Wild Dark Shore

Seeing Yen’s body makes Fen think about her mother’s death and corpse. She wonders if Claire would look like Rowan if she were still alive.

After dinner, Fen and Rowan talk about what they saw, and Fen cries. Rowan, who has a shaved head, tells Fen that she cut her hair off because she “wanted to feel lighter” (72). Then, Fen goes to talk to Raff. He is upset looking at a picture of one of the scientists, Alex. He storms off and goes to hit his punching bag in the lightroom at the top of the lighthouse. Fen tells Dom what happened, and he leaves to check in on Raff. After Dom has left his room, Fen steals Claire’s annotated copy of Jane Eyre from his closet, where he keeps Claire’s keepsakes.

That evening, Fen cannot sleep in the house because she thinks she sees someone walk past the window. She goes to sleep in the boathouse on the shore.

Raff has a hydrophone that he uses to listen to and record underwater sounds. He records whale noises that he then pairs with his violin playing. One day, when he was working on a track, Alex, a scientist at the base, overheard him playing. Alex complimented him, and they began to see each other. One day, they kissed.

Raff is upset that Alex is gone. He boxes his punching bag to work out his feelings. His father taught him this technique to manage his anger.

That evening, Orly tells Dom that Rowan was asking about Hank and that he told Rowan that Dom and Hank were not friends. Dom reassures Orly that he did not do anything wrong by sharing this information with Rowan, but Raff seems alarmed.

Orly tells Rowan about the “buzzy burr,” a flowering plant that propagates by attaching burrs to birds’ wings. It can travel around the world on the wings of an albatross until it is deposited in Argentina.

Rowan feels wary of Dominic. She wants to keep busy, so she decides to clean the bathroom and refinish the kitchen table. Then, she finds Orly and they go for a walk. He shows her the albatross couple, Ari and Nikau, that nest on the island. 

That evening, Rowan and the children have a bonfire on the beach. Fen tells Rowan that she worries about returning to the mainland because she doesn’t “know how to talk to people” (87). Rowan warns Fen not to fall in love with a place or a person because things can be destroyed, like Rowan’s house was in the fire. Fen tells Rowan their family came to Shearwater Island after their mother died. Rowan tells Fen she raised her two younger sisters and therefore understands Fen’s need for freedom and rebellion. Before bed, Dom tells Rowan that he knows Hank is her husband. He tells her that Hank seemed “burdened” and that the isolation perhaps took a toll on him.

Hank came to Shearwater after the fire that destroyed Rowan’s house. His job was to decide which seeds would be transferred to a smaller seed vault and saved and which would be left behind. After a few months, Hank seemed to “spiral.” His last messages to Rowan were three emails that expressed fear for his safety. Rowan was unable to get in touch with other scientists on the island, so she decided to go herself.

Raff brings Fen some food and asks her to come back to the house. She refuses. They talk about their anxieties about leaving the island. Dom and Orly arrive. They tell Raff and Fen that Hank is Rowan’s husband and that Rowan came to the island to look for him. Dom tells the children that they need to all keep their “mouths shut.” Raff thinks that his father seems calm, but he knows that he is capable of violence.

Dom thinks about how they need to be careful about what they tell Rowan and resolves to keep an eye on her. Rowan offers to help Dom with repairs, and he agrees. They go to the base and remove a corrugated metal roof to use to build a shelter for the remaining batteries. Dom is impressed with Rowan’s ability. She tells him she used to work in construction as a “chippy” (carpenter) and that she built her own house. Dom is impressed and feels his attraction to her grow. Later, he redoes her stitches, which have popped.

That night, Dom awakens to the sound of Raff crying. Raff tells Dom that he misses Alex, but Dom does not know what advice to give besides encouraging Raff to keep using the punching bag. Later, he awakens to the sound of Orly crying. Orly has had a nightmare about the brush fire that destroyed Rowan’s home.

At breakfast, Dom chastises Rowan for telling Orly about the fire and giving him nightmares.

Later, Dom, Orly, and Rowan go to the seed vault. On the way, Rowan overhears Orly talking to the wind, reassuring it that they are not going to go “that way.” Rowan is stunned by the natural beauty of the island and the hundreds of seals and birds that live there. They arrive at the vault, where Hank left instructions for which seeds to save. Rowan realizes how hard it must have been for Hank to choose which plants would survive and which would be left to go extinct. They package up seeds. As they leave, Rowan notices that the concrete walls have been water-damaged and may not hold for long.

On their way to the scientific base, Dom asks Rowan why she did not decide to rebuild her house. Rowan tells him she felt there was no point. Dom says that his job is to fix things, even though they will break again. At the base, Rowan decides to stay in Hank’s former hut, the little blue one. She notices that it smells of bleach. 

That night, Dom explains that Orly believes “the animals [who were killed] live in the wind” and that he can talk to them (125). In the 19th century, colonists killed thousands of penguins, seals, and other animals on the island, driving some to extinction.

While in bed, Rowan wonders if Hank has left her. She thinks about how they argued about having children. Rowan argued that not having a child was a way to mitigate their impact on the climate, but Hank said that was not the real reason she did not want to have children. Rowan felt disappointed he hadn’t understood her complex emotions on the subject.

The next day, Dom and Rowan return to the lighthouse. As they approach, they hear Raff playing the violin. Dom is moved because Raff has not played in a long time.

Listening to Raff play the violin, Dom thinks about how he misses his wife in moments like these; he has no one with whom to share his wonder at his children’s talents.

As Raff plays for Fen, he thinks about the day they found Alex’s body hanging from the fuel tanks; Alex had died by suicide. Fen had to cut the body down.

After dinner, Fen goes to the boathouse for the evening. Rowan observes Orly helping Raff with his reading. Rowan thinks about how she had to take care of her siblings during their unusual childhood growing up on a houseboat.

Rowan goes up to the lightroom at the top of the lighthouse. There is no longer a light there, but there is still a huge reflective lens. Dom is there boxing the punching bag. He explains to her how the light worked and its historical role in keeping sailors from shipwrecking on the rocky shores of the island. Rowan feels like she wants to understand Dom as well as he understands the lighting mechanism of the lighthouse.