The Road Less Travelled

Chapter one

Somewhere east of somewhere

A week at sea didn’t change Dana’s life. Returning ashore did. Her phone, which had been switched off since she’d boarded the gulet boat, delivered bad news the moment she turned it on. In small black letters, it spelled out a tragedy.

Her baby sister was eloping.

Dana pocketed her phone without sending a reply, gripped the canopy of the shaded lounge area, and swung herself down to the deck. Her bare feet slapped onto the freshly washed wood and a startled bird winged to the sky.

Those who were still on board hastened out of her way as she thundered down the narrow steps to the corridor below. Everything rolled; the floor, the walls … her mind.

With a history of bad ideas and looking through the lens of many poor choices, Dana knew she had the means and the obligation to protect her sister, but what she didn’t seem to have was the time. She was in Turkey. Chelsea was at home in Australia, but she would soon be in the Cook Islands – a good twenty or so hours of flight time from the Turquoise Coast.

There wasn’t a moment to lose.

The crew’s luggage was piled in the amenities closet closest to the stern. Dana grabbed her duffel bag, the tattered coat she hadn’t needed to wear in months, and the Converse sneakers that had travelled the world with her, and doubled back on herself in the tiny space.

She followed the rich smell of spices to the small galley kitchen further along the corridor. The tour chef was there, bent over food she would miss more than anything else. His broad shoulders were almost as wide as the bench he was expected to prepare a literal boatload of meals upon, and his dark skin shone with sweat. The tiny extractor fan in the tiny window wheezed and spluttered, but did little else. The old gulet’s poor design meant the chef cooked food within a person-sized oven.

Alim turned when he noticed her standing there.

‘It’s been fun,’ she said, touching a finger to her temple then pointing at him.

Alim’s thick eyebrows lowered. He pointed a set of tongs at the things she carried. ‘What is this?’

‘Emergency,’ she said.

‘Emergency?’

The chopped vegetables sizzled and spat in the ancient frying pan on the stove by his elbow.

She said, ‘Family.’

‘But one day more.’

Dana shook her head. ‘I’ve only got a day to get across the world.’ They’d hugged many times previously – he was the affectionate sort – but sweat was sweat. They weren’t so close that she could bring herself to get it all over her, so she blew him a kiss instead. ‘Tell the Cap I said cheers?’

‘Cheers?’

‘Cheers. Thank you.’

The self-named Captain Courageous had anchored them in Fethiye and taken a break on shore, he wouldn’t be back for hours. Dana didn’t have that kind of time – not for a goodbye that wouldn’t matter in the years to come. She barely had time for this goodbye, except Alim had been a little bit important. Quick to smile, quicker to play, he’d been the reason for many laughs in her otherwise repetitive days.

She touched the back of her fingers to his wet cheek. ‘You’re pretty cool.’

He was beginning to understand. ‘I will miss you,’ he said.

Dana smiled. ‘We’re Facebook friends.’

As if that meant anything.

Back on deck, the sun-kissed faces of her latest and last tour group turned towards her with interest. Their names were a blur of letters and their backstories a smudge of origins. The groups came and went every seven days, each of them similar to the last and foreshadowing the next. She didn’t bother saying goodbye, and she ignored the hundredth blonde who pulled her sunglasses down and asked for a cocktail, because Dana no longer worked here.

Pulling a crushed sunhat from her duffel bag, she stepped onto the gangplank; back into the sun and the warmth that had been her biggest constant since June. She pulled the hat low over her eyes and on the dock she wriggled her feet into her old flip flops. They were the most battered of the dozen pairs littering the boarding area, and this was an endless source of pride for Dana, because that kind of wear and tear had to be earned.

The concrete was so bright beneath the midday sun that it seemed lit from within. She’d lost her sunglasses somewhere east of somewhere, which meant she was squinting when she neared the closest thing to a friend that she’d had for near on a year.

He was tall. Half a season on Ataturk 2 had darkened his skin and his hair was stiff with salt. His clothes were faded and frayed from too much indifferent care and his eyes were full of a kind of interest he’d never been able to muster for her. He was looking at a girl close to Dana’s sister’s age – a mere eighteen – and there was nothing else for him; no shining boats rearing against their moorings, no glittering Mediterranean slapping against the docks, or young boys trying to sell reused bottles to thirsty tourists. He’d succumbed to madness. He’d stopped seeing the world, stopped living for it. The girl was a walking, talking anchor with long eyelashes and tangled hair.

Dana thrust her shoulder against his arm as she passed. ‘Jump,’ she said, his curious nickname which he’d never explained but often illustrated. She’d caught him off-guard. Fractured his singular concentration. She felt his body pivot but she didn’t look back. There was nothing she needed to see or say.

He was already a memory.

There was only forward. Forward to a battered dolmus on the main road, which led to a larger bus station then a long drive to the international airport.

Four hours later Dana had a ticket to ride and the first whispers of a plan. She settled in one of the hard seats to wait, and re-read Chelsea’s wedding invitation, over and over again.

If anyone knows a reason why these two should not be wed …

Chapter two

Kia orana

The Cook Islands was nothing like home. Dion had been ready for that. He’d read webpages, blogs, a Lonely Planet guide, and a tourist brochure, but nothing had prepared him for poultry at baggage claim.

A skinny black chicken wobbled between the waiting passengers. The baggage claim area of the Rarotonga International Airport was little more than where the baggage handlers parked their baggage truck and trailer. The passengers were free to help themselves to what was theirs and hopefully no more, and the informality of it all made Dion uncomfortable.

He seized his bag the moment it became accessible. The people around him were hot and tired, plane-creased and clearly stiff – they were swinging their arms and stretching their backs – but it was clear that they were also energised by their arrival. They were smiling and sniffing at the sweet-smelling air, and their collective excitement made the small space feel ever smaller. It was dark, Dion couldn’t see much beyond the carpark lights and the pool of light in which they stood, but he felt what everyone else must: that pervasive sense of otherness.

He didn’t like it.

There was a mark on his new bag, easily the length and width of his arm. Someone he didn’t know had touched his things, and carelessly. He knew he was supposed to just roll with this because these things apparently happened during travel, but the lack of accountability felt wrong. Back home, there would be hell to pay if he dropped a wine barrel or damaged a customer’s car. His boss – the very man who was standing across from him now, watching the pile of bags reduce ever-closer to his ratty old duffel at the bottom – would have something to say about such carelessness. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t all employers?

Woody caught Dion’s eye and winked. He feigned thirst by spreading his fingers over his throat and sticking his tongue out, then he wiped some sweat from his temple and pretended to lick it from his fingers.

Okay, so Woody wasn’t the type to come down hard on a guy, but the mark on Dion’s bag still rankled.

He pulled the bride’s bag free when it became available, then stepped away from baggage claim.

Standing back from the crowd, Chelsea’s wide smile widened when Dion wheeled her bag to her side. ‘Thank you,’ she said in her sing-song way. She took custody of the handle then pretended to offer him a tip. With Australian currency.

He declined it with an eye roll.

‘There’s a chicken,’ he said to her. When her smile didn’t change, he clarified, ‘In the airport.’

The sticky, thick air seemed to move inside her and fill her up. ‘Isn’t this place wild?’

That was one word for it.

‘I can’t believe it’s so late,’ she went on. ‘I feel too charged for it to be the end of the day. Don’t you want to just … run down the road screaming, or something?’

They were on an island. If Dion was going to run anywhere screaming, it would be back to the tarmac. ‘I could sleep,’ he said instead.

A smiling woman, her hair as dark as shadow, interrupted their exchange. She approached them with her dark copper arms extended, each of them covered from wrist to elbow with ropes of flowers. She drew one from her wrist, then with both hands set it carefully about Chelsea’s neck. She murmured a greeting to the bride, then turned to the best man.

‘Kia orana,’ she repeated. ‘Welcome.’

Dion had to bend so she could reach over his head. The petals stroked his cheek then the necklace rest against his chest, pungent and fresh and a shock of colour against his black shirt.

‘Meitaki,’ he murmured.

The woman’s eyes brightened. ‘Ah! Meitaki ma'ata.’ She had a wide, friendly face. A wide nose and a wide, smiling mouth. She wore a colourful dress and a flower behind her ear, and her customer service was incredible because she seemed genuinely pleased to welcome them here.

She nodded at them both, then moved on to the next of the newly arrived.

Chelsea lifted her new necklace to her face and breathed it in. Dion took his off. He gave the garland to her and by the time their travelling companions joined them she’d fashioned it into a crown of gardenias.

Michael returned with his large backpack on his shoulders and the handle of a rolling bag in each hand. Chelsea’s mother Kathryn was close behind him, and she’d taken charge of her husband Malcolm’s bag.

Malcolm was slower these days but no one minded, particularly not Woody, who walked beside him now. The pair were a study in opposites; Malcolm shuffled, Woody strode. Malcolm had short grey hair and a serious but soft disposition, and Woody had a disarray of blond curls which perfectly matched his wild, haphazard way. They were best friends, and as good as fathers to Dion.

‘I shouldv’e got me one of these on the plane,’ Woody said, holding his flowers high. ‘Got into the mile high club.’ His cracked lips spread into a wide, self-satisfied grin. ‘Geddit?’

Michael rolled his eyes. ‘Not one of your best, Dad.’

Woody shrugged, still smiling.

Dion cleared his throat. ‘Of course, you’re making a lei pun – as in, you got leid – but in the Cook Islands,’ he pointed at the flowers about Woody’s neck, ‘it’s called an ‘ei kaki.’

Woody blinked at him; once, twice … then he laughed and dropped an arm around Dion’s neck. ‘You’re the weirdest kid. At least I know you got my meaning.’

‘It’s Hawaii that –-’

‘Stop talking, D.’

Woody didn’t lift his arm from Dion’s shoulders until they were at the steps of the bus that would shuttle them to their accommodation. Friendly porters piled their bags in the undercarriage as the group climbed aboard to wait for the final tick against the passenger list.

There was no air-conditioning, only open windows encouraging intermittent breezes. The small space was over-sweet with the scent of hot flowers and perspiring passengers, and settled towards the back in a seat of his own, Dion felt very far from home. Alone in a bus that would take him somewhere unknown, along a road he’d never seen before and couldn’t anticipate the turns and markers of. He shifted in his seat and tried not to think of the kilometres between here and all he knew.

Home was other – would be other – for the next week.

He could manage a week.

At long last, the doors shut and the bus rolled forward into the night. It pulled onto a single lane road surrounded by shadow. There was a low-lit café, then trees and snatches of coastline.

The road never widened. The traffic never increased.

They passed one stop after the next. Passengers disembarked. Dion bounced his knees and watched the unfamiliar shapes crawl past the windows. The driver was in no hurry. Nor should Dion be, but there was an unshakeable sense of urgency in his blood, one he’d carried into this country and couldn’t shake.

It felt like an age before they reached The Rarotongan.

A line of dancing flames preceded the grand front doors. Open to the elements, the high-ceilinged, expansive lobby was furnished with rattan and adorned with flowers so incredible they looked fake. A man in a floral print shirt hurried forward to greet them. He carried a tray of drinks full of sweet juice, and the woman behind the counter – just like the woman at the airport – wore a flower behind her ear and a wide professional smile that made Dion feel pleased to have arrived.

Check-in took a while. The bride and groom went first, then the mother and father of the bride followed. Woody, the father of the groom, went next, and Dion went last, although he’d sooner have gone first and left the lot of them behind – he was as wound as the guts of a clock.

Keycard finally in hand, he closed his fingers around the handle of his bag and waited to fall in line.

But the bride had a question.

She leaned against the counter. Eyes wide, she asked the stranger a question which shot adrenaline straight through Dion’s middle.

‘Has my sister checked in yet?’

Dion didn’t hear the woman’s answer, because his mind was overrun with a name.

Dana Ryan.

He’d thought of her of course, even to some degree expected her; the sister of the bride, the intrepid traveller, the girl who’d taken his virginity just before she’d taken her first step into the world.

Chelsea’s expression told him what answer he’d missed.

‘Hey,’ Michael said, curling his fingers around her elbow, ‘you don’t even know if she got the