Page 69

The water has nearly reached us. I am appalled at how quickly the shaft has filled up. And if Dom hasn’t got the hatch open yet, it means it’s not as simple as grinding the rusted hinges off.

We are hanging on to the rungs, trying to rest our shoulders against the wall. It’s tiring gripping on like this, hard on our frozen hands and feet. I tell Orly to sit on my shoulder, to rest awhile, but he says he’s okay, he can stand.

“How come he hasn’t got it open yet?” the boy asks me quietly.

“He will.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

I don’t answer.

“Guess it’s drowning, then. Of the three. Drowning, burning, or starving. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” I shake my head at the idiocy of those words. “I was talking shit,” I tell him. “I was angry. It’s not true.”

“Seems like it will be.”

“Hey. We’re not dying in here.”

We might be dying in here.

I feel it come upon me with eerie certainty. We might be dying in here. If so, then what? What is my choice? My path forward?

It is to protect him from fear. To help him feel only love.

“I forgot to tell you something,” I say. I am looking up, and I see his eyes tilt from their vigil on his father to find me in the dark below.

“What?”

“You know how you were talking about the banksias? How they come to life after a fire, when everything else is burned?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I didn’t tell you the most important part of the story. Of my story, of the fire at my place. I said everything burned, but it didn’t, Orly. Afterward, I was walking through the ash, looking for something, anything still living. And remember how I told you about the wombats and their square poos?”

“Yeah.”

“Wombats have a thing they do in fires. They take their families underground, into their burrows. They have tunnels under the earth, and they go down there to take shelter, but they don’t just take their families, they also take other animals down there. They save everyone they can. And then the mum and dad wombats stick their bums up into the entrances of the burrows to block the fire and the ash from coming down. And their bums get burned, and sometimes they die, but they protect the others.”

Orly meets my eyes.

I smile. “They were down there. A whole group of them, huddled together. The wombats had saved a dozen little creatures, there were lizards and frogs and possums and a wallaby, and there was a koala, too, and they were all alive.”

He is smiling now too.

“And those mum and dad wombats that stick their bums up to save their family, that’s your mum and dad,” I say, and we are both laughing, knowing it’s true.

“So I wanted to ask if you guys would like to come and live there with me?” I say. “When we’re out of here.”

“To replant?”

I nod.

“Won’t another fire just come?”

“Maybe. But we’ll make sure the whole place is covered in banksias.”

A person, a real, normal person, not some professional diver or whatever, can only hold their breath for a few seconds. Seriously, that’s about it. Maybe a minute, if you can stay calm. A child, far less. I’ll give him twenty seconds, tops, before he panics and draws a huge gasp of water into his lungs.

But. Maybe twenty seconds is all we will need. You never know. I start preparing him.

“Has your sister ever talked to you about holding your breath?”

“She taught me to swim.”

“Did she talk about what happens when you’re under?”

“She talked about calmness.”

“Let’s practice it,” I say.

“I don’t want to go underwater, ,” he says, terrified.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” I say, and I believe it, somehow, even though I have been petrified of water since I was thirteen years old. Maybe that’s what being a parent is. Expanding to be more. Asking of yourself more, for them.

“We might have to go under, but only for a minute or two. So we’ll need to be brave. Do you understand?”

He nods.

“We’ll be brave, and we’ll be calm. Just like Fen said. She was born for the water, right?”

Orly nods again. His teeth are chattering.

“I’m here with you,” I tell him. “It’s you and me, okay.”

I think of River, in these last minutes. I let myself remember him, and for the first time in a long time I take pleasure in the memories. He was a gorgeous, smiling boy. He made the world richer for having been in it.

I look at the little boy above me. “Hey, Orly.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

He puts his little hand on my head, like a pat. “Love you too, Row.”

“Tell your dad…” I break off and swallow. The water is at my shoulders. I have already climbed as high as I can; both our heads are touching the top of the hatch. I can see how frantic Dom is up there. This might come down to seconds so I won’t delay him long enough to tell him anything. I will just have to hope Orly can pass something along. Because one of us will be able to press up through that window and breathe, even when the shaft is entirely submerged.

“Tell your brother and sister the same, okay? I’m not your mum, but I will always love you.”

“Stop,” he says. “Just stop. You can tell them.”

“I think it carries on, even after.” I breathe out slowly. Breathe in slowly. Stay calm. The water reaches my chin. “Press your face up now,” I tell Orly.

“I don’t want to. What about you.”

“I’m right here. I won’t leave you.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever,” I promise.

I am so glad I came down here, that I could be here with him.

“Nearly there, hang on!” I hear Dom shout.

It lifts my heart. Orly might have a chance. He presses his face as far through the little window as he can. All light is blocked and I am in darkness. I tilt my face up. Soon I will take my last air and go under.

I have drowned once before. I thought of my mother, then. It was strange to me that I should think of her at the end, after years of trying to convince myself I hated her. Untrue of course, but armor against the way she blamed me, the way she couldn’t stand to look at me. I have been so angry with her—even after she died I have held on to that anger and it has made me fearful—but being a parent is complex and it is altering and being the parent of a lost child is something no human should have to contend with. I forgive the distance she imposed between us to try to survive. I think instead of the love she had for us in the beginning, and of my sisters and our boat.

I think of Hank and how grateful I am that he taught me to appreciate the things that grow in the ground. He gave me access to wildness and that is no small thing in a human life. I think of this life, of my life, of the things I built and planted. I have been lucky to know such richness. But I also think of how my husband taught me something else, something so deeply wrong I am stunned that I ever believed it: that in the face of world’s end love should shrink.

I think of Raff and Fen and Orly. I have spent my life loving other people’s children. There is no safety in this. But what is the use of safety if it deprives you of everything else?

I feel immense grief, thinking of the time I spent resenting this little boy and wishing I could have been anywhere else. I should have been treasuring every precious second with him, with them all, instead of wishing those seconds away.

I realize I never told Orly what I wanted to say to you.

I am underwater now. There are little lights flashing, they look like sparks from the cut glass of your Fresnel lens.

I think of the whale, and her calf, and the sea embracing them.

I think I finally understand your words. It’s just a body. They hold on or they don’t. You’re right, it’s nothing to be frightened of. Mine will become the salt of this water. And every time you swim it will be me upon your skin.

Orly slips. He comes under. His body slides into mine and I catch him in the dark and his long pale hair is all around me. My survival instinct tells me to surge for the surface, to press my mouth to that small opening and draw breath—to do anything to end the agony in my chest—but I can feel Orly panicking, his eyes are wide, he is going to suck the water into his lungs and then he will be gone, and so instead of going for air, I cover his mouth with mine and I press into him the last of what I have in my lungs, in my body. Enough, maybe, for another second or two, and I feel him calm a little, and then I think I feel him pulled from my arms

and I am falling.

But there is someone here.

A woman.

Down here in the dark with me.

She catches me and holds me so tenderly, and I know her. She is his mother, and she died so he could live. I understand it so simply now, it is a love that lives in the body but unlike the body it never dissolves. It lasts forever.