There was a comic I once read—it was years ago, and to my discredit I’ve since forgotten the author—about stories. It’s stuck with me ever since.
Everyone in the comic made colorful, bright stories—they were physical objects, happy little crafted things that flew like kites, pulling laughing children along in their wake, up in a sunny, grassy world surrounded by a drop-off into darkness.
In the midst of that world, a single story-maker stood out among the rest. Wearing dark clothes, with a scowl on their face, they created dark, rusted, heavy things, and the others laughed at them: “You fool, stories are meant to be uplifting! What are you doing with those?”
In answer, the story-maker launched their story. It went right off the edge of the plateau, and sure enough, dropped like a lead weight.
The comic panels took you down with it as it fell. Down and down, past the edges of the sunlight, to where a desperate, dirty hand reached up from the mud and grabbed ahold. I’ll never forget the final panel—the character hanging on to the story like a lifeline as it pulled them up into a shaft of sunlight.
The story lifted them up, as none of the others could, because it met them where they were.
Stories do not always meet us where we are. There is no accounting for tastes, because there is no accounting for the places we may find ourselves in this life, or for the stories that may find us there.
Bermuda’s Belly is a story that plunges down into the dark. Into the fiery, danger-filled bowels of a pirate vessel, and the tightly packed mechanisms that drive it, and into the messy, harsh, uncomfortable lives of the enslaved children aboard it. Reading it, I found myself taking shallow breaths, holding my shoulders close, as if I was the one trapped in a submarine, trying to squirm through the claustrophobia-inducing tunnels to keep the engine running.
The story follows Meggie, a girl who was kidnapped off the streets by pirates. The pirates need small children to reach and maintain the parts of the submarine that are too cramped for an adult to fit. Locked up tight in the dark, it seems like there’s no way out; but unlike the other children, Hen, Tad, and Digger, Meggie hasn’t given up on escaping. When the pirates take on a new crew member—Sinjohn, a strangely kind man who doesn’t seem to fit in with the other sailors—it may be Meggie’s chance to escape. But, she needs to find a way to bring the others with her.
No one in this story is without flaws. Or perhaps ‘flaws’ is a misdirecting word. Unlike many stories about kidnapped children, especially in the adventure genre, no one in the story fills the role of savior. No one has to fight their way out of the dark alone, but only because no one can do it on their own. The children can’t make it off the submarine alone; Sinjohn the sailor can’t go against the other pirates by himself. The lack of absolute heroism in the story doesn’t detract from it; instead, it lays bare the mechanisms of care that allow us all to help one another, regardless of our abilities or our circumstances. While Meggie’s indefatigable idealism is what holds our heroes together, never allowing them to fall into apathy or half-measures, no one’s actions are able to be discounted.
Bermuda’s Belly is a story that doesn’t hide in simplicity or in wish fulfillment; instead, it chooses to go the difficult way around; the way in which everyone has to care and has to try their best. It earns its ending, in a way that makes it an incredibly satisfying and uplifting read. This one’s going to stick with me for a long time, I think.
style=”display:none;”>
