The sea is still tonight. The view from this spot is always changing, rough waters reflecting and distorting the pinks and yellows of the sunrise, tempestuous greys, every possible shade of blue. On very clear days, the snowcapped peaks of the next island are visible, so close but very distant, improbably thrust from the earth.
I walk along this path every day. Sometimes I pause only briefly to look at the sea before continuing my journey. More often I stand a while, taking in as much as I can, bottling it up to take home with me until I am compelled by time and falling temperatures to move along.
Right now, the water is glass, mirroring an unusual sky. Soft mauve near the horizon, deepening upward into something darker, like a heavy velvet drape across the landscape. I am lost in cataloguing various shades of purple when there is a sharp, insistent sound.
A woman passing near me stops and examines her phone, face moving through a range of emotions too quickly for me to identify. With shaking fingers, she makes a call.
I turn away but can still hear snippets. Did you get the alert? Her voice is coloured by suppressed panic. Higher than the house. What’s that...12 hours? Where are we going to... Choking in short, shallow breaths. A pause. No, I’m breathing. Coming now. I love you too.
The woman remains still for some moments after the conversation ends. Suddenly registering my presence, she makes several faltering attempts to speak, eventually settling on a suggestion to check my phone. She then turns sharply away, breaking into an awkward run, handbag and groceries jostling.
By the time I have my phone in my hand, it’s making the same sound. A loud message is displayed on the screen.
ATTN: TSUNAMI. EST ARRIVAL WGTN REGION 6AM. WAVES UP TO 10M HEIGHT. RESIDENTS IN TSUNAMI ZONE EVACUATE TO HIGHER GROUND.
Oh, I think. Of course. It was probably a matter of time. The wave must be coming from quite far away though. Like the woman said, that’s at least 12 hours off. How exotic. Most of our catastrophes are homegrown.
The next thing that appears on my screen is an incoming call from my mother. She spends a lot of her time thinking about natural disasters and my vulnerability to them although, of course, I suppose this is not an unfounded concern. I learn from her where the offending earthquake was (off the coast of South America), how big it was (very, very big), and several other details she saw on the news and wants to make sure I know.
She asks where I am now, if I’ve started preparing to evacuate. She can’t understand how I’m being so calm, wants to make sure I’m taking this seriously. I assure her that I am, that I’m going home now, and besides, it has the whole Pacific Ocean to cross yet. She doesn’t think this is very funny but is reassured enough, for now.
I hang up and look around, taking in my surroundings, unchanged, apparently not having heard the news. The sea is still calm, the sky only slightly darker. I start to notice movements around me. People rushing past, shouting into phones, someone touching my shoulder checking I’m okay. Cars are racing past, travelling at speeds generally unadvisable on this narrow road.
I wonder if I should be speeding too. There’s a hill right there, a steep bank around 30 metres up, covered in rough scrub and gorse. I could cross the road and scramble up; it would only take a few minutes. What would I do once I got there? The wave won’t arrive for hours. It’s too soon to waste time but too long to rush. As a first step, I think, I should probably go home.
I round the corner and see the little house. I sometimes feel surprised it’s still there, find myself wondering how it came to exist in the first place. Who would build a home on this rocky outcrop, so exposed to the weather and the sea? And who would stay there, now that the waves are starting to reach up through the foundations and make rockpools on the carpet? It's been clear for some time that the sea is winning the war for this small piece of land, progressing through a slow strategy of attrition. And yet here it still is and here I am.
It’s getting properly dark as I step inside and look around. The familiar décor, the clutter, the mess. I’ve lived here for almost three years now but sometimes it still feels like I’m house-sitting for Aunty Simone.
Everyone was perplexed when she left me this house, myself included. I’d lived in a different city all my life and barely visited Simone since my childhood. If the people in my life had been surprised that I’d been left a house by an eccentric aunt, they were completely stupefied when I decided to move in and stay.
I’ll just stay for a bit, do it up, then sell once the market starts to improve, I told them. After the first flood, that plan started to look a little more challenging. After the second in less than a year, it seemed pretty much impossible. There was some talk of the government buying up the land, like they’d done elsewhere but it didn’t come to anything. Everywhere was vulnerable to some kind of risk. If they intervened after every disaster, where would it end?
It was clear by then that I was never going to leave anyway. I’ve started to settle into my life here, I told my friends back home. It just feels right. They would try to understand and would sometimes come to help with repairs, even though I could tell they thought it was a losing battle.
The attempts dried up a while ago. No one could understand why I was tying myself to this place, against my best interests, at an increasing financial loss, in a city where I didn’t know anyone and wasn’t really trying to make friends. I couldn’t blame them for asking but I did a very poor job when I attempted to explain. In truth, I was beginning to enjoy my isolation, alone with the sea, in the house of another woman living on the edge.
A knock at the door. How long have I been standing here? This happens to me sometimes; I fall into a moment and lose a few minutes or hours. I suppose it’s not a great time for it. I check my phone, too overwhelmed by the volume of notifications to register anything but the time. 7:30 pm.
The visitor is Claire, who lives at the top of a nearby hill and is one of my few friends here. We met doing flood clean-up in the next bay over on a rare occasion when my house was spared any damage. She greets me with a quick hug and a sympathetic smile, both soothing and laden with grim insinuation.
She’s come to check on me, having called and texted multiple times with no response. I dimly recall a promise to keep Mum updated on my progress and imagine her probable state of distress. Will remedy that soon.
I say I’m ok, that I’m just trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. It’s strange to have so much time to think about this. The wave is so far away that if you wanted, you could go to sleep and wake up just in time, setting an alarm like you were catching an early flight. We laugh at this prospect. Who could possibly sleep knowing what was coming?
In any case, whenever I’m ready, I can head up to her place; we’ll have some hot drinks and wait it out together. Do I need any help packing up? No, I’m alright. Okay then. A gentle squeeze on the arm, promises to stay safe, keep in touch, see you soon.
I close the door behind her and look around the living room. I suppose I should at least try to start packing.
Where, how, could I possibly start? I survey all the cluttered, flood-stained furniture, the shelves littered with Simone’s collection of trinkets and seashells that I’ve barely touched since moving in. This wouldn’t be like the previous storms, where everything got a bit damp but was more or less salvageable. This wave is playing for keeps. Anything I don’t take now will be swept away, gone forever, or at least forever changed.
I have considered this prospect before with morbid fascination. All the ways the house could be destroyed. Each different direction from which a wave could approach. I compulsively read up on other disasters, forty metre waves sweeping into Japan and carrying off entire villages, disappearing as if they had never existed. Would that happen to this little house? The erasure of its existence, taking every remaining trace of Simone away with it? It occurs to me that maybe this is what she would have wanted.
I think back to my childhood, to the couple of weeks each year when my mother would put me on a plane and, not without trepidation, entrust me to her sister’s care. They were weeks outside of time, where the rules of reality felt different, when my normal life seemed distant and strange rather than the other way around.
Simone had lived alone for many years, at least as long as I had known her. She didn’t seem to have any desire to change this. In my mind she oscillated between an idol and a cautionary tale, although no-one could doubt that she was content with her life. There was a serenity about her that would be impossible to fake.
We’d spend our time together walking along the beach, staring into rockpools, reading fortunes in the washed up seaweed. Other times we would sit in this room, fashioning treasures out of seashells and driftwood, while she regaled me with tales of her life and her philosophies. We would go out every day, even when the weather was rough and the gusts were powerful enough to knock a person over. I learned the therapeutic properties of screaming into the wind, releasing my worries to the sea.
Simone was all too aware of the house’s vulnerability. We are only here by permission of some higher authority, she would say, and that permission could be revoked at any time. She was never fixed on who exactly this authority was. Not content with a generic deity or earth mother, she told me about Kymopoleia, the lesser-known daughter of Poseidon, responsible for storms and waves. She paid tribute to Tangaroa, the sea god of this land and recounted tales of the selkies and sea witches that bedevilled our ancestors across far-off seas.
What made Simone so captivating was that you could never tell if she really believed it or if she was just having you on. It may have been a bit of both. What she did seem certain of was that sometime soon the rent would be due, the permission to stay revoked. I think she would have been sad she was going to miss it.
I start to move things from one place to another, trying to devise some kind of system, failing to make any meaningful progress. Partway through my packing I remember to return Mum’s calls and receive a barrage of concern. I swear on my life that I’m moving as fast as I can, that I am taking this seriously. It’s just quite a big job.
And it is. The stakes of each small decision are paralysingly high. Under the circumstances, I can hardly be comprehensive. The question of where I will go next is still too abstract to consider but I suspect my search for long-term shelter won’t be helped by lugging all of my possessions around with me. Nonetheless, I am struggling to leave anything behind, the certainty of its destruction strengthening my attachment to every object.
It’s nearly 11 pm when there is another knock at the door. An earnest young man in his early twenties. He is with Civil Defence and is going around all the houses checking on residents, seeing who has evacuated and ensuring that those remaining have a plan. Do you live alone? Yes. Do you have somewhere to go, people to help you? Yes. Good. There is an emergency number you can ring if you need help. The wave is still six or seven hours away but we’d recommend evacuating sooner rather than later. Thank you, I’ll be going soon, just need to pack up a couple more things.
And I mean it. Don’t I? Of course I do. It would be ridiculous not to. I am a logical person, a sane person. I may be moving slowly, occasionally losing focus but I do intend to leave soon. I will carry my bags up the hill, sit with my friend, wait and watch while the ocean consumes the houses below. Take comfort knowing that I made it through this one then find another place to go, settling in until another fault line ruptures or a storm pulls the earth out from under me.
I picture what would happen if I didn’t leave but stayed rooted to the spot instead. Go down with the house, tie our fates together. I try to shake free of this dangerous notion. Drowning here would not be peaceful or romantic. No Virginia Woolf stepping calmly into the Thames or Ophelia floating serenely in a procession of flowers. It would be sudden, violent. I see myself thrown around the living room, battered by Simone’s trinkets and furniture and miscellaneous debris, then ripped out into the sea.
And I am not the only one involved. I think of the people who care, are required to care about me. My mum. Claire from up the hill. The young man from Civil Defence. Who else would I be endangering by indulging in a nihilistic fantasy?
Then, for the first time since I received the alert, my heartrate begins to speed up. My breathing shallows. Fear starts to engulf me.
I see water coming up through the floorboards. The science was wrong, the wave has come early. I’m paralysed as the water rises up around my neck, over my head, pushing me under. I search for a way out.
If I can open a door or a window it will spill out like a burst dam. There may be even more water out there, endless water everywhere but there might also be some air. Moving ponderously, gasping, I struggle toward the front door.
Finally, I am able to throw it open, tumbling out onto the deck, landing on my hands and knees. I gasp in the cool air, notice that I am dry. Of course, the water was never there. That was just panic, built up and overdue, pulling back, gaining momentum, then rushing in all at once.
My breathing returns to normal. I survey my surroundings. I am facing the sea with the house, the road and the steep hill at my back. Everything is much like it was when I saw it last, waves gently lapping at the rocks separating the house from the beach, a bright moon reflecting off the surface of the water, illuminating the scene. I can see myself from a distance, a stubborn child refusing to go inside after a day at the beach, staring down at the water that threatens to consume her instead of running away as fast as she can.
Not for the first time, I wonder at the woman I’ve become since I moved into this house. Is this just the natural effect of isolation, cutting myself off from friends and family, living so exposed to the elements? Was it inevitable that living in this house with all of Simone’s memories and belongings would turn me into a facsimile of her? That’s not quite right. This didn’t just happen. I chose to become this person; someone whose behaviour defies explanation and confounds all of those who try to understand her.
I am starting to truly understand what Simone meant. The hills surrounding the city, the jagged mountains across the strait, they didn’t just appear overnight. They were shaped over millennia, slowly, gradually, with occasional moments of great violence. How arrogant we all are, imagining we could claim ownership over any of this land. The disrespect we’ve been showing, the destructive provocation. No wonder the arrangement is being brought to an end.
With this realisation it makes less and less sense to run away. Who am I to think I can avoid the approach of the ocean? Today, tomorrow, six centuries, six decades, six hours. It doesn’t really matter. It’ll all be ending soon enough.
I feel comforted, my panic almost completely gone. I rise to my feet. Move forward slowly, calmly, carefully climbing over the low wall of rocks. My feet touch the water, brisk but welcoming, rough sand holding me in place. I understand, I think. You’ll do what you must. We’ll do what we can, until the day that we can’t. And that’s the way it’s always been.
I stay here for some time, the sky turning pink, my skin turning blue, thoughts fading. From far away, I register someone calling my name. Hands grab my shoulders, shake me. What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong with you? We were so worried. Terrified faces, panicked eyes. I would tell them to calm down but somehow, I don’t think they’d appreciate it. They lead me inside, wrap me in a towel. I let them. I was prepared to stay but I suppose for today I can go.
There isn’t time to take anything from the house, so we head back through the door and hasten up to higher ground. At the top of the hill there’s a small huddle of people, wrapped in blankets, clutching each other, waiting to witness the destruction of their community. Some are holding back tears; some seem to be in shock. A handful of small children clutch at their parents’ legs, too young to understand what is happening but sensing intuitively that they should be scared. Above all of this, an undeniable feeling of nervous exhilaration.
Some look puzzled at my late arrival but readily embrace me into the group. I turn my face to the sea. It’s only a matter of minutes now.
There is a collective gasp when the water starts to recede, unveiling rocks and stranded, thrashing fish. I spot the little house. It looks so lonely separated from the tide, its steadfast companion. No matter. They’ll be reunited soon.
We all hold our breath and wait in silent anticipation. I look around at my neighbours, their eyes fixed on the horizon, faces a mask of horror. I feel for them. They will mourn the loss of their homes, the lives they built on unstable foundations. They don’t understand that this is how it’s meant to be.
In the distance, a fearsome roar.
The wave comes quickly, and then it is gone.