Paradise Lost

 Fierhen was a small fishing town, not far from the northern coast of Sweden, yet very far from everything else. It was founded a mere eighty-five years before its last inhabitant died, by a small group of settlers that had been driven out their homes by a tempest.

The storm had been of such magnitude and violence that it was more akin to a scourge, a typhoon with all the fury of a scorned goddess. It tore down houses and ripped trees out by their roots, making mockery of all that stood to oppose it. The survivors never forgot that rage. It was understandable that they wished to leave the wreckage of their former homes, to escape the memory of such terrible ire. The only question left of the matter is, quite simply, why here?

Why leave the tempest-benighted heights and settle in amidst the cold waves of this tiny island? To look at Fierhen is to espy misery, a vision of sad smallness in a bitter world. The houses, those that still stand, are salted wood, failing before the might of the ever-shrieking wind. Boats rot in docks of timber equally forlorn, and there is little left of the island beneath the town’s foundations.

The last inhabitant of Fierhen was a woman. She was old, half-blind and full deaf, with nary a tooth to fill her cavernous mouth. Not a soul in the world beyond knew she lived there, and not a soul would find her bones for decades following her passing. She had forgotten much, even her own name.

When she was younger, and stronger, and remembered her name, her children had visited her one final time. They’d come to beg her to leave, to come home with them and live in their house on the mainland. She’d welcomed them, fed them, smiled and embraced them. When they left, she did not go with them. They had passed from her memory, and she from theirs.

She oft wandered the empty trails of the island. Naught accompanied her but the wind. Even the birds and insects had left Fierhen, even the fish. The latter was why the town had died. Everyone had gone away when there was nothing left to catch. The old woman stayed, and grew thin. The town was quiet, despite the endless muttering of gales.

She drew in nets each day, catching less and less. She ate, and she continued on. Once, she’d had a husband, though his face blurred in her thoughts. He was kind and strong, and she recalled he was quiet. She wished he’d spoken more, so that she could remember his voice.

There were flowers that grew sometimes, some years, in all the gentle nooks that the salt couldn’t find. The old woman took some, leaving others to grow. She lay them on a little headstone, in the only dirt where anyone was buried. The stone was as weathered as she, and older. It had a name on it, one her blurred vision could no longer perceive. There lay a voice she remembered, though it was as faint as sunlight in a storm.

There were not many headstones. The first settlers had not found rest here, and many had left or died in the icy waters around the island. Fierhen was no sanctuary, not an Eden nor an Asgard. Still, some had stayed. It was them, now, that slept beneath the weathered stones. The old woman had had parents, something the youth of the world might well marvel at. They lay here, and their graves were lightened with flowers.

Why did she stay? It was not to be with them. They were dead, and long gone. It was doubtful that even bones remained in the soil. Why not leave, and be with the living?

She watched the horizon, in the spring and summer, when the sun never quite left the world. It was as beautiful as when she had first beheld it, an event few truly remember. It brought a smile to withered lips, warmth to a once-tender heart.

That last year, she knew. She knew that she was not long for the world, that she would not see the end of winter. Her final moments would be in the long night, in the cold her ancestors had ventured so far to escape.

She wasn’t afraid.

Her husband had fallen into the sea one day, and no man with him could fish him out. The cold had taken him and sunk him to the depths. Her children had left as soon as they could after that. She’d been happy to see them go, to see them live their lives beyond Fierhen’s shallow confines. The fishing village wasn’t for the young. Only the future was for them.

She thought about that final visit, on her last day on Earth. It had been months now, or maybe it had been years. They had worn that strange mix of smiles and sadness that melancholy partings bring. They had told her about their homes, their spouses she had never met, her grandchildren whose faces she would never see, then they told her more. About all the mundanities of their lives, their work, their food, the cities they lived in. She’d been delighted to lean on every word. But through it all, she’d seen their desperation, their quiet hope that drained away as the visit went on. Because, for all her interest in their lives, in their futures, in the family she had never met, there was one truth that remained. The only one that mattered, really.

She would never leave.

They’d departed, teary-eyed, promising to visit again soon. That promise had been forgotten, but she forgave them. Their lives were too full for her, who refused to be a part of them. She wondered if she were being selfish, staying here, dying here, apart from the family that loved her enough to beg her to be with them. She knew that dying was as much about those one loves as it was about oneself, that funerals aren’t for the dead. Maybe she should have given them that.

As she sat in her chair, watching the last fire she’d light, her mind drifted back. Memory was a foreign country now, filled with strangers speaking strange languages. There were sights and sounds and snatches of meaning, but so little to hold on to. For the first time in many years, she thought about the storm.

It had come in the day, blackening the sky in mere moments. It hadn’t left for near a week. She was so young then that even her mother and father were young, and they held her in the face of nature’s wrath. She didn’t remember the house that had blown away, only the strength of her parent’s arms holding her. The following days were hazy, as most things now were. There had been carts, and walking, sore feet and parched throats despite soft ground and stinging rain. Then a boat. Remembering the rocking rocked her, now, to sleep.

She knew this was the end of it all, that there would be no waking. She wasn’t afraid of that. She sank into darkness, where her husband had found peace so many years ago. But before she rested, she remembered one final thing.

It was not words, not sage wisdom nor loving remark, but an image. For the first time in far too long, she saw something clearly.

The sun, splitting the clouds. The sea, calm and still. The sky dark, yet untroubled. And there, in the rays of the sun, an island. Small and rocky and wind-bitten, but faithfully, unequivocally, there. It was nothing special, not worth a second look on fairer days. It was paradise.

The old woman smiled at the memory. It was the last thing she did.

And so Fierhen was gone, not so long after it was founded, in the scheme of cities and civilisations. It was unremarkable in every way, even awful sometimes. The people that lived there now live elsewhere, and are happier. The people that died there would never have left.

Why did those settlers choose that tiny rock to make their new homes? The answer is simple really.

It was there. Sometimes, that’s enough.