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Page 22.

The island loomed around him almost as mysteriously as it had during the fog and rain of night.

Daylight did not shine deeply into its dark shadows. He felt himself in the presence of ghosts as he circled around to the old woman’s cottage. Though the house stood empty now, he felt an obligation to leave things in order, if only for himself when he returned. He straightened things out, fixed the door so no animals could get inside, and prepared to close up the cottage. He would think about using it as a hideaway, after some time had gone by and he’d digested what he’d seen and felt here. Before he closed up, he noticed a couple of slender wooden sticks lying in a corner, along with a small clay jar. He knelt down and examined the jar. It was filled with a black paste, and the tip of the sticks were black. Crawling on all fours, he began to take an interest in the pale scraps lying around. Most were blank. They were paper, evidently created by chopping vegetal matter up fine and mixing it with wool in water to make a pulp which was then pounded flat and left to dry in the sun, maybe stretched over a flat rock or pressed between flat rocks. He resolved to explore the art of paper making on his next trip. Right now, he was more interested in the old woman’s writings, which he found on several of the scraps that had been in her bed. She must have composed some thoughts on her last day, until the light faded and the deadly gas from the fireplace took her away. Alex sat on a rock on the beach and read the scraps, repeatedly and out of order, until some logical threads took shape in his mind.

I am Kathryn, bearing the memories of Kathryn Bellwood, an instructor of History at Beacham University. In many ways, I am Kathryn Bellwood, who lived eons ago. Yet, I am my own person, so I call myself simply Kathryn or Bella. We write because we feel we must leave some record, even when it is not clear anyone will ever read it. To you, years in the future, maybe a thousand years from now if this record survives, greetings. If you wonder why you live, know that we wonder also. Know that it is good to live, and to love life, and to enjoy the world despite all its evils and hardships. In that sense, I have no regrets. Like Dorothy, my dear friend Dot, I am a clone. We are sterile and cannot bear young. We are born in the cave and very few of us ever escape from the devils who eat us. I was strong and smart. I was quick and got away, finding my way to this abandoned village where nobody has lived in centuries. I tried often to return to the valley, but the devils frightened me off. Finally I did rescue Dot, who bears the memories of Dorothy Chin, who taught Chinese Literature at Beacham. Dot went back to the valley despite my objections and has not come back. I fear the devils have taken her, and I am so old and sick that I don’t think I can go on. But know that life was good, such as was able to live it, and maybe in some ways we have had it better than the millions of true humans who lived and died in their cities, with their wars and other horrors. They accomplished great things, but there is no memory of them in the universe except what we unfortunates carry in our genes. The night is coming and I can smell the smoke now. It reminds me of Kathryn’s childhood, and it makes me sad that I never was able to sit with my (her) parents at the fireplace at Christmas and tell stories. I did have a kitten once, and it lived to an old age but was taken by forest animals. I am growing drowsy now, and I have so much more to tell about...

With that, the account ended, and Alex sat for a long time staring at the words on the crude paper. They were inked in stiff, uneven print letters and did not resemble the fine script he knew Alex Kirk had possessed. He rose and took the papers into the cottage, where he carefully hid them in a dry cubbyhole high up. He laid them pressed between stones so rodents could not make a meal of them. They were perhaps the last written testament of humankind. At the same time, Alex had learned enough, reading between the lines, and knowing what he himself had learned in his short life so far, to know there was a place he must go look for more answers and possibly for his own purpose in life, his own salvation.

Alex took the women’s boat, the new knife, and several blankets and set out for the mainland. He had to sail carefully, aiming through an opening of calm water among the boulders, but he managed without damaging the boat.

Just outside, he tied the boat up for a few moments on a rock while he dived down to retrieve his own knife and spear from the wreckage of his raft whose image lay shimmering and trembling one fathom down among kelpy rocks. His bow and arrow he found also but they were waterlogged and probably ruined, though he tossed them in the bottom of the sailboat for possible salvage.

The sailboat looked much as he’d first seen it, when the young woman was still alive and sailing back to the island some weeks ago. It had a tall mast and a woven sail made pliable and airtight with lots of grease. The whole boat smelled pleasantly of lanolin and pine tar. It had a clean, dry, smooth bottom with evidence that straw had once served as a seat, though he had not thought to gather any for his journey. It had a wooden keel-fin, which he dropped through a central slot whose rim rose to gunwale height. It had a rudder of flat wood polished from use and rubbed with oils to make it water resistant. He could sit in a rear corner with one arm over the tiller and the other hand holding a spar that controlled the sail’s pitch, and off he went rocking up and down in the soupy sea as the wind pushed him crisply along. The wind was strong and he kept the sail angled so the boat would press forward on her slightly raised bow.

Pulling the boat up on the sand, he hiked across the hot beach and up the sandy cliffs until he was on a meadow nearly 200 feet above sea level. The meadow was covered with red and yellow flowers, and the air was fresh. For hours, he hiked about looking for any signs of the crashed sky object. He widened his search to include the mix of palms and evergreens growing in the foothills of low mountain ranges, but found nothing—no crater, no burned area, no debris. He began to think the phenomenon must have been one of those fist-sized meteorites that often drop through the atmosphere and burn up without a trace before striking the ground. Gradually he let it go from his mind and returned to his sky island.

In the next day or two he repaired his bow and arrows. He rested an afternoon long in the warm sunshine, sleeping on his promontory after eating well—eggs from his hens, and two quail that ventured too close for their own good. But he kept looking toward the valley, restless to discover its secrets and see what it was Kathryn and Dot had sought there. He had a good idea of what he might be looking for.

Only that prepared him for what was to come next.

In the early morning, right after dawn, he eagerly set sail for the valley in his new boat.

Rather than sail directly to the sandbar fronting the middle of the valley, he tacked away toward the hills opposite his dwelling. He noted with pleasure that one could not make out his sky-island from the sea, which gave him a sense of security. Better not to advertise his location, but to use the island as bait for any other possible souls stranded in time as he was, and he resolved to visit the island regularly. But today his quest lay in the valley where the rippers lay in wait, the beasts that had cost Dot her life and in consequence the life of Kathryn. Alex resolved they would not take his own.

By the sun and the time of day, he noted that he was heading more or less westward. He realized that he had just had confirmation that Beacham University was not an artifact in his head, but had once been a real place. Kathryn’s use of the words “eons ago” did not cheer him as much.

This still did not tell him whether the area around here was that which had long ago been called Upstate New York, or if Beacham had somehow conducted its genetics experiments on some tropical island. There was much still to be learned.

He rode into a tiny cove surrounded by high cliffs. There, he beached the boat on a thumbnail beach, securing her anchor line under a heavy stone.

From this protected cove the valley was well out of sight around a long bend to the east. He waded around rocks, through shallow water, and came into a larger cove closer to the valley. This cove had a larger beach leading to forest above the rocks. He clambered up into the woods and discovered fruit trees. Birds twittering excitedly among the dangling fruits signaled the orchard-like nature of this area, and Alex looked for a good tree to climb.

Sitting in a tree atop the cliffs, chewing on a juicy sweet pear of delicate flowery flavor, he promised himself to come again and take home a few fruit trees.