Clearing the Sea Mist
A Short Story by Emily Macdonald
The Cessna hugs the coastline in the narrow gap between the sea and the fog. The belly of the plane seems to surf the heaving swell. Waves wash and foam rocky outcrops, feeling close enough to tip the left-side wing. Bush crested cliffs loom, piercing the morning mist. Revving and gliding, they dip, bounce, and buoy.
Kat had assumed a pilot in a cap, wearing a navy uniform with embroidered wing epaulettes. She’s not reassured by the man in a crumpled Hawaiian shirt, gripping the controls. She’s glad she can’t see his face. Kat clutches the sides of her seat and stares straight ahead, not wanting to catch Jo’s eye.
The plane takes a sudden swing out to sea and climbs rapidly to rise over the threatening headland, and then, a bare minute later, they tilt towards the coast again. Below, Kaitoke Beach, pealing with clean glassy breakers, comes into view. The low cloud thins as they bank over the beach to the airfield behind the dunes, flying lower each time in ribboned loops. It takes three passes to scare the sheep from the landing strip before the plane bumps along the ground, engines roaring. The pilot jolts the brakes, and the plane slows, turns, and at last comes to a stop.
Kat’s legs are stuck to her seat, her shoulders are by her ears. When he turns around, the pilot has blister beads of sweat, pocking his face.
Jo rolls her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to land into the wind?” she asks. Kat fiddles with her seat belt, pretends she hasn’t heard.
Kat, on unsteady legs, and Jo, brisk and efficient, help unload their heavy backpacks and the boxes of supplies for the store at Tryphena Bay. They relay the boxes to the wooden shed beside the airfield. It’s empty apart from one wooden bench and a standing set of scales. A battered sign reads ‘Claris Aerodrome.’
“Will this stuff be okay just left here?” Kat asks.
“Sure,” says the pilot. “Bush telegraph. Someone will be along soon.”
The morning sun drills down, evaporating the last whisps of sea mist, and the sky appears clear—a synthetic, vivid blue. Kat and Jo smear sunscreen on their bare arms and legs.
“Here, I’ll do your shoulders,” Jo says, though she is the fairer one, her pale, freckled complexion more prone to burning. She kneads Kat's skin, lifts her hair, massages the back of her neck while the small plane taxies away to the far end of the field.
The sheep have chewed their way back onto the runway, so Jo and Kat run at them, shouting, and clapping. The sheep, jaws working, take a few sullen trots, then start feeding again.
“Jeez, these sheep don’t give a flying fuck!” Jo stands, hands on her hips. Laughing, they wave, arms outstretched as seizing a gap in the sheep, the plane speeds along, rises, and performs a slow arc to fly, this time across the bush-clad island. The plane soon dwindles from view. Kat fights the twinge of panic at their isolation. Off-grid, as the locals would say. She closes her eyes, listens to the retreating engine, the surf booming, the baaing sheep, the fluting bird calls, the cicadas warming to their buzzing drone.
Jo lifts Kat’s backpack and holds it steady as Kat pushes her arms through. Kat is ready to return the favour, but Jo is already swinging her pack, fastening the waist belt, and pulling on the straps to mount it high on her shoulders.
“All righty. Here we go!” Kat returns Jo’s high five, and grinning at each other, they start to walk.
The plan for their first day is to hike west, across the island on the only road. Via Tryphena Bay, then further south to camp their first night near Cape Barrier. Off the beaten track, even by island standards, but on the landward coast, with its inlets barricaded by oyster rocks and overhung with flaming Pohutakawa trees.
Jo manages the map. Kat is not incompetent, but it’s easier this way. Jo has plotted their route with bright highlighter pens. The forestry huts and their planned campsites for four nights, the tracks to the natural hot springs, the old kauri dam, and the climb to the peak of Mount Hobson. The route to the surf side of the island for another week at Awana Bay, where Tom and the others will meet them.
When Kat talks about Tom, Jo tuts or throws a shoulder, changing the subject. Kat tries to restrain herself, but Tom, Tom, TOM! Tom, Tom, TOM! becomes a rhythmic refrain in her head, keeping pace with her footfall as they tramp on the dry metal road.
The sun is high when they reach the top of the range and start the descent towards Tryphena Bay, zigzagging across the road, chasing the shade from the overhanging trees.
Kat feels she would run if she could, when the store comes into view, but the weight of her pack disrupts her balance if she makes sudden moves. Resting in the welcome slab of shade under the low-hanging tin roof, they flap the hems of their t-shirts to air their clammy skin.
Inside, the store thrums with the sound of the generator. The shelves are stocked with the basics—flour, sugar, tinned foods, packets of biscuits. There’s a rack of postcards, and on the window shelf, a display of smooth pebbles, hand-painted with setting suns, flowers, and seascapes.
Jo lifts the freezer lid and grins at Kat. They both lean over letting the iced air rise to meet them.
“There’s room for a small one like you to lie down in there,” says Jo. Kat frowns, picturing herself, prone amongst the frozen peas and boxes of bait.
“You girls goin’ to buy anything? If not, close the damn lid”. The man behind the counter rolls his mouth as if he’d like to spit. Kat picks out a couple of Frujus, and Jo lets the lid drop in a whooshing thud.
They sit outside on upturned bottle crates, sucking their ice blocks in a race against the drips.
“Shall we have a swim?” Kat suggests. “The water looks so cool and refreshing.”
“Nah,” says Jo. “Let’s stick to the plan. It’s a way to go yet. Besides, everyone comes to Tryphena.”
Your plan, thinks Kat, looking at the empty, pristine beach, but she prefers not to argue. It won’t be dark for hours yet.
In the mid afternoon, after Shoal Bay, only one vehicle passes them, a battered ute stacked with fence posts straddled by a young, barking Huntaway. Pulling up in a dust cloud, a man calls out to them from under his hat.
“Where yous headin’? Wanna ride?”
“No, you’re right, thanks, mate. We want to walk,” Jo shouts.
He eyes them in slow consideration, at Kat for longest.
“Ok, your lookout but yous be careful out there.”
“It’s ok. She’s with me,” replies Jo. The man cocks an eyebrow and gives a small salute as he accelerates up the road.
Kat turns away. She fiddles with her water bottle and takes a long drink to avoid having to say anything. The sound of the motor fades beyond the bends, and the relentless buzzing of the cicadas seems to amplify—a drone to accompany the beating, the longing ‘Tom, Tom, TOM!’ in Kat’s head. She walks a little behind Jo to prevent conversation.
“Right you are, this is it.” Jo folds the map and leads the way, winding down the hillside. The foreshore is grassy, studded with cabbage trees, clumps of flax and boulders, some organised in perpendicular lines as if a pioneering settler had laid them out, a construction in mind, later abandoned or forsaken for a better site. Scattering the sandy beach smooth lumpen rocks form half-hearted obstacles to the turquoise sea. Sweaty and sore shouldered, they dump their packs.
“Fuck, I need to get in that water RIGHT, BLOODY, NOW!”
Jo’s swearing jars and Kat squeezes her eyes. She considers the slow lapping waves, the seabirds bobbing on the water, the gentle breeze, the scarce clouds, light brushstrokes highlighting the sky.
“My togs are right at the bottom.” Kat tugs the strings at the mouth of her pack.
“You don’t need togs. Nudey! Take a look round. There's no one to see us, not even any bloody sheep!” Jo peels off her shorts and pants, tugs her t-shirt overhead, and unfastens her bra. Challenging, she faces Kat. “Come on, don’t be a wimp.” Jo runs into the sea, and Kat undresses, turning her back.
Kat gasps when the cold water grabs, tightening as it creeps up to her waist. Kat feels Jo’s eyes on her and dunks under, then duck-dives, driving down until her hands reach the sandy bottom, and she propels herself further out, streamlined. She breaks for air and flicks her hair from her eyes. Jo is floating on her back, star fished and sculling in slow circles, her pointed breasts breaking the surface. Kat kicks and swims further out, enjoying the slippery freshness of being naked in the cooling sea. She rotates to look back at the shoreline. The southern point smothered in bush, a few taller trees poking through and beyond, on the climbing sweep up of the hill, a cleared area of grazing land, tinged mid-summer yellow.
A flash startles her. A quick glint where the black bush meets pasture. She watches closely, wondering if she’s mistaken, seawater playing tricks with her eyes. She scans the bush line, trying not to blink.
Flash. The light comes again. A reflection? Glass or metal? Something or someone is there.
“What are you looking at?” Jo calls.
Kat starts to reply, then swallows her words and ducks under the water. “Nothing,” she says as she re-emerges. “Just enjoying the view.”
Drying off, the salt crisping their skin, they lie back in the warm grass. Kat relaxes with her hands cradling behind her head. She closes her eyes, letting the sun dance and create kaleidoscopes behind her eyelids. Tom would like this bay. She imagines him casting a long line for fish, perhaps prizing oysters off the rocks with his multi-bladed Swiss Army knife or diving through the kelp for paua. He would build and light their campfire, a trivet set over a ring of stones, a billy on the boil. She imagines their tent pitched, sweet amongst the organised boulders as if they formed a garden wall. She thinks of Tom, his hand, circling her neck, how he’d slide a slow finger down then tease, idling sideways to draw the curve where her breast swells.
Kat jumps. “Jesus! What are you doing? What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Jo?”
“It’s just sand flies landing on you. Keep your bloody hair on.”
Oh God thinks Kat. Not this. Not now, out here, in the middle of nowhere. Four days to trudge through and four, long, restless nights.
Kat retrieves her clothes and starts to dress. She thinks of the flashing light, that might have felt like a warning or a signal of danger. Now, the thought of someone, anyone, nearby is reassuring.
“So, pass me your insect repellent then. Yours is bound to be stronger than mine,” Kat says. She stands watching, arms folded, waiting in angry silence as Jo scrambles, bent over, as she searches in her pack.
“Yeah, take as long as you like,” Kat thinks. “Take as long as you bloody like.”
Tomorrow, Kat will manage the map.
Author: Emily Macdonald was born in England but grew up in New Zealand. She has won and been placed in several writing competitions and has work published in print anthologies and on-line journals including Fictive Dream, Reflex Fiction, Lucent Dreaming, Retreat West, Ellipsis Zine, Roi Fainéant, Flash Frontier, and The Phare.