The Southwind Saga (Book 3): Flood Tide

by Kovacs, Jase

  Thankfully, the old man doesn't deem it necessary to recount the last ten years of our shared history and falls silent abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

  "I think," says Auntie Ruthie in English, "That it is good for neighbours to meet from time to time. For too long we live next to each other, yet we only speak by throwing letters over our fence." She motions to Roman, who sits to her rear, and then over to me.

  "Good neighbours, they talk," says Ivan Bossman. Behind him, dozens of people nod solemnly in agreement. "We... we have not talked for a long time."

  "I think it is our fault," says Jacka. He is the youngest of the three, and I hide my smile as I see the game they are playing – the leadership triumvirate, a figurative mother, father and son. Mother advances ideas, Father confirms them, and son plays devil's advocate, airing uncomfortable suggestions that can be overruled by mother or father, so what would otherwise be left unsaid for fear of causing offence could be blamed on his youthful imprudence without a loss of face. "Perhaps we should have invited our neighbours to a feast. It was the way we did things in tambuna taim."

  He means the time of the ancients, when the islanders of Papua would embark on long ritual trading voyages to exchange symbolic gifts. They pause here, waiting to see how we react to this opening.

  The fact that they speak to us in English is enormously significant, and I look to our council, hoping they realise this. The old man's tokples history was for the locals, a traditional opening of a meeting or negotiation, as symbolic as a Latin Mass. But now we're getting down to business. If Auntie and the others wanted their people to easily follow the discussion, they would be talking to us in pidgin. But by speaking to us in English, they are demonstrating that their people know what is about to be said. They are reminding us – as if we needed it – that they represent a united community.

  Duncan takes his time before answering. He likewise understands that this meeting is, first and foremost, a piece of theatre. He looks to his left and right, taking in all the members of our Council and receiving their acknowledging nods, a piece of playacting to let the locals know he speaks for us all. "I think we should be the ones inviting you to a feast. For we are the guests upon your island, and we should show gratitude to our hosts. Although I fear that we would be shamed, for we could not feed all of your people."

  An expat coughs and I hear the word bullshit! Kev glares angrily at his crew but can’t find the critic. No one else reacts to this interruption, with Auntie only nodding slowly as she considers Duncan's statement. "It is true that you expatriates have much to learn about the gardens of the land and sea. But we also have much to learn; about power and yachts and the masalai."

  "Twelve years ago, I sat with you, Duncan, in this same place," says Ivan. "And we said that your people could live past the water that came from the stone. But the stone has closed its mouth, the creek is no more and so our talk of before is finished. It is time to talk again."

  "What is there to talk about?" asks Michael. His shrill interruption surprises the local council. “The creek is gone. So what? Our boats still bring cargo. And we trade with you for fruits and fish and other island things. Why should this change?"

  Duncan smiles but the glow in his eyes betrays his anger. Jacka doesn't miss the advantage that Michael just handed him. "For years your boats have brought the cargo and we have traded. But now, they sit in the bay and go nowhere. Only Captain Matty goes out but she doesn't bring us any cargo. I ask you, where is the cargo?"

  Before Jacka finishes talking, Duncan has flicked his eyes in my direction, and I step in before Michael can open his mouth. "We have told you about the new threat; the masalai called the Green Lord who killed all of our brothers and sisters on Woodlark Island. A man of your own people, Roman, went with Captain Matty to Woodlark and killed many masalai there. We brought back people who were—"

  "Where is the cargo!?" The interruption comes from an older man, sitting in the shade of the treeline. I struggle to recognise him, before it suddenly comes to me. He's Father Livingstone, the old priest and one of the men who watched the first fight over the creek with a satisfied expression. Now he rises to his feet, his outstretched finger, capped with a curled yellow nail, shaking with emotion as he points at me. An old woman tugs at his arm, urging him to sit, but he shakes her off before continuing. "That is why your peoples are here, crocodile boy. It is why white men always come. To take the things of our land. But there is no cargo! You trade nothing! So why are you here?"

  "Hey! You show some respect!" Ivan’s voice is like a thunderbolt as he leaps to his feet. He shakes his hand angrily as he scolds. "This is not your place to speak! It is Isaac's turn. You show him some respect!"

  The old man melts into the crowd and Ivan back to me, an expression of deep dissatisfaction on his face. "I am sorry, Isaac. Some people are too rude."

  Ivan's dissatisfaction is mirrored by many of his kin, but I notice others wear fixed neutral expressions that tell me they share the old man's anger. "It is all right, Ivan," I say. "Those with white hair can speak the truth when none others dare. He is right; our boats could sail across the sea, to fight the masalai and bring back cargo. Remember, many of our boats have gone out and never come home. Captain Matty’s own boat – and all her family – have been lost. And yet, still she sails." Matty stiffens beside me, and I feel a pang of guilt for exploiting her loss. But the moment of crisis is fast approaching. Ivan, Jacka and Auntie Ruthie brought all their people down to remind us of their power. It’s time I remind them of ours. "Our people man the Watch. Ever night, they shoot the masalai. Only a few days ago, Matty and her crew fought with the soldiers of the Green Lord at sea. One of our own people died on that trip."

  "What you say is true," says Auntie Ruthie. "For too long, your people have borne all risks. My own nephew told us of your wars." I find Roman in the crowd, remembering when he walked out of the storm with a machete held high, and lifted me from the cross on which I was to be crucified. "It is time for that to change. The island spoke and told us it was time to tell you of the decision we made months ago."

  A cold fear climbs my spine as I realise I have misjudged this whole situation. This is not the first round of an extended renegotiation of existing barriers. We are not here for a discussion.

  This is the delivery of an ultimatum. We are here to listen to terms.

  Duncan opens his mouth to respond but his words are snatched away by a harsh clanging of the Watchtower bell. Those expats closest to the shore rise to their feet, their voices lifting in surprise and alarm.

  A fleet of sailing canoes has entered the bay. There are eight; fast, robust vessels that can easily carry five or six men across the open sea. Their triangle sails look like a school of giant sharks’ fins cut the surface.

  "The Green Lord!" gasps Piper. "Duncan, I have to get back to the gun!"

  "No, wait!" I grab her arm and receive a withering glare for my impudence. "The sails – they're brown. They're woven of pandan." Suddenly everything falls into place. I turn back to Auntie. "These canoes are yours."

  The three of them glance back and forth with each other, surprised by the alarm with which we greeted their boats. But this uncertainty disappears as I speak. Auntie smiles at me, and I have the feeling that we’re back to the script they imagined. "They are. We have been building ever since you came back from Woodlark. For too long our people have shared our food but not the risk. It is foolish to think only a little water separated us. We were divided by much more than that – history and skills and what each of us thinks the other can do. It is time for that to end. Now we too have boats that can go out into the world and fight the masalai. Together."

  ***

  "Those bloody flamin' idiots!" thunders Kev. "What if we’d opened up on those canoes with the .50 cal?!"

  We're all back in our meeting hall, seated in our circle as we try to process this upset of the status quo. I hate to admit it, but Kev is right. My bowels chill at the thought of Piper, k
eyed up by the crowds on the beach, mistaking the canoes for the Green Lord's forces.

  "That's the problem with these people," says Sandra. "They don’t think things through. They know we shoot at boats that come too close. They are just so stupid—"

  "What these people," says Duncan, his voice emphasising her choice of words to let everyone know how distasteful he finds them, "know is that we shoot at boats only after following our rules of engagement. The locals came down to the beach to show us they were united. Not in forcing us from this land, like we thought, but in joining us in our fight. The canoes were presented in the same way."

  "And in both cases they almost got shot!" spits Sandra.

  "So you're saying it would be their fault if we didn't follow our own procedures and shot them?" asks Abella. She shakes her head, not believing what she hears.

  "Yes!" shouts Sandra. I have never seen her so upset, and I feel that today's events touched a hidden trauma. "That's exactly right. Mistakes happen when people are surprised!”

  "It seems they have more faith in our people than you do." Abella looks around at the rest of us, trying to gauge the room’s feeling. She isn't happy with what she sees. "Look. Has anyone else considered the risk of infection if the locals decide to head off on their own missions? They don't have guns. They will be taking on the infected with machetes and clubs. They're bound to be exposed."

  "They don't have guns... yet," says Big Kev ominously. "But yeah, I see your point. They've got more guts than sense. They'll go off on a little adventure, get themselves in the shit and then who will they come crying to? Us, just like in the old days."

  "They don't want to do their own missions," I say. "They want to come on ours."

  Michael bursts out laughing, a harsh, mocking bray. "Don't tell me you believe any of that nonsense? They're like children, wanting to come to work with Daddy. Their little canoes are fine for catching fish, but they're hardly comparable to our yachts."

  "People colonised the Pacific a millennia ago in canoes just like them," says Larry. "You'd be—"

  Matty's interruption catches us all by surprise; in truth, I think we had forgotten she was sitting in the corner. "Why the hell are we debating this?" she breaks in angrily. "The way to the Green Lord is open. His island is undefended. We just doubled — no, tripled! — the forces at our disposal. There is not a moment to be lost."

  Michael's smile drips with condescension. "And what would you have us do?"

  Matty looks to each of us as she speaks. "Every day we waste arguing is another day for the Green Lord to grow his army. Will you wait for the day his red sails fill the horizon? Let's strike — NOW! We sail, as soon as possible. Every boat, every canoe. Every man and woman who can stand a watch, who can fight, comes with us. It's what the locals want to do. It's what we have to do."

  Michael's smile widens, and I steel myself for his inevitable put down. So what he says next surprises me even more than the local's canoes. "Good. Good! Let's take the fight to this Godless creature and free our island. Matty is right. We will never have a better chance."

  He stands and walks to Matty. His eyes hold a strange sheen, and his mouth lifts into a smile that seems almost embarrassed. His hand, when it comes up, is as pink and soft as a child's. But his grip is sure, and Matty nods slowly as she returns his handshake, as if they have finally come to an understanding.

  "All right," says Matty.

  Big Kev looks at us out of the corner of his eyes, his head tilted like a dog trying to work out where the ball has gone. "Are you seeing this?"

  Duncan and Larry share a look no less perplexed before Duncan says, "This has been a very strange day."

  ***

  The evening sky is the colour of a bruised peach; ugly blotches of black and purple clouds smother the setting sun as if they were assassins in the service of the coming night.

  I'm sitting in Aotea's cockpit and have been for some time. One of the logbooks lies open in my lap, its pages dense with tiny black letters, squeezed together like convicts on a prison hulk, with no space for the thoughts to breathe.

  My palms are tender from where I have been rubbing them against the rough stubs of greenstone epoxied to the deck. I have not read a word in hours, I have done nothing for hours, nothing but sit in the cockpit and let my mind fall backwards into history as the sun falls from the sky, drawing down the cloak of darkness in its wake.

  The thump of a dinghy coming along side almost brings a shriek from my throat. Matty appears over the gunwale, hauling herself onboard carefully to avoid scraping herself on the greenstone. My heart thunders in my chest, and I feel like I have just woken from a nightmare.

  "Larry said you were still out here," she says. She has her hair tied back with a bandanna and her eyes are alight with a mischievous energy. "You planning to sleep in this madhouse?"

  "I guess I lost track of time. You look happy. You've got what you wanted."

  "Happy isn't the word. And it’s not what I wanted — It's what we need. I'm glad people have finally seen sense."

  "There are other alphas, remember," I say. "Besides the Green Lord. On Woodlark, Deborah listed those she knew. She called them prophets. Besides the Pale King and the Green Lord she named the God of Rocks and Creeping Things, and the Pneuma of the Great and Empty Desert."

  Matty shrugs. She drinks from a plastic army canteen she has brought with her. "I killed the first alpha. We're off to kill the second. I imagine we'll get to third and fourth in good time. "

  "But doesn't it strike you as strange? Suddenly everything coming together like this. The local's fleet, Michael's sudden support, the prisoner letting slip—"

  "That's what things do, mate, when you push for them long enough. They come together. And anyway, you're meant to be the politician out of the two of us. I gotta draw you a picture? Michael's just jumping on the bandwagon before we take Shiloh off him." She drinks from her canteen again, and then holds it out to me. "But I didn't come out here to talk about that dickhead. Come on, have a drink with me."

  I smell the ripe, harsh smell of swipe, the fermented fruit wine that is the only option for those who still like a drink. "No, I don't—"

  "Goddamnit, Zac. Have a drink with me."

  I take the canteen. The swipe warms my throat and leaves a harsh sweetness in my mouth. "Jesus," I cough. "That... sure is a drink. Since when have you drunk swipe?"

  "Yeah. Usually I hate the shit. But, y'know. Today was emotional."

  We sit for a minute, watching the sun drop behind the world's edge. When it's gone and the first stars are filling the sky like the lights of a far-off city coming back on one by one, Matty says, "Why do you spend so much time out here?"

  "You know why, Matty. There are answers here."

  "So what?"

  "So what?!"

  "Yeah, so what. So what answers are you looking for? It's like Old Weng, going over the logbook of the Black Harvest. Yeah, I know, I'm the one who brought the logbook back. But I've been thinking about it. Who cares about what makes these monsters tick? Who cares about their motivations? I don't want to understand them. I just want them dead. Proper dead. Gone forever."

  "The insight into their mind will—"

  "Don't give me that, mate. You've told it all to me before. I get there are insights to be gained. But that's not why you're spending so much time out here." She smirks. "Hiding from Abigail?"

  "What!? No! Why'd you ask that?"

  She looks away but not before I see her smirk deepen. "No reason. Just teasing." Then she comes back to me, and her smile is gone. "This boat is cursed. I regret bringing it back. I asked Duncan, you know. If we could just take it out and scuttle it. But he's bought into your insight argument. So every morning I have to see this damn boat. Every bloody day. And I see you aboard, eating your own soul out."

  My face burns, and my tongue feels a few sizes too big. I tell myself it has nothing to do with Matty's comment about Abigail. "Do you ever have bad dreams?"

 
Her smirk is back. "Only when I sleep."

  "Like what?"

  "You really want to know?"

  "Do you mind?"

  She takes a long drink. The evening breeze riffles the face of the sea and we hear the 'pah' of a sea turtle exhaling as it visits the surface.

  "I'm sinking down in the deep water," she says. "Not drowning. That bit's important. I'm not drowning. But sinking down into the black of the abyss. It's not dark though, or if it is then I can see through the darkness. I see the bottom of the sea, and it's covered in people. Like, everyone who has ever died from the plague. And they're all looking up at me and everyone of them is a masalai. And they're waiting for me."

  "Jesus. Like they're going to feed on you?"

  "No. No, not at all. It's like... I haven't told anyone this. But. On Woodlark, did you feel the Green Lord's mind? Does he come to you in dreams?"

  "No," I say, meaning yes.

  "Have you seen the Dark Star?" Her voice is steady and slow, as if she is entranced.

  The fire is gone, and my skin is clammy with pinpricks of sweat. Matty has already told me about her experience with the Dark Star, but she spoke in the depths of delirium, and I have not brought it up again, thinking it was nothing but a fever dream that she did not remember. But then, I have heard his name spoken by other mouths. "Yes. Deborah said he was the god of the alphas. She called him the Lord of the Void."

  "I came face to face with the Pale King. And I didn't know what he could do. His mind dominated mine. He... he came... he made me see things and believe things. I saw the masalai as if they were the people they once were. I saw that they loved me and wanted me to be one of them. He took me into the Void and showed me the Dark Star. And Zac, it was so beautiful. The sick, the fucking sick thing is, is that I wanted it. I wanted the love of the Dark Star and the Pale King and all of his kind. He made me want it. That's what my dream is. They're all waiting for me. And I'm sinking, slowly but I'll never stop." She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and raises the canteen to her lips again. But then she stops herself and offers it to me. "You probably need a drink after that."