Where Sea Meets Sky(49)

I stand up out of my chair to get a better look and see what looks to be little creatures waddling out of the bushes and heading for the side of the house. Once they hit a patch of light coming from the house, I can see what they are.

Little blue penguins.

“What the fuck?” I say softly, feeling like my mind has just imploded. “What the hell are those?”

“Little blue penguins,” she says proudly.

I turn to her in disbelief. “Are you serious?” I thought I was making that up. In my head.

She nods. “Yup. Little blue penguins.”

And she’s right. They’re about a foot high, miniature versions of the ones I’ve seen on TV, and they’re entirely blue in color. I thought it was just the darkness playing tricks on me but no, once they hit the light, you can see the color on their oily feathers.

“I don’t get it,” I say, watching as the last of their group quickly scampers out of sight. That might have been the cutest and weirdest thing I have ever seen.

“You never head of them?” she asks. “They probably have a burrow under the house. It’s actually quite common for beach houses.”

“Look, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t do a whole lot of research about the country.”

“I can see that,” she says. “Well, how about that, then.”

“How about that,” I say, sitting back down. The penguins’ magical appearance has somehow taken Gemma’s heartbreaking story to another place, and she’s quick to jump on the transition. She tells me all about the interesting birdlife in New Zealand, from yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula down south, to the kea—cheeky green parrots that live in the snow-covered Alps. She’s animated as she tells me all she knows, and I absorb it like a sponge. I drink my beer and she goes back to drinking hers, and before Nick, Amber, and the Irish show up all sloshed, she’s painted a beautiful picture of what’s to come. I can only hope I’ll continue to be part of the picture.



“So how is the art coming along?” Vera asks me, her voice sounding so crazy clear over the cell phone. It’s nuts to think that not only is it eight p.m. where she is—yesterday—and eight a.m. here, she’s literally halfway across the world. Yet I’m able to talk to her like she’s right beside me.

“It’s picking up,” I tell her. “I didn’t start sketching until we were in Abel Tasman Park, but it was like I couldn’t stop myself. I wish I brought more than my watercolor pencils though.”

I breathe in the fresh mountain air and look around me. If we weren’t leaving in ten minutes, I’d be trying to paint this place as well. We’re in Makarora on the South Island, a place by an area called Haast Pass, sort of the halfway point between the resort towns of Wanaka and Queensland and the Wild West Coast that we were just on. There’s nothing to Makarora except maybe the holiday park we stayed at and farms scattered about, bastions of civilization trying to survive among the encroaching wilderness. But shit, is this place ever beautiful.

I’m sitting on top of a picnic table, the air sweet with morning dew while the sun slowly starts to heat up. I’m still amazed at how strong it is down here and how quickly you can burn. I learned that all too well during a kayak trip, though the burn on my upper body has turned into a deep tan.

Everywhere you look are mountains—big, ridiculously hefty mountains, like someone has placed sugar-dusted anvils at the sides of the valley. What I like most about them is how bare they are. Though the valley floor is green, green, green, with grassy fields of sharp-bladed flax and palmlike cabbage trees, the foliage peters off halfway up the mountains, leaving their upper halves bare. They’re brown and tan and nude, covered in what Gemma calls tussock grass, and because of this you can see every little cranny and crevice. It’s like looking at living velvet, and I can literally just stare at them for hours.

Vera clears her throat. “And is that the only thing picking up since we last talked?” she asks, trying to hide her curiosity.

I last talked to her the morning after Paekakariki and the little blue penguins. I bought a calling card at the ferry terminal to the South Island and spent the majority of the rough and wild voyage across Cook Strait filling her in on the trip so far.

That was ten days ago. Everything since then passed by in a dreamy, hazy blur. Sometimes it felt like a good dream. Other times it was a nightmare.

“Well,” I say hesitantly before launching into it.

After we left the North Island, Nick and Gemma’s relationship became a bit strained. Normally, that would have made me happy—I wanted nothing more than for them to break up. But it only made things awkward and Gemma miserable.