Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
But there were eucalypts, three of them. My favorite trees on the land. They were a fraction too close to the house, but I couldn’t cut them down for that. I loved them too much.
In the end everything burned for those eucalypts. Because the flames, they leaped. They flew farther than I’d ever imagined they could.
I am going south with Dom and Orly to the seed bank. It requires a look-in every few days-we have to check the temperature now the power’s out, on top of which they have this sorting and packing task
Hank left them. I’ve told them I’m coming, regardless of whether they want me to, regardless of how much it slows them down. We are going to sleep the night in a field hut, which is where Hank mostly lived. I want to see for myself where my husband spent his time. I want to sniff around a bit. Can’t shake the feeling Dom’s not telling me everything.
If Hank has indeed gone home (there is no home, there is nothing left, where will he go?), then I’d like to know what he went through in his final months here, and why he was so disturbed he sent me those last three emails. They tell a different story.
I think my body is starting to get used to the walking. I suppose it has to. The stitches have helped: there is no fresh blood. This improvement bolsters me.
We make our way south. Dom quizzes Orly on his maths. The kid makes swift work of it, then turns the conversation to the land we walk through. Much of the trek is difficult, and there are stretches so steep we need ropes to help us walk up the inclines. But there are also long tablelands of grasses, with mountains rearing up on either side. Sloping green hills and valleys. Mossy mounds. Rocky sea cliffs. And crystal-blue lakes nestled within it all. It is like walking through an ancient, untouched paradise, and I begin to see the island differently, now that I have trespassed within it. From outside, from the ocean, it is dark and dramatic and uninviting, but its center is quiet, it is peaceful. I can see why they love it here so much.
We reach a lake and above it circles a giant, snowy albatross. “Is it Ari?” I ask. “Or Nikau?”
Dom and Orly peer upward, studying the graceful, gliding arc. “It’s Nikau,” Dom says. “Males have less gray on their wings.”
We watch the bird for a long while. His flight is mesmerizing. I breathe in the cold, crisp air and it reminds me of home.
“Dad calls them the teenagers,” Orly says, “’cause they only wake up and start flying around at midday.” He seems to think this is hilarious.
“You can swim here,” Dom tells me. “If you dare.”
“Feel it,” Orly urges me. “Take off your glove and put your hand in.”
“No way, I’m not that stupid.”
“Come on, please? Please, please, please.”
I take off my glove, mostly to shut him up. Walk down over the rocks to the clear water. The albatross glides through the crystal reflection on the surface. The cold, when I feel it, hits me in the guts. For Orly, I let out a mighty yowl. He cracks up, goes to his knees laughing, and his dad and I are chuckling too, if at nothing else than his pure delight.
We walk on, skirting a valley so green it’s almost neon.
“That’s bog,” Orly tells me. “Don’t go down there, whatever you do. This is a type of fern.” He points to a vibrant green plant with many tiny fronds. “I can’t ever remember its proper name…” He gives his head a hard knock with his fist, looking desperately disappointed in himself.
“I forgive you,” I say. “What’s that one?”
“These are megaherbs, they don’t grow anywhere else in the world except on these subantarctic islands. This one’s the
Stilbocarpa polaris, and it’s got loads of vitamin C. The sealers who came here used to eat it so they wouldn’t get scurvy.” The plant in question looks like a big green cabbage with fanlike leaves, and there is another one beside it with a long stem to hold a bright-yellow flowerhead. “And see this mossy-looking stuff?” Orly says next, indicating a large round patch of what does indeed look like moss. “It’s called
Azorella, and it’s a perennial herb, but it’s interesting because it gets really windy here-the wind can get so savage, you haven’t even felt it yet, Rowan-and this plant has evolved to get pulled underground by its deep roots, so it can survive the harshness of the conditions. Oh, and look! This one here, this pretty one”-he is touching what looks like a purple spiky dandelion-“this is the one I was telling you about, the buzzy burr. Its real name is
Acaena magellanica. See these tiny little hooks on the seed? This is how they catch onto bird feathers and get carried around the world. A lot of the plants here are like that, they’ve had to find ways to survive an unsurvivable place.”
I peer around at the vegetation. “They’re pretty special then, huh?”
He nods proudly, and though I had thought this island’s botanicals were sparse and bleak, I realize I just didn’t know how to recognize their abundance.
It gets colder as we travel farther south. I see frost covering the ground, and one of the southernmost mountains is completely covered in snow. Cresting a rise brings us out onto a kind of grassy plateau, and Dom tells me I have to move quickly along the worn footpath, because there are baby giant petrels nesting. I do as I’m told, following his pace and letting Orly bring up the rear, and as we walk I catch glimpses of them, fluffy gray dodo-type birds, completely adorable in their little nests among the tussocks.
The freezing wind is whipping against my face, icing my eyelashes and making my teeth chatter. This wind is a high shriek through the snowy grasses and the megaherbs; it is almost wordlike. I hear Orly say, “We aren’t going that way, I promise.”
I look back at him, thinking he must be talking to me, but I see him gazing into the sky and something about it chills me.
“Keep moving,” Dom orders me, voice low, and there is an urgency I’m not expecting. I find my pace again, a little more quickly now, and my heart is racing, I can’t help hearing Orly’s voice in my mind and the wind is lifting-
We climb down over the edge of the plateau onto a set of wooden steps, and the second we are protected by the cliff face the wind is gone and my panic with it.
What I am met with, instead, is an entirely different world.
A cacophony of sound. A universe of it.
My god. If I thought there were animals before, it’s as nothing to this place they’ve brought me to. Thousands of penguins, both royal and king, squawking and screeching and chattering. Huge elephant seals flopping about, either lying on the sand, using their clawed flippers to scratch their fat bellies or throw sand over their fur, or rearing up in the water, practicing their fighting with great bellowing honks and gurgles. The racket is mind-blowing; I have never heard anything like it. Not eerie and haunted like the wind was but wild and boisterous and full of life. I can’t help laughing in astonishment, in wonder.
Even the color here feels richer, the black sand blacker, the mountains a deeper green, the kelp bloodier, and the bursts of color worn by the penguins so intense it’s like they’re waving flags at us, joyfully calling
here I am!
“Welcome to South Beach!” Orly announces, flinging his arms wide.
I shake my head, lost for words.
We walk along the water’s edge, and unlike up at the pinch, where the westerlies ravage and batter the beach and base, here we are protected, and the water of the bay is quite calm. I can see penguins diving, their sleek little bodies launching in and out. Here and there in the shallows are more fighting seal pups. Chunks of ice bob in the dark water and sit on the sand, and there are spatterings of snow upon the ground. Dark cliff faces rise up on either side of us, shrouded in mist, and again, at these coastal points I feel a sense of the dramatic, but this time I don’t feel so uneasy. I feel moved by the beauty.
“Wait here, please,” Orly tells me in an imitation of a traffic cop. He uses hand signals to gesture to the penguins and I realize there is a steady stream of royals waddling up and down this particular path between the water and the steep craggy cliff face. They start leaping up the rocks and disappearing behind a curtain of the big green cabbage. “The royal highway,” Orly tells me. “They head up through there to their nesting ground, way up in the hills. This is the only place in the whole world where they breed! We can go and look at the colony later, there’s still some chicks up there, they’re so cute. But you have to keep the road clear for them, so when we get a break in the traffic?… we go! Go!”
I realize he is waving me through and I trot forward over the highway, past the waddling creatures with their stylish yellow eyebrows. The kings are quite different, much larger and more elegant, with a graceful curve to their long thin beaks and a rich velvety collar of yellow at their throats. One of them waddles right to my feet and looks up into my face, inquiring as to my presence here, maybe saying hello. I gaze down at it, trying to communicate silently, trying to tell it how lovely I find it, but it grows bored and wanders away.
A massive bird angles down over my head and I duck, startled. As it nears the bay it flings its huge flippered feet out and runs along the surface of the water, flapping for balance and then plonking down. It’s quite the landing.
“That’s a stinker,” Orly says, following my gaze. “Rats of the skies.”
“That’s nice.”
“They deserve it,” he tells me with a wrinkle of his nose. “They’ll feed on anything, the giant petrels. They’ll peck out the eyes of baby seals!”
I can’t help laughing. “You sound excited by that, you little freak.”