Nanny Jack has lived here for as long as anyone can remember and despised for longer still. She lives up on top of the hill with a tarp pulled over her greyed hair. Her onion-scented feet stick out at the bottom, and when there is a southerly wind blowing the whole island cries. We call it a foot-wind.

There’s a scar that runs a crooked smile over the belly of an island boy. When the doctor cut him out of his mama the foot-wind hit too strong and the doctor couldn’t see the umbilical cord for tears. Nanny Jack kissed the island boy’s belly, but it didn’t do a squeak of good.

That’s just Nanny Jack.

Up on top of her hill she can see us all like so many piss-ants zigging around. She presides over the island in a little monarchy tucked up in her head. She blesses the boys and spits for girls and when an island baby crops up that Nanny Jack doesn’t know what to do with, she leaves them to a higher power than herself. We aren’t sure who that is, but we are grateful for the respite all the same.

Nanny Jack watches over all the births, of course. Every conceiver gives birth in the ocean; it’s the way things are done here. And it’s where the conceptions happen too.

Sometimes the birthing squalls are so loud that no one sleeps. Other times the little mews are so gentle that they lap you into dreams of spreading flowers. Whatever the pitch, Nanny Jack is sure to be witness.

There’s a rumour that after all the blood and life has been dealt with, Nanny Jack goes into the ocean and swims around with her mouth open, eating up the placenta. She hasn’t any teeth that we can see, so perhaps she just sucks it down her throat. Her long old hair probably gets in the way at least a bit. It’s never been cut, at least not by any of our barbers. We think the placenta eating is how she knows everything about everyone. She’s eaten our births so she can catch hold of our lives.

We run fast on the island, but we can’t run from Nanny Jack.

***

I was born into the mess of this at one point. As I was coming into the world the island folk dreamed up lilies. I was produced soft, but that didn’t last for long.

Nanny Jack spat on my heels and that gave me a devilish sort of walk. I moved like I have a deal to make, a sort of greedy, rubbing-of-the-ankles stride that nobody trusted. Not even my mama would kiss my head. The hairs on it grew long with neglect. Most others on the island keep their hair short or else bound up tight. Not Nanny Jack and me. Our hair was overgrown.

Nanny Jack noticed. She saw it all.

She doesn’t come down from her hill much, not when she can see everything from up on high. It’s only for the close ups that she will go, for the births, deaths, and sex. And for me.

I was at the kitchen bench when she came down, looking out the window to the ocean. All windows faced away from Nanny Jack. We wanted to look at her as little as possible.

My mama was leaning over the hot-plate, looking bloated as a soaked raisin from all the swimming she had done that day. Out since before dawn even cracked an eye.

She had two crab cakes going for burgers, which were my favourite. I liked to fill up my mouth completely and pretend that was the reason I never talked. It went well with mayonnaise.

Nanny Jack didn’t bother with knocking, she just came through the door. Nothing was locked, anyway.

Our mistake.

It was pretty obvious, what she wanted. She pointed at me for further clarification besides.

I’ll take her.

My mama turned around and let the crab cakes burn.

Go away.

The nerve. It was like an egg yolk had been cracked over my head. The thrill of it ran sticky over my body.

You don’t want her. I do.

My mama picked up one of the patties with her bare, salt-wrinkled fingers. It must have been hot. She dropped it into the bin.

Nanny Jack left, but not before giving a spit to the linoleum in front of my mama’s feet. There was still a girl in my mama somewhere, after all. I spat there too, now that it was to be Nanny Jack and me.

We climbed up the hill and the island spread out like a banquet below me. A feast my eyes nibbled over.

We begin.

***

I grow, weed-like, by Nanny Jack’s side. I bud breasts and blood, as a girl tends to do, but Nanny Jack won’t let me down to the sea to test out my womanhood. I squander on the hill-top instead.

She tells me stories, sometimes, that don’t make sense. They’ll start at the end or else have no end at all. Some she’ll forget the telling of halfway through. Others send her to sleep, and those ones I’ll take up for myself and remake them into tales thrilling. Just in my head. Never out loud for Nanny Jack to hear. Ones that send heat to my cheeks because I have nothing else to keep warm by.

Not unless Nanny Jack takes me under her tarp.

I see my mama, sometimes, from up on the hill, her below. She starts walking around with an island man.

This is the first time Nanny Jack lets me down the hill.

We sit in the low dawn tide, salt water threading through our teeth, to watch my mama’s new coupling. After that I don’t think of her as my mama anymore.  

We attend the birthing, almost ten months later, of a big, blue boy. He has his umbilical cord around his neck but Nanny Jack takes out a knife I’ve never seen before and cuts him free.

She blesses him up a good, strong life and then it’s my turn. I cup the back of his newborn head and I’m worried that my fingernails are going to sink right through his soft skull so I keep the blessing quick.

Don’t end up like me.

I don’t know if my blessings work the same as Nanny Jack’s do yet, but it’s enough as we climb back up the hill to see his island mama take him to her breast.

It turns out Nanny Jack eating the placenta isn’t one of the stories that are true. Not while I’m watching, anyway.

***

One day, Nanny Jack tells me she’s leaving for a bit. I don’t know if she’s ever done this before, back when I was downhill, but she is doing it now.

Keep the trouble up while I’m gone.

She shuffles down the other side of the hill, away from the ocean and the island folk, the side I’ve never been down. I watch her go for a few steps before I start feeling like I shouldn’t.

I watch the island folk instead, as Nanny Jack has taught me. It’s getting longer and longer between my blinks so I don’t miss out on as much as I used to.

I wrap myself up in Nanny Jack’s tarp and try to keep up the trouble, as Nanny Jack said. I’m not sure how to do that without going downhill and I won’t do that without Nanny Jack.

There’s a storm one night and I decide I must’ve had something to do with it and the island folk seem to agree. They don’t look uphill often, but they do now and even though they’re too far away for it, I think I hear their screaming. I sleep well that night.

Nanny Jack’s back a few days later, and she presses her hand on the top of my head in greeting. She hasn’t touched me like that before, for no reason. I don’t think anyone has.

***

I must pass a test of some kind or another, because Nanny Jack starts leaving more and more. And I start coming down the hill on my own to keep witness of the lives and deaths of the island folk. At first I tell Nanny Jack how many babies and how many burials there have been in her absence, but she holds up a hand to stop me.

I don’t care.

This doesn’t seem like Nanny Jack but I keep my thoughts mine.

Now even when Nanny Jack is up on the hill it is just me who goes down. It’s only my spit and my words that come to the island folk.

No one says anything about Nanny Jack not being there, or at least not to me.

I attend a funeral, standing behind the mourners in the shallows as the body is cast off to the deep. I realise it is the blue boy, the first I blessed, now a man dead. His body looks old and that makes me think how I must look old too.

Nanny Jack alone doesn’t look any older, but I know she must be.

***

Finally, there’s the day I should have known was coming. I guess I always kept my eyes looking elsewhere instead. This time though Nanny Jack makes sure I’m looking right at her when she says it.

I’m going.

And this time I know she isn’t coming back.

---

Eilish Alexander is an emerging writer and playwright based in Lutruwita/Tasmania. She has been published in the 2025 Big Issue Fiction Edition, Visual Verse and will be published in Crow & Cross Keys in January 2026. Her play Animals of the Court was produced in 2022. Eilish holds a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in English and Writing. She is an alumnus of Australian Theatre for Young People’s 2025 National Studio residency and 2024 Fresh Ink National Mentoring Program.