Fraser dried himself and dressed in one of the interchangeable suits that hung in his vast walk-in wardrobe. More of a suite, really, with chairs and mirrors and two dressing tables. One half of the space still contained Charlotte’s things. Her clothes, her shoes, her eighteen-year-old scarves – as if any minute she might walk back in the door. There was more than enough room to keep the clothes, and it brought him some comfort to see them there. Fraser looked in the mirror again, pleased with his hair. That was one advantage to the surgery – he’d never go bald. The thought helped him overlook the fact that the suit was too big for his shrinking frame.
Fraser began his drive to Hobart, thoughts skipping ahead to his lunch appointment with Premier Kate Logan. What would his old friend say, he wondered, when he told her?
Chapter 14
Sarah woke with a stiff neck, freezing feet and no sense of place. Rough-hewn roof beams above her and warped tin walls. Lisa’s bunk, that’s where she was. Last night’s memories returned in steady fragments, while rain beat a tattoo on the rusty roof. Outside, she heard a commotion, busy sounds, people. Sarah checked her watch. Almost six o’clock, barely light. She pulled her sleeves over her hands.
Drake poked his head in. ‘Rise and shine, princess, or you’ll miss the school bus.’
Sarah climbed from Lisa’s bed. The ground was icy. A fierce wind whipped through the door, whipped through her clothes and made her shiver. She was glad for Ray’s oversized coat, and wrapped it around her as she struggled out the door and took in Camp Clementine by dawn. Grey sky, picnic chairs blown about, billowing canvas shelters. Boxes of posters and leaflets, banners and badges, weighed down with bricks. Derelict cars lay half-buried in the earth. Dozens of people filled the outdoor bush kitchen and huddled by the camp fire, eating bowls of oatmeal and toasting chunks of bread on green twigs. She couldn’t see Matt anywhere.
Drake pressed a mug of black tea and a slab of toast into her hands. ‘Get this into you,’ he said with a grin. Sarah didn’t much care for tea. Wasn’t there coffee? She took a tentative bite of the toast. Its oily black spread tasted as foul as it looked. She spat the mouthful out.
‘What is that?’
‘Vegemite,’ said Drake. ‘The health food of a nation.’ He relieved her of the toast and crammed it into his own mouth. ‘We’d better hurry.’
Sarah took his arm. ‘I need to go first. You know …’
Drake pointed her in the direction of the less-than-private composting loo with a queue. ‘It’s that or pick a tree.’ Sarah didn’t do primitive well. A tree had sufficed last night under cover of darkness. But in daylight, in this crowded camp?
‘I’ll wait until we’re down the road,’ she said, miserably, and trailed after Drake. The three children from last night stood by the jeep, dressed in neat uniforms and clutching schoolbags.
‘That’s Matt’s jeep,’ said Sarah, looking round ‘Where is he?’
‘Young Matt overdid it last night,’ said Drake. ‘You saw him. He’s in no condition to drive. He’s not even conscious, actually. In the meantime, wasn’t it you who were so concerned about these children’s education? You don’t want them to miss the morning bell.’ The kids giggled. ‘Sarah, meet Ben, Tyson and Matilda.’
They all climbed into the jeep and drove back past the battered Camp Clementine sign, back past the loggers’ equipment. ‘We want to see Dumbledore’s Wand,’ said Ben.
‘That’s what the kids call the tree I climbed yesterday,’ said Drake. ‘It has lots of names. Different things to different people. To me it’s Pallawarra, the tipping tree. Matt says we shouldn’t name it at all.’
‘Why?’
‘He says it’s like the blind men trying to describe the elephant from just a leg or a tail. They all have a point of view, and they’re all wrong. He says that it’s a vanity, that the simple fact of the tree is enough. But even he calls it Pallawarra.’ Drake spun the wheel and veered off the track. ‘Some people call it the fairy tree, or the cupid tree. To Burns, it’s Ereg T950. To the hippies, it’s the Tree of Life. The witches call it Tapio, the fierce spirit that protects the forest.’
‘Witches?’ asked Sarah.
‘White witches,’ said Drake. ‘You met one last night – Lisa. They’re perfectly friendly, most of the time.’
‘We call it Dumbledore’s Wand because it’s magic,’ said Ben.
Sarah turned in her seat and smiled at the little boy. He was so cute. All blonde hair and big blue eyes, and such an imagination. If she had a child she’d want one just like him.
Drake detoured and pulled over by the tree. Sarah could see an ancient face in its bark, with a beard of lichen and eyebrows of moss. She’d missed it yesterday, but it was plain enough now. Sarah got out and peered up Pallawarra’s trunk, leaning back until her spine hurt. The tree was so tall that, even in broad daylight, she could get no real perspective on it. A wave of vertigo turned her stomach and sent her head swimming. She closed her eyes tight to keep balance. Tangled hair whipped around her face. The wind felt different, warmer and wilder.
‘Are Lucky and Lisa up there?’ asked five-year-old Ben.
Drake nodded. ‘Probably tucked up, sound asleep. Getting some rest before the fun begins.’
‘Will they get blown down?’ asked seven-year-old Tyson.
Good question. How could anybody stay put up there in this howling gale? Sarah imagined Lisa’s slight form plummeting to earth.
‘No way,’ said Drake. ‘They’re roped in, snug as bugs in rugs. Nothing will get them out of that tree until they decide to come down.’
‘Dumbledore’s Wand wouldn’t let them fall anyway,’ Ben explained. ‘Coz they’re its friends. But it would be dangerous for enemies to climb up, wouldn’t it, Tilda?’
‘Oh yes,’ said ten-year-old Matilda. ‘They’d die.’
Sarah inhaled sharply. Such a strange thing to say.
It began to rain. As Drake drove back past the heavy logging machinery, all three children leaned from the window and shouted BOO at the top of their lungs. Sarah jumped. Drake took no notice.
‘What was that for?’ she asked.
‘We’re voking a deadly curse,’ answered little Ben.
‘He means invoking. It’s just a bit of fun,’ said Drake.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Ben in an indignant voice. ‘It’s real.’
‘It is real,’ said Matilda solemnly. ‘What about Scott?’
‘Stop it, Tilda,’ said Drake. ‘Scott died in an accident.’
Nobody spoke. They passed the place where Matt had shot the possum. Sarah imagined it rotting beneath the leaves. She was tired of the crying wind and the children. Tired of the granite grey sky and the brooding Lord of the Rings forest. Drake swung left through a curtain of rain, over the rickety bridge, across the swollen Charon River.
‘Why is the water so black?’ asked Sarah.
‘It’s stained with tannin, leached from button-grass moorlands higher up,’ said Drake.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Matilda. ‘It’s black because it belongs to Charon the Ferryman. He rows dead souls to Hades.’
Sarah decided she didn’t like Matilda anymore.
‘You’re clever, Tilda,’ said Drake. ‘Where did you learn about Charon?’
‘We’re doing myths and legends at school. I know the five rivers of the underworld as well. Acheron, the river of pain. Cocytus, the river of wailing. Styx, the river of hate. I can’t pronounce the river of fire. It starts with P though.’
‘Phlegethon,’ said Drake.
‘Yes,’ said Matilda. ‘And I think I’ve forgotten the last river.’
Drake laughed. ‘You must have been drinking from it then. It’s called Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.’
Matilda bounced up and down. ‘That’s it, that’s it. Lethe. But our teacher calls it the river of oblivion.’
Sarah checked her watch. This was getting creepy. Like that first dinner at Matt’s house, when Penny’s talent for making pretty
jewellery turned into a bizarre obsession with taxidermy.
‘Do you have to pay the ferryman?’ asked Ben. ‘What if you don’t have any money? I don’t have any money.’
‘Then you’ll be a ghost for a hundred years,’ said Matilda, firmly.
Ben started to cry. Tyson found some change in his pocket. ‘Here, Ben. But don’t spend it at the canteen. Save it for Charon.’
Sarah looked out the window at the giant trees. They were outlandish. These children were alien. So was Drake’s easy acceptance of their superstitions. For the first time she felt homesick. Los Angeles made so much more sense.
‘Here we go,’ said Drake, as a procession of police cars, trail bikes and four-wheel-drive vehicles appeared through the sweeping windscreen wipers.
Drake pulled off the track to make a hurried call. Another phone lay on the dash. Matt’s phone? Sarah picked it up and examined it. Turned off. She switched it on. The approaching convoy halted at their parked jeep. Drake explained that they were driving the children to school in Hills End. This satisfied the officers, and the convoy moved on. Drake jumped straight back on the phone, giving an estimate of police numbers.
‘Come on, Drake,’ said Matilda. ‘We’ll be late for school.’
Matt’s phone crowed and Sarah picked it up. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Penny? It’s Sarah.’
Chapter 15
Woorawa
Jake released the big black eagle into the aviary beside Aquila, under the watchful eye of a small boy. The boy didn’t come when his father called him, or when his family moved on to the next exhibit. The eagle hopped and flapped to the highest perch and stared at the sky. What a beauty. Where was Matt? It wasn’t like him to miss such an important arrival.
‘What’s his name?’ the boy asked Jake.
‘Woorawa. It’s an Aboriginal word for eagle.’
‘Woorawa,’ the boy repeated. ‘Why is he here?’
‘Hit by a car. Happens to a lot of them. You’d think people would be more careful.’
The boy nodded, never taking his eyes off the bird. ‘How old is he?’
‘Sorry, kid. I’ve got to go.’ Jake picked up his bucket of dead possums. ‘Why not ask him yourself?’
Jake smiled as he walked away. ‘Talk to me, Woorawa,’ the boy was saying. ‘Tell me your story.’
* * *
The eagle swivelled his head and fixed his gaze on the boy. After a moment, a man came and took the boy’s hand, hurrying him away. Woorawa looked back towards the sun, rising high in the morning sky.
Last night, he’d dreamed he was back in the Tarkine with his mother and father and Moon, his sister. He’d dreamed about the ancient eyrie of his birth …
His parents. Old eagles. Experienced. Thirty seasons of chicks had hatched in their broad nest high in the branches of a centuries-old myrtle beech. Each year, they cleaned and refurbished it with new stems and lined it with sprays of soft sassafras.
It was a good season, the season of his hatching. Woorawa’s egg came first: an especially beautiful egg, splotched purple-brown and lavender. Moon’s plain white egg arrived three days later. His parents shared incubation duties by day. At night, mother eagle brooded alone, her mate on watch, roosting in the canopy. Forty-two sunsets had passed since the laying of this clutch. Sometimes she stood and stared at the eggs, listening to her unhatched chicks.
For six weeks Woorawa lay curled around his yolk, never hungry. Brightness came and went. Then one day he felt an irrepressible urge to scratch at his shell. With his beak crammed awkwardly under his wing, he scraped and struggled and scraped, not knowing why. One more scrape. He punched through the membrane, drawing breath from a trapped bubble of air, filling his lungs. He peeped. He peeped again. The world grew bright as mother eagle leapt from her nest. She stared at the egg, touched it with her beak, uttering soft low encouraging calls. Dirra-lich … dirra-lich … dirra-lich.
Woorawa peeped and peeped. I’m here. I’m coming. Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap.
Moon heard him in her ivory egg. Hour after hour, he chipped away. It was gruelling work. Only strong chicks hatch. All through that day he tapped, rested, and tapped again. The sun sank below the ridge. Mother eagle tucked her eggs under her warm brood pouch and they all slept.
Morning came. Tap, tap, tap … tap, tap, tap. Woorawa raised a little bump on the shell. Mother and father stood by in rapt attention. Sister heard him too, waiting for breath inside her ivory egg. He peeped and scraped and pecked and peeped, holding his entire family spellbound. He tapped in a circle, broke off a cap and pushed it away. Mother and father leaned close to see their son. The end of the egg came off. Woorawa wriggled free and fell in an exhausted heap. There was no hint of the strength to come. Father launched off, determined to provide his mate with a meal before dark.
Mother eagle swept her baby beneath her breast, drying his snowy down, warming his wet body. And Woorawa slept. He slept all that long afternoon. He slept through the evening. He slept all night. And when morning came he sat up, bleary-eyed, wobbly head held high, surveying a view as ancient as he was new.
* * *
Mother admired her hatchling. She knew when she saw the beautiful egg that he would be special. Special like the pair’s firstborn, hatched when their nest was still small and shallow. Hatched when she was still young.
Her mate fought for her that first summer, all those years ago. The new breeding season had seen her cast out by her parents, last year’s chick no longer welcome. For two years she’d roamed alone on thermals of the central plateau. Sometimes she strayed into the territory of the few adult eagles who shared the skies. Invariably, these pairs, including her own parents, evicted her with aggressive territorial displays.
And it wasn’t just her own kind who despised her. She was a pariah of the avian world wherever she went, relentlessly hounded by smaller birds. Magpies and mudlarks. Crows and currawongs. Sometimes hawks and falcons mobbed her with shrill whistles, dashing in with claws and beaks. She mostly endured the indignity. Sometimes she rolled and plucked a too-bold raven from the air, making a meal of it. Other birds harassed her as she ate, even little robins and wagtails. Was she welcome nowhere in the world? Perhaps she should leave her hostile homeland.
Weeks of lonely, aimless flight brought her to the Tarkine, a vast wilderness in Tasmania’s north-west. But prey was scarce and hard to catch for an eagle raised in the farmlands of the Central Highlands. No dead sheep. No paddocks full of cats and rabbits here on Tikkawoppa Plateau. Instead, myrtle beech rainforest and button grass moorland extended to the horizon. She’d never learned to hunt large prey, but plump little pademelons abounded in the cold grassy clearings below. How hard could it be?
Cloudy skies allowed her to drop lower and lower without fear of the prey detecting her shadow. Selecting her target now. One … two … three. With folded wings she plummeted earthwards. The pademelons heard the whine of wind in wings and leapt as one for the forest. Her intended victim reached shelter. She switched focus to a larger male, crashing onto his shoulders mid-bound before the trees swallowed him. Seizing her prey tight with beak and claws, beating broad wings in reverse, she hauled him back into the open.
But this was no rabbit. The struggling wallaby weighed ten times more than the inexperienced young eagle. And it fought, desperate for life, ignoring the pain of slashing talons, resisting the force of battering wings, dragging itself closer and closer to the haven of the forest where she dared not follow.
It threw itself on the ground, dislodging its attacker with powerful kicks of clawed hind legs, inflicting damage of its own. Discouraged, she retreated, while a flurry of buff breast feathers whirled about the battlefield. The wallaby regained its feet and gathered itself for one final bound to safety. She hung back, unsure if she possessed the strength to mount another assault.
Then, out of the blue, the cavalry arrived. A second bird screamed earthwards, slamming the pademelon with all the force and know-how of a born and bred Tarki
ne forest eagle. Now both birds went in for the kill. Beaks like knives. Rapier talons crushing with bone-piercing force. The stranger’s claws gripped the wallaby’s neck, throttling it. Soon their victim ceased struggling. The eagles fed in a spirit of companionship, gorging until their crops could hold no more. The male lifted off, roosting on a low bough, ruffling feathers and preening. He watched her. She joined him. Side by side they rested, digesting their meal.
Hours later, the stranger took off with a stick held in his beak, broad wing strokes struggling to restore him to the breezy skies. She followed without hesitation. Higher and higher they spiralled, riding updrafts where wind met mountain. Her companion was in a playful mood, dropping his stick over and over, only to sweep around and catch it again. She joined in the game, diving on the stick, snatching it in her claws.
The male bird abruptly plunged, wings folded, then looped into a vertical climb. Stalling, he hung suspended in space, striking a heroic pose in silhouette. She watched this virtuoso display with admiring eyes, sometimes mirroring his movements. Again and again, he demonstrated his acrobatic skill. Teasing, she swooped him. He fled in mock fear. First she pursued him, then he her, flying close above and behind, perfectly synchronised. She spun and hung upside down in the cold air, presenting her talons. Instantly he seized them in his own, and the pair fell from the sky in a spectacular, cartwheeling trust exercise.
They pulled from their giddy descent just metres from the treetops. Intoxicated with love and lust, the birds alighted on a broad branch in the upper canopy, making low, affectionate yelps. He preened his intended, nibbling her nape, caressing her bill, serenading in high tremulous yodels. She crouched, beginning a loud, demanding choo … choo … choo, reminiscent of the voice of a whining nestling. Her suitor mimicked the call. Rising a few metres in the air, he landed lightly on her broad back, balancing with clenched claws to avoid causing harm, wings beating in slow motion, beak agape. Bowing low, he curled his wedge-shaped tail aside … and she had her wild mate.
The Memory Tree Page 9
