The bunker

 The wind brought hail and sleet across the Coryn sea for nine months of the year; for the other three it brought locusts and migratory insects.  Rarely, when the wind died down for long enough, a new wind arose, known as the Eloïste, and it brought black sand from the northern desert.  This mounded on the shoreline and heart-achingly slowly created the beach.

The seashore was best described as blasted; what little plant life could survive the chill winter temperatures and the bombardment of ice through sleet and hail was stripped of leaves as soon as the locusts arrived: plant lives were short, brutish and nasty in ways normally associated with the animal kingdom.  Beyond the black sand, where the earth was ochre and green and exposed rock slowly weathered away, thin twigs poked here and there out of the earth, grave markers left behind by dead plants that shuddered in the howling wind and offered shelter to nothing and no-one.

Adele led the children in single file along the black strand.  The wind was gusting and tugged at shirts and trouser legs, sliding coldly inside clothing and raising goose-bumps on skin.  Now and then it would shriek and pounce and Adele would sway, bracing herself against the fury of the air, then turn and count the children.  Some would be standing, others fallen.  So far she’d only lost two: one had fallen when they crossed the rocky stepping stones across a bay and been seized by the ravenous, churning, white-whipped waves of the sea and the other had been gripped by the wind and pulled free from the sand and cast up into the air.  She’d chosen not to look where the child landed; it was far enough away that the scream had been thin enough to be the cry of a cormorant or seagull.  They still had nearly half a kilometre to go.

Footprints left in the sand filled rapidly with water as the beach was shallow and the sea relentless.  It took less than a minute for the footprint to lose definition and sharpness; barely two and a half and the sand was flat, pristine, and looked untouched again.  Adele was sure that there was a metaphor for life here somewhere, but the rage of the sea and the merciless onslaught of the wind were too consuming for her to ponder it.

At last the bunker came into view.  A grey concrete cube sat on a promontory of rock high above the beach.  The path that had been there once was already eroded to the point of precariousness and it was slightly easier to climb the sharp tufa, spider-like, provided you didn’t mind the razor sharp cuts that were inevitable.  Adele’s fingers were covered in a fine white tracery of scars but she refused to wear gloves.  The children were not permitted gloves and she felt that this tiny moment of solidarity was the best she could offer them.  One more had been lost before they reached the bunker; they had knelt, frozen and despairing in the sand and the children behind them had plodded patiently around.  As the sand absorbed the footprints of those who passed, cleansing itself and refusing to be changed, so it absorbed the child who sank like a mammoth caught in a tar-pit.  Feeble cries alerted her to the tragedy and she looked back once, acknowledging only the futility of trying to save the already-dead, and then she pushed on in silent misery.

Two fell on the climb to the bunker and were left where they landed at the foot of the rocks.  White bones were visible here and there, washed by the twice daily tides, and the crabs emerged from the sand where they had been hiding to begin the inexorable cycle of life anew.  But everyone else reached the top where the wind heightened its anger and renewed its blows against fragile flesh.  New cuts and open wounds stung with salt torn from the waves and dashed against skin and salty tears ran down reddened faces to mingle and exacerbate the torment.  Adele paused for a moment, letting the elements do their work, and then she found the key to the bunker in a pocket and unlocked the door.

Inside were sad beige toys, a small kitchen, and beds for all the children that had set out on this expedition.  Wordlessly, but necessarily, Adele set eyeless teddy bears and limbless dolls on the beds that would have been occupied by the children who hadn’t made it this far.  Then, at last, she gathered the survivors to her to explain the purpose of this trip.