On her way home from her day job in the middle of a heatwave, all Linny wants from life right now? A cold shower.
Then the head of her dive team pages: a salvage job out on the reef. Even better than a shower—if Linny gets there in time.
She’d better. Because today, a centuries-old mystery awakens on the reef. Everything Linny knows? About to come crumbling down…
A haunting tale for everyone who ever longed for something more beyond the ordinary edges of life.
Rest for the Wicked
Linny inhaled deeply before she closed the bakery door, filling her lungs with enough sugar-and-bread scent to tide her over until the morning. Some days, she just couldn’t believe her luck, working in a place like this.
She closed the door behind her with a click and stepped out into the sweltering Cairns humidity. Insta-sweat. Grimacing, she tucked her stray fringe behind her ears.
The whole of northern Queensland had been experiencing an unusual heatwave, even for a tropical summer, and to make things worse, the humidity that kept Linny—and everyone else—perpetually damp also grew huge cumulonimbus clouds every afternoon that threatened but never did anything else. It was almost, Linny thought, like the land was holding its breath, waiting.
For what, who knew, and right at this second all Linny was waiting for as she schlepped down the footpath to her car was a cold shower. Mmm. She luxuriated in the idea, imagining icy water gushing down over her head, her shoulders… She’d get out to the air con on full blast, cold enough to raise goose bumps, and just for the three minutes it took to get dry and dressed again, she’d enjoy being cold.
If anyone had told her when she’d left Canberra that she’d miss the cold, she would have laughed in their face.
A muffled buzz from the depths of her bag vanquished all daydreams: the pager for her second job. No rest for the wicked, she thought wryly. Frantically, she searched through the bag for it. Why do these things never stay where you put them? She growled in frustration.
Coins clinked in their rush to escape her wallet and join the general detritus in the bottom of the bag. Argh! I am getting a smaller handbag!
It was a near-daily threat, sadly, with little force behind it; working the bakery in the mornings kept the bills paid, and doing on-call duty at one of the tiny local salvage companies provided just enough disposable income to feed her book habit. Somehow, there never seemed to be quite enough left over for handbags.
Finally, Linny found the offending pager and hit mute. The message scrolling across the tiny screen read, “All hands on deck dive ready 3pm”.
She dug out her phone and checked the time.
Great. If all her dive gear had been at the office like usual, she’d have made it in no time. As it was…
Linny hit the top spot on her phone’s speed dial. “Hey, Buzz? It’s Linny. I just got your page and I’m on my way, but all my gear’s at home for cleaning, so I can’t get there until at least quarter past.”
The old dive master grunted in acknowledgement, nothing more.
Probably her place on the team was guaranteed, Linny thought.
Surely, after six years…
Still. Buzz’d hate her for asking, but doubt would gnaw away her sanity otherwise. “Am I still in?”
Buzz sighed explosively into the phone, a wind gust of cyclonic proportions. “Get your ass here quick, girl. We’ll wait. Quarter past.” He hung up.
Joy burst through Linny’s chest, and she practically danced the last score of paces to the car. Summer was usually their busy season, with dives every day, but with the storms holding off and trade laws still under negotiation, business had been slow. She hadn’t had a dive in over a week and the reef was practically singing to her.Yes! She grinned as she got into the car, bumped the air con up as high as it would go, and pulled out into the sleepy post-lunch traffic. Dive time!