Rain Stones 25th Anniversary Edition

by Jackie French

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Angela.

  ‘Well, you know. Wallabies and wombats and the owls. There’s a mopoke that still calls down our street, even with all the new people. Mopoke! Mopoke!’ Angela jumped. ‘That’s what he says. There used to be a wombat right up near the house till the houses down the street were built. I think the dogs have frightened it away now. You can still hear frogs croaking and all sorts of noises and scuffles though. And possums. There’s one in our roof. You can hear him scampering at night. He wee’d on the ceiling once and Mum was mad. One night I saw a whole paddock of roos feeding just over there. They lifted their heads when they saw me but they didn’t run away. I don’t think animals are as scared at night. It’s their time, not people’s.’

  ‘It’s certainly not my time,’ said Angela. ‘I’m nervous of the dark. I wish we’d brought a torch.’

  ‘The moonlight’s bright enough,’ said Michael.

  Angela looked at him. He seemed different tonight. Older, more confident, as though, like the animals, night was his time too.

  ‘Why is the day too noisy?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you like school and your friends?’

  ‘They’re okay. All they’re interested in though is TV and sport and doing things. None of them knows how to watch at all. There’s too much going on during the day. You don’t have time to look at things, or feel the wind on your skin, or smell things. Things smell different at night. See? Sniff!’

  Angela sniffed. ‘I smell honey,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘That’s the tree above you. See, that big old twisted one. It’s been flowering for a week, but you probably wouldn’t smell it during the day. I wish I could paint the smell of honey. I hate going home sometimes. As soon as you turn on a light the world seems to change. As though it’s flat, all one colour with too much light.’

  ‘Aren’t you tired in the morning?’

  Michael grinned. ‘Sometimes. It doesn’t matter. Mum lets me stay home from school. I just say I couldn’t sleep because of asthma. That’s when I do most of my paintings.’

  They turned a corner. The road glimmered deep grey in the moonlight. The last houses had disappeared now. Canberra was a purple glow of light behind them.

  ‘I think the dinosaurs like the night too,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t think they died out at all — when did you say it was?’

  ‘Sixty-four million years ago.’

  ‘Well, then. I think they’ve just been hidden. I think they’re waiting till we’ll no longer hurt them. I think they hide and come out when it’s safe, when no one can see them.’

  ‘You see them.’

  ‘Well, they know I like them,’ repeated Michael. ‘And you like dinosaurs too. They know I wouldn’t hurt them. I just like to watch them dancing and playing in the moonlight.’

  The hills rose long and golden above them. Their round tops caught the light. Further out Mt Tennant was dark against the sky. The moon lit the road and the paddocks of thistles beyond.

  ‘Just over the fence,’ said Michael. ‘We’ll wait under those trees over there, below the hill.’

  The light was black and silver under the trees and the world seemed to move in the flickering moonlight.

  Angela slapped a mosquito. ‘How long do we have to wait?’ she asked.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Michael.

  Michael was right. The world was different at night. Even the air seemed thicker, the colours were new colours, not grey at all, but shadowed, deeper reds and greens and blues. The stars glowed away from the halo of bright sky around the moon. The breeze was cool but the ground below was warm. It almost seemed to breathe warmth, thought Angela, like some great animal beneath them.

  Nothing seemed to be happening. Angela slapped another mosquito. Then she felt it, as though the air was moving, as though the light was changing. At first she thought it was just the dappling of the moonlight. Then the boulders on the hills began to move. They rose and uncurled arms and legs. They stretched their backs and yawned. Their yellow beaks glinted. They lifted one long leg and then another, standing upright like delicate kangaroos. Their eyes shone like the stars. Suddenly the hill was moving, covered with delicate dancing rocks. They pranced and skipped and lifted their faces to the sky.

  Then one saw Michael. It gave a fierce high chattering noise and scampered down towards him.

  They were the animals from Michael’s first painting, as tall as dogs but more fine boned, the front legs small and agile, the back legs long and stronger. They were green and red and blue and danced on long-toed feet. You could just see the wide, sharp teeth inside their beaks.

  ‘Michael! They’re leaellynasauras! I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I just call them the dancers,’ said Michael. A dancer rubbed its narrow head against his pyjamas, and looked inquiringly at Angela.

  She inched away from it. ‘Do they bite? They look bigger up close. Euch, it’s all covered in lichen. You’ll get your pyjamas dirty.’ The dancer hissed at her and turned back to Michael. He patted its head absently.

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Keep watching!’

  ‘Michael!’

  They felt it with their feet first, as though the earth was stretching below them. Then they saw it. The first of the giant hills was moving, its rounded back rising in the air. It stretched and looked around. It was golden in the moonlight, the colour of dead grass, the colour of the hills. Its forehead bulged above its lips as it snorted and stretched again on its hind legs and lumbered forward to taste the tip of a casuarina tree.

  ‘That’s a muttaburrasaurus!!’

  More hills moved now. The plain had come alive. A tiny head reared over a giant body and smiled down at them, showing small blunt teeth.

  ‘I can’t believe it. Michael, that’s a rhoetosaurus! I didn’t realise they would be so big!’ The rhoetosaurus twined its neck into a gum tree and nibbled the mistletoe berries. ‘It won’t hurt us?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Michael. ‘That’s only old Baldy. He just eats berries and grass and water weed. Baldy’s friendly. Anyway, they know me. They know I like them.’

  Another dancer bounded up to them. Michael scratched behind its ears. ‘They’re pretty, aren’t they?’ he asked. The dancer butted him gently and licked his ankle with a raspy tongue. ‘Hey, cut it out, that tickles!’

  ‘Pretty! Michael, is it always like this? Every night?’

  ‘I can’t get out every night,’ said Michael. ‘It’s always different though. You never know who’s going to wake up. Sometimes there are only the dancers. We’re friends now. They always come out to me. Sometimes there’s a lot of other animals. There’s one like a giant kangaroo that growls and another that looks like a wombat but it’s as big as a hippopotamus and . . .’

  ‘A diprotodon! But they can’t be here too! They come from quite another time than the dinosaurs. They only died out twenty thousand years ago.’

  ‘But you said, “The past is part of our present.” And it is,’ said Michael.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that!’

  The child shrugged. ‘Well, there they are,’ he said.

  ‘Michael, why don’t you tell anyone about this?’

  ‘I did,’ said Michael. ‘I told Mum, but she just got worried in case I was missing Dad and making things up. I think she’s too busy to listen much. I told Miss Watson but she just thought I was pretending. I wouldn’t tell the kids at school. They’d think I was nuts, or if they thought they were real they’d come out and hunt them or scare them away. Grown-ups laugh, or they pretend to take you seriously and laugh behind your back. You thought I was just imagining it, didn’t you?’

  ‘But why haven’t other people seen them!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose they haven’t looked.’

  A tiny dancer brushed Angela’s leg. She pushed it away. ‘Get off, you stupid creature. You’ve made my dress muddy. Are you sure they won’t bite? Michael, do you realise what this means? It’s an extr
aordinary discovery. People will come from all over the world to see these dinosaurs. Scientists will be able to study them. Can you imagine what a zoo would pay for a real life dinosaur?’

  Michael stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I wonder if we could nab them when they’re asleep. It would be a lot easier. Maybe place a net around the hills.’

  ‘You don’t mean catch them?’ cried Michael.

  ‘Of course. Michael, a discovery like this is important to the whole world. Everyone will want to see the dinosaurs.’

  ‘But they can!’ cried Michael. ‘They only have to want to see them! All they have to do is look!’

  Angela laughed. ‘People don’t want to crawl out of bed at two in the morning. Scientists can’t study dinosaurs dancing round in the moonlight. They’ll have to be herded up, Michael. They’ll have to be kept safe.’

  ‘But they are safe. They’ve been safe for sixty million years! They don’t want to be studied! That’s why they look like hills!’

  ‘I’ll be famous. I won’t have to go begging for a fellowship now. Every history book will mention me! You’ll be famous too, Michael. I’ll give you plenty of credit for having found them first.’

  Angela picked up her camera. ‘The first thing to do is get some decent shots,’ she said. ‘Oh, why didn’t I bring a telescopic lens? I wonder how close I can get without scaring them.’ She walked down towards the river. The camera flashed.

  Michael stared after her as she walked across the paddocks. The little dancers leapt about his feet, as though they knew they had to comfort him. The smallest reared against him and tried to lick his tears.

  Across the river another animal was waking. This wasn’t a hill, gold in the moonlight. This was a mountain, tall and black and craggy. The gums and sheoaks clung to its sides but now you could see that they weren’t trees at all, but horns, clinging like armour to its hide, descending in a giant crest along its back.

  ‘Dr Boardman! Come back!’ cried Michael.

  The mountain reared against the sky. Its long flat head blotted out the moon. Its tail swept along the river. Even from the trees you could hear it breathing and its shrill, high roar of rage.

  Michael tried to run towards her. The tiny dancers held him back, clinging to his pyjamas with their pointed teeth, pulling him down to the ground, cuddling next to him, so all he heard was her scream and the heavy footfalls of the allosaurus, plodding back to its mountain range.

  No one ever discovered what happened to Dr Angela Boardman. Michael said nothing. As he told the dancers the next night, no one would believe him. Things that happen in the world of night are never quite real by day. He was sorry though. He thought Dr Boardman would like to have been famous as the first archaeologist ever to have been eaten by a dinosaur.

  The dancing dinosaurs skip in the moonlight and the round backed hills of Canberra sleep in the sun. Sometimes when you walk across the feathery grass you’d swear they breathed, or moved in the shimmering summer light, the golden haired hills of Canberra, the ancient hills with furry feet.

  Dusty and the Dragon

  It was cool by the creek. A breeze swept the valley, deep below the ridges. It rustled the casuarinas, so the females shook down small berries and the males dusted the water with rust-red pollen.

  Rob trailed a finger through the swimming hole and inspected it. The pollen clung to it like a coat of peanut butter.

  ‘Yuck!’ he said. ‘Who’d want to swim in that?’

  His sister rolled over and looked at him. ‘It’s not so bad. It floats down the end when you swim in it anyway. Finished your book?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll have finished this one soon. Then we can swap.’

  Rob snorted. ‘I’m sick of reading. There’s nothing to do in this dump. Mum and Dad could at least have sent us to a holiday camp or something. Anywhere but here.’

  ‘Have a swim and cool down.’

  ‘In that? Hey, do you think we could ask Dusty to drive us into town later so we could swim in the proper pool?’

  ‘No. He’ll just tell us to swim in the creek, or go for a walk, or pick apples or something. At least at home we’d have had the video. This is going to be a long two weeks.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rob looked at his watch. ‘Lunchtime. Do you think there’ll be anything decent to eat?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Gwyn. ‘You know Dusty.’

  ‘When I get home,’ said Rob, ‘I’m going to eat six hamburgers and three drums of fried chicken and watch TV for a week without stopping.’

  They wandered across the flat, dry grass, hot on their feet, and up through the greener garden. Once it had been tidy. Now, tall camellia bushes crowded each other. Unpruned branches hung from the fruit trees while the fruit rolled fat and slushy into the long grass: scabby oranges and fat-skinned lemons. A forest of raspberries multiplied by the fence. Jasmine wandered through the grass and geraniums wandered over the flower beds.

  The house was cooler. Flies hummed outside the kitchen window, in among the honeysuckle leaves that crowded the panes. Dusty was putting lunch out, thick slabs of bread and thicker cheese, tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. Dusty smelt of salt, like fresh corned beef, and yellow soap, and leather from his boots and belt. He nodded as they came in.

  The children sat down at the scarred kitchen table while Dusty made his tea, dark black and thick with sugar, and put the plates in front of them.

  ‘Thanks, Dusty,’ said Rob, lifting his tomato carefully and putting it on Gwyn’s plate before picking up his bread and cheese.

  Dusty raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t like tomato,’ explained Rob.

  Dusty snorted. ‘That’s a perfectly good tomato. Eat it. It’s good for you.’

  Rob looked at Gwyn. She winked back, as though to say, ‘Mum was right. He’s impossible.’ She passed him back the tomato. Dusty watched them.

  ‘I used to hate tomatoes too,’ he remarked.

  No one answered. Rob tried to swallow his tomato without tasting it. Finally Gwyn asked politely, ‘What made you change?’

  Dusty sprinkled pepper on his tomato. ‘It was years ago. During the ’thirties. I don’t suppose your mum’s ever told you?’

  The children shook their heads.

  ‘I don’t suppose she would have,’ said Dusty Dargan. ‘You know about the ’thirties, you kids? Hardest time Australia’s ever had. No jobs and no money. Kids with thin legs and men with hopeless eyes. Some people stayed put and lived on the dole. Some distilled eucalyptus oil or went gold panning. Me, I went wandering. If I couldn’t work, I’d wander.

  ‘I had a bike then. Not a flash one like you kids have today. No gears, no lights, heavy enough to break your back if you tried to carry it. It was all I had in the world except my swag — just a couple of blankets and my billy. I reckoned I’d bicycle all round Australia. Only one person had ever done it before, but I didn’t mind being second, not as long as I did it.

  ‘Well, I got up to Brisbane. My legs had muscles like a kangaroo’s. Kept going north, picked up the dole along the way and a bit of work when I could. Thought I’d give the Birdsville Track a go.’

  ‘We saw the Birdsville Track on TV last month,’ put in Rob.

  ‘You don’t feel the heat through a television set. You don’t feel the dryness, like you were blotting paper and the sun was sucking you dry. It nearly got me. The sand was as thick as week-old porridge, the world as dry as bumfluff on a chook. I had to carry my bike, I couldn’t ride it. My skin was too dry to blister. My food ran out mostly, just old bread and what I could snare — a wombat or a cockatoo.’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Gwyn. ‘You ate wombats?’

  ‘I ate them. It was that or starve,’ said Dusty. ‘They’re tough but you can get a feed off one. But all the while I was dreaming of tomatoes.’

  Rob and Gwyn had stopped eating to listen. Dusty grinned at them.

  ‘Don’
t know why I wanted a tomato. Like I told you, I never liked the things. But it stuck in my mind there on the yellow dirt of the Birdsville Track — that was what I wanted and that was what I kept going for. I lived on meat and bread and then the bread ran out, and then the water. That’s what kills you, when your water goes. You can go without food for weeks but not more than days without some water.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Rob. ‘Did you find a river or something?’

  Dusty shook his head. ‘The land was as dry as a bit of toast. I didn’t dare go too far off the road to look for water. I dug the soaks, but they were dry. I drank the sap from trees but then I got too weak for that. I carried my bike at night and slept in what shade I could find during the day. I don’t know when I collapsed.’

  ‘Did you die?’ asked Gwyn.

  Dusty Dargan blinked at her. ‘That’s a stupid question, girl. This isn’t some story on your television set. This was real. Would I be here now if I died? Of course I didn’t die. They found me on the track, with my bike still in my arms and my tongue purple and swollen and my skin red and bursting like a ripe balloon. They carried me into town and some old bird spent three days dripping water on my tongue and bathing me till I came to.

  ‘I was like a match with the wood shaved off,’ said Dusty Dargan. ‘I gradually pedalled my way back to the coast. And you know what I was longing for all that time? A tomato. They didn’t have any veg to speak of out at Birdsville, not then they didn’t.’

  Rob put another slice of tomato in his mouth. It wasn’t so bad when you got used to it.

  ‘I reckon if I hadn’t been dreaming of a tomato I’d have stopped there and then. They saved my life, those tomatoes, and if they hadn’t saved my life your mother would never have been born and you wouldn’t either. So you eat your tomatoes,’ said Dusty Dargan.

  They ate in silence for a while. Rob finished his tomato.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ he admitted. ‘It tastes better than at home.’

  ‘’Course it does,’ said Dusty. ‘I grew that tomato myself. You don’t get good tomatoes unless you grow them yourself. Just pink balls like a baby’s kneecaps. No seeds, no juice, no taste to them.’