Kenna Esters's Arc

Chapter 1 of 13

Kenna woke to salt water in her lungs and sand under her palms. She coughed hard, rolled onto her side, and forced her eyes open. Green stretched in every direction — thick trees, tangled vines, leaves the size of dinner plates. The boat was gone. Her gear was gone. Everything she'd packed for the shoot in Papua New Guinea had sunk or scattered. She pushed herself upright and scanned the beach. If her cameras had washed ashore, she might still salvage the trip. If not, months of planning and the chance to capture something Fauna Lens had never seen would be lost. She walked the shoreline, legs shaking. Broken planks and twisted metal littered the sand where the current had deposited them. Rope lay coiled around splintered wood. A torn cushion. Pieces of the hull. Nothing she could use. Then she spotted it — her camera bag, half-buried near a tangle of seaweed. She ran. The zipper stuck, swollen with salt water. When she finally wrenched it open, seawater poured out. Her digital camera was dead. The lenses were flooded. But wedged in the bottom pocket was a film canister, rusted and dented, its paper label peeling away in wet strips. She turned it over in her hands. The seal looked intact. Kenna sat back on her heels and stared at the canister. Inside was a roll of film she'd shot three days ago — a sequence of frigatebirds diving at sunset, backlit and fast. She'd planned to develop it in Port Moresby, but now she had no way to know if the images had survived. The canister might hold her best work or nothing but water damage. Either way, she was stranded with no boat, no radio, and no way off the island. But she had film. That changed everything.