Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
“Hank?” Orly thinks. “He was nice. Everyone liked him.”
“Mates with your dad?”
“Oh no, not Dad.”
I look sideways at him. “Really? Why not?”
“I dunno.”
“Did they not like each other?” I press.
“Dad said once that he could see through Hank.” Orly looks at me. “What does that mean?”
“Just…” I try to work it out too. “I guess it means he thought Hank wasn’t who he seemed to be.”
“Oh. Why do you care, anyway?”
“I don’t,” I say robotically, but Orly has already darted forward, not interested in my response.
My too-small boots hit the black sand of the beach. We have been picking our way around the big fat seals on the pathways. Some of them look up at us as we pass, some snort and give a lazy gurgle, while others don’t bother lifting their heads.
“Meet the wieners!” Orly says. “Elephant seal babies. The adults have gone out to sea already.”
I can’t even imagine the size of the adults if these giants are the infants.
There is a human shape in the distance. Out among the fur seal colony. We make our way past the clumps of bright seaweed, over the bones. Birds fill the sky. I don’t know what kinds they are.
“Mind the gentoos,” Orly says, skirting around little waddling penguins with bright-yellow feet and beaks.
“They are much cuter than they have any business being,” I comment. It is hard to take in that they are just?… here. Right beside me. Completely unbothered by the presence of people on their beach.
“I know. My favorites are the royals. They have those long orange eyebrows, you know? They let you get close, too, you can hang out with the royals and the kings, they’re down on South Beach, but these gentoos are more shy so we have to be careful not to disturb them.”
“Got it.”
We give them a few meters’ berth. I can see about a dozen of them awkwardly wandering over the rocks, sort of idly making their way toward the roaring sea. When they reach the water I see that awkwardness morph into a smooth, sleek dive through the waves.
As we draw nearer to the fur seals, the sound of them crests. Could there be hundreds of them? The honks and snorts from the adults are coupled with what sounds like the bleat of lambs. In my confusion I look for the source of this and realize there are little squidgy shapes in among the adults, sand-covered babies with little ears poking out of their heads, dozens and dozens of them making these tiny lamb cries.
“Oh my god,” I say.
“I didn’t know they’d given birth!” Orly exclaims. “Let’s not get too close.”
As he says this a huge male starts flopping over to us with an aggressive bark. I am alarmed but Orly raises his hands above his head and says, “Shoo! Go away!” And the seal kind of considers him, gives a huffy sniff, and then flaps back to the colony. I can’t help laughing.
“That was King Brown,” Orly tells me, as though this explains the interaction.
“You guys name them?”
“Alex and Fen did.”
A sleek, light-gray mother seal starts shouting, panicked, and as we watch, the girl, the human shape among this astonishing mound of furry bodies, picks her way over to the crying mother and without any hesitation she shoves an enormous male in the side, making him start with surprise and shuffle his way off the tiny baby he’d been squashing. The little seal pup shakes its head and bleats for its mother, who nuzzles it in relief, while the male gives a roar of indignation and then flops back down to sleep.
“He nearly killed the baby,” I say, horrified.
“Yeah. It happens, sadly. They don’t mean to, they’re just so big. Fen stays in there a lot to try to stop it.”
“Doesn’t it bother them to have a human among them?”
Orly frowns, looking at his sister. “I guess not,” he says, as though it’s a stupid question, and given what we’re looking at I suppose it is. “The researchers used to have rules about keeping a few meters away, letting them come to you, you know, just basically not bothering them. But they didn’t even try to make Fen stick to those rules. She’s just?… one of the seals.”
Which seems a truly bizarre thing to try to contemplate, and I find myself wondering how this could be true, how such a thing could come to be. Why is she down here among these animals instead of living in a house with her family? And why does her dad allow it?
Fen has seen us now and is making her way over to us. We have met before but that feels like part of the fever dream. I take her in properly, watch the way her body moves, completely at ease on the sand and among the animals, strong and graceful in the full wet suit that looks not unlike the sleek dark fur of the seals. Her hair is long and sun-bleached blond, tangled and salty almost to the point of dreadlocks. Her skin is very tanned and freckled and she seems like a wild animal who has stepped free of a life under water.
Maybe Dom doesn’t have much choice in the matter of who and what his daughter is; I can’t imagine it would be easy trying to keep this creature from the sea.
“Hi-” I start to say before I am cut off by an embrace. I am so shocked and it hurts so much that I don’t think to hug her back, and
when she lets her arms drop I immediately regret this, wanting to reach for her even through the pain.
“Oh!” she gasps. “Your wounds!”
I grimace. “It’s okay.”
“Sorry. It’s just…” Her eyes are filling. “I didn’t know if you’d wake up.”
I gaze at this girl, realizing all three of these children have shown me the same open warmth, a kindness given freely and without agenda, and I wonder if that generosity is a product of their isolation, of their loneliness, or if it is simply a truth of their characters. Their father is different, he looks at me with wariness, but if that is to protect his children then I can understand it.
I don’t want to ask this girl what I’ve come here to ask her. Not now that I know she will say yes.
“They’re beautiful,” I say of the seals, and she beams, a smile of crooked white teeth, and
she is beautiful.
“They are,” Fen agrees. “I find it so hard to leave them. How are you?”
“I’m okay.”