Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
I always thought it had just rusted over, but I see now that it’s been intentionally welded shut, no doubt when the fur-trade storage facility got turned into a giant freezer and they needed to make sure it was properly sealed. This is a problem, because what I thought would be a quick job with the angle grinder is actually turning into a very difficult task with a tool that might not be sufficient for it.
There is no way I’d have enough time to go back for different tools. Not even close. I have to use what I’ve got.
I make the decision to break the glass while they’re down near the bottom, rather than waiting for them to get any closer. They’ll need air, and we’ll need to communicate. The window is too small for them to get through, you could reach an arm out, or shove half your face through, but that’s it.
I grind at the metal. I wear away at it. I don’t let my thoughts wander, I concentrate.
Look at what you have done, she says.
Don’t listen.
You wanted this. Remember?
Please stop.
Remember all those years ago. At the very beginning. There was a moment. Go back there.
No.
I will bring the moment to you here, then.
I was out of my mind.
Yes. And still. You thought it. You wished him dead, if it meant I could live.
It is so clear to me, suddenly. This isn’t my wife. It is not Claire and it never has been. Claire is a woman so complex and so profoundly loving that she gave her life for her child’s. This creature is my own monstrousness and nothing more.
Who should have to suffer the grief of losing their partner entangled with such confusion? Such guilt? I have never been able to grieve for her simply or purely because I have always had to contend with my own shame, my own responsibility, and the idea of the choice I made between the two of them. I never grieved properly because it felt like to do so meant wanting to trade my son for her, to make the other choice, but how is that fair? How is that a choice that is possible? Even the hypothetical of it is sickening, it is too much to ask of anyone, but it has been my constant companion.
There is a truth that needs to be spoken, if only within me.
I tell this thing-my ghost, my haunting-very clearly.
I will not be a prisoner of this choice any longer. I will love my son expansively, and I will feel no guilt for it. I will miss my wife, always. And I will be free of you.
I look through the hatch at my boy. He is gazing up at me, waiting. There is no fear in his eyes. He trusts me to save him.
Fen
The force of his lunge sends them both rolling into the water. She has the wherewithal to reach for a pylon. The waves are ferocious. They take Hank instantly, sweeping him into the churn, and she knows she won’t see him again. Fen clings. She is calm. She has to hang on until the set of waves passes and she has a chance to climb back up into the boathouse. But they are so strong, they are battering her. She has the lung capacity and the calm to survive the time underwater, but she isn’t sure she can withstand the waves, and if they take her, as they did Hank, she will be no match for them. Her hands are starting to slip.
And then a grip so strong upon her arms, reaching for her, pulling her free. They hold each other, she and her brother.
Rowan
The water has nearly reached us. I am appalled at how quickly the shaft has filled up. And if Dom hasn’t got the hatch open yet, it means it’s not as simple as grinding the rusted hinges off.
We are hanging on to the rungs, trying to rest our shoulders against the wall. It’s tiring gripping on like this, hard on our frozen hands and feet. I tell Orly to sit on my shoulder, to rest awhile, but he says he’s okay, he can stand.
“How come he hasn’t got it open yet?” the boy asks me quietly.
“He will.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
I don’t answer.
“Guess it’s drowning, then. Of the three. Drowning, burning, or starving. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” I shake my head at the idiocy of those words. “I was talking shit,” I tell him. “I was angry. It’s not true.”
“Seems like it will be.”
“Hey. We’re not dying in here.”
We might be dying in here.
I feel it come upon me with eerie certainty. We might be dying in here. If so, then what? What is my choice? My path forward?
It is to protect him from fear. To help him feel only love.
“I forgot to tell you something,” I say. I am looking up, and I see his eyes tilt from their vigil on his father to find me in the dark below.
“What?”
“You know how you were talking about the banksias? How they come to life after a fire, when everything else is burned?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I didn’t tell you the most important part of the story. Of my story, of the fire at my place. I said everything burned, but it didn’t, Orly. Afterward, I was walking through the ash, looking for something, anything still living. And remember how I told you about the wombats and their square poos?”
“Yeah.”
“Wombats have a thing they do in fires. They take their families underground, into their burrows. They have tunnels under the earth, and they go down there to take shelter, but they don’t just take their families, they also take other animals down there. They save everyone they can. And then the mum and dad wombats stick their bums up into the entrances of the burrows to block the fire and the ash from coming down. And their bums get burned, and sometimes they die, but they protect the others.”
Orly meets my eyes.
I smile. “They were down there. A whole group of them, huddled together. The wombats had saved a dozen little creatures, there were lizards and frogs and possums and a wallaby, and there was a koala, too, and they were all alive.”