Water and Fire (14 page)

The water was dark, as was the
island we approached, for the fishing season had not yet started. I
lifted my head and said the words in the humans' language, "Welcome
to the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, girls. They may be cursed, but for
a time they will also be home."

"The Abrolhos
is cursed, with murder, mutiny and lust," the pilot said suddenly,
as the mist on the water resolved into some very flat islands. The
tourists were glued to their windows, craning for a look. "On a
stormy night almost 400 years ago, the Dutch ship
Batavia
was sailing from
the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia in Indonesia. The lookout saw what
he thought was moonlight on the water, but it was foam of the
breakers on Morning Reef. The ship struck the reef just there..."
The pilot banked the plane as we passed the reef, so he could pass
over it again for the tourists on the other side of the plane. "You
can just see where the ship sank. The waves kept pushing that ship
until it carved a hole in the reef, where divers found it around 50
years ago...they brought the ship up and put it in the Museum in
Fremantle, leaving that blue boat-shaped hole in the
reef..."

The Abrolhos Air Charter pilot
continued, giving details about murders, mutiny, executions, and
some hero called Wiebbe Hayes, whose heroism seemed dependent on a
lot of luck. I wasn't clear on where mutiny came in, but the lust
involved either some women or the treasure that had been on the
ship. Maybe both.

I looked at
the little wave-shaped island where all the horrors had happened,
with a few buildings huddled together on it. A few weeks marooned
on that sandbar and I'd go mad, too.
I
hope Dean hasn't sent me to an even smaller pile of sand surrounded
by ocean. If he has, I'll report him for the Playboy centrefolds he
sticks on the ceiling of the ute, every time we leave
civilisation.

The plane
flew over a much larger island, with an orange gravel airstrip that
stood out against the white limestone and grey-green shrubs. There
were even fewer buildings on this island than tiny, wave-shaped
Beacon Island. At the northern end, a beautiful white beach
stretched its arms around blue-green water. A couple of yachts were
moored in the bay.
Wow, what I'd give to
be able to afford to do that. I wonder if my island has a beach
that good? I'll buy Dean a beer if it does.

The plane veered north now,
across multicoloured waters in blue and green between the brown
reefs, toward the island at the northern end of the Abrolhos.
"North Island approach..." the pilot intoned, turning sharply to
point the plane south.

North Island was a big sand
island, with a lake at the north. Houses were clustered in the
south east corner of the island. Coming in to land, I realised the
gravel airstrip looked really close and really, really short.

I didn't have time to panic
before the wheels touched the gravel, more gently than any jet
landing at an airport. The plane taxied up next to a rusted shed. A
plank was hanging on the front of it, which some comedian had
painted with the words, "North Island International Airport." A man
was standing beside the shed, next to a quad bike with a shiny
aluminium trailer. It had to be aluminium. Anything else would rust
in the salt.

One man unbuckled his seatbelt
and climbed out of the plane. The pilot helped the guy unload his
gear onto the gravel, before he got back in the plane and prepared
to take off again.

We took off south over the
buildings. I saw the two men load their gear into the quad bike
trailer before they headed through the dunes to the settlement. The
pilot started telling the tourists about the fishing industry, as
we left North Island and flew toward West Wallabi.

He flew low
over West Wallabi, telling us about how Weibbe Hayes had fought off
the mutineers from a building that you could still see on the
ground. I saw the outline of some square limestone walls as we flew
over. I shrugged. Old shipwrecks had little appeal to me.
They're all long dead now, whoever they were and
whatever they did.

The island gave way to ocean
again and I could see more inhabited islands, like squashed sea
urchins or some kind of exotic bacteria, with jetties sticking out
at all angles from the two islands. The pilot mentioned something
about pigeons and lobsters and I tuned out again.

I looked down
at the islands. These were covered in houses, almost as dense as
suburbs in the mainland. Would my island home be like that – with
neighbours that would complain every time I flushed the toilet or
played music
? I bet I'm next door to the
oldest, grumpiest fisherman. A bloke who hates the slightest noise,
but has his radio and TV on so loud I can hear the actors breathing
from next door. And his toilet will be closest to my place, so I
hear his every fart.

The islands
were gone and we were flying over ocean again, headed toward the
next group of islands. I had a map, but I couldn't remember the
name of the island I was landing on, or even the group.
Maybe it will come as a nice surprise. Maybe
there will be palm trees.
I crossed my
fingers for a nice white beach.

"Why is it called the Easter
Group?" one of the tourists asked into his headset.

"I dunno," the pilot said.

Probably the
explorers who named it had run out of names and they were here at
Easter, so they figured that would do.
I
looked out the window, to see if any of the islands were shaped
like sheep, rabbits or Easter eggs. Nope.

"That one is Rat Island and I
know why it's called that. Apparently it was infested with them."
The pilot sounded really pleased at this. "We'll be landing briefly
there to drop off one of the rock lobster fishers and then we'll
head out over the Pelsaert Group."

I looked
around and realised the fisher he was talking about was me.
Rat Island? Dean, you bastard, you've sent me to
an island infested with rats? I'm going to catch some and add those
to your swag on the first night…

"I'll show you where the
Zeewijk was wrecked in 1727. They built themselves a new boat out
of the wreckage and sailed it to Indonesia..." the pilot continued,
oblivious to my seething.

Hell, if I was wrecked on one
of these islands, I'd take up carpentry real fast, too.

One island
was approaching really fast and really low. The gravel of another
airstrip was dead ahead and it seemed to end in the water. The
water looked real close...
OH SHIT. We're
going to go off the end of the runway and into the
water!

Ocean's Gift
is available in
ebook and paperback.

Demelza Carlton has always
loved the ocean, but on her first snorkelling trip she found she
was afraid of fish.

She has since swum with sea
lions, sharks and sea cucumbers and stood on spray drenched cliffs
over a seething sea as a seven-metre cyclonic swell surged in,
shattering a shipwreck below.

Demelza now lives in Perth,
Western Australia, the shark attack capital of the world.

The Ocean's Gift series is her
first foray into fiction, followed by her suspense thriller
Nightmares trilogy.

Want to know more? You can
follow Demelza on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or her website,
Demelza Carlton's Place at:

www.demelzacarlton.com

Don't forget to review
Water and
Fire
before you go!

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