by Justin D'Ath
Where was Nissa?
12
CHINA DOLL
I hauled myself up the side of the baobab, bawling. I didn’t care if the robber heard me. In fact, I wanted him to hear.
‘This is all your fault!’ I shouted back at him. ‘I hate you!’
Rain lashed my face, mixing with my angry tears. I was angry all right. Angry at the robber, angry at the cyclone, angry at the flood; I was even angry at the baobab for pitching Nissa into the water. Most of all I was angry at myself for allowing her to be taken by the flood a second time. I should have been with her. Instead of staying with the robber, I should have gone to Nissa. I should have looked after her, not him. He was the cause of all this.
I walked along the length of the baobab’s trunk, standing upright. I think I only made it because I was so angry. It was as if, for the three or four seconds it took me to get from one end to the other, Cyclone Kandy was scared of me! Falling against the wet broken roots, I looked out over the flood.
Tree tops poked out here and there. Logs and debris rocked along in the current. A low hill moved past perhaps two hundred metres away through the teeming rain, but there was no sign of Nissa. I slumped forward, defeated.
Wait a minute, I suddenly thought. These are different roots. Where’s the big Y-shaped one that Nissa was sheltering under?
That was when I worked out how the baobab had rolled 180 degrees, dragging the robber and me from one side to the other. But Nissa had been on top of the tree to begin with. If she had become caught in the roots and was dragged through 180 degrees, then she would be … underneath it!
I leapt into the flood. What I didn’t realise at the time, and what saved me from being swept away, was that the baobab was no longer caught in the gumtree; it was being pushed along by the flood, and so was I. Relative to each other, the floating tree and I weren’t moving. Jackknifing my body, I dived headfirst down beneath the splayed branch-like roots. I grabbed hold of one, then another. Hand over hand, I used the roots to pull myself down beneath the baobab. The water was brown and muddy. I couldn’t see more than a metre in front, but I knew she was down there somewhere.
Nissa! I cried out to her in my mind. I’m coming!
We nearly bumped heads. Her small round face was centimetres from mine. Her eyes were wide open; she seemed to be looking at me. But her mouth was open, too, and no air was coming out. Close your mouth! I was thinking, fighting to free her. One of the shoulder straps of her pink overalls had become twisted around a root. I tried to rip it free but the root bent back and forth, resisting my efforts. The cloth of her overalls seemed to be made of denim; it wouldn’t rip, either. I tried to find a button but there wasn’t one – the strap was sewn into the garment’s bib. The stitching was strong. I grabbed the strap in one hand and began working it along the root towards its broken-off end. The root was about a metre long and pointing down into the cloudy depths. It was hard to see what I was doing. One of Nissa’s little hands waved lifelessly in front of my eyes. I had to push it out of the way several times. My lungs were bursting even though I had been under the water for a fraction of the time Nissa had. Her mouth was open. Her hair floated around her face. She seemed to be looking at me, but could she see anything out of those wide-open brown eyes? How long did it take to drown? The current tossed us back and forth. Leaves drifted slowly past. At last I reached the end of the root. With a final desperate heave, I pulled Nissa free. Holding her lifeless body in the crook of my left arm, I fought my way back towards the pale ceiling of daylight high above.
I broke through the surface with a huge gasping whoop. It was a close thing – two more seconds, I reckon, and I wouldn’t have been able to hold my breath any longer. I was light-headed from lack of oxygen. There was a roaring in my ears. My limbs felt leaden. But there was no time to rest. I lifted Nissa’s face clear of the water. Her lips were blue. She wasn’t breathing. I had to get her up onto the baobab. There was no time to lose. Rain sizzled on the water as I worked the unconscious child close to the tree trunk where the roots were bigger and thicker. I climbed them like a ladder, dragging Nissa behind me. My breath sawed. She was surprisingly heavy. I hauled her up onto the swaying trunk and laid her in the shelter of the upflung roots. Her eyelashes fluttered but it was just the wind. Her eyes were firmly closed. Her skin was deathly white. She looked like a china doll.
She looked … dead!
I had never given anyone mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before. At First Aid classes we’d used a dummy called Oscar. He was twice as big as Nissa, even though he was just a head and half a plastic body. Nissa was so small! So lifeless! Tears smeared my vision as I knelt over her. I tried to recall what you were supposed to do. You didn’t just tip the head back and start blowing.
Clear the airway, I remembered.
Gently, I opened Nissa’s mouth and poked a finger in to check that there was nothing stuck in her throat.
And she bit me.
Then she spewed up about a litre of water, all over my hand and wrist. I rolled her onto her side and she coughed up an impossible amount of water. No wonder she’d felt so heavy.
Nissa opened her eyes and looked at me sideways. And both of us started bawling.
13
NATHAN
The robber had called Nissa a plucky little kid. He was right. No way could I have survived underwater for as long as Nissa had. She recovered quickly. I think she was the first to stop crying.
‘Tam tad?’ she asked.
I was sitting with my back to the roots and my arms wrapped tightly around her. I was never going to let her go.
‘No, Niss, I’m not sad,’ I snivelled. ‘I’m happy.’
Crying because I was happy. How soppy is that? But it was true. Regardless of our situation, I was happy at that moment. Happy to have my little cousin back. Happy that she was alive. And happy, too, that I’d saved her. I knew it was a pretty brave thing I’d done. Pretty damn heroic, actually! I felt good about myself. Sam Fox, real-life hero!
But I didn’t have long to enjoy the feeling. There was the robber to think of. I’d left him suspended on a flimsy support of branches centimetres above the flood. Now that Nissa was safe, I should go back and check on him. And, if possible, drag him up onto the baobab’s trunk. It’s what anyone would have done, I told myself.
Nissa wasn’t happy about it. She clung to me and wouldn’t let go. I had to pry her hands gently loose, one finger at a time.
‘The man’s sick, Niss,’ I explained. ‘I’ve got to go and help the sick man.’
‘Bad man!’ she said, and thrust her thumb into her mouth.
I persuaded her to nestle in among the roots. Not too far in – I didn’t want her to get caught in them if the tree rolled again. I felt bad about leaving her, but I had no choice. The robber had saved my life, after all.
I crawled slowly out onto the slippery, rocking trunk. I wasn’t going to risk standing up this time; my anger had been replaced by relief, and with relief came caution. There was more than just my own life at stake now. If I fell off, Nissa would be left on her own, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to survive without me. Neither would the robber.
I couldn’t see him as I edged my way out onto the exposed tree trunk. That didn’t bother me at first. There were lots of leaves and branches between us, and he was wearing dark clothes. But the closer I came to the leafy end of the tree, the more uneasy I became.
‘Where are you?’ I called.
There was no answer. I slithered down the last half metre of smooth wet bark and crouched in the fork of the tree’s two main branches.
‘Are you there?’ I shouted. ‘Hullo?’
The only reply was the mournful wail of the wind and the relentless slap of raindrops on leaves.
I called again, several times, then I struggled through the slippery foliage until I was directly above the platform of branches where I’d left him. The man was gone. He must have fallen unconscious and slipped down into the water.
‘Hey!’ I called.
That was when I realised I didn’t even know his name. Eventually I would find out it was Nathan, the same as my brother’s name. Nathan McDonald, twenty-three years old, unemployed factory worker. He’d had some bad luck and made some wrong choices, but even as I stared into the tumbling river I knew Nissa was wrong. Nathan McDonald wasn’t a bad man. A bad man wouldn’t have held onto me as we were swept past the baobab. A bad man would have let me go.
‘Hey!’ I screamed again. The turbulent water stretched away in all directions, like a vast inland sea. ‘I just want you to know I came back for you!’
14
CYCLONE KANDY
The full force of the cyclone struck about twenty minutes later. It was like nothing I’d experienced before. The wind must have reached two hundred kilometres per hour. It made a deep, savage, howling roar that filled the universe. Ribbons of lightning darted through the low blue-black clouds. Thunder boomed. The whole sky was on the move, racing overhead at an incredible speed. Nissa and I huddled against the baobab’s roots and hung on for our lives. I sheltered her as best I could with my body, and took the brunt of the storm on my back. The raindrops felt like hail. My thick bush-shirt provided no protection from the stinging attack. I was pummelled by the wind. It was hard to hang on. Beneath us, the tree swayed and tipped and pitched. It was tossed around like a cork by the huge winds and the wild water. Every so often a wave broke over the trunk, a rushing wet wall that slammed me forward with the power of a rugby tackle. I was worried that Nissa would be squashed between me and the roots. Each time a wave hit, I arched my back against it and pushed out with my arms. Several times I bumped my head hard against the roots. I saw stars. I became dizzy and disorientated. My knees felt chafed and raw from sliding on the wet bark. The muscles in my arms screamed out for relief. But I couldn’t let go. All I could do was hold on and pray that the cyclone would pass quickly. And that the baobab wouldn’t roll again. If it did, that would be the end for us. There would be no climbing back onto the tree this time if we fell into the floodwater. Not even a Hollywood hero could have survived.
We were lucky. Later, I found out that the eye of the cyclone crossed the coast forty kilometres to the south. Only its outer perimeter passed over us. Cyclone Kandy made its way inland, gradually losing ferocity and turning into a rain-bearing depression that caused floods over much of the Top End.
Forty minutes passed. Or maybe it was an hour. It’s hard to estimate time when your whole world is reduced to something resembling the inside of a kitchen blender. The wind died down. It happened with surprising suddenness: one moment it was howling, the next it wasn’t. Just a slight breeze tickled the back of my neck. I no longer had to hold on for my life. It was still raining, but at least it was falling vertically now instead of horizontally. It no longer stung. The roar of thunder was fading into the distance. I remained kneeling where I was for a few more minutes, my numbed hands still gripping the roots. I was cold and dazed and exhausted, and probably suffering from shock. My forehead hurt where I’d knocked it against the tree.
‘Tam?’ said a little voice from beneath me.
Slowly, I relaxed my arms and leaned back. Nissa looked up at me, her face deathly pale, her eyes ringed with pink and blue stains of exhaustion.
‘Tam take Nitta home now?’ she asked.
I smiled, or tried to. My jaw felt stiff from being clenched tightly closed. No more rash promises, I reminded myself.
‘I don’t know, Niss,’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘I’ll do my best.’
That was when I noticed how still everything was. Not just the air, but the baobab as well. It was no longer pitching and swaying. It didn’t seem to be moving at all.
Stiff and sore, I climbed shakily to my feet. I helped Nissa up too. Standing side by side on the high trunk, her tiny hand in mine, we gazed out at a sight more beautiful than anything I’d laid eyes on in my entire fourteen years, four months and sixteen days on this planet.
Land.
We were saved!
15
DON’T EVEN THINK CROCODILE!
The baobab had run aground in a patch of mangroves. Beyond them, a coconut palm rose high into the rain-filled sky, and behind that stood a few straggly gumtrees. Mangroves only grow in tidal water and coconuts aren’t inland trees, which means we’d been swept nearly all the way to the coast. We must have been close to the river mouth. That explained the waves that had pummelled us at the height of the cyclone. Perhaps the tide had been in at that stage and now it was retreating. Behind me, out in the open water, the current looked strong. I could see logs and leafy branches and other unidentifiable debris being carried past by the flood. I wondered if Nathan McDonald was out there somewhere.
I piggybacked Nissa down the ladder of roots and jumped with her into the water. It came up to my chest. Nissa was used to being wet now and hardly seemed bothered. She clung trustingly to me like a baby koala to its mother as I worked my way, half swimming, half climbing, from one mangrove to the next, all the way to dry land.
It wasn’t dry, of course, but after our terrifying ordeal, anything that wasn’t underwater looked pretty inviting. I waded through the ankle-deep sludge and collapsed on a patch of damp pebbly ground, Nissa beside me.
‘We made it!’ I gasped, letting the fat cool raindrops splatter my face. ‘Nissa, we’re on our way home.’
It proved to be another rash prediction.
Ten minutes later, when I recovered sufficiently to get up and explore, I made a grim discovery. We were on an island.
It wasn’t a big island. Standing on a soft sandy mound at the island’s highest point, I estimated it was no more than forty metres long by fifteen metres wide. Just a narrow spit of land in a sea of swiftly moving water. Floodwater, not seawater, but I knew the sea was not far away. Straining to see through the teeming rain, I made out a hazy stretch of riverbank in the distance. The tops of several trees poked above the floodwater between it and the island. They grew almost in a line. If the current hadn’t been so strong, it might have been possible to swim from one tree to the next all the way to shore. It was something to keep in mind for when the floodwaters receded. Provided a search party didn’t find us first. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait.
Nissa pulled impatiently on my hand. ‘Tam take Nitta home now?’
She must have thought I was Superman. I crouched next to her. ‘The river’s too high, Niss. We’ll have to wait a while.’
Tears welled in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around my neck. ‘Want Mummy,’ she murmured.
‘I know,’ I said, lifting her. ‘Let’s go and find some shelter until this rain stops.’
Apart from the mangroves which ringed its shores – and which were mostly underwater anyway – there were only four trees on the island: the coconut palm and three skinny gumtrees. None offered shelter from the incessant rain. I turned a full circle on the mound. At the far end of the island was a low thicket. It wasn’t big, but possibly we could crawl inside it and escape the worst of the weather. I carried Nissa down to investigate. As we drew near, I thought I heard a rustling noise; but there was no wind, so it might have been my imagination. Then I heard it again. I stopped.
The thicket was denser than I’d first thought. Growing along the base of a metre-high rock shelf, it was a tangle of bushes and palm fronds and what looked like driftwood, all stitched together with some kind of a leafy vine. The rock shelf projected slightly over the heavy foliage; it was impossible to see into the dark space beneath.
‘Hullo?’ I said, feeling foolish. If anything was in there it would be an animal of some kind. Or more likely a bird. What kind of animal would live on a tiny island like this?
Don’t even think crocodile! I told myself.
Raindrops pattered around us. There was no other sound. I strained my eyes into th
e thicket. Probably nothing was in there. I was exhausted and my imagination was playing tricks on me.
One of the palm fronds wobbled. So did my heart.
‘Tam …?’ said Nissa.
‘Shhh,’ I whispered.
I lifted her from my right hip to my left. A bone lay half buried in the sand next to my foot. It was huge. It must have been the leg bone from a buffalo. Giving no thought to how the buffalo came to be there, or how it died, I stooped and dragged the heavy bone out of the wet sand. Then I took a deep breath and pitched it into the thicket.
Nothing much happened. There was the swish of the bone passing through the outer layer of leaves, followed by a soft thud as it hit something solid, then the only sound was the patter of raindrops. Slowly, I let out my breath. False alarm. There was nothing in there.
A twig snapped.
A vine twanged.
Uh-oh! I thought, and took half a step backwards. But it was too late to turn. Too late to run.
A large dark shape exploded out of the thicket like a train out of a tunnel. All I was able to focus on as the creature charged was its pink slimy snout, its small narrow eyes and its yellowed, razor-sharp tusks. A wild boar!
I managed to leap out of the way. Almost. As it hurtled past, the huge boar struck me a glancing blow with its bristly flank, pitching me to the ground. Nissa landed on top of me. Terrified, expecting another attack, I rolled onto my knees and launched Nissa up onto the rock shelf. Then I scrambled up after her, all in the same movement. Only then did I look around. Halfway down the island the boar was still running. It seemed as intent on escaping from us as I was from it.
Nissa was crying. The palms of both her hands had been grazed on the rock when I pushed her up.