67
When Sparrow woke it was dark and he was wet and cold and tangled in the heath, well clear of the soak. He raised himself up, water trickling down the muddied side of his face. He felt the cut high on his cheekbone, probed at the hurt, palmed the grit away, gently, and wiped his wet hands on his britches.
The night sky was clear, the full span of the starlit heavens. The heathland was perfectly still, a sea of brush, that vast entanglement bathed in a blue-grey light, like an ocean becalmed.
His head was throbbing, the pain travelling in pulses, thudding on bone. His heart began to pound.
Bea was gone and Amicus Amico was gone, like in the dream, and he was alone in that ocean, beneath a lone tree, a big old spreading crooked tree.
He felt himself quite unable to walk. He felt the damp on his skin all down one side. He recalled taking the axe from his belt. The axe was gone. He felt for the costrel. The costrel was gone and the shot dog was gone.
The haversack was there, the leather flap configured about the teapot. They had missed the flint and they had not taken the teapot. But they had taken Bea, and Amicus, and the axe and the costrel, and the shot dog. They might as well have taken everything, the teapot and all. But he had to wonder: what would they do with a teapot?
He pulled the haversack close, squeezed at the lumpy contents. The quart pot was gone. The pistol was gone too, but the mug was there. Strange.
He sat cross-legged, staring at the dirt, feeling at the cut on his head. Ran his tongue across his bottom lip. The blisters had scabbed over and the lip felt like rough bark. The long cut on his forearm had shed its scab, the fading mark of the flood. So long ago, the coop, the coffin, the crows, the shark, the hook.
An age, a lifetime. Another life altogether.
The stillness out there did not sit well with the churn in his gut, nor with the ache in his heart. He got to his feet. He walked to and fro, loosening his joints.
A crescent moon ascended, lit the heathland, a blanket of shapes and shadow folds. Bats flew north-east, swift and low, into the blackness beyond the far ridge. The land was silent and all was still save a restless soul, alone, pacing the warm earth beneath the big old twisted tree in the vastness of the upland.
Sparrow felt entirely helpless for he knew he could never find Bea or Amicus, not in this inviolate waste. They were gone and there was no finding them and he had not even the rope to hang himself. He looked up. He had the bough, perfectly situated, sturdy. But he did not have the rope.
He dearly wanted to banish such thoughts, rise above them, but he was entirely alone, and he did not know what to do and his mind would not obey his want.
He was searching for a thread of hope in a moment of wretched gloom, but his hope was frayed as old plait and, anyway, hope was not his to summon or abandon. Hope was a mischievous thing, a cruel sprite that might visit or depart on a whim. They’ve took her. Why would they ever bring her back, such a prize. Sparrow knew if he was the squat elder, or one of those virile young men, he’d never let her go, not Bea Faa. As for Amicus, what they might do with him, injured as he was, did not bear contemplation.
He could not go on alone, he knew that. No axe, no meat, no costrel, no companion. Nothing but a teapot, and what use a teapot without a companion?
Sparrow reckoned he might find his way back, across the heath, through the shaft into that cave and on to the high waters of the Branch. Once on the Branch he reckoned he could find Mr Catley’s patch, save an ill-starred encounter with the mountain blacks, or with Caleb. Caleb set upon vengeance for Mort.
He recalled Mr Catley’s cave house with a fondness no words could express, except perhaps for the word delight. But Peskett’s torn old tent was also there, the mark of the soldiers. Even there he would not be safe.
Better there than here.
That was probably true. Here he was alone, alone beneath a lone tree in this unplumbed immensity. He saw himself as if from a great height, dead upon the baking heath, some creature, some reptilian thing tearing the meat off his bones. He did not want to die alone in this country, his remains blanketed by flies and feasted upon by crows.
He made a fire from a wizened scrub wattle, long dead. He uprooted the thing and dragged it whole into the clearing and fed the roots and bole into the flames once the twigs had taken and the fire was licking up.
He skimmed water into the mug, the mug that he and Bea agreed they would share, and he poured the water into the teapot, along with the last of Dan Sprodd’s tea. He set the teapot on the flame, the black creeping up the metal.
Bull ants fled a hollow in the scrub wattle and he took the tin mug and a stick and set about flicking a procession of them into the mug. It’s all meat.
He waited for the tea to boil and when it was ready he wrapped the handle in his sweat rag and poured, filling the mug almost to the brim. He put the mug at a tilt near the firelight and watched as the bull ants came to the surface and swirled, a swirl of fire colours, as if beribboned round a maypole, a maypole for the midges. He stirred some more and blew on the tea till it cooled and then he drank it down, all of it, for he did not know when next he would eat.
Sparrow could not help but think of Bea. He tried not to contemplate her circumstances but he found that impossible. His pictorial mind served up some loathsome doings, the likes of which prompted thoughts of Griffin Pinney rutting on her in that cave.
He began to cherish the night hours, wishing for night eternal, for come the day he would have to rise and step from the shade and leave the soak and trek, with neither water nor rations, in one direction or another. He would have to be resolute, alone.
But he was not alone. He heard the rustle of the underwood, the crack of brittle scrub. He looked out upon the heath, a dappling of night shadow, a thousand shapes out there. He watched the brush on the far side of the soak.
Such were the shadow shapes upon the animal and about the animal, the inseparable melt of the elements, that it took Sparrow quite some time to identify the living form within the brush.
It gave him quite a fright but as soon as the animal moved, limped forward, he knew it was Amicus. The dog was hop-hobbling on three legs, the wounded leg angled clear of the ground, entirely unnatural.
‘Where have you been,’ he said.
Sparrow swivelled onto his knees as Amicus limped into his arms, his tail wagging with the pleasure of the reunion. He could feel the dog’s heart, beating like a wedding drum. His own heart was beating in time.
The dog pulled away and hobbled to the water and drank and hobbled back to Sparrow, his whiskers dripping wet. With some difficulty he dropped down, his bodyweight firm against Sparrow’s thigh, his head resting there, his scraggy tail brooming the dirt.
Sparrow took the injured leg in his hand. The leg below the hock was soaked in saliva, the skin torn off the cracked bone, a soggy flap.
The dog squirmed and pulled away.
It occurred to Sparrow that if the leg was no good it might have to come off. ‘I don’t reckon I could do that,’ he said, out loud. He reckoned Bea could do it, reckoned she might know how to do it properly.
His worst enemy was fear, that he knew. Fear that sinks into the skin and slithers along one’s inner byways and coils about the vitals and squeezes till a man can hardly breathe, that man rendered putty in the devil’s sculpting hands, rendered ignoble, unmanned, good for nothing but to run, to flee, or to go down with black, uncomprehending eyes, and wait to be robbed or killed. Or eaten. Fear was a man’s worst enemy. Fear was hope’s undoing.
He stroked the dog’s forehead recalling how Amicus had fought with a fury when the pack had besieged him, fought them all. He would surely have fought to the death. If that dog knew fear, and who could know what he knew, it surely did not paralyse him. It did not rot the rigour in his fibre nor reduce him to a puddle of quiver, as fear can sometimes do.
That was a most sobering reflection. Sparrow took great pleasure in the vivid recall of his own part in tha
t savagery of tooth and claw. How he stepped into the melee without hesitation and shot dead the native dog and scattered the pack asunder and saved Amicus. He resolved never again to allow fear to rot the rigour in his fibre and shrink him to a puddle.
He could hardly believe that Bea was gone. That was the hardest thing. That pained him to his core and the pain threatened to squeeze his vitals and undo him, but now he understood fear and that was half the battle. He vowed he would not be undone by fear.
The dawn light was coming, working new patterns on the heath. The dull ache within his skull had eased. Amicus was twitching and whimpering in some sort of dream. Sparrow lay down in the dirt. He lay on his side, curled about the dog like a shell around its soft parts. He heard the cawing of a crow, the beating of wings; he felt the pain within him disperse and he with it, a weightless drift on the heath.
The sun came up and the country all about began to warm swiftly, and the sandflies came in, nipping at his forearms and his ankles, searching for veins in his neck and for a time diverting him as he swatted at them, smacking at his uncovered parts.
The sharp movement stirred the pain in his skull.
He dragged himself to the edge of the soak and drank the warm sludge from the cup of his hand, Amicus watching from the fringe of the shade, not caring to move, flies humming about the bloody flap on his wounded leg.
Sparrow dozed some more. His only want was rest but in his rest there was no repose. The bloodied ghost of Griffin Pinney leered at him; the savages came for Amicus and trussed his legs and took him for meat. He saw the bull shark take the boy. He saw eels thrashing in a mess of gut in the keel wash, supping on the viscera. The eels jolted him from sleep.
The dog came to him and they sat, watching the midges buzz about the soak.
He buckled up the haversack and one last time he drank from the soak and they departed, heading north-west across the heath. Now and then Sparrow looked back, trying to guess the north-west line the squat elder had signalled. He angled for a point of convergence with that line. He wondered if that made any sense at all.
They walked on, man and dog, on through the day, the sun beating down. They came upon the putrefied and much diminished carcass of an old wallaby, half devoured, crawling with flies. Amicus took to the carcass, tearing at what was left, shreds of gut, tattered green meat on the bone.
Sparrow squatted in the shade of some charred brush, watching the feast. After a while the dog slowed. Then he hop-hobbled away and vomited in a patch of shaggy pea. Leaves like holly.
They went on.
Midafternoon they reached the far side of the heath and took to the shade of a sparse woodland. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and he licked the sweat off his skin, the veins there like thick blue cord.
He felt beads of sweat dripping inside his shirt. The heat was much as it had been for days and the wasted leaves hung lank on the trees, thin as the meanest lips, their colour drab and drained. He squatted down in the speckled shade, Amicus by his side.
The dog showed no signs of distress. He licked carefully at the wound, the bared bone on his hind leg. He seemed entirely at home.
Sparrow wished he could feel like that. Even the flies did not seem to bother the dog. He’d just shake his head, yet again, like it was a good thing to be busy, as if the excesses of nature were there to help him pass the day and, in that languid way, endeavour to persevere.
Atop the slope, Sparrow saw clear blue sky to the west. He wondered what was there. He feared more of the same. He could see no sign of cover for the night. There was no going back. Drawn by the vast emptiness of the blue sky through the trees, he walked up the slope. He stopped short when he saw the far cliffs and a void to the fore. He called the dog away from the edge and the dog turned awkwardly and came to him and hobbled at Sparrow’s heel as they moved forward, together.
They stood atop a cliff wall that ran north to the dense green line that marked the horizon, above a point where the valley was lost in the braided folds of mountain spurs and patches of stone and a wash of the darkest forest green.
The void was a half mile across, more or less. The far cliffs were fractured by heavily forested gullies and slot canyons carved deep through stone. To the north he could see open patches of grassland on the valley floor, the lumpy shapes of marsupials grazing and smaller things foraging, clustered together, wood ducks, and a flock of black cockatoos in full flight following the line of the far wall, the stone there fissured and scarred like the hide of a dragon.
Sparrow felt the glare of the sinking sun upon his foreparts, the palpable heat off the wall of stone below. He stepped back lest a gust blow him away. He sensed the bond between his own flesh and the dirt and the ash about his feet, as if a mere ribbon of bark or a mean, thin leaf might have more substance.
He retreated a little further and turned about and sat on the slope, looking out upon the scene from whence he’d come. Surely he would find cover if he could find a way into that valley. A cave, some water. He was thirsty. He guessed the dog was thirsty too. ‘They should’ve left me the costrel,’ he said. Far off the heathland was shimmering in the heat haze, and in that haze he saw them, two figures.
He saw them threading the heath.
Sparrow could hardly move. He thought his senses might be playing a trick on him. He feared these figures might dissolve into nothing. But they did not dissolve. They came on. They came out of the haze. They took shape, firm and mortal.
She might have been one of them on first sighting, for she was tall and willowy and dark enough to sway the mind, the scene, such as it was. It took but a moment for Sparrow to know it was Moowut’tin and Bea, the savage to the fore, a long spear angled on his shoulder, the girl a few steps behind. The mongrel dog too, ahead of them, here and there leaping the heath.
Sparrow came down the slope yowling and when they saw him he yowled some more and waved his arms in the air. He hoped that Bea would wave back, but she did not. Moowut’tin made no sign but walked on, threading a course to the north of Sparrow’s position.
Sparrow hurried along the slope, northwards, the blue sky coming at him through the twisted trees. He felt shaky all over. He quickened his pace and stumbled and nearly fell, his heart pounding his chest. Amicus hurried ahead, Sparrow no match for the young dog’s hobbledy quickness.
Moowut’tin’s course was entirely mysterious to Sparrow but there was comfort in the prospect they would come together some way ahead. He hurried on for it seemed they were covering ground with a swiftness he could not match.
They met near the headwall of a narrow gully chocked with boulders and rotting wood and shrouded in darkness further down, where a dense canopy of tall trees defied the light above.
The dogs were circling each other, sniffing, renewing their acquaintance.
Sparrow could not help but look at Bea. She seemed much the same as before, if hatless and somewhat weary. ‘Here you are,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He did not know what to make of her voice, whether sadness or weariness, he could not pick the meaning that carried on that one word.
He saw Moowut’tin had the costrel slung on his shoulder, the defective rim coated with some sort of orange gum. ‘You mended it,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Moowut’tin. Moowut’tin handed the costrel to Sparrow and he felt the weight of the water within. He ran his fingers along the formerly defective stitching and felt the gum and the leather perfectly dry. ‘Thank you.’
Bea reached for the costrel, took it from Sparrow. He thought she might drink, but she did not. She ran a finger along the orange gum, examined the mend with some care. Her hand appeared unsteady.
‘Are you well enough?’ he said.
‘I was attended with some care by the women, then Moowut’tin appeared, much to my delight.’
‘What of Mr Catley?’
‘What of Mr Catley?’
‘Would you not go with him?’
‘I would
go with you, and Amicus.’
Sparrow felt a joy in his heart such as he had never known. He studied the gully, the way west.
‘You must go now,’ said Moowut’tin.
Sparrow and Bea picked their careful way into the gully, around masses of stone and rotting boles and branches, into a forest of coachwood and ribbon gums, cedar wattle and gymee, Amicus ahead of them, searching out the ground.
Further down the way was sheer and they made their way past caves and overhangs with the help of anchor vines and handholds in the stone. Nooks and niches resplendent with bright-coloured mosses and lichen that glowed in the gloom, here and there the brows of gargantuan boulders dressed in splendid staghorns and bird’s nest fern about the footings. On several occasions Amicus had to find his own way, and he did so, disappearing for a time and rejoining them further down, hop-hobbling along.
Near the bottom the grade eased somewhat and they followed a well-worn track through dense fern and grass trees onto the valley floor. From there they followed the cliff line north. They walked side by side where they could, talking about the night and day just gone, Amicus scouting ahead, limping along, now and then pivoting about to stare at them as if he, like Sparrow, could hardly believe it.
They drank sparingly from the costrel. They set out across the valley as the sun in the west seemed to flatten and flare along the stone horizon like a blood orange slick, and clouds like flames licked into the heavens. The parched grassland washed to and fro, a bloody wash on a flaxen sea, and whorls of heat, like tendrils, came off that wash as they walked on, swatting at the last of the flies, the dust and sweat a paste upon their skin.
Sparrow was happy. He was flush with relief, his hope restored, a singing in his heart. Words came to him, from where he could not recall: in gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, youth on the prow and pleasure at the helm.
They walked on.
68
Moowut’tin followed the line of the cliff top north, picking his way, looking out across the valley, the mongrel dog at his heel. After a while he stopped. He stepped close to the edge. He squatted on his haunches, squinting into the glare, his free hand shadowing his eyes.
The Making of Martin Sparrow Page 42
