Your Father and the Eternal Sun
“Daddyyyy,” you hummed from my lap. It was a beautiful spring morning, and we sat on the terrace overlooking the garden. Your mother worked on her petunias by the front gate; your brother kipped in his cot beside us.
“Why am I orange?” You asked.
It was a question I had long prepared for. “Because I’m beige, and your mother is red,” I replied. “And when beige and red come together, they make orange.”
You were satisfied, but only for a few moments. An obvious question had presented itself.
“But why are you beige?” You asked, fiddling with the buttons on my shirt. “Mummy’s red; all my friends are red; everyone’s red except for you and us.” You gestured to your brother, who stirred at the sound of a butterfly passing overhead.
“Because I come from a land far away,” I replied, in the tone of voice one uses with curious children.
“There’s land far away? What’s it called?”
“Oh, it’s called England, and it’s a long way across the sea. So far, in fact, that I’m the only person to ever make the journey.”
You rubbed your fingers across the stubble on my chin. “Why did you come here?”
“Because I read a book.”
You perked up, as I knew you would. “What kind of book?”
“Oh, a massive, gold-leafed book buried beneath the floorboards of the library. It was filled with strange, loopy writing I couldn’t understand, but there were also pictures, little blue-and-gold drawings of this island. I saw the palaces of oak and jade, the schools and their sprawling gardens, and the little mountain fairies that keep the trees in bloom all year round. But most astonishingly of all, I saw your mother.”
“Mummy!” You chimed, leaping off my lap in excitement. Hearing her name, your mother turned and smiled at us both.
“That’s right. The book had a picture of Mummy inside, and it said she lived on this island. Well, once I read that, I dropped everything to come here.”
“Tell me more!” You demanded, your eyes wide with excitement.
And so I did. I told you about the talking beavers that helped me build my ship, the giant snakes that guard the waters around our island, and the ring of gold I stole from Saturn itself to gift your mother on my arrival.
You might think I was lying. I suppose I was, strictly speaking. But in many ways, the story I told you that morning was more authentic than the strict, physical truth of my arrival could ever be. As you grow, you will come to understand that not everything can be categorised, that rules and models can only capture so much, and that often, there is more truth in stories than fact.
Oh, who am I kidding? I lied because I was scared. I was scared that what happened to me might happen again, or worse, it would happen to you, or your brother, or perhaps even your mother, because God knows the Eternal Sun knows no age but death. And I didn’t understand. Even then, ten years after washing up on the beach, haggard and afraid, I didn’t understand the truth - the real truth, that is - of what had happened to bring me here. I still don’t, though I’ve accepted that now.
But it’s time you knew the facts. You deserve to know where your family comes from. Besides, it’s an odd story, and odd stories deserve to be told.
It was hot. It was the kind of hot that drains the world of colour.
It was lunchtime, and as always, I took a took a walk to stretch my legs. It had been a long morning, though I can’t quite remember why. That’s the thing about long mornings: they always seem far longer at the time than they do in hindsight.
There was a park on the other side of the city centre. In the middle of the park was a small zoo. I never went in, but the giraffe enclosures were visible from outside, and I had developed the habit of visiting them on my lunch break. Habit might not be the right word. I wasn’t enjoying my work, and the girl I was seeing had just broken up with me. In those days, visiting the giraffes had a sentimental, almost ritualistic significance.
Maybe that’s why the heat didn’t stop me. It’s hard to say now. The sun beat down on my back as I walked. It seemed to grow stronger the further I walked, and I distinctly remember thinking that if I didn’t turn back soon, I would do severe damage to my skin.
But I continued regardless. Even as the back of my neck reddened and stung, I pressed forward. This will sound odd, given the story I’m about to tell, but of everything that happened that day, that’s the part I understand least. I often wonder what my life would look like had I decided to turn back then.
I reached the giraffes after fifteen minutes. As always, I watched for a while before sitting on a bench to eat my sandwich. When I finished, I threw my scraps to the pigeons, then stood to say goodbye.
That’s when I saw her. A little giraffe, barely a few weeks old, pacing the perimeter of the enclosure with her head close to the ground. I can’t specify what it was about her movements that drew me to her, but I became fascinated by her. My heart started to hurt as I watched her, and all the exhaustion and meekness I had felt not just over the past year but all my life swelled like an evening fog in my chest. It was painful, but it was the alluring sort of pain, like pressing an aching tooth with your tongue.
I watched her for at least thirty minutes, long past the end of my lunch break, before finally mouthing a tearful goodbye and turning to leave.
Then the Sun exploded.
The sky filled with white, scorching light, and I was thrown to the floor in shock. The air turned fiery, and it felt like boiling steam against my skin. In that moment, the Sun was strong enough to make a sound. It was a coursing, crashing sound, like a river raging over jagged rocks.
I covered my face and cowered like a dog in a storm. I do not choose that comparison lightly - in the face of such overwhelming power, I was stripped of all that made me human. There was no room for prayer or regret; I felt only the base instinct of fear.
Besides, it was over so fast. The moment I turned away from the Sun, the world fell quiet, and I saw through my hands that the sky had dimmed. I opened my eyes to find the world exactly as it had been a second earlier. It was as though nothing had happened.
I remained on the floor for several minutes. My vision was blurry, I was out of breath, and I was trembling enough to rattle the gravel beneath my feet. I felt empty, but I was otherwise unharmed.
When I turned my head, however, the world filled with fire once more. The second time was no less unpleasant than the first, and I collapsed into a blackberry bush immediately after turning back around. After a bit more trial and error, I established that I was unable to turn my head more than ninety degrees in either direction without being consumed by flame.
Like your father, you are a lateral thinker. Already, you will have thought of several possible solutions, the most obvious being to ask for help.
But there was no one around. It was me, the giraffes, and a few confused-looking pigeons. What’s more, it occurred to me in a single pang of dread that I had been alone from the moment I left my office. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed it, but the markets, the public squares, and even the buses had all been empty.
Use your phone, you think. I have told you countless times about the wonders of cellular technology, the little libraries in the pockets of every man, woman and child on my home island, but now, when I needed it most, it was no use. It had been melted beyond recognition, fusing to my thigh like a silicon leech.
In the meantime, the Sun began to strengthen. Not as drastically as before, but enough for me to notice. It soon grew intolerable, and yet again I was robbed of my humanity, driven by instinct along a predestined path like a stork flying south for the winter. I did anything to escape the heat. I climbed boulders, hopped fences, and even pushed my way through the brambly bushes marking the edge of the park. The Sun cooled as I moved away, but whenever I stopped it grew hotter and brighter until I pushed forward again.
Many more solutions will have occurred to you by now. Retreat inside! A sensible idea, and one that occurred to me, too. But when I left the park, I found that every door in the city was closed and locked. Every house, every shop, every public building was shuttered. I found temporary respite under trees, but the Sun would soon grow hot enough to wilt the leaves off the branches.
Break a window! I can almost hear you scream through the pages. Another logical suggestion, but the world I had entered lacked any logic, or at least the sort of logic we’re used to. When I came across a shop with an unshuttered window, I picked up the closest rock and launched it at the glass. My heart leapt when I heard a shatter, but it sank like a brick when I processed what had happened. The glass looked untouched, and my rock lay in a thousand pieces on the ground. The Sun beat down on my back.
There was no earthly solution. All I could do was walk.
I passed the city, then the suburbs, then the endless beige fields that make up the English countryside. I had hoped the Sun would begin to set, but to my horror it refused to even budge. Even after hours of walking, it was as light outside as it had been at midday.
My feet began to complain. The bones in my hips ground into each other with each step, and a sharp pain radiated from my knees.
After what I estimate to be twelve awful hours, the fields began to change. I passed increasingly thick clumps of gorse and marshy grass, heard the distant squawks of greedy gulls, and caught the unmistakable stench of rotting wood and saltwater. My stomach twisted, as though trying to escape my fate without me.
Soon, I caught the first glimpse of ocean. It glowed white, and shaky waves of heat emanated from the surface.
I squinted, and saw a castle on the horizon. It was faint and trembling.
I squinted more, and I saw the silhouette of a woman standing on the parapet, wearing a long, translucent robe and crown of white magnolias. I saw a sleek cat rubbing the top of its head against her ankles. I should say I almost saw all this, because I saw it with the sort of ghostly clarity with which one sees shadows in the dark. The woman was both there and not there. Then the air shifted, and her form evaporated from my mind.
And so I was pushed to the water’s edge. Oddly, I did not feel fear but dread. I gave myself a single moment of peace, removing my shirt to feel the brief coolth of ocean air on open skin. Then, feeling the Sun strengthen on my back, I waded in.
The water was cool and calm, but every stroke was a battle nonetheless. It was physically difficult - I had been walking for over twelve hours by this point - but the real challenge was mental. The Sun had chased me beyond everything I had ever known, beyond the borders of the island I had called home my entire life. What possible hope was there of it ceasing anytime soon? I could swim for hours - days, even - but I would have to surrender eventually. What difference did it make whether I drowned by the shore or miles out to sea?
And the further I swam, the angrier I became. What right did the Sun have to drive me like a carthorse? What kind of man was I to accept it? And with each stroke, I thought of angry letters and eye rolls and the chime of artificial bells at dawn; I thought of last-minute work and the dense dread of a slamming door; I thought of tears on cheeks and the constant sensation of weakness. I was only half a mile from shore, but I had been swimming my entire life. I was sick of it.
And so I stopped. It was surrender, I suppose, but the valiant sort, a defiant last stand, a refusal to play a game I didn’t want to play. I think of it now as the first brave vote I ever cast.
If the Sun was impressed, however, it didn’t show it. The moment I made my decision, even before I had turned around, it burned me as strongly as it had near the zoo, filling not only my ears but my entire body with the livid roar of celestial rage.
They say pain fades with time, but I can conjure up the sensations of that moment anytime I close my eyes. Stinging, burning, tearing pain - even the memory makes me half long for death. Every instinct told me to give in.
Why didn’t I? I’m still not sure. I’d love to say I thought of the woman I had seen on the horizon, or even the little giraffe I had seen in the zoo. But deep down, I know that’s not it. Your mother says it’s because I’m stronger than most, but I often suspect it has more to do with bitterness. There’s little a man won’t do for love; there’s nothing he won’t do for spite.
Whatever the reason, I persevered against the Sun. And a remarkable thing happened. I did not die. Despite the sensation of burning, my skin remained unblistered. There was a sound like a freight train passing inches from my head, and it felt in that moment as though my teeth were turning to ash in my mouth, as though my eyes were melting from skull, but as time went on I was forced to recognise that it was not so, that I was not incinerated, that I might win whatever twisted game I had unwittingly entered.
It is difficult to describe the mix of agony and righteous euphoria I felt in that moment. I howled, then slammed my hand into the water, sending a splash of sea foam into the air and pushing myself back towards the Sun.
Back towards the Sun. I had moved by half an inch at most, but the effects were immediate. The Sun dimmed and reddened, and the previously calm waves grew tall and fierce. The water turned ice cold. When I looked towards the horizon, I saw thick clouds rolling in from all directions.
Before I could start for the shore, before I could even really process what had happened, I was thrown into the air by a wave. I spluttered and struggled for balance, but before I could fall back a stronger wave came from behind and enveloped me. This wave and I fell together, dropping so far that I felt my bottom touch the sand on the seafloor. We rested there for a single silent moment, then sprung back up with the force of a cosmic geyser.
I was launched no less than a mile into the sky. By the time I reached my peak, the clouds had finished rolling in beneath me. For another moment, I was suspended, weightless, above a world’s worth of crisp white cloud.
I pictured myself crashing back into the raging sea below, but it never happened. I did not fall. Rather, I floated down like an autumn leaf until I reached the surface of the clouds, which had taken on the solidity and texture of a thick pile of cashmere blankets.
No sooner had I touched them than the clouds to my right - all the clouds to my right - began to shift. They swirled, softly, like milk in tea, then began to descend, so that a gentle slope was formed to the coast. What’s more, I could see other people again. Little dots on pavements and cars on the road, drifting by and circling each other, as though they were all part of some grand choreographed dance.
To understand what I did next, you need to consider my state of mind. Not only was I exhausted and afraid, but I had entered a world beyond my comprehension. And whilst the scene below me was real - I don’t doubt that - it seemed faint, somehow, as though viewed through thick layers of glass.
I stepped away from the coast. I looked around, and on the opposite horizon I saw the castle I had seen earlier. It was still faint, but it was clearer than it had been before. I looked for the woman I had seen on the parapet, surprising myself with my eagerness. I did not see her where I had seen her last, but I continued searching regardless, rejuvenated by desire, and eventually I intuited - though I don’t know how - that she had left her position to walk towards me. She was coming for me.
In an instant, I knew her face. I knew it with the certainty one feels upon seeing a red house that the house one sees is red, though I could not see the woman. I could not say whether her lips were thin or full, or whether her eyes were green or black, but I knew the voice from those lips would be sweet, and the eyes would look at me like no one had looked at me before. I stepped towards the castle.
I don’t know what I intended. Whether I wanted to run and whoop or collapse and cry, I can never know, because no sooner had I taken my first step than the clouds gave way, and I plummeted to the ocean.
I landed on my back with a breathtaking thump. The water was even colder than it had been minutes earlier, and I began to chatter before I’d even stopped sinking. When I finally pushed myself back to the surface, I found that the Sun had set, and I was left with only a sad collection of stars for company.
I floundered, searching desperately for any sign of the shore, but it was open water as far as the eye could see. The only thing to do was pick a direction and swim.
I don’t know how long I swam for. Time ceased to have any meaning. I couldn’t even count the days; the Sun took up an erratic pattern, coming up for a few minutes, sinking below the horizon, staying there for what felt like weeks, then rising just as I had lost all hope of ever seeing light again. Several times, it would half-rise in the west, move clockwise across the horizon until it had completed a full orbit, then extinguish like a light switch. Once, it completed thousands of orbits in the space of ten seconds, moving so quickly that it appeared as a straight, blinding line of white in the sky. I looked down at my hands, and I saw that they were hands of an old man, grey and veiny. Then the sun moved backwards, and they regained their youth.
And all the while, I swam. The same anger I felt earlier bubbled to the surface, and more than once I refused to keep going. But this time the universe ignored me. Not even death paid me any attention - even after weeks without water, when my lips had withered and my eyeballs had retreated deep into their sockets, I never lost the strength for just one more stroke. Several times, I closed my eyes and twisted onto my back, expecting, half-hoping, to be dragged down by the current in my sleep. But I never failed to wake up an hour later, my head throbbing, the salt waves tossing me about like a dog an old rag.
The only advantage to this, although I could never have thought like this at the time, was that it made success inevitable. Somewhere on that bastard sea was an island, and there were only so many places the currents could take me before I crashed into it.
It was dawn when I finally washed up here. By that time, however long it was, I was so broken that I hardly recognised my salvation. The man who found me says I was trying to swim through sand. My first and only memory of that morning is looking up at blur of faces in a hospital bedroom.
I can picture it now. For the most part, it’s just swirls of purple and navy blue, punctuated by the odd pang of pain or wave of nausea. Then, in the middle of the group, a woman approaches. At first, she’s as blurry as the others, and all I can make out is the crimson hue of her hair. But then she wipes something from my face, presses fresh water against my lips, and looks down at me with eyes the colour of sunlight.