Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  Marijam looked small and hunched as she heaved herself slowly down the steps, a mythic crone. She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. A gun: Jessica’s gun. The old woman weighed it in her hand as if trying to work out if it was the real thing or just a toy.

  ‘Maude’s on her way to Hobart,’ she said, holding the gun up as if to shoot the horizon, sighting along the barrel. She checked that the safety was on, then she threw it towards Jessica, who lunged to catch the weapon as Portia tensed to jump for it.

  ‘Down, girl.’ The heft of it, the comfort in her hand.

  Portia yipped and bounced as if expecting Jessica to throw the gun for her to chase.

  ‘Down, sweet.’

  ‘Good dog you got there,’ said Marijam. ‘Needs some training.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘She’ll come good. I’ve seen her mother. Good loyal dog.’

  Jessica put the gun into the pocket of her jacket and buttoned it away tightly. The dog whined and ran to the slope where the stairs began. She sat quietly, looking up towards the old woman, who reached into her pocket again. She pulled something out and Portia snapped it out of the air and settled down to chew.

  ‘We baked scones. For your William.’

  Your William.

  ‘Got him some flowers. A big old bunch picked from our gardens.’

  Jessica nodded. ‘He’ll like that.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ she snapped. ‘Men don’t go in for flowers around here. And he can’t eat, I hear. Not solids, anyways.’

  Jessica nodded again.

  ‘But it’s the thought. And he’ll remember it. More to the point, you’ll remember it. They’re for you as much as for him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘It’s what we do.’ Sounding just like Maude. She turned and stepped off the stairs, sinking into the soft sand, somehow maintaining her balance; seeming younger on the strand. More in her element. She bent to ruffle Portia’s ears.

  ‘Marijam,’ Jessica said, squaring her shoulders, squeezing the cold solidity of the gun through her jacket pocket.

  The old woman lifted her chin, waiting to hear what she had to say.

  ‘I want to go hunting.’

  ‘Good,’ said Marijam. She nodded, walking quickly through the soft sand to take Jessica by the elbow. She could feel the strength in the old woman’s hands, the daily ritual of putting out the boat and bringing in the net. Again she felt dizzy, seeing her future staring into her eyes. And it wasn’t so bad really. Tough, solitary, self-sufficient. Wise? Maybe.

  ‘We thought you might. Meet us at that same place, tonight, just on sunset.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Never doubted it,’ said Marijam. ‘I was going to run that gun over to you this afternoon. You saved me a trip. You’re a good shot. A fighter.’ And then she turned quickly, dropping another scrap of food which the dog leapt for, and scaled the bank to the steps leading to her house. Jessica’s future self, retreating.

  Not so bad.

  Back on the water the ocean was spread out for her like butter, like a path she was set on. The clean wake arrowing out from the back of the boat, the nose of it pointed in the only direction possible.

  ‘Want to go hunting, girl? Want to go get him? Catch him? Hey?’

  Portia sat up. The boat rocked. She barked, excited. Jessica shushed her.

  ‘Good girl. There’s my good girl.’

  And the ocean parting before her like a scene from her mother’s Bible. She felt the gun in her pocket.

  ‘Come at me,’ she said, quietly. ‘Just come at me now.’

  Jessica knelt down in the damp leaf litter and held the fragment of shirt out for Portia to sniff. The dog snuffled at the fabric then licked her hand. Would this work? You had to train dogs to do this kind of thing. The puppy whined, perhaps remembering Matthew’s scent from the attack on William. Then she jumped up to put her paws on Jessica’s shoulders and lick her face.

  It was stupid to think this tiny baby dog would lead Jessica anywhere. But she felt safer.

  ‘You’ve got me, I’m afraid,’ said Marijam. ‘I’m slowing down these days. Run ahead if you need to. I’m good on my own anyway. You okay with that arrangement?’

  Jessica nodded. The others paired up and set out. She let Marijam lead the way. She was quick for an old lady, using a walking stick like a third leg. Jessica found her feet slipping in the mud where Marijam was sure-footed. When Portia pulled, Jessica slipped and landed heavily on her bottom. She began to wish she had brought her own walking stick.

  ‘My father used to be a logger around here,’ said Marijam. A quiet sure voice. Jessica hurried forward to hear.

  ‘I used to go with him sometimes. Tough work. Took a day or two to get a tree out of here. They’d only pick the big old ones. Roll them out on wooden tracks, float them down the river up to Geeveston. Not like now. Come in and clear-fell a patch in an hour.’ She shone her torch up towards the treetops and laughed. ‘There! Look it.’

  Jessica looked up to the canopy but saw nothing but leaves bathed in torchlight.

  ‘No, lower, down…there, there where the light…’

  Jessica saw it. A bit of something sticking out of the side of a sturdy trunk. A peg of some sort, wood or metal.

  ‘Used those to climb up the trees. Take one at a time. Big old trees they were, not like now. And all the things we’d see, quolls and devils and wallaby. He’d talk about the tigers. Shooting them. Everyone shot them. He wasn’t so sure they took the sheep like the authorities said. He thought it was something else, something fiercer. Tigers were pretty docile. But he needed the bounty so he shot them anyway.’

  Portia stopped; sniffed. Jessica tried to pull her on, but she growled deep in her throat.

  ‘There you go,’ said Marijam, stopping, turning back to stand, hands on hips, staring at the dog. ‘She’s a good dog you got there. I told you so. She’s got him.’

  ‘William’s,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘She’s William’s dog.’

  ‘Ah. Well, she’s got a score to settle there. Looks like she might be yours now, though…She’s bonded. You might have to apply for custody. Or co-parent.’ Marijam smiled.

  Jessica could see the little girl who used to play in these forests. The wicked humour, the naughty grin.

  ‘Oop! Mind where she takes us,’ said Marijam.

  The dog was pulling Jessica off the track, into the frightening clumping of trees. Into the thick dark. Jessica held fast to her gun and let the dog lead her. They were travelling fast now, pushing between tree trunks and over thorny bushes. And for a while, miraculously, Marijam kept pace with her, until she stopped and shrugged.

  ‘Just take the lead,’ Marijam said. ‘I’ll catch you. I know all this area round here.’

  Jessica didn’t know the forest at all, but she trusted Portia, held fast to her lead.

  When the trees eased out into rocky ground she began to feel like she had been here before. Then the dog stopped at the rock face, at an overhang, an entrance, and she knew exactly where they were.

  Her cave,Winter Cave. Not the main entrance, but a hidden side passage that she had been down only once or twice. She stepped into the cave and looked up. A few little lights here and there. And when she looked at any one of them directly, it disappeared.

  ‘Hello, my friends,’ she whispered to the glow-worms of Winter Cave.

  Jessica used the torch on her phone, wishing she had red cellophane to protect the glow-worms from the glare. Portia sniffed, tail hanging seriously, pointing down at the floor of the cave. She zigzagged her way towards the cave wall, picked a turn and then another. There were so many networked paths and Jessica was being led away from her familiar routes. At every turn she looked up; the lights blinked above her, waving her forward. She held tight to the lead and let the dog drag her along. She tried to remember the complicated twists and turns but it was imp
ossible to keep track.

  The dog stopped; Jessica waited. She was disoriented. She looked up but the ceiling was dark. What? Every passageway had its own little colony of Arachnocampa tasmaniensis. You rarely found a part of the cave networks without a few of the little lights.

  The dog made her mind up and turned towards an entrance, and Jessica followed. The passageway twisted for a bit, then opened out into a large cavern.

  Someone had made a house here.

  That was Jessica’s first thought. There were wooden pallets stacked up in neat formations, platforms for shelving and benches; then she noticed the bottles.

  Home brewing. She was used to the bottles that Matthew kept under their shack. This looked just like that, only the bottles were bigger and there were tubes feeding into them, tubes and funnels. She took a sharp breath in and the air in here burned her lungs. A sharp smell. Unpleasant. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but it couldn’t be home brew.

  She turned her phone off and looked up. The roof of the cave here was dark, desolate. She aimed her phone upwards and switched the torch back on. The webs that must have held the worms were all empty now. On a low overhang nearby she saw the shrivelled body of a dead worm still hanging from its silken thread.

  Something had happened, a glow-worm apocalypse.

  And with that thought she felt a tightness in her chest. She tried to breathe in but there was something stopping her. The air was poison, was it going to kill her? She heard her pulse throbbing in her temple, let go of Portia’s lead and pressed her palms against her too-quick heart.

  Jesus, a full-on panic attack—not poison at all. The dog was sniffing around the buckets and bottles and…She had seen this kind of set-up in movies, Friday night crime shows. A drug lab. Meth, that’s what it looked like. Cooking meth in a glow-worm cave in a national park…why…?

  But Portia was growling low and deep in her throat. Then she turned, stared straight at Jessica and barked. Picking up on the panic? Jessica forced herself to breathe again. Tried to calm the stupid heartbeat.

  ‘Hey, girl,’ she said, holding her hands in front of her, trying to ease the dog’s stress too, but Portia barked again and her lips curled back in a sharp-toothed snarl.

  Jessica backed away, but the dog stalked towards her, growling, a constant low threat, her back legs tensed. She leapt, and Jessica brought the gun up quickly, stumbled to one side, followed the arc of the dog’s body with the barrel of the gun. Her finger tensed on the trigger but when the dog landed, snapping and snarling, she could see there was something on the ground there. She fumbled with the phone, almost dropped it, aimed the light towards the crouching figure.

  The phone was in her left hand, the gun in her right. She saw a leg kick out, connect with the dog’s ribs, send her rolling and yelping towards the nearest pallet. There was a rattle of glass, something falling, smashing, the dog barking, claws scrabbling on rock.

  Matthew curled up to standing. His body glistened in the light from the phone. He was naked and when he unfurled his spine she could see the pale flesh shadowed between his legs. She remembered that footage on his phone, the slow curl from beast to man.

  Not just a man.

  Jessica kept her finger steady on the trigger.

  Portia leapt. Matthew swung his hands like a club and Jessica felt the blow as if it had connected with her own chest. She stilled her breath. Sighted along the barrel of the gun.

  ‘Jessica!’

  She squeezed the trigger, but the sound of his voice had been enough to twitch her hand and the bullet thudded into the rock wall behind him.

  It was Matthew. His voice hurt and small, a damaged thing. The voice of never-meant-to-hurt-you. Every time the apology, the excuse, this tiny voice. This damaged little boy–man.

  And she had missed. She never missed. Matthew had made her doubt herself yet again.

  He was running. Jessica saw the shine on the floor where he had been, a little pool of blood, a trail of blood. She hadn’t missed. She had wounded him.

  She called after him but he was gone. She looked down to where Portia was cowering, whimpering.

  And William back in the hospital in Hobart.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, and to the dog, ‘Stay, girl. Stay. I’ll be back. Just stay.’

  She held the gun high and straight. She felt each step, sure and firm, slow at first and then faster as she turned and turned again through the snaking corridors. The ground was slippery but she was used to it here. She turned a corner, gun first, felt herself climbing as the floor sloped upwards. There were lights here, little lights glowing steadily above her. They were like a chorus, urging her on with their glow. Her colony. Undefeated.

  She heard a sound ahead; picked up pace. The passageway crouched down around her and she kept moving forward, on her knees now. And when it fanned out into three large entryways she paused; listened. Swung the light down and found a spot of blood. She took the middle path.

  She was gaining on him. She could feel it. Each sure step one step closer and her hands were raised. She was ready. A sound behind her.

  She turned. Something…a shuffling sound, getting closer. She stood her ground. She could hear her heartbeat, the blood thundering through her body, trembling her hand. She took a breath to still it.

  At the Olympics they have an event where you have to run, jump, shoot. Jessica had stumbled on it one day back in Toowoomba, before Matthew. She watched, imagining how fast your heart would beat after running up to the target, how skilfully the competitors drew breath, steadied, aimed, fired. She felt the pulse in her wrist. Her gun was ticking up, down. She took a breath, held it. She rested her finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze.

  Marijam.

  She exhaled.

  The woman stopped, frowned at the gun. ‘You shoot it?’

  Jessica shook her head. She turned back towards the mess of corridors. She listened.

  ‘Heard your shot. Thought you’d got it.’

  ‘Winged him.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a sound, a distant scrambling. Jessica ran, quick and steady, winding her way through the labyrinth, faster, leaving Marijam shuffling slowly behind.

  Gun first around each corner—like a cop on a late-night TV show, she thought, camera light down till she swung around. She used to practise this in the compound when she was a kid. Playing End Times, the sinners coming at her like zombies through the corridors of the old church. She was transported back now to that simple game. Goodies, baddies, the sinners, the saved. Jessica, Matthew.

  She had no doubt now. She would pull the trigger.

  The mountain was honeycomb. The soft curve of intersecting paths. She looked up and saw the vaults open above her. Sidestepped chasms that spiralled down to darkness. She felt the damp rock wall and knew she was home. The shack wasn’t home. The shack was Matthew’s place, his family’s place. The shack was a trap he had made for her, and like a lame animal she had sat in the snare waiting for him to come home each day. I’m all you have, he had told her and, like an idiot, she had made it true.

  She held the gun up: straight and steady. Running towards her target. Fast, accurate. Monitoring her heart rate, controlling her breath.

  These turns were familiar now. She looked up, saw the glow. Her colony. The corridor branched up ahead; she knew it before she saw it: three caverns at the end of three twisting paths.

  She stopped and listened.

  He was in her territory now. She knew these caves intimately. The centre path was a dead end, the cave to the right had an exit but it involved a climb. She turned left, walking slowly now. She swung the light ahead and the cave opened up around her. Damp teeth glittering up from the mineral ground, a curving curtain from above and then the drips that had gathered over thousands of years. His eyes were bright in the light, just his eyes visible as he crouched behind the outcrop of stalagmites. She stepped forward. Her finger was careful and sure on the trigger.

  ‘I’ve got you,
Matthew,’ she said, surprised by the calm of her voice. ‘Give up now.’

  There was something wrong with his movement. Crawling, dragging, a little hop in his step. She moved closer.

  It wasn’t Matthew. The head turned and she saw the long muzzle, the mouth opening, deep and full of tiny teeth. She had never seen anything like this: nothing like a dog or a cat; something other. Something rare. It darted forward, found the rock wall and paced back again, sensing it was trapped, trying to the left, then to the right, then back again. Its haunches were oddly heavy, as if it were dragging its hips. Its tail was long and bushed out slightly towards the end. Its ears were pricked and its eyes were small and flinty. The stripes were almost luminous in the light from her phone. And it was small. Too small for the word tiger.

  ‘Shoot it!’

  Marijam, standing at the entry to the cave behind her, and the sound of her voice startled the tiger. She saw it crouch, then hop, balancing on its curved back legs, its feet delicately touching the stalagmites before it started its pacing once more.

  Marijam went to push past but Jessica sidestepped to block her path. The creature sniffed around the rock formations; Jessica watched it. Each flinch of fur, each tic of an ear; the turn of head and gape of jaw. She watched as the creature turned and locked eyes with her, and it was extraordinary. She felt a strange looseness in her chest just looking at the animal. As if she had been transported into some wilder past, communing with something ancient. She stared and the animal stared back. If it was him, Matthew, she would know.

  There was nothing of Matthew in its eyes. She wasn’t scared of it. It was a thing of wonder.

  Marijam reached for her hand, for the gun. Jessica flinched, holding her hand high, but Marijam was wiry and strong. The old woman curled her hand around Jessica’s fingers and clenched her hand on the trigger and the sound of the shot filled the cave, her cave.