The Island(72)

The cave would hide them from the humans, but she knew it wouldn’t fool the dogs. The dogs were only getting started. They’d begin at dawn on the beach and eventually they’d follow the trail all the way here.

She moved aside the moss and went inside the cave.

“I got food,” she said.

“What did you get?” Olivia asked.

She knew Olivia would never eat koala. “I don’t know—it had been hit by a car. Wombat, maybe? And eggs.”

The fire was going good. The eucalyptus twigs and leaves were so full of oil they were giving off a bright yellow flame that illuminated the entire cave. She added more branches, and within minutes they had a respectable blaze. They warmed themselves and enjoyed the light. It was better to cook on charcoal than flame but she couldn’t wait all night.

She cut up the koala meat and internal organs and kebabbed them with eucalypt sticks. She made a tripod out of other sticks and set the meat next to the fire. The eggs she cooked on the machete blade, one at a time, so as not to waste any of them. They’d been lucky with the timing. In a couple of weeks, the shearwater eggs would contain more than embryos, but for now, they looked and tasted just like chicken eggs. Olivia stacked the fried eggs on a thin flat stone while Owen turned the meat.

They ate with their hands.

The meat was oily and tough and gamy and sour. Every bite was unpleasant. But they were starving and they wolfed it down. The eggs were good. And they drank their fill of the water.

“This is the best water I’ve ever tasted,” Owen said.

Heather had a sudden comforting flash of memory of her brief time on the reservation with her grandmother. ?a’ak was the Makah word for “water.” Her grandmother pronounced it “wa’ak,” which was the way the Indigenous people said the word on Vancouver Island too. It was the only word in Makah she could remember. “Wa’ak,” she whispered to herself to see if it would bring magic.

She closed her eyes and whispered it again. “Wa’ak.”

No magic, but the fact that they had food and were still alive was wizardry enough.

Owen waved the pamphlet she’d taken from the prison. “You can have this back again. We didn’t need to burn it. It’s mostly photos of a really crappy-looking prison, but there is some info about the island.”

“Really? Read it, will ya?” Heather said.

“OK. ‘The former McLeod Federal Prison, established in 1911, was closed in 1989 because of growing costs,’” Owen read aloud. “‘This facility is now being turned into a museum. It was Australia’s last island prison, although there is some controversy as to whether Dutch Island can be considered a true island. At spring tide, the eastern coast reveals a dangerous causeway, the site of many fascinating shipwrecks.’”

“Ooh, sunken treasure,” Olivia said.

“‘Dutch Island was considered to be one of Australia’s toughest prisons for hardened criminals,’” Owen continued. “‘No prisoner ever escaped from Dutch Island, unlike Devil’s Island in French Guiana and Alcatraz in California.’”

“Did you say nobody has ever escaped from Dutch Island?” Olivia said.

“Maybe we’ll be the first,” Heather said.

“We went to Alcatraz when we visited San Francisco, remember, Olivia? Do you know how many people escaped from Alcatraz, Heather?” Owen asked.

“Nope.”

“Three. Or maybe none, depending on whether they drowned or not.”

“Dad said they drowned,” Olivia remembered.

“They totally escaped. And so will we. And speaking of spring tides, you wanna help me with my astronomy worksheet?” Owen said, grinning and fishing a rumpled piece of paper from his cargo pocket.

Olivia laughed. “Wow, you still have that? Mr. Cutler will be impressed.”

“You think I’ll get an extension?” Owen said, laughing with her.

“Let me help you with it,” Olivia said.

And the kids sat together and began reciting the planets and the phases of the moon.

Heather yawned and lay back on the cave floor.

She listened to the fire crackle and the kids talking and she closed her eyes and sleep came the way it never came in Seattle but the way it had come in the mountains of Olympic National Park when she was a girl.





35



Snow falling like tea leaves spilled from an old tin chest.

Falling on the mountain and the wood and the newborn ferns. Falling on the doe tracks by the river that only she had seen.

The smell of kerosene lingered on the backpacks. She liked it. She was half high off it. That and the bacon and the lard, and the sugar in the breakfast coffee.

They were half a mile from the ridge that they had scouted last night.

Deep in the forest now. Through these big dinosaur trees with fairy-tale names: Sitka, Douglas fir, western hemlock, big-leaf maple, black cottonwood.

A cardinal chirped a warning. A raven watched them with indifference.

They reached the ridge and settled down to wait. They were well concealed behind ferns and a massive fallen oak lying in the understory like a dead god. Lichen wrapped the oak like an emerald bridesmaid’s dress, and as the snow blew sideways from the mountain, it transmuted it slowly into the gown of the bride herself.