Kendra. Jane Keehn
near the ceiling she removed a plastic shopping bag containing a rolled pair of trousers and a t-shirt – an old one that featured a faded emblem of the Mandalay Aquarium; a seal and a dolphin standing tall under the spray of a waterfall. In another bag she grabbed a pair of lace up canvas running shoes to protect her feet over the barnacled rocks and the rusting, broken wire cage parts. At the bottom of the bag lay wound fishing wire hangings. Shells tied together with bits of broken coral, dangling from ornate driftwood. The shells hit against wire hooks and old coins, clanging in Kendra’s pocket as she propped herself steady with her crutches.
She made her way slowly to the wharf, where a seasonal funfair had set up. Humans seemed to have set up a structure of living with rules and regulations that she was only beginning to learn about. Boundaries and structures seemed to prop up the society that didn’t exist as rigidly underwater. On land there was a system for how people should behave and how they should act towards one another. Kendra had seen it in the streets, in the cafes, libraries and wharfs she had hung around. She skittered along the lonely laneway until she reached the back of Fisherman’s Wharf and the start of the Sideshow alley tents.
Tourists and local carnival workers hung around the games of chance and lemonade stalls. Kendra sat on part of the wharf where her crutches would be slightly camouflaged with the old men’s fishing poles and nets. She heard the metal clanging of a train nearby and realized it came from one of the tents – the Ghost Train jangled inside carrying screams of delight.
Finding a low hanging branch at the edge of where the wharf started, Kendra tied some fishing line to one of its twigs and began to untangle her wind chimes and dream catcher-style ornaments made of brittle sea urchins, broken bits from the beach, woven against clear line and twine of beach plants that she had rubbed together. Trinkets Kendra has made from nothing that she sometimes sells for a few dollars of spare change.
It was a way to have a small amount of money to enable her to exist in the world humans have created on land. Kendra sat on a plastic chair at the side of the merry go round. She watched the groups, the couples.
The laughter made her look behind her and she watched some young girls hitting wooden cylinders with a small rubber ball. Then the woman behind the stall handed them a small fluffy toy in the shape of a shark. They laughed some more and linked arms – stalking off into more of the flashing lights of the food stalls.
The arm-braced crutches Kendra used to manoeuver her way through the streets enabled her to move much faster on her slight earth legs. They also seemed to render her invisible to the many people fighting for a place on the paving, rushing to restaurants to share a meal.
People didn’t like acknowledging someone who may be in need of assistance, so their eyes darted away from her gaze as she limped along the back alleys. She felt she could observe all things in as much detail as she needed. She was of no interest to anyone.
She loved the lights of the town - how they shone in the dark and surrounded the alleyways. How the fading light made her even more invisible and how people changed the way they dressed - women wore jewels, men wore suits.
There was an excitement in the air. She couldn’t describe it, she didn’t know how it came about but there was something intangible that could not be sampled and packed away in a jar or a box. It was just there. Created by the feelings, the emotions between the humans.
She smiled and looked up at the stars. The petty drug dealers and teenagers kissing in the dark had no need to look out for a dishevelled ash-haired girl inching her way along the white brick ledge.
She watched out with her nocturnal vision.
There was just enough space between each boundary for Kendra grab the grey edges for support and to slither unharmed between them, like some kind of mutant native animal, using the night to hide from their prey.
Emily - Chapter 4
Emily’s face reflected back at her from the laptop screen, as she grabbed a beer with one hand and the mouse with the other. Leo let out an exasperated sigh lying chin in paws on his basket on the floor.
Emily shot a glance at him while she swigged a mouthful and then moved the cursor over a map of the Mandalay shoreline. The small notepad sat on the table on top of the plastic bag that had protected it. Her brown eyes squinted as she thought of the caves she had to find and to enter.
Heat beamed from her computer screen and she ran her hand over her face and through her dark hair. She held the beer bottle to the back of her neck and cooled that small part while she visualized the turn of her kayak as it was swept along by the waves towards one of the caves openings.
Emily steered the mouse over the table and clicked something on the bottom of the screen. A video of waves crashing flashed over the mud map. The wreck of the Mandalay tore in two as it hit the limestone reef and cracked apart.
Scanned images shuffled through a folder on her desktop as she examined an old line drawing of the original Mandalay as it prepared for sail in the Dutch West indies.
Emily clicked onto the front of the ship and zoomed in on the figurehead arched over the hull. Her face framed by carved braids of yellow hair loomed up on the screen and Emily imagined her grandmother as a girl - her arms clutched around the wooden neck, her legs grasping for balance and control around the mermaid waist.
Much had been written about it in the local history books and in the Maritime Centre’s exhibition catalogues about Meg’s amazing survival but she hadn’t been the only one to survive the wreckage. Others were washed ashore and made the Bay of Mandalay their home.
Meg’s story captured the imagination because she was the youngest to survive the coal ship’s destruction on the reef and because the image of a six-year-old girl gripping on to the wooden mermaid was one out of a fairy story. Emily’s favourite part was her grandmother telling her.
- I just refused to let go and before I knew it, I was face down in the sand, but I was alive!
Distracted by a blue light in the bottom right corner of the screen, Emily frowned and clicked the mouse.
A Skype alert flashed on her laptop screen. It was Melanie from the Museum’s education team. Her heart raced a little faster as Emily clicked the key board in response to Melanie’s call.
- Stop work and get something to eat?
Emily sighed as she typed her answer.
- Would love to, but your husband might not approve!
Emily blew a small exasperated breath through her lips then pressed them together in a disappointed smile.
Melanie’s quick response popped up.
- He’s away diving for abalone – you could come to my place – I’ll cook?
Emily’s ink-stained fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
- Really, would love to, but sorry, I’ve got a couple of friends here for dinner.
She grabbed at her diving watch on the desk - it was too chunky on her wrist, it scratched at the scroll pad. It read close to eight o‘clock on its large white digits.
She signed off to Melanie, saved her file, closed the screen and clamped the laptop shut like a large white, flat clam shell.
From the small kitchen table, she grabbed a compact canister of fish food and sprinkled a hefty pinch into an aquarium where two ordinary looking goldfish lazily followed each other around.
Walking to the front balcony overlooking the ocean front, she brushed the remnants of the fish pellets onto her jeans, and placed her hands on the balcony’s rail, gazing far out at the horizon, swaying slightly as she focused away from her life.
The waves below swept up onto the sand carrying with them unseen and unknown objects carried and lost in the current.
After her grandmother died, the softly crashing sound was the only thing