The Bottle Ashore

My mother keeps on asking me why I have decided to embark on this journey across the ocean, into the vast unknown beyond the Great Wave. As if asking several times will change the outcome of my response.

“You don’t know what’s there,” she says, over and over. “Nobody knows what’s there.” Again she asks, “Why go? You have a life here. Don’t waste it on some reckless trip.” Sensible advice, for sure, but I am beyond reasoning with.

Last week I saw something shimmering on the shore. Taking a break from my morning walk, I stooped over to investigate, and found a small glass bottle with a rolled-up piece of paper inside. I opened it in a rush, only to find that the message within was in a language I could not understand.

I stared at the short text at the very bottom, thinking it must be the sender’s name. How would it be pronounced? Was it a man’s, or a woman’s, or neither? Long minutes passed by as I cast my mind to the possibilities beyond the horizon. What was the sender trying to say? Surely they had good intentions if they were seeking an anonymous reader through the ocean. Did they, too, wonder what lay on the other side?

I tucked the bottle away in my pocket, and there it stayed as I went about my day. I did my rounds, visited the market, stopped by the tavern… but the mysterious person across the ocean lingered in my mind. I spent every idle moment fiddling with the bottle in my pocket, trying to glean new meaning from its message to no avail.

The bottle became a lucky charm of sorts; the scroll inside, an unsolvable puzzle. I took it to the record-keeper, but he could only come to the conclusion that it was some sort of elaborate prank. My mother, too, was unconvinced from the start. I had an unhealthy obsession with washed up debris, she said, in the same dismissive tone she used when I brought bits of scrap and driftwood home as a child.

Perhaps she was right. The bottle, and everything its existence implied, soon became all I could think about. I spent hours in the records hall, delving deep into tomes full of theories as to what lay beyond the Great Wave and how to get there. One in particular stood out to me: after studying the patterns of the currents for years, the author claimed that having a connection to someone from the other side would forge a way through the Wave. Nobody had managed to prove or disprove the theory, as nobody had found the requisite connection.

If that theory is right, the bottle is my key.

I am convinced that this is my calling in life. I no longer fear the consequences of failing: not knowing the truth feels like a fate worse than death. This, my mother cannot understand. She tries to convince me to stay, even now, as I untie the rope keeping my boat docked to the pier.

But suddenly, just as I pick up the oars, her insistence reaches me, and I realize that leaving her behind would be my first and only regret. I stare at her, and she stares back, standing still as my untethered boat slowly and inevitably drifts back, widening the gap between us…

…until my mother jumps into the water, sending forth a heavy splash that soaks me to my bones.

She does not know how to swim, I remember with horror.

My body moves on its own. I throw out an oar for her to grab, then scramble to pull her up and over the hull. She falls in with a thud, and the moment she’s safely on my boat, alive and breathing, my dread flares up into hot anger.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yell at my mother, both of us dripping wet and sprawled out on the floor. “What kind of stunt are you trying to pull?”

“You’re the mad one!” she tries to yell back, but she’s completely breathless. She clings to the edge of the boat to stabilize herself, and makes an effort to breathe. “If I can’t convince you to stay, then I’m coming with you! I’d rather die than live without my son!”

Her sudden confession shocks me into silence. Exhausted, we drift together for a while, oars forgotten on board as the currents take us further and further away from the one and only coast we know.

At last, as the Great Wave appears in the horizon, I feel my courage return. I take my mother’s hands in mine and press the small, cold bottle in between.

“This isn’t the end of our story,” I tell her. “It’s only the beginning.”