The Journal of the Walk, Sunday, February 1st
The briny smell of the ocean cut through the dry desert air and beckoned me onwards, the rustling of the waves becoming louder as I hurried my steps. Coarse, sun-scorched earth gave way to soft sand that shifted at the slightest touch, and I stumbled several times in my haste to reach the place where water kissed the land.
I wasted no time and took off my shoes to wade in the shallows of the sea, where the water was the color of polished jade and algae-covered rocks emerged from time to time, lapped by calm waves. I shuddered at first as the chill of the water crept up to my knees and spread to every corner of my body, but it was still a much-welcomed sensation after days of traveling and sweating under an inclement sun. I looked at the horizon – the place where the ocean and the sky became one – and breathed in the cool marine breeze born from the frigid northern currents that reached out from the ends of the world and into this tropical sea. Somewhere, a seagull cawed and a choir of its kind answered in turn.
For hours, I walked along the coastline, collecting seashells with exotic shapes and colors before returning them so that they may find new occupants one day. Packs of sea lions – their dark skins glossy with seawater – rested on some of the rocky formations that emerged from the deep blue, caring little for the brown pelicans that landed next to them before soaring back into the cloudless sky.
The sun reached its zenith and began its descent beyond the waves. The first shades of twilight had not yet tinged the horizon when I found the ragged man who muttered incessantly and did not turn when I approached. He stank of salt and filth; his long, unkempt hair and beard were caked with scraps of food and algae; and his skin bore burns, cracks and blisters from exposure to the elements. The waves drowned his frenzied words as he crouched on the ground, and it was not until I was at arm's length from him that I finally understood what he was saying:
"Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-six. Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-seven. Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-eight…"
He turned to look at me and, with red eyes of madness, leapt and grabbed me by the shoulders.
"Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-nine!" He screamed as tears cut through the filth that covered his face. "You are real! Tell me that you are real! Please!"
"I am real," I reassured him, and helped him sit down. "I am as real as you are, as real as the ocean, the sky and the sand."
The man choked out a cry.
"The sand…" he said. "The sand! I must count it. I must count it! Grain by grain, grain by grain until none are unnumbered…"
I noticed the small mound behind him, barely larger than a sandcastle and looking more like a ruinous miniature mountain than a fortress. Next to it were several half-eaten fish, most of them close to rot and beset by seagulls. This, I realized, was what the man had been occupied with the entire time.
"The number!" The man then said with sudden horror. "You remember the number! Do you? Please, do! Ninety million, six thousand and… and…"
"And ninety-eight," I said. I could see the last coils of sanity tensing and beginning to unravel within him. How long had he been here, ceaselessly counting grains of sand? And why?
"Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-nine!" He screamed, and he showed me a single grain of sand nestled in his nearly flayed hands. "Ninety million, six thousand and ninety-nine! Only one more, and then another, and another, and at last I will be finished! At last I will be free!"
"Free?" I asked. "Has someone forced you to do this? Has someone enslaved you to this ordeal?"
"She," his voice became a low grumble, and his eyes focused on me. Whatever lucidity he had left struggled to surface from his madness. "She did this to me. She said that I must count the grains of sands – that I must know if they were more than the stars that pepper the heavens at night – or the sky would crash down on top of me! I cannot stop. I must not stop until it is all done, until I know how many grains of sand are on this beach. I will number what is numberless, or else the blackness will crush me!"
He turned to swat away a seagull that had come too close to his stash of fish, groaning like an animal as the bird squawked and flew away. I decided I had seen enough. Though I wished the man well, it certainly was for the best that I continue my path and left him to his own devices; I surmised that someone must be watching over him, for I doubted he would dare interrupt his task long enough to feed himself. Perhaps, I thought, that someone was she who he spoke of.
Dusk came a few hours after I left him and, amidst the purplish darkness, I saw distant fire. I followed it blindly, like a nomad who follows the brightest star in the desert firmament, and soon I stood before a bonfire over which some fish cooked. The Woman who tended to her food was short and thin, red-skinned and raven-haired, her eyes a hungry shade of amber. A wide smile – vaguely mischievous, vaguely malicious – formed on her lips, and I saw the flash of sharp ivory teeth in the firelight.
"Sit," she said, and I sat.
"Eat," she said, and she handed me some of her catch, cooked and seasoned with strange herbs.
After we had eaten, she handed me a small pot of clay and poured a strong-smelling liquor into it.
"Drink," she said, "and ask what intrigues you."
"Was it you who cursed the man who counts the grains of sand under the sun?" The liquor she had served me was strong, acrid yet perfumed. It burned the back of my throat before simmering in my stomach.
"Cursed?" Her laugh was unnerving, almost like the cackle of a wild animal. "Who is cursed? I only told him a story; he heard what he wanted to hear, understood what he wanted to understand. Once the storyteller has finished telling the tale, it belongs to her no more."
"So it seems," I nodded. "What story did you tell him?"
"If I told it to you, what is it you would understand?" The Woman asked mockingly. "Would you seek as he does, to count every grain of sand under the heavens? Would you cower in fear of the stars and the Moon crashing down on you?"
I do not think I would, I thought to respond, but something told me it would be unwise to try my luck with her. Instead, I simply shrugged and said, "I thank you for your food and drink, for the warmth of your fire. I should be on my way."
The Woman smiled. The fire threw her shadow on the floor, a shape with an elongated snout and pointed ears.
"Hah! Humans are all the same. So scared of the unknown, of what they may find lurking in the dark. Why do you feel such dread in hearing a story and claiming it?"
"Because," I responded, "sometimes you claim the story, and sometimes the story claims you."
The night echoed with her voice – half-laughing, half-howling – and she stood over the fire.
"Indeed: as I weave the story, the threads become tighter, the coils become stronger. What am I weaving? A blanket or a shroud? Either will cover you in their mantle; either will swallow you whole. A sailor's knot or a hangman's noose? Either will ensnare you; either will entwine you until you cannot breathe."
"And what of you?" I asked. "Who weaves your story? Who tells your tale in which you are entangled?"
Another toothy smile.
"The man you saw sought to do so. He thought he could claim my story; claim me. But my tale has been told already, told by me and me alone. At the loom of fate, I wove together my story and my husband's story with threads of whalesong and liquid moonlight, and the winds and tides echo with our joining forevermore. Woe is he who would usurp us and drive words of pretension like needles into our dream-born hearts."
"I would never dream to do so," I responded.
The Woman kept silent for an instant and watched me with amusement. In the light of the dying fire, her eyes were like midnight suns.
"Oh, stray Wanderer," she said at last. "Who says you are not dreaming right now?"
I shot up from the ground on which I lay, my body rattling with the shock of being suddenly awake. As my eyes adjusted, I looked around. The night was no more, as were the fire and the Woman. I shook the sand off my clothes and tasted the tang of cooked fish and strange liquor that still lingered in my mouth. Then I stood and went on my way, still following the coastline.
I care not if my ordeal was just a dream or not. For one, dreams are as real as any other experience of the human mind. Secondly, no one is obligated to believe me. Storytellers are, after all, the craftiest of all liars.