by Averil Kenny
To their left, stood the crumbling ruins of an art deco mansion, strangled by the vines thickly festooning the clearing. The great, dark maw of the grand entranceway was overgrown with moss and vegetation, dark with mouldering. The smell of rot was everywhere; putridly thick. The front terrace, which once might have hosted garden parties and moonlit rainforest balls, spilled in broken stone relics out to the cliff edge.
Fable stumbled on a creeping vine. ‘What is this place?’
Her question sank, unanswered. Beer bottles clinked, and cigarettes were lit.
‘Where are we?’
‘Vinelands,’ said a St Ronan’s boy as he passed by, with a long coil of rope.
Fable wandered to the terraced cliff edge, finding a gap in the heavy curtain of vines. Clutching the disintegrating balustrade, she peered down at the brown torrent. Her heart cantered over itself. The wonder that would normally have greeted such power, those vertiginous depths, was absent this day. Fable tried to summon it, but the ache in her gut intensified.
She wandered back into the clearing. Discarded beer tops fell like pennies. Laughter and a sweet, earthy smoke drifted from within the mansion’s gloom.
Fable scrutinised the dispersed boys, carefully blank-faced. She noted a ring of overturned milk crates surrounding a makeshift campfire. Litter lay, half submerged, in mud. Initials and crudely intertwined stick-figure drawings were engraved in the thickest vines.
Now Fable understood. This was a party. She’d heard bragging about such forest gatherings, but had never imagined herself cool enough for an invite, especially from a Hull. Fable had the dawning sense that she might even be the guest of honour today.
Wait until Raff heard how popular she was becoming! Adriana had always seemed the most direct route into Raff’s notice, but maybe becoming a favourite among Eamon and his mates was a more dramatic way of earning Raff’s attention.
Here was her chance to show him she was not a kid anymore.
Her hand was already reaching for the bottle offered her, when the most important thought occurred: Raff was probably on the way to the party himself. And she’d better damn well be acting like a grown-up girl when he arrived!
Her first taste of yeasty-sour alcohol made her cough and shudder uncontrollably. The laughter of the surrounding semicircle affronted her. She was Fable Hamilton, she’d been invited to Vinelands over all other girls, and she could sure as heck drink beer as well as any boy.
The next swig went down quickly – with neck-bracing willpower – and a warm smoulder began to overtake the clamping in her tummy.
*
The earth kept dropping away from her feet – silly planet! Fable supposed she was drunk. It was akin to spinning manically on the spot to get dizzy, like having misplaced a part of herself, and though she cast around, she couldn’t remember what she even wanted. Her words caught at her tongue like wool on sharp edges. Or else, they spilled out like a dribbling decrepitude. She wanted to laugh at herself for every moment of her life gone before. It had all been so serious, hadn’t it? If only she’d glimpsed the world from this tilting, anaesthetised vantage point sooner.
Fable lurched towards the ruins, in search of Eamon’s orange shirt: her homing beacon. As long as she could locate that orange shirt, she would not slip away from reality, and her only objective. She swayed at the dark entrance, peering.
Tiny moving lights glinted within, like eyes; low laughter seeped out.
Fable staggered back from the threshold with a sudden, unnerving sense of peril. She skidded on the roots creeping forth, felt her heart thud out of time. She caught sight of Eamon over on the crumbling terrace, in a huddle of boys, and stumbled towards them with the aggravating slowness of a dream; convinced now something was at her back, in pursuit.
Fable pitched into their midst. Her arm, landing on Eamon’s orange shirt – safety – and pulled him heavily towards her.
‘Hey, baby! Let’s get it going!’ Dane Johnstone said.
Eamon straightened them both. Dully, she registered his disgust before he turned away, beer raised. She felt someone pinch her bum, a finger hooking inside her shorts. She spun to catch the culprit, even as Dane’s hyena laugh gave it away. Another beer was pressed into her grasp as a different hand now slid past her bum.
Fable swigged.
The boys were brewing bravado at the cliff edge. Legend had it you could swing right across to the opposite bank on a long vine. No one could qualify which vine might reach, and none would volunteer to test the theory.
‘But in a flood?’ Fable asked.
‘Nah, mate,’ a St Ronan’s boy said. Not the one who kept rubbing his crotch against her back. ‘It’s a death trap. You pick a vine too short, you’re gonna be left dangling in the middle, then soon as your arms give out, you’ll be swept away.’
‘Raff Hull crossed it once, in the flood of forty-nine,’ Dane offered. ‘Took him another five hours to hike home from the other side, though. Ain’t no return vines.’
Eamon harrumphed. ‘He missed a whole day of slashing! Came home bug-bitten, sunburned, torn up by wait-a-while, then he got welts from Pa’s belt to top it off.’
The crotch pressed against Fable’s back again. She felt it at a benumbed distance, riveted by the image of Raff, wearing only a loincloth, sailing across the creek, and from tree to tree, all the way down the valley. A puckish giggle rose.
‘I want to see you do it, Eamon!’ Fable said, nudging him.
He pushed back. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘Go on! Your brother did it.’ She could not say Raff’s name aloud in this circle, even with yeasty courage flowing through her veins. ‘If you go, I’ll do it, too.’
The group erupted into bawdry laughter. ‘Go on, Hull; make her do it.’
Eamon tossed his bottle over the balustrade. They watched it disappear into the maelstrom.
‘Get stuffed,’ he said, turning on Fable with an expression of such loathing she staggered backwards.
*
Without warning, she was hoisted onto the stone balustrade. Fable screamed, fighting to get down, but there were too many of them pushing back. A rousing cheer erupted.
Fable seized at the vines, feet seeking purchase on the mossy stone. She was hemmed in, yet bared to the flood.
Someone squeezed her bottom.
The boys jostled for better position around her, and in their unloosening Fable stumbled, stone breaking away beneath her feet. She clutched the vines tighter, trying to shake off her spinning head, their jeering.
But Raff crossed it.
With that, brazen mettle supplanted fear. ‘Let go of me!’ she shouted, attaching her body to a single vine. She tested its strength – once, twice – gazing up along the great, falling length.
The boys thought her act was a great lark. Mocking laughter rang out.
‘Bloody girl thinks she can do it.’
‘I’m not chicken, like the rest of you,’ she cried.
Still they held on; groping tentacles tethering her to safety. She was between a flood and a hard place.
Fable grunted explosively now: ‘Get off me!’
The joke grew old, their laughter hollowed. One set of arms released her, followed by another, and another. Laughter fell away completely.
Fable tugged on the vine, letting it take her weight off the balustrade for a moment. It held, and immediately she felt the vine yearning towards the creek. A single, skittish catcall issued from her audience.
She did not yet swing – the vine was still moored to the balustrade by the pressing boys.
‘Let go of me!’
The boys tittered uneasily, then one by one, they released the vine.
‘Oh, stuff this! What a joke. I’m not being a part of it,’ Eamon said, disappearing into the clearing.
But Fable had been released. And without another conscious thought, she flung herself over the roiling abyss.
For one wild moment, she simply fell.
The wind rushed, th
e forest screeched – or was it her? – the flood roared and rose to claim her, then her vine reached its ultimate, rippling length, and she was yanked quickly back again towards the cliff edge.
She crash-landed in a stunned heap on a lower outcrop. Someone above was shouting at her, or for her, or about her. The vine escaped her, drifting out to hang, suspended, above the torrent. The cliff tilted away under her, threatening to yield her into the water.
Fable sagged. She was about to vomit – oh look at that, she already had.
Voices roused her from imminent collapse, and she lurched once more to her feet, nails dug deep in earth as she clambered back to the balustrade. Limbs scraped on stone as she dragged herself over. The face she lifted to her spectators was blanched white, stained with mud and stomach matter; and triumphant.
Fable raised her arms in victory, stumbling.
A rousing cry went up.
‘You’re crazy!’ Dane said.
Two unfamiliar faces, grown men, had emerged from the mansion gloom and stood watching their group now. Eamon was nowhere to be seen.
A tepid beer appeared in her hold.
Fable was alone with the St Ronan’s boys, and the hands were back on her once more.
*
The reeling fugue seemed to drain away all at once and the world, growing dim at day’s end, snapped back into murky focus. Fable found herself seated on a milk crate before a wetted-out campfire pit, with arms heavy on her shoulders from both directions, hands resting on her upper thigh.
She was afraid.
How did she get from the vines to here, and how long ago? When had she consented to all these hands and how did she now remove herself from them?
Fat plops of rain on her face and shoulders brought some semblance of awareness back – she was soaked through, and longed to pull her clinging blouse away from her body. Instinct, however, told her not to draw attention, or invite any comment.
She was holding yet another beer, half finished, judging by the weight of it. How many had it been now? And why did she have the distinct impression the boys surrounding her, their mouths running off with vulgar jokes, were waiting with barely concealed impatience for Fable to finish this particular beer?
It was because she’d agreed to something, wasn’t it? Only now she couldn’t recall what, exactly, only that groping back for the answer made her feel sick, and cold.
Coarse laughter issued from the ruins on a coil of acrid smoke, and Fable remembered.
She was supposed to join the boys inside the mansion, to try the marijuana they’d all been darting in and out to smoke. Their insistence had sounded playful when she’d agreed. But now, she intuited the sobering truth: she must not go into that dark lair.
Fable shivered, raising the bottle to her lips as though to sip. The liquid briefly infiltrated her mouth before washing straight back into the bottle. Her eyes scoured the thick wall of vegetation, inscrutable in the gathering darkness, for Eamon’s orange shirt.
Any moment now, Eamon would have to return. He’d been missing so long, but the boys kept saying, laughingly, Eamon had only gone to find the powder room. Maybe he’d wandered to the toilets at Moria Falls? Even Eamon Hull wouldn’t just abandon a Glade Gang friend.
For now, she would swallow this beer in careful, diminutive sips, suffering the proprietorial arms, until Eamon came back. Then she could go home.
CHAPTER 21
STARS, HIDE YOUR FIRES
B
lunted as her senses were, leaden as her thoughts felt, Fable didn’t at first notice the new arrival at the glade. He emerged from the overgrown road on foot and stood for a long moment, watching.
It was one of the boys who sighted the intruder.
‘Heeeey! It’s Raff!’
‘Raaaaaaff. Maaaaate!’
‘Fellows,’ said Raff. ‘This is some gathering you’re having here.’
He stood at confident albeit unsmiling ease – hands in pockets, brow rutted. Boys rose to greet him with hands outstretched to shake and were rebuffed; Raff’s hands remained pocketed. The boys at her side did not budge, however, their arms weighing unbearably upon her now.
Raff stepped no further into the clearing, and seemed indifferent to her presence. She wanted to rise and say something, anything, but the bravado with which she’d swung across a flooded gorge deserted Fable now in Raff’s presence.
‘Wanna beer, Raff?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Come on, get it into you! Have a cigarette.’
‘Got the truck waiting out on the road, can’t stay.’
‘Ah, come on, Raaaaaaff. You gotta cut loose one time.’
‘Not for me, Dane. I’ll keep going.’
Dread made Fable shrink beneath those heavy limbs. Would Raff turn now, as quickly as he’d materialised, and leave her to them?
Laughter issued from the ruins and Raff’s gaze shot to the mansion. He stepped closer. ‘Who else is here?’
Dane listed boys according to their larrikin nicknames. Raff’s brow did not soften. ‘This isn’t your usual gang, is it, Fable?’
He’d finally addressed her, but his eyes traversed only the boys. Fable shook her head, a lump forming in her throat.
‘Don’t matter,’ came one boy’s cocky reply. ‘We’re all firm friends here now.’
‘Yeah, Fable’s having the time of her life with us,’ Johnny Fletcher said from the milk crate adjacent. ‘She’s been swinging on the vines, right over the creek!’
‘She’s even taken your title,’ bragged one heavy arm’s owner. ‘And she managed it as a rebound.’
‘Brave girl,’ Raff said, his eyes still not moving to Fable.
Dane made a noise like a primate. ‘Nah, not a girl – if you know what I mean?’ Beer sloshed as he mimed breasts. ‘Coconuts! Ay, fellas?’
Laughter spread around the fire.
Raff alone remained serious. ‘And which one of you is driving back tonight?’
‘We’ll draw straws.’
‘Don’t think so, Johnstone,’ Raff said, patience now disappearing. He stepped closer to the fire pit. ‘I’m going to offer Fable a ride home now. And anyone else who thinks it might be time to leave . . . seeing as I’ve got the truck ready and all.’
‘Fable wants to stay with us,’ Dane said, tightening his moist grip on Fable’s leg. ‘It’s her first time going to Vinelands.’
‘Yeah, she’s here for a good time.’
Someone moaned in a long falsetto, and the group exploded.
Raff straightened to his full height, with a look that could fell a tree. ‘It’s getting dark, and Fable’s people are going to be looking for her.’
One of the men had resurfaced from the mansion gloom. ‘Don’t be such a bloody party-pooper, Hull,’ he said, a cigarette hanging limply from his lips.
Fable swung a breathless glance at Raff.
Raff’s serious lips twitched. ‘These kids are a bit young for your company, aren’t they, Furse?’
The man called Furse crushed his fag beneath his foot and slouched back against the stone, languid resistance in every line of his body. ‘Fable’s enjoyin’ herself. Let her be.’
The other man’s voice echoed from the dark innards, ‘Go home, Hull.’
Raff’s face remained emotionless, but, at his quiet persistence, courage flared at last in Fable. She began to struggle free. The arms clung, even in their unravelling.
‘I am ready to go home.’
Raff’s eyes shifted to Fable, with a single, emphatic nod. He motioned with one arm. A cry of disgust encircled Fable as she picked her way free, evading reaching hands. She stumbled over a large root, into Raff’s grip.
‘Well, we’re off, fellows,’ he said, guiding Fable away from the fire circle with a firm hand at her elbow.
The clearing was in an uproar as Fable and Raff disappeared up the track. His grasp was unrelenting. All thoughts flew from Fable’s head at both his nearness and the fear besieging her. Raff walked at a
full pace, penlight scything the blackness before them. Fable had to jog to stay abreast of him.
She’d thought herself sobering up at the campfire, but now they were in motion she felt the world spinning beneath her.
‘Hang on, I need—’ Fable doubled over to vomit.
Raff waited, his eyes focused over her head at the dark pathway behind, the ruins beyond.
Fable wiped her mouth and reached for Raff again. The compassion on his face withdrew behind brusqueness.
‘You’re too young to be drinking, Fable Hamilton.’
She tried to roll her eyes, but the resulting head spin only made her turn and puke violently. When she staggered upright, it was to Raff’s unnerving seriousness.
‘Fable, you’ve got something on the back of your legs.’
She spun to see, achieving only a wheeling lurch. ‘What?!’
‘Nothing, forget it,’ he said, moving on again.
‘Please! What is it?’
At her pleading tone, he stopped. ‘Stay still.’ He retrieved a scrap of cloth from his pocket, stooped and swiped gently up the back of her leg. At his touch, Fable swayed widely. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself, but Raff had moved clear.
He lifted an inky-black shape, glisteningly engorged, for her perusal.
‘Only a leech,’ he said, sounding more relieved than she felt. ‘It’s been having an absolute feast. Check yourself at home for more.’
In his hand lay a white handkerchief embroidered with a blue R – and covered with her blood. Fable stared. A rude thing to have done, bleeding over a man’s pretty handkerchief like that.
‘Out, damned leech,’ she said with a weak smile.
Wryness tugged at his lips. He placed the handkerchief in her hand. ‘All right, Lady Macbeth, I’m taking you home.’
They pressed on. As they neared the road, Fable remembered Eamon.
‘Wait! Your brother’s back there, too!’
‘Eamon isn’t there.’
‘But he is! He brought me here. You can’t leave him—’
‘He’s not. Let’s go!’
Fable stumbled after Raff, confused by his tone. Moments later, the truck came into view. A hunched shadow in the cab moved away from the window at their approach. Raff banged on the door.
