All images generated by NK Rowe using Hotpot.AI
1st place, “A Gift From The Sea” by Catherine Ogston.
Based on the shipwreck of the Annie Jane on the west coast of Scotland, 1853.
The granite obelisk points skyward, as if it is an accusing finger. Below it lays the bodies of near on three hundred and fifty men, women, and children, God rest their souls. I bring flowers here weekly and clear away any weeds which threaten to inveigle their way into the earth around the monument. Before the stone was erected, there was a large wooden cross pushed into the ground, so mammoth it cast a shadow onto the beach below. When the sun was high, its silhouette would reach out and touch the waves of the sea, intent on pulling itself towards the land and the bodies it had already claimed years before.
The cross had been made from the wreckage of the Annie Jane itself, as our small island has barely any trees. Only two wooden coffins were made; the rest of the dead were laid to rest, heaped up and stacked, in vast pits. Their clothes were still wet and such a miserable sight I had never seen. Even standing at the grave of my husband, and ten years later my son, did not compare to witnessing the burial of those men, women, and children. We had to cover their faces and bury their dreams with no time or means to know their names.
And yet, out of that misery, came my salvation and my secret. I have never spoken of it, although plenty have guessed.
I sat alone in my cottage that night in September 1853. The fire hissed and spat at me and I told it to be quiet. I had been alone for fifteen years and often found myself mumbling to myself and striking up conversations with inanimate objects. If the others in the village heard me, what did it matter? They only cared that I did not bother them or knock on their door for favours. Between the fire’s crackles and my own commentary there was a fearsome howl coming from outside. The wind was whipped up to a rage, spewing its bad temper across both land and sea. Each cottage had bolted the door against the attack of angry winds and the pelt of cold rain. We were used to barricading ourselves inside while the weather rampaged like a roving monster, shifting stacks of sand on the beach and building mountainous waves in the sea.
The first cries were almost lost among the wind’s shrieks. But the banging of doors and commotion of people running and shouting were soon clear to me. Tying a shawl as tightly as I could, I cracked open my door and asked what the cause of the din was.
‘Shipwreck!’ came the answer. ‘A ship is breaking up, right this very minute.’
I joined the throng of people scurrying to the beach overlooking West Bay. The moonlight illuminated a cruel scene: a black outline of a stricken ship, the huge rolling swells of water which rocked the vessel as if it were an upturned eggshell, the tiny dots in the sea; people who had either jumped or been swept overboard. I learned later that a colossal wave had indeed picked up a huge gathering of people on deck, fighting to release the lifeboats, and carried them away. The masts had collapsed through the decks, crushing those waiting below. Parts of the deck broke into pieces and the lucky ones found passage on these rafts. We stayed on the beach and worked through the night, pulling survivors from the waves and darkness.
In the end we welcomed 89 men, 12 women and 1 child to dry land. The beach was already covered with the bodies of their family, friends and comrades by the time the sun rose and we could do no more.
But I do not speak the entire truth.
In my cottage, I stowed my treasure. For hours I thought the child would not make it. The bitter cold, the salt water, the shock of what she had been through seemed sure to leave her as frozen and beyond help as the others we were digging mass graves for. But a flutter of an eyelid and a murmuring from her lips before night fell again over Vatersay and I knew she would survive. But I told no one I had her.
During the following days I kept to my usual business and showed my face to my neighbours in a display of normality. Then, when two weeks had passed, I bolted my door and put out my fire. I heard my neighbours pondering over where I was and I heard them trying my door handle after knock, knock, knocking on my thin wooden door. My finger to my lips, I signalled to the child to not make a sound; a redundant precaution for she had not said a word since I lifted her tiny body off the beach and secreted her away.
For four days I lived like a shadow in my own house. Then in the inky murk before the October dawn I left my home, carrying the child in my arms. We hid like fugitives among the heather until mid-afternoon. Then I stood up straight and urged the child to walk the best she could, for the short trek back to the village. Our arrival was greeted with a hush that descended around us as we trudged to my door. Tools were downed and tongues halted as I made my way to my house, my neighbours’ eyes burning a hole in the back of me.
The child lay down and fell asleep. I sat in my chair and waited for the rap of curious knuckles on my door.
‘Where have you been? Who is the child?’ they asked.
‘A daughter of my cousin in Barra,’ I told them. ‘The family got word to me to come before it was too late. Now they are all dead of a terrible fever. The child has come to live with me.’
They nodded solemnly and went away. But I knew that wasn’t the end of it.
The child spoke eventually. The winter was quickly upon us and the long hours of darkness bonded us together. She ate the food I gave her and I fashioned clothes for her from those I had kept in Samuel’s kist all those years he had been gone. When the spring sun came and warmer winds stirred us from our hibernation she was taller and stronger. She had shaken off the haunted look that night had imprinted on her. She knew her name to be Ellen but she seemed to remember nothing else from her former life. She did not know where she had been living before boarding the ill-fated Annie Jane and she could not say why she was heading toward Quebec. But she followed me around, learning how to be of use and how things were done. In time she seemed to hardly remember that she had arrived as a refugee from the sea.
My neighbours grew less suspicious. Or perhaps I only assumed this in my desire to believe so. One day Jean McGregor sidled up to me and asked after my charge.
‘How is the child faring?’ Something in her voice made the hairs on my neck prickle. ‘Ellen, isn’t it? Or perhaps she should be named Annie? Annie Jane?’
My instinct was to shoot her a look of furious indignation but I did not give into it. She left me then, a needle of doubt and worry buried in my side.
It became a regular occurrence. She quizzed me on how my relations had got word to me that there was a fever threatening them, why I had left without telling a soul, why it was that I took flowers so often to the wooden cross that marked the burial place for those the sea had taken.
That question was easy to answer, not that I ever gave a reply. My guilt was as vast and as all-consuming as those tumultuous waves that had swept away so many. I had stolen a child, not caring if her family had lived or died that day. I could have turned her over to the other survivors, who were sheltered at Vatersay House before making their way back to the mainland. But I tried to console myself that I had given her better care than a group of strangers could have. If she was alone in the world, what would have happened to her in Glasgow or wherever she would have ended up? Who would have appropriated her? If it was an evil thing I had done, it was perhaps less evil than the wickedness that could have befallen her. This is what I turned over in my head at night, searching for peace, as if I were endlessly turning over pebbles on the beach, looking for the right one. But every stone seemed the same and gave me no answers.
Jean McGregor picked her moment one day at the shoreline as we watched the men haul cod from the boats. Ellen played with the other children, her red curls dancing with gold streaks in the late afternoon sun.
‘Aye, you were lucky to find a daughter from nowhere,’ she announced sneeringly. ‘Lucky to not be alone in your old age with no one to care for you.’
‘Not so lucky for the child, to lose her kin,’ I told her. It was the truth, whichever way you reckoned on it.
‘Perhaps her kin are not dead!’ she proclaimed and the group’s eyes flitted from her face to mine, as if they were dogs hoping for scraps to fall from our plates. ‘Perhaps the survivors list from the Annie Jane would reveal a secret or two.’
‘Likely a search of some people’s houses would uncover a few things also,’ I replied. Her eyebrows shot up high as she dared me to continue.
‘It would be a terrible sin to steal rings and necklaces,’ I announced to the sea, although plenty ears were open and listening. ‘An even more terrible sin to steal them from dead people, only just pulled from the sea.’
I stayed long enough to see her blanch before turning away and walking, stiff-backed, to my door. Her refrain of ‘I did not, I did no such nothing!’ continued while I stayed behind my door, letting the tremble of my knees still.
Years passed and my neighbours left me alone. Jean McGregor and I tolerated each other, even if we did not trust each other. Ellen grew into a strong young woman who did not mind hard work. Between us we kept food on the table and the hearth always warm. I knew that one day she would marry and have her own cottage; fill it with children who would surround her until she grew old and frail. I did not worry about that day, for I knew I would never be truly alone now.
One day a man appeared and inspected the graves where we had placed those poor souls who had been scattered along our beach. He paced up and down, took measurements and wobbled the wooden cross with both hands, as if this action would tell him something important. He told us he was in charge of erecting a stone memorial for the Annie Jane’s dead and he would be back with his workers.
A few months later he returned. He and his band of men pulled down the cross and prepared the ground for the stone tower.
‘An obelisk,’ one of the men told us, his Glasgow accent foreign to our ears. We had never heard such a word! He laughed and agreed that there weren’t many this far west. Jean passed him a cup of tea and he thanked her. Then he looked solemn and leaned forward, as if to confide a secret.
‘I had relations on the Annie Jane,’ he told us. ‘My brother and his wife, and twa bairns, on their way to Canada. He was a carpenter on his way to a job. It was going to be a new start for them.’
There was little to say to this news so we gazed out over the sea, calm as a huge blue bath. In the distance I saw Ellen walked towards us across the machair, a basket in her arms, her hair a glorious tumble of fiery curls.
‘Gracious,’ he announced. ‘My brother’s daughter had hair that colour. It was her mother’s pride and joy. Puir wee Ellen, I can barely stand to think upon what happened to her.’
My face froze, but not before my eyes locked with Jean McGregor’s. My life was about to be unravelled and torn down in front of me. Surely she had been waiting for this day for years; the moment she could reveal her suspicions and have her revenge for my accusation.
I stood as numb and helpless as a witch at her own trial. I waited for Jean to announce my deceit to this man who would in a few short days leave the island and take my daughter with him. I would be completely alone again with only my misery and disgrace to keep me company.
But Jean did no such thing. She excused herself and walked the path to greet Ellen. Linking arms with her, she turned the two of them away and into her house, chatting to a bemused Ellen as if they had hours of news to catch up on. Between the two of us we kept the stoneworker and Ellen separate. When he left Vatersay he was content that he had paid his respects to his family, lain in that bed beside the sea, a granite monument guarding it so no one would forget those three hundred and forty eight tragic losses.
I never thanked Jean McGregor for that day. Something told me she did not want my gratitude nor need it. But I bring flowers to the memorial every week. My offerings will not put my wrongs right. But it eases my heart, one tiny fragment at a time. Like picking up sand, grain by grain, I try to make amends.
3rd place, “The Lost Vessel” by James Edwards
“You should be getting visual confirmation any minute now”.
Every time the voice in my ear spoke it made me jump. I kept on forgetting that they were here with me. In this strange environment it was difficult to feel anything, except alone.
I clicked the button built into my headset, “Received”. I didn’t want to jam up the communication line for too long in case an emergency message needed to come through. Plus, I was straining my ears, almost to headache-inducing levels, for any possible noise. Pointless of course as there was no sound here, but it didn’t stop me trying. All this really achieved however was me jumping out of my skin every time the comms went off.
“Adam, can we get a read of your oxygen levels please?”
As soon as I got down here, I seemed to forget the majority of my basic training. Smooth and steady breaths they had said. One guy had told me he used to slowly sing the national anthem in his head to regulate his breathing. Not sure I could remember the words now if I tried. Instead, like an idiot, I kept holding my breath for long periods of time before realising and gasping for air. Funnily enough that isn’t the ideal method for conserving oxygen.
“I’m at 67%”.
The debris was really getting thick now. Flotsam, I think they use to call it. Or was it jetsam? I could never remember, plus those terms aren’t really used anymore. Debris was the umbrella term now applied, covering everything from microscopic dust to human remains. No point getting too sentimental about stuff like that, I guess.
The further I drifted from the ship the darker it became. No natural light was able to penetrate the ‘cloud’ that had formed. For safety reasons I was tethered to Eden1 but that didn’t really fill me with much confidence. If things went south there wasn’t a huge amount they could do for me back on the ship. I was on my own, and no one really knew what I might find down here.
We had given up on the chance of any survivors long ago, there had been far too much damage for that. It was even doubtful if there would be any signs of life at all. The optimists back on board were still hopeful that we might be able to recover some remnants, but it was mainly answers they were after. How could things have gone so wrong?
“Adam, we are picking up some large pieces of debris on the radar. Stay vigilant.”
I could see them now. Huge dark masses that appeared to silently float up towards me, like some monstrous mythical sea creature emerging from the depths. No wonder all the probes we sent out hadn’t been able to make it through, it was like a floating minefield. I don’t know what I had been expecting but not this.
“Are you seeing this Control?”
“Yes, the images are coming through clearly. Just keep a check on your flashlight angle.”
As this message was being relayed a large metallic looking object appeared as if from nowhere. I barely had time to react. I instinctively opened one of the air release valves on my control panel and veered off to one side at breakneck speed. I thought I’d cleared its path but then felt a sickening tearing sensation. Looking back I saw a spiked barb had torn through my suit just below the oxygen cylinder. That was close, too close. But there was no time for relief. A shrill alarm started sounding along with a flashing red light on my heads-up display.
BREACH BREACH BREACH
“Adam! What’s happening out there? Your vitals are all over the place.”
“I have a serious leak from somewhere. The oxygen tank appears to be intact, but my gauges are falling rapidly. Any ideas your end?”
It took all my effort to remain calm whilst relaying the last message as clearly and concisely as possible. But I knew I was in real trouble here. If my oxygen gauge continued to fall at the rate it was, I would only have minutes left of breathable air. After that, well it didn’t really bear thinking about.
BREACH BREACH BREACH
“Adam, it looks like one on the tubes leading from your oxygen tank must have been penetrated along with the outer layer of your suit. The good news is that we do have a fail-safe for this scenario.”
I felt a substantial ‘but’ coming up.
“Unfortunately, you are going to have to temporarily shut off your oxygen tank to conserve what’s left. Once all the tubes are clear of air we can pump through a resin which should re-seal any holes, as long as the tear isn’t too severe.”
BREACH BREACH BREACH
I closed my eyes. There was no point debating, I didn’t like the sound of my odds, but they knew the system a lot better than I did. Plus, there was no time for ‘plan Bs’ at this point.
“Ok. Talk me through the procedure.”
I was really trying to control my heart rate using the grounding techniques I had learnt during my psych assessment. But surprising enough it is quite difficult to ‘ground’ yourself whilst floating in the abyss. The quacks hadn’t thought of that, I guess.
BREACH BREACH BREACH
“You will need to physically turn off your oxygen tank then override the system to confirm. Once done we can remotely start the sealant procedure from up here. The whole process should take about 60 seconds. Radio communication will be down for that time as we don’t want to overuse the system and risk blowing out a vital component. Once complete we will inform you to restart your system, which, if working correctly, will start to regenerate your oxygen reserves.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Adam, but we are doing everything we can up here. Try to remain positive, and calm.”
BREACH BREACH BREACH
I knew that calm was more important than positive right now. But I was struggling with both. I went into autopilot.
“Preparing to shut off oxygen tank on your word. Wish me luck.”
“Affirmative. Remember your training – we need 60 seconds. Shut down now. Good luck Adam.”
I took three deep breaths then hit the e-stop on my oxygen tank. A warning alert flashed across my visor asking If I was sure I wanted to proceed. I hit confirm, a strange humming, then silence.
Every light instantly went off on my suit. All the background beeps and clicks that had previously gone unnoticed now became extremely conspicuous by their absence. I didn’t know if that was supposed to happen or not. But there was not much point worrying about it now. Everything was so still, and quiet. Eerily quiet.
My torch was still on, its thin beam providing the only source of light. The object that had caused all this trouble was still slowly floating past me like some vast manmade whale. A lattice of twisted steel. My brain couldn’t fathom what it may once have been. Actually, my brain was starting to struggle with most of its functions now as I slowly starved it of oxygen.
I turned back around to see where I had come from. Apart from the illuminated strip of the tether closest to me everything was black. A vast nothingness. Somewhere up there the crew of Eden1 were desperately working to save my life, so we could complete the mission.
The mission. Most people saw it as a complete waste of time and resources. If there was still anything out here it was far beyond saving. At this moment I found it hard to disagree with them. As these relics of a time long gone floated past, they appeared more alien to me now than our new lives had seemed when we first set out for the ‘new world’.
A shoal of small metallic entities swam past, glistening as they were touched by the torch’s light. Beyond the dust and debris, I tried to remember how things had been. The greens and blues. A sunset. The feel of the ground beneath your feet and fresh water on your skin. A world teeming with biodiversity. Life.
Without realising it, I had closed my eyes. Strangely it still felt as if I could see the glow of the torch, its beam now becoming stronger as it appeared to guide the path ahead of me.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“Adam. Come in Adam. This is Eden1. The procedure is complete. We need you to reboot your system to turn the oxygen tank back on. Adam, do you copy?”
“We are unable to regain comms Captain. His vitals are still reading but they are weak.”
“Keep trying. This is a disaster. Any idea what the object he collided with was?”
“It’s hard to tell with the abundance of debris out there. Could have been a satellite. Or even one of the orbital launch structures. There has been so much shifting of late it’s hard to know for sure.”
“Did we at least manage to get any readings from the planet’s surface?”
“Inconclusive sir. Once we reel him back to the ship and check the spacesuit’s onboard computer, we will have a better idea.”
“Well let’s hope we manage to get something. I’ve already got top brass on my case for losing those two probes. Thank God we didn’t send in a drone after them or we may have bankrupted the whole damn department.
“I just know that there must still be valuable resources below the surface. If we could only find evidence that it’s safe to send a mining crew down there. The mission would still be salvable.
“Okay, Control, reel him in. Let’s see what we’ve got. Jesus, if we lose a terranaut on top of everything else, this will turn into a real PR nightmare.”
“Adam. Adam. Do you read me? Please come in. Adam?”
Fosseway Writers 