ROSALEEN LOVE

Rosaleen Love is an Australian writer who writes about science and the rest of life. Her short fiction has been collected in The Traveling Tide (2005) Aqueduct Press, Seattle, and in two books published by the Women’s Press, UK: The Total Devotion Machine (1989) and Evolution Annie (1993). Her nonfiction includes Reefscape. Reflections on the Great Barrier Reef, Joseph Henry Press, 2001. She is a research associate at Latrobe and Monash Universities, Melbourne.

“I consider this story to be one of my personal best. I was exhilarated by the challenge laid down by Robert Hood and Robin Pen, the editors of the Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales anthology in which this story first appeared. The editors wanted stories about biologically impossible creatures with a political mission (or at least that’s how I read the specifications). Just my kind of story. The story also springs from my interest in Indigenous sea rights and my book, Reefscape. The story won the Open Short Story section of the City of Boroondarah Literary Awards for 2004. It also jointly won the 2005 Aurealis Award for fantasy short story.”

* * * *

he sea murmurs on the rocks. Last night, there was no murmur. There were no rocks. The thing was out there, lying there, and when it stirred, the waters moved up and over and under, and the thing was there, underneath, near the surface. It’s gone today.

If Kai goes to the jetty and jumps into the water, he’ll be in way over his head.

The thing that came yesterday has gone away today.

It will come back.

Kai knows. He’s heard this story before. It’s a story from the old people.

They’re here today, the government people, to talk to the old people about sea rights and land rights, but their talk is just hot air. Kai knows better. That mob, they own this land, from here to the horizon. Sea, land, doesn’t matter. What’s under the water, in the bay, it’s land, right? Happens for now to be covered by sea.

For the moment.

Wasn’t always like that, in the time before this time; won’t always be like that, in the time to come. What is sea was once land, what is now land was once sea.

The gods walked on the earth. They came to a place they liked, and there they settled. They turned into land, the gods, and look, you can see, there, how across the bay, that island, a god lay down, and stretched out, and there you can see the curve of his back, and in those rocks you can see where he set down his fishing net. And that’s his canoe: must’ve got wrecked, like, just a bit, and he said, No worries. I like it here, the bay, the sea-grasses, the mangroves. It’s a good place. It’s home.

Sea rights. That’s what it’s about. From these shores to the horizon, who owns what.

Last night, Kai stepped out. He walked out on the water. He’s not going to tell them today, that mob from the government. They wouldn’t know how to listen, so hung up on their rights are they, on their legal rights. Who owns what, from the shore to the horizon, and the land that’s there, under the water? They reckon, no one. Others know better.

Last night, when Kai walked on the water, the sea sloshed round his ankles. His feet gripped what lay beneath, firm enough to give him rubbery passage, though his toes had to dig down deep.

Kai was there, when the sea rose and flooded the jetty and swept the men away, and their dog.

It was the dog that saved the fishermen, that’s for sure, Chippie, the old red mongrel who came to after the flood, and found himself standing on top of the ocean, far from shore, far enough, in a different enough place, to make an old dog yelp himself silly. They came to, the men, Kurt and Eddie, with Chippie howling, and lights from the shore beaming out, and the rescue party turning up, their boats impossible to launch on the rubbery sea until they, too, the rescuers, learned not to fear, but to step out on sea as on land, in the knowledge that what was under the water would sustain them for the duration. The rescuers came in the moonlight, over the sea, to where the three men flopped round on top of the water, there to save them, three Jonahs from the belly of the deep.

Old Wally was in a bad way, but Kurt and Eddie, they were big men, and they came to and gave Wally the kiss of life, that’s what brought him back, as Chippie barked his head off, and Wally woke to curse his rescuers, but he’s not too sorry, not today.

They took Wally off to the hospital, just to be sure. At the time, his story made no sense.

The Government man is back today, with something he wants the old people to look at. He’s brought the drum from the museum and the museum people with their video cameras. They want the old people to tell the old stories. The old people are happy to oblige. They like the old stories, but better still, they like to turn the old stories into new stories.

The people gathered under the trees and passed the drum around carefully, whispering. On the rim of the drum they traced here the marks of the sun as it shimmers on calm noon water, there the glimmer of the full moon on the place where salt water meets fresh. The story is told in the marks. The story is told in the music. The story is told in the dance. Today there is no music, no dance. The story will be told, but not fully.

Kai’s there, at the meeting place, with the old people, to help fill in the silence with words, to make the museum guys feel good about their meeting.

“You bang that drum,” they murmured, the old people, one to another, “Trouble comes looking for you. Big time.”

Kai was there, the go-between, the interpreter, to tell the museum guy that the drum was played on special occasions, to summon the creatures of the deep. Maika, they said, it’s her drum, and Maika is from the old times. Maika, she travelled south with her mate, and as she travelled, she created all the land along the coast, and all the people, all the families, all the creatures of the shore.

Someone’s given that drum a bash, they reckon, the old people. They whisper their agreement. That’s what happened yesterday. Those fellas in the museum, they packed the drum to bring it up here, and some smart-arse played the fool and thumped it, and that’s why it happened. The fishermen, and Chippie. That’s the drum of Maika, who travelled down this coast and created the bays, the rocks, the headlands, the islands. She travelled south, and now she’s on the move again. She’s come here, and she’s mad. That storm - her breath - made the clouds. That flood tide - her spirit - frothed the salt spray. That land under the sea, it’s her resting place, a place for which they have a name and the government lot do not.

Maika is moving now. She’s moving because she’s heard about them fellas, she’s heard about the new laws that say sea places are owned by everyone and no-one. Maika doesn’t like that, so that is what she is saying, that is what all this means. Them fellas on the jetty last night, who were swept away into the water, they could have drowned. But they were saved - that time. Maika, she did that.

Not like she’ll change her ways, not for the government people and their laws that are not her laws. Their laws will wash away in the salt and the spray.

The old folks, they knew. That night, last night, they weren’t down by the sea, not like those men who got swept away. The old people stayed up high, on the cliffs, and made their fire. They looked out over the sea and the islands, and inland to the place where the fresh water comes down from the hills and swirls into the salt of the sea.

In the museum, they take good care of the drum. They smear it with oil and turn up the air-conditioning. The old people used to make a new drum when the old one fell apart. This drum is the last drum and must be kept away from the coast, away from the shacks of the old people, which do not have climate-control and adjustable lighting. Fair enough. The drum can stay where it is. The old people stay where they are.

Maika came that night, then went away again. She swept the men on the jetty into the sea, and then she gave them back again. That was Maika’s will.

* * * *

So much has happened since, but as to cause and effect, questions still hang in the air. Maika came back, and this time she stayed.

Maika returned and filled the whole bay. She settled, and as she came to rest, she threw fish high out of the sea and they rained down far inland. Maika lay down in this place, like a god, and look, you can see her eight arms, how they plug up the rivers that used to flow down to the sea. Shells lie where they fell, pushed into high mounds, heaped in waves on the former shore. The sea now pounds on reefs far, far away.

Maika settled and stayed. Where once the rocks were exposed at high tide, now Maika covers them with her white, translucent flesh. Her body stretches to the distant headland. The jetty stands, uprooted, across the giant’s back.

Each day the flesh becomes firmer and darker, until you can walk across to the other side of the bay. The children bounce over, boiing boiing boiing, but the old people are more respectful and watch where they put their feet. Some places are slippery, where water still lies, and salt encrusts the high plateau.

Maika is changing from one state of being into another, from god to land. At night, she glows with phosphorescent light. If you climb the cliffs, you can see the new night-lights, stretching west far inland along ancient river beds, glowing east from here to the horizon.

Ant, spider, crab, and starfish find new habitats. The turtles that once swam to graze the sea grass meadows must give this place a miss, now that the sea meadows are history.

The jetty juts out over land. Its foundations are not firm.

Maika roamed the seas. She came to a place she liked and lay down and became land.

The old sea markers are gone, but that is the way of the sea. Once there were roads in the sea, and the old people slipped their canoes along tidal currents through mangrove flats.

The sky signs remain, but the sea signs are gone. Headlands become hills, beaches lie stranded far from the sea, swamps are born anew in the places where Maika stretched out her arms, as fresh water forces new paths.

The smell of the sea has left this place. Soon the real estate fellas will come. Maika has changed from god to land and back to god again, in their way of looking at it, at their gods of what is bought and what is sold. What was once sea has become land, and public rights to the sea will not prevail. Their mob still owns this, from the ancient shore to the horizon. Land, sea, doesn’t matter. Now they know it, the government mob and their lawyers. Now they come north with papers to be signed.

Sea rights become land rights, and land rights may be sold. See these papers, note their promise of great riches. Sign here, at this place.

The old people say they never learned the ways of signing papers. Sorry.

The matter of sovereignty will be solved. One day, a new city will be built.

They will drill canals through to the distant sea, and beside the canals the land will be carved into lots. Mansions will rise, each with its personal jetty, though the foundations will have to be drilled deep and piles pushed into the bedrock far beneath. New roads will lead to the city. Development will bring its own rewards.

Maika came, and stayed, but only for now. Her time here will pass, and one day she will arise and move on somewhere else. They will call it earthquake and tsunami. The mansions will crumble to dust and the canals yield up their niche inhabitants, the crocodiles and bull-nose sharks, to lie in the air, surprised, and for the moment lost for evolutionary inspiration.

Maika will rise and slide out of the bay, just as once she entered it. Her arms will curl in toward her belly, drawn from the buried beds of fossil rivers. Her eyes will open, and her gaze will be fixed on the ocean depths, where the fumaroles smoke and the hydrothermal trenches guard the magma sheath beneath.

One day, Maika will have had enough. She will call to the deep, to her mother, and her mother will call to her, “Come.” What is sea will once more become land; what is land will become sea. Maika will say, our time has come, my mother, my sisters. The gods will walk over the waters, but where they make their home anew, they will choose to change it to suit themselves, and the oceans will rise, and rise, and the land will build up, but this time beneath the sea, and no one will own the sea, from here to the horizon. No one will own the land.

All will be sea, and the gods will, once more, come rightly into their own.