The Raft: A Novel by Fred Strydom

of colour in our gloomy, achromatic world. There were no chores to be done. The offenders on the rafts had been pulled back in. The rations of food for the day had been handed out. Now all we could do was wait the weather out.
    My mind replayed the details of Moneta’s story. I couldn’t work out why she had chosen me to tell it to.
    I thought about telling Gideon, but a deeper part of me said it would be a mistake. I had been entrusted with her story, and though she had not told me to keep it to myself, I sensed the many specific details of her memory were her prize. A memory like an old heirloom that needed to be polished every day and kept in a safe place. The story had been shared in incredibly vivid detail. No one on the beach had told me anything like it before. Whatever I could possibly repeat would undoubtedly be a mere shell of her living, breathing memory—and that, above all, would be the real wrongdoing.
    A part of me also knew Gideon appreciated my company precisely because of our silences. I rarely understood what was going through his mind, but for some reason, we’d been drawn to each other’s quiet company. One of the instructions to the commune was to minimise conversation, but sometimes I thought only Gideon and I sat willingly without needing to talk. In another time and another place—a place where sharing a dream or spreading an idea was not only accepted but encouraged—my guess was that Gideon and I might still have been friends, and we’d still probably not need to natter about every passing thought.
    “Look,” Gideon said, looking out into the rain.
    “I know.”
    “No, look.”
    I squinted and saw a man running through the pelting rain, coming out of the grey like an apparition.
    It was Daniel.
    Daniel walked briskly ahead of us. He was a young man with a lanky frame and the gaunt face of someone at least ten years older. I knew him to be keen to impress at times, but honest and competent. I had liked him since the first time we’d met.
    He was yelling, but his words were barely audible beneath the clatter of the rain: “Nooit! It has to be moved! If it dies, it won’t be long before it becomes a health risk to us all! But it’s not going to be easy!”
    The pellets of water beat against my face. My eyes fought to stay open. I ran my hand through my hair, slicking it back, and glanced at Gideon beside me. The water didn’t seem to hassle him at all. I looked back along the beach. The commune of tents was far behind us, a cluster of orange dots in the dimness. I wondered how much further we had to go.
    Daniel continued: “I don’t know how we’re going to do this! Maybe with rope! Maybe rope and a lot of men!”
    As he marched ahead, his feet threw up brown crowns of water. He pointed towards a mound of boulders up ahead. We still weren’t sure why we had been called.
    We climbed carefully over the rocks. Foamy water rushed into the gaps below, churning and slapping against the dark stone. My hands struggled to get a grip on the slimy surfaces. As I reached the top the object of our undertaking came into full view: on the shore ahead of us an enormous swollen body lay beached on the sandy shore.
    A whale.
    Daniel had mentioned nothing on the way over, but not even his obvious eagerness could have prepared me.
    It was a black mountain, stretched out, slumped-down flesh crushed by gravity. The rain cascaded over its sides as it moaned and emptied its blowholes in fine, hissing sprays. A thick fin hung limp at its side like the unusable remainder of a gigantic, clipped wing. Near the edge of the sand the black serpentine tail rose, flapped once, and crashed back down. The longer I stared, the less it looked like an animal at all. It was unearthly, almost god-like—something that could just as conceivably have fallen from the sky as washed up from the ocean.
    “Have you ever seen such a thing?” Gideon asked.
    “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Never.”
    I hopped to the sand