11,034 meters

Jana Larsen

As the dawn kisses the surface of the water softly, he leaves her chained to the bottom of the sea, with her wrists burning from the shackle's metal grip.

Her eyes glue to his back like the rocks pressed to her feet. He shadows the rare specks of light that float into her cold and dark prison—and so slowly, he rises. The light returns as he swims away, but her sights remain the same.

It is dark. It is lonely. It is silent.

So she parts her lips and spins the tale of a bright-eyed little girl from a faraway land who picks up corals on a calm shore.

Sometimes she forgets she cannot leave. Her dreams fill with hazy images of a clear sky. The leaves of palm trees sway in a slow dance with the breeze. There are bits of broken seashells, nipping into her skin— and no. They do not hurt. She is used to the pinches of shattered fragments on the sand.

She can take three more steps, sand sinking between her toes before she wakes up to the ocean's cold abyss.

He is not here; she presumes. He is never here while the sun is up.

So she laughs. She laughs and laughs until her lungs crumple up like paper, and then she crafts another godforsaken cloth until her hands ache. Her arms try to extend to a land far beyond here, but it is a land her fingertips cannot reach. Instead, she spins the water surrounding her, weaving her sorrow into the cold, murky waters.

One day, she realizes she is tired of the cerulean above her. The caramel sand across from her small bungalow sickens her—it mocks her. It whispers to her: you are trapped. Are you not exhausted from running on this beach of yours, picking up corals and seashells and broken glass?

So when she sees him treading through the waves on the shore, she screams: yes. Take me away from this place. I know all too well.

The first few days are lovely.

His palace of pearls sparkles brighter than any star in the cosmos. Gold and silver line the walls of every room—and every jewel one could think of lays inside the cabinet of her bedroom. Maids dressed in white wait at her side, her commands ready to be fulfilled.

He gives her a loom, with threads made of silver and gold.

Are you happy? He asks.

I am, she whispers. I am.

Cerulean and navy.

They swirl her gaze, dipping her irises into paint cans of blue, blue, blue. The coral-covered floors. The star-speckled ceiling. Her soft pillow covers. Her long, bejeweled dress.

Nothing is not blue.

And little by little, the murmurs of the water sink into her ears. It hisses out questions, and she tries to shake them out of her system: out of her thoughts, out of her room. But they keep crawling back, their claws tearing into the threads of her heart.

This is for your good, he tells her. This is to keep you safe.

Tears of frustration brim on her eyelids as she pulls on the chains wrapped around her wrists. They burn like magma against her skin. The walls that surround her are dreary and ice cold.

There are no lustrous stones or sparkling dresses here.

There is nothing but darkness.

So she begins to hum a melody, her voice resonating throughout the walls of her prison, hoping her song and the clicks of her loom could drown out the ghosts who whisper empty promises in her ears.

Why do you stay here? He asks.

Because this is my home, she answers. This is my warmth—the sun, the sand… the sky.

Are you not tired of walking along this beach? He points to the blue that kisses the shore. Do you not want a new adventure? A place that can fulfill your deepest desires? Her hair flutters with the breeze as she shakes her head. I love it here.

That is what everyone says, my dear.

When she attempts another escape, she is too slow and too weak.

Her bones crackle and ache at every step she takes. Blood seeps through the cuts on her feet, painting gloomy roses on the bedrock's dark staircase. Her breath escapes her through rickety gasps.

It turns to nightfall, and she is nowhere near the exit.

He catches her getaway as he returns, his eyes dull with disappointment. He gives her no leniency. The chains that wrap around her wrists and ankles are sculpted from the searing heat of the earth's core.

She screams and screams, and screams until her voice becomes ash. Her loom and her fabrics lay somewhere else, broken and untouchable.

A torrent of hazy dreams cannot wash away the truth of her choice on that afternoon she weaved with her hands of talc and sand. She lies at the bottom of the earth, the weight of it all on her soft shoulders. The whispers of demise that flutter in her ears are inked and smudged on her soul, their words as myriad as the 11,034-meter distance of her beloved dreams.

Are you not tired of running on this beach of yours, picking up corals and seashells and broken glass?

This time, she does not weave.

burning out faithless child,

the star

dreams of solitude, arising, connected