Aino and the Sea (Surreal Circus Flash Fiction Contest)

Aino and the Sea

She’s not allowed out in the garden when the sun is high in the sky—it would burn her, Mother says. She watches from the window, peeping through the blinds, her dark-dilated pupils shocked by the brilliance outside. The sky is pure azure light, perfectly uniform, streaming down to illuminate the emerald land, to caress the flowers and bounce back from the silver fronds of palm trees bent into a motionless dance by the permanent wind. Behind them, the ocean, a lazy, sleepy monster of darker blue moves its back slowly, rhythmically, and licks at the foot of the cliff.

There used to be a picture like this in one of her books. It was her favorite: a place to dream about, a place for adventures. She can’t find it in any of the books she’s brought with her. She couldn’t bring all of them— books are heavy things and you have to leave them behind when you move to your new life and new father.

Instead, she opens the one about the girl who sold matches. The picture is white and gray and cold and the houses have chimneys like where she’s come from, the land of the ice queen who can’t go out in the sun. She’s seen this before, too, but it looks larger now, filling the whole page, and the light from the last match looks warmer and brighter on the little match seller’s face.

Time in this room is louder than in most places—it ticks away on a dozen clocks of all shapes and sizes, in a symphony of polished wood and brass. Her new father likes to know the time. But she already knows it, even before it speeds up and a little bird flies out of the largest clock, sings three times before whooshing between the blinds, out the window, and out over the ocean to fetch the clouds and the musty smell of rain. It’s the time when the evening magic starts.

She runs out onto the porch, passing Mother who’s on her way back in, her belly ballooning in front of her like those colorful sails on the bay whose name she can’t remember. It sounds like spinning though, like Mother’s belly is spinning thread out of time, and weaving a new baby inside her.

Mother smiles at her. “Don’t get wet,” she says, but that’s not possible when rivers flow from the sky and wash away the colors and melt the shapes of things. They dissolve the roof over the porch until she’s surrounded by sheets of water on all sides, parallel and intersecting mirrors that tessellate her pale image across the universe, endlessly, pointlessly.

When the rain is over, she’s allowed to play in the garden. She runs off the porch and throws herself into the grass glistening with tiny diamonds as the sun takes back the sky with a kinder, afternoon smile. Large pearls roll around inside hibiscus blossoms as she brushes against them. White flowers throw their jewels off and flutter up into the warming green-scented air, faltering as though still learning to fly. She follows them to the tree behind the house, the one with the small blue flowers that remind her of forget-me-nots, and watches as the white swarm covers the blue. In a long-dead language, the tree’s name means the tree of life, Mother has told her, and that must be why all the hummingbirds are here too, their jade bodies kept in motionless flight by invisible wings. Whether they inject life into the tree with their needle-sharp beaks or draw their own life from it, she can’t tell, but she knows this is where it all takes place. This is where birth and death hatch and take into the air as confused butterflies looking for their flowers.

She climbs the tree and perches on a branch, a large clumsy thing that doesn’t belong, and dreams of being a hummingbird, light and graceful and knowing the secret.

When the ocean stops pushing the wind and the sun starts its evening fall, painting the western sky blood-red, she climbs down to follow its path. She’s supposed to go inside now, but she doesn’t: she walks past the house slowly, conspicuously. First, when they had just arrived, Mother used to play with her in the garden, but now Mother is too big and tired because of the baby growing inside her. This game is the only one they can still play.

“Come inside, Aino,” Mother calls from the window. Her name comes out like Aina, because everything here is more melodious, more perfumed, thick green grass-soft rather than fresh snow-crunchy.

She doesn’t stop. That’s part of the game. She follows the sun and listens for Mother’s footsteps behind her.

The top of the cliff is deep red jagged with black when she gets there, the ocean-monster below pink-gray and quiet, barely breathing. The steps appear suddenly, right as the crimson disk is half swallowed by the darkening sea—a steep, winding staircase carved into the rock, sparkling with quartz crystals and fool’s gold. She starts walking down, one step, two steps, three, waiting for Mother’s hand to reach down and grab her as it always does.

On the fourth step, the staircase spins, and she opens her wings and flies, down toward the patiently waiting ocean. No hand stops her, and she knows why. In the dwindling light, she can see Mother’s belly open up. Out of the fountain of blood, Mother pulls out a baby boy, white as snow but with the face of Aino’s new father. She wraps him in her old blanket and cradles him in her arms. The baby cries softly as his sister, the sun, and the sea become one.

(960 words)