Archive of Stone - Part 3

War of the Water Bears

Another River

I skipped school the next day.

Something on the news had sent the rhythms back into a jagged staccato that scraped along my ribs and stabbed like shards of glass in my chest.

Another river slowly dying. Unable to breathe. Constricted for decades by colossal walls of concrete and steel turbines, tearing at the river’s core. The salmon were trapped and dwindling, their great migration faltering as they battled through a maze of fish ladders, grinding metal and sluggish heavy reservoirs. Out in the open sea, the orca were starving, waiting for the returning young salmon that grew fewer and fainter with every generation.

The chance for restoration, for the concrete and metal suffocating the current to be undone, for the river to run free again — gone. Smothered by men in slick suits with smooth voices. All false smiles, perfect teeth, and plastic skin. They’d talked about “energy security” and “long-term economic resilience”. Polished words scrubbed clean of blood. But beneath them I felt the salmon’s futile, bone‑deep exhaustion in my marrow and the orca’s gnawing hunger in my belly.

I’d escaped the house unseen, drawn down to the beach where the taste of salt on the wind and the gritty feel of sand between my toes steadied the rhythms and smoothed their splintered edges.

The lace-edged tide had retreated, leaving behind glassy pools gathered in the hollows of the black rocks. I crouched among them and watched a limpet exhale a thread of silver bubbles. The water shimmered with green and gold, tiny shrimp darting like sparks, while a hermit crab trailed its borrowed shell across stone slick with algae.

I held my hand flat on the surface of the water, its coolness caressing my palm. The warmth of the rock seeped up through my feet and I could feel the balance of an entire world stored within it. The memory of countless tides, of barnacles opening to float their delicate filaments in the shallows, of periwinkles grazing across the stone, trimming crumpled fronds of sea lettuce as they wandered, of blennies flicking from one shadowed crevice to the next.

This was the balance that had once lived in my river too, flowing through its bends and mudflats, carried in the shimmer of fish and the drift of reeds. A balance that reached beyond wetlands and estuaries, across oceans and coastlines, threading my river to every river — and my life to every life. The balance of a single living body, wild and once whole, now fractured and fading.

The pain of the stuttering rhythms sliced through me again, and a slow, burning anger ignited in my chest. The quiet whispering of the water bears swelled, and through the rocks I felt the deep, subterranean cadence from the cave — steady, deliberate, undeniable. It moved through me like a signal. A summons. A drumbeat calling me to war.

The Wall

The moon hung pearl bright in an obsidian sky dusted with stars as I stole from the house. There’d been questions when I’d returned from the beach. Frowns, raised voices, and disappointment on my parent’s faces. I didn’t want to disappoint them again if they found out I’d gone, but I couldn’t ignore the rhythm calling me to act, drawing me out into the night.

I kept to the shadows, skirting past the herb beds and the leaning shed where jasmine tangled through the trellis and wild honeysuckle spilled over the hedge. The night air was sweet and heavy with the scent of summer. I squeezed through a gap in the hedge to the footpath that rose up to the headland before sloping down toward the cliffs.

I moved as quickly as I dared on the loose shale, willing the night to shroud my escape. Breathing a sigh of relief, I passed the gorse and rounded the bend in the cliff, slipping beyond sight of the house. My breath clouded faintly in the cool air and I could hear the sea whispering against the rocks far below. As I scrambled down the steep trail where the stone curved like a spine bent against the wind, I could sense the cave above me — the narrow cleft in the cliff wall, and the ancient presence of stone still awake within.

The beach waited below, a pool of sea-smoothed shingle cradled between two shoulders of rock. Hushed and dark. I made my way down to the boat, tied to a weathered post just above the high-tide line, where a ridge of shingle and dark strands of seaweed marked the water’s reach. It lay tucked under a torn tarpaulin, half-hidden in shadow, and secured with salt-stained ropes. I crouched beside it, heart thudding, and worked the knots loose.

As I tugged the tarpaulin free and tucked it into the shadows, the barnacles formed dark, jagged patterns, as if they too carried a declaration of war.

I hauled the boat down the shingle and the stones grated beneath the hull in time with the drumbeat in my ribs. It was far heavier than I’d expected. The rope bit into my palms and my shoulders burned with the effort of each heave, but the suffocated tide, the fading life in my river, the starving orca on the other side of the world seared through my heart, and the anger flared hotter, driving me on.

Finally, muscles trembling, I yanked the boat into the surf and paused, lungs heaving in counterpoint to the sea’s slow breath. The black water glittered with the reflection of stars spilling across its rippled surface. I stood in the shallows, the waves lapping at the shingle and washing around my legs as I caught my breath. As I gazed out into the expanse of sea, a strange stillness settled over the world. Thin veils of cloud drifted in from the horizon, softening the obsidian sky to pewter, enveloping the stars and obscuring the moon in folds of grey velvet. In the veiled dark, other lights stirred — soft flickers of blue and green, tiny sparks that bloomed and faded as if the sea were breathing starlight from its depths. The dim luminescence brushed my skin and translucent patterns shimmered there, pulsing faintly in echo of the water bears’ low murmurs in my blood.

I pulled the boat further in until the sea lifted it from the shingle, the hull sighing as the water took its weight. It pitched sharply as I gripped the gunwales and hitched myself up and over the side, then steadied as I settled the oars in place and dipped them into the black water. Spectral blooms of light unfurled in the wake of each stroke, curling outward in brief spirals before dissolving into the dark. The shadowed cliffs receded as I rowed onward, their outlines softening by degrees until they were finally swallowed by the night.

Ghostly glimmers stirred beneath the surface — quick darts of light where fish scattered, then a soft rush of water as a sleek body swept close along the hull, leaving a shimmer in its wake. Its slick form caught the faintest gleam before vanishing, and moments later a rounded head rose a few yards away, exhaling in a spray of salty breath. Whiskers glistening with droplets and huge warm eyes reflecting the dim light, its gaze held mine for a moment before dipping silently under once more.

Dip, pull, lift, forward, repeat. I drew the oars through the water, my breath settling into rhythm with each stroke. Every now and then I caught another glimpse of the seal, keeping pace with the boat in the dark water. From far out in the unseen vastness of the ocean, a sound welled — sonorous and mournful, resonating through the water and the wood and into my chest. One voice rose, then another, until their haunting chorus enfolded me as I rowed toward the harbour.

Lights began to appear through the dark, their unblinking glare leaching into the night. As I drew nearer to the sea wall, the flickers of luminescence dwindled and the water grew dull and listless against my oars. The whales fell silent, the seal slipped behind and I could feel the living sea shrinking back from the reach of the harbour. The air thickened with the taint of diesel fumes, the tang of salt smothered by the sour edge of industry.

The wall loomed out of the darkness, its oppressive presence blocking out the sky. Water slapped and echoed against it and my breath sounded harsh in the uncanny stillness. The faint groan of ropes and clink of halyards carried from the harbour beyond. I edged the boat closer until it bumped against the wall. Its surface was pitted and cracked, crusted with salt and scarred by rust seeping down like bloody tears. I pulled in the oars and leaned out to catch hold of a corroded ladder, cold and slimy beneath my hand, steadying the boat in the wall’s shadow.

I reached out and placed my hand on the wall.

The resonance that had been awakened within me by the water bears and the memories in the cave coalesced into a muted rumble in the centre of my body. The vibrations pressed close and fast at first, a trembling roll that shivered through my blood. With each breath it swelled, each pulse heavier, each gap wider. The soundless beat rose through bone and sinew. Slower. Stronger. Harder. Until my entire body seemed to pound with it, driven into a single, towering crescendo.

And from deep within the Earth, an immense, silent shockwave surged up through bedrock and concrete to meet the final thunderous beat that rocked through my core, the two colliding where my hand touched the wall. It tore outward in every direction, carrying the weight of mountains and the pull of tides. Light erupted across my skin and into the water, a single pulse of radiance rolling outward, shattering the dark. For a heartbeat, the black sea shivered as though the stars had fallen into its depths.

And then — stillness.

Complete. Absolute.

Author’s Note

This is Part 3 of what began as a small, self-contained piece for Earth Day 2025¹, but the story wriggled out of my hands and took on a life of it’s own. There will be a Part 4 — the finale, I hope — though the story continues to make demands that I hadn’t anticipated!

This chapter is dedicated to

rebecca hooper

, who reminds me of Mira. I think, perhaps, that much of what I have read in Rebecca’s writing has inspired Mira’s character and story. While writing Part 3, I read her essay On Orcas and Anger, and Mira all but insisted that the Pacific Northwest hydroelectric dams, the broken salmon deal, and the starving southern resident orca become part of her story. Rebecca has also written of her many encounters with other animals and birds, (a seal among them), and of the utter magic of bioluminescence, a phenomenon I have never witnessed. Yet I knew again, that I wanted Mira to witness it — that it too must be part of her story.

You can read and listen to part 1 here:

Archive of Stone - Part 1

And part 2 here:

Archive of Stone - Part 2

1. “The Future of Nature” was an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem, organised by

Claudia Befu

and

Julie Gabrielli

.