Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
Nuyina is due to collect us, and the seeds, in about seven weeks.
“I found the boat,” I tell them, to change the subject.
“It wrecked?” Raff asks.
I nod.
“Where?” Fen is quick, she adds, “Did the Drift take it?”
Another nod.
“Then we won’t get to it,” Raff says.
“Probably not.”
“But the people,” Fen says.
The bodies, is what she means.
“They’ll have to wait until the ship comes.”
She looks horrified. “They’ll be…” Shakes her head. “I can make it.”
That may well be true. She is a very strong swimmer. But she still
wouldn’t fare any better than the splintered boat. Besides which, I’m not about to let my seventeen-year-old daughter dive for drowned bodies.
“They should be buried, Dad,” she says. “We can’t just leave them out there.”
“We can. It’s only their bodies.”
This quiets them. I see them both turning it over in their minds, pondering its meaning, its truth. I can see it makes sense to Raff but it won’t be enough for Fen, who grows more convinced by the day of the unquiet spirits on this island.
In the end they’re still kids, though, and by the time we reach the bottom of the slope the gloomy mood has already lifted off them and they share a grin before bursting into a sprint. They rarely miss an opportunity to race each other to the top. I laugh, and Christ, their energy, their
youth, I feel ancient.
But something occurs to Raff and he pauses, losing his lead. “Dad. Don’t tell Orly about the vault, okay? He won’t cope.”
I’d had the same thought, but murmur, “You ever manage to keep anything from that boy, you tell me your secret.”
Rowan
The baby in my belly is so hot it has begun to burn my whole body. I curl myself over it, holding my stomach and trying to soothe it through the walls of my skin. I breathe all the cold air I have, hoping to cool it, and see that it is no longer inside me, no longer a baby at all but the blowball of a dandelion, and with one breath it erupts, it flies, it disintegrates-
Rain falls hard on my face.
Not rain. A shower. I am lying in a bathtub with a shower battering me, and the fever has returned, I am so hot. There is a person crouched beside the tub but it isn’t the boy. It is a girl, I think. She strokes my burning forehead and tells me the water will help cool me. I think I fall back to sleep because the next time I open my eyes I am being lifted, naked, out of the tub, by warm strong hands, at least six of them, and then my body is dried gently, tenderly, and it’s just the girl again, she is carefully toweling me down and then wrapping me once more in bandages. I still don’t know what’s beneath them. She helps me step into underwear and clothes, moving my limbs like they are a child’s, guiding me through leg and arm holes. My eyelids are so heavy it is difficult to keep them open. I ask her name as I lean on her.
Fen, she says. The girl who swam out to save me. She helps me back to the bed and makes me swallow painkillers before she lets me sleep.
Some time later I wake enough in the dark to listen to the voices. I can’t see them, and I don’t turn my head to look.
“Do you have enough layers? Take a few more blankets down.” A man, voice deep and scratchy.
“I have enough.” The girl, Fen.
“You don’t sleep on the beach, alright, you sleep in the boathouse.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Easier if you just stay here the night.”
I hear a movement, and then Fen’s voice telling him firmly, “I’m going, Dad. I have to.”
There is a silence, and then the man says, “You’re safe here.”
“I know,” she says too quickly, and I hear her leave.
I keep my eyes closed, aware there is a man in this room with me, one I can’t see and don’t know. I consider speaking to him-there are things I need to know-but I’m so tired.
The next time I wake it is morning and the fever has broken. I am sweaty and need the bathroom again. It is less difficult to stand and walk this time, and when I reach the hallway there is a near collision with a small darting figure.
“You’re up!” Orly declares.
“Can you show me to the bathroom?”
“No way, you’re supposed to stay in bed.”
“And how am I meant to go to the toilet?”
“I didn’t ask and I don’t want to know,” he says, then bounds off down the stairs. I limp my way down and around, considering that each step will be one I must climb back up. The bathroom, I discover, is on the ground floor.
I try a tap and find that the plumbing works. But the light doesn’t and there is no window in this bathroom, so it’s only a shadow woman who stares from the mirror, and she looks mad. She looks frightening. Hollow eyed and thin cheeked. The space is so small I can barely turn without knocking an elbow, but I painstakingly remove the pajamas that aren’t mine. The mirror woman becomes an Egyptian mummy wrapped in bandages. I am scared of what lies beneath but I have to get them off.
I go slowly at first, unwinding and rolling, but it’s taking too long
and my heart is leaping forward, the thrumming is building in my chest, I start pulling at the bandages, and I’m not even really finished with one before I’m pulling at another and everything is getting tangled, and this is how he finds me.