Wave

by Sonali Deraniyagala

A white foamy wave had climbed all the way up to the rim of sand where the beach fell

was our friend Orlantha

Steve was in the shower, or reading on the toilet more likely.

White-bellied sea eagles abound here, and for Vikram they were the most splendid of birds. For a nearly eight-year-old, Vikram knew heaps about birds. A pair of sea eagles nested near the lagoon that edged this hotel in Yala, and he’d sit on a rock on the lagoon’s shore and wait hours, hungry for a glimpse of them. They always turned up, as reliable as the tooth fairy.

Not that Malli had any commitment to the violin, it was being onstage he loved.

his five-year-old brother’s brazen nerve.

She had taken a break from living in Los Angeles to teach in Colombo for a few years, and her children’s orchestra was thriving. It was called Strings by the Sea.

We hadn’t planned to come to Yala together, she was with her parents who were on holiday from the States.

she would love to start a family soon. “What you guys have is...

This was not normal. The sea never came this far in. Waves not receding or dissolving.

I didn’t stop for my parents.

I hadn’t seen Orlantha run with us, but she must have done. She was in the jeep. Her parents had rushed out of their room as we came out of ours, and now her father, Anton, was with

The jeep was in water then.

sudden look of terror, eyes wide open, mouth agape. He saw something behind me that I couldn’t see. I didn’t have time to turn around and look.

The jeep turned over. On my side.

My head was above the water now. Still I was being swept along at such a speed. There was nothing I could hold.

I was floating on my back. A blue spotless sky. A flock of storks was flying above me, in formation, necks stretched out. These birds were flying in the same direction

that the water was taking me. Painted storks, I thought. A flight of painted storks across a Yala sky, I’d seen this thousands of times. A sight so familiar, it took me out of the mad water. Watching storks with Vik, laughing with him about their pterodactyl-like flight, for a moment or two that’s where I was.

Vik and Malli, I thought again. I can’t let myself die here in whate...

There was a branch hanging over the water. I was floating towards it, on my back. I have to clutch that branch, I told myself, somehow I must.

My feet were on the ground. My eyes couldn’t focus. But I saw then the toppled trees everywhere,

Mahasona, he is the demon of graveyards. Even in my complete bewilderment, I understood. Something dreadful had happened,

wave. I kept shaking my head and refusing. I was too tired. And without my boys, how could I leave? What if they’d survived?

Telling them

One of the men with me went up to him. He’s dead, he came back and said. He mentioned a name, and I recognized it. He was a fisherman who lived in a small hut on the beach by the hotel.

We were at the ticket office at the entrance to the national park.

I knew this building well.

This dry breeze on my face, it’s a normal breeze.

Was it real, what just happened, that water? My crumpled mind couldn’t tell. And I wanted to stay in the

unreal, in the not knowing. So I didn’t speak to anyone, ask them anything.

There was also the nest of a weaverbird, which always intrigued Vik. “It’s like a real house, Malli.

didn’t try to comfort him. Stop blubbing, I

They could already be at the hospital. Steve and the boys. Even Ma and Da. They might have been found and taken there. I kept thinking this, then stifling the thought. I had to stop getting my hopes up. I won’t find them, I must prepare for this.

Anton, Orlantha’s father, who came rushing out.

shoulder. It was a tidal wave, there was a tidal wave, he said. I nodded. I tried to seem casual, as if I’d known all along.

Yet I silently and hopelessly murmured, there might, might just be the smallest chance.

didn’t budge. I didn’t want to be so quickly disappointed, like Anton was.

ignored her. Sod off, leave me alone, I thought. Why do these scratches matter? When something this horrendous has happened,

Each time someone approached me, I was terrified I’d be told that Steve or the boys or my parents were dead.

Whenever I recognized someone from the hotel, I thought this. Why are they alive, surely that wave should have got them as

When Mette turned up at the hospital, I was thankful to see him.

asked Mette if he could take me back to Yala. He agreed. I should go back in case they are waiting for me there, I told myself.

When we turned into the road leading to the park entrance, I couldn’t recognize it. This road usually went through scrub jungle. Now on either side was an endless marsh.

Mette looked at me, indicating he would do it. But there was no way I would let him. What would I do if I learned they were dead?

sad for me. Now she was going to make me cry, and I didn’t want that. I hadn’t shed a tear all day, and I wasn’t going to. Not with all these people here, not now.

I’d never heard shrieking like this before. So wild, wretched, it frightened me, rattled the wall I was holding on to. This noise was crackling into the numbness in my head. It was blasting the smallest stir of hope in my heart. It was telling me that what had happened was unthinkable, but I didn’t want this confirmed.

this cannot be really happening, it surely cannot. Is this me, with an old blanket around my waist, pushing a wheelchair to a mortuary where

He found Orlantha, he told me. He found her, only her. She is not with us anymore, she is gone, he said.

Mette then suggested I call my aunt’s house.

I mumbled something like, it’s only me who survived, I’m coming back.