The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

15: The Pond

The sun was beating down on my head but my legs were cool, dangling in the dark water of Halmae's pond. Crickets hummed in the bushes behind me and a magpie squawked in a tree. My favorite dream.

My net had dredged up so much mud that I couldn't see the bottom of the pond anymore. Three fat salamanders[1] hid as best they could in the strings of pondweed that floated in Halmae's white tray. Hoping they'd become friends I tilted the tray a little, making them tumble together, but they scuttled away from each other and wedged themselves into three white corners. 

"Wannya, Jun-su?[2]" I looked up to see Abba sitting next to me, his legs dangling into the muddy water too.

"Abba!" Seeing him always made my heart buoyant with joy. But something was wrong in this dream; my heart felt raw and tender, like it was filling up with all the tears I'd cried since I'd lost him.

When I was younger I'd have long winding conversations with Abba at the edge of the dream-pond. These days I couldn't recall the sound of his voice, having not heard it for so many years, so Abba would just sit silently with me. But I knew that his voice was memorized forever inside me, somewhere on a special shelf up high in my brain. If I was lucky the memory of his voice would occasionally topple off the shelf and into my dreams.

"Ghenchana, Abba[3]?"

He looked the same as he always had. Too-big lips and a scratchy beard. Permanently rolled-up shirtsleeves. He lifted his eyeglasses and squinted at me in the sun. "Momi anjoa[4]."

I dreamed about him at the edge of Halmae's pond so often, that I suspected that he must have broken the news to me there, all those years ago.

I turned to tell him that we'd take care of him and that everything would be OK. But he'd already gone. "Abba! Gajima![5]"

He hadn't stayed long enough.

Crickets stopped buzzing and birds fell silent. The sun hid, plunging me into gloom. Or perhaps it was already twilight. Abba might stay for seconds, or for hours, but the dream always ended with me all alone at the edge of the dream-pond, with my heart full of tears.

But this time, the dream went on.

My reflection on the water's surface fractured over and over as my legs kicked up muddy swirls. A pale shape shifted through the gloom and weeds at the bottom of the pond. It stopped below my feet, lurking, then slowly it rose to the surface.

I couldn't see what it was at first. Long and white, it rose up between tangled weeds and eddies of muddy foam. Hazy sunlight caught on a bright glinting patch at one end as it rose. The thing broke the surface, the patch gleaming brighter. It was the sun reflecting off Abba's glasses over his closed eyes. His body rolled, settling against my legs, and I found myself staring into Abba's still face. White and cold, just how he'd looked on the day that he died.

My only thought was to run to the house and bury myself in Halmae's arms. But my legs were lead-filled things, immovable. My eyes were frozen in their sockets, unable to look away from Abba's face.

Bubbles rose where Abba's withered hand grazed my knee. There was something else coming to the surface.

Rising from the dark water was another corpse, pale and rotting. His limbs hung limp as his chest bobbed gently on the water next to Abba. His face looked the same as always, though mud and reeds clung to his cheeks. Halbae.