I'm coming up slowly, into the night. The deck is wet black, waves washing over the bow in this growing swell. The air is warm and thick. We're nearing the tropics now. I'm barefoot, wearing wet-weather pants, a singlet and a wet-weather jacket, unzipped in this heat. My hair is damp, my hands clammy. Trembling, just a little.
Mac is at the helm. He pats the seat beside him. I sit down. And he smiles. 'You're ready,' he says, gives me a hug, stands and shuffles across the cockpit towards the hatch, turning at the last moment to say, 'See you in four hours.' And then he disappears below deck.
Darkness encircles the boat. The moon and the stars are hidden behind a thick blanket of cloud. The only light comes from the glow of the navigation instruments. Sea spray is lit pink. Beyond it, the world is impossibly black. Like an Yves Klein monochrome, the sky is everything and nothing. Because no matter how close up and palpable this blackness is, it is at once unfathomably deep.
And so I sit here, in this strange, rosy haze, one hand on the boat, the other on the wheel, gripping so tight my knuckles turn white, because I feel now, with the sea indistinguishable from the sky, that if I let go of the boat I'll be sucked out into blackness. Like falling water. Into the abyss. Into everything. Into nothing.
***
At first I think my eyes are playing tricks on me as a thin band of orange stretches itself across the horizon port side.
Minutes grate. My pulse quickens.
The orange band grows thicker, becomes wider, until I see the colour take shape. The orange comes alive. It's moving, bending, dancing in the night.
I squint and the orange pulls into focus. I gasp.
Flames. They're flames!
The ocean is on fire. Is it an oil slick?
My hands are shaking now, my heart thumping. I fly through the cockpit and down the hatch to the nav station, where I flick on the desk lamp and pull up a chart.
'What is it?' I whisper aloud. Port side. It's land! We're close to the coast here, only a few miles offshore. I feel my heartbeat calming; it's not an oil slick.
I climb back up the ladder into the cockpit and walk up onto the port deck. Staring out, I can see it now. Tongues of fire. The land is burning.
I remember Mac pointing out a smear of grey in the sky this afternoon. 'We're in cane country now.' Here, he told me, farmers clear the land with fire.
I sit back down at the helm and breathe deep. Beyond me, embers take flight like moths swarming around the moon. It's terrifyingly beautiful.
***
Mac comes up on deck with two cups of tea as the sky opens into white, sea flowers opening their petals. Dawn is blooming. A beam of sunlight cuts across the horizon. Mac passes me my tea.
'How'd you sleep?' I ask.
'Like a baby,' he says, smiling widely. 'You survived your first night on watch.' He pats me on the back. 'I'm proud of you, kid.'
I take a sip of tea, feel it warming me up from the inside out. Beyond the bow, the water is deep navy turning into something else. I watch in awe as the hours peel away; the sea becomes the blue of summer evenings, the blue of the number four, the blue of birdsong. It's brilliant and bold.
Mac is beaming. 'The Coral Sea,' he says. 'We're here.'
***
For lunch we have tinned spaghetti and warm bread. Maggie tells me that after five days at sea, anything tastes good. She's right. We've been at sea for almost two weeks, and I'm positive this is the best spaghetti I've ever had.
Afterwards, I wet a cloth with water from the sink and wipe the salt off my face. I've learnt that the more salt you get off, the easier it is to sleep.
I get into my bunk, having also learnt that, at sea, you sleep when you're able to. If you don't, you forget how to tie knots.
When I wake in the late afternoon, I find a packet of banana-flavoured lollies in my rucksack that I'd packed and forgotten about. I bring them on deck, sit down in the cockpit, stick one in my mouth and then offer the packet to Mac.
'What are these?'
'Banana lollies.'
He pulls back. 'Throw them overboard.' 'What?'
'Bananas are bad luck at sea.'
'They're only banana-flavoured.'
'I don't care.'
'You can't be serious.'
'No wonder we've been beating up-wind for two weeks. You've had bananas on board!'
'There's no actual banana in them!'
'Oli, they're bad luck. Throw them overboard.'
Maggie chimes in, 'It's also bad luck to have women at sea. Are you going to throw us overboard too?'
Mac laughs. 'Maybe I should.'
'You'd be lost without us,' she says, a cheeky smile spreading.
I put another of the lollies in my mouth.
'Hey! I saw that, kid.'
I roll my eyes, spit the lolly over the side.
'And the rest.'
'Why are they bad luck?'
Maggie explains, 'Bananas make the food around them spoil faster.'
'Fine,' I say, emptying the packet into the sea.
A gust of wind rises off the ocean, fills the sail. We lift two knots on the speedometer.
'See?' Mac says. 'It's working already!'
Sitting next to Maggie, I whisper in her ear, 'I've still got another packet below deck.'
She cracks up, then whispers back, 'Save some for me.'
***
Islands come into focus the way you wake up on a Sunday morning: slowly, like a painting, layer by layer. Block blue, at first. Then daubs of green, the outlines of trees, a band of white sand. A brown slab takes shape, all wrinkled and folded rock, until the cliff face opens its eyes.
A day later, we anchor for lunch on an island fringed by coral. To get there, we have to weave between two coral shelves. We drop the sails and turn on the motor. Mac comes up from the nav station with a chart, spreads it across the cockpit. I'm at the helm, listening to him call the shots.
'Easy, easy,' he tells me. 'Slow down a notch.'
I pull back the gearstick at my feet, steer starboard. My eyes are on the depth instrument when, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a fin. I look across the port side to see a grey fin. 'A dolphin!' I exclaim, then see the grey body snake back under water. 'Oh my God, a shark!'
'Concentrate!' Mac shouts.
'I just saw a shark!'
'Do you want to run us aground?'
'Sorry,' I mutter.
'Now, hook port side,' he says, 'around this lump of coral.' I steer the boat around a patch of rippled pink water. 'Now into reverse,' he instructs.
I flick the motor into reverse. The boat rocks on its heels, pulls back. Mac jumps up out of the cockpit and heads up to the bow. 'Neutral!' he calls out.
I put the motor in neutral, and he lowers the anchor.
'Very good! Now off, please!'
I turn the motor off, and listen. The island is alive with birdsong. A sea eagle takes flight, soars down the cliff face, spreads out across the water.
Mac jumps back into the cockpit. 'Time for a swim?'
'A swim?' I say. 'I just saw a shark!'
'Doubt it,' he says. 'It was probably a dolphin.' 'It wasn't swimming like a dolphin.'
Mac ignores me, goes down below with Maggie. They emerge minutes later wearing their swimmers. 'Come on, Oli,' Maggie says.
'No way,' I say.
'At least feel the water,' says Mac.
'Fine,' I say, edging towards the back of the cockpit. I grip the lifeline, slowly lowering one leg down to dip my toes in the water. But before I touch it, there are hands on my back, pushing me in. I fall forwards into the drink, fully dressed in my board shorts and singlet. My belly flop is spectacular.
I surface coughing and spluttering. Mac and Maggie are on deck, pissing themselves. I start swimming towards the ladder, panicked by something that touched my foot, but I must wait for Maggie who is already coming down into the water. She enters the sea the way you come home, dropping your keys on the table, breathing out. A sigh of relief, the way the ocean holds her.
Behind her, Mac jumps in, his splash coming over both of us.
And now I'm laughing too.
***
Back on deck, we have Vegemite on rye biscuits for lunch with peach fruit cups for dessert. I've just put a piece of peach in my mouth when I see a fin surface just beyond the stern, a grey body snaking through the water. I shriek, spitting the peach into my lap. 'Look! I told you!'
'Oh yeah, that's definitely a shark,' Mac says, and Maggie bursts into laughter.
'It's not funny!' I say. 'We could have been eaten!'
'They're only reef sharks, they won't eat you.'
'Yeah,' Maggie says. 'Maybe just a toe.'
***
I've been to Beijing, a city stacked into the sky. Bangkok, hot and heaving. New York, towering. Rome, ornate and opulent. Yet as I fix my snorkel to my face and dive beneath the surface, I realise no city I've ever seen compares to a city made of coral. It's vastly intricate. Infinitely complex. Schools of fish dart between swaying yellow seaweed. The seabed blooms like sea hibiscus. Starfish adorn rocks. Emperor angelfish glide through sun-lanced waters. I equalise my ears, swim deeper to where humphead wrasse move like gentle giants.
It's like walking through an art gallery. Walls of shells and barnacles are framed in gold leaf. Coral statues sit atop algae-covered plinths. Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn, a new work is unveiled. The sea, the finest curator.
But then I swim over a drop-off towards another shelf of coral and see only white, the pinks and purples leached from the coral like blood drained from a vein. The occasional fish swims between the bleached bones.
When I surface, the sunset is marbled on the water. I swim back over to the boat, climb up the ladder and find a towel in the cockpit. I wipe the salt off me. Maggie is already there, a towel wrapped around her body, her hair sleek silver.
'What did you think?' she asks.
I'm speechless.
'Beautiful, isn't it?'
'Yeah,' I say. 'But there's a patch where the coral is all white with hardly any fish. What happened to it?'
'Bleaching,' Mac says, climbing up the ladder. 'The worst the reef has ever seen last year.' He reaches for a towel. 'You can thank climate change for that. The ocean is warming, and it's becoming more acidic.'
I feel an uncomfortable weight in my stomach, wondering if Mac has told Maggie that my dad works in oil.
'You know,' Maggie says, 'I mourned losing my eyesight, but I'm almost relieved I can't see the reef now. It'd break my heart.'
Mac sighs. 'The Great Barrier Reef is the living dead.'
***
We anchor for the night in Blue Pearl Bay. Over dinner, Mac tells me there's a humphead wrasse living here called Priscilla. He says that when you dive under, you can hear her beak crunching on the reef.
'Soon,' Maggie says, 'you'll hear whale song.'
'Whale song?' I say. 'You're kidding.' Maggie shakes her head. 'Honestly.'
'If there's a whale within ten miles, you can hear it when you stick your head under,' Mac says.
I laugh. 'You're pulling my leg.'
'Just you wait,' Maggie says.
Mac reaches into the cupboard above the sink. 'Dessert, anyone?'
'What have we got?' I ask.
'Apple puree pots,' Mac says, passing one to each of us.
As we eat, I think of our walk this morning across Whitsunday Island to Whitehaven Beach. The tangle of vines strung around the track. The blue soldier crabs scuttling at low tide. I picture the muddy spots that freckle manta ray wings in the shallows. Wispy grasses like fine green hair on sand dunes. Twisted branches and orange rocks. And then I close my eyes, and I imagine that wash of turquoise sea swathed around a curve of white sand.
'Today was a good day,' I say. 'Thank you so much for bringing me here.'
Maggie reaches out to me, touches my forearm, feels her way down to my hand resting on the table. She holds it. 'No,' she says. 'Thank you.'
***
'Psst,' Mac whispers, coaxing me out of darkness. 'Oli, wake up.' I feel a hand on my shoulder. My eyes fly open.
'Sorry, kid, didn't mean to frighten you. But you gotta come see this.'
'What is it?' I mutter, rolling onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow.
'You'll see,' he says.
I wriggle out of my bunk and follow him through the cabin, up the stairs, through the hatch, into something else.
The ocean is glowing, iridescent. Like a silver muscle, pulsating.
Ripples of dragonfly blue. Sways of rose gold.
I whisper, 'What is it?'
'Phosphorescence.'
I walk to the back of the cockpit and lean over the safety rail, looking down through black glass to the sea floor, everything illuminated. Rainbow fish scales sparkling like jewels in an underwater cave. This coral city, lit up like Atlantis. All glittering gold. Teeming. And endless.
And there is the feeling that I'm beyond myself. As if I'm gazing into outer space, watching a galaxy being born. I hold my breath as the universe takes shape in wrinkled corals. Blooms of pink algae flowering like a summer storm.
This underwater world.
All silver and pink. I watch it.
Becoming and unbecoming in a single pulse.