The waves slither onto the beach, crimson like blood. I can smell the poison in the water, the chemical tang that rides the scent of brine, yet still I kneel on the soft white sands and cup my hands.
The ocean withdraws. It leaves me wanting. Trails of ochre trickle seaward; they are not enough. I wait for the next wave, wishing deep in my heart that it will swell and crash down upon my head and drown my sorrows. Instead I await the long path to oblivion. The waves rush forward again and I dash my hands into the water. I come up with a handful of wet sand. It runs through my fingers, and a soft tingling inches its way across my skin.
This is the way my father passed, and my brother. They chose the long path. The red tide left them on the shore, their lips and fingertips blue, their hearts stilled by the toxins that have banished living memory of the blue-green ocean. What wonders my kin saw as they passed away, none living will ever know. Only those willing to taste the waters see as they did. Only those willing to taste the waters die with their eyes open.
But my hands are full of sand; my fingers twinge as the toxin seeps through the skin, and even the ochre sand falls from my grasp. I eye the next wave with interest. It gathers speed. Perhaps this will be the one which carries its deadly cargo into my grasp.
Footfalls upon sand thrum behind me. The wave has me transfixed and I do not turn. I reach down towards the retreating water, even as Anya’s familiar presence approaches.
“Seth, please,” she says. Her voice wavers. “Come away! Come back with me.”
No. I won’t. I can’t. But I can’t say such things, not to my beloved sister. How can I tell her that I wish to take the long path without implying that existence alone with her is unbearable? It isn’t. But it is not enough, so I say nothing. The wave swells.
“I can’t lose you too,” she says. But she will. Already my fingers have gone numb. The toxin is strong; soon it will take the rest of the life on this island of ours, by starvation if nothing else. The shallow seas are empty of fish. They were the first to die, washing up on the shore in droves. We were wise enough not to feast on this apparent bounty, but not wise enough to find a solution that didn’t end in the long path.
Her shaking hand descends on my shoulder. “Please,” she says. “Don’t leave me all alone.” It’s all about her, you see. She fears solitude more than she fears the slow death of all that surrounds her. The long path takes time, but it will be nothing more than a moment compared to the drawn-out suffering of living with the despair that the red tide brings.
The wave lunges forward, and Anya skitters backwards, out of its reach. The poison laps at my bare knees. My skin is on fire, but it is a fire of purification, a fire of rebirth. My hands are heavy, yet still I cup them and lower them into the ebbing flow.
“Why?” she demands. “Tell me!”
“I wish to die with my eyes open,” I say. I lift my hands and tilt my head back.
I don’t even see her hand before it strikes my wrist. The poisoned water sprays from my hands across my face, across the beach. It looks like she drew blood; perhaps she has. My lips are wet; whether with poison or my own fearful sweat I do not know. I turn to look at her. Her eyes burn. Her lips are pursed in a furious expression I remember from our childhood. Red dots spatter her shorts and her bare legs.
I laugh, struck for a moment by the image of the two of us. She raises her hand to strike me again, but she hesitates. Her eyes burn fiercer.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Why throw it all away? Everything we’ve worked to build? Everything mother left us?”
“But there’s no hope,” I say. And it is true. “When there’s no hope, there is only despair.”
“Then find hope anew! Please Seth, think about this.”
“I have thought about it, long and hard,” I say. “Either I will die here with the ocean’s tide at my lips, or when the tide strips the life from our home I will die of starvation. I will watch you die of the same.”
“If you leave I will die of loneliness!”
I shake my head, but she kneels and grasps my shoulders with both hands.
“If you taste the waters, so do I,” she says. “We will take the long path together.”
She has always known my heart. She knows that that is the one thing I could not stand. Because is that not the reason for my cowardice? Is that not the reason that I seek the long path, to save my eyes from seeing the one thing I could not stand, the suffering of my dear sister? I lick my lips as I gaze into her eyes, judging her determination.
My tongue burns. My limbs feel distant. I turn away from her, back towards the ocean. She kneels at my side and her hands reach out for the crimson tide. She won’t do it. She won’t follow through. She’s just trying to bluff me, to pull me back into her world, away from the long path.
The wave rushes in. We reach down as one. I wince as the poison coats her fingers, but we each draw a palmful of death. She raises her hand to her lips and hesitates to glance at me. She is bluffing, bluffing, bluffing. My mouth is ablaze, my brain stinging, my thoughts astray. I struggle to raise my hand to my mouth.
“I follow my father and brothers, upon the long path,” Anya whispers. She tilts her head back. The water trickles from her hand. Crimson splashes across her nose, her eyes, into her mouth, down her chin. She coughs and drops her hand.
I freeze. Her back arches with a crack, and she topples sideways onto the sand. Her eyes are wide, delirious. She is on her way; I must follow.
But my hand disobeys. My brain is on fire, and the beach undulates before me. The foam at my sister’s mouth is like the treetops at sunset. But I have not tasted the waters, I cannot take the long path, I cannot pass on beside her. I force my hand to my mouth, but already it is empty. I lick the palm, but there is nothing but damp sand.
I fall back against the beach as the ocean retreats. I am vaguely aware of Anya’s fevered thrashings beside me, but this is not the path. She is gone, but I remain forever on this beach, taunted by crimson.