Songlines

by Carolyn Denman

  Smiling at the ecstasy that was reflected in his pale eyes, I watched as his wary demeanour was replaced with sheer joy and he smiled back. At that moment I would have happily juggled the stars themselves to keep him looking like that.

  ‘Shalom, Bane.’ I laughed.

  ‘Shalom, beautiful Lainie,’ he whispered, and then he kissed me again.

  Chapter 28

  Half an hour later, as the kookaburras heralded the coming evening with their cackling challenges to each other, Noah returned with a weary looking Tessa in tow.

  ‘Sorry, guys, for running off like that. I guess it all just got a bit too much, you know?’

  I threw a chocolate bar at his head but Tessa intercepted it deftly and smiled at me.

  ‘I hope you ate enough for lunch because we’ll be staying here until morning,’ I accused. ‘Unless someone feels like hunting for some dinner? Didn’t think so.’

  Standing up, I gave Noah a relieved hug to take the sting out of my words. I was still in a state of euphoria, which didn’t fit at all with our current predicament. Noah, of course, noticed straight away. He watched me as I tore into a packet of biscuits, and then looked questioningly at Bane. Bane ignored him. This was going to confuse the hell out of poor Tessa.

  After we had all refreshed ourselves with a drink from the stream and what little food we had, Noah stood up and made his way determinedly towards the cave. As I knew he would, now that he had decided to step ahead into the unknown, he didn’t hesitate to see it through. Bane took out his phone to light the way through the tunnel, showing the others where to avoid the worst of the pitfalls.

  As we entered the echoing chamber, my anticipation of seeing the sword again grew. Its impact on me had been profoundly moving and I couldn’t wait to share it. We carefully pulled away the rocks, hoping that the disturbance wouldn’t cause a dangerous collapse. It couldn’t possibly be safe to do it too often, but Bane kept going so I took that as a good sign. Finally the rocks became almost too hot to touch and when I knew the moment had come to shift the last one, I honestly tried to behave myself but it was just too hard. I pushed Bane aside and stood before the wall, facing the others.

  ‘Behold!’ I cried, thrusting my hands out dramatically. ‘The Kingdom of Eden is at hand!’

  Tessa rolled her eyes at me and Noah groaned, but Bane’s lips twitched in subtle amusement. Ha. Knew it. He did appreciate my humour. He was just too stubborn to admit it. Noah pulled me aside and removed the last rock, and the sudden light had us all blinking furiously as the hole opened up into the cavern beyond.

  ‘Holy shi—’

  I clamped my hand over Noah’s mouth before he could get the words out. I still felt like we might be punished if we said the wrong thing and I simply wasn’t willing to risk it. If I could call a storm, I had no doubt at all that God could manage lightning inside a cave. Possibly should have been more respectful myself, in hindsight.

  We all stared, mesmerised by the massive spinning sword, its white-silver edges laced with flames. All four of our faces were crammed into the narrow gap between the rocks until I reluctantly pulled out to give Noah and Tessa more room to look.

  Tessa was crying openly. It was a deeply spiritual experience to come face to face with a story from Genesis, so I moved back a bit to give them time to let it sink in.

  ‘I wonder what it does?’ Bane mused after a minute or so.

  I glared at him. ‘What else does it need to do? It’s a sword. It spins. It’s on fire,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yeah, but you could just walk past it, couldn’t you?’

  Something deep inside me shuddered. ‘Would you try? It would be a bit of a risky thing to test out, don’t you think?’ I peered past Noah’s head to study the narrow gaps either side of the sword.

  ‘I suppose so, but I don’t sense any danger,’ he said.

  ‘Just because it isn’t dangerous to me doesn’t mean that it’s safe, Bane. Think about it.’

  ‘Good point.’ His smile was smug. ‘Just don’t try to go without me, and then I won’t have to find out.’

  As he kissed my fingers I looked away. At some point I would have to go to Eden. He knew that. And he knew he couldn’t come. Realising what I felt for him didn’t change that. If anything it made me more determined to find answers. I cared for him too much to keep him trapped here. It was not an argument I could start then, however, so I stayed silent.

  Noah watched the sword for a long time, presumably coming to terms with what it meant for him. Tessa, if anything, looked relieved and I understood exactly how she felt—I’d had much the same reaction. It was good to finally find answers to questions you had been wrestling with for so long. Noah’s biggest problem was that up until this week, he had never needed to wrestle with anything much. His worldview had been complete, or so he’d thought. Now he had to reassess everything.

  The light from the sword gave a soft glow to everything it touched, sending reflective sparkles off all the walls, but most of the cave was still full of deep shadows. It gave the place an unearthly beauty but with a slightly creepy feel. Unlike the tunnel leading in, there weren’t many stalactites or limestone deposits inside the chamber. The heat from the sword had kept the place too dry for the deposits to form, leaving the floor of the cavern relatively smooth. Only the tiny stream seeping up through the rocks along one side kept the place damp. I had been hoping that the chamber would be warm enough to sleep in, but the rock fall blocked out too much of the sword’s heat. The tiny hole we had made was nowhere near enough for even that to warm such a large underground area. Perhaps if we left it open for a few hours we could always see if it was better during the night if we got too cold outside.

  I started to shiver but none of us felt ready to leave just yet. Bane felt around for a few of the smaller rocks on the far side of the fall and handed them around for us to warm our hands on. They were too hot to hold for long but he pointed out that they should retain their heat for quite a while and might be useful to take with us.

  Eventually it was Tessa who managed to articulate what we were all thinking. ‘What happens now? Are we supposed to guard this place our whole lives or just while the miners are here?’

  Once again I mentally berated myself as I realised I hadn’t bothered to find out what her future plans had been either. Nursing, she’d mentioned, but what else? Great friend I was. Three questioning pairs of eyes all turned to me.

  ‘How would I know? You all think I know how this works but I only found out about Eden about three months ago,’ I said a bit petulantly.

  ‘Surely Harry must have told you something,’ Noah complained.

  I thought back to all the times I had avoided him, expressly to prevent him from telling me anything. Bane was right. I had reacted pretty childishly. It made Noah’s little hissy fit seem positively mature by comparison, and we were all paying the price for it.

  ‘Harry wasn’t one for saying much of anything but even if he had, I wasn’t ready to listen, so I never gave him much of an opportunity,’ I admitted. Tessa put her hands on her hips and frowned at me, so I tried to think of something more useful I could offer. ‘As far as I know, Harry didn’t seem to have a lot to do in the way of active duty until recently. I’m not certain he even really knew what we were capable of, or he would have warned me. Noah, your mum told me that she’s never had a lot to do with Eden. She’s never been inside, and doesn’t know very much at all. I’m hoping that might mean that if Kolsom leave we can get on with our lives, more or less.’

  Harry had also managed just fine without a Guardian, but I wasn’t sure about the reason for that. Had they found a way to break the bond or had something happened to her? Certainly Aunt Lily had slammed the door shut the one time I’d tried to find out.

  ‘The way I see it, we have two choices,’ Bane said. ‘Either we wait until Harry comes back or we can try to figure this out
by ourselves. You don’t actually need to get in there, do you?’

  All three of us looked at him as if he was insane. The Garden of Eden. Paradise. Who could resist trying to get in?

  Tessa inspected the wall of rocks very seriously but it seemed pretty obvious to me that even with four of us it would take years to clear away enough to get through. Even excavating the small hole we had made was dangerous. Moving any more would have to be done very methodically if we wanted to avoid ending up like the Wicked Witch of the East.

  ‘Couldn’t you two just sort of … un-rock-slide it?’ she asked, reaching for Noah’s hand. Noah looked disconcerted, like he was trying to decide if he should be scared, excited, or eager to show off his abilities to his girlfriend. Bane seemed disappointed that she wasn’t trying to talk us out of trying to get inside.

  I stared at the rock wall. Somehow Harry had done this. Perhaps it was possible. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to remember what I’d felt during the bushfire. I had spoken out confidently, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d said, or in what language. My mind stayed completely blank. Well, not completely. No one’s mind can stay totally blank, and the harder I tried to clear mine, the more it kept defaulting back to thoughts of Bane, and kissing, and how it was nearly dinner time and I was kind of hungry. After a minute or so I let out my breath in a puff and opened my eyes. Everyone was staring at me expectantly.

  ‘Sorry, guys. I’ve got nothin’. Any other ideas?’

  ‘Could we get some sort of message through to Harry?’ Noah peered through the opening as if expecting to see Harry there so we could have a chat. ‘Somehow let him know that we need him back so he can move the rocks again?’

  ‘Actually, Bane’s right. We really only need to talk to him. I don’t suppose he has a phone?’ Tessa asked hopefully. Noah just laughed while I shook my head. Even assuming Eden could get satellite reception, Harry and phones were like opposite poles of a magnet. Besides, it was easy for her to say we didn’t need him back; I would have given anything to have him home so things could go back to the way they were before. Well, maybe not quite everything.

  Bane looked intrigued by the idea. Looking around for a small pebble, he tapped Noah on the shoulder so he could get close enough to toss it through the hole. It landed a couple of metres on the other side in a disappointing anticlimax.

  ‘You need to get it past the sword,’ Tessa said, stating the obvious in her enthusiasm. Bane tried again. This time the stone clattered past the sword and bounced a little farther, and then disappeared in a shimmering haze.

  ‘What happened?’ Noah asked, bobbing about trying to see past our heads.

  ‘Event Horizon,’ I said, trying to sound knowledgeable by giving it a technical sounding title. ‘So it is like another dimension. There could be a whole universe in there.’

  Noah groaned. As if stories from the Bible weren’t enough, now he had to put up with my sci-fi jargon as well. Personally I felt less disturbed by the idea of a bigger-on-the-inside-other-dimension than I did with a Bible story coming to life. What did that say about me, exactly?

  Backing away from the gap, Bane started fiddling with his phone. ‘Lainie, I know you said Harry doesn’t have a phone, but does he know how to use one?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s not that bad. He hates them but he isn’t stupid. In fact he could probably figure out how to reprogram the thing if he wanted to. Why, what are you thinking?’

  ‘What if I could get my phone in there? Do you think he would call you?’

  ‘Only if he had reception.’ It was funny how even after being faced with all these crazy supernatural circumstances, the idea of getting phone reception in another dimension was just too ridiculous to accept.

  ‘Even if he doesn’t, maybe we could still communicate.’

  ‘How? No message bank either, remember?’

  ‘True, but he could look at texts and notes. And we could set an alarm for a rendezvous time.’

  Okay, so that was pretty brilliant. He offered me the phone and I tried to think of what note to write. What was I supposed to say? Hi, Harry, hope you’re enjoying your holiday. Come back soon so I can still enrol for uni and by the way, are you my real dad? Instead I wrote, ‘Harry, I’m ready to talk now. I have lots of questions. Meet me here. We’ve set the alarm for you.’

  I had tried writing ‘Meet me at the sword’, but of course even trying to type the word ‘sword’ was impossible. Even what I did write made me feel as guilty as if I had run over a kitten. I badly needed this meeting though, so I mentally sacrificed the kitten and hit save.

  Bane set the alarm for six o'clock the following evening, then wrapped his phone tightly in a sock. Tomorrow’s hike home was undoubtedly going to be very uncomfortable for him.

  With pedantic care, he widened the hole a little more and just managed to squeeze one arm and his head through. My heart skipped a few beats and something deep inside me stirred restlessly as he leant towards the threshold between worlds. I fought to suppress my compulsion to drag him away from there, while behind me Noah was pacing the floor like a weaned calf.

  It was almost pitch dark with Bane blocking the sword’s light, so we couldn’t see him throw the phone to the other side, but he pulled himself out quickly, blowing on his scorched fingers. Hopefully he’d tossed it gently enough not to damage it but far enough away from the sword not to be affected by the heat.

  ‘Should we try to call it?’ Noah asked, squinting through the gap to try to see where it landed.

  ‘Are you nuts? Bane can’t even get reception here, let alone in another dimension.’ I dialled the number into the sat-phone anyway, just in case Eden was actually a super-technologically-advanced civilisation, but it wasn’t and I was strangely comforted by the idea that at least some of the laws of the universe still seemed to apply.

  ‘Well, I guess that means we’re coming back tomorrow,’ I said as I slumped down onto a lumpy rock.

  By the time we stumbled out of the cave the sun had almost completely set, leaving a dull golden haze against the top of the hills. Tessa was eager to explore and look for other ways through the ridge but we all talked her out of it. Not all caves began horizontally, and discovering the vertical ones in the dark didn’t seem like a great idea.

  We polished off the rest of the oranges and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible for the night. The warm rocks we had brought from the cave were great but not the cosiest things to cuddle. After some amusing experimentation, I ended up putting two small ones into my socks and cuddled a bigger one against my chest. It made me feel surprisingly safe. I thought about gathering some sort of bedding material but felt too lazy. Chances were I would probably regret that before morning.

  We tried to settle ourselves near the mouth of the tunnel so the overhang would keep the dew off us. Noah and Tessa curled up together on a flattish bit of almost grass. At least they would keep each other warm. I was relieved, however, when Bane chose a sleeping spot well away from mine—I still wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing by him earlier so I was grateful not to have to decide between what I wanted and what I felt was sensible. My rebellious body ached to close the distance between us but I was determined to suppress such a selfish idea. If he could keep his distance then so could I.

  Tessa lasted almost half an hour before the mosquitoes drove her into the cool tunnel. Noah followed to help her find somewhere dry to sleep. Mozzies had never bothered me much, which made me wonder if it was a Cherub thing, but Bane didn’t seem to be too bothered either. Unless he was just hiding it well.

  We lay there for a long time listening to each other breathing. It was obvious he wasn’t asleep. Then I remembered that he could always feel when I was awake so I tried really hard to relax. It wasn’t easy, and when I finally began to drift off all I could hear was the poignant echo of the river. The melodies wove themselves inexorably into m
y mind, far more powerful now that we were so close to the cave.

  I dreamt of my mother. She was crying. Holding me but crying as if her heart was broken. Irritably I pushed away from her and climbed onto Aunt Lily’s lap instead. She tickled me and sang me songs. Songs that made me laugh. But I could still hear my mother crying. Now she was crying because of me. Because she had lost me as well, so I tried to go back and comfort her but Aunt Lily held on to me too tightly. She pulled me away as I tried to reach for my mummy. I wanted to tell her I was still here, and that she hadn’t lost me. I wanted to hug her and make her better, but Aunt Lily carried me out of the room. In my childlike distress I screamed at her to let me go, to take me back, and I struggled frantically to get her to release her hold but she held me like a vice. I wanted Mummy, not her. I needed to make her better; why wouldn’t she listen? I screamed louder. Mummy needed me, she was so sad!

  ‘Lainie! Listen to me!’ Aunt Lily was shaking me. You should never shake a child, I thought angrily as I continued to struggle.

  ‘Lainie, please listen, you’re just dreaming!’ Bane’s voice sounded frantic and his hands burned where they gripped my shoulders.

  I sat up with a jerk and blinked at him in utter confusion.

  The grassy clearing glowed eerily in the moonlight while a trillion stars looked down disapprovingly at the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. Someone was sobbing loudly and I hoped futilely that it wasn’t me. I needed time when I woke up to compose myself before anyone could see me, but Bane was right there. There was nowhere to hide.

  A few hiccupy breaths helped as I tried to dry my face with my hand. My salty tears made my fingers sting, and looking down at them I realised it was because they were covered with grazes. Bane pried the fingers of my other hand away from the rock I was still clutching. I must have been wrestling with it in my sleep if I’d made myself bleed. No wonder I’d woken him up.