The rubbish dog was taking him somewhere. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly understood where.
She had found a way out of the cove.
If he hadn’t been so tired, in so much pain, he might have seen the track too: a narrow passage where the rock had crumbled, leaving a rough track up between the boulders and blocks of cliff. Other animals had used the path, treading silt into packed earth bridging the gaps between the broken rocks. He could even faintly smell them — not just dog and seagulls, and not pig or human either, but animal scents he didn’t recognise.
He leaned against the cliff face again to help support his weight, hopping, dragging his leg, until they reached the top. He paused, out of breath. The pain exhausted him, the storm and fright and strangeness.
He gazed around, panting. On one side the sea stretched blue and bare. On the other golden tussocks of grass spread to dull green hills in the distance, the earth between them a patchwork of cracks, parched from the sun. It looked like a land crying for water to make it live. But this was the Dry, he told himself. Rain would come to this land too.
Or would it? The land looked wrong. The colours weren’t right — the green too drab, the grass too brown. Only the sea on his other side was as it should be, the bright and fearless blue. Maybe this new land never had a Rain Season to bring it back to life.
The sun glared at him, swollen as his knee. He could see the beach he’d hoped to land on from here too: a vast stretch of trackless sand. No sign of the canoe. No sign of people either. No smoke, even on the horizon.
He had tried not to think about that. It was bad being alone. No fire was worse. Now the true terror flooded over him. Fire kept the wild animals away in the night. Fire drove away the spirits of the dark. Fire warmed the body on windy nights and cooked his food.
He’d once seen his grandfather make fire by turning a dry stick in a patch of rotting wood. It had been a show-off trick. The clan always carried fire with them when they moved camp — a live coal in a slow-burning pig’s tusk.
It had taken a long time for Grandfather to get the rotten wood smouldering. Could Loa even remember how it had been done?
He shut his eyes for a moment, in pain and weariness. The pain in his knee felt like knives. He needed water: soon, or he would die.
He opened his eyes. The dog was still there. ‘Water?’ he whispered, as though she might understand.
The rubbish dog gave a short ‘hff’. She sounded impatient. She padded away, then stopped to wait for him. Loa lurched along the animal track towards her, along the cliff, then down into a sort of gorge, where two ridges met.
He stared.
There was a pond down there in the rock, almost perfectly round. Smooth cliffs surrounded it except on this side, where the path led down to it. The water was shallow, but clear. Impossible for a croc to lurk there, or even a snake.
Could it be fresh water? Or was it salt water, splashed here by some high tide?
As if to answer him the rubbish dog ran down to the pool. She drank briefly, then looked up at him as though to say, ‘This is how you drink, you fool.’
‘Water,’ he whispered. He lumbered clumsily down the rock to the pool, then lurched into a sitting position next to the water, injured leg in front of him, and lifted up a handful.
It was warm and sweet and wonderful.
The dog gazed at him. He drank again and again, then dunked his head into the water to get rid of the salt and heat. At last he hauled himself onto his good foot again and scrambled up the path onto the rocky ridge.
He was safe from crocodiles up here. A croc could climb the path. But it wouldn’t bother. The other animals that used this path, whatever they were, would be crocodile food too. Again he closed his eyes. For the first time in two days he let himself sleep without forcing down terror first.