Peter woke late. It had been a night broken by snatches of sleep amongst moments of terror. He had never felt so exposed to the elements, even during the squall that had brought him here. At least then he was too busy sailing The Jupiter to be afraid. But, alone in the dark as branches fell close by, he had felt helpless.
Now a feeling of claustrophobia pressed down and he gathered himself to push the hull up, away, and free.
It would not move. He remembered then the bang in the night. Something had fallen upon the hull. Under the edge of cockpit a glimmer of light shone bright. He stretched out a hand and began to push the sandy dirt away. He dug until he had an opening large enough that fresh air could flow. Working for a few minutes more and he could press his face into the gap.
‘Woohoo!’ He shouted. He caught his breath and then renewed his digging until he could get first his head, then his shoulders through. With a push of his legs against the hull his hips came next, then in a rush he rolled free from the hull and lay on his back. The coconut trees swayed above him in the now gentle breeze.
‘Figure I’m safe from falling coconuts for a while now. Anything that was going to come down already has.’
With that thought he realized there would be fresh nuts to be gathered up, and he wouldn’t have to try climbing.
He bounced to his feet, eager now to get on with exploration.
The Jupiter’s hull was broken and holed. A coconut tree had fallen across the bow, the plywood was buckled and cracked where it was not just demolished.
‘Oh Jupe.’ Peter said.
He stroked at the fallen vessel’s paintwork. There had been so many hours of filling, fixing, sanding and painting her. Learning to sail and get the best from her. Now the splintered wood snagged at his hand, the surface smooth no more. The Jupiter had died far from home.
He had so many plans for sailing this year, for winning races. He had to show them they were wrong about him. More than a loss of a good friend, a future would now never happen. Tears blurred his vision and he turned away towards the ocean.
Off in the distance, between the ripped and ragged plants, the manta jumped and bounced across the sea, and again he was reminded of a dog trying to cheer him up. But it could not even know that he was up and about. Or how he felt.
Alone. Tired. Hungry. Lost.
‘I must look this place over more, there has to be something other than fish and coconuts to eat.’
So with a backward glance at his shattered hopes, and on an empty stomach, he set off along the beach. With the sea to his left, the forest to his right, the long curve of sand stretched before him.
It was not long until the sand was broken by large tiled slabs of black rock. There were tidal rock pools, and big rocks to hop over with a stream that wound between them. The water spilled from a wide pool surrounded by wind rippled sand bars. Birds thronged the pool, or sat along the beach.
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‘Amazing how life thrives where humans are not fishing, or building holiday houses.’
Some long legged white birds darted their beaks into the water to catch crabs and small silvery fish. As he came closer he was startled to see how these ‘birds’ ate their catch. They reached their wings forward and fingers plucked the fish from the beak, tore at the flesh and popped the tidbits back into their mouths. Peter squatted down and stared.
‘What are those things?’
They were a lot like herons, the beak and long legs. But the shape of the wings where different. Fingers and claws on their ’elbows’ gave them a new trick. He moved closer and the flock turned to him and then their hundred eyes were aimed at him. A chittering noise erupted from the flock and the birds closest to him rose in the wind until, in a wave, all were in the air. They wheeled about in a dizzying dance of white against the blue of the sky.
‘Those are the strangest birds… fingers on their wings. Perhaps finger-licking-good-wings are in my future,’ he said with a scoff. ‘Sheesh. Licking-finger-wings.’
He ran a hand through his salty hair, then rested his chin on his knees to look into the distance. A long way offshore a line of islands stretched in a wide arc across the sea. White flashes, and the roar of waves, showed that huge ocean rollers pounded against the green islands just beyond. The storm still raged in the ocean even if the day now was fine and wind calm.
The barrier islands were low, with no high peaks or hills. Much more like the desert islands he had heard of — a few coconut trees, sand, and waves. Huge waves. One sprayed foam high in the air, and after a delay, the boom sounded like thunder. The waves were like jailers that kept him from leaving the island if he ever managed to repair his boat and escape beyond the reef.
Hunger gnawed at him now,
‘Coconuts. I can gather some up now.’
Running out towards the flock, he yelled like a mad thing, the finger-wing-herons wheeled high into the air. They scolded him with chittering cries. He slowed to a jog as the thick sand dragged at his feet, then walked slower along the wet sand scanning for…
‘Shellfish.’ White shells littered the beach. Small holes like miniature mole hills were everywhere — breather holes for clams. He dug out the sand like a dog amongst the shallows until he had a pile of clams. They tried to dig back under the surface, their long tongue-like bodies slipping out between the clam shell and levering into the sand. There would be food today, and not fish.
He tied them into his T-shirt, his mum’s Comsat Angels T-shirt. He felt a pang of loneliness. But shook off the thought, filled the T-shirt with clams, and slung it across his back where it bumped as he walked like a pat on the back for his good work.
Now he just needed a shaded place to open and eat them. He tried not to think what uncooked clams might be like, he had only eaten them in clam chowder before.
‘How do you open live clams anyway?’
The far end of the beach ended in a narrow bluff of black volcanic rock. The vegetation came close to the water here, always pushing against the rocks, sand and sea. Beyond was a wide expanse of black rock covered with dry pools of white sand. He skipped between the sand patches glad to have his sailing boots on. The ragged black rock would tear them to bits otherwise.
The expanse of rock rose in a low slope as he walked along it so his viewpoint rose higher. The sandpits gave way to patches of bushes and small trees that burrowed into what he figured was an old lava flow. By the time the rocky slope ended he found himself at the top of a low cliff. Below lay another white sand beach. Or rather two beaches cut by a wide stream.
And there were people here. And animals. Mantas. Being killed. Their blood stained the white sand red.
Peter dropped low. Hid behind a bush, and peered out. Some of the people worked to cut up the mantas, others loaded canoes that lay in the stream. Leaders ordered the groups about.
People — but with the strangest legs — backwards — like a bird’s. Their clothing was blue-black, and faces black with yellow or gold patches. But he saw now — they wore no clothes, instead they had thick blue-black fur and their bums were covered with a fan of…
‘Feathers.’
Forgotten, his shirt slid amongst the rocks and the clams fell in a clattering cascade across the black surface.
‘What the…?’ He goggled as he realized. ’Aliens!’