by Marele Day
She felt the sharp sting of a slap on the back of her leg. ‘Don’t you understand? She was trying to kill you.’ Then Cedar shrank into a huddle on the ground, hands over her face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept repeating.
Lilli walked through the space between them, touched her grandmother.
Cedar came back to her normal size. She put her arms around Lilli, held her close and spoke softly into her ear. It was like being with the sea princess but without the turtle or jewels. Cedar explained that the princess and the palace weren’t real, just a story. It was not right what Mitsi did and Lilli must never again try to follow her. Real people can’t live under the sea. ‘Much as we love it, we are only ever visitors. Even divers come up for air.’
As she had done for herself, Cedar determined any inadequacies in Lilli’s blood would be similarly compensated for by prowess.
Cedar threw a shell, or a stone, and Lilli dived for it. She didn’t always find it, or even see where it had gone, before she ran out of breath. Lilli scrambled up to the surface, held onto Cedar’s bucket, and gulped mouthfuls of air as if she were eating it.
When Lilli’s breath had settled, Cedar picked up another shell. ‘Watch carefully. Mark the place where it enters the water.’ Lilli followed the trajectory of the shell, imagined it had fishing line attached and her hands could follow it.
At first they trained where there was no seaweed, where the seabed was sandy and finding the shell was easier. Sometimes Lilli spotted it but did not have enough breath to swim down and retrieve it. She came to the surface again, gushed her air out.
‘Do it in a stream so it doesn’t hurt your lungs,’ said Cedar. ‘Like this.’ Cedar did the whistling breath, made the air sing. It sounded like a stone skipped across the surface of water. Pearlie’s whistle reminded Lilli of a string of paper dolls, and Groper could do ‘O Sole Mio’. Lilli’s attempt was thin and high, like the squawk of a baby bird. ‘Excellent!’ Cedar laughed.
Cedar taught Lilli to read the seabed, and observe how it changed with the winter and summer currents. She showed her how to use the prising tool to slice the muscle keeping the abalone attached to the rock, taught her which ones to harvest.
‘No smaller than this,’ Cedar said, stretching out her thumb and forefinger. ‘Leave something for the next season. For your daughters. Your granddaughters.’
As Lilli grew in confidence and began exploring further from the shore, Cedar told her about the smiling woman who lives in the deep sea. She takes on your appearance, reaches for your hand and offers you an abalone. If you follow her you get lost and never find your way back. You become a sea ghost, always searching for your home.
Lilli never told Cedar what happened the first time she dived into seaweed. All the way in the boat Cedar kept saying how wonderful it was, like walking upside down in a gently waving forest. ‘You might even find abalone,’ Cedar told her. ‘They love hiding in seaweed.’ Cedar attached the lifeline to her. As Lilli eased herself into the water she heard Cedar say, ‘Give us a tug when you’re ready to come up.’
It was strange and eerie, even the water around the seaweed felt different—gelatinous. Slippery fronds stroked her skin as she descended. A gently waving forest, Lilli kept telling herself. As she parted the fronds she saw something round and solid. The first thing she thought of was the sea princess’s turtle. Down she went but the seaweed grew thickly and Lilli kept losing sight of the turtle. Perhaps it was moving, leading her to the palace. As she kicked down something wrapped around her wrist, grabbed hold of her. Lilli struggled to break free but it made things worse. She was running out of breath, surrounded by seaweed, big slobbery tongues of it. Lilli felt for her lifeline, gave it a good hard tug. Then she was lifted, up through the lolling weed to the surface.
Everything was streaming—Lilli’s eyes, her nose and mouth. She vomited sea water.
Cedar waited till she had settled, then gave her some tea from the thermos. ‘Did something happen down there?’ Cedar asked quietly. The day was bright and shiny, the sea placid all the way to the horizon.
‘No, nothing happened.’
A few days later, when they were walking back from a shore dive, Lilli asked Cedar if she’d ever seen the smiling woman. ‘Is she real or just a story, like the sea princess?’ Cedar continued walking, as if she hadn’t heard. Lilli kept pestering her but Cedar took no notice.
Finally, when they were in the house, Cedar said sternly: ‘Too many questions, Lilli. Some things can’t be explained, it’s better to simply believe. Be careful down there. Keep your mind alert. The sea is not tame. She can always take you by surprise.’
22
Hope tricks you every time
It was only two days before the festival and still no word from Lilli. No letter, no parcel of sweets. Chicken checked the letterbox morning and evening, looked in the pigeonholes in the office, the drawers, in the stand which held the pamphlets. A letter had usually arrived by now. Perhaps it was lost; perhaps the one Chicken sent had gone astray. Or worse—Lilli was ignoring the letter because Chicken had stopped being cheery and happy. Lilli could at least have given some sign of recognition, like a postcard, or returned the torn photo. Chicken regretted sending it now. It was probably the last she’d ever see of it. What did Lilli say? Just because something disappears doesn’t mean you’ll never see it again? Yeah, right.
Hope was a smiling woman who led you along with promises then left you stranded in disappointment. It would be better not to care about anything, to never have had a sister than one who doesn’t come to see you. It was better not to hope because hope tricks you every time.
‘C’mon, Chicken, get a move on,’ said Violet. They were upstairs folding quilt covers, preparing for guests. Chicken could see the ferry from Boat Harbour, still small and far away, but it wouldn’t be long before it reached the island and there’d be another call on the loudspeaker. Not only was the afternoon ferry bringing Violet’s guests, but also extra supplies. In the days leading up to the festival the women were busy making dough for fried pastries, threading squid on skewers, making fish patties and soup. On the morning of the festival, the ferry delivered bags of ice so that the drinks sold at the food stalls would be nice and cold. There was lots to do, the rhythm of the days punctuated by announcements over the island’s public address system for helpers. Everyone turned up and did their bit.
Nori was at the beach with a couple of the other men. They were pruning, clearing unruly vegetation away from the shrine, setting up benches in the VIP pavilion where the mayor of Boat Harbour and other special guests would watch the festivities and be served refreshments of sea urchin and cold beer.
‘Any letters for me, Mum?’ asked Chicken. She tried to make it sound as if it was a thought that had just come to her, not one she’d been gnawing at for days.
‘No. Why?’ Violet was holding two corners of the cover, one in each hand. Chicken was standing opposite her mother doing the same, the fabric stretched taut between them.
Chicken knew Violet would already have said if a letter had arrived but she had to ask. ‘Oh, nothing in particular.’ Chicken walked decisively up to her mother and handed her the two corners. They had made the first fold.
‘Are you expecting something?’ Violet asked with an indulgent sort of smile.
Chicken looked at her now empty hands. ‘No.’ She rummaged in the clothes basket while Violet placed the neatly folded cover in the cupboard for the guests.
The ferry was so close now you could see the little squares of windows. Chicken scanned each one.
‘She’s probably just forgotten,’ Violet said. Chicken hated it when her mother knew what she was thinking about.
‘She’s never forgotten before,’ Chicken replied.
‘She might be in the Amazon, perhaps some place where there’s no mail service.’
‘No matter where she is, she always sends something.’
‘Well, there’s still a couple of days to go,’ Violet reminded h
er daughter. ‘I wonder where your father is?’
‘At the beach.’
Violet already knew that. Hopefully he had spotted the ferry further out. When it got closer and headed for the harbour, you couldn’t see it from the beach. Violet had assumed he’d come home first and change before picking up the tourists in his van. He was representing the household and first impressions counted. She didn’t want him looking like he’d just come off a building site.
The whole island was caught up in preparations but the festival wasn’t real anymore, just a re-enactment. It was supposed to be for the gods, to express gratitude to the sea, but it had become entertainment for tourists. There were no longer any abalone to be found off the beach, so early on festival morning a boat dumped farmed ones into the water which the divers retrieved to be returned to the co-op. It was possible that they weren’t even abalone, just the shells. The ‘diver of the year’, the woman who on festival day was the first to find a pair of abalone, male and female, had already been picked out—a photogenic young high-school girl. On the day of the festival she didn’t go anywhere near the water.
Chicken remembered what she’d said to Keri: ‘Someone has to show the tourists what we do.’ It was all for show, for the cameramen and tourists. And now Chicken was folding their futon covers.
Bloody tourists. Chicken’s breath huffed out of her. It wasn’t the soulful whistling of diving women, more like the steamy snort of a bull. She left the clothes basket and headed off.
‘Chicken,’ her mother called after her, ‘where are you going? The guests will be here any minute.’
‘Out.’
Chicken stormed down the hill with no particular destination in mind, simply to get away. She kept on going, past the port parking area and the people waiting for the ferry which was entering the harbour. She found herself at the tsunami warning sign near the seawall. Perfect. A big angry wave looming over a little boy and a white-spotted dog who were trying to run from it, their fishing line and bucket abandoned. Even the worm used for bait was trying to escape. The wave was dark blue with glaring white eyes and an angry red jagged mouth. Over the face of the wave was a white fringe of foam that extended into fat clutching fingers. Urgent little white drops were coming off everything in the poster—the wave, the boy, dog and worm.
Chicken sat down beneath the imminence of the wave, her forehead and the back of her neck beading with sweat. She glared up at the wave, fixed at its crest. This was one wave that wasn’t going to come crashing down on her.
Something sharp was sticking into her bottom. A shell. She was sitting in debris—shells, bottle tops, broken plastic cups, a f lattened cigarette packet that had once been blue. No doubt this would be all swept away before the festival. Must have the island looking spick and span for the tourists. A couple of seagulls landed on top of the tsunami billboard, then swooped down in front of her, sensing a possible source of food. Chicken shooed them away.
A folk tune snaked its way out of the school grounds—Ry rehearsing the festival dancers. Chicken pictured them going around in a circle, holding decorative sticks, waving them about. And now, yes, when the music changed, they would go back the other way.
Chicken started scraping a shell along the ground, making an unpleasant grinding sound against the concrete. The ferry passengers were disembarking. Chicken didn’t even bother looking for Lilli, or the possibility of a letter. It wasn’t the mail ferry anyway.
Chicken wondered which were Violet’s guests. Ah yes, there they were—two couples about the same age as Violet and Nori, making their way to the van with Island House emblazoned on the side. Nori had the back doors open ready to put their luggage in.
Chicken felt like calling out: ‘Hey, Dad, how’s it going?’ Even though she was on the other side of the harbour her voice would carry. Nori wouldn’t mind but Chicken imagined the look on Violet’s face if the guests knew that their hostess’s daughter was sitting in a pile of rubbish.
She watched the van make its way up the hill. Violet would be doing a last-minute check of her make-up, giving the vestibule an extra squirt of room freshener.
The one or two passengers going back to Boat Harbour were now embarking. Chicken could get on the ferry, disappear somewhere. Forget the festival, forget her family. Forget she was a sea woman. Leaving was easy. You just pack your bags in the middle of the night and go.
23
The apparent dragon
There were shrines so unobtrusive they could easily be overlooked—along seldom used forest tracks, in the hollow of a tree, beneath outcrops of rocks, by the side of the road. It was Soshin who had first shown Yugen the one in the forest where he stopped on his day of departure. Yugen loved coming across them in unexpected places, simple reminders that the sacred was everywhere.
He was exploring the last island, had discovered this shrine on a knoll behind the beach. He was glad that the beach was deserted; he felt less isolated when he was by himself. People continued to behave oddly towards him, it was not his imagination. On the ferry over here he’d said good morning to two old men who looked exactly like each other. They bent their heads, shuff led their feet on the deck and did not look up again till the monk had moved away.
Perhaps it was something invisible. Even though the urn was hidden in the backpack, perhaps people instinctively knew that the monk was carrying with him the vestiges of death.
He must continue till he had completed his task. It did not matter what people thought of him, how he was regarded or made to feel.
This shrine was larger than the one in the forest but equally unobtrusive. The monk would not have noticed it at all had he not seen the staircase. He counted the steps—there were seventy-three—as he ascended, not sure what he’d find at the top.
A low wall left the shrine open to receive the bounty of the elements. There was a small pathway of smooth round pebbles to purify the feet of visitors to the shrine. The shrubs growing alongside it, including the bushes with the small white f lowers, had recently been trimmed back—not in a mechanical straight cutting line, but carefully, each branch and twig. Sometimes half a leaf was missing.
The dwelling for the god was white concrete, its small timber doors bolted with an ornate engraved brass fitting that joined the two. The doors were subdued with age but the brass fitting had been polished so that it looked like new. On the weathered surface of the altar were small mounds of white rice with a scattering of mahogany-coloured adzuki beans.
Yugen had saved this island for last because at the ferry terminal he’d discovered that there was to be a diving women’s festival and had delayed his visit to coincide with it. Soshin had loved festivals.
Yugen remembered winter solstice celebrations at the monastery, with sweet cakes and generous quantities of rice wine. Soshin would fill the monks’ cups and say, ‘Drink up, my boys, this will protect your health in old age.’ After several cups, someone suggested a game of baseball. Even the abbot joined in, not always running to the makeshift bases in a straight line. Once Soshin hit a ball so far into the forest that it was never seen again. Sometimes monks drank so much wine that they’d suddenly lie down on the ground, even in the middle of a game, the warmth of their bodies melting the snow around them.
Yugen had forgotten the needle-cold chill of winter solstice. He’d become another creature. Now his body felt only moist sea air.
In the hazy distance was the beehive village of the island he’d visited a few days before. It appeared to be shrouded in sleep, its love story resting between tellings. In his mind Yugen saw the distinctive white rocky outcrop above the beach where the couple were harvesting seaweed, the path on the map which led to it.
The beach below the shrine where he now stood was curved, with crunchy grey sand and a smattering of broken shells. Midway along the stretch of sand, tables had been arranged corner to corner so that they made a square with open space in the middle. At the back of the beach was a long trestle table with chairs spaced evenly behind
it. It already seemed as if a row of straight-backed people were sitting in them. Although the beach was empty it was strewn with footsteps. They skirted the tables, came up to the concrete path and disappeared on its hard surface.
Tomorrow the beach would be full of people eating and drinking, celebrating. Perhaps in a big festive crowd Yugen wouldn’t be noticed, he could mingle in the general camaraderie.
At the far end of the beach something odd, out of place, caught the monk’s attention. It appeared to be a dragon, a gigantic lizard, reared up on its tail, pale underbelly exposed, short forelimbs bent at the elbows, the sharp-clawed fingers of the paws outstretched, head up, mouth extending down to its shoulders.
What Yugen thought he saw could not possibly be. He tried not to dwell on it. His mind was still in recovery, pieces of it missing. After the appearance of carp at the power transmitter, he could no longer trust his powers of observation. How could he know for certain that the things he thought he saw were actually there?
When in harmony the mind’s several layers did not separate and distinguish themselves. At those moments the mind was at one with its surroundings. Like water it f lowed everywhere, settling into the shapes of the spaces it found along the way.
The monk tried not to think about the mind that was thinking about the mind, because behind that was another and another.
It was too late, he’d dwelled too long. The carp had come back. Now instead of circling they sat in a row, dressed in abbot’s robes. In front of them stood a small boy. The biggest, most senior carp asked the boy a question.
‘Dragon,’ the boy replied.
This sent the whole congregation of carp into a f lurry.
‘Did others happen to see it?’ asked one.
‘Were people pointing and staring?’ demanded another.
There was no-one else on the beach, no source of second opinion. Another objection the carp-abbots had was the creature’s inertness. Did it not tire of being in that reared-up position?