When we arrived, the tide had just receded.
What is exposed on the beach is not shells, but objects. An old-fashioned TV with a screen of snowflakes, a crooked building block castle, and a kite with a thread. This is not an island. This is a small hill piled up with the remains of memory. And my friend and I stood silently at the foot of the mountain.
We can’t talk or jump. We can only walk up slowly along a path washed away by the tide. Our only strength is time. To be precise, it is to let time go back.
I hold down a key. The sea stopped whispering and began to pour back into the sky. Wet sand grains rose from the feet and flew back to the depths of the beach. The kite broke free from the stranded reef, staggered back to the sky, and the spool rotated quickly in the invisible hand. Release the key, and time flows forward lazily again. In this way, we pushed the tide of time and trekked back and forth on the shallows of memory.
At first, we were just having fun. Let the snowflakes on the TV flow back into a vague animation, and let the glass marbles rolling downhill return to the palm of your hand. But the island began to make gentle demands to us. It needs a lantern to be lit by moths at some point in the past to illuminate the cliff for us in the “present”. It needs a pool of rain to freeze in the back flow of winter day and become a step for us to step on to the high place. We are no longer just travelers. We have become repairmen of memory. In the folds of time, we look for the correct “past” that can keep the present moving forward.
Every object shines because it has been warmed by a real time. The TV turned on, and it was the ending song of a late-night animation we watched together. The block castle collapsed and stood again, which was the messy scene after our fight. I suddenly realized that this island is not a game scene. It is an answer sheet about childhood handed in by the two of us. Each puzzle is a fill-in-the-blank question that we have forgotten.
The deepest emotion is often voiceless. Sometimes, one person needs to stand at a certain point in the “present” and stay still, and another person needs to return to the “past” and carefully adjust the position of an item, or wait for a beam of light to shine at the right angle. There is no verbal communication, but when the light that crossed time finally lights up the lantern, dispels the fog, and lets the path extend forward, we will stop for a while. The sea breeze blew, and the faint echo left by us when we just reversed the time came from a distance.
There is no failure here. You can stay at a certain moment forever. I once made a maple leaf red and green on the branch, green and red, and looked at it for ten minutes. The friend stood beside him and looked at the sea without urging. It felt very similar to when we were a child. We squatted by the sand pit and watched a hermit crab change its shell. An afternoon passed in the ups and downs of the tide, but we felt extremely rich.
We finally reached the top of the mountain. There was nothing there, only the winding path when we came, which turned into a string of scattered and warm points of light in the twilight, connecting all the memories under the mountain that were re-examined by us. There is no cheering and no ending subtitles. Only two friends stood in the gradually surging night, and under their feet were a glowing sea that we salvaged together.
After quitting the game, the room was quiet. I got up and poured water, and saw the dusty tin box on the bookshelf. I forgot what was inside. I only remember that when the lid of the box was buttoned, there was a “click”.
Some things may not have been lost, but were brought to a shore that we usually can’t go to by the tide of time. _The Gardens Between_ gave us a boat that could go against the current in time. It doesn’t let us change any great past, but let us go back and confirm that those beautiful and ordinary evenings really existed. Then, with the light of the coast, return to the darkness of the moment.
It makes me feel that memory is not a burden, but an island. You can’t live forever, but you know, it will always be there. When the tide of reality is too loud, you can go back at any time. Between those familiar objects, let the time gently flow back for you.
