Ocean's Trial

by Carlton, Demelza

  I shook my head. "How will we get back? Beating against the wind? Better to try Fish Rocks, near Robbs Jetty. They must've gotten their name somehow."

  He nodded and gave me two thumbs up and together, we turned the little boat to run with the wind. We almost ended on top of the rocks, if it hadn't been for my shout, and we quickly dropped anchor in the lee of the rocks. Not that they offered much shelter from the waves – more insurance that the waves didn't make us drag our anchor and run aground.

  "Now we bait up and wait!" Out came a bucket of low-grade whiting, rods, lines and hooks. In the dim light from the lantern hooked to the mast, we baited up the lines and cast them out. Four rods in total – two each, he told me, so we always had a line in the water, even when we were reeling in a catch.

  I didn't laugh at his optimism. I'd already seen dolphins popping up for a breath before ducking under again, so I knew the fish were still below us. Enticing them to the hooks was his area of expertise.

  It seemed like no time at all before first one of his rods, then the other were bending under the weight of a hooked fish. I helped reel one in as he fought the other and both sizeable snapper were soon swimming in the seawater well in the middle of the boat. Another and another and another...the fish seemed never-ending, until my arms ached from fighting the snapper aboard. Tony seemed to tire, too as the snapper school in the well looked as dense as they had in the water around the rocks.

  One by one, he stopped re-baiting the hooks when we caught fish, until all four were out of the water. "Hungry?" he asked, pulling a basket from under the bench he'd been sitting on. We shared sandwiches and hot coffee in silence, lulled by the waves rocking the boat. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was back in the Trevessa's lifeboat, waiting for rescue and wishing William was with me. Faintly, I heard the memory of the song I'd given voice to in order to help my mind to sleep.

  But I wasn't alone tonight. I had Tony.

  Didn't I owe it to my heart and happiness to let another man into my life?

  My eyes flew open and I regarded Tony's relaxed body stretched out across the bench for all the world as if he was asleep. But he'd just had two cups of tar-black coffee – he couldn't be sleeping! He inhaled in a great, ripping snore.

  "He is only a man. While he sleeps, seduce him as you should. Mount him and make him give you his seed. Then you can return home with me and take your place among us again. No one will notice another boat surrendering to the sea in this storm."

  The faint singing had ceased and I knew now it was no memory. "He is a man, but he is also my friend. The ocean will not have him!"

  Mother rested her arms on the gunwale, cocking her head to the side. "You think you can protect him? Protect all of them from the ocean's gift?"

  I clenched my fists and stepped in front of him. "I will try. I will certainly protect him from you. They are not our people, but they love as powerfully as we do. Because they are land-bound, does that make them less than we? They are more numerous and I have heard tales of ships that dive beneath the waves. They will find us, Mother, and we may not survive the battle. Better to slip among them, as invisible as a jellyfish, and take what we need without death. Better that we work with them to protect secrets we hope they never discover. Do not give them reason to hate us, for they will hunt us as they did in the days of dragons and it is we who will not survive this time. Have you forgotten what they did to Duyong?"

  Mother's eyes widened. "I carried your sister's corpse into the depths myself. I do not forget –"

  "Nor forgive," I finished for her. "Some of them do not forgive or forget, either, Mother. And some deserve life. They need to be protected from us as much as we do from them."

  "If you wish to protect them, then you must lead the Elder Council," Mother insisted. "And you shall never take your place until you obey!"

  "You could do it," I replied. "You lead the Council. You are its Facilitator and you could persuade them to..."

  "To what? Teach children how to be human? Not to kill? To regard them as kin and not disposable breeding partners? I haven't the heart for such a battle. Especially not after they stole my chosen heir and left me with a disobedient child with a voice so powerful she cannot control it!"

  I glared at her. "I am no child. And I disobey because you are wrong. I will not give the ocean another man for you or for any of the Council. Even this one you cannot have!" I raised my voice in song, for the first time since I'd arrived on land. Mother might have serenaded Tony to sleep, but I could rouse him. Even as her ethereal tune harmonised with mine, fighting to keep him unconscious so she could persuade or threaten me for longer, his eyelids fluttered.

  For the first time, I saw fear in my mother's eyes. "Come and find me when you find a man you would conquer the ocean to protect. You cannot swim from it. You will be the Elder of the Gold line, and rule the Council as your mother and grandmother before you." She flipped her tail and dived like a humpback whale headed for the ocean floor.

  Tony yawned and sat up. "Sorry, I didn't mean to doze off. Was I out for long?"

  I shook my head, peering east across the land to see the faint streaks of pink on the lowest clouds. "It'll be dawn soon. Shall we take our catch home?"

  Twelve

  Tony stared thoughtfully at the well, where the teeming pink fish matched the dawn-tinted clouds above. "How did we catch so many fish? I don't think I've ever caught this many snapper in a night, not with a full crew and a full night's work!"

  I shrugged. "The storm made them crazy."

  "Let's stop off at the fish markets and see if we can put some of these on ice or something. There's no way we can take all of these home – not even with my family. Pity the markets aren't open today – we were the only ones crazy enough to go out last night."

  Us and Mother, I thought but didn't say, as I guided us into the fishing boat harbour. A small huddle of people stood on the jetty, watching us as we tied up. I recognised some of the local restaurant and café owners – our first customers of the day, most days. Not today – the markets were closed.

  The only fish to be had were swimming inches from my toes, in the well of our boat.

  "Tony," I said softly. "What about selling them? We're here at the markets. Those are our usual customers. It's not like anyone else is here with fish to sell..."

  As if to illustrate my point, Mrs Davis called out, "What's the catch this morning, Basile? And why aren't the markets open yet?"

  "Beauty pink snapper, a shilling a pound! The other boys didn't want to get their feet wet, so they're all curled up at home, out of the storm. These are the only fish for sale at the markets today!" Tony shouted back.

  Mrs Davis frowned. "But they were only nine pence a pound yesterday. That's robbery, Basile, and no mistake."

  I counted the fish while the two haggled, with help from some of the other customers. I counted twice, but both times I came up with more than fifty fish. Most were easily twenty pounds – some were even bigger than that. A little more complicated numbers work told me our combined catch was worth close to fifty pounds, even at yesterday's prices – a fortune for a day's work.

  "Ten pence a pound!" I thundered, leaping onto the jetty. "But once it's gone, there'll be no fish before Monday. Get in quick!"

  If business had been brisk yesterday, it blew by in a fresh gale this morning. As the sun rose, Tony and I scooped fish from the well, weighed them and counted coins. By ten, we were down to the last few fish and they were increasingly hard to catch.

  "I'll just take the money inside to count it on the table," Tony said, stepping easily onto the jetty and making for the market building. I used his absence to sing the fish quietly within my reach so that I could catch them without having to get right down into the well. I killed them quickly, not wanting to prolong their pain.

  Tony returned, wearing a stunned smile.

  "How much?" I asked.

  "Sixty-two pounds, fifteen shillings and sixpence."

 
It was more money than I owned – all my savings from my meagre pay to fund my search for William. I grinned. "Your dad will be thrilled. Maybe I can go fishing with you again."

  He snorted. "These aren't Dad's fish – nor anyone else's, either. Half of this belongs to you. You risked your life for this catch, too." I realised now that he held not one money bag, but two – and he handed one to me. My jaw dropped. "I'm going to get a second-hand motorbike and take it to the races at Ascot with my share. One of the guys up the road is selling one and I think I'll have just enough. What about you?"

  A motorcycle? I'd seen them speed past me as I rode my bicycle home in the afternoons. I wanted to feel that kind of speed and power between my legs. If I stayed here and gave up my search for William, I'd have enough for one of the powerful vehicles. If I lived on land for the rest of my life, that could be normal for me...

  "I'm sorry. You must be exhausted. I'm used to fishing all night, but you're not. I should take you home, Maria."

  I shook the strange thoughts from my head. "You're probably right."

  We cast off and edged around the breakwater and South Mole, into the harbour proper. The going was choppier than the open sea, with the swirling floodwaters meeting the wind-driven swell from the Indian Ocean, but we sailed slowly through the port, waiting for a particularly wide barge to pass beneath the rail bridge before we took our turn. I stared up at the old bridge – built by convicts in the previous century, I'd been told – as a train thundered across it. The bridge creaked ominously and I glanced at the foundations. The floodwaters had swept away most of the bank now – and the timbers visibly sagged as the train gained the northern bank.

  The barge had moved and it was our turn to sail beneath the bridge. I looked up and my blood ran cold. A massive crack in the beam above no longer looked like the harmless fault Captain Henderson had described yesterday. Even as I watched, the bridge bowed down to meet us. Tons of timber and steel, coming to kill us. Mother and the ocean hadn't done the job – but she'd left this death trap waiting for me to return home, just in case.

  My mind whirled with calculations no human mind could compute – for no human had been trained since childhood to respect the fluid dynamics of current, wind and wave as water flowed over bank and bed. We had only minutes before the water won and this bridge would fall. I couldn't save it. But perhaps I could save some of them.

  High up on the northern bank, Captain Henderson and a crew of fettlers carried tools to repair the bridge. Around twenty feet before the bridge started, one of them kicked a stone. The rock careened down the slope, bringing a shower of soil down with it. That was all it took. The crack widened further and for the first time in my life, I screamed in fear.

  Thirteen

  I shoved the tiller hard, sending us toward the bank as soon as we were out from under the bridge.

  "What are you doing?" Tony hissed as the boat heeled over dangerously.

  Captain Henderson and his crew stared at me, just as I'd hoped, so I sucked in a breath and shouted, "Don't let your men on the bridge. It's ready to collapse." I pointed a shaking hand at the beam and he slipped and slid down the bank to get closer to us so he could see what I was pointing at. His face paled when he saw that I was right. As if to illustrate my point more clearly, a huge chunk of stone fell away from the embankment, splashing into the river and sending our boat rocking.

  "Get everyone clear of the bridge. Someone run up to North Fremantle Station and stop the next train from leaving. I'm going to get the engineers on the Reliance and we'll –"

  Henderson was drowned out by a tortured scream. The sound a thousand-year-old jarrah tree might have made, knowing it was going to be hacked to pieces and cast into the hell Merry's church priest talked about. Or a beam from that same tree ripping apart under the stresses of storm, flood and too much weight over the bridge built on top of it.

  A gust of wind carried the smell of coal smoke from a steam engine, concentrating as it came closer. I turned and saw a freight train steaming along the track on the south bank of the harbour – headed right for the groaning bridge.

  Henderson continued pointing and shouting at people on the far bank, but the wind whirled his voice away upriver, where no one could help halt the approaching train. If the train touched the bridge, the whole structure would collapse.

  "Tony, we have to get to the dock on the south bank. Now!" I insisted. He followed my gaze to the doomed train and nodded, yanking on a rope so hard a weaker strand would have broken.

  We made it to the middle of the river before the sound of groaning timber and stone splashing into the water drowned out all other sound. The northern end of the bridge tore away from the bank and toppled into the swirling waters below, where we'd been floating in the Star only moments before. The structure seemed to float for a few seconds, before sinking beneath the muddy waves.

  A plank bobbed to the surface, perhaps thirty feet downstream, which was quickly carried toward the ocean and out of sight. Glancing up, I saw that the freight train had miraculously stopped of its own accord. The driver hung out of his window, talking to a flagman. Both were gawking and pointing at the bridge that almost claimed his life. And mine.

  Shaking and numb, I helped Tony tie up at the dock. In yet another first, I allowed him to assist me out of the boat. He pushed his way through the crowd of sightseers – armed with cameras again, as if they knew what was going to happen. But they couldn't have, I reasoned. If anyone had known, that last train would never have crossed the bridge. I followed close behind him.

  A resounding crash of steel on stone made me flinch, followed by a second. Tony turned his head to look, but I kept my eyes firmly on Merry's house ahead. "What was it?" I asked dully.

  "The fettlers' sheds. Where they keep their tools for fixing the bridge. Kept, now they're gone. All washed down the river to the sea now." He laughed. "Maybe the fish will fix it and use it on the seabed."

  I smiled wanly at his joke and continued trudging up the hill. If I stopped, I'd fall to the ground and cry.

  Merry stood on the veranda, but she was so intent on the bridge that she barely noticed us until we stood beside her. "Oh, my," she cried. "You've just missed the most horrifying thing I've seen all year. The rail bridge collapsed!"

  Tony grimaced. "We know. We were the last boat to ever sail under it. It came down just after we were through."

  Merry dragged her eyes from the bridge to us, concern in every muscle. "Are you all right? Are you hurt? Oh, I hope no one was hurt. A train had just steamed across the bridge, too – I heard it just before all the screeching."

  "No, we're fine. The bridge missed us and there was no one on it when it broke."

  My mouth was too dry to speak, so I just nodded slowly as Tony told the story.

  "It's a miracle no one was hurt!" Merry insisted. Her hand fluttered over her heart.

  Tony glanced at me. "No, not a miracle at all. It was her." He jerked his thumb at me. "While we were under the bridge, she saw the damage and told one of the rail workers up the top. They had time to stop the trains and get everyone off the bridge before it fell. And then Maria insisted we had to come to the dock. If we'd stayed where we were, the whole bridge would've come down on the Star and smashed it like so much kindling..."

  "I'll go make some tea, shall I?" Merry said, not waiting for an answer. I followed her inside, but Tony stayed on the veranda, watching the disaster unfold further.

  Instead of helping her, like the vague voice in my head said I should, I sank onto a kitchen chair. I wanted to be hugged and held and told that I was all right. Like William had. He would have warmed my heart with his reassurance as he warmed my body with his. Instead, Merry silently set a cup of tea on the table beside me and carried hers and Tony's out to the veranda.

  Neither of them had touched me. Both were kind, demonstrative people – I'd seen them hug and kiss others. But never me. It was as if a cold distance separated us.

  You're not one of them, my mo
ther's voice whispered in my memory.

  No, I wasn't. I was me. One of the people of the ocean's gift and I was a danger to the humans around me. The bridge would still be standing if it weren't for me. But had I left with Mother last night, people would have died. The fettlers. The people on the freight train. The avid photographers who even now were climbing over the dangerous remnants of the bridge.

  If I wanted to continue to help these people, I needed to choose one to mate with. To love. And the only one I wanted was William.

  A cheer rang out from the onlookers outside. I forced myself up from the chair and carried my tea out to the veranda. "What happened?" I asked.

  Merry glanced at me and smiled. "The signalmen are trying to keep the telegraph cables from falling into the river. They've rigged up new posts on each bank, but the soil keeps crumbling away, so they've had to move them back already and I think they'll have to do it again soon. One of them hung upside down from the bridge wreckage, like some sort of monkey, and managed to catch the cable just before a steel girder would have cut it in two. Remarkable."

  Another beam splashed into the water and two men began weaving an intricate web of rope around a precariously placed signal. A section of the bank dropped away beneath it, but the signal swung away into empty air – and the ropes held it suspended a few feet above the waves. More cheers erupted from the crowd by the dock.

  A clink close by attracted my attention. Tony laid my money bag in the tub on the old washstand, giving me a meaningful look. I nodded. He set his empty tea mug on the scored timber beside it. "I'd best be headed home. Mum will be annoyed if the neighbours hear about this before she does. How many of the snapper do you want?"

  I stared at him. Snapper? Then I remembered. "We still have yesterday's wahoo and the dhufish. You take them. Thank you to your family and especially your dad for letting us take the boat out."

  Tony nodded. "If it's all right with you, I'll leave the Star tied up at the dock for today. You'll keep an eye on her, won't you?"