It is a Landing. I sit up in the bed, staring at the little screen in my hand. The light feels too strong for my eyes, which are still lost in sleep. My heart reacts quicker than my head, bursting into a gallop as I read the tiny letters. A Landing.
I jump out of my bed, grateful that I am still wearing the clothes from yesterday, dragging on my boots and run into the bathroom to do what has to be done before I can start a new day.
Outside it is dawn, everything is the color of dark blue and grey, the color of the sky before the sun is up, but after the moon has left, colors of in between. I run down the stairs and out the gate, into my car, starting the engine with a startling roar, which is too loud for so early in the morning. There is frost on the windows of the car, and the wind is still blowing strongly, angrily.
Arien sends the position to the group, and I quickly add it to Maps. It’s not far from here, I just have to follow the main road along the ocean.
The streets are silent, everyone else is still sleeping, there are no other cars on the road, the landscape is still and frozen, the only thing moving is the waves, so dark blue they look almost black, or maybe purple. In the rearview mirror, my face is white, eyes wide. I clench the steering wheel.
It might have taken five minutes or it might have taken two hours, I cannot tell, when I reach the scene. The first thing I see is the van, parked by the side of the road. The second thing is the boat, at the bottom of a cliff, grey rubber in the rolling waves.
I park behind the grey van, wanting to take a deep breath, but where is the air? There is none. I run outside, to a side of the cliff where it is not very steep and halfway run, halfway fall, down the slope, to the water. There is no path here, only dry bushes catching my clothes, as if trying to trip me, and the stones are very loose, sailing down with me.
At the bottom of the cliff, big stones raise up in the air, like gravestones, and the wind is biting, cutting my skin. Arien is there, and I think I see Mary’s hair, the glimmer of red, but I do not look, my eyes are fixed on the boat approaching us, pushed uncontrollably by the waves. I can hear screaming, and the wailing of kids, the sounds jumping along the surface.
“I don’t think the engine is working, they can’t steer away,” Arien is saying. “They will hit the stones here.”
I can see that he is right. The boat is lying low in the water, almost invisible, pressed down by the weight of the people in it, maybe thirty, no, maybe fifty, people, huddled together against the wind and water, in a boat that looks more like a play boat, to have in pools, not the ocean, not in currents like this.
The waves have a hold of it, the boat, pushing it around and around in a sickening circle, like a grotesque mockery of a carousel in an amusement park. As I watch, it looks as if a wave will turn the whole boat around, and I can hear a woman scream in death fright.
“Form a line, everybody, a line!” Arien screams. The boat is just a few lengths from the shore. He maneuvers across the slippery sides of the stones that are towering around him, until he stands in the water, the waves licking his hips.
“Come on!”
We follow him, and I fall down on the slippery surfaces and hit my knee, but I am up again, fighting my way forward, hearing the others panting around me, but I do not look, keeping my eyes on my feet, until the ice cold water whirls around me. I position myself next to Arien, with someone on my other side, and we all raise our arms and form a cross in front of us, making a damper with our bodies.
I close my eyes seconds before the boat hit us, my back being thrown against the hard surface behind me. Everywhere, people are screaming, screaming, screaming. I am too shocked to feel pain; the adrenaline only makes me feel sick.
“The kids, carry the kids!” Arien is yelling, his voice soaring above the chaos.
We form a line again, like we did that day in the warehouse when we put blankets in the trunk, except now it is not blankets, it is children that we transport. I stand closest to the boat, only Arien between us, and the rest of the workers behind us. Arien gives me a child, either crying or too frightened to cry, and I give him to the girl with the long hair behind me, who sends him to Mary, and so on, until he is safely put down on the shore.
There is a woman in the boat, dressed in black, who is screaming higher than the others. She clings to a baby in her arms, and refuses to give it to Arien, refusing to give it to anybody, clinging the tiny body to her chest. The other people in the boat seem to be trying to talk to her, but she only shakes her head, crying hysterically. Eventually two men force away her arms, while a third man takes the baby from her and gives it to Arien.
I wait for him to give it to me, to send it down the line, but he does not. He holds it, staring at it, his face a mask of dread. The woman screams and screams, I am surprised her whole body does not explode; it looks like she is about to rupture, burst.
Eventually, Arien takes off his jacket, wrapping it around the baby, covering the face. He gives it to me with a small shake of his head. I take the little body, and it is hard as stone.