It’s one of them days when everything is off.
A hot sweaty night in Rusty Bus means we kids is all grouchy-tired. Littlies wake up whining and pushing, arguing over whose clothes is whose. Little Margy clings to my shirt tail so hard I can’t work her fingers open and have to drag her all the way to the loo with me. Me and my best friend, Jaguar, head to the beach, trying to cool down by taking turns at dipping in the sea pool. Him standing on the sea wall on lookout for crocs, me swimming, then we swap places.
We always do things as a team, him and me. We’s gonna be the best fisherpeople and the best salvagers on the whole of the inland sea one day.
The dawn mist is sitting low, not a gust of wind to blow it or the mozzies away. They’s buzzing at my ears whenever I come up for air. I’m slapping at one when Jag sets up whining like a newborn puppy and leaps off the sea wall into the water with me. Splashing and gasping, his eyes wide and wild, he yells, ‘Neoma! Run!’ He scrambles out onto the beach and takes off, jus’ leaving me there! I know he’s unnaturally afraid of crocs but this is silly! ‘We’s meant to be a team!’ I yell after him.
His shorts must’ve been torn on the sea wall, coz all I get in answer is one hilarious pale buttcheek sliding up and down in a corner tear in his shorts as he gallops up the beach.
‘Jag!’ I shout and scramble out of the sea pool, all splashes and pumping legs up the beach. I turn back once I got a head start on that croc or whatever, coz I wanna know what’s got Jag so messy. He’s regularly afraid of stuff, but he never up and leaves me to face it alone!
A pale-pink head pokes up above the edge of the sea wall. It’s a baby. A tiny baby head, pulling itself up out of the water and onto the sea wall made from old car frames and rocks. I head back down the beach to help it. Who left a baby in the water? Lucky it din’t drown!
The baby keeps climbing, revealing more of itself over the rusty metal and rock. It ain’t got no hair, and it’s unnaturally pink like it got soaked in hot water not cool sea, and then a pair of bright blue eyes is looking at me. There’s a tuft of green sea moss stuck on its ear. Its nose is tiny and there’s pink flower-bud lips jus’ below that. Then its chin shows, and jus’ below something that makes me want to scream and run too! Scuttling crab legs! This baby’s got crab legs instead of a body!
My heart shoots to thumping flat out, and my feet stagger back from this crawling nightmare, until my bad-sleep head tells me babies can’t have crab legs for bodies, but crabs can take anything for shells. It ain’t a real baby head, but a doll head. One of them dolls that looks like a real baby. The crab’s found it in a drowned house somewhere in the risen sea. It’s got its own bit of salvage.
I laugh, which comes out a bit squeaky, and then I whistle up to the littlies. ‘Come and be witness to what’s jerky-walking along our sea wall happy as can be. A baby-head crab-house!’
Jag comes creeping back down with the other kids, hanging on to his shorts at the back, hopefully coz he’s noticed the hole … not for any messier reason. All the littlies, even those still hot and sleepy with puffy eyes, laugh and try to be brave even though it’s a terrible, terrible sight, that jerky-walking crab baby.
Little Margy wants to chuck rocks at it, but I tell her no. ‘Bad enough that crab can’t find a decent shellhouse to carry round, now you wanna go and smash the only one it could find?’
We’s all there, down on the beach, laughing off our fear, when an aluminium-hulled boat with a bright yellow sun on the prow comes sliding out of the mist.
What a day. Maybe I’m having one of those sweaty sleep dreams that seems so real?
Three tall people, all wearing shiny headbands, is in the boat. They dock, and before the first long leg stretches for the jetty the littlies scatter like scared roos. Me and Jag run and hide too, behind a car-body cottage.
The three strangers hoist large black bags over their shoulders and stride through the village and straight up Cottage Hill like they’s the most important thing around. More important than us. More important than our elders even, who come out of their huts and cottages, their silver hair shining in the early morning sun, shouting, ‘You there! Whaddya think you’re doing here?’
The rest of us, seeing them shiny bands of gold around their heads with a big gold sun on the front, seeing their smooth jet-black hair, seeing their fine clothes, the rest of us is too scared to say a word to them.
Round the back of our island is all cliffs and shores, so full of rocks and driving sea that people don’t dare come that way, but our beach is open. With all the car bodies lying round after the risen sea dragged them up here, we took the bendable body-metal and wheels for building and set those solid chassis down as a sea wall, to make anyone come in the front of the bay where we can all see them. There was a time when we’d have people sitting on the sea wall, ready to sound the alarm or see them off, but all our neighbours now is peaceful and we look out for each other, so it’s a big shock for us to see people we don’t know sailing straight on in like they own the place.
Right away when they reach the top of the hill they pull giant axes from their bags and set to clearing trees and use the wood to mark out big circles, though we tell them not to. The elders tell them we don’t cut down the trees, we only take the lower branches, we only take the dead and fallen wood. But they’s the biggest people we ever seen. And they go about their strange business like our elders is jus’ children, to be yelled at if they get in the way.
Their language is strange and only old Marta understands it, a little. That’s how we learn they’s siblings from the Valley of the Sun, two sisters and a brother, but we dunno what they’s doing on our hill. We don’t have anyone who knows their language good enough for that.
Nothing feels right about this day. This day of hot, tired kids, and walking baby heads, this day the siblings from the Valley of the Sun choose to come sliding out of the mist and take down our trees.
