by Jase Kovacs
He shrugs noncommittally. "Maybe. Before, yes. Green posts and a white concrete at the mouth of the harbour."
"Starboard lateral markers," Matty says to Enzo.
"But of course."
"What side do you go on the white concrete?" she asks Roman.
"Either."
"What side do the big ships go?"
Roman thinks for a minute, before saying, "This side."
Matty swallows tightly. She's getting frustrated. If there's one thing she hates, its people who can't give a straight answer. "Maybe we should draw this."
While they work on a sketch map, Enzo cooks up a plate of breadfruit fritters, sago, and dried bananas. Piper, who has been following the conversation with the grim, tight-lipped fatalism of a defendant awaiting sentencing, catches one whiff of the frying food and disappears to hang her head over the side.
Matty sketches the islands as she understands them on a page torn from an old accounting book. "So, the barrier island over there is this one. And the passage stretches up to the northeast. The shallow corals we can see with the breaking waves are along here?" She runs her finger along a diagonal line, stretching up the northern edge of the channel.
"Yes. Like a wall. And on the other side, many small islands, corals, rocks."
Matty hashes in a rough line that Roman nods to. She draws a half circle, opened to the southwest, at the end of the passage. "And this is the harbour. Where is the white concrete?"
This time, Roman doesn't hesitate. He taps the eastern side of the harbour decisively. "Here. Many rocks. Many corals. The big ships come around this side."
"The western side. Okay. Piper, are you listening?"
Piper lies on the deck, limp as a piece of seaweed, her hair tied back by a strip of sweat-damp sailcloth, but she raises a thumb in salute. Enzo grins as he bites into a fritter fried in coconut oil. "You don't want to eat? Is tres bon."
"Fuck… " The rest of Piper's rejoinder is lost in an empty heave as her stomach struggles to void itself of food that isn't there.
Enzo gives us a very French but what did I do? look. Matty ignores his grin; she's in mission mode and entirely focused on the day ahead. "So we come up the passage. Maybe twelve miles. Everyone is a lookout. The reefs won't have moved, but there could be sandbars. How deep is this passage?"
"Very deep," says Roman.
"Deep enough for this boat?"
"Easy. You know big ships with cranes?"
Matty's tenses, her neck tendons stretching as she nods. "Yeah. I know those ships with cranes."
"They go right up." Roman places his hands together to suggest a ship coming alongside a wharf.
"You want we should anchor outside the harbour?" asks Enzo.
"That depends if we ever get any bloody wind," says Matty. And then, as if she has the power to compel nature, a breeze spills over us, ruffling in from the south. The sail pops twice as the breeze makes its mind up if it will go or stay. Then Excelsior's deck tilts perceptibly as the sail fills and the boat starts to gain way.
"Oh, this is nice," says Enzo as he plucks his mug of water off the tipping seat before it can slide and spill. "Genoa?"
"Yes. Roman, the furling line."
The genoa is mounted on a furling rig, a long pole of aluminium surrounding the forestay that reaches from the top of the mast to the front — I mean, the bow — of the boat. The furling line spins this pole, wrapping the sail around it when not in use, an ingenious method by which we can easily control the size of the sail — and thus its power — without leaving the cockpit. Roman reaches over and releases this furling line — now we only need to pull on the sheet, the rope attached to the bottom corner of the sail (I forget the corner's name, no, wait, its called the clew), and the whole thing will roll out nice and smooth. I move to the winch and get ready to haul in.
"Zac, what are you doing?" Matty asks.
"Ready to winch on the sheet," I say, pleased how easily the terms come to me.
"That's the starboard sheet. The wind is from the south. We're heading northeast. So what tack will we be on?"
"A starboard one?"
She nods. "So which sheet should you winch on?"
I thought it was the starboard, but since I'm obviously wrong I say, "Port."
"Yep. Enzo, haul it in. Piper, you might want to move."
The Frenchman smirks at me. I don't think I've fooled him with my evasion. I move out of the way, down the back of the boat, where Piper is weakly spitting over the side. "You'll be better on dry land," I say.
"I'm fine," she says through gritted teeth.
Enzo winches the port sheet tight, and the sail fills in an elegant curve like the belly of a whale. The wind strengthens and Matty nods, satisfied. "This should take us all the way in," she says.
Enzo makes a disgusted noise, shaking his head in surprise. "Why do you say? Is too unlucky to tempt the gods!"
"We've had a southerly every morning an hour after dawn. I've been waiting for it."
"So unlucky! I think you are not so experienced, perhaps?" He appears deadly serious, but we all know him well enough to see he's just kidding Matty.
"Yeah, fair enough. Perhaps I should offer the gods a sacrifice. Would they take a Frenchman?"
"But of course. You must please them with the best."
"I'll keep it in mind. Roman, Zac, Blong. I want all of you up the bow, looking out for rocks, shallows, anything suspect. Piper? Keep feeding the fish."
Piper's raised, shaky thumb is her only reply.
***
Despite Matty's insistence that we arrive while the day is young, we don't reach the harbour until nearly noon. The passage turns out to be wider and deeper than expected, but the tide runs against us with a surprising velocity. Combined with the wind, which proves to be more fickle than Matty expected, we find ourselves moving up the passage at less than walking speed. Matty is annoyed, Enzo resigned with a knowing air; apparently there was some truth in his earlier chiding her over tempting fate and both of them, at least at an instinctive, superstitious level, feel that she jinxed us.
Roman and I sit up the bow, keeping an eye out for any hazards. The tide, moving against the wind, cuts up the water, and we strain our eyes to spy any hazards lurking beneath its rippling surface.
"How do you like sailing?" I ask Roman. He is sitting on the bowsprit, a narrow platform jutting out over the bow of the boat. The genoa stretches down the port side of the boat like the wall of an enormous tent, and I have the very peculiar sensation that I'm lingering outside someone's house.
"It's okay," he grins. "Just like a canoe, only bigger."
"You find the terms, the names for everything okay?"
"Yes. It is a new language to learn. But I speak six already. One more is not so problem."
"Six languages?"
"Tok pleses. Different island languages."
Blong races up to us. "Did you see the big fish?"
"Where?" asks Roman, jumping from the pulpit and looking eagerly over the side, into the bow-wave.
"Back here!" says Blong, pulling at his hand eagerly. "Get your spear and catch him!"
Roman laughs. "I don't think Captain wants me to fish today."
As if she can hear, Matty leans out of the cockpit and shouts, "Blong, stop distracting them. They're meant to be lookouts."
"Oh boy." Blong rolls his eyes as he turns away from her. "Lady cranky today!"
"Tell us about your fish," says Roman.
After Blong has finished his long and very detailed story — the gist being a big fish chased a little fish and ate it and Blong saw the whole thing — and has wandered off to tell Piper, Roman looks away to Woodlark. "It frightens me."
"The island? Me too. The monsters?"
"Sometimes, at night, I see lights on the island. Do the monsters have lights?"
I shiver and tell myself it's just the breeze prickling my nape. "No. You saw these only recently?"
"A short time. The priest says God punis
hed the Woodlark peoples for still hunting gold and grass stone after Judgement Day."
He's talking about Father Livingstone, a lay preacher who took over the spiritual ministrations for the local community on Madau. I'm not a fan; he loves to preach doom and gloom and can tarnish the silver lining of any cloud. "Father Livingstone is very old and sees death in all things."
"People will see us sailing to Woodlark. They think we are after treasure. They'll think the whites are stealing from them again."
"Auntie knows where we are going. She'll set them straight. What's this grass stone you're talking about?"
"In tambuna time, before we became Christians, the gods sent us grass stone. The colour is very nice. People would stare at a piece all day. We used it to give our totems sight. We found it wherever there was gold. Many peoples came from far away, in canoes bigger than this yacht, to trade with us."
"Far away? Like the mainland?"
He sweeps his arm out, to the south and the west. "Farther! Samoa. Fiji. Kong Kong."
"Grass stone… you mean jade?" Kong Kong tipped me off — it's the pidgin name for Asia.
"The expats call it that. My daddy said he sold some to the kong kongs on Woodlark."
"Roman, do you think that Judgement Day has been and gone?"
He looks at me with an expression that suggests regret and confusion and acceptance all at once. "What happens is the will of God. After the flood, he said no more water but fire next time. The world is sinful, he smotes us, and the godly rebuild." He looks over at Woodlark, now so close that I can see individual trees and the flaw in the land that reveals the harbour hidden there. "It is his will that I am here. Whether we find gold or monsters. It will be up to him."
Then he tenses, squints his eyes, and points to a tiny mote of white, which to my eye looks like nothing more than a rock on shore. "Captain! The white concrete!"
***
There is very little wind as we approach the harbour, and Matty constantly studies the shoreline, the movement of the water, and the barely full sails as she works to keep us in the middle of the channel. Fighting the falling tide slowed us down, but we have arrived at low water, when the hidden dangers of the bay are exposed. A long narrow sandbar breaches the surface like a crocodile's back, and she gives it a wide berth. Roman and I are still on the bow, but the water is muddy with mangrove runoff, and we can see nothing through its green curtain.
Matty's furled the genoa, and we sail under a reefed main, the small sail catching what little wind there is. We can see clearly out to both sides of the boat. All of us are infected by her tension, and we linger silently around the deck, ready to leap into action at her command.
The air shimmers with heat and the scream of a thousand cicadas. The island has suddenly opened to take us in. The bay is an upturned bottle, the narrow mouth opening up to a long harbour. An island halfway down marks the limit of the deep water — the far side is a labyrinth of mangrove swamp. To the northwest is the big concrete wharf where the cargo ships used to tie up; a stack of rainforest hardwood trunks, each longer than Excelsior, lie rotting, waiting for a ship that will never come. Behind the concrete wharf are a series of frames: warehouses whose tin walls have long rusted away, leaving only a red skeleton of girders. I have the horrible feeling that I am sliding down the gullet of a great and lazy monster. A cold sickness settles in my stomach as I remember the last time I entered this harbour — and I shiver despite the heat.
Enzo comes forward and slings a lead weight on a long rope over the side. It runs out through his hands, and he raises his eyebrows in surprise. "No bottom!" he calls back.
"There's a green post," I say, pointing to a wooden pole that leans drunkenly from its bed in the mud. The green paint is so faded that it is almost white.
"Starboard lateral!" shouts Enzo, pointing along with me.
"I'm going closer," replies Matty.
"I thought she didn't want to enter the harbour," I say. Although the bay must be nearly a mile wide, we're being funnelled into shallower water. The exposed flats, the sudden appearance of flies that swarm over our exposed skin, the relentless scream of the cicadas all conspire to make me feel claustrophobic, even oppressed.
"It is too deep," says Enzo. "Cannot anchor. Wait. Do you smell that?"
I can't, but Roman nods. "Smoke. Not us. From the island."
We glide closer to the concrete wharf. Spars and steel girders stand askew where the concrete has rotted away. Exposed rebar makes me think of ribs. Barely two hundred metres away. The green schooner came ashore just over there, south of the wharf. Where did it go? Is four years enough for a yacht to rust away to nothing? I don't know.
"Enzo, stand by to raise the main!" Matty calls.
"You see over there?" He points to where a swirl of water betrays a hidden sandbank on the starboard side, not ten metres away.
"Bloody hell. Twenty metres deep here and aground just there." Matty doesn't sound stressed, just annoyed. In a way, it's relieving. I feel like we're running out of water, as if we're about to go aground. But she's confident and in control, and I know we should be right.
"Roman, come with me. I may need your help. Zac, keep heaving the lead." Enzo heads back to the mast, where he drops the coiled main halyard on the deck and hands the running end to Roman. He stands by at the reefing clutches, ready to release the lines holding the sail down in case Matty suddenly wants it raised.
I drop the lead weight over the side and let the line run out in my hands. The water here is so murky that we could be in two metres depth and I wouldn't know it before the boat lurched to a stop. But the line runs right out to its end without interruption. "No bottom!" I call back.
"Thanks Zac!" replies Matty. "Enzo, if it doesn't get shallow soon, I'm going to go back out and we'll bring the dinghy in to survey the harbour. If I bring her about, stand by to raise the main."
Enzo nods. Roman tenses, ready to haul on the main halyard. Enzo shakes his head and tells Roman to relax by giving a little wiggle of his hand, fingers out, palm down. Not yet.
The line runs through my hand, the smooth nylon warming my palm with friction before stopping abruptly. I stutter as I quickly calculate how much line remains on deck. About a quarter. "Matty, bottom here! Fifteen metres."
"Right! Is that a yellow marker off the port bow?"
The bow wave is scarcely more than a trickle, and I feel the sudden need to urinate. Black flies crawl around my ears and try to get into my eyes. I wave them away and see a faded yellow float, black and green with weed and barnacles, lying flat on the water like a log. "I think it is — its very overgrown, though."
"Keep that bloody lead going!"
I haul in the line quickly, brown water splattering the deck. The lead is dark with thick mud. This time only half goes out before the weight hits the bottom. "Ten metres. Mud!"
"Enzo!" calls Matty, but he's already coming up to the bow.
"Excusez moi." He slips the clutch on the windlass, and the anchor splashes down, the chain running out over the steel hull with an alarming clatter that seems to momentarily still the cicadas and startle the flies. "Ten metres, mud, yes?"
"Yes."
Both he and Matty know what they want. He lets the chain run out as Matty sails on. He calls back, "Forty metres!" and she turns the wheel suddenly, the boat coming around sluggishly in the indifferent wind. Enzo closes the clutch to lock the chain. "Keep sounding," he says as he goes back to the main.
Matty slacks the main right out, and Enzo takes the boom and hauls it over to windward so the sail now backfills with the paltry wind and acts as a brake. Excelsior stops, and the chain tightens and lifts as the yacht's weight comes on. Matty and Enzo watch the shoreline, the island and the trees behind — they're finding transits, two fixed reference points on land to tell them if the anchor is holding. After a long minute, they nod to each other, satisfied. "Okay," says Matty. "Drop the main. Let's get the dinghy down in the water and—"
"Matty!" calls Bl
ong from above. He climbed the mast at some point, unnoticed by us all, and sits in the spreaders, six metres above deck. "People!"
He's pointing over at the rotten concrete wharf. The cicadas raise their voices in an indignant chorus, reasserting themselves over our sudden noisy anchoring. I can't see what Blong means, and I wipe my eyes and then there they are, suddenly clear. A blond woman and a young blond man, both wearing plain white smocks, not a hundred metres away from us, standing as still as statues, watching us impassively as the noonday sun beats down mercilessly.
CHAPTER SIX: MATAI
When I look up and see the two people standing there, dressed in white clothing, so bright in the noonday sun that they are almost incandescent, I feel a strange moment of dissonance. As if my brain can't process what it sees and so takes a step back to something that makes more sense.
My talk with Zac the other night bothers me. I said I no longer worried about the past, that it couldn't touch me and that I looked now to the future. What surprised me was that it was true and I didn’t know how true it was until that moment.
I was cleansed on Black Harvest in a crucible of fire. I arrived as one person and left as another — now I'm a stranger who I am gradually getting to know. I sailed up to that ship on my family's yacht, Voodoo. It was the boat my mother and father had painstakingly turned into a cruising yacht; it had been my home for over fifteen years. Hell, Voodoo was the only home I ever knew and, when my family died, it seemed my duty to keep her going, to keep her alive. As if the yacht was a vessel carrying my parents' souls to the afterlife ,and I was Charon, their ferryman on the River Styx.
And I failed. Voodoo was destroyed by the Pale King, burnt up by a fiery rain of suicidal marys. A fire that consumed not just my home but also the past that shaped my identity. For fifteen years, my past was my present. And Voodoo was more than just a yacht; she was a metaphor for everything that I couldn't let go. My every waking moment dedicated to keeping the past alive.
The Pale King thought he was destroying me.
Instead, he freed me.
But that left the question: Who was I without Voodoo?