Free Stay:The Last Dog in Antarctica by Jesse Blackadder Page A

small group was going hiking and playing cards, a trip they called a jolly. Another wanted her to come over to the Greenstore and see how the year’s supplies were packed and retrieved. A biologist wanted to take her looking for specimens on the sea bed in the bay once the ice melted, and Shine the weather observer kept talking about taking Stay to Woop Woop, which turned out to be an inland airstrip where the planes could land once the sea ice had broken up. Laser wanted Stay to visit the LIDAR building, from which they shot a laser beam up into the sky and examined something called polar mesospheric clouds.
    But gradually, as they all settled in to their lives on station, people stopped noticing Stay. No one talked to her directly when they were with their friends, probablybecause of being teased. They didn’t even put money into her. No one used money in Antarctica, Stay had realised, and so they didn’t carry it. All the meals were supplied in the Mess and the kitchen slushy always set out fruit and bread and biscuits for anyone needing snacks. There was a big store cupboard called Woolies, where they went for supplies like soap and shampoo and sunscreen. Nothing was for sale.
    Everyone on station was busy, and when they finished a shift they were often tired. When Stay had first arrived, the sun had only dipped below the horizon in the middle of the night, creating just a few hours of twilight, with brilliant sunsets that turned the sky every shade from orange to purple. But now the sun didn’t set at all — and wouldn’t go down for another six weeks. People found it hard to sleep properly and they were sometimes snappy with each other. Stay heard them talk about having ‘big eye’, which meant not being able to sleep because it was too bright. She thought it was a silly saying — most people who couldn’t sleep had slitty eyes, not big eyes.
    Stay missed the way Chills had talked with her as if he could hear her thoughts. He could hear them, she was sure. Kaboom still talked to her like that, but she was busy with work and Stay didn’t see her that much. She felt lonelier in the midst of that big crowdthan she had even on all those long nights alone on the streets of Hobart. It didn’t matter how hard she looked at someone and willed them to set her free, they couldn’t. She was chained up. Trapped. And not an adventure in sight. When she heard that the elephant seals had arrived in their summer mud wallow down on the beach near the station, she couldn’t rush out with everyone else to see them groaning and rolling around to loosen their old skins and let them peel off. The Adélie penguins over on Gardner Island were laying their eggs and, before the sea ice was completely gone, people hiked over to watch them. Stay couldn’t do any of it.
    When the big blizzard blew up and people were stuck inside, Stay daydreamed about Chills, far away on Bechervaise Island with another penguin colony. What did he do when there was a blizzard? Where did he sleep? What did he eat? There wouldn’t be a Mess on the island, she was pretty sure of that. How did he have a shower? Or wash his clothes?
    She sighed and looked out the windows again. She was bored, and she was pretty sure some of the humans in the bar were bored too. When they had to go out to reach another building, or to come back to the Living Quarters after work, they came in with their eyes streaming from the wind. The sea ice was almost gone,which meant no more driving across the frozen bay on quad bikes or Hägglunds, and no walking either. As the snow melted, the area around the station looked like a dirty pile of rocks and dust.
    It was getting late and the expeditioners were starting to drift away towards bed. Someone was mopping the floor in the kitchen. Stay couldn’t see who it was, but she guessed it was Kaboom taking her turn at slushy duty. Stay pricked her ears to hear the music. She knew that in return for doing a day’s hard work, the