Peter shook off his remembrances and now splashed along the strange unknown shore, his sailboat towed behind.

‘Is it all like this? Bright hot beach and forest?’ Peter said aloud. He was used to being alone — a lot. But that was okay. Except it made him talk to himself — he tried to stop being weird like that. Now instead he laughed.

‘This place is a new definition of alone.’

The tangled tropical forest stretched wide along the beach and did not invite entry. There were no openings between the twisting spiked fronds of something that could be the worst sort of man-maiming cactus-vine-thing. But probably wasn’t. How could he tell?

The splashes and kicks of his feet in the shallows startled a school of small fish. They flickered and flashed a moment, then shot under the shade of the boat. Were they something he might eat? In the blazing heat he understood the meaning of desert island for the first time.

Peter remembered a snatch of poem from school.

‘Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.’

Then Peter saw it — a narrow band of fresh water cut across the sand. Boulders and rocks of broken coral filled the bed of the stream. Its continuous chuckle underlay the regular wash of the waves from the sea.

‘Not so much of a desert after all. At least I can drink.’

He brought The Jupiter up into the flow of the stream, and waded through the cool water. The mast got tangled in the overhanging leaves and branches that formed a tunnel over the stream. Out of the sun and in the shadows he felt cooler. Yet the humidity seemed heavier. The air lay thick with the smell of the forest, moss, and fresh water.

Peter started in fright as a flock of birds burst from the water surface. The waterway opened up into a wide lagoon, a waterfall fell a few meters to churn the water white. Above rose the forest-clad spire of black stone. A ribbon of cloud trailed from the high black peak and broke into a line of smaller white pieces. These puffed and billowed in the breeze like foam in the wake of a ship.

Peter pulled his sailboat up onto a sandy beach where he sat against the trunk of a palm tree that leaned low over the lagoon. Next to him a green shoot sprouted from a mottled old coconut. He recognized everything, but only from what he had seen on TV or read in books. A land more dreamlike than real.

Where is this place? And where are all the people?

Had he stepped into a travel brochure for a resort hotel? Did a team of gardeners plant and tend to the green plants? But chaos ruled here too. The smell of decay, sea, and fresh water overlaid one another.

Not a garden. A wild place.

The birds settled on the water once more. Sea birds mostly, though he saw something a lot like a duck, or a cormorant.

Thirsty, he slipped to the water’s edge and scooped up a handful of water and sniffed. It smelled fresh and was crystal clear so he took a sip. He realized then the birds might piss in the lagoon and flicked the rest of the water from his hand.

‘But birds don’t piss do they? Bird shit is white and gunky.’

He laughed and took a deep drink anyway, then ducked under the cool fresh water to wash the salt from his clothes. A thump on the ground a short distance away made his heart race — a coconut rolled to a stop.

‘Okay. Don't sit under coconut trees. Or leave my boat there.’

The Jupiter was easy to drag back to the lake and pull along the edge to a clear patch of land free of trees.

Safe from the strange sea animals and high on shore he took off his life jacket, and unzipped his wet suit. He rubbed his hair dry with his hands. His metal sailing spanner strung on his neck banged free against a khaki T-shirt emblazoned with a Comsat Angels logo, one of his mum’s favorite 80’s bands. It had been a happy day when he learned he could fit her cool old T-shirts. She? Not so much.

Next to the sailing spanner on the cord lay a small leather bag. He opened it now and slipped the precious greenstone niho taniwha from its protective cover and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. The Maori carving of the water monster’s tooth had been meant kept him safe while sailing. It had failed in that. The deep green stone tooth glowed a bright green at the edge where it thinned enough to let light shine through. The soft warmth calmed him Perhaps it had saved him. He still lived.

He tied the arms of his wetsuit about his waist over the bottom leggings. Then squeezed water from the Comsat Angels T-shirt to dry it a little then put it back on.

He walked along the edge of the lake, and stumbled onto a trail. Peter was no tracker but that it was an animal trail seemed obvious. For the first time he wondered if there were dangers about. Tigers might leap on him. Closer to the forest edge, he kept one eye to the lake, the other to the trees… which is why he stumbled on the square of rocks that had fallen into a pile. A taller line of stones formed a wall.

‘A house. So I’m not alone… or I am but… someone lived here. Once.’

A pang of loneliness hit him all of a sudden, and he hung his head.

‘How long ago? Did they end up here like I did?’

Back at his sailboat he sat a while. That he had travelled far from home seemed obvious. No part of Lyttleton looked anything like this land. Too warm — like Fiji, or Samoa. There were some familiar things, but the birds were strange. And the manta thing in the water…

‘Strange new world.’

Peter hugged his knees and shivered. Suddenly he wanted to be in the sun, not here under the shade of coconut trees that might drop a bomb on his head. He ran into the sea and kicked up sprays of water, reveling in the movement of his feet through the warmth.

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Away offshore, the manta thing jumped from the water, and he wondered why he had been afraid.

‘Mantas don’t have teeth. I’d just be gummed to death.’

Standing still the fish now swam in a ring about him. He put his hand into the water curious to see what would happen. Several nibbled on his finger tips — tickles more than bites.

If you’re so fearless… means no one hunts you.

Almost without thought he stroked the belly of one larger fish, tried to grab it, but it flicked away and circled into the distance. The flash of unsettled sand cleared and the fish came back. More thoughtful now he realized that if he were to eat, he would have to catch something, and here the fish came close enough to bite him. Fearing they might soon lose interest, he placed his hands palms up in the water and wiggled his fingers. Another fish slipped between them. He raised his hands slowly, and then in a rush flipped the fish high in the air. It landed in the shallows and thrashed for a moment. Peter dived for it, and both flapped about, neither getting very far. Then a wave washed up, and in the extra depth the fish flicked away.

That’s when he saw the manta had come up to the shore, only a few meters away, head to the beach. Peter stepped back until his feet reached dry sand once more — unsure how much water it would need to get its gums into him.

He stared at it curiously. Under the water the iridescence shimmered, while above the water the colors melted like a sheen of oil that only slowly flowed across the wide flat body. It seemed almost as if hair or fur covered it, that floated free to swirl underwater, but it lay slick in the air against the skin. Peter rubbed his wet hair, he felt the locks of it stiff and damp with water. He ruffled his fingers and his hair separated free from his scalp.

He took another step back. Mantas might have gums. But this hairy manta thing might have teeth and like to eat boys.

With a sudden heave the manta reared into the air and slapped down in a splash, Peter jumped back as a wave of water pushed up towards him. As the wave receded the fish he has been trying to catch flapped about on the sand. For a moment he just watched them. Then dropped to his knees, and with one eye on the manta he flicked each fish up the beach out of reach of the water. When he had four he let the others fall back into the sea. He even helped one that still floundered about. Surely four fish could feed him enough for now.

It rocked him a moment. The notion he would be stuck on this island alone without food, and the fish he caught might be his only meal tonight. He had never had to think about where his next meal would come from.

‘Now I have to get my own meals…’ the reality of his isolation sunk in then.

The manta slipped away from the beach into deeper water. Its fins slapped the surface as it dashed back and forth almost like a dog. Peter wondered if it had helped him purposely. The manta rose in a short leap and then disappeared.

The four fish hung two in each hand as he trudged back to the lagoon where his boat lay.

‘Now what?’ The dead eyes of the fish stared back at him as if they were angry with him. So alive just before, now he owed it to them somehow. To eat them, and not waste their lives.

So he washed them in the lagoon water and admired the sleek forms. The scales were smooth when he ran his fingers from head to tail, but rough and prickly the other direction. He picked at the scales and they popped off, but when he rubbed they cut at his fingers. He found a sea shell and scraped the fish tail to head and the scales popped right off. Three others soon joined the first on the back of The Jupiter’s deck.

Peter stared glumly at his work. The fish seemed no more ready to eat, and instead were a bit battered and bruised.

‘How do you even make a fire?’ He knew the old story of rubbing two sticks together but that made as much sense as dancing for rain.

He raised one fish to his nose and sniffed. It smelled fresh, and salty. A bit like the sea.

‘Well, the Japanese eat their fish raw. I guess I…’

He put the fish back and stared at them a little longer until they blurred in his vision. Peter blinked. There was no fun in being alone like this, with no way home. Did anyone even miss him? Uncle Jeff had complained about him enough to his mother even if he had fed him, and let him stay in the caravan.

COVID had kept his mother out of the country, and old age had meant his grandfather had lived in a home. Peter would miss the old guy now he had gone. Even if he repeated the same stories — he still loved them. Each telling comforted him and he had tried each time to persuade Granbam to tell a new version of the tale. To give him more detail.

Peter picked up one of the fish and washed it in the lagoon water, then took a bite. The flesh was soft and sweet and…

‘Needs salt.’

Back at the beach, he sat in the warm water of the shallows as the sun went down eating the raw fish. Between bites he washed it in the seawater to season it and tossed the bones into the water. Small fish churned the water’s surface as they fought for the remains. Four fish filled him well enough. He wouldn’t starve.

With that thought he realized he had accepted this strange place. It seemed real, not a dream.

‘But if there’s a way here, must be a way home.’

The sun turned the sky a raw red and dipped into the sea. As huge rollers swept across the ocean the horizon moved and heaved about as if uncomfortable in its efforts to sleep. The distant rumble of their death upon the reef came to him as an ominous warning of the perils of the open sea. But never before had he been anywhere more peaceful and quiet. Suddenly he wanted to be back with his boat, amongst something from home.

‘Tomorrow I’ll sail on the lagoon, around the island. See what’s here.’

With The Jupiter on its side the mast lay on the sandy ground. The sail, stretched by the boom and mast, formed a kind of tent. Snuggled up next to the hull he drummed his fingers on the wooden side.

He had sanded, painted, polished and worked at the surface for so long The Jupiter had become as familiar to him as anything in his life. More so than the bunk bed in Uncle Jeff’s caravan. With that thought he dropped off to sleep, exhausted, and itchy with salt. In his hand he held a hank of The Jupiter’s mainsheet rope wrapped tight in his fist.

Peter woke in the night to a howling wind. The sail flapped with a crack and hit him in the face. It strained at the boom, and the ropes securing it to the hull snapped wildly. His makeshift tent had become panicked and uncontrollable.

Warm fat raindrops greeted him when he rolled from under the sail and he got wet in an instant. Another gust struck and the rain suddenly hit like bullets fired from the dark.

His sailing spanner about his neck became useful now and he worked to remove the halyard rope that fixed the sail to the top of the mast. He slid the sail down the groove in the mast, and he unclipped the boom from the goose-neck fitting that allowed it to swing. The many adjustment and control ropes he loosened faster than ever before. With the sail bundled into a tight roll he wrapped all the ropes around it. He did not want his sail to get caught in the wind and ripped.

The rolled sail and boom he shoved deep under some bushes together with the centerboard and rudder. The wind grew even stronger now. With the hull on its side it caught the wind almost like a sail. It rocked and the mast bounced and dragged across the ground. There was nothing for it. The mast had to come down too. His spanner loosened the mast side stays, and he undid the forestay turnbuckle on the bow. With the mast unstepped it joined the other rigging under the bushes.

‘Done, and done.’

He began to relax, but jumped as lightning flashed bright and picked out his surroundings in brilliance and shadow. He rolled the hull upside down and slipped underneath in the hollow formed by the cockpit. After the next lightning flash he counted less than two seconds before the crack and crash of thunder struck.

The storm lasted for hours, but Peter finally slipped off to sleep and he knew nothing until a huge bang awoke him. The hull shook and pressed down on him. He shivered in fear. All that remained now was the small dark space he huddled in.

It seemed as if the world was ending around him.