Jacob lay reclined on the beach, a bottle of wine sat open next to his left hand. An hour earlier, the wine bottle had been full, now the crimson liquid filled only half of the glass.
Jacob stared out past his bare feet to the blue fury before him. He wondered how it was possible for people to travel across such danger and uncertainty to come to be here. But it was possible, because other people had come here. According to his brother, they both had come here from somewhere else. To Jacob's dismay, the epiphany which followed from accepting the mantle of protector of the island didn't include any insight into his origins. Jacob knew he could bring others to the island again if he wanted to. In his heart, he felt something pull at him, a feeling which seemed to accompany his days since what he liked to refer to as "the incident". There was none other left on the island, except for him and one other. That was the ideal scenario, wasn't it? If no one were on the island, there would be no one to try to steal the heart of the island. But someone was trying to steal it, that is, if he could ever find it. The problem was that he would have to come through Jacob first and this person was very determined to do so.
Jacob raised the glass to his lips and let the warm liquid run into his throat. A breeze blew across his loose clothes and Jacob started to close his eyes, shielding them from the sun. He liked the feeling of sand on his bare feet, and dug them deep into sand before him, feeling each granule slip through his toes. The incessant roar of the ocean before him seemed as if a calming melody. It always came in the same rhythm, like the beating of his heart, which he could feel inside of his chest. It proved to him how very alive he was; how very alone he was.
Jacob drifted off slowly, the sun warming his skin and clothes and Jacob's hand began to slide down from where it held the wine bottle at its neck. Jacob lay like that for a good amount of time before a shadow darkened across him. He blinked his eyes open wearily, fighting back the daze which preempted this occasion. A figure dressed in dark clothes stood atop him, blocking the sunlight from his face.
Jacob reached out to the bottle again and raised it to his lips, which now felt parched.
"Do you want some?" He had asked the figure after taking a swig, holding the bottle out in front of him.
The figure didn't answer; it just stood in front of Jacob, eyes locked on him.
"You're blocking the sun," Jacob said lazily, motioning the figure with his hand, dropping his head back into the sand.
The figure finally moved, taking a seat in the sand next to Jacob. Minutes went by before either of them spoke again.
"Why are you here?" Jacob asked in a serious tone.
"That's the eternal question, isn't it?" The figure replied, glancing over at Jacob before returning his gaze to the ocean.
"Not for me," Jacob said stubbornly. "I know exactly why I am here."
"You think you know why you are here," the figure corrected him.
"Please," Jacob said dismissively, pressing his finger into the space between his eyes, "enlighten me."
But the figure didn't answer; it just stared out into the ocean. Jacob continued to drink the wine. The bottle was only a third full now.
"I want to leave this place," it finally spoke, but Jacob didn't answer him. The figure turned to look at Jacob in the face. "Please, Jacob, let me leave."
"You're strangely diplomatic today," Jacob said sighing. He closed his eyes against the sun, his finger running across the lip of the bottle. The figure continued to look at Jacob, irritation playing at his face.
"Jacob, you don't have to do this," it said. "You think you have to be here to protect this place," the figure motioned its hands outwards, "but you don't. You can leave too. Come with me, Jacob. Let's leave this place together." The figure sounded almost pleading.
Jacob stayed silent for quite some time as if thinking over the proposal. His blue eyes gazed lazily out into the ocean, his face serious. Jacob ran a hand through the stubble on his cheek. The collar on Jacob's shirt shifted slightly in the wind, the breeze blowing it open.
"I promised mother I would look after this place," Jacob said finally.
"That woman was crazy!" The figure exclaimed in anger.
"Is that why you killed her?" Jacob rolled his head over to look at the figure for the first time, his blue eyes impassive.
The figure's face betrayed emotion, anger, irritation, and confusion.
"This is exactly what she wanted," the figure said through gritted teeth, its finger pointed at Jacob. "She wanted to punish me for trying to leave here, for trying to leave her! Now she's made this game of hers and she's gotten you to play along too. She told you that you were the special protector of the island!" The figure motioned wildly. "She told you that I could never leave! She's convinced you that there's something here to protect!" The figure was shouting at Jacob now. "There's nothing here to protect!"
Jacob's face betrayed no emotion.
"So what is it to be, then?" The figure continued. "The eternal struggle of brother against brother? Neither one able to die? Stuck forever on a magical island?
"You're not my brother," Jacob said in denial, rubbing his open palm across his face. "My brother died back in that waterfall." He took another sip from the bottle.
"You're a fool, Jacob." He said. "She is playing you for a fool. Besides, you know very well that you can't kill me."
Jacob swallowed hard, the revelation breaking at the wall of his denial. Both men sat in silence, an impasse between then.
"It was you," Jacob said finally. "It was always you."
His brother looked at him quizzically.
"Mother wanted you to look after the island, not me."
Jacob's brother didn't speak; he just continued to stare at Jacob, his expression unreadable.
"But now I'm all that she's got left." Jacob's voice seemed almost to crack. "She had to settle for me after you betrayed her." Jacob took another swig from the bottle, its contents reaching nearly the bottom; he looked back out over the ocean.
"Jacob, why do you believe these crazy things? You don't have to do anything! Neither of us does! We don't owe her anything! Our real mother died at her hands and you would follow her blindly?"
"She said that humans destroy, corrupt, that they're violent," Jacob said. "Yet look at what we have done. We are no better than they are. Does that make us human?"
Jacob's brother didn't have anything to say to that.
"Why is it so easy for you to believe everything that mother has told you?"
"It has never been easy," Jacob said desperately.
"Just let me leave the island, Jacob."
"Even if I wanted to let you go," Jacob said, "I can't."
Jacob's brother looked at him furiously.
"The rule has already been made and I can't change it," Jacob said.
Jacob's brother continued to stare at him, eye twitching, and anger rising from within.
"I don't believe you."
"Mother made it so you can never leave."
"What was all that 'I make the rules now' about then? Still her pawn, I see?" The man shook his head in disgust, looking back towards the ocean. "Nothing has changed."
"Tell me why," Jacob started.
"Why what?" His brother snapped back at him.
"Why do you want to leave the island so badly?"
Jacob's brother shook his head, obviously irritated, but searching for the words he so desperately needed to say.
"Have you ever felt that you were meant for something?"
"No," Jacob replied, truthfully, knowing that he wasn't ever really meant for anything, that it just so happened he got placed where he was now out of sheer desperation and convenience.
"I've always had this feeling Jacob, ever since I was little, I knew…" he trailed off, lost in some silent reverie. "I knew somewhere deep inside that I had a destiny."
"Destiny?" Jacob looked at him skeptically.
"Every year of my life passed by me and that feeling inside of me became stronger and stronger until it was almost unbearable." He looked into the ocean as if he were staring at something far away that he was familiar with.
"Then when our real mother came to me and told me where we really came from, I knew! I just knew so clearly in that instant. I knew everything I had to do, everything I had to accomplish to get back to the place where I came from. Living with the others was only the first step in that process. I have to go back."
Jacob continued to stare out impassively at the blue horizon in front of him.
"What was she like?" Jacob asked quietly.
Jacob's brother stared back at him with a questioning look on his face.
"What was our real mother like?" Jacob clarified.
"She was beautiful," the other man said. "She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her hair was black, like a raven." He ran his hand through his own peppered hair.
"I see," Jacob said with glossy eyes, watching his brother run his hand through his own hair.
"My destiny," Jacob's brother enunciated to him, "lies somewhere out there across the sea." He pointed out towards the frothy white and blue waves. "And it breaks my heart every single day that I have to stay here." His intense gaze bore directly into Jacob. "It destroys me. Absolutely to the core of me it destroys me."
"Oh," Jacob said and then chuckled, his voice mirthless. "Oh," he continued to chuckle, sardonically. His brother's eyes bored into him with rage.
"Destiny," Jacob said laughing and closing his eyes. "I see."
"I fail to see what is so amusing," his brother said.
"You can't leave," Jacob said simply and clearly, looking at his brother in the eyes. "The body of the man who could have left this island is back there in the cave with the body of his dead mother."
The other man's gaze was sharp, his pupils pinpricks in a deep sea of blue. His face became red, veins pulsing in his neck and temples. All the rage and fury of the world seemed to be contained behind his visage.
"Besides," Jacob continued, looking back out at the water. "If I have to stay on this island forever then you are too."
Jacob's brother jumped up from his spot and threw himself on top of Jacob, fingers pressing at Jacob's windpipe. His face was a mirror of rage as he desperately dug his fingers deep into Jacob's neck. Jacob stared back into his brother's eyes, unblinking and passive.
"Then I am going to kill you and find a way to leave," he said determinedly.
Jacob's brother gave up, his breath exhaling sharply from his chest and he released his coiled fingers from Jacob's neck, but stayed on top of Jacob, pinning him to the ground.
"I'm going to find a way," he told Jacob, staring into his eyes.
"Just promise me that you won't turn into that smoke thing in front of me again. That was really unsettling."
Jacob's brother got up from on top of him, hatred burned in his face as he looked one last time at Jacob before taking off down the beach.
Jacob lay in the sand, an empty wine bottle next to his left hand. He picked his hand up from where it lay and placed it upon his chest. His heart was still beating.