Last to be winched ashore were some very large crates. William and another man seemed very excited by these.
"They say it's the biggest locomotive Peckett's ever built."
"I'll make arrangements to have it hauled up to the workshop tomorrow so we can assemble it."
"With the bigger firebox, we'll be able to speed up transport and shift double the volume in the same time..."
"It's the direct oil-burning engine that makes the difference. Not having to use wood any more."
"The startup time is far less than the Shays. Under an hour, they say."
"We'll be able to replace the old Shays with Pecketts in a matter of months."
I couldn't discern one voice from the other, for both men shared the burr in their speech that until now, I'd only heard in William's words.
"Wait until you see the other fine piece of engineering I brought home, Jackson."
I watched William pry open a crate that was somewhat smaller than the rest. He brushed the straw away to reveal a Triumph motorcycle, the twin to the one he'd ridden in the race back in Perth.
"The new P series. Beats your Trusty relic from the Great War – like comparing a Peckett to a Shay!"
Jackson whistled, admiring the machine as much as I did. "But can you ride it, McGregor? I seem to recall the last time I let you ride my Trusty, you took a spill and you were lucky we found you before you became a crab's dinner!"
"Find me some fuel and I'll race you to Rocky Point. Then we'll see who can handle a motorcycle."
The two men freed the Triumph from its crate and poured a liberal amount of liquid in its tank. William stomped on the kickstart lever by the back wheel a few times before the engine coughed into life, but his wide grin spoke volumes about his confidence.
Jackson wheeled up a less shiny motorcycle that looked like an older, more used version of William's. His took considerably longer to kick into life, but once the engine caught, it chugged like its younger counterpart. Both men nodded in unison three times before they took off, roaring up the road and the hill beyond until they were hidden from my sight.
I sighed. Seven years on land and I'd come full circle – I was naked in the water, wanting to join the human community, with no idea how to do it. And, once again, the human I wanted to join with most was William.
Nine
Until darkness fell once more, I explored the coral surrounding this island. It stuck up from the seabed like a sharp cone, though the point had been lopped off long since, leaving the cloud-shrouded plateau. I itched to climb it, to feel cloud on my skin and see where the huge frigate birds soared from, as they rode the thermals down to the sea. Around the edges, the coastline of the island was full of cliffs, caves and tiny coves, the biggest of which was Flying Fish Cove, where the Islander and the jetty were.
I was lucky; the moon hadn't yet risen when I stepped out of the ocean and onto the strip of beach. The road was warm under my bare feet as I followed the route William and Jackson had taken up the hill. Houses lined the road and I tried to keep to the shadows, so those on the verandas wouldn't see me. I caught glimpses of large groups of people squeezed around tables, eating, drinking and smoking, but I didn't stop. None of them was William.
As I hiked up the hill, the houses became larger and further apart. A dirt road curved off into the dark, bisected by a deep gouge from what looked like a motorcycle. I smiled and followed the muddy trail.
It led to a house high off the ground, surrounded by a veranda that could only be reached by steep flights of stairs. Two familiar motorcycles were parked at the foot of the stairs closest to the road and masculine laughter drifted down from the house above.
"To not having nagging wives to tell us not to drink too much!" Glass clinked and liquid glugged. "Ah, but I'll miss her 'til she returns from Scotland. So why aren't you married yet, McGregor? Too ugly for the ladies?"
"I couldn't keep them off me in Scotland. It's why I left. Too much choice. There was this one girl on the way here, though..."
"What happened? Did she see your face? Did you belch at dinner? Or did she listen to you for long enough to realise you're naught but a bag of wind?"
"No, none of those things. The ship sank and she was thrown into the water. There were sharks and...the poor girl didn't make it."
"You're not one to let sharks get between you and the woman you love! You're a McGregor, man, one of the descendants of Red McGregor. Why didn't you jump in and save her?"
"I would have. For that girl, I would have, but I was in another lifeboat. I didn't even know she was in the water until the sharks had taken her from me. Nothing left but a few scraps of bloodied clothing. It was years ago, but she haunts me still."
Jackson laughed loudly. "And I thought you were serious for a minute there! A ghostly, naked, young woman who haunts you. I bet this paragon haunts your best dreams."
"I've had enough to drink for one night and it's time I headed off to bed. Tomorrow we have the biggest locomotive ever built to haul up to the workshop at Drumsite and God knows that'll be hard enough without a hangover. My thanks for the drink and I'll see you in the morning."
"Sweet dreams of sweet girls, McGregor! Tomorrow, you'll remember you work on the devil's truncated tit, mining bird shit to send back to England. Welcome back!"
I waited in the cool night air as the lights in the house were slowly extinguished before I crept up the steps. The house was huge – much larger than the one I'd shared with Merry D'Angelo in Fremantle. Yet this one seemed just as empty. I padded through spacious living rooms that looked barely lived in, but I assumed that was because of William's absence. That would change once he'd unpacked his things and settled in, I was sure.
The sound of snoring summoned me to the bedroom where he slept. Netting hung from the ceiling, shrouding the bed and the man sprawled face-down across it.
"William," I breathed, not knowing what else to say. The robber crabs had stolen my tongue – so many months of learning to speak his language and I was lost for words now I faced him. "Oh, William." I stared down at his sleeping form, touching my fingers to the netting that separated us.
He shifted in his sleep and the snoring ceased.
"My God, he was telling the truth. You're McGregor's ghost!" Jackson sat up and thrust the netting aside, staring avidly back. "My name is William, lass. You can haunt my bed for as long as you like." He coughed. "At least until my wife returns home."
"I seek William McGregor. He was here. Where is he now?"
"He's in the other house – the new one on the corner by the cliff. Don't keep the man up too late – I need him to help me with the locomotive in the morning." He held out his arms. "Are you sure you won't stay, lass?"
My heart drew me to William, but caution kept me here. "I will sing you to sleep, if you wish," I offered, lifting my voice in song before he had a chance to refuse. I wove a melody of slumber and peace, with an undercurrent of memory loss, for I didn't want him to remember me in the morning. Such was the price of safety.
When Jackson snored one more, I slipped down the steps and into the darkness, following the road to the corner, the cliff...and the man I loved.
William's front steps were gritty with salt beneath the soles of my bare feet. Movement caught my eye as a robber crab lumbered under the steps, where I could see the lumpy outline of a coconut.
The doors were open to let in the night breeze, much as Jackson's had been, so it was easy to slip between the billowing curtains and into William's house. Without snoring, I was forced to search the rooms, looking for him, but finally I did. He slept in one of the rooms facing the plateau – one of the few without windows overlooking the ocean. Perhaps it held too many bad memories for him – or perhaps this side of the house was more sheltered from the salt spray the swell carried up the cliffs. I noticed William's luggage stacked up against the wall, together with my trunk, sandwiched between two of his. At least I would have clothes to wear this time.
The bed creak
ed beneath him as William tossed in his sleep. I could see his face, so I knew I'd made no mistake this time. The man before me was William and I needed to tell him so much. But he might reject me or embrace me with open arms. I had no idea how much he'd changed in the time we'd been apart. So, coward that I was, I stood beside the bed, letting my eyes drink their fill of the man I loved.
He was clean-shaven, so the hard lines of his face were in clear view. Even lying in bed, he looked imposing – bigger than most men I'd met. Few were taller than I, but William was both taller and broader. His powerful arms could lift me as easily as I scooped up a snapper – and he had, the night the Trevessa sank. When I'd tripped, he'd taken me in his arms and carried me to the lifeboat, entrusting me to the crew before he climbed aboard the lifeboat himself. He'd risked his life to save mine many times over, pulling me from the raft to the Trevessa in the first place. If only he'd held tight to me in the lifeboat so I couldn't have left him to seek vengeance and justice and all those things that had seemed important at the time, but didn't matter now. All that mattered is that we were together now. My heart dared to beat in hope.
"William," I said softly, brushing aside the netting between us so I could touch him. "So long I've waited..."
"YOU!" he shouted, startling me. "Wasn't it enough that you followed me around in Fremantle and on the Islander? You have to disturb my sleep here, too? I won't speak to you, I won't acknowledge you, I have nothing left to say to you except GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
For the first time, I felt fear as he leaped from the bed and stalked toward me, menace in every movement. "William, please," I began, backing slowly away.
"No William, no please and nothing else. I said get out!" He pointed at the door and I stumbled through it, blinded by tears and tripped by the dying hope that seemed to catch at my ankles.
Tears welled up and overflowed. I had to get out before he saw my weakness. I hurried down the steps and out to the cliff. A wave splashed against it and I tasted salt. Home.
I jumped.
Ten
I blinked my water eyelids into place and the tears ceased as if they'd never been. Mermaids didn't cry. We fed the undeserving bastards who broke our hearts to the sharks instead. A fate they richly deserved – and one that made me feel so much better than silly tears.
But not tonight. It would take time to assemble a school of sharks and work them into a frenzy, before luring my prey over the cliff into their waiting jaws. William could live another day.
I darted off into the water, looking for a suitable cave to sleep in while I planned his demise. The island's cliffs were peppered with caves, both large and small. Some of them stretched great distances beneath the rock, carrying and bouncing sound from distant points of the island. Idly, I wondered if William's screams as the sharks devoured him would echo through the caves after he died.
A strange line in the stone caught my eye and I swam closer to investigate. It looked like someone had deliberately carved symbols in the rock outside a particularly large cave entrance. Yet the carvings were well below the waterline – far deeper than most humans could swim. My kind, though...in fact, the symbols looked like the ancient ones carved in the reef at home. We'd once had a written language, my teachers had told me, but we'd left it behind with the old city when we migrated to the Indian Ocean. None today could read them, though all the teachers agreed that the most common set of four symbols meant, "Our Indian Ocean home." And the symbols here matched the same pattern, though these were far more ornate than the roughly scratched ones at home. My people had been here before. But how long ago?
Curiosity consumed me, so I entered the cave. The peculiar mixed echoes told me this was one of the far-reaching ones, tunnelling far beneath the island as if some huge, ancient shipworm had drilled out its home here. As I swam through them, I marvelled at the smooth surfaces of the tunnels, undoubtedly sanded by centuries of pounding waves. But not completely smooth. The walls were scratched with shallow marks, cut close together all over the walls, ceiling and floor. A closer look told me it was writing – tiny scratched symbols, like those outside the cave, but thousands of them. All bunched up together like the words in a book.
I followed the engraved tunnel, noticing side branches but staying with the writing. Who did this? Why had I never heard of it? And was she still here?
If she was, she was very old and I'd invaded her home without permission.
Hesitantly, I started to sing. Very quietly, at first, until the cave chambers picked up my song and reflected it back to me, when it didn't matter how softly I sang – the words carried through every tunnel. I sang of loss, of loneliness and my confusing desire for both ocean and land. But no one answered.
I burst through into air, not realising that I'd been swimming upwards, and into a cave only half-filled with water. The ceiling here was bare of words, for they only stretched up the walls. Yet this chamber was different. A shallow ledge held the rotting remains of a seaweed hammock, still fastened to the wall on one side and trailing through the water like the hair of a corpse. The wall above the bed had ornate letters that I understood:
Dubhan Draak van de Zwartelijn
Beneath it were the deeply carved numbers:
1603
I murmured the unfamiliar words in my head until I realised I did understand them. They just weren't English. Yet the language was immaterial – it was the meaning that shocked me. Dubhan the dragon from the Black line, 1603. That was perilously close to when my people had arrived in this ocean – yet there were no tales of dragons here. The only children's tales that mentioned dragons were warnings about how we shouldn't believe everything we hear, least of all myths, because they had claimed more than one curious mermaid in the past. One lost girl's name stuck in my mind because she bore the same name as my grandmother – Aurelia.
Smaller letters, marked with shallower cuts, spelled out more names. As if the stone had read my mind, there it was:
Aurelia Meermin van de Goudenlijn
Sephira Draaksdochter van de Zwartelijn
1801
Aurelia of the Gold line was my grandmother and Sephira, my mother and her daughter, was born in 1801. If these words were true, then my mother was both more and less than she'd let me believe. Than she'd told the Elder Council.
Draaksdochter. Dragon's Daughter.
I sat down on the ledge, dazed, tracing the words with my fingers. It couldn't be true. Dragons had died out in the wars between our kind and humans, centuries ago. The Black line had been the first to go, for they'd started the war. At least, that's what I'd been taught. How much of it was true? If the Black line had survived in a dragon, this Dubhan, in the Indian Ocean long enough for him to father a child on my grandmother...that meant the blood of the last Black dragon ran through my veins, too. The rage, the desire for power, the drive to fight beyond all reason...came from him.
No wonder Mother kept this a secret. She had more of the madness than I did – her father was a Black dragon. The one who started the war, if the stories were to be believed.
I shifted the trailing kelp from the ledge, lifting the submerged end up to the wall where it had once been pinned. It was too short and narrow for an adult – this tiny hammock wouldn't have fitted anyone bigger than a toddler. This was where my infant mother had slept, as her dragon father carved the walls and kept her mother captive.
I stared at the strange symbols, wishing with all my heart that I could read the words my grandfather had written more than a century ago. One day, I swore, I'd find someone who could teach me.
Eleven
The primal roar of male voices woke me from sleep I hadn't planned. To my disoriented mind, it sounded like they were inside the cave with me, but a quick glance around told me it was the travelling echoes, playing tricks on my ears. Yet it was so loud...
I followed the sound through the only tunnel I could find that led upward. It narrowed quickly, but I could see light up ahead. Direct sunlight lanced through the
water before me and I halted in the shadows. If there were angry humans ahead, I didn't want them to see me. Not in my naked human form, nor as I was now – gills, tail, fins and all.
Besides, I'd heard this sort of primitive chanting before and then it had meant one thing – violence.
A loud cheer rang out and then the general buzz of conversation. Silence fell. Flesh smacked against flesh and I heard the crack of bone. A splatter of liquid rained on the soil.
Whoops and cheers erupted over the sounds of more blows, though no more bones breaking.
The chanting resolved into words. "Lee, Lee, Lee..." The sound had a wistful desperation, as if they wanted what Lee might deliver but feared it would never come.
Another blow ended in a crunch, crushing all hope for Lee as the voices chanting his name fell silent. A smaller number of voices took up a different chant. "Tuan, Tuan, Tuan..."
If there was fighting, William would be here. And if William was his opponent, Lee didn't stand a chance.
A body thudded to the ground. All chanting ceased and was replaced by quiet mutterings in Chinese.
My heart leaped into my throat – who had fallen?
"That's enough for this week, lads. Lee got in a lucky hit. Maybe next time he'll beat me. Worth a month's pay to the winner who does." William's voice calmed my panic. Lee had fallen and he'd survive, too.
I almost screamed in surprise when William's head plunged into the water, not three feet from my hiding place. I choked back the sound, staring at his face to assess his injuries. His nose was bloodied, but that seemed to be all the damage he'd taken. While I sighed out my relief in a stream of bubbles, he withdrew his head, leaving a small cloud of blood twisting in the water as it diluted to invisibility.
"Be careful, Tuan. A dragon lives in the Grotto cave. Maybe he will take vengeance for your victory over one of his people."
Ocean's Triumph Page 3