I came over to the table. ‘What’s up, Aunt Lil?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. I’m just having a bit of trouble interpreting this schematic.’
‘Is this about Kolsom again?’
She nodded. ‘I found the copy of our land title, but I’m struggling to work out where exactly on the map our western boundary is.’
Sliding over the floorboards in my woolly bed socks, I peered over her shoulder. ‘The title doesn’t show where the river goes, is that why it’s tricky?’
‘Yeah, and because there aren’t any proper roads to use as landmarks.’
I pointed to a small rectangle on the northern part of the page. ‘Is this the Ashbrees’s place?’
She looked at it, and then at the map, and then back to the page. ‘Can’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s too small.’
‘Unless you have the scale wrong.’
We both squinted at the tiny writing that showed the measurements. Then I looked at the scale of the map. ‘See this thin squiggly line running down here on the right?’ I pointed to the faint trace and then showed her the corresponding place on the map. It was the river, but it was not where we expected it to be. Which meant the title covered a lot more land than we had assumed.
Aunt Lily turned to me. ‘This farm is four times the size I thought it was!’
I did some quick sums, and pencilled in the borders on the map. What I had previously thought was our farm only took up one small corner, adjoining Noah’s place. My aunt’s broad grin became positively evil and I quietly hoped the lawyer at Kolsom Mining didn’t suffer from a heart condition.
Staring up at the dark green leaves of a manna gum, I watched a kookaburra bash a snail violently against the branch it was sitting on. I was supposed to be cleaning out the pit pump behind the tractor shed, but I didn’t really want to.
The morning was cool but sunny, and beside me the river swirled noisily, fat with last night’s downpour. This used to be the place Noah and I hung out the most, when I could convince my aunt that we would stay out of the water. Even then she only allowed it because it was within shouting distance from the house and the water was slow and shallow for quite a long way here.
Noah and I used to play a game where he would try to launch various things into the river upstream at his place while I would wait at this spot for hours—or so it felt—hoping to catch his boat with its message. Somehow his homemade contraptions never made it this far. Either he was not as good at boat building as his namesake or there was a phenomenon something like the Bermuda Triangle going on somewhere in between. No guesswork as to which option we’d decided to believe. In fact, when I was nine I’d mistakenly referred to it as the Barramundi Triangle and Noah had laughed so hard the name had stuck.
These days, however, instead of building boats we seemed to spend all our time on boring things like memorising the process of turning bauxite to aluminium, and figuring out how mitochondrial DNA could help trace the origins of the human race. Noah had called me at eleven o’clock the night before because he couldn’t read his own handwriting and needed me to read out half the term’s biology notes. I couldn’t wait for exams to be over.
I stretched, yawned, prepared to get up and go back to my chores, and then promptly flopped back down on the rock. It was quite warm in the sun when I focused on nothing but the feel of it on my eyelids. All around me I could hear evidence of the life sustained by the swollen river and deep earth. Magpies warbled in raucous contrast to the delicate sounds of elusive bellbirds. An almost-warm breeze made a stray strand of my hair tickle my lips.
The music lingered just out of reach when I woke with a strangled cry. There were tears streaming down my face and I realised I was sobbing. A heartbreaking sense of loss consumed me as the memory of the dream melted away. Not again. Every night this week I had been having these musical dreams. Tantalising, fading before I had a chance to remember. No wonder I was so tired. Drying my eyes and trying to settle my emotions, I peeled myself off the rock. Not as comfortable as it had seemed a moment ago. A moment? I checked my watch. Crap, Aunt Lily would be back from town any minute and none of my chores had been done.
I was halfway up the hill when I heard the argument. The words were indistinguishable but it sounded like Noah’s mum. She only ever complained to Harry when Aunt Lily had given us permission for something she didn’t approve of, so feeling only pea-sized guilt, I crept up to Harry’s cottage. The old fibro unit was nestled behind a small hill farther along the driveway than our house. Mrs Ashbree’s white Pajero was parked in front of it.
‘I don’t care how close Kolsom are getting, you need to go, Harry,’ came her voice from inside. She was crying. Maybe not loudly, maybe not out loud at all, or with physical tears, but I knew. Somehow, I always knew.
I crept past the window and then plastered myself against the wall to hear more.
‘It can wait,’ Harry replied.
‘Do you think I can just ignore it? Let me try again.’ She was speaking through her teeth, biting each word.
‘Enough, Sarah. It isn’t working. Just let it go.’ Harry sounded even more tired than I was. ‘Besides, Lainie’s just outside and I need to talk to her.’
Damn. No matter how quietly I moved I never seemed to be able to sneak up on anyone. I walked up to the front door trying to think of a reason to be there. Noah’s mum opened it just before I could knock. My brain scrambled for an excuse she might believe, but she beat me to it.
‘Oh. Hi, Lainie. I just stopped by to ask Harry’s advice.’ She looked annoyed. ‘I was hoping he could tell me the best brand of pocket-knife to buy for David for Christmas.’
What?
Behind her, Harry’s face went blank, as if he’d been hurt by her comment. What was that all about?
Without waiting for me to respond, she pushed past me and strode back to her car. Not even a goodbye.
Harry and I stood silently until she drove away, and then he beckoned me inside and put the kettle on.
‘I, er, was wondering whether Aunt Lily told you what she found out about our land title.’ It was the best excuse I could come up with. At least I hoped it sounded better than Mrs Ashbree’s weak one.
‘No, but I can guess. I know exactly how big this farm is, and where its borders lie.’
‘It’s over three hundred hectares, Harry.’
‘Three hundred and twenty-eight. And the back of it runs north as far as the Chentyn road. It’s a bit of an odd shape.’
I fished a couple of tea bags out of the ceramic jar by the stove. ‘Do you think showing someone the title will be enough to stop the miners?’
Harry peered at me. ‘I hope so. Can I ask you a question?’
I shrugged.
‘How did you know to come out to the bush the other day?’
‘We saw Sergeant Loxwood fly past,’ I said, far too quickly.
He made a ‘hmph’ sort of a noise, and stirred sugar into his tea. Then he handed me my mug and led the way out to his back porch. We sat down on the step and watched the river sparkle through the trees at the bottom of the hill. I was itching to ask him what Mrs Ashbree had really been doing there, but it was none of my business. I also guessed that there was something he wanted to know from me, but there was no way I was going to tell him I’d been having visions and weird daydreams.
‘I have to go away for a while,’ Harry said eventually. ‘Possibly for a few weeks, but I’ll wait until after your exams so you won’t have to cover for me while you’re trying to study.’
He might as well have announced that he was moving to Antarctica. The longest I had ever known him to go away for were his four-day fishing trips with his friend Stumpy Johnson.
‘I need to make sure you know some things before I go.’
‘Like how to bail Aunt Lily out of prison?’
He smiled. ‘Actually, I just nee
d to know if you remember any of the stories she used to tell you when you were little. The ones about the Garden of Eden.’
My blank stare felt a bit rude, but I couldn’t seem to find a better reaction. I remembered the stories, of course. We used to always make up tales of what it would be like to live in Paradise, and they were probably what had ignited my love of fantasy novels—I’d had to be careful not to make references to our made-up stories in my English essay by accident. But I had grown out of my aunt’s bedtime stories at about the same time as I’d discovered that Santa was really Harry climbing across the roof on Christmas Eve. What did they have to do with Harry leaving?
‘I’m serious, Lainie, do you remember?’
‘I remember her telling me that my mother was living with the elves in Paradise. She made it sound so nice that I used to ask if I could go too. I argued that the elves would miss me if I didn’t visit. I even had names for some of them. Then when I was six, we went to Dayna and Tom’s wedding, and after the service Noah and I played in the cemetery behind the church. I found my parents’ graves and cried for hours. What’s your point, Harry?’
His deep brown eyes were full of the sort of sympathy that you couldn’t brush aside. It opened up a hurt that I thought had been long since dealt with. But his next words hurt even more.
‘Your mother’s grave is a lie. I’m thinking of going to Eden to find her and see if she can help me with something I have to do.’
Chapter 3
‘Take it back.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Take it back, Harry!’
‘No. Your mother is alive.’
‘Then prove it.’
‘Come with me.’
‘Where?’
‘The Garden of—’
‘SHUT UP!’
Chapter 4
I didn’t remember getting up or leaving, but I found myself stumbling along the riverbank, fuming. I was furious with Harry for coming out with such a ridiculous and hurtful joke. What he’d said had made no sense to me whatsoever. My aunt had used her stories of Paradise to comfort a grieving child. That I could understand. But to say that my mother’s grave was a lie? Why would he do that? It wasn’t funny, and I had never known him to be insensitive in any way.
By the time I’d calmed down enough to return to the house, Aunt Lily was waiting for me to jump in the ute so we could check the lambs together. She asked me what was wrong but I refused to tell her. Harry didn’t appear, thankfully, and for the next few hours we kept busy with the sorts of jobs that were exhausting and yet we could seldom say what we had spent all that time doing. Just stuff. Unblocking drains, cleaning out pit pumps, checking limping sheep, retrieving panicking lambs from the wrong sides of fences, retrieving panicking ewes from the wrong side of a clump of gorse, stacking hay bales, unstacking a pile of bricks like a high stakes game of Jenga because Aunt Lily was certain she’d seen a snake but it turned out to be just a blue tongue lizard, restacking the same pile of bricks … the endless tasks required for living on a farm. It helped. A lot. Because even though Aunt Lily was the only one with me, I kept feeling as if there were too many people around and all I wanted was to do and not think. By evening I crawled into bed utterly spent, but when I fell asleep, my dreams were choked by sad music and hazy memories of my mother.
By Monday morning, I had almost managed to fool myself into believing that Harry really had been joking. A part of me knew that I couldn’t ignore him forever, but I didn’t know what to do about it other than wait for him to apologise.
At recess I had just put my lunchbox away in my locker when Noah came hurrying down the concrete steps of the breezeway. He was so agitated it took him two tries to undo his combination lock.
‘Worried about today’s practice exam?’ I guessed.
‘What did you make me pick Chemistry for anyway?’ he grouched, wrenching a textbook out of his bag.
‘Oh, I just wanted your company. It’s entertaining to watch Tessa Bright blush whenever you get partnered with her. We’ve finished all the pracs for the year now though, so you can ditch it if you like. Unless, of course, you actually do want to get into Melbourne Uni next year.’
He pressed his lips together, and then changed the topic. ‘Lainie? What did you decide to do about the incident with Bane? Will you report him?’ He shoved the book into his locker and slammed the door, leaving half a tree’s worth of paper sticking out at odd angles.
‘I guess so. I should, right? I mean, he had a knife. I think he’s a bit unstable. I really should.’ And yet I felt strangely reluctant. I couldn’t stand the guy but that didn’t mean I wanted to get him expelled right before exams. But what if he really hurt someone next time?
‘I’m not sure he’s that unstable. I know it must seem like that to you but he’s not usually like that, not around most other people anyway. He’s really quite a nice guy. Don’t dob him in just because you hate him.’
‘Nice guy? Are you mental?’ He didn’t look like he was kidding. He would always see the best in people, but there was no way I could live with myself if Bane did hurt someone. ‘Noah, he had a weapon. At school. I need to let someone know.’
My friend didn’t argue further as he tried to poke some of his papers back behind the door, but it was no use. The poor things were just too determined to escape the stench of old bananas. He bent to retrieve them just as a flock of Year 8 girls came giggling around the corner. When they realised that the bum in their way was Noah’s, the giggles became rapidly hushed whispers and one of the girls turned pink. We ignored them like we always did. Girls had been acting mental around Noah since before he’d even sprouted underarm hair. But then one of the girls approached us. She had her red hair straightened to within an inch of its life and wore mascara so thick it looked like she’d taped spiders onto her eyelids.
‘Hey, Noah. Nicole said to tell you she’s catching the bus home tonight, so don’t wait for her.’
Something didn’t sit right. Something about the way her words …crinkled around the edges. She wasn’t lying, but she was hiding something. I had a knack for knowing when someone was being deceitful. Noah called it my gift. My distrust was conveyed to him with the barest gesture—a long-practised language that felt entirely natural.
For a moment he looked so weary that I thought he might just let it go, but then he took a step forward so that he towered over her and stared her down. The poor girl looked ready to faint. Then he smiled, and she blushed.
‘When, exactly, did she tell you this?’ he asked. One of the other girls took a small step backward.
‘U … um … before maths.’
‘And did she stay for maths?’
No answer.
Noah kept staring. Waiting.
‘She has permission to do some research in town,’ the girl said, her voice rising at the end like it was a statement that needed his approval. Even Noah could tell she was lying.
Damn. Not again. Nicole was Noah’s precocious thirteen-year-old sister. The youngest of four kids and the only girl, Nicole had a tendency towards dramatic escapades. Since Noah’s two elder brothers had moved to the city to study, it was up to him to rein her in. It wasn’t an unusual thing to have to raid the town library for research, because our school was too small to have a decent one of its own, but in Year 8 that involved permission slips and parental consent that she clearly didn’t have. This would be the third time in two weeks that she’d wagged class. She was heading for a suspension.
As soon as Noah stepped back, the girl fled, not even waiting for her friends to catch up. I could hear his teeth grinding.
‘She just doesn’t care about anyone but herself, does she?’ His foot twitched like it was about to kick something. ‘Mum’s going to totally spit it. The two of them fought non-stop all weekend, you know. Dad cut the grass twice, just to get out of the house. If she gets suspended, I’m c
oming to live with you.’
‘I’ll find her,’ I offered. ‘I’ve already done a practice exam and did okay. Mrs Armstrong won’t care if I tell her I’m studying in town instead.’
For a second he looked like he wanted to be gentlemanly and refuse, but my suggestion made too much sense.
‘Don’t worry, it won’t take me long. She’s probably at the lake,’ I said, already heading to the staff room to sign myself out. ‘Old Mrs Jackson at the newsagent dobbed her in last time when she went to the shops, so she’s unlikely to risk that again.’
The lake was the centrepiece of the town. During drought years it hosted weekly fruit and veg markets and footy matches, and when there was water in it, well, we kind of just hung around there letting the mozzies feed on us and pretended we were at the beach.
When I got to the park that overlooked the water I found Nicole perched sacrilegiously in Nalong’s famous Carved Tree. An Indigenous resident had sliced chevron patterns into the bark hundreds of years earlier, most likely as a warning that there was sacred ground nearby. I shook my head to clear it of the memory of my daydream. That tree had been carved too.
‘You know I can set a curse on you for touching that,’ I told her.
‘That’s bullshit,’ she muttered.
‘Yeah, it is. We don’t curse people, but Harry might be a bit annoyed at you.’ Harry Doolan was an Elder of the local Aboriginal community—or what remained of it. Most of them lived closer to Horsham now, but Nalong was on a part of the river that they still belonged to.
‘Do you really have Indigenous blood, Lainie?’
‘So Harry tells me.’ I was reluctant to say much more because the truth was that I didn’t even know what my mother’s favourite colour had been, let alone anything about her family history. I didn’t know the people, the language, or the stories. In fact, I had always been so certain that I would offend someone if I went around bragging that I had Aboriginal heritage that I had never been brave enough to try to find out any more. And after Harry’s insane announcement the other day, I didn’t particularly want to think about either him or my mother.
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