Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
It’s an albatross. Close enough that I can see the soft, snowy plumage of its neck and face and head, the speckled gray on its wings, its pink hooked bill and dark eyes. It is sitting on a nest, I think, and it’s huge. I have seen David Attenborough. I know what they look like. But I could never imagine the majesty of them so close; the true size of this bird is dazzling.
“Is this the one you told me about?” I ask softly. “With the seed?”
Orly smiles. “Maybe. That’s Ari. She’s got an egg under there. Nikau is at sea. He’ll be back sometime soon to take over on the nest.”
The moment is so peaceful that I could lie down and stay here with her forever. I feel all the restless, panicked threads of me calm.
“Did you know they spend most of their lives in the air?” Orly says. “They can glide without flapping for hours at a time.”
I imagine this easy, lazy flight. I saw it, on that first walk down to the beach, I sat in the tussock and watched Ari-or maybe it was Nikau-soaring almost motionless through the air, so different from the other birds that it’s impossible not to recognize.
The wind picks up a little and I lift the hood on my windbreaker (Dom’s windbreaker). Orly doesn’t have a hood today, and his long pale hair is whipping around, getting in his face. I gently comb the threads with my fingers and start braiding it tightly. I haven’t done this since my sisters were little but my hands remember it well. While I braid, Orly tells me more about the wandering albatross. He explains how they only lay an egg every two years and how the last time Ari and Nikau did this, for her senior biology project Fen tracked and studied the process, from laying the egg and then incubating it for eleven weeks, to the egg hatching and then the growth of the chick. She set up a camera that recorded the chick, named Tui, for the months he sat in that nest, waiting for his parents to return and feed him. They watched as he practiced building his own nest by collecting mud and vegetation into a mound, and they were here when Tui finally took to the sky. Orly says his sister sobbed, knowing she would probably never see the bird again but also knowing this was a triumph, that he’d made it to maturity when not all chicks did. They are old, Ari and Nikau, nearly fifty years old, and they don’t have many more breeding years in them.
“We might see this egg hatch,” Orly says. “Before we leave.”
“I hope so.”
I finish Orly’s hair but neither of us moves; instead he leans back into me and together we watch Ari tilt her head and lift her beak into the sky, we watch her spread her extraordinary wings as though to show us her beauty.
“This your doing?” Dom greets me. He’s standing by the sink, gesturing to the dining table.
There is a brilliant pink and mauve sunset tonight as Orly and I get ready to brave the walk down the hill. We plan to join his brother and sister on the inky sand of the beach.
I nod.
“Why?”
I don’t know if Dom’s pissed off, but he is studying me closely, trying to work me out. He certainly doesn’t seem
pleased.
“It was a travesty,” I say. “And it’ll need a few more days of work before you can use it.”
“So where are we meant to eat?”
“On the couch, like normal people.”
This irritates him, and I try not to smile.
“Come down to the beach with us,” Orly begs his dad.
Dom drags his eyes from me long enough to tell his son, “Can’t, mate, I got things to get done around here.”
I see Orly’s shoulders slump and I wish his dad could see it too.
By the time we reach the pinch, Raff and Fen have already made a fire of driftwood. The world outside these flames disappears into shadow, but I can hear the constant snorts and scuffles of the seals, hundreds of them all around us.
Fen uses a blade to cut open the rubbery orange kelp, the texture and look of which makes my skin crawl, it is so alien, and then she places a fish inside it and puts the package on the fire to cook.
“You feeling okay today?” I ask Fen while the boys practice boxing moves by the water.
She nods.
Raff is about four times the size of his little brother, and he is laughing as Orly feints and weaves around him, his feet moving in swift dance steps, a twirl here, a pirouette there.
“I’m picturing it a lot,” she admits.
“Me too. You’re seventeen, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve been here since you were nine?”
She nods. “We’ve been back to the mainland a couple of times to go to the doctor or the dentist, but that’s it.”
“That’s…” I shake my head. “Crazy.”
She shrugs. “I guess.”
“Do you like it here or would you prefer to be in the real world?”
“This is real,” she says, and leaves it at that. A while later she asks, “Do you have kids?”
I shake my head.
“How old are you?”
“Forty.”
“Then how come you don’t have any?”
“I don’t want any.”
“Why not?”
“Fen.” I laugh.
“Sorry,” she says quickly. “Was that impolite? I have nightmares about getting back to the mainland and offending everyone because I don’t know how to talk to people.”