heard the harder crash of the waves breaking on the ocean side of the island and the white hiss of the water pulling back across the sand, rippling in pools around the base of salt-bleached logs and then again the crash of a new wave breaking. He could hear the entirety of the island. He could hear it, feel it, touch it, smell it. His entire awareness possessed and was possessed by the island. He knew its every intimate detail. He could sense the rhythm of its breathing, the current of its life.
Then, after the instant of expansion, his attention relaxed into a single, distant place deep in the body of the island. He was in a high mountain valley crowded with jungle and tumbled rock. There was a waterfall and dark, rushing water splashing among the boulders. Only the slightest breeze shifted the fronds of the tree ferns. A bird called in the twilight. Everything in the valley was alive â the water, the rocks and the air â everything was suffused with an awareness of its own. The valley had no name; no human had ever set foot there. This was his home; his place, where he could be absolutely himself. Here, he would never die. Here, the person he had become in the instant that the great bird shadow had passed over him could live forever and ever.
Later, as his grandmother led him unerringly down the dark path, he heard his parents calling for him, âDion, Dion.â
2
Miranda Whitlam, looking for something to do, picked her way past the packing cases and went into her fatherâs study. Since her mother died, Miranda had not dared speak to her father while he was working, but she had dared go in and be with him and had found her intrusions unresisted. As usual, he was seated at his desk, staring into his computer screen. She hovered around for a while, picking things up from the desk and putting them down again: a personal organiser, a battered leather-bound book, a pen with âRio Sheratonâ written on it, some Chinese coins. She let her finger track the luminous coloured inlay that cascaded down the dark-grey casing of the computer screen.
She took a breath and asked, âDaddy, what are you doing?â
She waited, aware that he had not lifted his eyes when she came in and that he was not lifting them to her now. At least he had not ordered her to be quiet or leave the room â although that might have been more interesting than this pointed disregard.
She waited a little longer but there was still not the slightest flicker of acknowledgement. Holding back her impulse to repeat the question, she set off on the round of the study that had been her original intention. It had been enough that she had dared speak to him in there. Trying to force the issue might result in summary dismissal.
Her first stop was the stone fireplace. Its lintel had carved crests that were now hardly visible, so worn had they been by the generations of cold men who had warmed themselves there. But Miranda could run her fingers across the shallow indentations and still make out the patterns. She had drawn them once and pinned the pictures up in her room, where her tutor, Lissel, had seen them and said they dated back to the sixteenth century. Miranda liked Lissel and had told her father so, thus ending the steady turnover, which Miranda had understood to be the natural consequence of the dislike she had expressed for her previous tutors. Lissel could catch on to Mirandaâs interests and change the course of her teaching accordingly. So, Mirandaâs fireplace pictures had set in train a series of lessons on what Europe had been like in the olden days, when there were still great forests of wildwood covering the land and men hunted bears.
In winter, her father would sometimes burn logs in the fireplace and Miranda could sit, feeling the tingling heat of real fire on her face while gazing into the glowing chasms between the logs. In the morning, instead of the fiery landscapes, there was a waste of ashes with
Then, after the instant of expansion, his attention relaxed into a single, distant place deep in the body of the island. He was in a high mountain valley crowded with jungle and tumbled rock. There was a waterfall and dark, rushing water splashing among the boulders. Only the slightest breeze shifted the fronds of the tree ferns. A bird called in the twilight. Everything in the valley was alive â the water, the rocks and the air â everything was suffused with an awareness of its own. The valley had no name; no human had ever set foot there. This was his home; his place, where he could be absolutely himself. Here, he would never die. Here, the person he had become in the instant that the great bird shadow had passed over him could live forever and ever.
Later, as his grandmother led him unerringly down the dark path, he heard his parents calling for him, âDion, Dion.â
2
Miranda Whitlam, looking for something to do, picked her way past the packing cases and went into her fatherâs study. Since her mother died, Miranda had not dared speak to her father while he was working, but she had dared go in and be with him and had found her intrusions unresisted. As usual, he was seated at his desk, staring into his computer screen. She hovered around for a while, picking things up from the desk and putting them down again: a personal organiser, a battered leather-bound book, a pen with âRio Sheratonâ written on it, some Chinese coins. She let her finger track the luminous coloured inlay that cascaded down the dark-grey casing of the computer screen.
She took a breath and asked, âDaddy, what are you doing?â
She waited, aware that he had not lifted his eyes when she came in and that he was not lifting them to her now. At least he had not ordered her to be quiet or leave the room â although that might have been more interesting than this pointed disregard.
She waited a little longer but there was still not the slightest flicker of acknowledgement. Holding back her impulse to repeat the question, she set off on the round of the study that had been her original intention. It had been enough that she had dared speak to him in there. Trying to force the issue might result in summary dismissal.
Her first stop was the stone fireplace. Its lintel had carved crests that were now hardly visible, so worn had they been by the generations of cold men who had warmed themselves there. But Miranda could run her fingers across the shallow indentations and still make out the patterns. She had drawn them once and pinned the pictures up in her room, where her tutor, Lissel, had seen them and said they dated back to the sixteenth century. Miranda liked Lissel and had told her father so, thus ending the steady turnover, which Miranda had understood to be the natural consequence of the dislike she had expressed for her previous tutors. Lissel could catch on to Mirandaâs interests and change the course of her teaching accordingly. So, Mirandaâs fireplace pictures had set in train a series of lessons on what Europe had been like in the olden days, when there were still great forests of wildwood covering the land and men hunted bears.
In winter, her father would sometimes burn logs in the fireplace and Miranda could sit, feeling the tingling heat of real fire on her face while gazing into the glowing chasms between the logs. In the morning, instead of the fiery landscapes, there was a waste of ashes with