Slow River

The Buccaneer Archipelago lies off the northern coast of Western Australia. Cicely Island, near the southern tip of the chain, is all black rock, lush tropical foliage, and white beach. Oster buys it, renames it Ratnapida, Island of Gems, and builds a house.

Lore is the first to see it. Oster comes to her school in Auckland three days before the end of term. “I want you to see it fresh, as it’s supposed to be.” And though they fly from Auckland to Perth, then take a copter from Perth to Beagle Bay, Oster insists they travel the last ninety miles to Ratnapida, Island of Gems, by boat.

“The key to this place is leisure. It has to be approached in the right spirit. You and I can appreciate that.”

The boat is a two-masted yacht but the wind is in the wrong direction so the captain uses the silent magnetic water propulsion. The noise of the sea is eerie.

It is mild for the subtropics, eighty degrees, and Oster wears shorts and a life jacket. They head northwest along the coast and the afternoon sun shines directly on his chest. The wiry gray body hair is almost golden in this light, and all of a sudden Lore knows what color his hair would be if his mother had not turned off her color-producing allele. She wonders idly what color hair her mother would have. One could often tell natural hair color from a person’s eyes… She has seen her mother with brown eyes and black, violet and deep blue, green and hazel, but realizes with a shock that she does not know their real color. She has no idea of the color of her mother’s eyes. She nearly asks her father, but does not: she is scared he might not know.

The boat docks at a wood and stone quay in a bay that has been scooped out of the black, volcanic rock. The island ascends in tiers of path and step and miniature waterfall to the house. When Lore sees it she understands immediately that this is her father’s way of proclaiming who he is. His way of dyeing his hair. She also knows her mother will hate it.

“It’s beautiful!”

Oster smiles.

It takes them more than an hour to climb to the house because Oster wants to show her every pond, every silent carp and lily, every arrangement of stone and water and hidden grotto. Lore follows him from pool to bench to bright bloom, laughs when a huge blue butterfly lifts from a purple flower by her feet. The gardens are very like him: playful, rich, and secret. Eventually they reach the top of the rise, where the secret places give way to formal grounds which give way to patio, then porch, then the house itself, almost as if there is no dividing line between inside and out.

The house is based on Indonesian styles: polished wood, high ceilings and low, stone sculpture, water, cool rooms. The gates are old iron filigree, the doors imported from a recently demolished temple. Lore is walking through her third room of wood and screen and slowly moving ceiling fans when she realizes she has not seen a single net terminal.

“Where are they?”

“There aren’t any. Not in these rooms.” He leads her through to the south side of the house. The change is subtle but definite. The curves of polished wood become more angular, the ceilings brighter, the air more brisk. Huge windows open to a long, long lawn with an intricate, tiled area at the far end. “I tried to disguise it a little.” Lore looks more closely at the lawn, at the tiles, and notices the discreet gray stubs of sensors and sound controls. A copter pad. “When we’re in a hurry, we can fly out.”

Neither of them mentions Lore’s mother.

For the first few months, the house on Ratnapida seems to be doing the job Oster intends. He always makes sure he is at the house a few days before Lore arrives at the end of the school term from Auckland. Sometimes Uncle Willem and his husband Marley are there; sometimes they can only fly in for a day or two. Tok, now a tall, serious fourteen-year-old, comes home from his school in Amsterdam, and Greta flies in from the field. Stella, who seems more like seventeen than fourteen, is there at odd times; sometimes she is sent home from school in disgrace in the middle of term, sometimes she spends the holidays with friends. Her hair is always a different color and her accent changes depending upon fashion.