by Michael Earp
A forest in the middle of the sea. I’d seen maybe seventy trees in my whole life, and now look at them all. Their twisted branches and unfriendly roots that push up through the water and scrape the bottom of my boat. The trees are just spaced out enough to let me through. I’ve been adrift for two days, the sun blistering my skin. I have no idea where I am but at least the trees are shady.
I don’t know what I’m looking at. They’re trees growing in the sea. How are they alive? My oars drag on the sand underneath, and I look over the side of the boat to see how shallow the water is.
If there’s trees, maybe there’s something that lives in them. Bugs – they’re all mostly good for eating. And whatever else lives in there, they gotta find fresh water somewhere. My mouth opens involuntarily at the thought, gasping for any moisture.
I start to use one of the soaked ropes to tie the boat to a tree. My hands are blistered, cut and sunburned, and it hurts to use them and the rope is cold and grating on my skin, but I manage to get a knot tied. I sit down, bring the oars in and sigh, running fingers through my long hair. The trees mean maybe I’m not going to die out here. They make me feel like I’m somewhere, instead of in the middle of nowhere, at the mercy of the sea.
I thought it would be fine, Zaid said it would be fine. He’s usually right about these things; he’s lived in the pipes for as long as he can remember. He knows the water, he says.
What would an old man know about a sea goddess, I curse under my breath.
She was so angry, the sea. Does she know I’m from the desert? That I’d barely even seen water before I moved to the pipes? She must be able to tell, and then it was all too much. She pinged my boat between her waves like it was nothing.
My arms are covered in sigils and spells to appease the ocean. Offerings of care and love, for the same in return. I weave shells through string and hang them in my boat, in the pipes, tangle them in my hair.
Between the gull cries, I hear something else. A human voice. Hoarse. Help me, all weak. I can barely hear them over the birds. It sounds like they’ve almost given up.
“Who’s there?” I yell. I know they’re deeper in the forest, though it seems to spread out a lot.
“It’s New,” they yell back. “Come rescue me, would you?”
“Keep yelling,” I say to New, “and then I will.”
They do. I untie my boat and paddle through the trees. It’s warmer the further I go in. Soon, I see New trapped in a whole bunch of rope in one of the trees. They look the same age as me, around fifteen, sixteen. I can’t remember how old I am, it’s getting harder to tell what year it is because it doesn’t really matter any more. They have dark skin like Zaid, hair all tied up in tight knots, a deep scar across their lips, travelling across their nose.
“How’d you get up there?” I ask when I see them.
“Oi, cut me down.”
“Do you have a knife?”
“In my pocket. I can’t reach but.”
I tie the boat back up, and my hands are throbbing from the pain. I step into the water, trying not to imagine what it would feel like to step on one of those roots jabbing up through the sand.
I get the knife out of New’s pocket and manage to cut the rope in a few places. They have rope burn on their skin; they were out in shorts and a singlet like me.
“The storm get you?” I ask.
“Yeah. I never seen you before.” They climb into my boat. “You from round here?”
“The pipes. I don’t know how to get back.”
New looks at me without any recognition. Fear zips through me: if they haven’t heard of it then maybe I’m much further than I thought.
“I know someone who would know, but won’t see her for a couple days. Storm’s coming back.”
“What should I do till then?”
“Stick with me, as thanks.”
As we row in silence through the forest to New’s place, we find their boat tangled up in some trees. We tie it to mine and keep going, New telling me which direction to row. When we get there, we moor the boats underneath the house. It’s a one-room cabin on stilts, sitting high above the water. It’s solid, small, mostly wooden. There’s a ladder we use to climb up into the cabin, which holds a bed, a bench, table, not much else. There’s no door, and there are holes in the walls for windows with no glass. A breeze passes through, smelling like salt. They live alone, like me.
For lunch, New cooks up some fish and rice. The fish are smaller than what I’m used to, out in the deep ocean, but they’re tasty enough and I’m so hungry my stomach hurts after one swallow.
“You been out all night?” they ask, as I wince.
“Yeah. I had nothing to eat or anything.”
“Slow down a bit, don’t hurt yourself.”
The pain starts to fade, and we both don’t have a lot to say. I fall asleep.
When I wake, the sun is starting to set. The cabin is bathed in orange light. My mouth is dry, heavy. It’s quiet and for a moment I panic; it’s never quiet in the pipes unless something dangerous is about to happen. Then I remember where I am.
New is asleep, breathing soft. I haven’t slept next to someone since my family. There’s only one bed, barely enough room for both of us, and I’m folded up against them. They said it gets cold at night so it’s good for that, but really it’s just nice to be near someone. I think that’s why I said yes to sleeping in the same bed as a stranger; I need human contact. Maybe New is the same, that’s why they let me in so easy.
New left a cup of water next to the bed. It tastes different to the water we get in the pipes, and it’s warm. I grimace, but I’m too thirsty to knock it back. The globe is hot, they say, and it’s hotter in the mangroves. That’s the name of these twisty trees, the ones that can grow in the shallow sea.
The darkness is different out here under the trees instead of in the pipes. Through the window the sky is dappled in clouds and moonlight above instead of plain old world concrete, for one. The light reflects off the water. Under the stars, it’s whisper-quiet. I can hear the bugs outside, birds that fly in the night. The rain that is soft yet I know will get harder. I’ve not been in a place where I can’t hear other people talking at all times, snoring, laughing, coughing.
New’s got mosquito netting up on all the window frames and the doorway. They showed me where they store wooden coverings for the windows and door in a small compartment under the floor. They only put them up when the storms get real bad around here or in the winter.
In the pipes I’ve got a sleeping bag on a few layers of cardboard that I put in my boat, which is pretty great. Gets real lonely. My family and me had our own space in the desert, and then the desert ran outta food so we had to go too.
My boat is my whole life now. Even though I’m lost, at least I still have the boat. And right now it’s sinking under me. It’s tethered on one of the stilts of the house so it won’t drift off, but it’s gonna go down over the next couple days. New said they can help me patch it up.
A mozzie buzzes past my ear and I reach out a hand and whack it. I don’t know if I got it because I can’t see. Can’t hear it any more, so maybe.
The mozzies are bad out here, New said, they love the water. I don’t know what water ’cause I thought they couldn’t live in sea water, but what do I know? They’re not too bad in the pipes. I have a mozzie net that I use, prop it up over my boat.
All my stuff except for what’s in the boat is in the pipes. I hope no one steals it because they think I’m a goner. I don’t want to have to start from scratch again.
Right now my bladder is full, so I scoot out from behind New. The air is cool on my bare legs, but not freezing. Like they said I guess, only in the dead winter does it get chilly. I miss their warmth already.
My feet pad against the wooden floor, dusty and worn. There are huge dents where things have been dragged across it; maybe this used to be a storage shed. That’d make sense. It’s a little building, on stilts so it sits in among the mangro
ves. They go on forever.
I pee into their little toilet, a bucket with a lid that’s behind a tiny screen, and then sit at the door and look out into the forest. I dunno how they can live here alone, anything could be out there. Especially with no door, someone could just barge in.
The ocean is calmer than she was, but she’s still angry. There are clouds, drizzle; the storm hasn’t resumed yet. She’s waiting.
I hear them stir behind me and I turn.
“Can’t sleep?” they say.
“Wondering how you live out here by yourself,” I say. “You’re pretty trusting.”
They get out of bed and bring the doona, wrapping it around the both of us as they sit beside me.
“Dunno how you can sleep in that big pipe with everyone else. Isn’t that kinda the same thing?”
“Well, I mean, I’m in my boat. I put the cover up.”
“Can’t anyone get through the cover though? How many people do you sleep near?”
In the little harbours inside the pipes there are dozens of people, I don’t know how many. Heaps.
“I guess.”
“It’s all dangerous,” they say. “With people or without ‘em. Somethin’s gonna get us in the end.” They smile at me. The scar catches their smile. I wonder how it happened. I wonder if they wonder about fingers and toes that are gone, or why I can only hear out of one ear.
“True.”
They lean their head on my shoulder.
“Is this okay?”
“Sure, New.”
“Sure.”
I take their hand; their warm fingers wrap around mine. They squeeze gently. They must miss human contact just as much as I do.
We go back to bed, and this time I wrap an arm around them. I can feel their heartbeat.
“You fish?” they ask, peering out at the sky. It’s the darkest morning grey I’ve seen and it hasn’t stopped raining since the muffled sun came up.
“Yeah. Not much else to do in the pipes if you’re not retail.”
“You superstitious?”
I snort. “I’m a fisher. Of course I am.” I trace the stormlines on my arms.
“Look at the sky.”
“I am. It’s not a good sign. Do you have a bowl?”
They nod. “Have to keep it inside, otherwise it’ll blow away.”
“Anything we can do? I don’t want to die in this shack.”
“This shack’s survived quite a bit,” they say, and I think they’re a little hurt, though they’re pretending not to be. “Though we should probably board it up. Almost did yesterday, but that storm caught me out.”
“She looks angry,” I say. New doesn’t ask if I’m referring to the sea or the sky, but I think they know it’s both.
We spend the morning tying down everything outside, and putting extra tethers on the boats. Mine is more than half sunk by now, which might be better for it if the storm is bad.
Once we strap on the window covers, the last thing to do is the door. Before we do that, they prepare the bowl and I get the dried flowers, start arranging them. They cut the jerky, and then I hold the incense while they light it. They wave the bowl across the porch, showing her what we’re doing, and then they bring it inside. We put it in the northernmost corner, and then we strap the door cover on.
“I hope this doesn’t last too long,” they say. “I was counting on a market day soon; we might run out of food.”
“Oh. I won’t eat too much.” I trace the whale dotted along the inside of my arm. When I first arrived at the pipes, I would see whales all the time. Now, not so much.
“You’re skin and bones,” they say.
“Like you can talk.”
“I don’t know your name.”
This takes me aback. I’ve forgotten the last time I met someone, must’ve been when the Chua family moved in a while back.
“I’m Marling. Ve pronouns.”
“Is that a fish?” They laugh. “I use they, by the way.”
“Marlin is a fish.” I grin. I have one of those drawn on my thigh.
“Well, that’s a bit fitting. Marling, the fisherperson.”
“That’s me.”
“Why were you out alone?” New asks, not quite looking at me. They’re probably not sure if they should.
“I am alone,” I say, unsure how to word it. My family died; I don’t really have any friends in the pipes. I know Zaid, everyone by name, but I am alone.
“Right. Why were you out in the storm, Marling?”
“I didn’t mean to be. You know how the ocean is.”
“Not really. I technically live on it, but I don’t think it’s nearly the same in the mangrove swamp as it is where you’re from. There used to be no water when the tide went out. That was a couple of years ago, now there’s always water underneath. I’m glad the people who built the house put it on stilts.”
“Zaid, the old guy who I thought knew the sea best, he told me it would be okay to go fishing that day,” I say. “A lot of people were out. The storm was so sudden. I went fishing further than I should, because the seas around the pipes are getting emptier. I was out near Seal Rock. I’ve never been there before. There used to be real seals there, until people killed them all for food. I never saw any.”
“I guess that’s how I got stuck too. I thought it would be okay.”
“Why were you alone?”
“You know how the ocean is.” Their voice is sad, but we both smile.
Last night, we cooked the food over a fire on the balcony. Today, we can’t go out there because everything will blow away. The house shakes, the covers on the windows and the doors rattle, and though there is a skylight on the roof, it’s muffled and grey inside from the cloud cover.
“Hey, check this out,” New says, their face brightening. They open a cupboard and pull out a gas bottle. It’s tiny and battered, but it’s a real gas bottle.
“How did you get that?” I ask. “I haven’t seen one of those since … I don’t even know when.”
“The market. Peony is there. She’s the one with the maps, so I can take you to her once it’s safe. Her knowledge comes at a price, and she’s not cheap.”
“I don’t have anything.”
New sets the gas bottle up, attaches a tube to what looks like it might be a gas burner, and then passes me a matchbox.
“You wanna do the honours?”
I look at the red box in my hands. I can’t believe it. I strike the match, the sulphur rising straight to my nose. I remember the smell of fire in the desert at night, the flames reaching up to the inky black sky. Now, in the tiny shack, it is a small orange flicker that turns the gas blue.
New puts on a pot of water, and I light a candle before blowing out the match. The other three candles I light with the first, sharing the flames. The cabin is bathed in the warm glow, and then the wind picks up. It shakes the cabin, rattles everything. I feel like the roof could blow off at any second.
“It’s okay,” they say. “We’ve been through many storms and nothing’s happened. I checked the nails and everything a few days ago. We’ll make it through.”
I’ve never been in an ocean storm in a house before. In the pipes it’s different, the sound of the waves echoes and whistles. We have to go to higher levels. But we’re okay. Nothing rattles, everything is metal and concrete. Here I feel exposed, although I know we’re not.
New cooks up some rice. We eat it with some dried seaweed and that’s all. It’s chewy, but it’s good. It’s nice to have two proper meals two days in a row.
When we lie beside each other that night, New falls asleep almost instantly. I stay awake, listening to the shack shake around us and the sound of the ocean. Is she angry because she can’t get to me? Or because she knows I have more than just her now?
Eventually I drift off.
“The way to the market isn’t too tricky,” New says, a few days later when we’re almost out of food and the sky is clear. “We’ll take my boat. Yours is too wide for the
paths we’ll need to follow.”
They never wear shoes, and their feet have become wide and flat. I usually have my gumboots, and now that I’ve been stranded out in the mangroves, they’re all I have. If Peony can give me a map, then maybe I can find my way back. If everyone hasn’t stolen my stuff, because they all think I’m dead.
“They say Peony’s wife Sanaa travelled the whole globe to try to find land,” New says as they unmoor their boat from under the shack. “I dunno if it’s true. But if she’s there, you’ll see. She looks like she’s been everywhere. Kinda like you, ‘cept older.”
“Do you go to the market a lot? Is that where you get all your food?”
New starts to paddle the boat through the water. Deeper into the mangroves.
“Yeah. Can’t really grow much out here. Need more soil. Peony and Sanaa have a bit of land that they use to grow food, and a kind of rice than can grow in saltier water. Not as salty as the sea, but still.”
“And fish? Do you ever fish?”
“I don’t.”
“Do you know how?”
“Not really, no.”
“What if we do a trade? I teach you how to fish, and you get me the map from Sanaa.”
New considers it for a moment. Fishing can be dangerous, especially if you’re on your own, but it would save them a lot in trading. They could even get more fish and trade them for something.
“Deal.”
We shake on it. My hands are rough compared to theirs; mine are covered in scars and burns and I’ve got chunks missing. Theirs are softer, maybe more dexterous than mine.
The storm means some mangroves are bent and broken, and we have to clear the path a few times. Sometimes New stops rowing and just uses their hands to pull us through the water. We pass a cabin like New’s, and this one is abandoned. It doesn’t look too decrepit. New doesn’t mention it as we pass.
The sky is dark, but I don’t think it’s going to storm again. Right after I have this thought, my stomach plummets. I don’t know anything about the sea any more. We could be in danger right now; we could soon be impaled on the trees, on their roots that stick up through the sand.
