Chapter Six

Part One

For nearly fifteen kilometres, Carrie and Dee had followed Edison’s sedan along a series of well-maintained but unsealed tracks. Their sedate pace gave them a chance to appreciate the scenery as their route took them around wooded peaks and through unspoiled valleys. Edison pulled to one side and waved them by when they broke out of the trees and onto a picturesque shoreline bathed in the early morning sun. Kate and Dominique’s faces beamed at them from the rear seat of the car as they motored slowly around, and Edison pointed to the area where Carrie could best turn around. Needing to drive straight off the vessel’s ramp at their destination, vehicles had to reverse aboard.

Carrie backed the van towards the waiting flat-bottom barge with the same confidence and precision that she did everything else. The tyres growled and pinged…   >> MORE <<

Part Two

As they walked across a cleared lawn towards the tree line, thirty metres away, Rick asked, ‘May I give you the rundown on our beautiful piece of paradise?’

‘Please,’ Kate said, enjoying the sound of his deep, clear voice.

‘Alegria is a peanut – or dumbbell – shaped island, running east-west. Overall, it’s just under two-and-a-half kilometres long and about three hundred metres narrow at its waist, that’s the Pinch. The northern side of the Pinch, where the barge lands, has deep water. Our beach is on the southern side of the Pinch, and it has beautiful shallow waters we call the Shelf. Those shallows are why the barge takes such a long course around. The eastern end, this end, is the Big End. There’s a ring road a bit less than two kilometres long that circles around the Big End; it follows the edge of the steeper slopes of the central dome, roughly a hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred metres back from the shoreline the whole way around.

‘The maloca is in the centre of that ring, and there are four paths running roughly north-south and east-west from the maloca to the ring road. Think spokes in a wheel, the western path is the one you would have come up on from the Pinch. We are on the eastern spoke, which is the longest path because it takes a bit of a detour around the high ground of the granite spire.’ Rick paused, checking that Kate was keeping up with his fast introduction…   >> MORE <<

Part Three

Refreshed, clean, and smartly dressed in comfortable clothes straight out of her suitcase, Kate heard the staccato clangs of a bell in the distance announcing lunch. Walking into the sunlight on the ring road, she met Dominique strolling towards the head of the path that led to the maloca. ‘Katie! Walk with me.’

Kate took his arm and they walked in a comfortable silence, turning onto the eastern path. A few metres into the trees, he pointed to a colourful lizard up on a high branch. An intricately marked tree snake was stalking it. ‘You’ll only see those snakes high up except in the hottest weather. Any moment now…’

Just as the snake started sliding into position, the lizard stopped advertising for a mate just long enough to notice it and stay in the gene pool. It leapt clear of the snake and the tree, gliding on wide membranes between its legs into the thicker scrub below…   >> MORE <<