The Archipelago

157 The Archipelago Evan Morgan Williams Five hundred miles from the mainland, obscured by the curve of the earth, the islands of a nameless archipelago dot a patch of blue tarpaulin sea. Barren, old, crumbling, the islands are the only defined points on a watery plain that is as vacant and forlorn as sky. Cargo ships chugging across the sea leave wakes of foam, and the wakes crisscross like pick-up sticks, but purposeless currents dissolve these lines. Jet trails across the sky repeat this behavior, the perfect lines, the breaking apart. Clouds of fish drift below, clouds of rain above. Sheens of oil. A stray, melting iceberg from the south. A fishing net torn loose. Nothing holds fast. Not even the islands of the archipelago. They are old and chalky, and they are crumbling into the sea; most have eroded to fewer than a hundred yards wide; the lowest ones are submerged during storms. Someday, the islands of the archipelago will wash away. The best navigational charts put the number of islands at about 200. The shorelines are sheer cliffs, jagged and white as bergs, crowded with puffins, cormorants, and gulls. Every island lies within sight of several others, and no island is separated from another by more than two hops. On a map, if you pinned down segments of string linking the islands, you would describe a network more entwined than the strands of a spider web. But understand this: if you tried to pull the string into a knot, gently, the tangled connections would amount to nothing more than a simple loop. It would be as if the archipelago were not even there. A long time ago, a people settled the archipelago. Where they originated , why they abandoned their old lives, and where they thought they were going, are not known, but at some time they boarded rafts, drifted across the sea, and washed up on the islands. The people dwelled in caves they carved into the mealy cliffs. Here began a harsh, new way of life. There was no way to leave. Tourists, mariners, archeologists, and relic hunters have explored the caves and found simple gear for fishing: sinewy nets, fishtraps, crab 158 Ecotone: reimagining place cages. The caves have yielded ivory knitting needles and spinning bobbins , and even a simple loom strung across four ribs of a bow whale. Evidently, the people gathered flax from a red flower that grows on the rocky humps of the islands, and from this flax they made a variety of fine, strong, scarlet ropes. Samples have been found of twine and string, woven cord, braided ropes, and several gauges of spun thread. The walls of the caves display faded, peeling frescoes, and the frescoes depict men casting fishing lines, women braiding children’s hair, instructions for tying dozens of knots, and children swinging from a rope over blue water turned milky from the dissolving cliffs. The layout of each cave is a marvel, a maze, as intricate as an island can stand without caving in. Maybe in the early days the caves were simple, but to make space for the growing population, they grew more complex: additional wall space for frescoes, twists and turns to confuse intruders. Of course, a resident would have found the passages familiar and comforting; each cave simplifies to a loop. Keep your hand on the left wall as you walk, and trace the frescoes with your fingertips. Do not let go. You will trace the entire cave and return to your starting place. A few expertly lashed rafts have been found, although there are no trees on the islands. You have to assume that the people kept the best rafts from their flotilla and salvaged boards from the rafts that were no longer serviceable. The frescoes do not show it, but you can imagine the people traveling locally on these rafts, island to island, sharing technology, food, and stories, stitching back and forth like guppies in an aquarium. Of course, the islands in the center of the archipelago would have seen the most traffic, and their frescoes depict people grown fat from puffin eggs, lounging in the sun at the mouth of their caves...