VALERY KONINGSBRUGGE

The small waves bounce the inflatable bed against my back from time to time. This, in turn, makes me bounce slightly above the bed at times. I am not awoken by this because I have gotten used to it - no, I am awoken by the splashing of water close by. I sit up straight away, afraid for the children. They are quite frantic because the Compeller is leaving the settlement and their multitude of little and clumsy footsteps is what the splashing noise comes from.

I am back with the pack and I look around for Molly, who is the only child who stays by my side. She drenches a strip of coral in water and slaps it against my head, still worried for my lack of rest. I pull the coral away from my eyes. She makes a sad face as if she's done something wrong.

I told her, "I'm okay, Molly. There's no need for this anymore." I held up the coral and tossed it into the water. "And there's no use in crying. The ocean takes that from you as well."

I ruffled up her hair and she smiled to cover up her guilt. As all children do. I swung my feet over to the side of the bed, next to where Molly stood. For once, I didn't feel confident about walking on water anymore. What if I was too weak for it? What do I do if I can't walk on water and I can't swim? Stay on this inflatable for the rest of my life until I die a painless death?

I put these thoughts to rest and touched the water with my feet which I tried to push through the surface with, but it was to no avail which I was pleased with. Molly gave a fast and quiet clap, but I wish she could just talk to me. Fill in the pieces in my head that I couldn't fill myself because of the haze that smoked out the memory.

"Now, I'm going to go catch that Compeller with my damn hands," I said, "and I'm going to thank him for saving my life. I need you to watch over the children, my second-in-command, and I need you to be vigilant with how you approach them, for you are but a child yourself. But you are the most capable child of thinking, so therefore I need you to be first-in-command here. Well, just until I get back. Wait, did you happen to get some binoculars?"

Molly's face lit up and she pulled out her writing materials and another stone tablet. It took her a long time to write her message down, which cut back on the time I had to chase the Compeller down. But I understood a long time ago that whatever Molly took the time to write, was always necessary to read.

She finished and showed it to me, placing the stone tablet in my palm. This is what is said:

'The Compeller's name is Earl. He let us look into his binoculars, one at a time. The iceberg finished melting. There were two people in there with weird clothes. One was an old man and the other was a sick girl. That's the last thing we saw because he took the binoculars off us and left in a hurry. I don't like him very much.'

I returned the stone tablet back to her and she watched me with a keen eye. I just kept on nodding and I waved back to her as I ran after the mysterious manipulator of water.

"Take care, and take care of the pack!" I called out. I leapt over the pack of children who at once grew in amazement of my newfound determination and then frantic once again because I was leaving. I picked up speed because I realised that being surrounded by water was no match to feeling the water under my feet and the wind in my hair as I ran with as much energy as I had inside me. And it was a relief and a release from being trapped in my own mind.

The Compeller was moving fast, and I could now see how he was moving so quickly without the adaptation of a Wayfarer. He had formed a single wave in which he surfed, his feet latched into the frothy wave.

He was heading towards the iceberg, which I assumed was why he left in such a hurry. He must have seen an opportunity of some kind that he could seize. The publicity of baring as the helper of the individuals that spawned from the icy rock is enough for popularity among the tribes that proper matches the politicians that we don't hear a squeak from whenever events like this go down.

These events are history. History is still in development. There aren't a lot of particular events in history that are particularly important. We don't inscribe enough events into the grains of our descendants for it to be remembered or treated as history. The world lives in the present, and I would too if I weren't so psychologically fixated on the past that I can't even seem to put together.

But I doubt that the Compeller could reach the defrosted pair because there was a commotion racking up around the iceberg...