Morag could do nothing. She could only stand high on the hill and watch the tsunami smash toward the destruction of her people.
There was a soft, growing rumble. Louder…
Then it hit.
She watched in appalled, stupefied fascination as the water reached the shore. There were dull grating sounds as buildings ground together. Sharp reports as power poles snapped. It was a vast front of inrushing water, smashing all before it in a ghastly, slamming tide, the like of which Morag had never begun to imagine.
And there was nothing to do where she stood but watch.
Maybe she could have closed her eyes. She surely didn’t want to see, but for the first awful seconds her eyes stayed open.
She saw the tiny harbour surge, boats pushed up onto the jetty, houses hit, the water almost to their eaves. Dear God, if people were inside…
She saw old Elias Cartwright open his front door just as the water hit—stubborn old Elias who’d consider it beneath his dignity to gather outside with the villagers just because of a mere earth tremor…
The water smashed and that was the last Morag saw of Elias.
It was then that she closed her eyes and she felt herself start to retch.
She kept her eyes closed.
Closed.
This was safe. Here in the dark she could tell herself she was retching for nothing. It was a dream—a nightmare—and soon she’d wake up.
But there was no line separating dream from reality.
The sun was still warm on her face. One of the island goats was nudging her arm in gentle enquiry. The world was just the same.
Only, of course, it wasn’t. When she finally found the courage to open her eyes, the tiny Petrel Island settlement was changed for ever.
The houses nearest the harbour were gone. The harbour itself was a tangle of timber and mud and uprooted trees.
Devastation…
Her first thought flew to Robbie.
She looked upward to Hubert’s place and the old man was staring down at her, her horror reflected in the stock-still stance of the old man. She was two hundred yards away but his yell echoed down the scree with the clarity of a man with twenty-year-old lungs.
‘I’ll take care of the lad. We’ll watch the sea for more. Robbie and I’ll stick with the bell and not leave it.’
She managed to listen. She managed to understand what he’d said.
Hubert and Robbie would watch to warn of another wave, she thought dully. And in offering to take care of Robbie, she knew what Hubert was saying she should do.
She was the island’s only doctor. The islanders looked to her for help. For leadership.
She had to go down.
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