All Our Shimmering Skies

by Trent Dalton

  She’s tired now and she lies back on the dry creek bed to rest and she looks up to the wide blue sky and she talks to it. She asks a question of it: ‘Why did you give me this?’ And the sun blasts whiteness in her eyes and she shields the sun with the perfect circle of the copper pan and she wonders if that’s why she received this gift, so she could look up and see only sky. But what she sees when she looks up is cursive. Words. A series of sentences roughly engraved on the underside of the prospector’s pan. She reads the words with the same interest with which she reads the epitaphs on the crumbling gravestones of Hollow Wood Cemetery, all those final deep-grief stories yielding clues to the lives of the departed souls, while the mud beneath her right forefinger nail underlines each strange word.

  The longer I stand, the shorter I grow,

  And the water runs to the silver road

  She repeats those words to herself. Repeats them over and over. ‘“The longer I stand, the shorter I grow, and the water runs to the silver road” … “The longer I stand, the shorter I grow, and the water runs to the silver road.”’

  From the words runs the etched line of what could only be called a map, but it’s like no map that Molly Hook has ever seen. She has seen maps of her country. She has seen the dot of Darwin resting like a jewel in a princess’s tiara on the left-hand corner of the top of Australia. She has seen the rectangle of the Northern Territory wedged in straight lines between a mapped out and vast Western Australia to its left and the eastern bulge of Queensland to its right. She has stared at all the wondrous names of places she hopes to visit across her Northern Territory when she’s done with digging holes for the dead and for her dad. Auld’s Ponds. Teatree Well. Eva Downs Station. Waterloo Wells. Each place conjures a vision in her head. Blue ponds where long-legged white storks stand on lily pads the size of Roman shields that float across the noses of sleeping crocodiles. A deep well full of English tea, where fancy men and fancy women in fancy hats fill bone-china cups as they watch lawn games unfold to the sounds of dappled-sunshine violin players. A woman named Eva Downs who looks like that actress Katharine Hepburn and who runs a thriving cattle property with a shotgun in one hand and a martini in the other. That place in the central Australian desert where Napoleon fell back down to earth.

  Her father has a prospector’s map of Australia from 1914. He keeps it in his work room off the main bedroom that Molly’s never supposed to enter. The prospector’s map doesn’t even have Darwin marked on it. It doesn’t even show the whole of the Northern Territory. That map is pink and everywhere outside of what is mapped out as the states of Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria is marked simply with the word ‘Aborigines’. Depending on the wilting spirit or rabid desperation of the goldminer, these areas marked ‘Aborigines’ were seen by Horace and Aubrey and their old goldminer friends as either dangerous no-man’s-lands or untouched gold-rich money fields ripe for a sharpened pickaxe. But this etched map in her hands is like no map Molly has seen. This is a map from a storybook. This is a map not of towns and cities, rivers and roads. This is a map of wonder and mystery, fortune and glory. And treasure. She remembers what her mother said: ‘We all have our own treasure to find.’

  A treasure map, Molly tells herself, as her fingernail traces the single etched map line down to a second set of words.

  West where the yellow fork man leads

  East in the dark when the wood bleeds

  She doesn’t repeat these words because she can see more words below them and she’s too desperate to follow the etched line that travels from north-west to south-east now down the back of the copper pan in a shaky course to another set of words, and a thousand blue butterflies are set free inside her stomach as she runs her short forefinger beneath them.

  City of stone ’tween heaven and earth

  The place beyond your place of birth

  The map line runs on and there are more words to be read on the pan but they are covered in silt. She rushes into the creek water once more and uses her yard dress to wipe the back of the pan completely clean, and she must remember to breathe when she raises her grandfather’s sky-gifted treasure map to the blue sky and reads the last collection of words etched into the pan.

  Own all you carry, carry all you own

  Step inside your—

  ‘Moll-yyyyyy!’

  Uncle Aubrey is shouting at her from beneath the milkwood tree.

  ‘Get outta that feckin’ creek, child!’

  The gravedigger girl rushes and splashes out of the water and crawls up the creek edge, grasping at clumps of tall grass to haul herself up and onto the cemetery grounds. Molly can see her uncle standing over the grave he’s just dug, leaning on the long shovel he used to dig it. Her father stands next to him, his head down and his black hat in his hands.

  ‘Get over here, child,’ Aubrey commands. His long thin arms and his long thin finger bones are waving her towards him, but she doesn’t want to go there.

  ‘May I please stay here, Uncle Aubrey?’ Molly calls.

  ‘No,’ her uncle says. ‘Come here now.’

  ‘I don’t want to go over there,’ she says.

  ‘Get over here now, child,’ Aubrey Hook barks. He’s so tall and thin, and his wide-brimmed work hat is black like his eyes and his eyebrows and his gaze. And Molly wants to cry now to show her uncle that she’s frightened. Cry, she tells herself. Cry, Molly, cry. Cry and he will understand you. Cry and he will care for you. But she cannot cry in this moment, no matter how hard she forces herself to.

  ‘Dad,’ Molly calls.

  But her father says nothing. And she knows her father is weaker than her uncle.

  ‘Dad!’ Molly calls again.

  But her father has gone away in his mind. Gone away, she tells herself, gone away like Horace and Aubrey said her mum had gone away. They said she wandered off into the bush. They said she was lost in the wild and deep country and she couldn’t find her way back again. Back to Hollow Wood. Back to Molly.

  Horace is frozen in this moment, head down, his hat in his hands.

  ‘You will come here now, child, and you will say goodbye to your mother,’ Aubrey demands from the edge of the grave.

  Molly grips the sky gift copper pan and hugs it to her chest. I will never be afraid, she tells herself. I will feel no pain. Rock is hard. Can’t be broken. She shakes her head. No. ‘She’s not in there,’ Molly calls.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘She’s not in that hole,’ Molly says. She points to the sky. ‘She’s up there.’

  Aubrey is momentarily stunned by his niece’s words. He looks at her closely to see where they might have come from, which part of the girl’s bent mind. He tilts his head and squints his eyes. Poor little gravedigger girl, he tells himself. Mad little gravedigger girl, he tells himself. Mad like her grandfather, mad like her mother.

  ‘What is that you’re holding?’ Aubrey barks.

  Molly is silent. He takes a few steps closer.

  ‘What is that you’re holding, child?’

  Three more steps closer and then he stops.

  ‘It’s a sky gift,’ Molly says, nervously. ‘It’s my grandfather’s pan. He wanted me to have it, so he dropped it from the sky.’

  Aubrey studies his niece again and then he removes his black hat and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He breathes and sighs loudly, pulls a hip flask from his pocket, unscrews the cap and takes a long, hard swig. He pockets the flask and runs his dirty right hand across the stubble of his cheeks. And then he marches quickly to his niece, gritting his white wolf teeth, and he digs his wolf claws hard into Molly’s right shoulder and pulls her towards the milkwood tree. As he drags her across the cemetery ground, he reaches for the pan in her hands, pulls hard at it.

  ‘Gimme that feckin’ pan!’ he spits.

  ‘No,’ Molly screams. ‘No, Uncle Aubrey! It’s mine. It was given to me.’

  The tall black shadow uncle’s hairy black wolf arm wrenches t
he pan violently from his niece’s hands and he tugs Molly Hook towards the milkwood tree and the black rock frog rock, and she digs her feet hard into the dirt to slow their movement but the tall black shadow uncle is too strong. He grips her body like he grips a shovel. Closer and closer to the milkwood tree he hauls her, until she can see the hole in the ground.

  ‘No!’ Molly screams. ‘Please, Uncle Aubrey. Noooooo.’

  A rectangular grave with no headstone. A rectangular dirt prism of air sunk into the earth, with no name and no epitaph. No story of a life. No existence. No goodbye. No luck.

  Her father stands at the foot of the grave. Her father can cry, and he’s weeping here. Aubrey yanks at the girl’s arm and swings her forward to the edge of the grave. ‘Say your goodbyes,’ he roars, furious and volatile.

  The girl’s feet nearly slip into the grave but stop at the edge where she can’t help but look down inside the hole. She’s terrified of what she will see, but what she sees is nothing. What she finds is a dig with no end. The hole goes on forever. She could dive into that grave right now and she could fall through the earth for eternity and every muscle in her body wants to do just that. It’s a bottomless grave. It’s a black void, and this black void proves Molly Hook right and she shouts at her father across the grave. ‘I told him, Dad. She’s not down there.’ She points to the sky. ‘She’s up there, Dad!’

  Her father offers no response to his daughter beyond weeping. Her father has gone away. Gone away like Mum. I will never be afraid, she tells herself. I will feel no pain. I will feel only rage. Then Molly makes fists with her hands and she clenches them so hard that her fingernails draw blood from her palms and she screams. ‘She. Is. Not. Down. There!’

  Aubrey steps to the side of the grave and talks to his brother calmly. ‘Control your child, brother.’

  But Horace is blank. Horace only weeps. Molly’s banshee screams echo across the cemetery. Loud enough to wake its eternal residents. A scream from the bottom of the endless black void inside her. High and sharp and piercing. ‘She. Is. Not. Down. Therrrrrrrrre!’

  Aubrey shouts at his brother now. ‘Control your child, Horace!’

  But Horace Hook has gone away. Horace only weeps. And with every tear her father sheds, the gravedigger girl grows more and more hysterical.

  ‘What are you crying for?’ she screams. ‘She’s not down there. She’s not down there. SHE’S NOT DOWN TH—’

  And the gravedigger girl is silenced by the back of her uncle’s knuckle and bone hand landing flush across her face. Molly Hook falls back hard on the hard cemetery dirt. She wipes her nose and looks at her fingers covered in the same blood that’s spread across her face. This place is hard, she tells herself. Rock is hard. My heart is hard as rock, she tells herself. I will never be afraid. I will feel no pain.

  Molly looks up at her uncle, who is still holding her grandfather’s pan when he turns his back on Molly and looks back down into the grave. Molly stands and wipes her face with her yard dress and she spits half a mouthful of blood on the dirt and then she runs fast at her uncle and she drives her shoulder hard into his back and she pushes against him with her legs. She will send him to hell where he belongs and the quickest route she can see is through that endless black void.

  But her uncle doesn’t move. His bones are too hard from digging. His bones are too hard from living. ‘This is your grave!’ Molly screams, pushing with all her strength as her bare toes slip in the soil beneath them. ‘This is yoourrr grave!’

  Then she gives up pushing against her uncle and reaches for the pan he holds in his right hand. ‘This is mine,’ she screams. ‘Give it back.’ She tugs on the pan and pulls back on it with all her strength and all that is left of her will. ‘Give it back.’

  Aubrey Hook is still gripping the pan when he turns and smiles at his niece as though he’s going to enjoy the thing he’s about to do, and the gravedigger girl is still bulldog-clinging to the pan when her uncle swings his right arm with such fury and power that Molly’s feet are lifted from the earth and she is thrown through the air and the only thing that stops her wild forward motion is the impact of her left temple meeting the edge of the large black rock frog rock next to the grave. Then she might as well be the one who is falling through that endless void towards hell because everything in her world, even the day sky, has turned to black.

  A black flying fox in the predawn pink of a wet season sky. Gravity turns the fruit bat’s faeces into a teardrop falling fast to the earth and inside that teardrop is a single seed. Wind pushes the teardrop towards a eucalypt woodland with a vast understorey layer of vibrant green spear grass. The teardrop falls hard and finds its own permanently moist pocket of earth. The sun rises and falls in the sky and rises and falls in the sky and the black flying foxes of the Northern Territory fly east and west with and towards their kin.

  Wet seasons turn to dry seasons and turn to wet again, and suns make way for moons and then a tree grows out of a pocket of moist earth where once a fruit bat’s seed found a home. It has rough dark-grey bark, stands thirty feet high and has glossy, round leaves that bounce light like the inside of an oyster shell. And from among these leaves, on the morning of 7 December 1941, a small round fruit appears before the world. It is the colour red and it is ribbed all around. It is a red bush apple.

  His gloved hand reaches for her photograph in the grey blindness of a cloud. ‘Nara, make me strong,’ he whispers. The photograph is fading, stuck by gum above the circular fuel gauge of Yukio Miki’s Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ long-range fighter. The original photograph was wider: Nara Nui kneeling on the floor beside the right leg of her father, Koga Nui, who was seated on a wooden chair, his right palm resting on his right thigh and his left hand concealed by the long sleeve of his hemp and silk kimono – his winter kimono – patterned with pine trees that Yukio always considered a fair pictorial representation of Koga Nui’s existence: towering and bristling and hard to kill with anything but an axe.

  Yukio sliced the photograph in half, weeks ago, with his pocket knife pressed against an aircraft carrier mess hall table in Hitokappu Bay, in the Kuril Islands, leaving only Nara to grace the sacred gum space above his fuel gauge. Nara’s not looking at the camera in the photograph, and she told Yukio she was looking, in fact, at her nine-year-old niece, Soma, who was walking precariously behind the camera on a pair of empty soup tins tied with rope. It was Soma who was making Nara smile so wide, she said, but Yukio knew the truth, that it was life that gave Nara Nui her smile; it was children and snow and harlequin ducks bobbing along clearwater streams and it was fat fish hanging from her hook and it was a red paper kite stolen by the wind and carried across southern Osaka; it was the air and the sea and the sky that formed that smile. Nara wears her one and only kimono in the photograph, patterned with plum blossoms, winter cousin of sakura – cherry blossom. The plum blossoms always bloomed in time for the cold days when Nara would nestle into the soft cushion of flesh between Yukio’s right breast and right shoulder. He would feel her lips moving on his chest as she spoke of their love and their future, and all he saw as he lay with his back on the snow-flaked grass were the gold hearts of hanging white plum blossom flowers against a sky as grey as the cloud he flies through now. It felt, then, like Nara was talking to his chest on purpose and when she whispered ‘zutto’ – eternally – she really was meaning to say it up so close; she meant to say it directly to his fast-beating heart.

  There is a parachute pack stuffed behind his seat. Few Zero pilots carry parachutes. He could slip his on here now in the cloud, he tells himself. The Zero’s cockpit can’t be jettisoned but it can be opened in flight. He could exit here, slip away unseen by his brothers and feel no shame. The high winds of the Pacific would carry him to a tropical island, carry him to Egypt, to Paris, to London with its big round yellow ticking clock in the night sky. A strong enough updraught could lift him and his parachute up through the clouds, even, through the sky and the stars and into Takamanohara, the Plain of High H
eaven.

  No, he tells himself. A Zero samurai fights to the death. Death, he tells himself. Death. The only answer to every question he ever asked about life. The shortest route to heaven. The quickest road to Nara.

  *

  The shortsword that rattles against metal in the left-side gap between the Zero’s pilot seat and cockpit door is called a wakizashi. The shortsword’s blade is only thirty centimetres long. Wakizashi swords were traditionally made for close-quarter fighting or to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, but Yukio carries the sword today not for the sharpness of its blade but for the power of the object’s story. A gift from father to son. A sword more than two centuries old, passed through the hands of Miki men, all of whom, with the exception of Yukio the fighter pilot, worked in the artisan knife-making workshops of old town Sakai, on the edge of Osaka Bay, at the mouth of Yamato River.

  There is an image of a butterfly engraved on the handle end of the sword’s blade. The blade was forged in the Miki family workshop in the heart of Sakai, a bustling fishing port and one of Japan’s busiest and oldest foreign trading hubs, filled with the sacred air of maritime commerce and tuna blood and the guts of fat red queen crabs. It was in the same modest and small and well-kept laneway knife-making workshop that Yukio’s father, Oshiro Miki, passed the wakizashi to his first-born son, then aged in his mid-twenties, on the day he left Sakai to join his military brethren in the selective and punishing Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service pilot training programme. Oshiro had told his son the story of the sword’s creation many times but on this day of sad departures he felt he needed to tell him again.

  ‘No more stories, father,’ Yukio pleaded. He had grown tired of his father’s stories. As a boy, Yukio had lived for his father’s tales. Tales of how the Miki family had been making blades for six hundred years. Tales of samurai swords forged for great warriors. Tales of how the flames of feudal war were finally extinguished and the need for samurai swords was blown away with the ashes of the dead, and how the Miki family elders then turned their sword-making skills to creating the sharpest fishermen’s filleting knives in all of Sakai. Knives forged for cutting the heads off tuna that could still carve through the neck bones of any fisherman foolish enough to doubt the integrity of Miki family steel.