Marsh and Me

by Martine Murray

  ALSO BY MARTINE MURRAY

  The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley

  The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley

  How to Make a Bird

  The Henrietta series

  Mannie and the Long Brave Day

  A Dog Called Bear

  A Moose Called Mouse

  Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars

  MARTINE MURRAY was born in Melbourne and now lives in Castlemaine. Her most recent novel, Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars, was shortlisted for the 2016 CBCA Award for Younger Readers, and she has won the Queensland Premier’s Award twice. Her books have been published internationally and translated into seventeen languages.

  martinemurray.com

  To Matt Barrett

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The Hill

  Chapter 2: Joey M. Green

  Chapter 3: The Discovery

  Chapter 4: A Battleground

  Chapter 5: Peace Offerings

  Chapter 6: Roar, Lion of the Heart

  Chapter 7: The Plains of Khazar

  Chapter 8: Where We All Fit

  Chapter 9: The Return

  Chapter 10: The Eyes of a Falcon

  Chapter 11: Nine Grim Lions

  Chapter 12: Two Worlds

  Chapter 13: A Speck of Air

  Chapter 14: Believing

  Chapter 15: The First Gift

  Chapter 16: Come as You Are

  Chapter 17: Ruzica

  Chapter 18: Fault Lines

  Chapter 19: How Songs Appear

  Chapter 20: Dark Horse

  Chapter 21: A Plan and a Song

  Chapter 22: Bitter Bread

  Chapter 23: Wild Girl

  Chapter 24: The Guitar

  Chapter 25: The Battle of the Bands

  Chapter 26: A Hundred Years

  ‘From all the little things, she rose.’

  JELENA DINIC

  I’m going up my hill. I call it mine, but it’s no one’s hill. It’s not even a real hill. Which is why I like it. It was once just a tip at the end of a dirt road and then they covered it with dirt, and once grass and other weeds grew, it looked like a hill. It’s solitary, unremarkable, scruffy and unloved by almost everyone. The train screams right past it and no one inside even looks up.

  The hill brings out the conqueror in me, Joey M. Green. Once I get on the hill, well, I stride up it, lofty as a cloud, my head stuffed with dreams. My faithful offsider, Black Betty, is always close by, snout to the ground, tail aloft and swashbuckling.

  Up here, I own the world. I get a waft of triumph. If you had a guitar and you wanted to play it really loud, this would be the place to do it. There’s only the birds to hear you and only the sky to fill with notes. No one to laugh at you or snigger if you’re not that good. I admit it straight up, I’m no guitar hero. But at least up here I can imagine I am. Up here, I go about with a Jimi Hendrix swagger if I feel like it. I’m anything I want to be—famous astronaut, mountain climber, warrior, poet… I practise the conversations I will have when they interview me on radio about my distinguished career.

  Just as I’m settling into my story, I hear a noise that doesn’t belong. You wouldn’t hear such banging in the middle of an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. Heard of him? Sir Ed and Tenzing Norgay were the first guys to get to the top of Mount Everest. Not so many people talk about Tenzing Norgay because he was from Tibet and he didn’t get a knighthood.

  There’s the noise again. Louder. An invader?

  High up in one of the peppercorns is what looks like a spaceship made by an amateur sort of builder. But as I get nearer, I see that it’s a treehouse. And now there is a frenzied rattling sound too.

  Am I frightened?

  Nope. I am Tenzing Norgay the mountaineer. I am Buzz Aldrin the astronaut.

  I poke my head through the low-hanging branches.

  What was once a quiet, hidden-away place, speckled with shafts of sunlight and the sharp smell of peppercorns, is now the grand entrance to someone’s treehouse. The sides are made of corrugated tin, fence palings, an old gate and part of a table-tennis table. The roof is the rusted bonnet of a red Ford Falcon. All pieces of junk that have been lying around on the hill for ages.

  ‘Hey,’ I call out.

  The banging stops instantly. There is no reply. Instead, an old pipe is thrust through a gap in one of the sides. It moves about until the eye clamped on the other end of it finds me. Black Betty’s ears stand up and quiver.

  The intruder is a spy. I knew I wouldn’t like him.

  ‘No need to spy,’ I say. ‘I’m Joey Green.’

  ‘Ajdye Brishi.’

  The voice scratches the air. The words are fast and hard like bullets. I take a step closer. I want to hear the words instead of being hit by them. The pipe swings like an elephant’s trunk and then droops downwards. The spy scuttles. Is he afraid of me?

  ‘Is that your name?’ I say.

  There is a pause.

  Then a fierce shout: ‘No.’

  The spy, hidden in his treehouse-spaceship, is playing a game I don’t understand.

  I take a few more steps closer. Black Betty rushes forward and then stops. A hand—or is it a claw?—reaches out from beneath the car bonnet roof and flings a small object, which I dodge quite expertly for someone who isn’t blessed with nimble feet. I pick it up. It’s a dog tag, a metal disc with engraved fancy letters: Maude 0603 849 355. I know Maude. She’s a border collie who belongs to Molly, who lives on the other side of the hill. As I examine the dog tag, something hits me hard on the ear. The spy has ammunition.

  I crouch down this time, not taking my eyes off the treehouse. Black Betty barks indignantly. I call out, ‘Hey, back off. That hurt.’

  Again the words fire. The same ones.

  ‘Ajdye Brishi.’

  Whatever it was that hit me glints on the ground. I grab it and stuff it in my pocket.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m going,’ I say. I can take a hint. I may have budding valour, but I’m not a war monger. I’m all for peace and poetry.

  I back out of the low-hanging branches and head home.

  Halfway down the hill I put my hand in my pocket and take out the piece of ammunition. It’s just an old triple-A battery: bullet-shaped, speckled with rust. It doesn’t tell me anything, at least it doesn’t tell me what I want to know. Who is on the top of my hill? And why won’t he show himself?

  I shove the battery and the dog tag back in my pocket. But, even though I set off down the hill, don’t think I’m defeated. I’ve got plans to work out. This has only just begun.

  Joey M. Green has a discovery to make and a hill to reclaim.

  You may have gathered, I’m not one of the cool kids. I don’t do jokes and I can’t remember intriguing facts about the universe. You definitely wouldn’t choose me for your team, either, especially if it’s a ball game, because balls, bats, hoops, hockey sticks and I have never hit it off. I bounced a football once, because my little sister Opal was trying to get me to play with her. It didn’t grab me and I didn’t grab it. Instead, it smashed Mum’s terracotta pot of red geraniums and cost me a week’s pocket money to replace it.

  As for other distinguishing characteristics—there is pretty much nothing to say about me. Which is why when something happens to me, even if it’s only someone on my hill, I cling to it as if something about me, something special and not yet known, made it happen. Maybe I have a destiny, after all.

  The other day, I ran the whole problem past Mum.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, plonking myself by her. ‘What am I good at?’

  I saw her face as if it was in slow motion, as if I’d thrown her a ball she couldn’t catch. (Believe me, I know that feeling.) She made all kinds of eye-popping, smile-wre
nching contortions and then her face fell into an apologetic half-smile, as if she had let the whole team down.

  ‘Well, darling, you’re good at lots of things,’ she said, finally.

  I waited for her to list them.

  ‘Like what?’

  She sighed ‘Well, you’re sensitive. You understand how others feel. You’re nice. You’re a nice kid, Joey.’

  I’m glad my mum likes me, but it’s her job to do that, and being nice is nice, but nice is sort of drab—like a background colour. It doesn’t leap out at you. It definitely isn’t the same as having a talent. It’s not like being the best at something. Even a small thing would do—the fastest runner or the best at billycarts. Actually, billycarts, shmilly-carts. That wouldn’t do. Maybe if I really did discover an alien from space in that tree, the kids at school would be impressed. I would walk around with the sort of swagger that famous people get on account of being talented, though not all famous people are talented nowadays. A lot of them are just good looking, or rich or relentless self-promoters. I’m none of the above, but I don’t think I can rely on being the nice guy waiting quietly in the corner with a tissue for when you’re upset about something…

  Maybe I’m Joey M. Green, explorer of the unknown. Discoverer of the long hidden. Seeker of things usually unsought for. It’s a name that could be remembered, not only remembered but revered by kids all over the world, all sorts of kids: sporty ones, spotty ones, geeky ones, quiet ones and quietly unremarkable ones.

  Neil Armstrong probably never felt like he was waiting around with a tissue. Heard of him? He was the first guy ever to walk on the moon. He went there in a rocket with Buzz Aldrin. Everyone knows about Neil Armstrong because he got out of the rocket first and then, on behalf of all mankind, which actually includes kids and ladies, he took the first steps on the moon. This happened way back in the olden days, sixteen years after Sir Ed and Tenzing climbed to the top of Mount Everest. I know because I googled it. I wasn’t exactly meaning to google it, I just typed in the words, ‘first man’ and it comes up with ‘first man on the moon’, then ‘first man in space’, then ‘first man to climb Mount Everest’. Nowhere do I see ‘first man with sensitivities’. Nowhere do I see ‘first nice man’. Because, let’s face it, landing on the moon and climbing unclimbable mountains on behalf of all mankind is deadly important and a million times more glorious and triumphant than being nice or sensitive.

  I wonder what went on inside the rocket between Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong after they landed on the moon. Did they pull straws to see who got to take the first step? Or did it come to fisticuffs? Or did they work it out like gentlemen? Did Buzz Aldrin say, ‘After you, Neil. I’ll be content to be the second man to walk on the moon…’? Was Buzz just a nice guy (with sensitivities) and was it because of that niceness that he will forever be known as the second man to walk on the moon? Or barely remembered at all? Maybe Neil purposefully sat nearest the door because he was determined to be the first man from the outset. Is that the sort of grit you need if you are going to make a mark? Because that’s the kind of grit I don’t have.

  The truth is this—if I’m not exploring my hill and discovering intruders, you’ll find me, guitar on my lap, in a bedroom, in an old house, in a small town in the country, an ordinary guy with an ordinary and undistinguished family: little sister Opal, two parents, Oscar the handsome marmalade cat, two largely ignored guinea pigs and Black Betty the beloved dog.

  I guess you could say that the hill is part of my world as much as the family is. And now, it has its very own mystery on top. Discovered by me, Joey M. Green—a name with the same rhythm as Mohammad Ali. He was an American boxer, one of the greatest heavyweights ever, and he wasn’t just a sports star; he stood up for freedom and justice too. Important stuff. He was no lightweight.

  This is what I am thinking as I walk home from the hill and, I have to admit, it makes me swagger through our gate.

  ‘Hey, watch this, Joey,’ Opal says as she does a somersault on the trampoline. She lands on her feet and springs up in the air like a champion, because she knows it was good and she knows I can’t do somersaults. Opal is one big show off. She’s only seven. She’s got short brown hair like a boy and limbs that bounce her from one thing to the next. She’ll try anything. She’s completely unreasonable, too. Like a little king.

  I’m not swaggering anymore. I’m standing still with my hands shoved in my pockets. I’m standing here, small in our big garden. It’s lucky there is no one else here, actually.

  Our garden is full of large old trees, weed-choked flowerbeds and two shaggy palms that stand at the front of the house looking like two old punks. At the moment our grass is yellow, as it’s late summer and no one waters it. The trampoline, big and un-netted with exposed springs like bare bones, is where kids hang out, because it sits beneath the elm tree. It’s shaded in summer and it’s a place to jump to from the tree. Quite a few kids (Ezra and Pippa Jay, Sam, Louis, Charlie and Jemima) hang around in our garden. They all meet on the tramp, eat snacks there, have water fights there, lie on it and talk or just jump on it. Opal does somersaults and other stunts on it. For some kids the trampoline is as good as a hill. Not for me, though.

  ‘Where were you?’ Opal has forgotten her somersault already. She hates it when I go out without her. She wants to know everything I’m doing and then she wants to do it too. It’s her version of love. She tries to attach herself to me and I try to shake her off. That’s probably why she learned to bounce so well.

  ‘Just walking Black Betty up the hill,’ I say. I’m not going to tell her anything about the treehouse or the strange person inside it. Opal can keep her somersaults and I’ll keep my discovery.

  Opal shrugs. She squats down and throws her arms around Black Betty, but she is looking at me. She thinks I can’t tell. She thinks she is camouflaged within Black Betty.

  She is checking for withholdings. Opal has a sixth sense about things. I do too. It’s something we have in common. We get it from our mum, who is a poetry teacher, which these days makes her out of a job.

  Can Opal tell I have a secret? I lean back on my heels and do my best to hide my thoughts. But Opal has already moved on. She never cares about anything for long. She suddenly releases Black Betty and races inside, yelling over her shoulder, ‘Anyway, Dad is making pizza. It’s movie night.’

  Friday night is pizza-and-movie night. All of us on the couch—me, Opal, Mum, Dad and Black Betty, and Oscar curled in a handsome bundle on the armchair. It’s pretty cosy and especially nice because the next day is Saturday, which means no school. And now I have a plan for tomorrow. I’m going back up my hill to investigate the treehouse and its unfriendly inhabitant.

  After pizza and the movie you’ll find me in my bedroom mucking around on my guitar. Don’t even think about Jimi Hendrix—I only know five chords. But my deepest wish is one day to be in a band. I mean it when I say it’s deep—it’s so deep down inside me, I don’t even let it surface. I’m way too shy to ever stand on a stage, let alone join a band. Think of Frankie Facini, who is just some young kid who sings and plays guitar outside the fruit shop. He’s already a lot better than me. If you put me outside the fruit shop, I would just die.

  At breakfast, Mum says, ‘Who is coming to the market?’ She says this every Saturday morning. No one ever wants to go. Opal will go if she gets an apple danish, though lately she tries for a cupcake with pink icing, which Mum says is full of chemicals that will make you hyperactive. Opal is already hyperactive—she will probably be an Olympic gymnast one day. She eyes me, waiting to see if I have a better option. But I have grim, jealous feelings and a do-not-enter-here look.

  Dad gives Mum a pacifying rub on the shoulders and says he has jobs to do—a plausible excuse given he is an odd-jobs man. Dad can fix anything, even Mum’s shoulders. He’s got what he calls fix-it hands.

  Sometimes it seems like Dad can fix anything, except me. When he throws a ball to me, he can’t seem to understand why I struggle
to catch it. ‘Keep your eye on the ball,’ he says. ‘Just watch it right into your hands.’ He says it as if this should be the easiest thing to do, and then he looks confused when I drop the ball. He’s stumped. I’m stumped. Life sometimes hits a dead end, and then you have to find a new street.

  ‘Joey will you come?’ says Mum, hopefully.

  Opal watches me.

  ‘Homework,’ I lie and shrug for effect.

  ‘On Saturday? You shouldn’t have to do homework on the weekend,’ Mum mutters to herself. She doesn’t really care who comes. She loves the market. It’s all about atmosphere for her. ‘Come on Opal, I’ll get you an apple danish,’ she says.

  Opal considers her options. With me and Dad busy, the market is her best bet. ‘The one with icing?’ Opal bargains anyway.

  Mum sighs. She can’t be bothered having an argument about it. ‘All right. Come on, then.’ She plonks a sun hat on Opal, takes her hand, and off they go.

  That leaves the coast clear for my investigations. I have already considered all possible plans of attack, though attack is really not my game. I hope to find the treehouse unattended and simply scope the joint. But if it is occupied, a peace offering is what I’ve got in mind.

  At first I wondered if a blueberry muffin might do the job, but muffins probably only work on sugar-starved kids like Opal and me. Maybe a better peace offering would be a small metal object, something like the ones he threw at me. Even though they weren’t used in peace, this would really show some admirable goodwill on my part, which, after all, is supposedly my specialty.

  I hunt around the house, but it’s harder than you would think to find something with the right sort of weight, size and availability—that is something that isn’t already being used, like Mum’s guitar slide or Dad’s key ring.

  In the end I go into Dad’s shed. Dad is in there, of course. He’s making a huge winged man. It’s for a sculpture prize. He’s making it mostly out of wood, but the wings are copper wire. He’s working on the backbone—head down, a whining saw, wood dust in the air. He stops when I come in.