by Jane Keehn
The crumbling giant concrete Poseidon statue watched over the entrance, his trident long ago broken into a single pole protruding from his massive fist. Rugged fencing and underwater glass cages used to keep dolphins, seals, penguins and even sharks in concrete caves for humans observe. They could be looked at during the day from the safety of the shoreline or fed by hand by humans who perhaps needed more protection than any of them.
Years ago the crowds stopped coming and the dolphins were either released or transported to the bigger underwater observatory beyond the Harbour.
Kendra found her footing carefully on corroded white bricks behind the concrete cage. She looked to the shoreline – a group of skateboarding boys skidded around the gravel of the old car park.
No one could see Kendra lower herself through a break in the wall. She placed her crutches under the cracks of a shallow rock pool. She undressed, rolled her clothes into a plastic shopping bag and stepped carefully toward the other side of the room that used to be a small storage space for feeding the marine animals.
She pushed the weight of her body, balancing on her stumbling, slender legs and slippery feet as she inched forward.
Kendra slipped naked through the gap clutching the bag as she grabbed onto the white painted rocks of the aquarium’s narrow ledge.
Inching towards the lapping tide her too-supple feet lost their grip and balance and she stumbled and fell forward, breaking the fall with her shoulder.
Her hair draped over the bag as she stood up, looked around and jumped into the deeper pool below her. Only the night air looked down at her.
No one disturbed her body’s transmutation as she was swallowed up by the water.
Emily - Chapter 2
The work room smelled of linseed oil and wood shavings.
Emily sat hunched over a block of solid wood as big as her dog, Leo.
She wore plastic goggles and green overalls as she worked with a chisel and mallet, cutting into the block where she’d drawn the outline of a fish-tailed woman in thick pencil.
This was her space.
The Mandalay Maritime Centre had a work room where Emily could do her computer drawings then replicate them onto the block. Transforming the wood into a figurehead took more skill but her Grandfather had left her his old tools and had shown her once how to slice the block at just the right angle with the sharpened chisel.
With a quick tap from the hammer, curls of wood shavings dropped to the floor, revealing a humanoid figure. Emily ran her hand over the hips of the figure. She could almost see Meg’s small hands holding on for life.
As the figurehead’s shape became clearer, from the cutting away of the extra wood, Emily embraced the dusty, saw-dust flecked body with her ink-stained hands.
Her stained finger nails contrasted with the light Marri timber as she rubbed the roughness away with light sand paper. Her touch was as light and as precise as if caressing one of her lovers.
Her hands delicately felt along the shoulder of the female cut-out and smoothed over the shape to feel if the roundness was perfect.
Emily needed Meg’s mermaid for the Mandalay replica in the Museum.
She wanted the original for the sake of history and truth, but in her absence, Emily would create her own mermaid figurehead from old photos and ship’s plans. Her replica would complete the Mandalay exhibition she was working on and help her to honour her grandmother’s memory and place in local history.
The wooden square at the head of the figure stayed flat and blank as Emily finessed the body of the mermaid. Known only from an old photo of the coal ship before she left Norway for the Australian coast, this beauty may have been one of the wreck’s casualties, but before she had vanished forever, she had saved Meg.
Emily wanted to do her justice, so she was saving the more intricate carving of her face until last.
She would use her Grandfather’s delicate and fine wood-working tools to create beauty from raw wood.
Something from nothing.
A woman from a dead Marri log.
Kendra - Chapter 3
Sometimes Kendra’s skin itched for the water where her tribe had come from, but she tried to limit her body’s transmutations.
She needed the ocean for food and once a week she needed to sell something so she could buy paper, candles, matches and fishing line. She didn’t like to steal but sometimes it was the only way of getting what she needed to maintain her messages to her mothers.
The abandoned Aquarium was useful for entering directly from the ocean. A year ago a concrete wall had collapsed onto a group of kids spraying graffiti over the plaster casts of maritime legends and now everyone was scared to trespass there.
Kendra found the familiar break in the pipes underneath the enclosure. Her naked human body lay drying and fully formed on the cool grey cement, rolling to its side over to the cement ledge where seals used to feed in front of happy summer holiday crowds. Kendra stumbled softly across the small caged area to a large crack in the concrete wall.
Hidden near the ceiling she removed a plastic shopping bag containing a rolled pair of trousers and a t-shirt – an old one that featured a faded emblem of the Mandalay Aquarium; a seal and a dolphin standing tall under the spray of a waterfall. In another bag she grabbed a pair of lace up canvas running shoes to protect her feet over the barnacled rocks and the rusting, broken wire cage parts. At the bottom of the bag lay wound fishing wire hangings. Shells tied together with bits of broken coral, dangling from ornate driftwood. The shells hit against wire hooks and old coins, clanging in Kendra’s pocket as she propped herself steady with her crutches.
She made her way slowly to the wharf, where a seasonal funfair had set up. Humans seemed to have set up a structure of living with rules and regulations that she was only beginning to learn about. Boundaries and structures seemed to prop up the society that didn’t exist as rigidly underwater. On land there was a system for how people should behave and how they should act towards one another. Kendra had seen it in the streets, in the cafes, libraries and wharfs she had hung around. She skittered along the lonely laneway until she reached the back of Fisherman’s Wharf and the start of the Sideshow alley tents.
Tourists and local carnival workers hung around the games of chance and lemonade stalls. Kendra sat on part of the wharf where her crutches would be slightly camouflaged with the old men’s fishing poles and nets. She heard the metal clanging of a train nearby and realized it came from one of the tents – the Ghost Train jangled inside carrying screams of delight.
Finding a low hanging branch at the edge of where the wharf started, Kendra tied some fishing line to one of its twigs and began to untangle her wind chimes and dream catcher-style ornaments made of brittle sea urchins, broken bits from the beach, woven against clear line and twine of beach plants that she had rubbed together. Trinkets Kendra has made from nothing that she sometimes sells for a few dollars of spare change.
It was a way to have a small amount of money to enable her to exist in the world humans have created on land. Kendra sat on a plastic chair at the side of the merry go round. She watched the groups, the couples.
The laughter made her look behind her and she watched some young girls hitting wooden cylinders with a small rubber ball. Then the woman behind the stall handed them a small fluffy toy in the shape of a shark. They laughed some more and linked arms – stalking off into more of the flashing lights of the food stalls.
The arm-braced crutches Kendra used to manoeuver her way through the streets enabled her to move much faster on her slight earth legs. They also seemed to render her invisible to the many people fighting for a place on the paving, rushing to restaurants to share a meal.
People didn’t like acknowledging someone who may be in need of assistance, so their eyes darted away from her gaze as she limped along the back alleys. She felt she could observe all things in as much detail as she needed. She was of no interest to anyone.
She loved the lights of the town - how they
shone in the dark and surrounded the alleyways. How the fading light made her even more invisible and how people changed the way they dressed - women wore jewels, men wore suits.
There was an excitement in the air. She couldn’t describe it, she didn’t know how it came about but there was something intangible that could not be sampled and packed away in a jar or a box. It was just there. Created by the feelings, the emotions between the humans.
She smiled and looked up at the stars. The petty drug dealers and teenagers kissing in the dark had no need to look out for a dishevelled ash-haired girl inching her way along the white brick ledge.
She watched out with her nocturnal vision.
There was just enough space between each boundary for Kendra grab the grey edges for support and to slither unharmed between them, like some kind of mutant native animal, using the night to hide from their prey.
Emily - Chapter 4
Emily’s face reflected back at her from the laptop screen, as she grabbed a beer with one hand and the mouse with the other. Leo let out an exasperated sigh lying chin in paws on his basket on the floor.
Emily shot a glance at him while she swigged a mouthful and then moved the cursor over a map of the Mandalay shoreline. The small notepad sat on the table on top of the plastic bag that had protected it. Her brown eyes squinted as she thought of the caves she had to find and to enter.
Heat beamed from her computer screen and she ran her hand over her face and through her dark hair. She held the beer bottle to the back of her neck and cooled that small part while she visualized the turn of her kayak as it was swept along by the waves towards one of the caves openings.
Emily steered the mouse over the table and clicked something on the bottom of the screen. A video of waves crashing flashed over the mud map. The wreck of the Mandalay tore in two as it hit the limestone reef and cracked apart.
Scanned images shuffled through a folder on her desktop as she examined an old line drawing of the original Mandalay as it prepared for sail in the Dutch West indies.
Emily clicked onto the front of the ship and zoomed in on the figurehead arched over the hull. Her face framed by carved braids of yellow hair loomed up on the screen and Emily imagined her grandmother as a girl - her arms clutched around the wooden neck, her legs grasping for balance and control around the mermaid waist.
Much had been written about it in the local history books and in the Maritime Centre’s exhibition catalogues about Meg’s amazing survival but she hadn’t been the only one to survive the wreckage. Others were washed ashore and made the Bay of Mandalay their home.
Meg’s story captured the imagination because she was the youngest to survive the coal ship’s destruction on the reef and because the image of a six-year-old girl gripping on to the wooden mermaid was one out of a fairy story. Emily’s favourite part was her grandmother telling her.
- I just refused to let go and before I knew it, I was face down in the sand, but I was alive!
Distracted by a blue light in the bottom right corner of the screen, Emily frowned and clicked the mouse.
A Skype alert flashed on her laptop screen. It was Melanie from the Museum’s education team. Her heart raced a little faster as Emily clicked the key board in response to Melanie’s call.
- Stop work and get something to eat?
Emily sighed as she typed her answer.
- Would love to, but your husband might not approve!
Emily blew a small exasperated breath through her lips then pressed them together in a disappointed smile.
Melanie’s quick response popped up.
- He’s away diving for abalone – you could come to my place – I’ll cook?
Emily’s ink-stained fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
- Really, would love to, but sorry, I’ve got a couple of friends here for dinner.
She grabbed at her diving watch on the desk - it was too chunky on her wrist, it scratched at the scroll pad. It read close to eight o‘clock on its large white digits.
She signed off to Melanie, saved her file, closed the screen and clamped the laptop shut like a large white, flat clam shell.
From the small kitchen table, she grabbed a compact canister of fish food and sprinkled a hefty pinch into an aquarium where two ordinary looking goldfish lazily followed each other around.
Walking to the front balcony overlooking the ocean front, she brushed the remnants of the fish pellets onto her jeans, and placed her hands on the balcony’s rail, gazing far out at the horizon, swaying slightly as she focused away from her life.
The waves below swept up onto the sand carrying with them unseen and unknown objects carried and lost in the current.
After her grandmother died, the softly crashing sound was the only thing that could lull her to a safe sleep - the waves crashing. And once in a while Melanie’s soft, secret, kisses on Emily’s skin.
The smudged lights of the funfair blinked on the Esplanade.
If she squinted her eyes to focus through the sea spray Emily could make out the twinkling lights framing an old circus caravan flashing human skulls and flowers and a girl she knew briefly last year.
- Come on Leo – we’re going out for a walk.
She grabbed Leo’s lead and bounded out the door before he could get used to the idea.
Catching up to her, they ran down the beach road into the township towards the bright lights.
Kendra - Chapter 5
Pink fairy floss on sticks hid people’s faces from Kendra as she unpacked her tackle box.
Small angular shells and sea urchins strung onto fishing wire clanking into bits of glass, that had softened from crashing waves hung from broken twigs and driftwood.
She removed other found-objects from the box that were cleverly tied into earrings and necklaces. Kendra hung them from a low hanging tree branch then untied her display of sea shells and metal objects on a shawl over the ground.
Her grey opal eyes flashed towards people walking past but hesitated at eye-contact. She hung her sea urchin wind chimes so that they made delicate music in the breeze and draped pairs of shelled hook and sinker earrings over a black fabric backdrop.
Her own ears showed off a pair with broken Heart Cockle shells. Around her neck was a heavy gold chain with a scrimshaw tooth – the one thing she hadn’t made herself; someone in her tribe had made it and her mothers had passed it down to her.
Leaning against a small limestone retaining wall she propped her crutches against the garden rocks. A clink of coins turned people's heads as she scraped the small change from her tackle box into the pocket of her jeans.
Her black t-shirt had a cartoon video game character on its front and hung loosely over her hips. Kendra shuffled her old boots against each other hoping that no one would notice they were two slightly different designs and mismatched sizes...one found on a rubbish pile under the jetty at Meg's Cove, the other on the road leading to Green Wood - forgotten, lost, not missed by their old owners.
Three teenagers sidled up to look at the trinkets on the shawl.
- How much are those earrings?
One of them, wearing black denim pointed to the smallest pair on Kendra's display.
- Usually ten dollars but you can have those for five tonight.
Her friend in a ruffled cotton tube top giggled while the trio looked through their combined spending money for the night.
- Sure. Here you are.
She handed over some gold coins.
Kendra watched them laugh as they skipped away, pleased with their unusual purchase. She clutched the coins before locking them in a compartment in the tackle box.
Her eyes scanned the pathways along the stalls and tables. She quickly sold a wind chime to a grey haired woman just before two blokes in yellow polo shirts began visiting each stall.
It was market security checking for permits, so she folded up her cloth, carrying her art works and jewellery like a sack and quickly ripped the wind chime from the branch.
/> Dangling from one hand, the tackle box clanked against the crutches Kendra shuffled into the holiday crowd to avoid any confrontation. Kendra dragged her feet through the sandy embankment, prodding her crutches sinking into the earth as she made her way to the esplanade’s car park. Walking by the food stalls, a deep-fried smoke from battered sausages on sticks stung her eyes and she wondered why anyone would want to eat something called a Dagwood Dog.
She followed the footpath trail away from the vendor’s generators catching her boots on some broken glass. Her orange plastic tackle box banged against her crutches’ poles, scattering a handful of seagulls as they swooped for a skerrick of discarded food. Dodging children with ice-creams Kendra found an empty faded bus seat near the corner hotel.
Singing, music, laughing, shouting came out the hotel’s windows to where she sat. Blurred faces showed through the window blinds, smiling and yelling into a microphone. Kendra tilted her head and focused through the crack in the light.
A kind of gentle wailing blew through the air like smoke, reaching her ears, in their night mode. The sound of a voice running alongside music and trying to keep up with it. It made Kendra smile. It made her skin tingle with warmth in the night air.
The woman singing had messy dark hair that brushed over her laughing blue eyes as she enjoyed the attention of the drinking crowd. There was something familiar about her determined smile and the way she narrowed her gaze when she looked at the woman singing with her. Kendra’s smile faded. She breathed in as she leaned forward for a clearer view.
It was the granddaughter. The one who’d nearly caught up with her in the kayak. Meg’s granddaughter with the brown dog and her note book always in her pocket - charting, searching, scribbling, looking for something. Kendra inched closer to the pub and found a perch on a bicycle stand outside the main entrance.