’m scared of the sea”, Charlie said, staring out at the waves.

          Rose looked across at him, and then turned in her chair to face the monstrous beast itself. She shrugged.

          “Don’t you think it’s fascinating though, all those amazing underwater creatures?”

          “No. I’m scared of it”, came Charlie’s reply.

          She thought for a moment. What was it that he was so uncomfortable with? He was only six, he’d never been anywhere by boat before, and she was fairly sure he’d not accidentally witnessed any disaster films, or seen news reels detailing water’s potentially devastating effects. Was it just that he was afraid because he’d never been this close before?

 

Charlie returned to his colouring in, pausing every so often to look over his sister’s shoulder to the vast stillness behind her. Rose watched for flickers of fear in his eyes, but couldn’t seem to find any. There were no physical signs of his terror… so was he lying? She glanced down at the plate of food still sat between them, unwanted ingredients of a cooked breakfast congealing in the blustery cold that surged in through the café’s open windows every so often.

          “Would you like to go a little closer, Charlie?”, Rose asked, hopeful that facing the problem head on would provide the most productive solution.

 

          He looked up at her, still blank and expressionless. A glimmer of a feeling traced across his face, or perhaps it was just the movement of sunlight overhead. He didn’t speak, but carefully began to put away his colouring pencils, rolling up his intricately decorated paper placemat like a scroll. Rose unfurled a fist and he took from it two red rubber bands and attached them around each end of the paper. They tightened their supple grip, holding his masterpiece in place.

          He pushed back his chair, standing decisively. Rose joined him, standing by his side at the table and turning to face the ocean. She could no longer see his face, but she felt a strange sensation creep over her.

          “Are you alright?”, she asked, though almost more to herself than to the pint-sized boy beside her.

          Charlie didn’t reply. He just stared ahead, as though waiting for something to happen.

          Leaving a handful of change on the table, Rose grabbed her brother’s hand and launched the two of them in the direction of the sand and the water. Charlie didn’t seem reluctant, but she felt as though she were being forceful nonetheless. It unnerved her, this sudden urge to cast him into the very mouth of his fears. This could become something he might never recover from…but what would help him more? Keeping him safe from potential danger, or making him face up to things when they were only a tiny knot in the lining of his stomach, rather than an all-consuming dread, stifling every move he might make?

 

Once at the shoreline, Rose stopped. She looked back at their trail, boot prints on a wintery stone-strewn beach. All around were the prints of strangers, some human, some animal. Charlie held his gaze firmly on the horizon. He shook free from Rose’s grip, and raised his left arm up, pointing out at the waves.

          “There”, he said, solemnly. “That’s where it will be.”

          Rose squinted into the distance, in the direction of his outstretched finger, but could see nothing.

          Charlie looked at her, frustrated. A visible emotion at last. “Don’t you see it?”

          Rose scrunched up her face in confusion, and shook her head slowly, still staring out at the watery vacuum.

          “It’s where they put the carnival”, Charlie said, speaking softer than before, as though fearful that someone might overhear. They were alone on the shore, the only others were almost specks on the periphery. Far off, Rose could just make out the shape of a dog as it crashed into sea foam and back out again, keen to tell its owner all about it. Rose turned to Charlie, holding him gently by the shoulders.

          “Do you mean… an oil rig? That’s nothing to be scared about Charlie, those things are just full of people doing their day jobs, just like mum and dad and other grown ups here on land.”

          Charlie shook his head. “No, the outline. It’s there in the daytime, always. Then they lower everything into place when it gets dark, when no one can see them doing it.”

          Rose desperately wanted to understand, but it felt futile.

          Charlie continued, keen to explain himself now. “I saw it before, when we were here with Granddad.”

 

          Both sets of their grandparents had passed a while ago, when Charlie would have still been in his pushchair. Rose exhaled slowly, reluctant to deny a young boy his imagined world.

          “Over there!” Charlie began to raise his voice in irritation. “Why can’t you see it?”

          “Charlie, darling, there’s nothing there. It’s just the sea. Maybe it’s the waves playing tricks on your eyes or something…”, Rose attempted to reason.

          Charlie interjected, defiant, on the verge of a tantrum. “No! Granddad showed me, and he said to wait until it gets dark, and then we’d see where he wanted to live one day. He promised it was there, and that I could see it, when the sun disappeared.”

          Tiring of her brother’s games, Rose took Charlie’s hand again. “Come on now, that’s enough. We need to get back, it’s getting late. Mum will think we’ve gotten ourselves lost.”

          Charlie lowered his head, dejected. He didn’t resist when she began to walk them back across the shore towards the cliff-tops above. Instead, he began humming a tune his grandfather had taught him years before, an old Russian ditty that harked back to their family’s heritage. Rose was surprised he could remember it at all.

 

When they reached the top, Charlie sat down abruptly on the grass. Exasperated, Rose opened her mouth to berate him, but instead felt an arcane sense of calm brush against her cheeks in the breeze. She sighed, sitting down on the grass beside Charlie.

 

They waited in silence, legs crossed, arms folded against their chests, for almost twenty minutes. Rose didn’t know what to say, and sensed that Charlie would only make them stay longer if she didn’t just play along.

            The sun all but gone now, the temperature dropping rapidly in its absence, she waited patiently for him to grow tired. Charlie leaned his head against the dip of her shoulder. His breathing grew slower, heavier. Rose continued to stare out into the emptiness ahead, the plausibility of seeing anything at all out at sea growing dimmer by the second.

          She blinked a few times, her eyes sore from straining in the dim light. When she reopened them on their final blink, a small light was flickering in the distance, far-off in the ocean. A night ship, she supposed. But as she continued to look on, hypnotised by its rhythmic solitude, more lights began to appear alongside it.

 

On board, the captain of the ship conducted his orchestra of crewmembers to carry out their nightly duties. Gradually, lights glimmered to life on the deck, accompanied by the subtle hum of machines whirring all around. A Wurlitzer’s call began to lilt across the surf, enveloping the night sky in a carefree descant.

 

“See. I told you”, came a quiet but assured voice beside Rose. “The sea carnival. It was waiting, same as every night. Everything is safer now it’s back again.” Rose felt him sigh, his muscles relaxing again against her side.

          In the distance, a diminutive Ferris wheel rotated sleepily on its axis, drawing to a halt as its lowermost carriage reached the topmost point.