It was sometime in the difficult summer of 1824 that I first spotted the vessel. It started small—a glimmer on the beach of Querencia on Mexico’s West coast. However it came to our shores, nobody paid much mind at first. We had other concerns. Famine and empty waters had persisted for months, with no end in sight. “It’ll pass,” the elders said, as they would year after year.
The object was rather strange—a dark oval some ten feet high and twice as wide. The metal panels on its side shimmered in the sunlight.
“It doesn’t belong here.”
The elders discouraged investigation before shuffling back to their homes.
The children, unburdened by such wisdom, gathered around the object with wide-eyed wonder. I cautiously let my younger brother Jair near the object, keeping him within full view. The children dared one another to touch it, harmlessly throwing stones and poking it with sticks.
By the second day, curiosity had infected the whole village. Theories spread like weeds. Some thought it was a wreckage from Spain; others whispered that it was an omen. Father Jimenez suggested its arrival was a test of faith. I quietly regarded the object as the debates grew louder and more antagonistic. Hardly anyone dared approach the object for long.
I first saw the girl when I followed Jair to the top of the object and peered through the glass panel. She was huddled in the centre of the vessel, her face tilted up in awe.
With a soft hiss, the front panel dropped open and the girl stumbled out. Her vibrant red hair gleamed in the intense sunlight as she clutched a small ornate box to her chest. Her wild eyes darted between the confused individuals surrounding her.
“Why is she scared if she meant no harm in landing here?”
The girl buried her hands in the sand and cried out in a language none of us could understand. Father Jimenez coaxed her back to the church at the centre of Querencia, ushering us to follow.
I hid in the bushes and boarded the vessel as soon as it was clear. I didn’t dare look inside for long but found an assortment of mysterious markings on the walls. Most interesting were the supplies which included a reaping of unfamiliar crops. Against my better judgement, I tasted some of the produce and my growling stomach immediately settled. Unwilling to test my fortune further, I hurried back to town.
Back at the church, the girl offered little clarity. I let Father Jimenez borrow my map as he questioned her, hoping to find her origin. However, she simply kept gesturing toward the empty ocean. I reached for her box as she was distracted and she swatted my hands away before I could touch it.
"If she didn't want us to be suspicious, she would let us see what's in there. This is our village!”
Ignoring the chatter around me, I apologized to the girl. She seemed to understand, yet her grip on the box did not waver. Though we couldn’t make out anything she said, the girl carried a generally friendly demeanour. She woefully regarded the hungry villagers the more time they spent around her.
She took us to the beach, where she tossed some seeds into the waters. A swarm of fish appeared, unlike anything we’d seen in months. She gestured excitedly as we caught as many as we could, but the villagers grew resentful. One of the elders confiscated her pouch of seeds.
"It’ll damage the soil! We already can’t grow anything!"
In the coming days, the famine continued and the fish disappeared once again. The girl was confined to the church by the divided villagers. Some were captivated by her arrival, hoping to learn her language and utilize the contents of the vessel. Others wanted her gone. I wanted to volunteer to help integrate her, but louder voices deterred my intentions.
“She’s a curse. She’ll bring ruin upon us. She carries the wrath of spirits in that box.”
Unease spread. The next morning, a mob gathered outside the church. Before the priest could say anything, an elder wretched the box from the girl and, when it wouldn’t open, hurled it to the ground. The girl dove after it, but landed in a sea of limbs as the horde batted her away. A few bystanders reached through the tangled mass of legs, hoping to retrieve the box for themselves. A child grasped it for a moment before a stray foot knocked it back to the frenzy.
Though feet, sticks, and rocks pummelled the box, it wouldn’t open. The container was swept along the friction of bodies back to the beach, closely followed by the wailing girl.
As the movement reached its climax, an unknown pair of hands hurled the box back into the vessel, the girl along with it. In a unified act, the assembly cast the object off. The crowd edged back to the village before the weight of their actions could catch up with them. I stood there alone, staring at the vessel that grew smaller by the second. The girl’s gaze lingered back at me, her bright eyes searching my face for something I couldn’t offer.
The rains returned soon after, and the fish once again swarmed the waters. Life in Querencia endured, as it always had, wonderfully isolated and secure.
The elders demanded that no one ever speak of the girl again. And so I agreed, in earnest, to never speak of this miscalculation.
DoubleSpeak 