Marta’s collecting things to offer as gifts, teas she’s mixed herself, perfumed candles she’s made in bamboo pots, salt-dried fish and little egg-cakes with blackberry jam tops. I hope I’m going to get to eat some of those cakes to make up for this boring day.
‘Quit your face-pulling, Neoma, it’s not like you have to do much today,’ Marta says, like not doing stuff is fun. Not doing stuff is the problem! Then she loads up my arms with all her gifts.
When I say, ‘Oof!’ at the heaviness, she goes, ‘You burnt your head. Arms and legs work fine,’ and sends me off down to her boat.
Soon we’ve got her sail hoisted and we’re skimming her little tin boat out across the waves, the wind bending out the fabric of the sail. It’s a good day to be out fishing, but on the horizon a pile of green clouds with dark edges is clumping like they might head our way. We both stare at them for a while trying to figure out if they’s gonna be a problem or not.
Marta was a young woman in the before-times. Before the risen sea drove everyone to the hills. She says she even flew in a plane to visit Old Bangkok and boated along its colourful canals before it was abandoned to the sea. When she was older she visited the great walled city of Sydney after most of it moved to New Armidale. She remembers when clouds were jus’ white. She says the green is bacteria and it’s the way the earth tries to make things right and clean, and one day, when the earth is done with cleaning, the clouds will all be white as white once more.
Marta’s family always lived here in her cottage on the hill. She used to work in the town. I been to Koodah twice when we had surplus dried fish to trade. It’s all houses up on stilts and lots of covered boardwalks. The sea’s real shallow around Koodah, so they’ve cut paths through the weeds and mangroves for the boats to come and trade. I don’t like that closed-in feeling. I worry about the crocs. I seen them snatch pigs eating taro on the banks where the creeks come down to the sea and I don’t see much difference between a pig on a bank and me on a boat. Jag was the one who pointed that out to me, and it’s prolly the one bit of worry that’s fully stuck with me.
‘Marta, where’s the Valley of the Sun, and how come they have a valley that ain’t full of water?’
Marta twists her lips to the side. ‘North, I reckon. North is where it’s warmer, so the valleys be drier.’
The sun is hot, even under my big hat and long-sleeve shirt, and Marta’s silently steering her boat so I wet my neck scarf to keep me cool, slide down into the bottom of the boat and rest the not-sore side of my head on the seat. I twist my hat around so it’s like my own little house roof on my head protecting my burn, and have a rest.
