Marsh and Me

by Martine Murray

  I feel like hugging him. ‘I’m all for team efforts,’ I say. It’s as if a river inside me starts to flow, because the worry about Marsh and her dad was the only thing stopping me from feeling completely wonderful.

  ‘When are they coming for dinner?’ says Dad, team member. ‘For one thing, maybe we can arrange for Marsh’s dad to give you regular guitar lessons.’

  The next day I go back up the hill with Black Betty. The peppercorn looks lonely and serious. I imagine it is beckoning me. Before I know it, I am there. I am climbing up into the treehouse, onto the cloud platform.

  But it’s empty. The little things are gone. The floor is bare.

  There is only one thing left: the wind telephone. The whole place is like a strange phone booth. Not even the stool is there. The Plains of Khazar have been packed up. It’s as if Marsh has disappeared.

  She must have done this before the show, when she came and got the acorn.

  I pick up the phone. I want to speak to the little things. They were what made the plains seem real. I try speaking to them as if they are there. I put the phone to my ear. ‘Hey, guys, the story hasn’t come to an end,’ I say. ‘It’s going on…’

  I imagine they are all there listening, even Mumija. I go on. ‘You would have been proud of Marsh, if you saw her at the Battle of the Bands. And her dad too. She sang your song. I think she sang it for you.’

  I’m talking to Marsh’s mum. I didn’t plan to, but I guess this is how it is with the wind telephone. I suddenly want to tell Marsh’s mum everything. ‘I think you gave us good luck—’

  ‘Hey, are you there?’ Marsh yells out.

  I quickly hang up. I lean out. She is standing down there with a spade, and Black Betty is at her side. ‘Come down. I need your help.’

  I’m so glad she needs my help. I’m so relieved she isn’t telling me what to do. I practically jump down the ladder. And then I’m pleased to see she is still Marsh. She’s got her khaki overalls on. She’s got that wild look in her eyes and a plan simmering in her head, I can tell. And I’m willing to be part of it.

  ‘What’s cooking?’ I say. ‘And where are the little things? It feels empty in there.’

  She leans on the spade. ‘Well, it’s going to get cold soon. I had to take them home.’

  ‘Home?’ I echo.

  She smiles. ‘But I left the wind telephone there. We can still talk to anyone we want to.’

  I blush. Maybe she heard me talking. If she did, she doesn’t mention it. But the way she looks at me is nice. She’s just smiling hard at me. She is flinging that smile right up at me, and I feel it land inside me and wedge itself there, radiating beams of happiness through my whole body.

  She lifts the shovel. ‘I want to dig a hole,’ she says and she pulls something out of her pocket and shows it to me. It’s the acorn, Mumija.

  It takes me a moment to make sense of it. ‘You’re going to plant Mumija?’

  ‘Yes, we are. Right here on top of our hill. We’re going to tell our secrets to the hole. And when an oak tree grows we’ll cut a branch and use the wood to make a flute. And Mama will sing me her songs through it.’

  I smile. My heart swells. ‘Or we could make a guitar!’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Both. There’s a lot to sing.’

  ‘In a hundred years’ time, though—I think oak trees take a while to grow.’

  ‘Don’t always be so practical,’ she says. ‘Come on. Where will we dig?’

  I guess it doesn’t matter that it could take a hundred years for our tree to grow. What matters is that in that hole we put the secret parts of ourselves. You couldn’t write a song if you didn’t have something deep and raw and personal and only yours unfurling within you, wanting to come out, to say ‘this is me’.

  We dig that hole and I whisper my secrets and Marsh whispers hers, and then we put Mumija in the hole. The sky seems so big and bare and blue and the sun is pouring all over the hill and catching sometimes in the golden leaves on the nectarines, and the world seems to glitter with possibility. And hope.

  We sit by our newly planted acorn and sing the songs that Marsh’s mum sang. We sing them, we howl them, we whisper them, while the sun slowly sinks below the distant horizon.

  I have the feeling that because of our secrets the hill will now feel the rumble of a little change within its chalky old soil. And one day it will be a different hill, even if it takes a hundred years.

  But before that, a lot of things will happen. Digby and I, for instance, will probably go dig up worms. Kenny Lopez might want to join our band. Marsh will go back to school. Opal will one day stop doing tricks on the trampoline. More songs will be written and more songs sung, and meanwhile Black Betty will probably grow too old to come with me up the hill. And one day a kid will come and climb our oak tree and maybe that kid might want to build a treehouse in it…

  But for now the sky is dark and luminous and the sun is just a smear of golden pink on the horizon. There are a few large, black, shaggy silhouettes of gum trees and then the valley beneath, crammed with houses and dotted with their little glimmering lights.

  The 6.15 train comes charging down the track and Marsh leaps up, flings her arms wide like wings and runs full pelt down the path.

  ‘Let’s race it,’ she yells.

  I run after her. We both run as fast as we can, hurling ourselves down the dirt path. Before us, the darkening sky and the black trees and the valley of glowing houses are waiting.

  And all of it feels like ours.

  Many thanks to Jelena Dinic, a poet I met on an escalator, who allowed me to plunder and borrow from her memories of childhood in Serbia.

  Also, thank you to Jane Pearson, my editor, and to Text Publishing.

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Martine Murray 2017

  The moral right of Martine Murray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company 2017

  Book design by Imogen Stubbs

  Cover and internal illustrations by Kat Chadwick

  Typeset by J&M Typesetters

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication

  Creator: Murray, Martine, 1965– author.

  Title: Marsh and me / by Martine Murray.

  ISBN: 9781925498011 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925410372 (ebook)

  Target Audience: For children.

  Subjects: Friendship—Juvenile fiction.

  Children’s stories.