Caretakers
Lake Oswego, OR
2020, Junior, Creative Writing
The first time I see the lighthouse, all is as it should be. I wander the depths of the seas, and flurries of creatures greet me as I pass, quicksilver skin shining against the darkness. Wheeling currents thread through my fingers and pull at my blood, carrying with them all the beings I have nurtured over eons: the wise giants of centuries past; the fluttering fish, fleeting and bright; the ethereal beings pulsing with the movements of the oceans.
The beam of the lighthouse skitters across the water’s skin, and I see the tower. It is newly fashioned, stripes of red and white distinct against the shifting blue of the sea. A girl kneels on the shore, sand skittering from her palms, shells held admiringly by curious fingers. She smooths each of her findings with her thumb, arranging each one in a growing assortment.
I am drawn to her innocent wonder, her fascination with jeweled seafloor adornments, her delight in the discarded shells of lesser creatures. I rise from the waters, the sensation of pure sunlight strange against my skin. She sees me: a luminous mimicry of her human form, algae spilling from my skull and barnacles winding around my wrists, a creature of the waters. The shells scatter from her hands, forgotten in her astonishment.
“Who are you?” she murmurs, and I watch the nervous motion of her thumb against the one shell that remains. The seas shatter against my ankles as I kneel, and my voice imitates the spill of foam against sand.
I reach out to claim the shell that she holds. “I have a message.” She listens as I recount the hollowing and filling of the world’s basins, the forging of the continents and the suddenness of life. I tell her of the sands that stirred and gathered, the primeval inhabitants of the deeps, the whirling of the stars overhead. “The sea is older than humanity,” I remind her, and her eyes widen. “This shell is made of the dust of past life, the sand of forgotten ages. Treasure it.”
“Who are you?” she asks again.
“I am a caretaker. I see things, and I pass by, but I too will be dust someday.” Then I turn, and spray surges around me.
The second time I see the lighthouse, I can hardly breathe. The algae shrivels against my scalp, and the barnacles puncture the skin of my wrists. The waters are tarnished by strange human fumes, and currents spin from their age-old courses, and every breath is bitter. The flickering fish that catch light with every movement are empty-eyed and still, and the abundant corals are pale and strange.
The lighthouse is blemished with the years. She sits on the shore, and she is different, her bones lengthier and her eyes vacant, no longer enthralled by the span of the sea. I stagger from the deep, and there is fear in her eyes.
“Help me,” I murmur, thinking of the inquisitive child who gathered seashells and listened when I spoke.
“Who are you?” she gasps, running from me. For a moment it seems that she is burning, and that the world is burning with her.
The lighthouse is gone, lost to the rise of the tides. The seas brim in their ancient basins, and the giants of the waters bleed, pierced by nets and knives. The seas are stained and dark and unfamiliar to me.
She calls for me, brittle-boned and frail-voiced, decaying with the waters. “What do I do?” she pleads. “Help me!”
I think of the molding of the earth and the shaping of life, the eons I have overseen. I think of the dust of spindly creatures, remade into iridescent shells, held by thoughtful fingers. I think of the seas, breathing and living, once the one constant in a ceaseless world.
I emerge from the depths, and she does not ask, “Who are you?” She does not recoil at my stretched skin and my shriveled adornments, my stooped and swaying form. We are alike now: familiar with the fall of the earth, witnesses to the passage of time.
I kneel in the sand, and foam burns against my ankles, and I remember a time when the skies were reflected in the shimmer of the seas.
“Have hope,” I whisper, and her eyes still retain their girl’s glitter. “Learn, and fight, and have hope. That is all that remains.”
I return to the swollen, straining waters. I still breathe.
Reflection
Reflection
Every year, my family drives to the Oregon coast to stay for a time. It is not your typical beach: the waters are not still and impossibly blue, and the shores are not packed with sunbathing tourists. It is cold and grey and unforgiving, the type of beach where you stand shivering until someone finally voices the request to go home, where winds tear kites from your hands, and your feet are numb against the sand. I love it. At times it is hard to imagine that there is an actual change occurring in those waters, that someday I will return to that beach to find it transformed for the worse. It seems almost impossible that a place harboring so many childhood memories might someday be uninhabitable, that the lighthouses I glimpse from the shore will sink beneath the rising seas, or that the seashells I pick from the sand will be the only remaining sign of life. This story serves as a reminder, both for the reader and myself, that while the impact of climate change may be gradual, it remains severe. We still have a chance to recognize and fight it. We still have hope.