Lights on the Sea

by Miquel Reina

It all began with a bolt of lightning. Cutting through the stormy night sky, it crashed down on the roof of the most remote house in San Remo de Mar. The retired couple living there already knew it was to be the last night in their home. What they didn’t know was that a lightning bolt would set off a chain of tragic—or perhaps miraculous—events that no one ever could have imagined.

First line

Unlike the others, the replica that Harold now held was not in a bottle but in an old, squat mason jar. Inside, his most treasured ship sailed defiantly across a sea of resin. It was the first he’d ever made. This ship had no detailed ornamentation, no royal crest emblazoned on her sails. It was a simple seaworthy sailing vessel, a modest boat longing for great adventures. A model of the full-size ship Harold had begun building long before the miniature copy he was now dusting. A ship that never had a name.

nothing compared to the love and care he had put into building the sailboat he now observed in miniature. A ship that had held all his dreams and had taken up all his free time. Harold set the jar down and sighed. Those dreams had sunk before the ship’s hull ever touched the water. There was nothing left now but a bitter dream inside a glass jar.

A faint ray of sunshine filtered through one of the broken shutters in the living room. Hundreds of dust motes swirled in the light, sailing over fragments of glass, china, and splintered wood partially submerged in pools of water on the floor. Pieces of paper slipped around like eels hiding between boxes and broken furniture, while water continued to drip from above, tapping on the dark reflective surface. Sunlight fell on the thick bottom of a broken drinking glass, passing through it like the glass was a prism, its light spraying into a fan of colors. A speck of dust passed through the rainbow, carried by a breath of air that inched it toward gloomy darkness. The air swirled, lifting the mote that gently brushed past twisted metal and drifted up the stairs as if with a life of its own. Its weightless form continued rising until it touched the ceiling. It bounced and rested on a cold metal chain that hung from the ceiling without its lamp, which lay broken on the floor. A gentle sway rocked the chain, and the speck of dust glided to the floor. A draft seized it again and swept it through the crack under the bedroom door to the darkness on the other side. Then the air current went slack, and the speck descended until it rested on the tip of something fleshy. Mrs. Grapes sneezed.

Mary Rose had never seen her house from above. It looked out of place—seeming to cry out in the middle of the nothingness. A tiny yellow dot testifying to its own smallness and that of a world it had miraculously escaped, brazenly contrasting with the immensity of the current setting.

Harold set down his empty bowl and looked around at the austere room that was completely free of clutter, totally different from the countless appliances, furniture, and stuff that filled the homes where they were from. “The lifestyle of a nomad,” he affirmed. Aga looked at Harold and smiled softly. “We’re all nomads, Mr. Grapes.”

“A home isn’t built with walls or determined by where we are,” Aga said. “A home is built from our experiences, from the people we meet along the way, and, more than anything, from how we decide to journey through life. Life is movement. A precarious equilibrium that can change in an instant.”

Amak furrowed his brow, squinting. “Look around you,” he said, looking to the sky. “The clouds moving above us, the constant blowing of the wind, the ice breaking, the sea silently slipping under our feet . . . nothing ever stops.”

“Life is a nomadic journey, Mr. Grapes. A road without trees to shelter us from the rain, without shoulders on which to rest, without lighthouses to show us the way when we are lost. I can’t waste the life I’ve been given by standing still and lamenting the past until my days run out. I must get up and fight; I must keep providing for my family. I must keep moving forward, not just for myself, but also for my daughter and for all those who are no longer with us. Because in the end, that’s why we’re here, right? The only reason we are given life is to live it.”

“It’s all in the past,” she said, looking toward the house. “The past can be a heavy burden,” Aga said. “How do you lighten it?” Mary Rose asked, turning to Aga, her eyes shimmering with tears. “You can’t,” Aga answered firmly. “But we can become stronger, so the weight doesn’t hold us back on our journey.” “Our journey,” she mumbled to herself, the words tainted for her. “Life is a constant journey. We move from one place to another,” said Aga. “The journey is what makes a fish different than a rock, movement different from stillness, light from darkness, life from death.”

The day they decided to change the fish into a rock: the boat into a house.

“He died shortly before we were to set sail on the boat we were building.” Aga gave a long sigh. “And what did you do with the boat?” “We took it apart.” She paused briefly and continued: “We made it into—” Then Mary Rose nodded toward the shipwrecked house, barely visible in the pale light of the stars. Aga followed her gaze and understood. “A fish that looks like a rock is still a fish, isn’t it?”

“According to our ancestors, the sky is an enormous dome made of the strongest, most resilient material in the universe,” Aga told her. “Beyond the horizon lies eternity, the land of the dead. It’s a place made of light that we see only when a soul slowly ascends to it, delighting us in its perfection, erasing our sorrow, and reminding us of the beauty in our world.”

Amak turned the note over and on the other side was a photograph. It was of a man and woman and a little boy with brown hair and blue eyes standing in front of a ship under construction. The boy’s hair was the same color as the woman’s, and his eyes were just like the man’s. Amak recognized the younger features immediately and ran out of the tent just as the ice on which it was pitched split. The tent was immediately swallowed by the cold waters. He ran, fighting to keep his balance and jumping to avoid the rapidly forming cracks. He fell face-first next to the sled where his son, Ukluk, and the dogs were waiting on firm ice. And there, while lying on the cold surface, he looked back and saw the house, covered in ice and glittering in the rosy light of dawn as it floated toward the open sea.

All around them, hundreds of ice fragments peacefully flanked them like faithful sentinels as they left the safety of terra firma for the freedom of the open water.

From a distance, if anyone had been there to see it, Mr. and Mrs. Grapes’s house no longer looked like a house floating aimlessly. It was a ship. An amazing ship, guided by a light that shimmered on the horizon. A ship that slowly sank in the hazy line where the sky and sea are one. If anyone had been there at that moment, they would have felt the wind drop and observed the twinkling starlight go dark for a fraction of a second. In the bright night sky, shimmering above the golden sea, they would have seen two new lights appear: one green like freshly cut grass and the other blue like the ocean. It was the light of those who have embraced life in all its wonder. Of those who have enjoyed their time and the people they love. It was the light of those who accept their own mortality at the end of their journey. Lives no longer filled with regrets but with the certainty of having fulfilled their destiny and faithfully lived out their dreams. It was the light of Harold and Mary Rose, known to all as Mr. and Mrs. Grapes.