Another loud pop made El’s eyelids flutter, then came that hissing, crackling sound, like something being fried with too much oil. Exclamations of delight and wonderment, at this distance pleasantly muted, bookended each repetition of this cycle. El had now walked at least a hundred paces from where the small crowd, her friends amongst them, had gathered to watch the display. She wasn’t tempted any longer to gaze at the little explosions drumming harmlessly against the inky sky, with its moon three quarters full. El had already stood and watched the fireworks for maybe five minutes with her friends before departing, beckoned into the night world, and now she was content to let them wash the sand-dusted path before her with pale, flickering hues.
The noise generated by each explosion, the delicate lights cast into the distance, and the cool darkness of the beach all blurred together, creating an atmosphere that was soothing in its contradictions. These controlled bursts of artificial lightning emphasized the otherwise tranquil environment; to see these great fires cast about and reduced to a pretty fascination was itself a comfort to El, one tethered to a deep longing for a time and place that she wasn’t quite certain had ever existed. Memories that weren’t really memories at all, more the impressions of feelings experienced long ago, emerged as from the night air.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Crackling and hissing, muffled gasps and cheers. Then it was over. Far behind her now, El heard yet more applause, hands coming together with dull resonance. As El moved further away, the crowd receded to a whisper so faint as to be next to imaginary, foregrounding the atmosphere of the beach in her consciousness. The beach was just to the left of the path upon which El walked, separated from the rest of the world by a small seawall of hefty rocks. There was little surf, but the sound of waves filled the air regardless, gentle but richly sonorous, a billion tiny crystals crashing without end against a velvet shore. El allowed the shimmering rhythm to fill her senses; it seemed to reach down into her body, stirring a warmth that began to grow in her stomach and chest.
El also noticed her head seeming to grow lighter, not in the manner she often experienced after skipping lunch at work, but in a way that felt purifying. Everything felt right, and with that came certainty that she would find what she was looking for out on the beach. Nothing about the events of the evening had upset El in any specific way, but the midnight dawn of a new year had crystallized into a desire that had been building for years, or perhaps throughout her life in one way or another. It seemed the perfect time to disappear, to melt into the shifting landscape of tiny sand dunes and formless ocean.
Burrowing deeper into her waking dream, El looked out at the waves. She stared into the depth of the night, the black of the water, breathing in deeply through her nose as if she might coat her airway with it. She wanted to be enveloped by it, or it by her, or to see the world fold into itself so that these would be the same thing.
Wanting to be closer to the water, she knelt to untie her shoes, then stood again to leverage her feet out of each, using the toes of the opposite foot to press downward on the heel. Still using her feet, she nudged her shoes to the side of the path so that they were roughly parallel, unmistakably purposeful but still slightly haphazard.
El took a moment to appreciate the coolness of the concrete and the roughness of the sand thereupon, then stepped onto a rock forming part of the seawall. Crouching to steady herself, one hand out to mitigate the consequences of a fall, she made her way down carefully. She stretched tentatively from one rock to another, hoping with each movement that the uncertain shape she had identified for her next step had not been an illusion.
After a few prolonged moments of cautious movement, El stepped down from the seawall, her feet sinking into soft, fine sand. In the daylight, it would have borne the palest shade of tan, but now it was drenched with the same liquid black as everything else in sight. She had been able to feel a breeze coming off the water from up on the footpath, but down on the sand it was somehow more intense. It wasn’t strong enough to do more than move her hair about gently, but it seemed to pass through her, brushing the dust from her bones.
Inspired anew by her surrounds, El walked toward the water, approaching the point where the waves left their outline before receding back into the ocean, over and again. She surveyed the scene before her from left to right, from the smudged outline of the mangroves that ringed the inlet, to the ocean where only a ship’s lights broke the horizon, and to the sheer rock that climbed from the water for some distance before being swallowed by scrub and forest. Her study complete, she began her search in earnest.
El started toward the hill, heading further away from whence she had come. She stuck to the edge of the ocean’s reach, letting it wash over her feet with every few waves. After a few minutes, her surroundings grew darker. She looked to her right, where the pathway and seawall that ran beside much of the beach had now ended, giving way to a murky realm of palm trees and bushes. Taken together, these figures bore a certain shape, but individually they melted into one another, a slight abstraction that seemed to suspend the scene just barely above reality.
Just as she was contemplating whether it would be dangerous to go for a swim, El finally heard what she had been hoping for; a wailing call intertwined with the air, filtered through palm fronds. It was just as it had been on the nights she’d lay awake in her parents’ house, unable to sleep even hours after having been sent to bed. The call had been a deep comfort to her then and so it was now; an understanding voice reaching out in her loneliest moments, letting her know she was cared for. Tonight, more than ever, she heard a promise in this sound.
El began walking diagonally up the sand, away from the water, searching for the source of the wailing. The call grew louder, telling her she was getting closer; then it stopped, and so did she. Peering into the dark of the trees and scrub, she saw it emerge, wings outstretched in warning. The curlew was no longer emitting its trademark call, but hissing at El intermittently, signaling that its offspring, or perhaps unhatched eggs, were nearby.
Although it was doing its best to threaten, El could never help but find the curlew a silly, endearing creature. Its long, stick-like legs gave it the appearance of a child’s drawing, its eyes were bereft of anything except defiance, and its delicate physique belied any attempt to convey menace. Indeed, here was an animal that laid its eggs on the ground without even the modest protection of a nest, had absolutely no means to defend itself from anything that might predate it or its offspring, and yet it would immediately reveal itself to any creature that wandered by, hissing and flapping away. To El, this was a beautiful display of character.
“Hi, Wallace. It’s me, El.”
The curlew stopped hissing, wings still unfurled, and cocked its head to one side, examining her. After a few seconds of consideration, it spoke.
“Sorry, El. I didn’t realize it was you; you know how I don’t see so well. How have you been?”
“I’ve been okay, thanks Wal. I feel better being out here tonight. How about you?”
“Oh, you know, not bad. Got a couple of young ones back there, so trying to stay on the lookout. It’s been about a month and they’re both still alive, though, so I must be doing something right.”
Wallace paused, looking at El. “But we’re not just here to chat, are we? Otherwise, I suppose you wouldn’t be walking alone on New Year’s Eve—well, New Year’s Day now, anyway.”
El let out a little laugh, perhaps more readily described as a short nasal exhale of mild disgust at her own self-absorption. “No, Wal, that’s great about your kids. Congratulations. I’m just a bit scattered, but I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks El, much appreciated. But really, you know you can always tell me what’s bothering you. That’s why I’m here.”
That seemed to be true. Since she was a child, whenever El really wanted someone to talk to, or a way to escape, Wallace was there. From a voice flitting through moonlit cracks between her curtains almost twenty years before, to now, El well into adulthood, Wallace the same as always.
At that invitation, everything that had been welling within El was suddenly a current, gushing forth as it found at last a reliable mode of egress: “Ah, nothing’s really wrong, you know. I was just watching the fireworks with my friends and, you know, thinking about how that’s another year down and… I don’t know, every year I come back here and do all the same things, see all the same people; it’s like this place is standing still. But not really, because whenever I come back the town’s a little more run-down, my friends are a bit older, the stuff we do is a bit less enjoyable. Everything’s just fading or something, I don’t know.”
El stared at Wallace, unselfconsciously awaiting a response, the kind of wise aphorism he would have provided when she was a child.
A few seconds passed, and Wallace finally spoke: “You’re right, none of that really sounds like a problem.”
“Hah!” El exclaimed automatically, unsure whether out of embarrassment at her melodramatic soliloquy, genuine amusement at Wallace’s unexpected response, or anger at having her feelings immediately invalidated by someone who had, until now, been an unfalteringly reliable confidante. She supposed it was a combination of all three.
Wallace must have sensed what she was thinking; he softened. “I think everyone feels something like that at times, especially when they’re moving from one stage of life to another. But it can be a problem when you hold on to those feelings instead of moving to that next stage.”
El knew she should just accept that advice and move on, but in a truer sense she knew she had been cheated. This was supposed to be kind of a cleansing ritual for her. Moments ago, she’d felt as though she could stay in this place forever, in this night forever. As soon as she’d heard the curlew’s call, she’d begun to hungrily anticipate the soothing platitudes that this sound had always been the harbinger of, and perhaps finally an invitation to rest for good on the night beach. Hadn’t she spent long enough in the real world? Was there really so much more to see? But now she was being sent packing. She felt stung, she wanted to cry.
“Yeah, not sure I’m moving to the next stage of life. What am I, getting married? Having kids? Seems like the only difference between now and few years ago is everything’s just a lot duller.”
Wallace made a small hissing noise, which El supposed was the curlew equivalent of an exasperated sigh. He moved his head around, cocking it to one side then another, then relaxed again. El sensed a release of tension in his countenance.
“El, I could tell you all the same things I’ve been saying since you were a kid, but—and I’m not trying to be cruel right now—I think this is what you need to hear. Which do you want, really?”
El looked down at her feet, which she could barely make out beneath the sand and the blanket of midnight.
Without looking up, she started in a small voice, “What I really want is to stay here, on this beach, in this night, forever.”
Wallace bobbed his head slightly. “I think you’ve always known that’s an option. You can come over to this side if you really want, but you know you won’t ever be able to go back.”
El sighed, “I know, I know. I know what I need to do, I know I need to stop coming to you for help, I know I should have given this up ages ago. I know it would go against everything to just take the easy option and stay here, but fuck—,” she inhaled deeply through her nose, “I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss you, Wal. I feel like such a child, but it’s going to be hard knowing I can’t come back here.”
“I’ll miss you too, El.”
Then, they both heard new voices emerge from the dark, in another world but growing nearer. “El! El! Are you here, El?”
“I think your friends are looking for you.”
The voices grew louder. Turning to the path she had forged through the sand, she could just make out the shapes of Noah and Isabel in the gloom.
El turned back to Wallace. “Well, I won’t see you again, will I, Wal?”
“No, I’m afraid you won’t.” His words were blunt, but El could tell they were meant with feeling, the weight of so many memories pressing behind them.
El could feel that weight too. And she could see what awaited her back in the city, any change and the fulfilment it might bring far from guaranteed, weighed against the ease with which she could simply stay. She wanted so badly to stay; it would be such a simple decision to make, she could feel herself being pulled into its current.
“El, where are you? We’re worried!” Isabel, now standing not far behind El, but unable to see into her night world. Suddenly, her friend’s words pierced the veil between their worlds and coiled around her.
“Goodbye, Wallace.” El’s heart cried out. No part of her wanted it, but she would go back. She was going back, animated by a will beyond reason or desire. It wasn’t even anything Wallace had said, she realised in that split second. She was just going back.
El turned around.
“Hey! Sorry, I’m here!”
*****
Philip Matthews is new writer living in Canberra, Australia, working in workplace exploitation policy.
