Off the Coast of Wonderland by Amber Poole. Lighthouse and magical realm.

Off the Coast of Wonderland by Amber Poole

Chapter IV

Mrs. Barnes moved slowly from the chair to the sweet table, crowded with cakes, berries and cream, candies and chocolates, from which she took a bit of each being offered, and placed them on a plate.

The child’s eyes were wide with wonder, though her body was still and cautious. The disquiet in her soul was perceptible. It would take more than sugar to ease the pain, but it was a beginning.

She didn’t take the cake as one would expect from a starving child; she took it as a traumatized one—she broke off a piece of it, devouring it in haste and then left other bits on the plate, it would seem as if saving it for later in case these delights would come no more.

Mrs. Barnes looked out the window at the strangeness there, a curiosity which reflected the bewilderment inside, but only in the sense that she knew she was living in a great mystery she didn’t understand. Unlike the inside, which was full of gifts and charm, the outside was dark and sinister, filled with demons and death, and littered with rubble and bones. There was a strong band of light that separated them from the sickness outside, creating various pathways down to the water, to the oil house, and now, added to these, a new one to a vegetable garden.

Sam and Martha Barnes were known as The Lightkeepers. More precisely, the keepers of the lighthouse. Sam Barnes knew how to smell the air and watch the clouds for signs of dangerous weather. He was an expert in identifying when the waters were about to deteriorate, warning passing ships how to navigate through such conditions as fog, standing waves, rip tides, and whirlpools. But the lighthouse had long since been shut down. When Sam was dismissed from his duties with the Coast Guard, they gave him the option to stay, but without a salary or funds to make the lighthouse more habitable. Over the years, not only did Sam and Martha grow older, but so did the lighthouse. It required a level of physical care suited for those much younger than themselves. In some areas, it collapsed into half-ruin, necessitating the closure of some rooms. Without central heat in winter or cool air in summer, and electricity supplied only by the power of a generator, living inside a lighthouse was demanding. Even the twenty-minute walk to town, which in their youth had been delightful, had become a trial.

Since the Great Storm or Bombardment, The Calamity, however it is referred, this war that changed everything, thus was life like before, and thus is life like now: teeming with surprise, mystery, dynamism, and an indescribable love.

For all Martha Barnes knew, they might already be dead. Was this what death, after life, looked like? A private world of the imagination.

She certainly felt renewed since the bombing had stopped. She hadn’t grown any younger. Her hair was still gray, her face wrinkled, but she didn’t feel the weight of her body as much. There was a levity within her that seemed to surpass the density of her physicality.

What was happening, she wondered? Was she living in a dream? One could be forgiven if one believed so, with the appearance of spontaneous feasts and tables laden with sweets and all the colors of the rainbow surrounding them, as if regularly looking through a prism. Not to mention the vibration of sound. The birds, the choir of women singing. Had it not been for the child that was swept upon the shore, as real to her as Sam, she would have considered herself dead. Perhaps in the place before a heavenly state, in the place of purification. In a place where souls are cleansed before they can receive the love and recognize the beauty of God, but Martha felt this love all around her; furthermore, there was a child before her, a suffering one. What was her task?

She wanted to lift this child into her arms and rock her, with the same intimacy as if she were her own, but didn’t dare. To disturb the uneasiness there, within the child, would be a breach of trust and confidence, like thrusting a stick into an ant bed, serving no other purpose than to upset an ecosystem.

Martha had to find another way to reach her, to discover her story and the doll to which she so fiercely clung. Neither spoke each other’s language, of this she was sure. Yet, they each longed for the other. The child hungered for a mother, and Martha longed to heal the damage wreaked upon the child, the damage done by the exterminators. Damage for which the world had paid handsomely.

There they sat, each in their brokenness.

Martha thought about paper and crayons. As was the reality of the new world, the new human, paper and crayons, and paints appeared on the floor where she sat.

There were scissors and a variety of different papers, dried flowers, glue, and small glass jars, some empty, some filled with water, enough provided by the love that enveloped them, enough to create, enough to tell their story.

‘I am the lightkeeper’s wife,’ Martha said aloud. I will make paper lanterns and hang them in the room where you sleep. I want nothing more than to make you feel safe. These lanterns will protect you when I am away from you.’

So she set out to make paper lanterns. The images in her mind, however, were of a different nature. They were images of the turbulent seas and the small boat in which the child was delivered to the shore, she envisioned this sea in the large, capable hands of the Great Mother. How else could this precious child have arrived?

The young girl watched with interest as Martha made paper lanterns. Some were made with red and yellow paper, some had tassels, and some were made using glass jars and pasting dried flowers onto them.

All the while, Martha was thinking of the sea journey and the miracle child sitting before her.

The child, on the other hand, was thinking of her mother’s workshop in a land far away, before the exterminators came, before there was an evil so unbridled that not even the Great Mother could prevent it until the earth was destroyed by it and the people living there perished.

End of Fourth Installment

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