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Her father had saved the books first. 

 

Flashes of darkness, fear, and water was almost all she remembered - except the sight of her father wading to the shore, books cradled in his arms, as she cried in the fast-sinking boat. The waves soon thrust them both to shore. Only then did he finally come to get her, wrapping his arms around her little body, almost falling into the roaring surf. She remembered the coldness of the gritty stone under her soft feet. They both slipped together onto the beach - Her Beach - and into the cave that would be their home. Terror tainted those memories and turned them inside out, but she always remembered: he saved the books first.

The strange storm calmed as soon as they set foot upon the beach, and the blackness of the night closed in. The girl child had never known such complete darkness - and she had never known the stars to be so brilliant. She remembered, vaguely, wandering through an evening garden, with people all around her. Her nurse had kept her away from the flowers, though she longed to touch them with their pretty colours. Sitting here in the cold darkness with only the lap of suddenly gentle waves for company, she cried a little at the memory of her stern, loving nurse. 
 

The boat was a wreck, and its skeleton leant against the side of their cave as if it were an animal that had died there. Father had dragged everything inside: a chest of clothes; thick barrels of wine and strange tasting water; a tragic looking sail, torn to tatters; a box of ship’s rations; and books, pile upon pile of thick, leather covered and carefully packaged books. They had been piled up around their little sleeping place, surrounding the nest of dry gorse-grass that Father had gathered. The girl child rolled over, rubbing her eyes, and cried again because she had forgotten that her hands were sandy. The grit got into her eyes, and the pain was sharp and unfamiliar. She began to sob, exhausted by the discomfort. Her Father reached over, half asleep, and patted her back. He wasn’t as good at this as her nurse had been, and she didn’t have the words to tell him this, or explain what she truly needed. But he patted gently, and made whispers of reassurance that meant nothing yet still eventually calmed her. When her tears stopped, she was rewarded by her Father’s whisper of kiss, gentle on her brow, and the warm comfort of his arm wrapping around her body, enclosing her in safety. Looking out at the stars, she found a way to sleep. 

In those half-moments between sleep and waking, she thought she saw a figure at the cave entrance. It seemed to have stars as eyes. But exhaustion claimed her, and the shadow in the night became all part of a dream.
 

Days passed. The girl child couldn’t count them - all she knew was the chill of the darkness, and how it was barely eased by the warmth of the day, and the ache of hunger in her small stomach. She grew to hate the ship’s biscuit that Father ground up for her, mixing it with barrel water into a salty gruel. She told him so - she sobbed, and pushed it aside, and begged him for her nurse. He seemed uncertain, because of course he didn’t know what her favourite foods were, or that she needed that lullaby in her nurse’s voice, in the accent that was so different to Father’s. She didn’t understand how Father could be here, in this strange place, when she so rarely saw him at home. She couldn’t fit the picture of her velvet robed, quiet Father, carrying books in his arms - never her - with the bedraggled and red-eyed man in his place. And she didn’t understand how he could be here, but her Mother was not. Not that she had seen them together except far in the distance, at a feast once. Her nurse had pointed her out: “There’s your mama, is she not beautiful?” She was too far away to see that night, but the girl child knew that her nurse was right. Everyone said so - that her mother was a beauty, and loved by everyone. But why was she not here? She did not have the words yet for the questions she needed answered. Eventually hunger defeated her. She accepted the salty biscuit mush. 
 

When the sun was up, sometimes Father disappeared across the beach, up on the high rocks that fenced the beach in. The black rock looked forbidding and sharp. She was brave enough once to creep up to it, hold her hands against it, and it was strangely warm. So was the sand - yet the sea was the bitterest cold. She feared it more than she feared the darkness, and kept away from the reaching fingers of the tide until Father returned. Usually empty-handed, he came back once with a handful of slimy green plants - seaweed, he called it. He gave it to her to eat: she threw it up right away. He shouted at her, wiping his feet angrily on the sand, but his voice was weakened. The vast expanse of the beach had taken his voice away, as though the sand was absorbing it, like it did the tide. She trembled, but she didn’t falter. She knew why he had given her the slimy thing - she knew she had to eat. 

She had realised that the food was running out. 
 

Their bodies tightened, wilted, and grew thin. Their skin grew rough with the salt and sand. Father’s beard grew long, and his curls tangled. Her hair grew ungovernable - her nurse always used to call it ‘devilish’ even when she had combs and pomade to gentle it. Her lips cracked. Father spoke seldom to her. Sometimes he sat by the very edge of the tide, and she could see his lips moving, but she couldn’t tell what he said. Only the occasional word, repeated, could she guess: Antonio. Naples. Gonzalo. Iohanna.
 

Was he praying, like Nurse Angelica said she should? There was no church here to pray to; no altar, and no mutilated god. This reassured her, because she had always secretly feared the figure above the altar, with the blood running down his hands and his wasted body. She’d felt pity for the suffering statue, and a hatred of the golden robed priests who would not take him down from the wall and help him. Now her father reminded her a little of that statue, with its sunken cheeks. 
 

Steadily, the fear and wonder she had once felt for her father went, taken by hunger. He was just another thing here, on the beach. And all there was was the Beach. Day in, day out, just Her Beach, and the biscuits, and the stars.
 

And then came the shadow-in-the-night. It appeared in her dreams in darkness. It watched her from the edge of the cave, and she was never afraid, for it never entered the cave. It seemed to have stepped down from the stars to watch over her. At night, her stomach hurt less. Her limbs didn’t ache, and she could lie and just make patterns with the stars in her mind. The shadow was part of that. Part of the beach, part of the Island… part of the slow process of dying.
 

The water ran out. Father was gone all day from the beach, and he came back blank faced and empty-handed.
 

Barren, he said. The Island is empty. Uninhabitable. He said it like a pronouncement of death - like a priest. He never left the beach again.
 

For a long while after this disappointment, he stood looking out across the empty ocean. He was still for so long that a strange dread came over the girl. His ankles were deep in the biting water, but he did not seem to notice. She wandered over, feeling some inexplicable compulsion to get him out of the water. She didn’t like this stillness. It was as though he was not really there; like his mind was elsewhere, far across the sea. She reached him, stretching out one small hand to his. He looked down, and his eyes were pools of darkness, tears running down his haggard cheeks. She didn’t have words for the pure, deep fear that gripped her. He moved quickly, picking her up in his arms and holding her tightly. Up until the Island, he had never touched her. Now, her fears fell away, revelling in the strength still in his arms. She was cradled, skeletal and hungry, but safe. She could feel the love he had for her in the tremble of his arms - detect it in some animal way. For a moment it was enough. 
 

Then he stepped forward into the waves. Her stomach lurched, but he held her. His grip was ever tighter. She squirmed, but his arms held her strong. Another step brought the water up to his waist, almost level with her toes. She wriggled, but his arms were tight. He was saying something, but she couldn’t tell what. She felt the cold water below, reaching for her, chilling her….
 

The cry of an animal rang out over the beach. 
 

Father jolted in shock, almost dropping her. A moment later he was scrambling back to the beach, moving frantically. She felt him drop her onto the little seagrass bed, and suddenly he was wrapping her in the tattered remains of the sails, stroking her hair and whispering ‘sorry’. She was dry quickly, but still he apologised, great wracking sobs contorting his shoulders. 

The girl child stayed quiet, watching, letting him hold her until his crying had softened into sleep. She didn’t understand what had happened - only that something had been broken. But she was not really interested in the strange workings of her father’s mind. When he was quiet again, she crept softly out onto the beach, and looked towards the stone outcrop where the animal cry had sounded. 
 

There was the shadow-in-the-night, almost formless. A silhouette in front of the sunset, unmoving, and yet she knew that it watched her. When the stars came out, she crept back into the cave, to her father. She was clinging on to the edges of exhaustion now. Her body hurt; her lips were dry and broken, and her stomach was an aching void inside her. She lay down, ready to go to sleep, perhaps forever. 
 

Something awoke her. Looking out to the cave entrance, she saw a large shell, filled with water. Beside it, a pile of round red grapes. The shadow had gifted them life, for another day.

And another. This time a great pile of salty mussels, which looked disgusting and tasted as heavenly as fresh baked bread. The water that washed them down was bright and clean.

And another. A large fruit with a tough skin that had to be scraped open with a rock - but when it was, yielded the sweetest, softest meat of sunrise yellow. 
 

And another, and another, until day after day the girl would awaken bright and excited for the next gift, until she began recognising the different foods, and had forgotten the taste of bread entirely. She fed them to her father by hand, keeping much for herself. She was too hungry to share fully; besides, he did not seem fully awake most days. He lay, like one dead, blank-eyed and with words kept to himself. The only thing he could say to her, in fragile and adoring tones, was ‘Cherubim’. 
 

And so the child learned her new name, and the other name she had once had fell away through her fingers like sand. 
 

Steadily, she grew stronger. The piles grew larger, as though the shadow grew bolder, though never quite bold enough to show itself. Cherubim did not believe it had a ‘self’ - she thought of it as a part of the Island, something that may as well be a dream. But with the gifts of food, her small body grew stronger. She no longer felt the grit of the sand, or the tangle of her hair. She had already started to forget the feel of silk sheets and metal cutlery. The past fell away into the abysm of time, and she barely noticed it go. 
 

Then finally there came the day, an unknowable amount of time later, that she left the beach. 
 

Cherubim left her father propped up on the cave edge, unseeing and tear-stained as he always was now. Today she felt something compelling her onwards. The wide cliff that surrounded the beach looked, for the first time, climbable. Her feet drew her towards it, her heart beating a drum in her chest. She touched the stone, and felt its warmth. It felt alive under her palm, like the flank of a horse. She should have recoiled but something made her press her palm firmer, feeling something there - a pulse almost, not quite a heartbeat but something so deep that her body trembled a little with its power. The heartbeat she had felt in her chest was in the rocks now. She drew a foot up, finding a climbing point easily - another foothold was under her toes, like a staircase. A thought flickered through her head: she had grown. She reached up and within reach was a strong handhold, and another, easier than a ladder, easier than stairs, easier than falling. She ascended out of the beach, onto the lip of the rockface… and the Island finally revealed itself to her.
 

Awe spread through her like the sun. Her back straightened, and her limbs stopped their weakened tremble. The path ahead led straight into an avenue of fruit-laden trees, their leaves broad and emerald green, shining like a treasure trove. Flowers of sky cut blue and deepest pink winked out of the foliage like mischievous creatures, and everything swayed and undulated as if moved by a breeze that she couldn’t feel. Beyond it, the gorgeous forest stretched out, deep and verdant, and she could smell it from there. She breathed deep, filling her lungs and flushing out the scent of sea water. The smell of perfume and ripe fruit and deep rich earth was almost a meal in her throat. She could see surging hills rising up beyond the forest, littered with many kinds of tree. The view rippled with the telltale movement of forest deer - though she did not yet know what they were. To her it was only a tantalising glimpse of life, at last. To her right, the paths wound up to a cliff, on which stood a ruined villa - she recognised it even from here - and on her other side she could see a deep lagoon of dark turquoise, glittering like a discarded ribbon. Beyond that, what looked like a mountain, and beyond that, only blue, blue sky that seemed endless and utterly unreal. 
 

Music lifted out of the ground then. For a moment she was frozen, amazed as a symphony breathed itself out of the trees. It was layered in whispers and unknown words and the sweet sound of… triumph? Victory? A memory briefly supplied the image of a man playing a violin, but the music surrounding her was so unlike that simple sound that the memory flew away, unwanted. Tears trickled down her face. Then her stomach gave a gurgle, and she stumbled forward, the music dropping away to a low hum in her ears. Scents now assailed her, enticing her forwards. Food was somewhere here, she knew it. It was everywhere. 
 

Whatever Father had seen before, it was not this. He had lied to them both. And she seemed to know, in the darkest corner of her heart, that this would be her secret. The shadow would not need to bring her food again, not to survive. Now she could keep them both alive: herself, and the strange thing called Father. The memories of the time before, away from the Island, released their grip at last. She drifted into the Island, body and soul… and it enveloped her completely.