Legend has it that on the coast of a faraway land untouched by man or his vile creations, lay a group of turtlefolk who held the secret to immortality.
Every full moon, the turtle women would crush white seashells on the shore into the finest power. They would mix it in bowls filled with rice and their saliva to form a paint the color of the stars. Then, they would wait. Wait until the full moon rose to the top of the sky before dipping the tip of their flippers into the sand, the bowl, and then their husband’s and children’s backs.
Each dot was unique. A swirl of white mixed with yellow specks from the bay. It was how the turtle folk kept track of the age of their men and understood when it was time for their daughters to marry.
There were three Chiefs of the turtlefolk. The youngest Chief barely had two hundred dots to his name, put into the position not by virtue but by inheritance after his late father’s unfortunate death to a crabman. Despite this, the turtlefolk liked him, at least the young ones did. First Chief was cool. He had long legs and strong arms that connected to wide flippers, which made him an excellent swimmer. Everywhere he strode, it felt like he was on a mission. He had a pretty wife too, a most beautiful turtlewomen who came from an exotic coast oceans away. Her skin was seaweed green, and flippers the texture of soft clay. The two represented perfect life, the future all turtle people wanted.
The second Chief had half his back covered. Half white, half brown. He was just like his shell, always in the in-between. The children said he had a painted stone half-white as well. Every time he couldn’t decide on a decision, he would flip the stone for an answer. Some even said they saw him traveling to the art store before every meeting with the other Chiefs to get a fresh batch of painted stones. Second Chief denied these stories of course, but the head painter told a different story.
The Third Chief’s back was all white. Proud and strong, he was the leader of the Chiefs but not the turtles. You see, with the turtle folk, the longer they lived, the stronger they became. And the one with that title was his wife. Her shell had stopped being painted when it reached the one-hundred-twentieth dot like all other female turtles, but she had been on the coast for as long as anyone could remember. Tatiyova was the rock, and that was that.
***
It was the night of a crescent moon when the first Chief called upon the other two Chiefs and Taityova for a meeting. The first Chief declared that they must avenge his father’s death and ready the turtlefolk for war against the crabs. The Third Chief said the youngster was being much too brash, while the second Chief seemed to nervously fiddle with some small object in his pocket. Tatiyova simply sighed, saying that they should first talk to the crabs, and that was that.
***
It was the night of the next gibbous when the second and Third Chief rode across the ocean on their wooden boat– carved out to look like a shell– to meet the crabs on the opposite end of the coast. They could’ve swum there in half the time, but that “was bad image,” according to Tatiyova.
The turtle Chiefs were accompanied each by two turtle warriors armed with wooden sticks with arrowheads at the end. “Four guards is a good number,” Tatiyova had explained. “It shows a matter of force, but not of violence.” The second and Third Turtle Chiefs nodded their heads, but the first Chief had looked confused. He asked her why he couldn’t go. “You’re still too filled with anger,” she said. “Anger that could fill the crabs too.”
As the turtle Chiefs approached the coast, they held their flippers up for all the crabs on the beach to see. “We come in peace!” cried the Third Turtle Chief.
“Then why do the men behind you carry spears?” Bellowed a crab with claws the size of boulders. The crabmen were not so different from the turtle folk. Both stood on two feet,both had one torso, both had one head, but the crab men had six arms, which made them very proud.
“That’s because one of your citizens has wronged us,” the turtle Chief responded, “They had killed one of our former turtle Chiefs and caused his son to be wrought with fury.”
A blanket of whispers fell over the crabs as a few with bigger legs and larger arms conferred with their king.
“That’s because your dead Chief lied to us.” The crab king said. “He promised us the secret to immortality.”
“Lies!” Cried the Third Turtle Chief.
“We have the documents right here.” A smaller crab wobbled forward, presenting his king with a golden parchment. On it was an indent of the former turtle Chief’s right flipper, colored in white—the paint the turtle folk always used.
The second and Third Turtle Chiefs fall silent. It was one of the turtle warriors that asked, “What did you offer him?” With his beady black eyes, the crab king cracked his hardened mouth into a smile, “You might never know.”
The turtle Chiefs and warriors had no choice but to sail home in defeat. The two Chiefs vowed not to talk about their peer’s transgressions until their next scheduled meeting with the first Chief that night. The two kept their word and held their mouths shut. The turtle warriors did not.
***
Turtle Chief One was angry. His people were angrier. Word of his father’s transgression had sprayed across the village like ocean mist almost the instant the ship arrived back home. The turtle opened his late father’s cabinet, searching for answers.
***
Turtle Chief One’s wife weaved herself across the crowd of angry turtlemen waiting at the front of her husband’s hut. She slid out to the side, entering through a secret entrance into the hut. She starts searching the house for her husband, careful to avoid the flipped-over tables and shattered seashells and the bottles of aged rice wine that had been given to the two as wedding presents. Turtle’s Chief wife finally arrives at their bedroom, but it’s too late. Turtle Chief One has found out her secret.
“I forgive you,” he says. Turtle wife and turtle husband cry together. They embrace. And for a while, everything feels like it’s going to be fine. But as the moon slowly rises in the sky. Turtle Chief leaves his wife’s flippers, exits through the secret entrance, and into the grief-ridden night.
***
The second and Third Chief realize that first turtle Chief won’t be coming to the meeting too late. By the time they called on the warriors to search his house, Turtle Chief One had already swum to the other side of the bay, carrying with him a spear and the cloak of darkness.
***
The crab men lived in a sand kingdom surrounded by four sand walls. The turtle Chief came with the high tide, watching as the water slowly dampened the hardened sand, loosening it to the point the turtle could burrow through. The uninvited guest slipped into town in the dead of night, passing by the sand houses filled with sleeping crab families, sand bars filled with drinking crabmen, and the newly opened sand karaoke venue filled with singing crab women and, coincidentally, most of the crab knights who had all called in sick that night.
When the turtle Chief arrived at the sandcastle where the crabking lived, he found a moat filled with seawater directly connected to the ocean to be in his path. Luckily for him, the few guards on duty that day had lowered down the drawbridge in anticipation of the knights out partying to return to the castle sometime that hour. So, just like that, the turtle Chief strode across the drawbridge and through the front door.
Before long, the turtle Chief was deep inside the castle. Gently sliding his flippers across the halls, he carefully made his way across the building and into the king’s chambers. Without making a sound, the Chief raised his spear up high and sent it straight through the king’s chest and what the turtle assumed to be the crab’s heart.
Unfortunately for the turtle Chief, no one had told him crabs don’t have hearts.
Before the Chief could raise the spear out of the king’s chest, the crab awoke, raising his pincer and ripping the turtle Chief’s right flipper straight off his torso, an arc of blood splattering across the room. The turtle Chief responded in turn, raising his legs to kick the king square in the chest, as a sickening crunch echoed throughout the room. The two of them yelled out their cries of pain, waking the entire kingdom.
Soon, knights started flooding the castle as the king and Chief dueled it out to a growing audience. Crabmen entered the chamber as the turtle Chief became cornered, with only a glass window and a thirty-foot drop into the moat behind him. Just as the crabs readied to capture, the Chief back peddled into the glass and fell into the night.
He crashed into the water with a sickening thud; his arm oozed out crimson blood in a field of liquid sapphire. The turtle Chief was missing a flipper, confidence, and now any resemblance of intact bones, but throughout all of it, he was able to glide through the water. After all, he was a strong swimmer.
The moat was directly connected by tunnels to the sea, so just as the water came and went, the turtle Chief swam across the moat and into the ocean, back to a turtle village that would realize its future was vastly different than it was just a night ago.
***
Tatiyova was the first to find him. The turtle Chief had washed up on shore with a broken shell, broken bones, and a broken spirit. “What you said was true,” the battered youngling mumbled at the elder, “my anger ripped itself out of my chest and has now lodged itself in the crabs.”
***
Daybreak.
Four platoons of turtle soldiers. Each had four columns and four rows. They wielded stone axes this time, not spears. More suitable for their heartless foes.
The second and Third Chiefs had sent a messenger to negotiate with the crabmen and their boats earlier that morning. He returned with an arrow in the ribs. The time for talk had long past. Chief one had ushered them all into this new future.
They can hear the crabs before they can see them. A steady beat of drums marches across the waves. Hard pounding of claws on wood. Heart pounding on ribs of turtles. As the first boats emerge across the waves, Turtle Chief Two lets go of all his rocks and grabs an axe.
“Today we shall live,” he yells, “And today they shall die.”
***
One Afternoon ago.
Turtle Chief One made two discoveries in his father’s cabinet. Two letters. One an explanation, one an apology.
“My son, your wife did come from an exotic land away from us, but it wasn’t as far away as you might think. You see, I had discovered her in my diplomatic journeys to the crab kingdom. A beautiful turtle women held captive by the crabs. At least that was what I had thought. But I eventually began having my suspicions, the turtlewomen’s skin looked too clean, her features too perfect for me to believe she was kept prisoner by the crabs for all this time. Eventually, I found out she wasn’t held captive, but instead raised by the crabs as one of their own. She was sending nightly letters to the crabs about us, about our lives, and potentially our secret to immortality later down the line. A month after I brought her to our bay, I was going to return her, but by then, you had already fallen in love. And she, had fallen in love with you.”
The second letter then read, “So forgive me for my mistake son. I am travelling tonight back to the crab kingdom to confront the crabs about all of this. If all goes well, you will never read these letters.”
***
The boats hit the bay, the turtlemen hit back. Axes crash with claws as a blur of orange and green floods across the sand. Turtles whose dots don’t even cover one-hundredth of their shell wield axes to defend their homeland. The crab king’s claws pierce emerald flesh, as a wave of broken shells follows in his wake. The crabs push forward as the sand slowly shifts from yellow to red, as blood is spilled by orange, as green retreats further inward. The only thing going on in the minds of the turtlemen is one thing: they need to buy time.
***
Deeper into the bay, the turtle women wad through vegetation to reach a cave at the heart of the turtlefolks’ immortality. Turtle Chief One’s wife is with them. They slowly walk around the edges of the cave floor covered in sand, slowly digging into the ground to reveal a constellation of small white dots. Small white eggs. Small white futures. They don’t teach this in human books, but each turtle whose egg is cared for by a turtlewomen carries the memories of their ancestors, their triumphs, and their mistakes. Their will is passed down. That’s how turtles are immortal.
***
The crab king nears the vegetation. The second and Third turtle Chiefs are there to stop him. The king’s claws have dulled, the turtle Chief’s shells have cracked. Yet as the three approach, not one of their wills had diminished. Black arrowhead finds an orange shell, as the Third Chief’s axe lodges into the crabking’s neck. The king thrusts a claw in response. It’s too fast, the Third Chief would die before the turtle could deal a finishing blow on the crab.
Second Chief barrels in front of Third Chief. The claw pierces directly through the Second Chief’s chest. He smiles at the Third Chief. For once Chief Two’s life, he wasn’t in the in-between on his decision.
Turtle Chief Three roars. He pushed his axe harder, further, until the blade doesn’t just find orange shell, but white flesh. The crabking screams as the axe grinds its way through his neck, until he can scream no more.
The crab’s head and turtle Chief Three both fell onto the ground. Turtle Chief Three had done it, he had won. He tried to get up but fell. The world had become so quiet now, so dark. Turtle Chief Three let out a deep sigh, his time had also come.
***
Night, turtles and crabs all fall as the fighting finally comes to a close. The turtle women carry their white dots to the sea on the opposite side of the bay and watch the eggs hatch and the small turtles swim into the ocean.
Turtle Chief One’s wife cries. She sees a pair of baby turtles, one with large flippers and one with skin seaweed green, enter the sea together to a future out in the distance.
***
“You warned me.” Turtle Chief One said in his dying breaths.
“Yet you didn’t listen,” Tatiyova replied.
“I didn’t listen,”
“But the future generations will.”
***
The turtlefolk still live today. They still swim in the same seas and live on the same bays they had so many millennia ago. But inside of each and every one, they carry the memory of bloodshed and war, what limbs and arms and flippers that can wield them can cause. That is why they have grown smaller. Heads no longer large enough to connive, torsos no longer large enough to hold pride, and flippers no longer large enough to hold spears and start wars.
The turtle folk live in a moral land far away from us, leaving wars for us humans to create over and over and over again. In a sense, they are immortal. They are living lives for generations to come…
In a more human sense than we humans can ever dream of.
