Page 134 of The Island

On the land above all was chaos, storm, and lightning, but down here in the underworld all was quiet.

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The sun was old iron, then blood, then faded yellow playground plastic. She sat on the tree limb and looked through the binoculars at the water and the mainland. You could possibly try a shot over there but that was a two-miler without a guarantee of hitting anything or attracting attention. Ammunition was precious. She watched a dorsal fin rise and sink beneath the waves.

The tree began to shake. She looked down. Owen was climbing up. He cleared the first level of branches and the second and the third. The old Heather would have told him to watch himself but he didn’t need to be told much now. “Hey,” she said.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked.

“Keeping an eye out.”

“What’s that bird?”

“Which one?”

“The one next to the crow on the other tree.”

“Oh, that one. I dunno. Some kind of raptor. An Aussie peregrine? Here, look at it through the binoculars.” She passed him the binoculars and resumed her rumination.

Olivia was at the bottom of the tree now. “Can I come up?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Olivia climbed the eucalyptus tree and sat on the branch next to Owen.

Heather adjusted her position and looked in the direction of the farm. She couldn’t actually see it from here, but she could make out an inky line of smoke coming from that direction.

“The bird has red on its front—what would that be?” Owen asked, handing her the binoculars back.

“Gosh, I dunno, Owen. Big mistake not bringing an Australian-bird guidebook here. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it,” she said and adjusted the focus. “Some kind of kite, maybe?”

“Would Dad know?”

“He knew everything.”

“He didn’t know about birds,” Olivia said.

“I need to go to the bathroom. It’s a number two,” Owen said.

Heather knew what the problem was. “Use grass. That, I guess, is what humans used for the two hundred thousand years before the invention of toilet paper.”

He went off for two minutes. When he came back up the tree, he gave her a nod. “It worked OK. But now I’m hungry,” he said.

“We can’t get the eggs in daylight. What about that snake? Do you think we could eat that?” Heather asked.

“It’s poisonous!” Olivia said.

“No, it’s venomous, not poisonous! Dummy!” Owen said.

“Don’t call your sister names.”

“He’s the dummy!” Olivia said.

“Apologize, Olivia.”

“Make him apologize first.”

Normally this could go for fifteen or twenty minutes, but today Owen said simply, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that,” and Olivia said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it either,” like two goddamn kids on the Hallmark Channel.

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