Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
“Okay. Cool.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I really do need to get off this island.”
“We all do.”
“I keep getting this feeling like Dad wants to stay. Even after they come to get the seeds. He hasn’t said so, but…”
“What’s there to stay for?”
Raff doesn’t answer but he doesn’t need to: we both know what would keep Dom here.
“You’re an adult, Raff. It’s your decision.”
“I don’t know if I could leave him here. And if Dad stays, Orly stays.”
I shrug. “Look, at some point you have to choose your own life. We all separate from our parents.”
That sounds cold even to me. I don’t tell him it’s not his job to carry his family. It
is his job, because he has decided it is. I understand this maybe better than anyone. I think of the things I decided to carry, and how I had to make myself strong enough to do so, and then I think of my mum again. She was very loving in the beginning, but grief severs things.
Raff is working through his own stuff. “You know when she was coming down on us?” he asks slowly. “I had this thought. That I didn’t mind.” He grimaces. “Do you think that means I want to die?”
I shake my head. “No, mate. I think it just means you’re brave.”
“I thought of Mum, too,” he says more softly. “And then it was funny, when I woke up and my arm was killing me, Dad was talking to me, and I wasn’t really sure what he was saying but the sound of his voice was like?…
home, or something. And I had this other thought. That it should have been him I thought of. That it’s not fair, is it. He’s the one who’s here, she hasn’t been here in
years, but we’re all completely obsessed with her.”
I think about how she is here among us, how even I, who have never met her, feel her presence.
“That’s grief,” I say simply.
Raff nods. Looks away. “Yeah. Anyway. I just want him to know.” We glance sideways at each other and he adds, “I won’t leave him. I won’t leave any of them here.”
The thought comes with simple clarity, and it is the last thing I need.
I won’t be leaving any of them here either.
The old blocked-up fireplace hasn’t worked in decades, but we are all getting sick of feeling so constantly frozen; with reduced power for heating we need fire. This means using brooms to try to clear out the chimney. By the time Raff and I reach the lighthouse, Dom and Fen have their heads poked up, giving directions, and I realize Orly is inside it.
“Get him out of there,” I say, hurrying over.
“I’m good!” he shouts from within.
Dom looks at me like
see.
“He’ll be breathing in years’ worth of soot and dust,” I snap. “Completely stuff his lungs. Get him out now.”
They pull him back down and the kid is covered head to toe in black soot. He laughs to see himself in the bathroom mirror, before being stood under the shower. The water runs black for a long while. When the worst is sluiced away we fill the bath. I listen for any coughing, but he seems okay.
Fen and Raff return to cleaning out the chimney while Dom and I sit beside Orly in the tub. Dom doesn’t look at me, and I think maybe he’s pissed off at me for telling him what to do, but then he rubs his face and says, “I messed up. I think I mess up all the time, only there’s not usually anyone here to point out what an idiot I am.”
I breathe out.
Orly reaches to stroke his dad’s hair, getting it wet. “You’re not an idiot, Dad,” he says cheerfully.
“You are,” I say. “But the kids are alive. You can’t have messed up too badly.”
I don’t really want to sit here and make him feel better about himself, so I leave them to wash. I spend a little time alone in my room,
undressing and unraveling my bandages. They are filthy now and I’ve run out of fresh ones, but I don’t need them anymore. I think I’ve become too used to them, maybe even a little scared of not having them. Scaffolding to keep me upright. Gently I run my fingers over the grazes and cuts, doing an inventory. Most have scabbed over and don’t hurt anymore, but a couple of the deeper gashes are still red and tender. The one on my hip that Dom had to sew twice is particularly hard to look at, even since I cut the stitches out-it has always been the deepest wound. I don’t think it will ever fully heal.
I swallow antibiotics and sit naked on the bed. It’s cold, and I try to let that cold inside me.
I feel it then. Breath on the back of my neck. The sound of it in my ear.
“I can’t protect them from what they’ve done,” I tell her softly.
She grows and throbs and fills the room, faceless and breathing. But I’m too cold to let her frighten me. I dress as warmly as I can, pack my bag, and lift my walking stick.
We aren’t going that way, I promise.
Orly
Plants, in a broad sense, are food. Not only for humans, but for animals, birds, insects. This is their main function on the planet, aside from creating oxygen. They feed life.
But there are some with a much subtler evolutionary design. Plants that wait patiently, taking no nutrients from the poor soil they exist within, their brightly colored and patterned leaves particularly delicious looking. Plants that draw the insects and the little rodents and the frogs to them-hungry creatures searching for food, tricked into thinking they have found a feast, before they themselves are consumed by the pitcher plants. The carnivores. These are plants that refuse to be prey. What possible need could we have to keep such defiance? The seeds of the deadly pitcher plants sit, gathering dust, in a far corner of the vault.
Rowan
The walk is slow in the dark, but I retrace the path we took, Dom, Orly, and me. The moon and the stars are bright. I pause by the crystal albatross lake, now a black sky pit to swallow me whole. I come to the grassy plateau where the baby petrels nest; it looks very different in this light, a sea of silver scales. I move swiftly as we did the first time, but I take a new route. He promised the wind he wouldn’t come this way, and I don’t know what I will find, but if I have to scour every last inch of this island to discover an answer I will do it. I will not sit still and wait.
Beneath the ash I see a glint. I unearth its source, brushing it off with a gloved hand. The glass has melted into a new form, it is curved and almost graceful. I don’t know what this thing used to be-a vase, maybe, or a wine glass-but I am transfixed by the way the light is moving through its twists and arches.
“Oh god,” I hear. I look up from the patch of debris I am standing within-once our kitchen-to the square Hank is sorting through-once our bedroom. I have the floorplan of the house marked out in a grid for us to work our way through methodically, sorting and removing and cleaning as if we are at an archaeological site. It is impossible to recognize any of these rooms now, so we have only the plan to help us understand where in the house we’re standing, but even within these areas none of the possessions (if any are recognizable) are where we expect them to be. The fire has collapsed everything inward. We’ve only