This Golden Land

by Wood, Barbara

  "Have you ever been back?"

  "Once, a few years ago. The old man had taken a new wife and sprouted a new crop of O'Briens. I went up the front steps but he wouldn't let me in the house. Said he had disowned me and I was never to come back. My bounty poster at the time didn't have as long a list on it as it does now, petty crimes really, but he threatened to send for the troopers. He wasn't a total bastard, though. He gave me an hour's head start."

  He looked at Hannah for a long moment, his eyes roving her face, taking in the dainty bonnet capping dark hair that was gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Out here in the rough and ready wilderness, he thought, and she still looks like a lady. "Let me give you a bit of Outback wisdom, Hannah."

  She had never given him permission to address her by her first name, nor had he ever asked. But she did not protest.

  "The trick in life, Hannah," he said, "is to cram everything into the moment. All your hours and days, all your pasts and futures. Compress then into now, and savor it like a rich man's feast."

  "And live outside the law?"

  He searched again for signs of judgment, but found none. She was curious about him, he knew, and she deserved an answer. "I don't live outside the law, Hannah. I live by my own law, pure and simple. No toffee-nosed Pom in a white powdered wig twelve thousand miles away is going to tell Jamie O'Brien of the lower Murrimbidgee how to live."

  He picked up the enamel cup that sat in the sand near his hat and, lifting it in a toast, took a sip. Hannah knew it was whiskey. O'Brien set the cup down and said with a sigh, "I feel sorry for the bloke who doesn't drink."

  "Why?"

  "Because when he wakes up in the morning, that's the best he's going to feel all day."

  Jamie shifted his weight and winced.

  "Pain?" Hannah asked in alarm, and hope.

  "There's that one tie that's still bothering me. If you could loosen it a bit?"

  Tension on the splint bindings had had to be adjusted over the days, first to accommodate swelling, and then to tightened the splints as the swelling had gone down. Hannah delicately picked at the knotted rag and when the two ends fell away, she stared in horror.

  In the light of the moon and the stars, Hannah saw a great black spot staining the bandage directly above the sutured wound. She closed her eyes. It was gangrene. The necrosis had seeped up through the bandage. There was no hope.

  "Everything okay?" Jamie asked.

  "I'm just re-tying it," she said, picking up the filthy ends of the rag with shaking hands and re-doing the knot, covering the horrific black spot.

  Jamie rubbed his stubbled jaw and said, "Would you do me a favor, Hannah? Will you remove your bonnet? Just for tonight?" He added with a grin: "Call it a dying man's wish."

  Hannah thought of the black spot on Jamie's bandage, thought about how everything was going to be different tomorrow, and so, reaching up, she removed the pins and then the bonnet, setting it aside on the sand.

  "That's much better," Jamie said, his gaze brashly roving the hair that shone like jet in the moonlight. Then his eyes met hers and Hannah saw his pale blue irises reflect starlight and moonlight, and Hannah found herself thinking what an attractive man O'Brien was, and she realized she was falling under a strange spell. She rubbed her arms. Chill was seeping through the wool of her shawl, through the fabric of her dress, through her skin and flesh right into the marrow of her bones. She knew it had nothing to do with the cold night.

  "I want to share some magic with you," he said. Jamie reached into his pants pocket and brought something out. "You will need to remove your glove for this."

  Hannah did so, and was startled when Jamie placed something cool and smooth on her palm. "Feel that?" he said softly. "Like holding a cloud."

  The opal was the size and shape of a robin's egg, smooth and soft. She turned the pale blue stone this way and that, catching moonlight and shooting back colors, and it made her think of Jamie O'Brien's eyes.

  "Look into it, Hannah, move it about. Go into the heart of the stone and let the colors swirl around you, bring you in to where there is only peace and silence. Feel the colors embracing you. The stone is cool, the colors are bright. The Aborigines believe opals are healing stones. They're the eggs laid by the Rainbow Serpent and they possess tremendous power to heal and to soothe."

  Hannah was mesmerized by the stone, thinking it possessed the best characteristics of the most beautiful of gemstones: the fine sparkle of al-mandine, the shining purple of amethyst, the golden yellow of topaz, and the deep blue of sapphire. Now she understood Jamie's passion to find more.

  As she started to hand it back to him, he said, "Keep it. As payment for leaving your comfortable hotel and coming out here to help me. Besides, we'll be finding plenty more." Then, looking into her eyes, he said, "Stay with me tonight, Hannah."

  She went back to her tent to fetch two blankets, and settled next to Jamie, who made a place for her at his side with his arm outstretched so that it curled protectively around her shoulders when she leaned into him. Hannah spread the blankets over the two of them and, resting her head on his chest, lay for a long while listening to the steady beating of his heart.

  Hannah closed her eyes, spilling tears onto the dusty fabric of his shirt. As he started to tell her a humorous Outback tale about a race and an old drover's horse, Hannah listened to Jamie's voice deep within his chest, and the rhythm of a strong, brash heart. And she thought that, under other circumstances, in another time, she could fall in love with this man.

  25

  H

  ANNAH WOKE ONCE DURING THE NIGHT AND THOUGHT OF going back to her tent, but she did not want O'Brien to wake up and find himself alone. And so she stayed with him until dawn, when the others awoke after a night of fitful sleep.

  Breakfast was a dispirited affair of beef jerky, damper and tea, and all they spoke of was that there was no sign of Stinky Sam who had gone off the day before. Finally the men carried Jamie to the wagon where they laid in him in the bed among the supplies.

  As fresh sunlight broke over the flat, unforgiving desert, they gathered around the wagon, a tired, solemn group with shadowed eyes and the stoop of hopelessness in their shoulders. Hannah knelt at Jamie's side and, before removing the bandage, she took his right hand and placed in it the opal he had given her the night before, curling his fingers around the cool, smooth stone. Their eyes met and he smiled in gratitude.

  Hannah opened her carpetbag, and as she prepared to cut the blackened bandage, she mentally prepared herself for all possibilities. Having assisted her father in the management of many wounds, she was experienced with the various conditions of injured flesh: from angry red festerings, to foul sores oozing pus, to the black necrotic tissue of gangrene. She peeled back the dirty rag and poured water over the wound to rinse away the caked blood and pale yellow fluid that had accumulated beneath the bandage.

  But when Jamie O'Brien's pale, injured shin was washed clean, Hannah froze. This was one possibility for which she had not been prepared.

  The others also fell silent, mouths dropping open.

  "Holy St. Hilda," said Ralph "Church" Gilchrist as he crossed himself.

  "What is it?" cried Jamie. "It is worse than we thought?"

  Hannah started to speak, but could not find the words. It was Maxberry who said, "It's a miracle, boyo, and that's a fact."

  Lifting up on his elbows, Jamie finally had the courage to look at his leg. Like everyone else, he stared in astonishment. "What happened?"

  "Your wound, Mr. O'Brien," Hannah finally said. "Appears to have completely healed."

  Although the skin of his calf and shin was white and puckered, as expected, and although the wound itself, with two rows of neat black sutures, was stained purple, there was no sign of pus or infection, no drainage of any kind.

  It explained why he had felt no pain, she realized. Not because of gangrene, but because the wound had healed.

  And then she saw her handkerchief among the bandages, pu
rple and ruined beyond saving—the dark purple iodine that had seeped into the outer bandage making her think gangrene lay beneath—and she had the answer.

  Her father's formula.

  Relief washed over her. And something else—a powerful, shuddering emotion that made her close her eyes and reach for the edge of the wagon. She swayed slightly, kneeling there next to Jamie O'Brien who was now laughing. The others were shouting and laughing, too, and throwing their hats into the air, with dirty-faced Tabby dancing a jig, and Bluey Brown shooting off his musket, and Nan grinning with gapped teeth. Hannah went quiet and still as she said prayer of thanks.

  The sight of the clean wound astounded everyone, and they gathered around again to stare and comment. They had all seen bad wounds. Maxberry himself had nearly died from the wound that had festered on his face. Never had any of them seen anything so clean as this. There would hardly even be a scar.

  Jamie said, "Faith, Hannah, you saved my life."

  But she was thinking of something else. The iodine was a cure-all. As she was suddenly filled with excitement, wanting to hurry back to Adelaide and explore this astounding discovery—she would ask Mr. Maxberry to escort her back—the morning silence was broken by a shout. They turned to see Stinky Sam stumbling into camp. "Opals!" he cried, waving his arms. "I've found opals! Millions of'em!"

  26

  T

  HE MOUNTAIN HAD BEEN CALLING TO HIM FOR DAYS.

  Neal didn't know how he knew it, couldn't find the words to express exactly how the distant mountain beckoned. He knew only that he could not stop staring at the red-gold monolith that stood on the red desert like a sunset frozen in time. It was like no geologic formation he had ever seen. To Neal, mountains had jagged peaks, alpine forests, snow. This queer upthrusting of rock was roughly the shape of a bread loaf, with no apparent vegetation, no peaks, and no foothills or forests surrounding it. How on earth had it been formed? What strange gestation and birth had produced such a cryptic phenomenon?

  As the two brothers Daku and Burnu, their black bodies painted white, torsos bent, with spear and woomera balanced in their hands, stealthily stalked an echidna, Neal—who was supposed to be ready with his boomerang should the spears miss their mark—stood mesmerized by the strange mountain. With the hot wind blowing against his face, Neal felt himself grow curiously detached. The mountain shimmered in the heat, it seemed to move, to breathe, as if some queer power were reaching out to him, to draw him toward itself. He wished he had his camera equipment. He wished he could capture the phenomenon on glass.

  "Very sacred place," Jallara had said when the clan first arrived at this spot, days before. "First Beings live there in Dreamtime."

  "People lived there?" he had asked. Neal thought he heard, on the wind, a low vibrating hum, like a tuning fork quivering in the lowest register. It was not something he detected through his ears, but rather it was something he sensed.

  "Not people, Thulan. Creators."

  Creators, Neal thought now as the hunters threw their spears and cried out in victory. What was causing the strange vibrations? Was it the force of subterranean steam or seismic activity? He wished he had his geological tools and scientific equipment. He would have liked to explore the jutting red rock—after all, he had come to Australia to unravel mysteries—but Jallara had warned him that the mountain was forbidden. "Very sacred, very taboo," Jallara had cautioned, saying that not even the clan's clever-man, Thumimburee, could walk on that ground.

  Unfortunately, Jallara's words and warning only piqued Neal's curiosity. But as much as he would have loved to break away from the group and go exploring, he respected their laws and would abide by them.

  Besides, there was something else he wished to explore, and it had nothing to do with geology. Nothing to do with the real world, in fact.

  In the past five months, since leaving the billabong, the clan had experienced a death, two births, one girl's rite of passage, and two youths' rites of passage. For the death and births, Neal had been allowed to partake in the ceremonies. For the secret girl's ritual, he was banned, which he understood. But when he was barred from the manhood initiation of the two boys, Neal did not understood why until Jallara had explained that only males who had undergone initiation could participate. Disappointed, Neal had had to stay behind in the camp with the women and girls and young boys while the men had taken the two youths out into the wilderness for secret rites.

  All through the night, as Neal had sat with Jallara at the campfire, as he had heard the faint twangs of Thumimburee's didgeridoo drift from the distance on the wind, his interest grew. And when the boys were brought back the next day, barely able to walk, Neal's curiosity had sharpened. Jallara had said it was a ritual of blood and pain. She had not exaggerated.

  After the youths recovered, they had then gone on something called walkabout while the clan picked up camp and continued on their never-ending trek, leaving the initiates behind with only their spears. When the youths rejoined them a few days later, there was a happy corroboree to celebrate the boys' entry into manhood.

  "So walkabout is a proof manhood?" Neal had asked Jallara.

  "They go to see spirits, Thulan. Get secret message."

  Spirits, Neal had thought. Secret message. Like a vision quest. What had the boys seen? What messages had they received out there in the wilderness with only a spear and their wits? As it was taboo to speak of one's experience during walkabout, Neal could only guess. And his curiosity grew.

  He woke up one morning to realize that he wanted to experience walkabout.

  The more he thought about it, the more the idea excited him. What was it like to have a mystical experience, to have a spirit-guide send you a secret message? Was it even possible that an atheist like himself, who did not believe in any realm beyond the physical world that he could see and touch, could experience the mystical?

  He had asked Jallara to present his request to Thumimburee who, to Neal's surprise, had readily agreed. The clever-man told Jallara that since thulan had led them to the dying man, that Thulan Dreaming watched over the stranger, then it was permissible for him to undergo the spiritual rites of blood and pain.

  Even so, the final decision was not an easy one for Neal to make. He was still obsessed with finding Sir Reginald. Justice and retribution filled his thoughts day and night. When the clan had left the billabong, five months prior, and the clan had traveled north, Neal had been horrified. To his relief, however, they had soon turned to the west and had continued a westward trek since. Neal suspected that since they followed a track parallel to the expedition's, when the time came for Neal to leave the clan—which was soon—he had only to aim his steps southward and he would eventually meet up with Sir Reginald.

  Neal was physically fit now, and ready for the trek. Thumimburee had offered to send three men with Neal, to take him across the plain to the point where he could continue on his own—where there was plentiful water, vegetation and game. Neal was eager to go. The sooner he left this place, the sooner he would confront Sir Reginald and demand an accounting for his crime—the sooner, too, that Neal would arrive in Perth, and the sooner he would be back with Hannah. But if he chose to undergo the initiation rites, he would be here for days longer, perhaps even at the risk of missing Sir Reginald altogether, who might right now be in Perth or certainly very near. And then Neal's would-be murderer could catch the first ship back to England and Neal might never catch the man who had left him in the desert to die.

  He gazed across the plain at the red-gold mountain. He felt as if he had been divided into three men: one thirsting for revenge, the second yearning to be with his beloved, and the third a scientist who knew that this was a most extraordinary opportunity that would never come his way again.

  What a paper he could write! The first white man to participate in the secret savage rites of a primitive people, deep in the heart of unexplored territory. What scientist worth his university diploma could pass this up? I came here to explore mysteries. Th
e world of spirits and the metaphysical is the greatest mystery of all.

  However, the experience was not without its risks. Jallara had warned Neal that sometimes youths who went walkabout never came back. Or sometimes the extreme tattooing—the first phase of the initiation—resulted in death due to the evil spirits of infection invading the wounds. And finally, although rarely, it sometimes happened that the secret message sent to the initiate by the spirits was so powerful, a message "Bigger than his head," that he died on the spot.

  While his companions continued to search the barren landscape for prey, their keen eyes on the lookout for tracks, scat and burrows—or, with luck, the overhead flight of a bird—Neal's eyes remained fixed on the taboo mountain.