Of course I went anyway. How could I not? George scowled and disapproved, but friendship has a claim even when the friend is gone. Those letters were sent to me for a purpose, and I intended to find out what it was.
The Sea Witch had sent her letters to an address in Tasmania, an island I’d never visited. That same address was on the back of the packet which passed those letters on to me. Travel was easy to book, and leave easier to obtain. The desire to travel showed an interest in life, something different from the obsession of Grief, and the university encouraged it.
“I don’t care what the university thinks,” said George. “There’s something wrong here.” He didn’t ask me not to go, because it wasn’t his place anymore and we were too careful in our boundaries now. But he drove me to the airport and slipped a packet of soft licorice into my purse and stood with his arms crossed while I checked in. You’ve always been able to turn away, and I’ve always liked that about you, he’d said, the man who had learned to turn away from home and family himself, and that was what I’d always liked best about him: his capacity to let go, easily and without apparent resentment.
“Just be careful,” he said, and did not kiss me goodbye. “Call me when you get there.”
I did call. I could give him that, at least.
Tasmania was green and blue and salt-scented, with wind so strong I had to braid my hair to keep it from tangling. It was cooler than the north, and as I headed towards the more mountainous centre I admired the deciduous beech trees and the rainforest. More than this, I admired the eucalypt forests, the tall enormous stands of swamp gum, breathing in their kerosene scents as I stopped underneath them for lunch, leaned against the crumbling bark of their trunks, and examined the hard little gum nuts that fell about me. They were so tight and contained and separate that I wondered how they ever survived.
I would have been more interested in sharing my impressions of it with George if I’d felt less disturbed. That wasn’t an admission that would have made either of us feel any better about my being here, so I kept it to myself and walked into a place of extinction. In all that green and blue and salt, extinction was a familiar odour.
At my destination — the remote, run-down farmhouse that corresponded to the address on the packet of letters — photographs of the same striped animals adorned the walls like family portraits. Amid the still pictures, short videos played on wall-mounted screens. The recordings, like the photos, were taken as the species was dying. We had so little surveillance of them, and most of that was centered around extinction. On each screen, thylacines paced up and down cages, the last specimens of a lost bloodline. They were meaty, elongated creatures, with short legs and jaws that gaped like a basking shark’s. They did not move like jellyfish, and I did not love them for it.
The woman who had welcomed me inside was old enough to be my grandmother, or Marjorie’s grandmother. I wondered if that was why the Sea Witch had sent her so many letters. Marjorie’s Gran had died when she was a child, and she had missed the relationship. Perhaps the Sea Witch found an old woman easier to confide in. So, following what I imagined was her lead, I called the old woman Granny. Not to her face. Her real name came with academic affiliation, with professorships and PhDs, but thinking of her as Granny reminded me that those impressive credentials belonged to the woman she had been before Grief struck her. Forgetting that Grief would have changed her — as Marjorie had changed into the Sea Witch — was a dangerous endeavour. Granny hid the madness well. That she still had an emeritus position was testament to her faculties. Looking for insanity as I was, however, I could see it seeping through to the surface from somewhere deep within her. There was the same mix of scatter and focus that I’d once seen in the Sea Witch, and for a brief moment I thought I saw Marjorie’s eyes staring out of Granny’s face.
“These are yours,” I told her, handing her the packet of letters. I didn’t need or want them. They were unpleasant reminders of what Grief did to my friend’s mind. “How did you know to send them to me?”
Granny smiled, and it showed all her teeth. “We talked about you. Does that surprise you?”
“Yes. I’m not that interesting.”
“You’re unlucky,” said Granny. “That is interesting. But there are so many unlucky people now. Still, you needn’t worry. It’s possible your fortunes could change.”
“Unlucky?”
“Grief hasn’t come for you yet. That’s unlucky.”
As if the avoidance of Grief was a misfortune she hoped would be remedied. “I’m happy the way I am. Don’t mistake loyalty and curiosity for a tendency to melancholy.”
“You’re so certain you won’t develop it, are you? Goodness. How extraordinary, to have the walking avatar of immunity here in my house.”
That was a bold claim, and not one I was prepared to make. I wasn’t superstitious and never had been, but to state that I’d never succumb to Grief was arrogant to the point of foolishness. “The universe dislikes hubris, I think.”
“And yet here you are.” Granny had a point, and George would have agreed with her. It was why the people who came down with Grief were shut away in hospitals, and why no one went to their funerals. Too much attention to the misery of others was a dark path in a dark wood,
