As Stars Fall

by Christie Nieman

  Seth said he would get her. Seth burned something.

  Delia begins to run.

  Robin

  While Mum was in the shower washing wisteria-ash out of her hair, I put on my school uniform, and after Mum had rushed out the door in a haze of perfume and kisses, I took it off again. I knew Wednesdays were her biggest teaching days with a full schedule and meetings in the evening, so I had my fingers crossed she’d be too busy for anyone to pin her down and inform her of my absence, or for her to notice it herself before she got home late. I rang Andy’s mobile straight away and Amber answered. They were driving into the outskirts of the city. I told her that straight after the chook breeders’ meet she and Andy should pick me up from the house rather than waiting around and then coming for dinner later. That plan was off; instead I would go straight home with them to stay with Dad for a few days. And I asked Amber if they had any extra chook transport cages in the back of the ute.

  She said ‘Of course! You never know what little beauties you might pick up at the Club Day. You should have seen this awesome phoenix rooster one of the old guys had last year.’

  ‘Do you think you could leave one cage free?’

  ‘Sure. What for?’

  ‘I’m not certain yet. Look I have to go – I’ll see you after lunch, yes?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll come straight there.’

  I went upstairs and I took all the photos from my wall and stuffed them in the bag with my clothes and toiletries, and then I set about putting my shoes and books into the big blue stiff suitcase I’d pulled out of Mum’s cupboard.

  I know it’s shocking to say, but I was relieved not to be going to school and seeing Delia. I mean, what could I say to her? I felt so bad for her, and so useless, and seeing her would have made me feel even more useless. And I felt useless enough at the best of times. Besides, I wasn’t going to be around anymore, after today. What was the point of making an effort to talk to her about it, to say I was sorry for her, to try to help her, and then just disappear? That wouldn’t really be fair, would it? And also, what could I have said? You can’t make something like that better for someone – you just can’t. Just like no-one could make the fact that my parents had split up feel any better for me.

  Well, I guess it probably wasn’t just like that at all. I mean, over the past month when my dad was in Queensland I’d thought about him all the time, I missed him terribly, but he’d still been there at the end of the phone, he’d still existed in the world. I’d had that, and I’d still felt lost. And I thought about something terrible happening to my mother, something that meant she wouldn’t be there anymore – and I imagined it not just in a stupid dramatic fantasy way, but thought about how I’d feel if she was really gone, suddenly, awfully, irrevocably, and knew that the awful dark hollowness that I got all through my insides from that little imagining could only be a tiny portion of what Delia was feeling.

  And then, as I put my belongings into the suitcase, I suddenly felt the weight of what I was planning. My mum wasn’t going to be there in the same way anymore. That was going to be the result of this action, this choice, this freedom I was claiming for myself. I had thought I was choosing escape, freeing myself from this bad situation. But now I realised that I didn’t have the power to change the situation, I only had the power to choose which parent was going to become more of a stranger to me. I didn’t feel liberated by the responsibility. I felt heavy. It was an awful choice.

  By the time the afternoon came around and the ute appeared at the gate to pick me up, I was so affected by the whole thing – the curlew, Selina’s death and the weight of my own decision – that when I hopped in next to Amber, Andy said, ‘Hey, squirt, you don’t look so good. Are you sure you want to come?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, it’s fine.’

  Amber said, ‘Do you want to wait around for your mum to get home? We’ve got time.’

  ‘No. I’m just a little tired. Some idiot tried to set fire to our house this morning.’

  ‘What?! Where?’ She lowered her head and looked out of the windscreen up at the scalded eaves. ‘Oh wow, shit! Man, the city is cracked. No wonder you want to come home.’

  ‘Is there a cage?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Andy, ‘we left a few different ones empty, because we didn’t know what you wanted it for. What do you want it for?’

  ‘We’re going to pick something up.’

  *

  Andy and Amber were as surprised by the parklands as I had been when I first saw them. Amber said, ‘Crikey, you just don’t expect this sort of thing in the city.’ We headed down the hill, Andy carrying an empty cage, saying, ‘Well, it’s obviously something chook-sized. Is it a chook?’

  ‘No.’ I headed in the direction of the clearing by the creek.

  Amber, following me, said, ‘What are we doing exactly? It’s not illegal, is it?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘There’s a curlew here. It’s from Murramunda, so we’re going to catch it and take it home with us.’

  ‘It sounds illegal.’

  ‘Down by the creek there, that’s where I saw it last.’

  ‘Didn’t your dad say something about a curlew the other night?’

  I kept moving. Dodging questions. Amber followed me, and Andy followed her, doing his job as the voice of reason. ‘Shouldn’t we call a ranger or something?’ I kept going and I heard him swear quietly. ‘You two girls are always getting me into trouble.’

  I was looking at my feet, navigating a rocky patch of ground, still quite a distance from the creek, when Amber said, ‘Well I’m all for it, Bobs, but I don’t see a bird down there, I just see a girl being quite odd. God, what is she wearing, is that a nightie?’

  I looked up. I saw what Amber was seeing: a girl standing knee-deep in the creek, a torn and dirty nightie coming untucked from her wet jeans.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I said.

  She was walking through the water. She suddenly bent over as if someone had punched her in the stomach, but then she stood up straight again. She was crying.

  ‘Delia!’

  I left Andy and Amber and ran down the slope. I didn’t look where my feet were going. People in the park – dog walkers, saunterers – were giving Delia strange looks, and I wanted to yell at them, You have no idea what this girl has been through, so bugger off! but I just kept running, and all the thoughts I’d had earlier, about myself, and about what I should say to her and about how I couldn’t help her, had disappeared from my head.

  I reached the bottom of the hill.

  ‘Delia!’ I called, but she was not seeing. ‘Delia!’ She looked. She saw me. I kicked off my shoes and walked into the creek. I waded over to her and touched her arm.

  ‘Come on, Delia, come and sit down.’

  ‘I can’t find her. I can’t find her, Robin.’

  She knew who I was at least, that was good.

  ‘Come on and sit down here with me.’ I drew her towards the bank.

  ‘She’s not here, where we saw her, she’s not here. I’ve called and called.’

  I sat Delia down on the bank next to me.

  ‘That’s okay, we’ll find her. That’s what I’m here for.’

  I held my arm around Delia’s shoulders and she grew calmer. We sat for a moment looking at the water, and then, when she was breathing normally, I took my arm away and turned to her and said softly, ‘Delia, I got your envelope.’ She looked up at me quickly, and then back down to the water. ‘Thank you for giving it to me. When I read it I felt like . . . well . . . like your mum was a really really nice lady. I’m so sorry, Delia. I’m so sorry she’s gone.’

  Delia was quiet. She looked at the water in front of us.

  ‘Seth,’ she said. ‘He burned something, this morning, he smelled like ash – and I’ve called and called and, Robin, she hasn’t come.’ Suddenly she looked up at me, straight into my eyes. ‘What if Seth’s burned her? What if she’s been burned again?’

  I grabbed her shoulders and held
her in front of me.

  ‘Delia, keep looking at me, look at my face.’

  I wanted to use my eyes to drill into her head. To clear out those awful thoughts. But I knew I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do anything about the inside of Delia’s head. What she had seen in there, what she’d had to visualise – knowing that some version of it was true – I couldn’t understand what that was like. It horrified me. And then to have the curlew turn up here, to bring it all close to her, to make it again realer than real . . . I didn’t know what to tell her. But as she was looking at me, as she held my eyes, I knew something; I said something I knew was true.

  ‘Delia, I know that Seth burned something this morning, but I’m pretty sure it was something else, something of mine. He’s very confused, and upset, and I think – I feel like – I don’t know . . . like he’s angry with me. I don’t know why. But I don’t think he burned the curlew.’ God, I hoped he hadn’t burned the curlew. ‘I don’t want you to worry, it will be okay. But we have to find the curlew quickly and take it home right now. I think it’s injured.’

  I could see weights shifting behind her eyes: a question there. She said, ‘You’re taking her to Murramunda?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re taking her home.’

  And somehow, we were both talking about the same thing.

  Delia nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said.

  She said, ‘She always really liked it there.’

  And then she said, ‘I’ll come too.’

  *

  It was difficult to explain the situation to Andy and Amber. Not that I explained everything. Delia had gone further up the creek to look for the curlew, and I told them about Delia’s mother and the fire. Amber kept looking like I was having her on, but in the end they’d both seen the state Delia was in and it was pretty clear that something terrible had happened. But then I told them that I’d prearranged to meet Delia at the parklands, that she had always been going to meet us here to hand over the bird, because it was her responsibility; it was her mother’s research bird from Murramunda, but it had been kept at their house next to the parklands and had escaped from there.

  She wanted to return the bird to its home, to the place her mother died. And now it had come down to it, she didn’t want to just hand it over. She wanted to be there.

  Andy whistled low under his breath. He shook his head. ‘Jeez, that’s rough. Are you sure she should see the place?’

  ‘She wants to. And I’m not going to tell her what she should and shouldn’t do.’

  ‘Still,’ said Andy, ‘she can’t just come without asking her dad. Think of the trouble I’ll get into. How old is she – ten, eleven?’

  ‘She’s in my year at school, you idiot. I’ll take the rap.’

  ‘Come on, Bobbie, you know it doesn’t work like that. I’m driving, so I’m responsible. And it doesn’t look good. It’s practically abduction. She’s got to ask. I wouldn’t even drive you somewhere without your parents’ permission, and I know you.’

  I went all quiet then, and straight away I felt Amber’s eyes on me. God, it’s so annoying sometimes to have a friend who’s known you forever and can read every little devious expression that flits across your face.

  I spoke quickly. ‘Okay, we’ll take her back to her house so she can ask. It’s not far.’

  Just then, Delia came out of the underbrush with the curlew sitting placidly in her arms. She had an expert grip on the bird, gentle but firm, wings pinned against the body so that they couldn’t even think of flapping. And the curlew looked as though struggling was the last thing on its mind. Its legs hung limp and relaxed. It blinked at us contentedly, like being in Delia’s arms was what it had intended all along.

  ‘Wow, you’ve got a pretty good hold there,’ Andy said, and Delia did her funny head-ducking smile.

  ‘I know how to do it,’ she said. She laughed breathily. ‘I have chooks.’

  Seth

  Seth hasn’t washed since he got home early this morning. He’d lumbered in the door, heavy and uncontrollable, his bones leaden, the elation of the fire starting to dim, and the bruises on his ribs from his father’s angry foot last night starting to ache. But then he’d caught sight of himself in the hall mirror as he came in the door, and he liked what he saw. He looked touched by fire. He was blackened and smoky. He had the marks of it all over his body – its smell, its heat, its ash – and yet he was still walking around. It couldn’t touch him. His father couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t touch him. He’d sent her a message. The smoke in his hair and the burnt material of his sleeve felt like badges of honour, and he was hot, hot all over, and the heat gave him energy that even the lead in his bones couldn’t counteract.

  He had watched as the woman and the girl struggled against the fire he had made and as the firefighters came and put it out. And when the police came he drifted back into the anonymous streets like mist. And he walked all the way into the city, and smoked an angel joint behind the church, and then smoked another one, waiting for his guy, but his guy didn’t come. He wouldn’t let them catch him again. He wouldn’t let them take him to hospital and bring him back from this, this colour, this heightened sense of everything. He wouldn’t go back to reality again, not back to that nothingness, that blankness, the world all pain and dull ash-grey.

  And then, as he walked all the way home, everything he looked at presented itself to him in measures of flammability – fences, bushes, trees, weatherboard. All could burn if he chose. He would only have to touch it. He understood suddenly that fire is a doorway, a doorway through which his mother had escaped. Everything could become a doorway with fire. Everything could be opened up like a portal to another place and he could slip through. His blistered hand was halfway there.

  And now he is prowling around his house, the heat welling up in his body, in his fingertips, and he is almost surprised that his touch alone doesn’t ignite door handles, clothing, paper.

  Delia isn’t home. He goes into her room. It is as neat as a pin: bed perfectly made, the books on the bookshelf arranged in alphabetical order, by subject then author. Her desk is completely clear except for a wad of photocopied paper, thick with staples through it, and a photograph of a piece of bush. The photo looks like one of the ones his mother used to try to show him.

  He picks it up. It is just bush. There are no defining features about it, not like the ones he saw at the flame-girl’s place. He pulls the pictures he stole out of his jeans pocket, sets aside the picture of the burnt rock, and puts the picture of the girl and a man next to Delia’s photo. The colour of the bush in the background is similar. It could be the same. He picks up the stolen picture of the girl. He should burn it. It’s the safest thing. He pulls his lighter out, holds it underneath the picture, and then stops. He looks at the girl. Her hair is so red. In the sun and wind it is streaming out from the side of her head like flame. Like her name. But her face: her face looks harmless. Sweet almost. It’s disconcerting. She looks like she’s about to break into a grin, or crack a joke, or pull a face. She looks normal. She looks nice. He remembers first seeing her in the parklands, how he laughed. He remembers her on the roof, swinging her body through the window, the sexiness of her. He looks at her face again. She looks beautiful.

  He drops the lighter and puts the stolen photos aside and takes another look at Delia’s photo. Just bush. No. Not just bush. There is a bird in the background. A tall bird, standing. It is the same sort of bird as his bird at the parklands. He stares hard at it. He puts the photo back on the desk and picks up the wad of photocopied paper. It is covered in dense type: a photocopied article from some science journal.

  ‘The link between land-clearing and reduced abundance: regenerating farmland to reverse declining Victorian Bush Stone-curlew populations’.

  It’s one of his mother’s articles. Her name is on the front. Delia was probably reading it, could probably understand it too, she’s so smart.

  He knows the name of his mother’s bird. He’s always
known that his mother was studying Bush Stone-curlews. She used to bang on about them enough. But he’d never seen one. He was never interested. But as he flips the pages of the report over, he sees it now, a black-and-white photograph in the article, above a chart of percentages. He sees the bird, wings stretching above its head, the caption underneath with its name: Bush Stone-curlew.

  And it’s that bird. His bird in the parklands. The bird in the photograph on the desk. And here it is, staring at him from his mother’s report.

  He takes the article with him to his own bedroom and sits smoking on the floor, staring at the picture of the bird. As he finishes his joint he hears a key in the door. A light sneaking step. The step halts. Delia. She’s trying to avoid him. He hears her open her bedroom door and the quiet shifting of clothes on skin, and of clothes on clothes, and then the zip of a bag.

  He hears her walk softly past his bedroom door. He hears the bathroom door open – a slight, angry trill from one of the chooks. Why is the chook in the bathroom? He hears her walk past his door, making soothing noises to the animal, and go into the backyard, and then back through the house and out the front door, which closes softly behind her.

  And then a male voice out the front of the house.

  ‘How’d you go?’

  And Delia’s voice. ‘Dad said it was fine, just that I should come back with Robin when she comes back.’

  Robin. Flame Robin. Seth leaps up, still holding the article, to look through the window at the street outside.

  A white ute is parked out the front of the house. A boy he doesn’t know, about his own age, stands at the back of the ute, looking oddly at Delia, who has a chook nestled under each arm and a bag in her hand, saying, ‘Can they come too?’

  Another girl takes Delia’s bag from her hand and tosses it into the back of the ute. There are a few cages in the back of the ute, full of chooks, and the boy leans over and slides a cage across the tray for Ripper and Slasher. And then Seth sees her. The girl. Flame. She’s over the other side of the tray, her hair bright in the sunlight. He feels heat well up in him as he watches her. She’s fiddling with something – a cage, securing it to the tray of the ute with some rope. And then he sees the bird. It’s in the cage she’s securing. Not a chook, but the tall, grey bird. The Bush Stone-curlew. The girl stands straight again, pulls a cover over the curlew’s cage and over the other cages, including the one that now holds Ripper and Slasher. The three of them all move around the sides of the car to climb up into the cabin. They are going to leave. Delia is climbing in with them. And as she climbs up onto the bench seat, he hears her say, ‘How far is it to Murramunda, anyway?’