by Jane Keehn
Kendra’s Prologue
Rain softly fell against the cold window of the house.
A naked flame burned inside as the young woman set aside the candle’s light and scratched a note onto a blue striped page of paper.
I need you to come back to me. I need to know what to do next. She’s getting closer – the one you told me about - the grand-daughter. I’ve seen her near the catacomb caves in her kayak, with her dog.
You told me the story of how her grandmother was saved by one of our tribe.
I don’t remember her – I was too young.
I wish you were here to tell me more.
There’s so much I don’t remember. I’m still here, waiting for you.
If you are out there on the far side of the black water, somehow, find your way back. I love you both. Please come back.
Kendra.
She folded the paper into a square then rolled it tightly enough that it fit into the neck of the brown bottle and closed it with a cork. She lit a match and held it to the wick of a white candle.
As the flame grew longer she tilted the candle so a stream of molten wax ran over the lip of the bottle, seeping into the gap between it and the cork. A whoosh of oxygen burnt up and expelled as the gap sealed, blowing a few strands of her ash white hair away from her face...the flame lighting up her opal eyes.
She thought about what she needed to do – when the seal was dry, she would take it from the thick wooden table, smelling of the many fish that had been gutted on it - out of the shack and stumble it down to the water’s edge.
She wouldn’t hold it in her hands, they would be busy clutching the metal poles she used to steady herself. Crutches to help her walk and hold up her body on her weak legs.
The bottle would swing in a plastic bag from her wrist, banging against the pole in time with her odd, shuffled steps.
She would shuffle down a trail behind the limestone caves and out onto the sand. For months she had studied the tides, their rise and fall with the pull of the moon.
Tonight the waves would be pulled further out than any other. The rip so strong that fish would avoid it, staying out past the lure of fishermen’s nets. Her bottled message would be pulled away from Mandalay. It would hit itself on the broken limestone lips at the edge of the reef. But the glass wouldn’t break.
The thick brown glass would get sucked under the surface and suctioned out past the skeleton wreck of the ship that named this town, far beyond Mandalay’s tides and rips. It would not be drowned and melted in the black lava of the off-shore oil rig’s spillage. It might come to rest on a shore of an island; an island with an underwater cave that protected its inhabitants from the world. It would be found at last by the two that it was intended for.
Swimming beneath the brown glass, one would catch it on her land-dwelling half then propel herself with her ocean-dwelling half into their protected shelter. They would crack open the bottle together and it would give them hope their daughter was still alive.
One woman dwelt half on land and half in water - from the Giluri tribe.
The other was from land, learning to adapt to a life half-submerged, dependent on the one she loved.
Kendra corrected her thoughts - No, Loves.
She wanted to believe the two of them were still out there – not ruined by the black water.
Not drowned and lost, just lost and waiting to navigate their way back to Mandalay to be reunited with her. When they found the bottled message, they would know their daughter was still home, living on land, by herself for five long years.
They would swim oceans and inlets and rivers and streams and at last walk together over the sand to find her again. To ensure the bottle had a chance of sailing on Kendra’s imagined journey, she rested her crutches against a low limestone rock pool. The brown glass floated in the shallow pool while she unzipped her overcoat, draping it over the metal poles. Soon her dark trousers fell to her ankles to be left on the beach. Without the balance of the crutches, her feet sank unevenly into the sand. Her arms hovered in the cool morning air to keep her from falling.
As Kendra’s ankles disappeared into the shallows a shot of pain seared up her legs as the sea soaked into her changing skin. Their human lightness, scratched with red mottled scars, sank to a bluish grey hue.
As she walked deeper into an emerging wave Kendra’s lower half was black under the sinking moon and when her body sank into the oncoming waves something dark and triangular slapped against the sand where her feet once were.
She propelled herself out into the deep in her changed form and joined the currents she knew so well.
Kendra raised her arm to the moon’s light and flung the bottle far into the surf. As her body turned with the force of the throw, she kept herself afloat with a steady rhythm of her lower, animal form.
Each new moon she would send out her bottles, not knowing if her Mothers were still alive or if she would ever see them again. The sadness and anger she had kept to herself over the five years she had been without her Mothers, churned inside her and Kendra's mouth opened to let out an animal roar of longing.
They might recognize her tribal call one day.
Emily’s Prologue
Emily pummelled the paddle into the shallow water as she positioned her kayak against the waves.
Beyond her reach, a grey greenish shimmer disappeared under a wave. Even if she dug her paddle into the sea with all her might she could not keep up with it or see it clearly. A fish? A seal? A dugong?
Emily stopped her paddle for a second – A Shark?
The coastline was only a few metres away from her craft.
She looked for channels between the limestone where she hadn’t yet explored. The catacomb caves were one of Mandalay’s natural formations and Emily had been into several of their hidden entrances. No one had mapped its entirety because of the dangerous quick high tides and unpredictable rips as the ocean pulled out.
She looked beyond the breakers and once again what appeared to be a dull greyish fin flipped close to the water’s surface before disappearing under its dark cover. Desperate to see what the creature could be, Emily grabbed the paddle and began scooping at the water with percussive strokes. Her lean arms and muscular shoulders rolled under her compact life jacket as she attempted to get the nose of the kayak closer to the unknown object.
The blue plastic of the kayak tipped quickly through the water edging easily over the small waves making their way towards shore.
Drips of ocean fell onto her arms and face as the paddles circled the water. Emily kept watching with her peripheral vision for the cream coloured rocks lurking beneath the surface. Twice her right paddle banged against a sharp limestone crater edge and Emily managed to jut the craft along without scratching its underbelly or getting stuck.
Her breath caught at the back of her throat as the kayak thrust towards where the grey fin had splashed. A plastic grocery bag swayed in the current then sunk under the ocean’s weight. Sweat caught behind the neck of her T-shirt and the life jacket collar.
She twisted her head around and arched herself and her craft forward with one heavy deep scoop of the paddle but the dull object submerged and disappeared once again behind the crashing line of waves. Emily released a breath and lifted the paddles end out of the water, coasting along in her own current.
- Damn.
She ran a hand behind her neck allowing a cool breath of breeze to ease its way down the hollow of her back as it momentarily parted a little way from the stickiness of the jacket heat.
The mystery sea-dweller disappeared. If it was a turtle it was way off course, since they weren’t found this far down the Western Coast. Razor fish had been found washed up dead on some beaches, but they were famous for being the brightest of shimmering silver and were f
our metres long and never found swimming near the surface.
Emily knew she’d missed her chance with the unknown creature so she let her kayak float to a stop before she back- paddled to turn around. She scooped up a palm full of water and released it down the front of her neckline. As the breeze blew against her skin she felt her temperature drop and her head cleared. The plastic bag came to the surface where her hand had been. Emily scooped it on board with the paddle. From a pocket on her life jacket vest, she pulled a plastic zip-lock bag that held a small note book and pencil.
The outline of the rocky coastline was sketched as a mud map. Emily crossed on her hand drawn map the location of her sighting of the large grey fish. She looked into the limestone caves and their inlets – some were too small for her kayak to fit into.
She’d explored much of Mandalay’s hidden coastline since she was a girl. A girl brought up with the legend of her grandmother, Meg, and the ship wreck she’d been saved from. So, the one exotic sea creature Emily had always longed to find was the wooden figurehead of the Mandalay wreck.
The Mandalay Mermaid that had saved Emily’s grandmother from drowning during the ship wreck, had never been recovered. Bits of wooden frame, artillery, coal, rope and netting had been found washed up amongst the limestone inlets near the Catacomb Caves but Meg’s saviour had been lost.
As Emily approached the jetty that lay opposite her home, her grandmother’s family home where she had been brought up, a brown Labrador sat watching, earnestly out to sea.
Seeing her edging the kayak toward shore, he howled an “about time” welcome, his tail wagging furiously the closer Emily approached.
- Leo! Come in. Have a swim.
Leo paddled furiously towards the kayak, jutting himself through the waves with his rudder-like tail. Emily grabbed the back of his wet, feathery neck as he scrambled, scratching onto the front of the kayak - her very own living, breathing figurehead.
She held the paddle over the sea and raised the other hand to her dog's neck.
- Have you been waiting for me?
Emily rubbed the scruff of Leo’s neck.
- Good boy, Leo, Good boy.
They coasted into the shallows where Leo jumped in and paddled to shore. Emily dragged the kayak across the sand and grass towards the road.
- I saw something out there, Leo. Something disappeared under a wave. But it wasn't Grandma’s Mermaid.
Emily shook her head and smiled to herself, while she gripped the handle of the kayak and lifted it to her hip, skittering across the road to her driveway, past the tiny vacant lot with its forever "for sale" sign and the neighbour next to it with ten old washing machines against the fence.
Emily grabbed the garden hose from its perch on a wiry model black swan sitting among the bromeliads and sprayed the salt scum off the sides of the kayak then turned the hose onto herself.
Her wet clothes dripped as the sand fell in drops to the lawn. She took a gulp straight out of the hose and ran the stream over her head. Scooping up the plastic grocery bag, Emily turned off the hose. She went to pitch the plastic into a garbage bin in the garage but felt something solid scraping inside.
Flipping the bag inside out Emily found a mess of fishing line with small shells threaded along the tangled length. She threw the shells onto the tool bench and the bag into the bin. Inside the garage she stripped herself of the wet garments and threw them into the cracked concrete tub.
Faded crabbing pot buoys hung dried and cracked from the sunshine on the fence line. A fish-shaped metal cut-out was hammered into the mail box with a looping number eight painted on the tail.
She slammed the side door and ran into the house. A hot breeze found its way over her body and momentarily cooled the mugginess of its heat. The salt and vinegar smoke from the other neighbour’s kitchen window reminded Leo it was dinner time. He followed her into the house as Emily shook her keys from the pocket of her life vest and opened the back door.
Scooping up a t-shirt and pair of tracksuit pants from a drying rack she quickly fitted them on and grabbed a beer from the fridge, threw Leo a handful of crunchy biscuits from a plastic container and strode out the back door where Leo positioned himself on his basket, happy to be home and to be eating something, anything.
Emily sprang over the back steps onto a crisscross of permanent scaffolding she’d attached to the house. She clambered her way up the ladder using her free hand to steady herself until she reached the top level, aligned with the uppermost tip of the roof.
She had a chair and small table positioned overlooking the ocean view. She made her way to the railing, grabbing it then drinking another refreshing mouthful.
She focused on the far crashing waves and breathed in the sea weed air. She found it hard to fully imagine what was out there.
Had her grandmother encountered something unknown when she gasped for her life on the back of a wooden mermaid figurehead? Grandma had told her a few stories but seemed to give up thinking about how she had made her way to Mandalay.
Emily should have asked more before her grandma died. She stared out at the sea, longing to know the full story, knowing that she would have to explore more.
She relaxed into the deckchair and allowed herself to drink and rest. She lent her head back and took another swig and smiled to herself.
With her eyes closed she imagined the caves of the catacombs filling with water and the evening tide. Somewhere, caught in a ragged, sharp hollow of the Catacomb Caves, was the chipped wooden painted mermaid of the Mandalay.
Emily squeezed her eyes tightly.
- One day, I will find you.
If she stared out to sea long enough her vision would blur and images of the past would float before her retina.
She would see her grandmother as a girl and that girl would jump into the pounding waves to save her life – losing her parents in the sinking coal ship.
If Emily thought hard enough, she could see the mermaid figurehead, the Mandalay Mermaid breaking from the thrust of a wave, cracking into the black vortex, spinning in the suction down and down, hitting against the rocks, bouncing up and out of the water.
She could see her grandmother as a girl bobbing up and down, in and out of the dangerous rolling rips.
What were the chances of this girl meeting up with the broken, lost figurehead? Their figure eight circles meeting in the middle and colliding with each other. The wooden woman bashing against the small human body. The tiny floating legs twisting around the wooden tail. The meeting in the middle and the crashing to safety of the shore.
If she closed her eyes now she could see how it was possible.
Until she found the figurehead and saw the clawing grasping fingernail and toenail scrapes of survival, how could she know the truth of her family history?
Her body could feel the weight of her journey and she sat again staring at the moon hanging over the waves.
As its crescent rose above the horizon, a far-off howling sounded across the water to her scaffolding deck.
It was a yowling naked howl of survival.
It could have been a dingo searching for its lost thylacine sister or brother.
Kendra - Chapter 1
The newspaper headlines grabbed Kendra’s attention.
Shark stomach had human remains at Whalers Beach. Police say there are no suspicious circumstances in the discovery of a human torso in the stomach remains of a shark, found on Whalers Beach last night by visiting backpackers.
The local medical examiner will attempt to determine the identity of the human, although none in the area has been reported missing. Officers assigned to the Mandalay Bay and its surroundings are working closely with the state coroners to determine the identity of the remains, since only the top half of the body has been found. If anyone has information regarding missing persons in the area they are encouraged to report to the local police.
It was a man – not one woman or two women – a man.
However tragic for the poor atta
cked man, it was not her tragedy. Kendra flipped to the local weather report on the inside page and caught the Newsagent's owner stabbing a suspicious look her way.
She memorized the prediction and closed the newspaper, tapping it neatly into place on the stack.
- Can I help you find what you’re looking for?
the man asked her.
She caught her metal crutch pole on the edge of the shelving and hopped slightly to balance herself.
- Just deciding what to read.
She smiled as she steadied herself and knew she was pushing her luck with this bulldog of a man who had caught her too many times reading great chunks of things without paying.
She limped over to another section of the shop and picked up small reel of fishing line and a pack of golden swivels, cupping them in one palm while her hands gripped the poles aiding her balance while she shuffled to the man behind the counter.
- Actually, I need these.
She smiled as she paid for the fishing items while pocketing a handful of sinkers.
The coins she used fell out of a small leather purse and left sand and crunchy metal shavings on the newsagent’s counter.
The man shot a glance at the Kendra when she moved her hand across the top to scrape the debris away.
- Keep the change.
She smiled at him and shuffled out of the door knowing that the dirt she’d left behind and the limping of her weak legs meant that he was disgusted by her and was no longer looking at her as she snuck a newspaper under her arm and held it against her body, balancing it alongside her crutches.
Kendra grappled onto the walkway that led to the picnic section of the esplanade.
People stepped off the footpath to avoid her limping, her swaying, her unnatural movements. They lowered their eyes when she passed in her dark clothing. Her stumbling and look of helplessness meant that most of the town’s folk left her alone without feeling the need to ask if she needed help.
It was an age old trick that Kendra’s ancestors had used to pass unnoticed amongst land-dwellers. After a day of hiding in the shadows Kendra felt secure in the bright lights of the fair flashed, casting shadows on faces as they smiled right past her as she made her way to the old aquarium.