Page 6

I think, in this darkness, that I have seen a man’s face. The sense of him lingers inside the crashing seas of my body, so that it begins to feel like he’s the one pummeling at my edges.

At some point, it could be seconds or a million years later, the pain changes. No longer an ocean but a sting. The sting becomes a flame becomes a fire. I know this fire. I thought I had escaped it.

But. Here is the strangest part. The fire is not alone. There is something else here. Something battling it, trying to hold it back.

A voice.

Let’s start with the greatest traveler among them, shall we?

Curious.

It is light and high, and from within these flames I cling to it.

It’s not finished, what’s left of this dandelion. It has more to do.

There are sounds in the room and I realize they are from me, I am weeping in pain. Something touches me. I’m not sure where. I drag my eyelids open and am shocked at the brightness. I blink and blink until I can see: a small hand has taken mine, is holding mine, and perhaps I have died after all. The voice, that sweet little voice is saying I’m here, I won’t leave you , and I start crying for a different reason.

He seems to be here on his own. I come to this conclusion only when I have enough brainpower to come to conclusions, and this is only after he’s given me painkillers. He is small, I’m not good with children’s ages, but he is a child, and he is striking in the light spilling through the window. Pale blue eyes and almost-white hair, perhaps he is Nordic—he has the look of a Viking in miniature, there are even slender plaits in his long straight hair. And he has been speaking to me of seeds. It’s how I know I am in the right place.

“Is this the research base?” I ask him.

“No. This is the lighthouse.”

I frown, trying to make sense of that. “Where are your parents?”

“Dad’s across island.”

“Why?”

“The storm that brought you. It’s taken most of our power. He’s gotta check things.”

The storm that brought me. I am back in it. My body thrown up into the ceiling of the cabin, then slammed back to the floor. I can hear his shouts from the deck, faint among the roar. I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me. Is he saying to stay below? Or to get free? I have no intention of going down with this boat, so I surge up the last steps and without even a chance to take a breath I am lifted, carried, dumped into the sea. A tiny thing in the mouth of a beast. I will never forget the weakness of my body. This body I have always taken pleasure in making strong. I will never make sense of the powerlessness or how it is that I’m still here.

“Is there an adult I can talk to?” I ask.

“No.”

I rub my aching eyes, trying to wrap my head around what’s going on and why I seem to be alone in a lighthouse with a child.

“What’s your name?” the boy asks me.

For a brief moment I can’t recall it. What a thing.

“,” I tell him.

“I’m Orly Salt. And you’re on an island in the middle of the Southern Ocean, fifteen hundred kilometers from any other landmass. Closest is Antarctica. So my question for you is: How did you get here, ?”

I look at him. “We can have this chat when your dad gets back.”

“He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Do you know if he radioed for help?” I ask. “A coast guard?”

Orly shrugs.

“Can you get me something to drink? Anything strong and straight.”

“I’m not allowed to touch the alcohol.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

He considers me, then shrugs and jumps up. “Guess these are mitigating circumstances, huh?”

“Guess they are.”

“I’ll say you manipulated me, if Dad asks.”

“You do that.”

He trots out.

I take a look around the cramped and crooked room. Low ceilings with heavy wooden beams. Stone walls and floor. A thick wool rug, wardrobe and bookcase both full to bursting. The window is small, the sky too glary for me to see anything and after a glance I don’t want to, it makes my head pound.

The kid returns with vodka and I get drunk. It helps with the pain, not with the memories. He’s also brought me a Vegemite-and-cheese sandwich on bread that isn’t entirely defrosted and a cup of tea with long-life milk and about sixteen sugars, by the taste of it. It’s all very unpleasant.

When I’ve finished I lie still, so little energy in my body I can do nothing but watch the shadows move on the walls. Orly carries on chatting about seeds. It takes a long time for night to fall. I wish the minutes away.

“How long have I been in this bed?” I ask the boy at some point.

“We found you last night. You’ve kinda been coming in and out of consciousness. You don’t remember?”

I shake my head. Just a man’s face in the dark. “What’s actually… what’s happened to me?” There is flickering candlelight and I need a break from the seeds, I need to understand what’s going on under these bandages. I am afraid to look, afraid not to.

“You mean…?” He gestures to my body. “You had hypothermia, that was the main thing. It was crazy, you were hardly breathing. And you got scraped up pretty bad. There’s a bunch of rocks offshore, the waves dragged you over them to the beach. You’re lucky, though. If the Drift current had got you, you’d be dead, no questions asked, dead.”

“No questions asked, huh.”

“The Drift is merciless. Instead you got Fen.”

“What’s Fen?”

He grins. “My sister. She swam out and got you, pulled you to shore. She’s the best swimmer you’ll ever meet. Born for the water, Dad says.”

“Was there…” I stop. Best not to ask too many questions. If they’d found a boat, the boy would have told me. “You should get some sleep, kid.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and then he curls up at the foot of my bed like a dog and nods straight off. I stare at him in disbelief and then I finish the vodka and roll over. The room is spinning and I think getting drunk was a bad idea because it feels like the rocking sea and the boat, it feels like his voice calling out to me only I can’t find him and I know he’s gone now, the Drift must have got him, and it was my desire, my arrogance, the stupidity of this quest that drowned him.

His name is Yen. He is the only one brave enough or mad enough to take me, I’m told. Don’t even bother asking anyone else. He used to be a whaler. He doesn’t ask me questions about why I want to be taken to a mostly uninhabited island so far away, he just asks me how much money I have, and when I tell him he nods once and says we will be fine if the weather holds. I ask him what will happen if it doesn’t and he says the sea will decide, which is an irritatingly sailor thing to say.

He doesn’t talk to me much on the four-day journey, but I will remember his voice. I will remember the sound of it calling my name and the way that name was swallowed by wind and waves.

I wake in the deep night with an aching need to do a wee. I don’t know how long it’s been since I went, but as I’ve been lying here for a couple of days now it’s a fair assumption that some poor person has had to clean up after me. It hurts to sit upright. The pain feels both deep and also right at my surface. I don’t make a sound, terrified of waking the boy and having to talk to him again.

My head spins and I’m not sure my wobbly legs will carry me. The house is dark. And odd. I flick light switches but they don’t work, the power’s been shut off. The staircase has a wooden banister to cling to. The walls seem to be curved and there are a lot of stairs. I don’t have the time or the desire to poke my head through every door I pass, looking for a bathroom, so I go to the ground floor and stagger out what looks to be the front door (there are coats and boots beside it, I pull both of these on) and into the night.

I gasp. Blinded by the sky.

The stars are electric and so dazzling I sink to the ground, unable to catch my breath. The cold is a blanket, wrapping around me and sinking within, and these pajamas aren’t mine, they are too small, and even with a coat they are nothing against the bite of the air. I need to move but I can’t. It is too beautiful.

When finally I get to my feet I see the building behind me, the lighthouse without a light, and before me is a hillside of long silver grass swaying in the starlight. Bits of me are going numb so I drop my pajama pants, but since there is no way my trembling thighs will lower me into a squat, all I can do is spread my legs wide and hope.

“What are you doing?”

I look over my shoulder. The kid is standing in the doorway, watching me.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“A wee?”

“Bingo.”

“Why are you doing it out here?”

“To make sure I wouldn’t be bothered.”

“Oh.”

He stays.

I finish my wee, then pull my undies (mine, thank god) and pants back on. The effort causes me to tilt sideways and then, almost slowly, I am back on the ground.

“Are you okay?” the kid asks.

I blink through my spotty vision and wait for my head to stop spinning. He pulls on his gumboots and coat and bounds out onto the grass. I don’t have the energy to move again and, since I guess he doesn’t know what else to do, he just sits down beside me. Together we gaze at the windswept hills before us.

“So this is Shearwater, huh?” I say.

“Sure is. One hundred and twenty kilometers squared. We’re a tundra climate with mostly mosses and lichens, and over forty-five vascular plant species, and we have over eighty thousand seals on the island, as well as the last colony of royal penguins in the world, and over three million breeding seabirds. And we’re a UNESCO World Heritage Site because we’re the only place in the world where the earth’s mantle is pushing up and being exposed.”

I can’t help smiling. “You get all that from Wikipedia?”

He shrugs. Which I guess means yes.

Orly points toward the ocean. “That’s where Raff and Fen are, down on the beach.” Before I can question what his brother and sister are doing on a beach in the middle of the night, he points what I assume is south. “Down that way is the seed vault. Where Dad is.”

“What’s the seed vault?” I ask, already knowing the answer but curious about what he’ll say.

“It’s where the world sends its seeds to be stored in case we ever need to rebuild a population of something.”

“Why’s it all the way down here?”

“To protect it. The permafrost keeps the seeds cold and it’s too far away for any people to reach.” He looks at me. “Seed banks aren’t a new thing, you know.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just that this is one of the last. And it has the largest collection of seeds from all over the world. A whole lot that don’t exist anywhere else—rare and endangered and even extinct in the wild. And it doesn’t just have agricultural seeds either, it has everything.”

“How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“Is that old enough to know what’s good for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Should we go inside? It’s pretty fucking cold.”

He giggles, possibly at the swearing. “I’m used to it, but you’re not.” He starts for the door but I don’t yet follow him. I am trying to figure out how to return to my feet, how I could possibly climb those stairs again. Big mistake, coming down here; I should have just wet the bed.

The boy, Orly, returns. He seems to understand, because he pulls one of my arms until I am more upright, then he offers me his shoulder to push off. A sound leaves my mouth as I drag myself up his body and steady myself upon it. His feet stagger under my weight, but we both manage to remain standing. Together we do an awkward drunken stumble back to the lighthouse. The mere sight of the stairs causes my insides to heave and instead I swing sideways into a living room, collapse onto an old velvet couch. My skull is trying to crack open and the rocks are feeding on me. Orly drapes a blanket over me. I am dismayed to see him lie down on the floor at my side. “Don’t you have a bed?”

He nods. Closes his eyes.

I try to close mine too but I can feel him there, shivering. “I thought you said you were used to it.”

“I… am.” He can barely get the words out between the chattering of his teeth.

Irritated, I hold the blanket open for him. “Come on. Hurry up.”

He wriggles up next to me, there is barely room but we warm each other. I end up with my cheek pressed against his back, listening to the pat pat of his heartbeat. That little beat feels immensely small and vulnerable under the expanse of that sky, and I think of the stone walls of this building and the empty rooms and his dad off on the other side of an island. I think of him alone here, with only me, who is basically no one.

The question forms inside me along with a warning not to ask it.

“Where’s your mum, Orly?”

His voice when it comes is muffled beneath the blankets. “She’s dead.”

I sigh. Listen to the pat pat. After a while I say, “Mine too,” and feel him drift off to sleep.