Flames

by Robbie Arnott

  The cloud’s rage howled on, pushing the storm east and west, north and south. Fields became bogs; ponds became lakes; wombats swam like water rats, and water rats cavorted like seals, drunk on the storm’s power. A muscly current turned Tunbridge into Nobridge. The Avoca post office was washed clean of all its letters. Hours after it broke over Notley, the storm reached the southern capital’s sprawling suburbs. It lashed the huddled houses before pouring onto the shiny docks, where fortunes of yachts clattered against weathered concrete. Hulls caved; masts snapped; engines died. Catamarans dived to the harbour floor.

  And there was more, for the storm was not finished. It pushed further south, down past Kingston and into the sleepy Huon. After another day of raging it made it all the way to lonely Melaleuca, where its howling torrents filled an abandoned tin mine to its jagged brim, sending a colony of cormorants reeling up into the sky. Something else reeled out of the mine, too: something foul and broken, limp and swollen, something built with flesh and feathers, yet pulsing with a thirst that no amount of rainwater could slake. By the time the storm passed it was floating on the rising face of Bathurst Harbour, heading out to the ocean. Yet was there a flicker of movement in its violent black feathers? Did its waxy nose-bill rise up from the water? Did its mangled wings begin carving through the water, dragging its body towards land?

  Only the cloud could have seen. And she was too busy weeping.

  On she went, on with her tantrums and wind-screams. Valleys became basins; orchards became lap pools; snakes shed their skins and morphed into slime-skinned eels. But why all this dreadful drenching? Why was the storm so monstrous and severe?

  The answer lay in the curls of the smoke that first rose from the Notley fire. Not fern smoke; not tree smoke; not even the rich fatty flavour of flesh smoke. No—it was the smoke that fizzed out of a small, golden-brown pelt in the heart of the fire. A special pelt: a river pelt. A pelt that had belonged to the other half of the cloud’s heart. The pelt of her waterlocked love—a love that had recently disappeared after centuries of mutual, touchless adoration.

  It had been weeks since she’d felt his eyes gazing up at her from the river and, despite her knowledge of his divinity, she had feared the worst. The fur smoke that rose into her wisps and wafts from Notley confirmed it: he was dead. She would never mistake that scent. He who owned the river now burned in the flames. Never again would he climb the dark mountain and stare up in hopeful worship. Never again would she feed his kingdom with her tears of lonesome love. No more would she nourish him with her rain. No more; not ever.

  A cloud’s sorrow: you cannot imagine it. But you can feel it, whenever a storm hits the world with uncommon force. When mountains crack and forests flood. When rivers surge and oceans bloat. When there is no true shelter left in the world. For the hardest storms are made of sorrow.

  Such sorrow came to the island, and tried to drown it.

  SEA

  I have always been afraid of the ocean. This fear comes from my father, I think—he wouldn’t even dip a toe in a tide pool. When we were children I would wander on the beach, Charlotte would tumble in the waves and he would wait at the edge of the gully, keeping an eye on us without ever stepping onto the sand. We never asked him about it. There wouldn’t have been any point: he wasn’t the kind of man who answered questions like that.

  When he left we kept going down to the beach, as if nothing had changed, but on our sun-smacked backs we could feel the absence of his eyes. And when I first turned to see the fatherless edge of the gully, I felt the fear shiver through me, as if it had been transferred from his mind to my own. Charlotte was out in the water, crashing her shoulders into a breaking wave, and the ocean’s weight, strangeness and malice were suddenly revealed to me. I have not touched saltwater since.

  Or at least, I hadn’t until I splashed my foot as I climbed into Karl’s dinghy, three days after the fire at Notley. I’d forgotten how cold the ocean was. How quickly it soaked through to the skin; how stubbornly it refused to dry. I didn’t say anything to Karl. I figured it wouldn’t have been news to him.

  How I’d ended up in his boat: a combination of my sister, his daughter, and my folly.

  The morning after the fire I woke up in my bed, with a few small burns shining across my body and no idea how I’d got there. Charlotte later told me that the detective I’d hired months earlier had carried me to her car and driven me home. She was no longer there—she’d left that night, apparently, muttering about gin and cats and sandwiches, although she’d promised to return and collect the money I owed her. I barely remembered hiring this detective; of her dragging me out of a fire I remembered even less.

  Then, in the low light of the morning, my sister told me more.

  How the fire had been quenched by the biggest storm in decades, maybe centuries.

  How floods now stretched all across the island, from the wide north coast to the southwest plains.

  How our father had appeared, as if from nowhere, before disappearing again when the flames went out.

  How furious she was.

  How she hoped my wounds hurt.

  How her friend, Nicola, wore burns far worse than my own.

  I can remember what happened, but it’s like remembering a dream, or a story I’d overheard. I knew what I had done, but I couldn’t believe I’d done it. My clearest memory was of the pelt I’d taken from Hough, and the strange, swelling confidence that had pulsed through me the longer I kept it in my grasp. Now that it was gone I felt much less sure of myself, but my thoughts were clearer, and I no longer felt compelled to follow every thought and desire that welled up within me.

  But it wasn’t just the pelt; even before then, when I’d been pursuing my coffin plan, my memories were murky, as if they were someone else’s that had been carefully recited to me. I consider myself a rational person, but my actions since our mother died weren’t all that rational. Nor was the way I’d treated my sister. Thinking about it was confusing, and filled me with a sickening shame. I tried telling myself that even though my behaviour was wrong, my intentions were right—but was that even true? Did I really have what was best for Charlotte in the heart of my plans?

  The truth: I had been erratic, selfish and weak. I had failed her when she needed me most.

  Charlotte left me lying in the bed, where I stayed for another hour, chasing these thoughts around in circles. When I got up I could think of nothing else to do but ask for her forgiveness, although I knew I didn’t deserve it. I could tell she was still angry, but she said that she would forgive me, probably, in time. She was holding a mug. The tea inside it was roiling with frothy, milk-brown bubbles—almost as if it was boiling. I was going to say something, I don’t know what, when she told me: As long as you forgive me too.

  I have nothing to forgive. I have only trust to win back. But she has always been smarter than me: one day, I might understand what she means.

  It was Nicola who suggested the dinghy. We had gone to see her at the hospital that afternoon. Charlotte hadn’t wanted me to come, but I insisted. I couldn’t do much for Nicola’s injuries, but I could apologise. After a brief argument, Charlotte had relented. We didn’t speak much on the way there, other than to comment on the smashed trees, huge puddles and debris that the storm had scattered across the landscape. The wreckage was everywhere. I had never seen a spectacle of natural destruction. Roofs had been ripped off houses, and whole forests seemed to have been uprooted and thrown in random directions. Great pools of floodwater lay across every remotely flat field. It almost made me sorry that I could not remember it happening. But then I remembered the fire.

  I’m not an imaginative person, nor am I usually pessimistic, but I had been convinced that Nicola would be unconscious and wrapped in swathes of cotton like a mummy. She was just lying in a white bed with simple bandages adorning her forearms. Trees were bending outside a narrow window. I hovered in the doorway, not sure what to do or say, as Charlotte hurried to the bed. Nicola kept her arms fla
t as my sister buffeted her with a heavy embrace, but a smile stretched out her lips and a red wave washed beneath the skin on her cheeks. Charlotte was whispering fast words that I couldn’t make out. After a few seconds she pulled back to look at Nicola’s arms. Their foreheads fell to rest against one another. More words were muttered, by both of them.

  I am not good at these things, but I began to understand, I think.

  So did Nicola’s family, who were sitting in stiff chairs in the corner of the room. They—I assumed they were her mother, father and sister—were all wearing expressions of quiet surprise. I cleared my throat and said hello; though they responded politely, I could tell they were much more interested in what was going on between their daughter and my sister.

  Greetings and introductions followed. It seemed that Nicola had told them about Charlotte, or at least mentioned her to them, because they greeted her with vague tones of recognition and gratitude. Of me, however, they remained wary, and did not move from the other side of the room. Which I understood.

  With their eyes on me—or the ground, in the case of Nicola’s sister—I began what I’d gone there to do: apologise. But it didn’t go the way I’d been rehearsing in my head. I started by saying pain and sorry and I didn’t mean but the words didn’t come out the right way, or in the right order. I kept talking. Normally I keep my sentences short, if I say anything at all, but in this small hospital room I began babbling to the point of incomprehension. I said things like intentions and make it better and please and hurt and never again and never wanted to; but the faster I spoke, the less sense I made. They were all staring at me now, and when I saw Charlotte’s eyes casting confusion towards me my stream of words gave way to a single, ragged sob. A sob that choked into a howl.

  I had not cried since I was a small child—not even at our mother’s cremation. But now my howl was joined by a rapid gurgle of other sobs, and tears, and the occasional moan. I didn’t know what was happening to me; I tried to maintain my composure, but failed; I failed as badly as I’d failed my sister. Somehow I ended up on the squeaky floor at the foot of the bed. My throat ached. I was punching the linoleum. Someone was rubbing my shoulder.

  It was in this moment, or sometime around it, that Nicola had her idea.

  Two days later I was squelching water against my sock as her father motored us over the grey waves. I’d expected it to be a rough and jolting ride, but the dinghy cut smoothly across the water. I clung onto the edge anyway. I don’t think Karl noticed how scared I was. If he did, he ignored it.

  There’s no point, I’d heard him say in the hospital. The stocks are too thin. You can’t make a career out of it anymore. Nicola held his hand from her bed. That doesn’t matter, Dad. Please. Just do this for him. She looked at Charlotte. For me.

  I didn’t know what it was that he was supposed to be doing, for me or for his daughter, and the last place I wanted to be was out at sea with a grumpy fisherman. But Charlotte had agreed with Nicola’s plan. When we got back from the hospital she stared me in the eyes, a stare of fury and concern, and told me I should go with Karl. So I did. And I didn’t ask any questions.

  We pushed past the Hawley heads, and the smooth ride I’d been almost enjoying took on a lurching lilt. The boat rose and thumped beneath me in uneven strides. I focused on the beach that was receding from sight, and its whiteness, and the green-beige smudge of bluegums that rose behind it. I began worrying about seasickness, storms, tsunamis, until Karl suddenly switched off the engine.

  I turned from the horizon to see him throwing an anchor over the side. A chain rattled out behind it. It plunged down, disappearing into the dark water. What happens now? I asked.

  Karl threw something black and flappy towards me. I caught it on my chest. Put this on, he said.

  I’m getting in the water?

  Yep.

  I shook my head. No. No, thanks. I don’t think I want to do that.

  Suit yourself. He sat down on the small bench in the middle of the dinghy and pulled a paperback out of his jacket. This was a waste of time, then.

  I looked down at the wetsuit. It felt plush and thick. Why do I have to get in the water? What happens then?

  Karl didn’t look up from his book. Just do it, mate.

  Charlotte’s face swam into my head, and the stare she’d given when we’d returned home from the hospital. I unbuttoned my jacket, peeled off my shirt and pants and socks, and started climbing into the suit. Its fabric fought my body at every opportunity. Karl had to help me force my limbs through the holes. Eventually I was in. The stretchy neoprene clung to me, and I felt constricted, even though I could breathe with ease. Karl yanked the zip on my back up to the base of my neck and handed me a pair of flippers. These go on your feet. He sat back down with his book. You go in the water.

  I had more questions, but there didn’t seem much point in asking them. I wedged my feet into the flippers, dangled my legs over the boat and, with a burst of resolve that I hadn’t felt since I’d gripped Hough’s golden-brown pelt, launched myself into the ocean.

  It wasn’t as cold as I’d expected. This was probably due to the wetsuit, which was also helping me to float. I looked up at Karl, waiting for an instruction. He was pointing towards a patch of darker water, ten or fifteen metres away. Go over there.

  I paddled over to the patch. What now?

  Wait.

  For what?

  Just wait.

  I kicked at the water beneath me, trying not to think about sharks and jellyfish and giant squid. Thanks to the wetsuit it was easy to keep my head above water, but after ten minutes my legs were beginning to tire.

  How long do I have to do this?

  Karl didn’t respond. He was still reading.

  I kept kicking, seeing nothing, gradually becoming colder. Ten more minutes passed. I asked again: How much longer?

  Karl didn’t look up from his page. As long as it takes.

  I resolved to not ask any more questions, not unless I was drowning. I would stay out here as long as he made me. This was probably the point of the trip, I realised. To teach me patience. Or respect. Or humility. I kicked and floated on, as the waves began rolling higher and my legs began aching in a deep, listless way.

  I had fallen into a kind of numb trance when water sloshed over my bottom lip. I spat it out and realised my neck had stiffened with cold. I tried to straighten my head, but I couldn’t. More water lapped into my mouth, salty and insistent. Karl, I yelped, I can’t do this anymore. I’m exhausted.

  Still he did not look up. You’re nearly done.

  I’ve learnt my lesson. I have. I’m going to drown.

  You’re not here for a lesson, mate. He finally put his book down and gestured behind me. You’re here for him.

  I turned, awkward and heavy, following the line of his arm. Something was there, but I was too slow to see it before it splashed back underwater. Fear surged through me. I pivoted, kicking wildly. Steady, Karl barked. I wanted to shout something back at him, something harsh and crude, but I was too tired, too cold. And before I could think of anything, the splashing figure re-emerged, half a metre from my face.

  It was a seal. A pup. Its head was small, brown and sleek, and great wiry whiskers forked out from beside its wet black nose. A fishy stench hit my open mouth like a slap, and I nearly gagged. Easy, I heard Karl yell. Go easy.

  I breathed through my nose as the pup studied me with its huge, glimmering eyes.

  Karl called out again. Give him your hand.

  I was beyond thinking, beyond surprise; all I could do was obey. I took my right hand from the water and held it in front of the seal. The waves were rolling higher now, and harder, and I was struggling to keep my head above the water. The pup kept looking at me. I spat water. My legs went limp.

  I kept my hand high.

  And then, as I began to slide beneath the sea, the pup rested its face on my palm. Its huge wet eyes bored into mine. A puff of fish breath blew out of its nose. Something ballooned in
side me, something huge and uncontainable, from the pit of my stomach to the back of my throat. As it expanded I rose up, high on the wake. And in that rising moment I held on to the seal, and kept my eyes locked on his, and waited to fall back beneath the waves.

  But out there in the salt, that something kept swelling. It has kept me afloat ever since.

  NOTE

  Flames is—obviously, I think—a work of fiction. The writing of it, however, was influenced by a few people, places and events that should be acknowledged. The lives of Deny King, Marjorie Bligh and Taffy the Bee Man (Helmer Henry Hastings Huxley) all served as inspiration for various characters, while the Launceston floods of 2016 and the Dunalley bushfire of 2013 inspired certain events in the story. More broadly, anyone who has travelled south of the Australian mainland may recognise some of the history, geography, flora and fauna in this book. Or they may recognise nothing at all; I have made up a lot of strange things here. It’s all I know how to do.

  Robbie Arnott, Hobart, February 2018

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There is simply no way this book would exist without the support of the following people: David Winter, Ben Walter, Adam Ouston, Rachel Edwards, Julia Carlomagno and the person I love most in the world, Emily Bill. Thank you all, so very much, for all your help, guidance, advice and support.