Page 75 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

My eyebrows rise. The Department of Conservation has a network of around a thousand huts across the country. They’re very basic and don’t tend to have hot water, cooking equipment, bed linen, or food. But they do provide shelter, a place to light a wood fire, a water source, and composting toilets. It would get us out of the rain and give us a place to rest while we decide what to do.

“How far is it to the hut, do you think?” I ask.

“Not sure.” He stands, picks the bag up, and puts the strap over his head so the bag rests on his back. “The sooner we get going, though, the sooner we’ll get there.”

He takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, and we start making our way up the slope behind the beach.

It’s hard going. The forest here is dense, the trees close together, and the undergrowth is thick with ferns and bushes. The only good thing is that the canopy bears the brunt of the rain, so it’s not hammering in our faces all the time.

Joel is in front of me, pushing through the branches and holding back the strongest of them so I can pass. We work together, doing our best to ignore the slap of branches and scratch of twigs on our arms, legs, and faces, although I’m unable to stifle the occasional squeal. Soon I’m covered in red marks, but I grit my teeth and try to keep up with him.

We’re only minutes in when I spot the blood coating his calf muscle.

“Joel!” I catch his arm and gesture to his leg. “Oh my God, was that a branch?”

He looks down and shakes his head. “I caught it on the reef.”

“It’s bleeding pretty badly. There’s a first aid kit in the bag.”

“No, I don’t want to stop. We’ll fix it when we get to the cabin.”

I want to protest, but he’s already off, wrestling with the trees, so I follow silently. How bad is the wound? There’s a lot of blood. Until now, our main problem was drowning, and I thought once we made it to the beach that we were out of the woods. But we’re far from safe. We still have no way to contact anyone—our phones are probably going to be soaked, even if there was a signal. Maybe the emergency bag has a flare or something? Joel did mention a house at the other end of the island, but he said it was several kilometers away. What if his cut gets infected? I’d have to go and find help on my own.

My heart bangs on my ribs, and my mouth has gone dry. Being on the boat in the storm was scary, but it’s only now that I realize how much faith I had that Joel would get us to safety. I trust him completely. But if he falls ill and I’m on my own… I don’t have half as much faith in my own abilities.

He glances over his shoulder at me and stops walking. Without saying anything, he lowers the bag, extracts a bottle of water, undoes the lid, and passes it to me. I have a few mouthfuls, then say, “Do we need to ration it?”

He shakes his head, takes the bottle, and has a drink. “We’ve got water purification tablets, and the hut will likely have a water source.”

“If we find it. This forest is huge. How do you know where you’re going? What if we’re walking in the opposite direction to the hut?”

He puts his hand in his shorts pocket and extracts something—oh, it’s the compass. “We landed on the eastern edge of the island,” he says. “Not far from Battleship Rock, ina tiny bay. I’m going from memory, but about half a kilometer from here is a strip of higher, cleared land leading northwest to the World War Two Moturoa Battery. It’s about another half a kilometer walk along that cleared land to the cabin.”

“So a kilometer in total?”

“About that, yeah.”

Normally it would take around ten to fifteen minutes to walk a kilometer, but of course we’re in thick forest, going uphill, in the rain, and we’re exhausted. Even so, my heart lifts at the thought that it’s not that far.

I slot the bottle back into the bag, and he lifts it onto his shoulder. I glance at his leg—the calf is covered in blood. The sooner we get to the cabin, the better.

As we start pushing through the undergrowth again, I say, “How likely is it that the cabin is in good condition?”

“The Department of Conservation maintains its cabins regularly, so it should be good.”

“How do they get to it? Shouldn’t there be a proper path up to it?”

“Yeah, it’s probably further up the coast. We could have tried to reach it, but we would’ve had to climb over the rocks, and I was worried about the waves washing us off.”

I realize he’s thought about all this already. I thought he was making it up as he went along, but he’d thought to pocket the compass, and he’s obviously got a plan in his head. Talk about the strong, silent type.

We’re silent for a bit, then, as we struggle through the rest of the undergrowth. I do my best not to think about the insects that are no doubt nestled deep in the bushes. Luckily we don’t have any venomous insects here—unlike Australia, we don’t have any spiders or snakes or scorpions that can kill you, and we don’t have any bears or crocodiles or big cats, not even any dangerous plants, really. There are allegedly a couple of spidersthat can cause harm, but they’re very rare. Still, I’m not that keen on insects even if they’re not venomous. But I guess even insects don’t like bad weather, because I don’t see a single one as we battle our way up the slope.

I don’t know how long we’ve been walking—it must only be ten or fifteen minutes, although it feels more like an hour—but eventually we emerge from the trees and find ourselves on a grassy slope dotted with rocks. With no trees to bear the brunt of the rain, it hammers down on us again, and lightning continues to flash above us, while thunder rolls almost continually. We’re used to it now, though, and we stride out, climbing the slope, which gradually flattens.

It’s semi-dark because of the storm, but there’s enough light to see by, and so when we crest the hill we immediately see the cabin, only a few minutes’ walk away.

“It’s there,” I yell above the thunder, and Joel grins, grabs my hand, and leads me along the grassy plateau toward it.

---