Skins

Skins Read Free Page A

Book: Skins Read Free
Author: Sarah Hay
Tags: FIC019000
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curled over the stern and pulled them in. After a while she closed her eyes, feeling the moisture seep into her skin. If the sea chose to take her, would she die from the cold or would she have to drown? The boat came up the other side and her eyes opened and fixed on a rock somewhere along that hazy line that separated the sea from the sky. She realised that in three days of sailing she had barely moved except when they hauled up on the beach at night. The rock loomed larger. It was in the middle of a strip of grey land. There was a white beach to one side. The whiteness was bright after so much blue and grey.

    Dorothea took the rough hand of the young man without looking at him. She held her skirts above her ankles and clambered over the side onto hard sand. Her fingers were stiff from clutching the rough timber of the boat and it was an effort to straighten her legs. She tried to moisten her lips with her tongue but it stuck to her teeth. Her sister stumbled as she was helped from the boat. Dorothea took her arm to help her and to steady herself. They both shivered as they walked a little way up the beach. Mary started to weep hot tears that drew lines down the salty veneer of her face. She glanced over her shoulder at the black man by the boat. His stare was steady, his eyes blank but hard beneath his heavy brow. She looked to the younger man and saw the sickly smile in his eyes as they shifted with excitement from her to her sister. She had never seen anything like them before: the big man with his shiny black skull and broad frame draped in animal skins, and the young one, lank hair falling to his shoulders and strips of trousers flapping around his ankles. Her eyes watered and she looked away, blinking against the shimmering figures that moved across the sand. She squeezed her sister’s hand but her grip had lost its strength.
    Mary began to breathe quickly.
    â€˜I need something to drink.’
    Dorothea released her. She looked into her sister’s face seeing the sweat on her forehead even though they faced the wind. Exhaustion was smudged beneath her eyes. The black man had his back to them, talking to Jansen. When she approached, Jansen draped his arm across her shoulders.
    â€˜My love,’ he sniggered.
    â€˜Is there any water? My sister is poorly.’ Her voice was flat.
    She could feel the sealer’s dark eyes upon her. He smelt like a fox.
    â€˜Follow the edge of the rock. There’s a well at the back.’
    He pointed to the corner of the beach where the sandhill sloped into a low ridge towards the granite. A clump of wattle grew there and behind it was stubby bush, coloured red and gold and green.
    Although they couldn’t see the camp from the beach, they could make out a track around the wattle where thin gold leaves blanketed the ground. They followed his directions, keeping to the edge of the granite as it went inland. The bush was on their left and grey-black lumpy rock striped with shallow gullies on their right. Their feet trampled dried-up plants that hadn’t survived the summer and dry yellow lichen which clung tenaciously to life at the base of the granite. Just when they were beginning to think the track led nowhere, they glimpsed something through the trees and caught the familiar smell of a smouldering hearth. A gap in the wattle turned into a path to a large timber and stone hut, which was built on the edge of a thicket of tall paperbark trees. They came to a wall and followed it around to the other side where they were surprised to discover that attached to the building was a shelter like a verandah which opened out into the clearing. Bedrolls and piles of skins were kept underneath it. A door at one end led to a kitchen. At the other end was an entrance to a storeroom that contained barrels and skins. From the rafters hung dead animals: wallabies, geese and a large lizard. A big paperbark tree and a tall eucalypt with a straight smooth trunk sheltered the

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