Into That Forest - By Louis Nowra Page 0,22

til me forehead were full of joy. Becky ate some and she became like me. She were ecstatic too. She danced along the wet sand. I danced with her and ran with the tigers who were jumping with high spirits too cos of something maybe similar in the seal tongues, and we ran and played til way into the afternoon. I had never had so much aliveness in me. Becky yafflered and yafflered at me, but the tigers and me paid no attention to her. We didn’t want to talk. When the sun were on top of our heads we found some shelter behind the sand dunes and we slept snuggled up to each other. I could feel Becky’s heart, Dave’s and Corinna’s racing hearts, as I put me head against their chests and fell asleep.

Seal gristle and tongues became our one and only food, and that food were the cause of so much happiness. We were there for some days, I don’t know how many cos I lost track of time. The seals stopped coming ashore and we could only kill the stragglers who had lost themselves from the main pod. One evening after the four of us had feasted on one scrawny thing, Dave spinned round as if he heard a noise but then I saw his nose were working overtime and I realised he smelt something powerful in the sea. He jumped from the rocks into the water and started to swim towards a dark object about the size of a cabbage. But he couldn’t reach it and had to turn back. He and Corinna stood on the rocks staring at this thing bouncing on the incoming waves, their bodies straining towards it, as if they thought their necks could grow long enough for them to grasp it. Becky seen their hunger for it so she jumped off the rocks into the water. She started to walk through the waves towards it. She were taller than me, but the water rose up to her waist, then chest and neck and still she went forward. I were out of me skin with worry cos sometimes the waves completely swamped her and she vanished beneath them, frightening me to the core of me heart. Then when I thought she would surely drown and I were pissing meself with fright I seen her hand reach out of the boiling white foam and grab the thing. She allowed the waves to carry her back on shore. We three ran from the rocks to the wet sand where she lay coughing and spluttering but still holding it.

It were a greyish colour, with sharp bits of bone and shells sticking out of it. The tigers sniffed it. The smell made their tails go stiff with rapture. They nibbled at it. I knew I had to wait me turn but I couldn’t wait. I grabbed it for meself. The tigers yawned at me and their eyes burned darkness into me, but I knew what I held in me hands - ambergris. It smelt of rotten stink and perfume. I told Becky what it were. She asked what it were for. I told her and said that if Dave and Corinna could eat it, then we could too. I gave it back to the tigers who were coughing threats at me. After they had chewed a mouthful the tigers’ eyes went glassy and their legs gave up under them. They wobbled off to the dunes where they lied down and watched the stars. I ate a mouthful and felt me blood become perfume. I couldn’t eat any more. It were richer than plum pudding. It were more powerful than seal gristle. I felt me legs turn soft, as if me bones had melted. I crawled to the dunes to join the tigers. Becky picked up the ambergris where I dropped it and carried it to the dunes where she ate a mouthful. Halfway through chewing it, she sighed, her eyes rolled back in her head, her expression were ecstatic and she fell down beside us real slow like she were in a dream, and when she landed next to me she sent up a puff of fine sand like dust in a room bright with sunlight.

We lied in the dunes like pieces of jelly. The next few days that’s all we did. We ate ambergris til there were none left, except for the sharp bony things that were stuck in it. Sometimes I thought I