Mais uma

The library found in a bottle

For thirty years, we've been hearing about how trash, thrown to the oceans, accumulates from everywhere into far places, long away from any lands of men and angels. What few people know, however, are the finer hydrodynamics of messages in bottles. The words in them, more htan the paper, ink, or bottles, slightly deform the water around them, so that all bottled messages follow a different track from those of bottles filled with ship models or empty air, from those with spittle and soda, bottles with urine sample or champagne wine, with motor oil or mineral water.

The track they follow leads to a spot in the Sea of Arabia (or in the Bay of Bengal - definitely near India), where there's a small island, with many miles of coral reefs surrounding it. They tread, as if guided by a pilot, the choral reefs without breaking, to land, from all over the world, at the sandy beach. In the island, an old djinnyah, a castaway from something more than a ship, has made it her duty to collect and organize all the bottled messages, and does so with the help of monkfish and of the tiny creatures that dwell in the choral. Bottles themselves make wonderful shelves, especially since the djinnyah (who doesn't have to open them in order to know what's written inside), seals their mouths with gum arabica and smokeless fire.

If you ever land there, say hi to the djinnyah for me. Mind that you don't ask to read any of the messages, though many of them are well worth reading - castaways have much time on their hands, and most of them are rather less practical than Mr Crusoe. See, she considers it a sin for the sons of Adam to read what was written at the behest of the Ocean Sea, and she might do to you what she did to me.