by Jase Kovacs
Finally, the white concrete marker is behind us, and Enzo can breathe easily again. We head out into Kwaipan Bay, the channel that took us all morning to sail up what seemed to be a lifetime ago — but was in fact only three days. The swell weakens as the bay opens and the breeze dies, until we are ghosting alone at barely two knots, just enough to have steerageway. Matty brings the green schooner up to our port aft quarter, so we sail on parallel courses.
We're paranoid about using the VHF; all electric devices are incredibly fragile, their delicate circuitry constantly under attack from the sea air. Every time we press a button, we're sending electricity through aged and delicate components that could fail in a faint puff of smoke. Matty comes in close enough that we can shout to one another. She tells us to sail another three miles down the bay, where its natural walls of coral reef are at their widest and where we can raft up together and speak properly.
I'm woken by the gentle bump as the two boats come together. I'm on the foredeck, having slept through all of the manoeuvres as Enzo brought us alongside.
"Ah, you awake!" he says as he sees me lift myself from the deck. "I think I have a boat of zombi; look, everyone is dead—" He cuts himself off by stifling a yawn as he waves vaguely towards the sleeping Lost Tribers littering any flat surface. "Except me. Ai ai ai, I sleep for a week after this."
I am dull and thick with sleep, and I stand there for a minute gawking stupidly as Matty instructs a tall, lanky, tanned American and a lean, young local on how to lash the two boats together. My body is a stiff rod of pain that groans in deep protest every time I move. But my heart lifts when I see Blong racing around the deck, trying to help and generally getting in the way, just as a young kid should.
Excelsior has tire fenders over her side to pad the two boats, which is good as the green schooner is weirdly studded with pieces of stone that give her a strange poxed appearance. These stones glimmer darkly by the full moon, light swirling in a hypnotising manner. It's like I'm staring into deep pools of oil. The stones shatter like glass as Matty sweeps the railing with a crowbar, so our mooring lines won't be cut by the thin flakes of jade.
Eventually the boats are connected to Matty's satisfaction, and she comes aboard Excelsior. Her eyes are dark, her face slack with exhaustion. "Enzo, you look how I feel," she says, gripping his forearm fiercely. Then she looks up and down the deck, at where our refugees gather to look over the green schooner with wonder. "What's going on with all these people?"
"I tell you if you tell me where you find another yacht!"
***
We swap our stories sitting on the foredeck under the high full moon. Our accounts ramble; each of us is kept awake only by the urgency of our position and the desire to make some sense out of the previous forty hours. There is a certain irony that Enzo and I, although the most battered, are also the most rested as we spent most of the time in a cell. All of us want nothing more than to sink into our bunks. But there is still far too much work to be done and questions that must be answered. Because, as we put our stories together, we find that rather than satisfying each other, we have fresh questions.
"The stone hypnotise the zombi?" asks Enzo when Matty has finished explaining their escape.
"I think so." She shrugs, aware that her uncertain answer does little to help. "We were able to pass through the marys while there was enough light filtering into the cave to reflect… " Her voice trails off, her fatigue robbing her of her point.
"But that kind of makes sense," I say. "Roman was telling me that people have always come to Woodlark to collect jade. People from as far away as New Zealand or China." Roman nods and murmurs his agreement. "And Deborah knew about your Pale King, Matty. Their Green Lord called them here as your Pale King called you to the Black Harvest."
"That's not quite what happened," she says.
"But you told me; he reached into your mind. He sought to dominate you. The bay around Black Harvest was filled with wrecks, ships that he had called. That's what the Green Lord did to Deborah. He came to her when she was dying and told her to 'come and see.' Unlike you, she was receptive to the message. She brought the Lost Tribe here."
"But only a month or two ago. What was he doing for the four years before that?"
"Hunting us," says the thin American named Mark. His eyes hum with a manic energy that he has suppressed all through the conversation. "And bedazzling his yacht."
"You—" says Matty, her finger rising. "You were going on about green and gold while we were in the cave."
"Was I?" says Mark, his face creasing into a rueful frown. "Sometimes I say things I don't remember."
"What's bedazzling?" I ask.
He waves it away. "Something tacky from the Time Before… I mean he was covering his boat in jade."
"But why?" demands Matty.
"'Cause he really likes jade?" Mark shrugs. "It fascinates the vamps, man. What more reason do you need?"
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt." Abigail has drifted over. "But Deborah talked about the Jade People, meaning those like the Green Lord."
"The alphas," says Matty. She has accepted the news that her Pale King was one of at least four with a stoic nod, as if I had simply confirmed something she already suspected.
"Roman, what do your people say about the Jade People?"
"They are from tambuna time," he says, his quiet voice almost lost in the grinding noise as Excelsior's steel hull occasionally crushes pieces of jade despite Matty and Enzo's best efforts to buffer the two ships. "The grass stone is used by powerful sorcerers, to give eyes to their totems and icons."
"Did Deborah have you collecting jade from the old mines?" Matty asks Abigail.
"No. She had us preparing the camp and looking for the Obsidian People." Abigail's eyes rise nervously to Mark and Alfred, as if she realises for the first time that they are the people that she helped hunt and feed to the damned. "We didn't have to know why we were doing things. We just had faith that she did."
"You don't know much for someone in her cult," says Matty.
"She offered us a way forward. I am not proud of the path that had brought us here. But I will not apologise for it. We had nothing else left," says Abigail defiantly.
"Fucking bullshit," spits Matty. "You people crucified a woman when she had no answers and then let yourselves be cattle when she did. All of us, at some point, had nothing else left. But we didn't all start sacrificing people to monsters."
"You shot our brothers," says Abigail. "We all do what we need to do to survive."
Matty is pale with anger, but her voice remains level and controlled. "You start talking like that, and you'll be swimming home."
"Stop that right now," I say, anger rising so quickly within me that I am surprised by my own vehemence. "We've all done horrible things to survive. Fine. Let's focus on why we're here. We have to stop the alphas, wherever we find them. Abigail." Then a second time, firmly, to break the death stares that she and Matty are sharing. "Abigail! Did you ever see the Green Lord?"
"Once. We only saw him once." She closes her eyes and sighs, her mind going back to the day they came to Woodlark. "Deborah led us here, brought us here in our two canoes. We landed at dusk, and the Green Lord came from the jungle. I only saw him for a moment because Deborah ordered us to kneel and bow our heads. He was a giant. The biggest man I had ever seen. His skin, every square inch of him, was covered with tattoos: black lines, swirls, patterns that made me think of writhing snakes. His eyes burned, oh God, they made me weak inside, and it was all I could do to bow my head. He spoke to Deborah, and his voice was like an earthquake."
"What did he say?"
She opens her eyes and looks at me. Tears fall from her cheeks. "'Come and see.' And he led Deborah into the jungle. She was gone all night. When she returned, she told us what we must do. One of our canoes would take the Green Lord back to our island. Those of us who remained would prepare the camps for his return. So they did; he left the very next morning, filling the bot
tom of the canoe, wrapped in sacks and cloth to shield him from the sun."
Matty shivers and murmurs under her breath, "Christ. We were a mile apart."
"Where is the second canoe?" asks Enzo.
"Hidden in the mangroves north of the wharf. Deborah knew you people were on Madau and didn't want to tip off any fishermen."
"We go back in the morning to get it?" he asks Matty.
"No. We're going back to Madau. Piper is injured, you and Zac have had the shit beaten out of you, we have two dozen refugees, we're beaten and exhausted. We're going home."
"And the Green Lord?"
"He's out there somewhere. We can deal with him another day."
"Okay," says Enzo, nodding with satisfaction.
"No arguments here," I say.
"I'm fine, though," Piper protests. Her voice cracks, and she repeats herself.
Matty throws a thin smile her way. "We'll stay rafted up for now; I'm not game to try the lagoon entrance by night. The tide will be turning soon; provided no breeze springs up, the ebb tide should carry us down to near the entrance by dawn."
"And if there is breeze?" asks Enzo.
"Then we cast off and sail in company, tacking up and down this harbour until there is enough light to try the passage. We'll maintain lookouts. Anyone off watch is to sleep."
I look at the haggard, exhausted faces that surround me. "There's no order I'd rather follow."
***
I sit on the foredeck, my back against Excelsior's mast, and watch lightning vein the night far to the south. Despite the fatigue that fills me to overflowing, I cannot sleep. Instead, I slip into a half-delirious daze, where I perceive images and my surroundings but in which the passage of time is a nebulous, inconsequential quality.
I find myself in a waking dream, where I see the Australian fighter jets circle us, riding on the tip of a long cone of perpetual thunder. They swung down low and lined up and my mother, sensing rather than knowing what was about to happen, shoved me overboard with two hands. The shock of her abrupt betrayal, which I did not understand, hit me as hard as the warm ocean. Then my back and arm, the only part of me above water at that moment, were lashed with fire, and I surfaced to find myself surrounded by the shattered remnants of Hooked Up, the last artefact of my previous life coating the sea with flames.
I drift through memories of warm days of cool green shadows and deep blue lagoons, playing with island children, punctuated only with interludes of education taught by Mrs. Aloysius, a time of innocence where the memories of the Time Before were as irrelevant as the adults' questions about what happening to the world beyond the horizon.
But more foreigners and expats came and, with them, the idea that I was not truly of the island, that I was not a crocodile boy but just the first in a wave of refugees seeking solace. The storm raging to the south bleeds into my dream state and I lift my head, in this fragment of the past, to hear a crashing as trees are driven aside by a vast, lumbering monster, forcing its way through the jungle in pursuit of us. Uncle Samson telling me to RUN, a nightmare flight ending with tall green palms that hung over the beaches blazed with fire in the dawn sun as I staggered ashore on Madau, Auntie Ruthie lifting me up and demanding to know where was her brother.
My mind floats back to the present as Matty crouches by me, her rifle slung over her shoulder, her dirty hands shaking slightly from her own fatigue. "I thought I told you to sleep," she says.
"I'm trying. I've got a lot to process. Is it always like this?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean… okay. You've been going out into the world, trip after trip, for as long as I've known you. You've faced these monsters time and time again. And you went up against the first alpha we knew about, and you won. Afterwards, when you're sailing away, is it always like this?"
She sits down, her back slumping as tension flows out of her. She blinks, and I see she is fighting to stay awake. But she shakes her head, not in negation but to clear it before answering, as if her thoughts are a jar of loosely sorted bolts that need settling. "Yeah, I get the context. But what do you mean by 'this'? What are you feeling?"
"Doubt. Confusion. Like, so many things happened so quickly. People are dead because we chose to come to this island. Did we do the right thing? Did we make the right decisions?"
She gives me a tight, bitter little smile. "Oh. Those questions. Yes, it's always like this. A blue mood always comes down on me afterwards. A dark feeling that even the brightest dawn can't disperse. I'll tell you what I've learned, although it will be little comfort for you. You're asking the wrong question. We can never do the right thing. Worrying about right and wrong is a luxury we can't afford in this fight for survival. The only question worth asking is, 'Can we do it better?'"
The bleakness of her answer appals me. "But there has to be some space for morality. Otherwise we're no better than the damned."
She lowers her voice; we are surrounded by sleeping Lost Tribers. Two dozen people stuffed into a yacht forty feet long doesn't leave a lot of space for confidential discussions. People don't want to go onto the green schooner. It's not just that the deck, studded with green stones, is far from comfortable to lie on. There is a deeper existential dread attached to the boat, as if it is the literal vessel of the Green Lord's malignancy.
"If I was bereft of morality, would I be carrying these people back to Madau?" she says quietly. "We both know what the… pragmatic option is here."
She doesn't need to say it. More refugees, particularly survivors of a cult previously dominated by an alpha, are the last thing Madau needs. I dread to think of Michael’s or Kev’s or even Duncan's response. I accept her point; if we were truly bereft of morality, then we would leave these people to their fate, which the part of me still lying on that cross and waiting for the hammer to fall believes they so richly deserve. "Okay. I get what you're saying. But what do you mean then about there being no right and wrong?"
"You're talking about absolutes. I'm saying you will go mad if you hunt for the right answer to a question posed by an insane world. I regret… many things. But you can't let them overwhelm you. Don't go hunting for the best answer. Be satisfied with the least worst."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MATAI
"A ship! A ship!"
My mind explodes awake. Enzo relieved my watch at two a.m., and I slipped into a deep and profound sleep. Now I burst back into awareness as the lookout calls; it is not Enzo, though, but Piper, standing on the cockpit roof, who has raised the alarm. Piper's watch; I must have been out for at least two, maybe three hours judging from how low the moon is in the western sky. Only a few hours' rest, but I feel as good as new, my mind clear.
The sea is calm as the ebb tide gathers motion, carrying us down the channel to the sea. The eastern sky is pink — not long until dawn. Piper tries to point out what she has seen with her good arm, but I pick it up: a slim, dark shape moving quickly against the darker backdrop of the island.
Not a ship. A canoe, about a mile away. I can see the flash of oars as the blades dip and fall, its sail furled on its lanteen boom. They've come out of the harbour and are heading to the shallow reefs south of Woodlark. I cast my mind back a month, to when I passed through the same waters. If I was there… and they're there… then that means they're on the same course as the first red-sailed canoe.
By this stage, every member of my crew is awake and on the deck. My mind runs with the possibilities, the options available to me. What can I do now? What should I do? Who is it in that canoe, and where are they going? My instincts tell me it's Reuben — or one of his followers. And they're going to the Green Lord.
It's a half-formed thought that, as I watch the canoe cutting across the harbour, grows to a conviction. I can't explain why I think this or why I am so certain, based on virtually no evidence. I can't even make out any of the people on board; I can only see them as dark shapes with bowed backs, heads down as they drive their paddles hard into the water. But it's the only thing that makes
sense to me.
What to do about it?
I have to stop them.
A thousand options whirl in my mind. We only have a small window of opportunity here. They have the advantage over us; they are running across the smooth bay under paddle. But they will tire, sooner or later, and will either slow, stop, or have to use their sail.
I have two ships, a score or more refugees, and a half-wrecked crew, most of whom know little about sailing. A gentle stirring brushes my cheek as the predawn breeze comes from the south. Some wind that will probably build during the day. Okay, I can work with that. As soon as I feel that breeze, a plan is taking shape. I force myself to hold my silence, passing the thoughts through my mind, the hundred variables on which success hinges, the myriad problems that could bring failure.
"Enzo!"
"Oui!" He stands by the cockpit, his face eager, even hungry for action.
"Take everyone to the Aotea. Everyone but Blong and Zac. Take them back to Madau. I'm going to chase down that canoe."
"The schooner, I think she will be faster."
An uncertain murmur passes through the refugees as they realise they will be passing onto the green yacht, and I raise my voice to quell their dissent. "I know. But I know Excelsior better. And I want her steel hull if I am going to pass through reefs."
Piper quietly says to me, "Let me come with you."
"No," I say, speaking quickly to head off her disappointment. "Enzo will need you and Roman if these people turn ugly. Make sure you have the pistol and give Roman the Ruger. I'm taking your Marlin and my M4."
"We should just put them in the banana boat and make them paddle to Madau," she says sullenly, looking to where our salvaged fibreglass boat bobs on a long towline behind Excelsior.
"Take it with you and, if it comes to it, do just that." I squeeze her good shoulder by way of farewell. "Just remember that we're meant to be the good guys."