The First Voyage

by Allan Baillie

  We don’t say anything and just keep paddling.

  Burnt Earth looks at the air touching the water ahead and watches it for a long time. ‘Hum . . .’

  Well, he is dim most of the time.

  ‘Yes?’ Old Tortoise says.

  He says, ‘Could we watch the water and the breeze?’

  Old Tortoise looks at him.

  ‘Most of the time the breeze is coming from there.’ Burnt Earth points away from the rafts. ‘It is like on Bird Island. Maybe all we have to do is keep the breeze on the right side of our faces?’

  Old Tortoise frowns at him and then he shrugs. ‘Maybe. We can try it.’

  I mutter, ‘If we find that we are paddling towards the setting sun then his idea stinks . . .’

  Something, something . . .

  I am the only paddler on the raft on this quiet night. I can’t remember how many shifts with these paddles I have done, but something has happened.

  I can feel the bamboos rising and clicking under my buttocks as the quiet sea rolls into the raft. I look at the sky, a sweep of stars stretching from the sea to the big moon. I can see Eagle Eye’s star in the flare of the stars. Eagle Eye spent many hours staring at the night sky when he was on Bird Island, so he knows that little star does not change. So I paddle the raft towards it, keeping the breeze on the right side of my face, and the movement of the sea agrees with the star. There is nothing to worry about.

  But what about the others?

  I turn and see the four rafts tracking obediently, one paddler for each raft while the rest of them sleep . . .

  Oh.

  A single eye of Fast Fish is staring at me. But it looks dead, like a mullet’s eye when it gets washed up on a beach.

  I close my eyes. There is that feeling. I think, He has died.

  ‘What . . .’ A cough and a dry spit. And Fast Fish is lifting his head. His face is marked on the side where he has slept on the bamboos. He blinks a little and focuses on me.

  He is alive! I grin and open my mouth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he says quickly.

  ‘I was going to tell everyone that you have woken up.’

  He shakes his head slowly. ‘No, leave them alone.’ He sees that Moonlight is asleep at his legs and he looks around without moving her. ‘I can’t see anything. Where is the island?’

  I point into the dark.

  ‘There is nothing there.’

  ‘Bird Island was gone on the first night.’

  ‘Oh. And you are paddling towards . . .?’

  ‘There is a little star . . . There.’

  ‘One of Eagle Eye’s stars? And you are leading all the Yams.’

  ‘Hum . . .’

  ‘When the sun comes up will we see Eagle Eye’s place?’

  ‘Hum.’ I think, I just want to see the sun come up where I am pointing the raft. I hope that Eagle Eye’s star and Burnt Earth’s breeze are working – even Burnt Earth’s breeze. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘When the sun set yesterday, you didn’t see the place. Right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. So I know where I am.’ Fast Fish lowers his head on the bamboo and closes his eyes.

  I stare at him and wonder if I dreamt of Fast Fish. Now he is lying there, maybe dead. But no, Fast Fish’s head has moved. ‘Um, do you want a drink of water?’

  ‘Later.’

  I nod and concentrate on the paddling. Fast Fish is all right and I have a grin all over my face.

  I move the raft slowly towards the little star, but then the star fades. The sky is washed by a light grey and the horizon is picked out, the sky beginning to erupt into a red blaze. And I see that the raft is pointing towards the lip of the sun.

  ‘Yes!’ I hiss.

  ‘What? You can see it?’ Fast Fish jerks up.

  ‘Sorry . . .’

  Moonlight looks at Fast Fish fuzzily, and pulls herself up from his legs. ‘Hey! You have come back!’ And she grabs him.

  Eagle Eye rolls over. ‘What?’ Then he sees Fast Fish and slaps his thighs. ‘Good! Good!’ He stands up and puts his hands before his mouth. ‘He is all right!’ he shouts.

  There is a dull moment of silence around the rafts, then the tribe whoop and bang their hands on the bamboo. Waterlily creeps up to Fast Fish and touches him as if she doesn’t believe that he is real.

  Eagle Eye grins at Fast Fish. ‘You bring us luck.’ He turns back. ‘Before, we had nothing but bad days with the Crocodiles and not enough food, but now we will get good days.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Fast Fish mutters.

  ‘We will.’

  Old Tortoise puts half a mussel on his hook and lowers it carefully into the water.

  Moonlight takes the mussel shell to get water from the carrier to Fast Fish. ‘We should celebrate. Brown Moss, crack a coconut for us.’ Eagle Eye nods at me. ‘You can stop paddling now.’

  I roll away from the edge of the raft, slap the paddle on the bamboo and rub my sore arm muscles. The Wind and Burnt Earth take over.

  ‘Green or hairy?’ Brown Moss says.

  ‘Hairy,’ Eagle Eye says.

  I smile a little. Hairy is better. A young green coconut will have the sweet water, but that is it. But if it has had time, it will flake off the green coating to show the hairy husk, and some of the sweet water will have become white meat. Lovely.

  I watch Brown Moss select a coconut from the box and look around for something to open it with. Burnt Earth offers her Fast Fish’s axe; she takes it and examines the edges of the stone.

  Now I am inside Brown Moss’s head. She is not going to crack that coconut, not like cracking a turtle. She wants the milk as well as the flesh and the axe won’t do it. I remember my Crocodile spear, so I grab it and pass it to her. She looks at the spearhead and nods at me. She is in my head.

  I stand up and she has the spearhead on one of the three black eyes of the coconut. She holds the coconut while I turn the shaft.

  But she soon shakes her head quickly. ‘Not this one.’

  I know that almost the moment I turn the shaft. I stop and she moves the spearhead to one of the other eyes.

  ‘Wait.’ Fast Fish holds up his hand and looks at Eagle Eye. ‘What do you think? Is it going to be there or the other one?’

  ‘What? I don’t know.’

  ‘What? This is the Elder who knows the way across the ocean?’ Fast Fish wobbles his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, all right. It will be there, where the spearhead is.’

  ‘It will not be. You will see.’ Fast Fish ripples his fingers to me.

  I turn the shaft and the spearhead twists on the black eye.

  ‘No.’ Brown Moss says.

  ‘See?’ Fast Fish says with a nod. ‘You haven’t got an eye any more.’

  Eagle Eye shrugs as Brown Moss puts the spearhead on the last black eye. I can feel it grinding into the coconut’s single seed and I begin to grin, but I see Eagle Eye’s strained face and wipe the grin from my face. I leave Brown Moss to tell it.

  She looks at Eagle Eye. ‘He had it.’

  ‘Always,’ Fast Fish says.

  Eagle Eye nods and slowly smiles. ‘You have the spirits in with you.’

  ‘Always.’

  The Wind and Burnt Earth are holding their branches above the water.

  Eagle Eye sees them. ‘Who knows? His spirits may rub off on you two.’ He points at the sun. ‘That is the way.’

  They hurry with their branches as Brown Moss passes the coconut to Fast Fish. He wipes the hole, then he lifts the coconut towards Eagle Eye and says, ‘Hoping that you are right.’ And he gulps the clear, sweet coconut water.

  And then he stops, closes his eyes for a moment and passes it to Eagle Eye with a light smile. ‘Just a wish.’

  Eagle Eye takes the coconut, looks at it and at him. Then he slowly shakes his head. ‘No. I know that there is a land out there. The birds know.’ Then he nods as he lifts the coconut. ‘But . . . I wish that we find the land soon.’

  Ol
d Tortoise pulls up his hook. The half mussel is gone.

  The third day on the voyage, Old Tortoise uses Fast Fish’s axe to shatter the hairy coconut after everyone has drunk all of the coconut water. We all grab a piece of the dark skin with white flesh. I like this part more than the coconut water, especially gnawing the flesh from the skin. We drink from the water carrier often, but just sipping.

  Fast Fish takes my spear, examines it and rubs his finger over the spearhead. ‘So that got me . . .’

  ‘That wasn’t the one that hit you,’ I say.

  ‘I mean that the spearhead . . .’ He looks sharply at me. ‘You think that I want to try to take it away from you? Take it away.’ He throws it at me.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Ahh.’ Fast Fish turns away and throws himself into the water. He washes himself and drifts away from the raft.

  Moonlight starts to call him, and The Wind and Burnt Earth stop paddling, but Eagle Eye says ‘No,’ quietly, and waves them on.

  Fast Fish drifts slowly away from us, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I watch his face but it is blank, as if he is thinking but doesn’t like the thought. Finally, he looks at the raft and he begins to swim, but he slows down, his face showing pain.

  Moonlight stands up and is about to jump into the water to help him, but Eagle Eye catches her arm. ‘He wouldn’t want you to help him.’ She remains on the raft but she stares at Fast Fish.

  He battles on for a while and then he sees that the second raft is very close to him and swims to it. Two hunters help him to get onto the raft, and then the paddlers move it over to our raft. He steps from raft to raft with annoyance on his face.

  After he sits down, he looks around and sees that everybody is peering at him. ‘What? I was having trouble with the spear wound. But it is all right now, go away.’

  I put the spear next to Fast Fish but don’t say anything.

  * * *

  The fourth day of the voyage, Burnt Earth cries out, ‘Turtle!’

  Fast Fish leaps up with the spear. ‘Where?’

  Burnt Earth points at a green stone moving away from the raft.

  Fast Fish hefts the spear. ‘This spear is a boulder, nothing to balance it. Get the raft close. Careful.’

  Burnt Earth and Moonlight paddle the raft quietly towards the green stone.

  Now I can see the green patterns of one flipper underwater. The patterns look like the shadows in the water. Then I see the head just below the waves.

  I whisper, ‘It is a Green Turtle.’

  Fast Fish says, ‘Shut up.’

  I think, It probably came from the Bird Island, like us. Wonder where it is going . . . Doesn’t matter.

  I watch Fast Fish lift the spear and make the spearhead still. He has to get the head to kill it; otherwise it will dive with the spear. But I don’t want this turtle. It is all right when a turtle is cooked with coals around it, but this is raw meat . . .

  ‘Ah . . .’ Eagle Eye says.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘There is a shark . . .’

  Fast Fish throws the spear but the turtle jerks his head sideways. The spear skids on its green scalp and hits the water. But maybe the turtle didn’t feel the spear, maybe it didn’t know that this is a raft here – but it doesn’t matter now, its eyes have found the shark’s fin. It dives quickly and the fin disappears too.

  Angrily, Fast Fish turns to Eagle Eye. ‘I was getting that one, but you had to butt in!’

  ‘You needed to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You might have thrown yourself at the turtle, to get more power in the spear.’

  ‘Well I didn’t, did I?’

  ‘But you might have. And if you got the turtle how would we pull the turtle on the raft when the shark would be tearing at it?’

  ‘We would have beaten it.’

  I pull the spear from the water and give it to Fast Fish.

  ‘We will never know.’ Eagle Eye turns away from him and shouts to the other rafts. ‘There is a shark here. Shark! Watch it.’

  Fast Fish thuds the spear into the bamboo. ‘I had it in my hands! Out there, you might think about that . . .’

  * * *

  On the fifth day of the voyage, the water in the carrier is getting low, and when I see small showers a long way away, my mouth feels dry. I think the showers look like vines hanging from a giant tree waving with the wind.

  ‘Why don’t they come over here?’ Burnt Earth mutters.

  ‘Because you are ugly and they are frightened to get close,’ I say, paddling.

  ‘Very funny.’

  He looks at the food bin. The water carrier is covered with palm leaves, but I know that it is getting lower now; Brown Moss has been putting back the green coconuts after they have been drunk so they can hold any water from rain.

  Burnt Earth turns back and glares at the light shower that wafts across the water. ‘Oh, look, let’s see if we can catch it.’

  ‘That?’ It looks a long way away.

  ‘It’s on the right way. Come on.’ Burnt Earth pushes his paddle into the water and his back arches.

  I sigh then but I hurl my body forward to get the paddle working. We get the raft almost surfing on the low waves.

  Eagle Eye wakes, sees what we are doing, and says, ‘Mad boys.’

  But Old Tortoise smiles and gets one of the two branches in the food box and begins to paddle. The Wind takes the last branch and joins the paddlers.

  Fast Fish shakes his head and looks at the other side, as though he is trying to see the Island. ‘Birds,’ he says.

  I swing around and see them flying high, probably from the island, and see Eagle Eye’s face with the beginning of a smile.

  ‘Come on, come on, we are getting there!’ Burnt Earth shouts at me.

  We heave our branches into the water and look at the shower. And it looks closer – or our eyes are dreaming a little . . .

  But Fast Fish frowns at the shower. ‘The boy is right. It is sliding to us.’ He tries to find a paddle, and when he can’t find one he grabs the paddle from The Wind and paddles furiously. The Wind looks at her hands and me, as if I should be saying something to him. I hang my head and concentrate on the paddling.

  The flight of the birds comes across the rafts like a fast cloud. The birds seem to move a little to the right, and then they fly like a spear towards the shower. The birds seem to slow down as they approach the rain’s shadow, then they are part of the shower for a long moment. And then they are out and their wings flash from the sun as they fly towards the horizon.

  ‘Smart birds,’ Eagle Eye says.

  ‘They’re damn birds!’ Fast Fish snaps and then heaves, gasps and stops paddling.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Moonlight hisses in alarm.

  He puts the branch back in the water and tries to work it but his face is showing the pain. The Wind moves towards him but Eagle Eye slides between them, takes the branch from his hands and says: ‘My turn.’

  I watch Fast Fish look away and move sideways. When Moonlight starts to go to him he shakes his head, but his hand is on the spear wound.

  ‘Look, look! It’s coming!’ Burnt Earth shouts.

  I see the shadow sliding across the water – as if the flight of the birds has kicked the shower towards the rafts. Brown Moss moves palm leaves from the water carrier to funnel the rain to it, opens the carrier wide and places the empty coconuts around it. Then there is a huge cool breeze wafting over the raft, and everyone sits up to feel it. And then I feel a cold droplet on my face.

  ‘All right, take it easy,’ Eagle Eye says, and stops paddling.

  A shadow spreads over the rafts, and everyone opens their hands to catch the light rain. Brown Moss and The Wind hold the coconuts on the carrier as they tilt their faces and open their mouths. I cup both hands over my face, try to be like a big fish gulping. Fast Fish stands up and washes himself with his hands, and Moonlight cleans his wound.

  Waterlily is standing and spi
nning around with her arms straight, and the others on the rafts are also dancing.

  I join them and then I see The Wind crouching around the coconuts and feel guilty. I move to her. ‘I can take over.’

  She looks up in surprise.

  ‘You could wash the salt off . . .’ I say.

  She blinks at me for a moment before slowly nodding and begins to get up – but the rain dies to a sprinkle, and then nothing.

  It is the sixth day on the voyage and the branches are losing their leaves. The paddling continues but the branches are now weakening in the water and the paddlers have to work harder to move the rafts – apart from with the flat branch. And that is giving us trouble.

  Because the flat branch moves the raft far better than the branches with leaves, we were wandering around the sea, until we worked it out: the paddler with the flat branch has to sit half the length of the raft away from the other paddler with branch leaves, or paddle slowly. Some of the rafts are worse though, with nothing but branch leaves.

  Burnt Earth says, ‘Sorry, I should have looked around for better branches like the flat one.’

  Eagle Eye shrugs. ‘We didn’t have the time. Now we’re almost there.’

  ‘Maybe the next day?’ Old Tortoise says.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ Eagle Eye glances at the almost-empty food box. He wanders about the raft, feeling the small bamboos in the food box and the strands and vines that keep the big bamboos together on the raft.

  I wonder if he is looking for something that could be used as a paddle, but the small bamboos on the food box are too short, and the ones we sit on are too long.

  Eagle Eye looks up. ‘We need to tighten the vines. They are getting loose with the waves.’

  We work on the vines with a bamboo sliver, tightening them so hard that the bamboo creaks. Eagle Eye yells to the other rafts to do what we have done, but I think that they look annoyed, as if they wouldn’t be so sloppy with their rafts.

  Fast Fish looks at Old Tortoise dropping his hook in the water and he turns to the food box. ‘You’re feeding the fish more than us.’

  ‘I almost got one before,’ Old Tortoise mumbles.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Eagle Eye says. ‘We need fish.’