung around her, and for the first time, she realized that she could not feel the ocean breeze. This air was not air.

“Mrs. Glass?” The immigration official waited.

“Then, I guess there’s nothing we can do about it now, is there?” she answered.

Marjorie hung up the phone and crossed the room to turn on the fan. She sat down in the wicker chair and poured her self a glass of water from the pitcher. She had never worried about James coming home before, but now she felt a little twinge of panic twist inside of her. They were living out of this small apartment building stuffed in between two more displaced Tristan families.

She took a drink of the water and breathed in the stuffy air. They were all together (no one stayed in Cape Town) and all alive. No one would rationale ask for more, but she thought about walking into some geological survey class at the University down the street and asking how you could stop a volcano. There had to be some wonderfully modern way that the families of Tristan just hadn’t been told about.

*
There was nothing but ocean around the MV Bouissvan. And then there was a tiny speck. And then the waters turned light blue and the speck grew to a mound, and the mound to a hill, and then the ancient mountain that formed Tristan da Cuhna appeared fully on the horizon and there was the thin line of clouds that always circled towards the top of the volcano.
James had spent the afternoons of his primary school years exploring the foothills of the volcano, where the plateau of Edinburgh ended and the mountain begin. There the line of clouds- there was a scientific name for them that had always escaped him- seemed close enough to touch. Those clouds never got dark with rain or stood still. They moved like a little train around the circle of the island.
Today was the first day James Glass had seen those clouds from the ocean. It was the first day he had approached Tristan by boat, and it was the first day in quite a while they had all been home. The eruption had left new layers of rock on their island, but not anywhere that could be of use. 
He was also now Administrator of the island, something than had been voted on before they all boarded their boats, but something he knew was coming since the afternoon they had left for Nightingale. They had all said it, don’t worry, Jim Glass will get us back. He could get them back to Tristan, but he might not be able to get Tristan back to them. There wasn’t even the island house anymore. He silently cursed William Glass for settling Edinburgh in the first place.
But then he stepped off the Boussivan, and was home.

*

Sophie ran through the vegetable garden her mother had planted on the west side of the house. Kristina and Steve were right around the corner, and she ducked into a thicket of tomato vines. 

“Princess Sophie?” Kristina sang out, “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Sophie tried not to laugh and fall down into the dirt. She had promised her mother she wouldn’t get her new dress dirty, but she felt her balance sway and caught onto a vine just in time.

“What was that?” Steve pointed the garden.

“Rabbits.” Kristina said. “The garden’s too dirty for Sophie to hide in.”

The fencing that the tomato vines had been growing on this year had been thrown on the garden gate, so Sophie moved it to the side and two waterlogged tomatoes fell to the side. The garden gate opened with a little creak and she let herself in.

Her mother stood in the kitchen, watching the water boil for her tea.

“Mom?’ Sophie said through the spaces in the house where the windows her father had put in used to be.

Marjorie turned away from her tea, “That sounds like Sophie, but that’s impossible because Sophie’s in London.”  She saw her daughter and dropped the mug on the table. The door swung open and soon they were hugging.

“Sophie!” her mother said. “What are you- never mind- you’re here!” She pushed her through the door and took her backpack off.

“Hi, mom.”  Sophie smiled. “ I heard about the hurricane and I came right down.”

Majorie took another mug out of the cabinet and poured them the hot water for tea. 

“I got myself on the fishing boat, I slept right next to the stores of crayfish.” She said, putting her backpack down. “It was pretty bad, but I’ m here.”

“But the Tristania won’t be back for another four months.”
“That’s okay, mom. I haven’t been back in a while, and I thought I could help.”

Her mother crossed the kitchen to the broken windows. “Thankfully there’s been no rain since then. We’ve got one room with full windows.”
The smile on her face had brought her mother’s laugh lines up, and it looked like they had been painted on for a second before her faced disappeared behind the mug.

Marjorie handed her the tea. “Will you plant my garden again?”

She nodded yes.

*