The sky hangs. The birds have hushed. There’s a blanket of stillness, as if the whole world is poised, waiting for the storm. The strange yellow light ahead of the rain brings out vividly the colours around us—the ochres, the browns, the bleached greens. I think of the strict Antarctic palette of white and blue and grey and black. Bellies of pink arc above us as Major Mitchells swoop by in a sudden evacuation. The smell of eucalyptus is flint sharp in the air. I look across at Rick. He’s kicking sand over the grey remains of the fire. I think of snow being kicked over the carcass of a day-old seal.

Antarctica is seared like acid on my mind.

I can never go back. I don’t reckon it’s meant for humans. I tell this to Rick. He says nothing. I know he thinks I’m here because I’m running away, as far away as I can get.

The first fat splats of rain come. One hits me like a nail. The earth opens up as if it’s breathing. We run. I take down my towel from the dead branch of the tree and snag a splinter in my finger. I can’t get it out. We run to the cabin of the four wheel drive and slam the heavy doors. Rick takes my hand in his and opens it flat and my palm is a road map of ochre lines. He tells me to hold still and with his two dirty blunt thumbnails he squeezes and stops and squeezes again and gently, the sliver pops up and out. I’m still and quiet because I’m crying. Because of Antarctica. Because of something I’d forgotten.

A blowy howly mongrel of a day and there was the grit from the wind and a shard of something in my eye, the sudden sharp pain of it and the scream, I can’t see! and he was at me swiftly and peering and holding my head braced tight between his big bear hands and yelling, Hold still! and he was licking my eyeball while I was kicking and squealing like a pony, he was licking and licking until the speck was gone and I came up blinking and smiling and still.

I can catalogue Antarctica by touch.

The touch of air sucked dry on my cheek, the fur of a day-old seal pup, the touch of an iceberg, a blizzard, a lover, the touch of sweat at minus twenty-three, of a camera stuck to the skin on my face, of cold like glass cutting into my skin, of a snowflake, of a dead man, of a doctor’s fingers on my inner thigh, of a tongue on my eye.

One: Galloping Days

ONE

GALLOPING DAYS

It begins with touch, in Sydney.