The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  She didn’t walk far around the water. The ashen ground was too warm and powdery. When her boots sank in a mound of hot, shredded gamba ash, she stumbled out with a hideous sense of her mother sinking in front of her.

  ‘Get a grip,’ she told herself.

  She moved to firmer ground and distracted herself with framing camera shots. Tongues of fire wavering from the end of a branch like a flag. Blackened root knots in a crater left by a vanished tree. The line of its ashes had spilled along the ground to make a white tree cut-out on a black earth.

  You could lose yourself here, she thought, and the little voice in her head claiming, I know where I am, I know where I am, became a far-off sound.

  A little way deeper in among the trees Greta saw one bleeding bright red sap. Now she’d seen one she noticed others. As if the bark had slit open just before her eyes settled on it. A bloodwood weeping. There was no colour in the landscape as rich or alarming as this sap. She wandered from one to the other until she came to a semicircle of flames burning low to the ground.

  A jarring laughter disturbed the quiet. She looked around but saw no one. The sound came again, this time directly above her. She stepped back to see up the tree in front of her. It had burned to where the branches started and they were bleached silver.

  Why aren’t they black like the trunk? she wondered. They have been skinned.

  The ground tilted under her. She looked up again, squinting against the sun. In a fork where two bony-armed branches met she saw the girl.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Greta cried.

  ‘Making coats for my brothers! To turn them from swans into men! I must finish. There isn’t much time.’

  Sunlight flared around the girl. She was hard to see. Greta shifted to bring her into focus. She seemed younger and was wearing a grubby pair of shorts and a faded pink singlet. Pandanus fronds rested across her legs. She was weaving and sewing them together. Five finished pandanus coats hung on rusty clothes hangers around her.

  ‘My fingers hurt!’ The girl held up her hands to show bloodied, swollen fingers.

  Cut by those serrated leaves, Greta thought. Pricked by the needle.

  ‘If only the green ants could help me. They are so clever. The way they stick their leaf nests together.’

  Greta spotted several green tree ant nests hanging from bare twigs. The more she counted the more she saw.

  ‘I must keep on against all odds,’ the girl was saying. ‘It is my task.’

  Greta smiled and nodded to her. The world spun.

  ‘And your task, do you know it?’ The question floated down in a distorted voice.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ Greta replied.

  The girl stopped working and was quiet, as if she couldn’t believe a grown woman didn’t know her task.

  ‘Go back to where you came from,’ she said solemnly. ‘Fly south.’ Heavy pinpricks stabbed Greta’s arms and legs, abdomen and back. Feathers took root in her skin; she was weighed down by giant wings on either side, sprouting from her arms.

  The odd laugh sounded again, this time from a distance, across the lake behind her. When she looked up into the tree once more it was empty. The girl, the coats were gone. All that remained were the ant nests in the branches and burned pandanus fruits scattered on the ground.

  ‘Strange,’ mused Greta, because she thought the orange fruits had finished their season.

  You are not from here, a voice in her said.

  The skin along her arms prickled. The wings had vanished with all their feathers.

  Find Ronnie’s track, go home, she told herself.

  And though she meant to avoid the lake there was a pull in the water, a slow spinning that reeled her towards it. The bank rocked under her. A bolt of pain shot through her head. Her hand floundered for the nearest tree trunk. She grasped its charcoal bark, leaned over and vomited. Her mouth was dry, her lips sticking.

  The firebreak was a blur. Still, she must go there. She hauled herself up and began the slow climb. The sun was a cruel eye. She lost count of her footsteps. A far-off voice called her name.

  When she reached the top of the track her legs buckled. A voice, a shout, swam through the air. A watery silhouette ran towards her.

  ‘Greta, it’s me—Joel.’

  Her body and her head felt quite separate, though her brain told her he must be holding both. She could feel his breath.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ he said.

  The earth was falling away from her now. The sky was spinning around her husband’s face.

  17

  Greta watched as her blood was drawn up into the specimen tube.

  ‘You’ll have to watch this fever,’ the doctor warned Joel.

  Joel rang Brynn and Tori while Greta waited out the nurse’s observations and the doctor’s insistence that her temperature drop before going home. The sound of Joel’s voice, the fierce light shining down made her ill. In the end he was quiet, but she could feel him watching her, hands ready to stop her rolling from the narrow bed. The blue curtain wavered slightly whenever a nurse passed. She imagined herself on a boat at sea, with the horizon ahead and a breeze behind this curtain that was a sail.

  ‘Do you ever think it was a miracle the way we met?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, in that moment. If I’d left the rocks. If you’d been swallowed by the sea. None of this would have happened.’

  He shifted uneasily on the stool, unsure if this was fever talk.

  ‘I mean the kids. Us. Why we’re together.’

  ‘I never thought about it.’ He pressed her fist against his cheek. His skin was cool.

  ‘It makes me think of fate,’ she said.

  He held a paper cup of water for her to sip.

  ‘We don’t talk much, do we? I never minded before. No questions asked.’

  ‘No questions asked.’ He patted her arm. ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘It’s odd we’re both orphans, don’t you think? Both lost our mothers young. I’m afraid for the boys sometimes—that it’ll happen to them. Like a curse. Fate again.’

  The curlew’s eye stared into her own, under her closed lids.

  ‘There’s no such thing as fate,’ he said. ‘Fate’s dead.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  Brynn was waiting for them when they arrived back home. She had the fan set up by the bed in the cabin, and one of the wicker chairs too. She’d brought a swag.

  ‘I’m moving in to help nurse and kid wrangle,’ she said to Joel in a low voice. ‘I’d have thought they’d take her to hospital, myself. When do you and Gabe leave?’

  ‘Gabe’ll go tomorrow, as planned. I’ll wait and see.’

  ‘Do you have to go?’

  ‘We need the money. Mick’s not paying us much and we don’t know when he and his mate will buy us out.’

  Greta’s migraine clamped tighter. The voices in the room became distorted whispers, like garbled cassette tapes. The hours were a blur of fevered waking and sleeping. Night came. The world shrank inside her crimson mosquito net. She vaguely registered movement behind it. Light, shadows. A camping lantern on the dresser. The shape of Brynn or Joel in the wicker chair. Above her the stars turned in the ceiling window. Joel kept sweeping aside the net to take her temperature and wipe her with a cool face washer. Sometimes she woke to find him lying next to her, his hand over hers. Her skin was wet with perspiration. The sheets were always damp.

  And then, as if a switch snapped, it was day and the children returned. They stared at her through the mosquito net. They had soft ruby ghost faces. She reached her hand out to touch them, to feel their skin.

  ‘You’re sicker than sick,’ said Raffy.

  ‘It won’t be forever.’ Brynn guided him outside.

  She’d taken on a gentler presence. The angular, bony body was a whispering movement through the room.

  Perhaps we have all died and become spirits, Greta thought. It might be possible.

  And yet she could hear her father’s wa
tch ticking on the pile of books by her bed.

  ‘What is the time?’ she kept asking, and one of the people outside the net would tell her.

  ‘Ten o’clock at night.’ ‘Seven o’clock in the morning.’ ‘One o’clock in the afternoon. The children are having lunch.’

  We’re still here, Greta assured herself, in the land of the living.

  Griffin brought her the spider conch shell from the shack and pressed it into her hand. ‘Here, listen to your beach.’ He held the shell up to her ear.

  The sea was far off, the winds of the place. She thought she heard a child’s words in that airy sound. The singsong notes of Gavin’s voice.

  She clung to the shell through the night. The migraine returned and consumed her. The sound of sand sifting down, down, down filled her ears. She could hear nothing else, just the sand pouring in steady streams, covering the bed, rising up the sides of the mosquito net, spilling into her mouth. It was weighing her down and she was breathing it in, grain by grain. She was being buried alive in one of Gavin’s sand cars, and he was there, right beside her, flicking more and more sand at her and laughing and not hearing her cry, ‘Stop! Stop!’

  The mosquito net swept back. Brynn’s face loomed near. She shook a thermometer in her hand and put it under Greta’s tongue.

  ‘Try not to thrash around.’ Her eyes were stern. ‘And don’t bite the thermometer.’ She gave her tablets to swallow with water.

  Greta knew nothing else until she woke up in another sweat, and a face was pressed against the mosquito net, just like the girl had done at the flywire that night on the verandah.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘Who are you?’

  It wasn’t the girl. This was a younger child. Her eyes strained to make sense of the distorted visage. A little boy. Climbed out of the spider conch shell. He’d come to her for real this time, Gavin.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘You’re dead.’

  He laughed at that and said, ‘I’m not dead!’ And the net floated apart to reveal Griffin with a lemonade icy pole. ‘Brynn says these are the cure for killer fevers.’

  He tore open the wrapper and held it to her mouth. Her lips stuck to the icicles.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said, one hand holding on to his precious little arm.

  And he was pleased and beamed a smile to her and promised her he wasn’t anywhere near dead.

  ‘I know what all this is about,’ she whispered to Joel. She could see him moving behind the net. ‘I know what it is, this sickness.’

  He parted the net and put his hand on her forehead.

  ‘It’s that girl. I saw her.’

  A frown played across his brow.

  ‘The girl, Joel. The one I told you about. I saw her at the lake, up a tree. She was making pandanus coats. Six. For her brothers.’

  ‘She’s off her head,’ came Brynn’s voice from the shadows.

  ‘She’s at the hut.’ Greta grabbed Joel’s arm.

  ‘Shh,’ he said softly. ‘No one’s at the hut. I checked.’

  ‘But I saw her.’

  ‘You’re delirious, Gret.’

  He planted a light kiss on her forehead and let the mosquito net drop again. He told the shadows he was going to check on the children.

  Brynn took form in the cane chair. ‘If you don’t calm down I’ll give you something to knock you out,’ she said.

  Greta feigned sleep. At first she felt sicker with her eyes closed. The bed was turning. It became the lake, a whirlpool sucking her into its vortex.

  She waited for the world to steady before checking her father’s watch. The glowing hands told her 3 a.m. Hours had passed. The sheet was damp under her. The bed had stopped its random spin. Above her the misshapen moon peered through the ceiling window. She was weak, but she felt compelled to walk. She slipped out from under the net and stood up. Brynn’s chair was empty. Joel was asleep in a swag.

  She stepped out into the night as she might step onto a new planet. The gleaming rocks, the moonlit fans of the sand palms welcomed her. She crouched behind one of the boulders to wee. Very near she heard the cry of a stone-curlew. Alive, she thought, alive! And close!

  She stood, using the boulder to steady herself, willing the curlew to come to her now, silver in the night, stepping across the prickly ground.

  She heard a cough and saw a figure emerging from the dark. It was the girl, hands cupped in front of her chest. She hid something. Before reaching Greta she stopped.

  Slowly she unfurled her fingers. A curlew chick lay dead on her palm. Its feathers were sooty and damp. The dusky blue legs were stiff, the little claws curled in a last contortion.

  ‘It is the younger of the two,’ said the girl.

  Greta’s eyes blurred. She reached out. ‘Give the chick to me.’

  But the girl’s hands closed over the feathered corpse. She turned and walked away. Greta followed, calling softly for her to stop.

  An adult curlew shrieked from the valley. The girl turned again, her face all moonlight. And her mouth was a bright red smudge, sewn shut with black stitches.

  Greta gasped and stumbled. The girl kept moving downhill. A dark cloud sliced through the moon. Trees, cycads, rocks became night souls. And the girl was one of them. Greta would never find her.

  She was struck again with vertigo. Her muscles ached. She took a few breaths and shuffled back to the cabin. Her foot knocked Joel’s swag on her way to the bed.

  ‘What is it?’ he mumbled.

  ‘The girl, she’s out there.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ll find her.’

  ‘No,’ insisted Greta, ‘you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Darkness ate her.’

  By morning the illness had lifted. She felt drained, but the vertigo was gone and her visions of the girl had faded. They were delusions. Fever bred, she told herself.

  Magdalen huddles in the old tin bath. Water drips from the tap with a soft beat. She’s listening to her father’s belt buckle tap-tap on the door. The flame wavers in the kerosene lantern on the floor.

  I know what you’re up to, Magdalen!

  The belt whips the door. She jumps.

  Slut!

  The lock rattles. Magdalen lowers herself under the water where the sound of him is dulled. She holds her breath until she hears her brother’s voice. She sits up quickly. Water sloshes to the floor. There is a scuffle behind the door, a shout from Fedor. Silence. Magdalen submerges herself again.

  On the other side of the door and down the hallway, Maria’s voice calls.

  Joel. Joel.

  He walks down the hallway to his mother. Her body is a sunken shape on the bed. Her hair is damp on the stained pillow. The sheets smell of her sickness.

  Look after Magdalen, Joel. Don’t let her wander.

  She’s with me all the time.

  The lake, it frightens me.

  She doesn’t go near it.

  His mother struggles for breath; he gently lifts the pillow to raise her chest.

  Don’t ever leave her.

  You know I wouldn’t do that, Mama.

  I know. But promise me.

  I promise.

  She lifts her arms from the sheet to reach for him, but trembling mid-air, clasps her hands instead. He takes them in his and lowers his head to her chest. Her eyes are closed, she is somewhere else.

  The quiet of the house has its own breathing. And the night is long. It’s longer than ever.

  18

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right for me to go?’ Joel asked. He was leaving for Connor’s in the morning.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Greta assured him.

  It was almost a week since the illness struck. She’d recovered from the worst of it in a few days, though she still felt off balance. Mundane details she’d known before would come to her like news, and then she’d remember, ah yes, that’s how it is. The cabin had surprised her, with alterations like bathroom walls and a lino floor, a sink even
, and a bay of louvres in the second bedroom. All happening while she was there, delirious.

  Joel zipped up his clothes bag. ‘I don’t think you should go to this Halloween party on the weekend.’

  The invite was from one of the school families, at a station. It was a slumber party too, for their daughter Poppy’s birthday. The boys were sleeping over.

  ‘I said I’d paint faces,’ Greta said. ‘The kids want me to go. I’ll drive Brynn and Tori back here for the night. They’ll look after me.’

  Griffin wandered in and lay down next to Joel’s bag. ‘You could stay and come with us, Dad, go as Count Dracula. I’ll be your vampire kid.’

  Greta waved off Joel before dawn.

  The boys were quieter than usual over breakfast. The absence of their father made them solemn. This is just like any other day, she told herself, and made the boys’ sandwiches. Toby held the door open for his mother as they left the house—he knew a few tricks.

  The way out felt longer. She kept seeing narrow tracks she’d never noticed before, winding into bushland. Where did they lead?

  We are nothing, she thought, nothing. We could be snuffed out and not missed.

  ‘Mum?’ Griffin said from the back seat.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If anything happens, you’re it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ahead, dust was propelling a ute towards them. Greta slowed. The other vehicle screeched to a halt beside her. It was Trapper. He got out and slammed the door behind him. The ute had a canvas canopy. She wondered what he hid under it.

  ‘Where’s yer old man?’ he demanded.

  ‘He’ll be back later.’ She stepped out to face him.

  She could feel the children’s gaze on her. Raffy would worry she’d told a lie; Toby would call it tweaked truth.

  ‘He can buy that heifer or I’ll shoot it.’

  ‘There’s no shooting here, sorry.’

  ‘I’m not givin’ it to ya!’ He pointed at her face.

  If he didn’t move the finger she’d bite it. He dropped his hand just in time.