by Jase Kovacs
Despite the collapse of the world, gold still has value. Although we no longer have the supplies to run the big mine equipment — the yellow diggers that tore the earth apart with their excavator arms, like smoke-belching dinosaurs grazing, or the drill rigs that sunk shafts thirty metres deep into the jungle floor looking for further lodes — we could still harvest the precious metal in the oldest way known to man: by panning it.
Uncle Samson, Auntie Ruthie's brother, loved doing this. Years ago, before Woodlark fell, we would come across with the trade canoe, which brought dried sea cucumber to barter for fresh vegetables from Woodlark's gardens. He would feign interest in the trading and negotiations for a short time, even helping unload the sacks of dried sea cucumber — long, black sluglike animals, collected from the wide bay separating Woodlark and Madau, bought by the small Chinese community that once had run an export business.
But while the rest of the crew wanted to spend time in the main settlement of Kulumadau, Uncle Samson heard the call of the treasure found in creeks. Before long, he would succumb to the same lure that had once called settlers to the gold rushes of San Francisco, South Africa, or Victoria, to wherever the glittering metal was found. He had adopted me as his solo accomplice and, after he caught my eye and waggled his furry brows in the way that always made me laugh, we would steal away to a creek that Uncle Samson knew. I was more than happy to go; Woodlark was also where Mrs. Aloysius ran a school for the younger children, and she was liable to press-gang me as her aide.
I was much happier with Uncle Samson in the creek, where rafts of moss hung from the jungle trees like ghostly curtains and sapphire-winged kingfishers darted at silver slivers of fish. He would swirl the creek water in a shallow metal pan, singing ancient chants of calling and power to bring him fortune.
When I was young, maybe twelve or thirteen, he would let me have a go. But I didn't have the knack, the rhythm to turn water into gold — or perhaps I did not know how to speak to the river gods and the earth spirits as Uncle Samson did.
When once again my pan remained empty, he would chuckle, shrug as if he had no idea why I was not favoured, and take it back. Within minutes of his careful, cadenced swirling, tiny flecks of gold glittered in the pan, as if summoned by his prayers and rituals.
Eventually, though, he took pity on me. Handing me the pan, he pulled a small vial from his pocket. Carefully he tipped a single drop of a liquid metal, a ball of quicksilver as big as my fingernail. Now, when I swirled the water in the pan, the gold, which before was spilled away by my artless technique, globbed onto the mercury, sticking to the liquid metal until its silver was swollen with a grit of golden flakes.
I try to keep to pleasant memories of Woodlark. I try to avoid thinking about the evening, four years ago, when the unknown green schooner appeared at the mouth of Kwaipan harbour at sunset, running onshore under full sail.
Uncle Samson and I were just returning from the jungle — I was nineteen then and had finally mastered the panning technique that allowed Uncle Samson to summon gold without the use of mercury. The yacht was aground south of the concrete wharf, and dozens of people were wading out to where it ground against the rocks as the tide swiftly fell. Its masts lowered as it tipped, exposing the pink antifoul paint that coated it below the waterline, making it look vulnerable and fleshy soft, like an armoured animal flipped onto its back.
The first rescuers had just reached the boat when the sun dropped below the mountain ridge. There was confusion as the crowds of people, clamouring to get board, as rescuers or salvagers or both, paused as the first saw something unexpected within.
Then the screaming started, and people faltered and then turned as a dark shadow, a hulking beast, broke from belowdecks, shattering bodies like driftwood. I saw a gush of scarlet as someone's neck opened in a red horror, crimson mist glittering in the dusklight, and then Samson pushed me and we ran in the jungle, thorns ripping our faces, and behind us came the sprinting mad, the crashing of the turned, the followers, scenting our blood and coming, they were coming, Samson fell and they fell onto him and —
"Zac, wake up."
I blink, the late afternoon sun painfully bright. I raise my hand to shield my eyes. Enzo wears a crooked smile that shows his yellowed teeth. My back aches from sitting against the mast, and I feel heavy and stupid as my mind pushes memories back into the past where they belong. "Sorry, I was sleeping."
"All afternoon! I think it is good; you sleep on deck like a sailor now!"
"Where's the island?" When I dropped off, the island filled the port bow like a malignant jade cloud — now there is nothing there but a long, golden path stretching across the waves to the falling sun. My heart gallops with the lingering aftereffects of my dream and, perhaps, a foolish thought that occurs to me as I try to understand the empty horizon — perhaps Woodlark has disappeared like a phantasm into fog. My mouth is gummed with white phlegm, and I have to repeat myself before Enzo understands.
"Oh, away, behind the genoa. The wind change, we tacked. The sun, she goes down soon. Matty wants to talk before, okay?"
I follow Enzo back to Excelsior's cockpit, an open, airy space. Everyone is here. Matty at the helm, Blong next to her, the boy's dark eyes suspiciously assessing us. Piper is curled in a corner, her legs folded under her, her face a pale green. Roman smiles amiably at me as I sit down; as always, he is attentive, polite, and just happy to be here.
It's three days since we left Madau Island and, in that time, we have followed a similar daily routine with Matty and Enzo doing their best to try and turn us into sailors. The boat has been in constant motion, but by tacking and gybing as necessary, we have stayed in mostly the same square of ocean, ten miles wide by five miles, south of Woodlark, the island always in sight. We spend each morning learning to sail — in actual sailing lessons with Enzo as he teaches us the basic concepts and practices that allow us to harness the wind and use it to voyage across the seas.
The guns come out on the afternoon of the second day, when the swell is slight and the boat running smoothly before the wind. Matty lays them out on a cloth covering the cockpit table. There are four of them: Matty’s assault rifle; a chrome-barrelled hunting rifle; a shotgun, its double barrels a deep blue-black; and a Chinese pistol I haven't seen before. She shows us how to load and fire them all. Even Roman. He is reluctant at first, so deeply ingrained is the prohibition against locals holding guns, but Matty insists. Ammunition is in too short supply to allow us to fire live, but she drills us in dumb show, shouting commands as we fumble to load, reload, unload, and clear stoppages and rectify faults. Well, when I say we fumble, I mean myself. Roman moves with the smooth dexterity of a man raised since birth to be a hunter — the guns are a touch more complicated than a bow and arrow, with which he is familiar, but the principles remain the same. Needless to say, Piper doesn't need any instruction; the silver hunting rifle, a Marlin 336 firing Winchester .30-30, is sized for a youth, and she clearly intends it to be her weapon.
I think I better at the sailing skills. After three days, I'm pleased to say I can now tie a bowline — most of the time on the first go — and I finally know the difference between halyards and sheets. Matty is also learning about Excelsior — the way the yacht handles various seas and winds, of course, and the thousand other facets of the mariner's art that allows her to sail.
But she's also learning Excelsior's foibles and weaknesses. The yacht has been at anchor for years, and this is the first time any real strain has been put on her systems. In other words, if anything is going to break, it's probably broken in the last three days, and she and Enzo have been kept quite busy dealing with a thousand minor emergencies.
She doesn't look tired, although I'm sure she's not had more than four hours' sleep a night since we put off. Quite the contrary, she looks invigorated, alive, as if she is a mermaid who would wither and die on dry land and is only at home with brine on her skin and salt in the air. She's tamed her short dark hair with a black bandanna, and ther
e is something appealingly piratical — even feral — about her grin as she says, "I won't beat about the bush. We've spent enough time ploughing the ocean — we're going ashore tomorrow."
Everyone seems to sit a little straighter at the news, although it was not unexpected. Each day, as we ran laps up and down the sea to the south of the island, we would edge in close to the coral reefs that Matty assured us were impassable to this deep-drafted boat. She spent a lot of time in the spreaders, halfway up the mast, studying the barrier with binoculars. We all feel her impatience to discover why the red sails had come.
By now, we're all familiar with the southern coast of Woodlark. Framed by the backdrop of the northern mountains, it is a mix of mangrove swamp and coral beach. The southeastern point was the main community in the Time Before — that's where the World War 2–era airstrip and concrete buildings formed the largest village on the island.
But we're interested in Kwaipan harbour, where the deepwater concrete jetty allowed barges to come in to unload supplies and equipment for the Kulumadau mine. The mine and the harbour are in the centre of the southern coastline, over ten miles from the airfield. Once they were linked with a dirt road, but we assume that has been reclaimed by the jungle.
There has been some discussion on where we will land but never any serious doubt, and Matty confirms what we have all suspected when she says, "We'll go into Kwaipan harbour early tomorrow. I want to be off the channel at first light, so we can maximise our time on shore. We'll anchor either in the harbour or just outside, depending on the local conditions."
"What will decide that?" I ask.
"The harbour is long and narrow. No problem for a motor boat." Enzo chuckles ruefully as Matty says this — despite a great deal of his blood, sweat, and tears, Excelsior's diesel remains stubbornly silent. "But I don't want to take Excelsior all the way in to get bottled up by a southerly. Provided no big weather blows up overnight, it should be fine to anchor out in the bay and row in."
I remember the harbour. "That's a long way."
She shrugs, annoyed that I would raise an objection she considers irrelevant. "A few blisters from the oars will be character building. We'll land, have a look for any sign of what the red sails were up to. Guys, I can't emphasis this enough. This is a no-risk job. We're out here to find clues, not get into fights, not kill marys, not clear the island. I've already wasted three days on you bloody lubbers, and I'd hate for you to get eaten when we're finally getting somewhere." She smiles tightly to undercut the grim reality that tomorrow we will be heading into a nest of vipers.
For a moment, I feel the fear, the memories of the green schooner clamouring at the doors of my perception. But then I look across the faces of my crewmates and see the trust and faith that Blong and Piper, even Roman and Enzo, have in Matty. We were individuals only a few days ago, but now we are a team — a crew — who are working together to achieve something greater than just our parts. I'm reminded of Uncle Samson and his panning for gold — how a drop of quicksilver would attract gold flakes and summon something precious where everyone else had found only sand and water.
***
We reef down the mainsail at sunset, making it smaller and reducing its power. It slows the boat, but it also means we don't need to leave the cockpit if strong winds come up in the night. Everyone but Blong stands a two-hour watch between 1900 and 0500 hours: Matty the first, Enzo the last, us three newbies in between. The skipper or the bosun generally make a brief appearance during our watches, just popping up to check how things are going and that we aren't heading towards an unrealised danger. Our instructions are simple: call Matty if anything weird happens. But each night has passed uneventfully, the winds gentle and steady, the sea miles rolling beneath our keel, watch after watch, night after night.
The first day out, Matty was everywhere, wanting to do everything. Piper, Roman, myself, even Enzo and Blong, found ourselves sitting or standing around while she moved effortlessly from one task to the next. She sailed the yacht with a casual elegance. We felt like passengers; it was as if she had forgotten we were there, and I even think our presence occasionally annoyed her.
She explained what she was doing, but her bewildering array of nautical terms and jargon only served to obfuscate her actions further! That night, I overheard Enzo and her having — I wouldn't say an argument — a terse conversation. The next morning, she was more withdrawn and distant, and Enzo took us newbies in hand, walking us through the boat from bow to stern and back again, patiently showing us the ropes in his broken yet strangely lyrical English.
That night, when I'm on watch, I'm not surprised when Matty rises out of the companionway into the cockpit. The truth is that none of us sleep too well — apart from Enzo, whose grating snore I can hear from here. All of us carry our losses within. Memories of the horrors we've survived to bring us to this place sit like stones in our bellies. It is a rare night that phantasms do not make an appearance in our dreams.
"All right, skipper?" I say by way of greeting.
Her face is grey in the starlight, the gentle glow of the compass the only illumination not from heaven. "I'm still getting used to that."
"What? Me calling you skipper?"
She pulls a vinyl cushion up beneath her back and leans out of the cockpit, glancing up at the mainsail to study the wind vane and the flow of the telltales. Apparently satisfied that I haven't made a mess of things in her absence, she nods. "Spent so long by myself, it's hard for me, you know? Sitting back, letting other people do things when I can do them better. Enzo says I've got to give you all a chance to grow."
"I gathered that subject had come up on the first night," I say. When she stiffens, her back tightening, I rush on. "Not that I heard any words or anything. But, you know. It's a small boat."
"Yeah. Well. He was right. You all need to learn how to be crew — but I need to learn how to step back and be a skipper." She relaxes, shifting her seat and getting comfortable. "How do you find night watches?"
I shrug. "Not too hard. The autopilot does most of the work."
"This boat sails herself when she's set up right. I mean… some people find a night watch gives them too much time to think. Alone, in the dark. Nothing to stop your mind wandering to places you'd rather it didn't."
"I think that's something all of us have to deal with. I have a habit of dwelling on the past, anyway. Whether I'm lying in my hut on Madau or out here at sea, makes no difference. Well, no, that's not entirely true. Out here at least you have the sea to distract you. There's always something going on, even when nothing is happening."
Matty nods. "Keeping busy helps. I'm not too worried about the past. It's done and can't touch us. It's the future that keeps me awake."
I make a noncommittal sound. I don't agree with her, but she doesn't want a debate. This is a conversation going somewhere. "You're worried about what we'll find on Woodlark?"
"Aren't you? How long since you've been up close to a mary?"
"I haven't left Madau in… four years it would have to be." My hesitation of the date is faked. I know exactly how long it has been. The last time was to Woodlark — when the schooner brought the monsters. But I don't tell her that.
"It makes me so angry," she says, her voice abruptly hardening and growing tight. "None of them were worried. Michael, his mates, anyone on Madau. The idiots just want to keep their heads in the sand. No one, not even Duncan, takes me seriously."
"You mean the evolution you found on the Black Harvest? Matty, Duncan takes it very seriously. Why do you think we're out here in the first place?"
"Things have changed, Zac. The Pale King said he was the first of many. They can control the marys, drive them to commit suicidal acts, send them out into the world. You know the marys. They haunt the places of their death. They hibernate when there is no prey. The only reason we have survived on Madau is because the marys won't cross the strait. But all that has changed. Even now, a wave of them could be advancing across the ocean floor. And what
does the Council do? Debate and squawk like a party of parrots and then send us out on a trading mission."
"A trading mission that is a cover—"
"Yeah, I know. But it's not enough."
"What should they be doing then?" I ask, my exasperation breaking through.
"They should prepare for war." She leans forward and her eyes catch the red glow of the compass in a manner that is deeply unnerving. "Because it's coming."
***
The wind falters at the end of my watch and dies completely sometime in the early morning, When I wake, the dawn reveals an incredible spectacle. There is not a breath of wind to ruffle the sea. But the glassy water heaves and rolls in an undulating motion, an enormous swell generated, so Enzo tells us, by a confluence of tide and current. Despite the air being still, we are in constant motion. Matty has put the genoa away, but the main is still up. The enormous swell rolls the boat back and forth like a swinging pendulum; the resistance provided by the mainsail, which cracks at the end of every arc, dampens the motion somewhat. But even so, Piper and I feel pretty green.
"We'll have to wait for wind before we try this," says Matty. She's looking at the small barrier island that marks the northern entrance to the passage. "That entrance is only a quarter of a mile wide, if that. Roman, do you remember anything about the passage?"
"The mining ships go there. There are too many corals over that side," he says, pointing over to the east.
"Yeah. I sailed through there on the way back to Madau. No way in hell would I take anything but a canoe through those reefs."
Roman points at the barrier island. "We go on this side of the island. There are corals all along the side. The way is very deep, but the corals come up quickly." He points to where the swell heaves itself up on hidden breakers, crashing and foaming white.
"And are there any markers? Signs, posts, that sort of thing?"