September Moon

by Candice Proctor

  O'Reilly swung his attention back to the pen of milling, bleating sheep. He picked out a dozen or so wethers and consigned them to the mob he planned to drive down to Port Augusta. They wouldn't bring much, selling just for their hides and tallow and glue, but it was better than sending them downwind to have their throats slit or their heads bashed in with a club.

  Which was the fate of the old, the weak, and the very young.

  He shoved away from the fence. "Take over for a while, will you, Jacko?"

  The black man nodded and swung up to perch on the top railing. Jacko had worked on Penyaka for only three years, but the Aborigine knew animals. He could probably judge a sheep's chances of survival better than O'Reilly himself.

  Moving away from the confusion, noise, and stench of the woolshed, O'Reilly struck out uphill, heading downwind, away from the creek. At the top of the rise he paused and turned to let his gaze wander over his land.

  A hot, dry wind scoured the slopes, kicking up eddies of gray-red dust that half obscured the horizon. There was no green, only shades of gray, red, and gold. Stripped of vegetation, the earth lay cracked, the scattered rocks brittle and exposed to the sun like the desiccated carcass of a dead animal. Red rocks. Gray dust. Faded, dead grass.

  Farther down the hill he could see a big old native black oak, half-dead now, its shade sheltering a family of wallabies. Ears alert, nose twitching, a mother with her half-grown young beside her raised her head and stared at him. O'Reilly stilled, but she bolted anyway, taking off with great, flying leaps. He could hear the thump, thump of her big feet hitting the hard dirt as the rest of the wallabies turned to follow her.

  When he'd first come here ten years ago, the grasslands had teemed with wallabies and kangaroos and emus, and the flocks of gaily colored cockatoos and native swans had been so big, they'd darkened the sky. But the sheep ate the grass and shrubs that had once sustained the native animals, and now it wasn't just the sheep that were dying. The land was dying. O'Reilly had never been the kind of man to waste time on regret, but the knowledge of the part he'd played in killing it lay like something festering and painful in his gut.

  He swung to the right, toward the dry rocky gulch he'd selected as his killing field. Before he heard it, he smelled it: the metallic tang of blood wafting sickeningly in the hot air. Then came the sounds: the panicked bleating of the sheep, the dull thwunk of wood striking skulls, the heavy thud of bodies falling on top of more bodies.

  He crested the ridge. He could see them now. The doomed sheep bunched together, mindless in their terror, their little heads jerking frantically, their tongues hanging out, their tiny, trampling hooves kicking up a pall of dust that hung over the scene like a shroud.

  Waddies flailing, knives flashing, the black men waded among them. He could have shot the mob, but that would have cost tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition and the time of men he couldn't spare. So he had hired some of Sally's people to do the work, and he was paying them by letting them keep as many of the sheep as they wanted.

  He knew most white men would think he was crazy, letting Aborigines get used to the taste of mutton. But he couldn't see burning sheep carcasses when children were starving.

  And the Aborigines were starving. They lived too close to the land. They were a part of it, like the kangaroos and wallabies and cockatoos. And like the kangaroos and wallabies and cockatoos, they were dying.

  Pinba glanced up, a bloody waddy clutched in one fist, and smiled when he caught sight of O'Reilly. Killing sheep meant nothing to Aborigines. In their way of thinking, the sheep were not a part of this land, and therefore stood outside the circle of life as they knew it.

  But these sheep were O'Reilly's life. He'd spent the last eleven years building up his herds. Now he was destroying them.

  Gritting his teeth, he loosed his knife from its sheath on his belt and waded into the surging sea of pearly-pink sheep, black human skin, and bright-red blood.

  Amanda sat on the veranda reading one of Aesop's Fables to Missy, who snuggled contentedly in the crook of her arm. "Can we read the next one?" Missy pleaded when Amanda finished.

  "Probably not," said Amanda. "The others will be coming back soon."

  Missy gazed up at her with big blue eyes so like O'Reilly's. "Why haven't you been down to watch the shearing yet? I'd think you'd want to see it."

  Amanda found she couldn't continue to meet that intense blue stare. "Perhaps one day," she lied. Because the truth was that she had no intention of visiting the shearing shed, where O'Reilly and the others worked so hard during the day. It would be too forward, too suggestive, too much of a betrayal of just how she really felt.

  She'd spent the last two weeks telling herself, over and over, that she wanted nothing to do with him. That she could overcome this weakness she'd discovered within herself. That she could conquer the dangerous, wicked feelings and impulses that the Australian aroused in her. And yet...

  And yet all the while, her entire being had been straining for stolen glimpses of his handsome, suntanned face and strong body. For the distant sound of his soft, lazy drawl.

  More and more she caught herself remembering that night before the fire. Dwelling on the hard strength of his shoulders beneath her touch. The soft, heady taste of his lips on hers. The way her body had trembled and soared and thrummed with vibrant, heart-pounding life when she'd stood in his arms. She had even found herself lying in bed at night, imagining what would have happened if he hadn't stopped when he did.

  What if he had unfastened her dress and opened her chemise to put his strong, tanned hands on her breasts; would she have let him? Would she have let him, if he'd slid his hands beneath her skirts and up the insides of her thighs? Would she have let him touch her, there, where she ached to be touched?

  Wicked thoughts, abandoned thoughts. Seductive thoughts.

  Useless thoughts. For he had taken her at her word and remained true to his promise; he had made no further attempt to kiss her or even touch her. She should have been relieved. She wanted to be relieved. But the truth, she had come to realize, was that she secretly yearned for him to touch her again, kiss her again.

  "There's Sally!" exclaimed Missy, wiggling off the bench. Amanda caught the book just before it hit the pavement. With an indulgent smile she watched Missy dart across the garden and down the hill to where the Aboriginal woman walked, strung out in a line between Liam and Hannah. Sally spent her days down at the woolshed working with the rest of them. She did the skirting, Missy said—which meant she picked the dirt-encrusted edges off the fleeces before passing them on to be classed and pressed into bales.

  Liam reached the house first and paused to pour himself a drink from the water bag hanging in the shade of the veranda. Beside him, the dog Barrister circled three times, then flopped down and panted his exhaustion.

  "Good evening, Liam," Amanda said, consciously making her voice as pleasant as she could. She was always wary of the boy, although she was careful not to show it. Liam had never forgiven her for talking his father into putting a stop to his carousing with the bullockies, and she knew it would be only a matter of time until the boy found some way to repay her.

  He nodded to her, then flung back his head and guzzled the water. His face was shiny with sweat and streaked gray with dirt, his brown hair plastered dark against his scalp. Shearing must be messy work.

  She started to open the book again, but stopped at the sound of a strange, distant noise. She lifted her head, listening. It was like nothing she had ever heard, an unearthly howl that echoed through the hills to assault Amanda's very soul. It was a wailing that was not a wail. A humming that was not a hum, but vibrated and rose and fell and at times almost twanged. The effect was eerie and disembodied and otherworldly, like the ghostly memory of some primeval echo that seemed to reverberate around the surrounding hills, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

  "What is that?" asked Amanda, flattening her hand against her chest, where her heart beat hard and fast.


  "What's what?" asked Liam, pouring himself more water.

  "That—that peculiar noise."

  He raised his cup and stared at her. "What noise?"

  "That sound. Like a throbbing, or a whirling hum. Surely you hear it?"

  He shook his head slowly, his face serious. "Why? Do you?"

  Amanda opened her mouth to say something sharp, then thought better of it and pressed her lips tightly together.

  Liam blandly sipped his water. "The Aboriginal women have a legend about a murdered girl who moans at dusk, although I thought only women about to die were supposed to hear it. It's secret women's business, so I don't know much about it. But Hannah could tell you."

  "I think I've already heard this story," said Amanda dryly. "Where is Hannah?"

  Liam nodded toward the garden. "There."

  Amanda twisted around. Sally and Missy had disappeared into the house, but Hannah was just letting herself in the side gate. She looked as tired and dirty as her brother.

  "Hey, Hannah," Liam called. "Miss Davenport says she hears a strange sound."

  Brother's and sister's gazes caught and held. There was a barely perceptible check in the girl's stride before she continued up the flagged walk, her face a mask of intense concern. Was it a trick of the fading light, Amanda wondered, or had she seen a fleeting flash of amusement before the girl carefully schooled her features?

  "Oh, dear. I hope it's not—" She checked herself and glanced pointedly away, as if reluctant to continue.

  "Don't tell me, Hannah," said Amanda. "It's your resident ghost, come to haunt me. Right? What's she supposed to do? Foretell my own imminent demise?"

  Brother and sister looked at each other again, but neither said a word. They were obviously masters at this game.

  A movement from the shadows of the veranda drew Amanda's attention to Liam's dog. Suddenly alert, Barrister lifted his head, his ears cocked forward, his tail suspended in the air behind him.

  "Look at Barrister," said Amanda. "He hears it, too. Don't you, Barrister?"

  As if in response, the dog pushed to his feet. He stood still a moment, staring at the distant, moaning hills. Then he threw back his head and howled, a wild, lonely sound that reminded Amanda more of a dingo than a dog.

  "Why is he doing that?" she asked, staring at the dog.

  Hannah pursed her lips in a worried frown. "The Aborigines say that when a dog howls at nothing, it's because he sees a spirit."

  Amanda looked from the children back to the dog. Without a word, she picked up Missy's book and went inside.

  The memory of that strange, unearthly rhythm haunted Amanda long after the actual droning intonations finally stopped.

  She felt restless, as if she didn't fit in her own skin. She retired to her room shortly after supper but she didn't remove her clothes. She tried to read a book but couldn't concentrate. Finally, smothering an exclamation of annoyance, she pulled open the doors to the veranda and stepped outside.

  The day had been unbelievably hot. Frighteningly so, when one considered that it was only late September. Even now when the sun had long since slipped behind the distant hills, a hot wind still blew across the land, sucking the moisture from the earth and every living thing on it.

  Pulled by the balmy night, Amanda ventured out into the garden itself. Above her a deep purple sky arced ruinously clear and so full of brilliant, glittering stars that it made her heart ache just to look at it. Near the western boundary wall she noticed a young English elm throwing silent shadows that stretched like long alien fingers across the pale silver of the dead grass of the hillside. Amanda could hear its leaves moving restlessly in the hot, exotic wind. It was as if the tree were talking to her, telling her it didn't belong here.

  She didn't belong here.

  She stared at the black mass of the high Flinders Ranges thrusting up jagged and mysterious against the star-spangled sky. The wind came from beyond those mountains, from out of the empty, unknown center of the continent. The pungent, dry smells of the desert rode with it, overlaying the nearer, sweeter fragrances of the English garden.

  She saw him then, standing at the edge of the garden, his hands braced against the top of the low stone wall in front of him, his gaze fixed on the stark, surrounding hills. There was something rigid, brittle even, about the way he held himself. It was as if he radiated tension that shimmied in the warm air around him.

  Missy had told Amanda about the slaughter of sheep that had begun. Shed thought it sounded terrible. But looking at O'Reilly now it occurred to her that she probably had little concept of how truly horrific it really was.

  She hesitated to draw closer to him. But the pain she sensed in him pulled her, and the memory of that pagan cadence pulsated in her head, haunting her. The sound had stopped before O'Reilly had returned to the homestead for supper, but he must have heard it. He must know what it was.

  She approached him quietly. She heard him expel his breath in a sharp, almost angry blast; saw the muscles work in his throat as he swallowed. She paused again, conscious of a sense of crossing an invisible boundary into something private, something intimate.

  Once she had thought of him as a man who never took anything seriously. A man who ridiculed and scorned everything, especially the things she considered most important. Now, watching his strong jaw tighten as he gazed out over the dying land, she wondered how she could ever have so misread him.

  "This wind is bad," he said without turning his head, and she realized he must have heard her walk up behind him.

  "I'm not used to a hot wind coming out of the north."

  "No. My mother never got used to it either." He swung to face her, his right hip resting on the top of the wall. It was one of his typically lazy stances, but something was different tonight.

  "Your mother was English?" she said in surprise.

  "Oh yes. She came over as a girl, when her father was put on half pay after Waterloo." He tilted back his head and looked down his nose at her, imitating Amanda's own plummy accent—or was it his mother's? "Colonel James Fitzroy Beaumont the third," he intoned. "From Kent. He fought with Wellington, you know." He lowered his chin, his hard gaze slamming into her, his precise English accent gone. "Just like General Whittaker."

  "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

  "Yes you did."

  He was in a reckless, dangerous mood. She'd never seen him like this before. But then, she'd never seen him after he'd spent a week slaughtering his own sheep by the thousands.

  "You were born in Tasmania, weren't you?" she said cautiously.

  "Yes."

  "I'd heard Tasmania is more like England."

  "It is. But my father left Tassie shortly after I was born, to take up a new run in Victoria. It was bloody hard there at first, especially for a woman raised the way my mother was. And by the time he prospered, she was gone."

  "She died young? I'm sorry."

  He gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "Hell, no. She could still be alive now for all I know. When I was twelve, she decided she was tired of Australia and the Irishman she'd married and the four children she'd had by him. So she found herself a pom and went back to England with him."

  Dear God, thought Amanda, staring up into his handsome, shadowed face. He'd said it carelessly enough, but she caught the echo of bitterness in his voice, caught a flickering glimpse of the hurting, abandoned little boy he'd once been. She thought of his English wife, who had also hated Australia, and who had also left him. And for the first time in her life, Amanda felt ashamed of her own Englishness.

  "No wonder you don't like the English," she said softly.

  "Nah." His lips twisted into a wry grin that tugged oddly at her heart. "I'm Irish, remember? Hating the English is part of our national identity."

  "But you're half-English." Not only was he half-English, she realized, but on his mother's side he was obviously far better born than he'd deliberately led her to believe. Once that would have mattered to her. It still should have m
attered. But for some odd reason, she found that it did not.

  He shook his head. "Don't remind me." She watched him twist around to look out over the valley again. "What did you want, anyway?" he asked after a moment.

  She hesitated, the harsh wind buffeting her ears and whipping at the hem of her skirt.

  "You obviously came over here to talk to me about something. So what was it?"

  She went to stand beside him at the wall. Beside him, but not too close. "I heard a strange sound this afternoon. I was wondering if you could tell me what it was."

  "A sound?" He glanced down at her. "What kind of a sound?"

  "That's just it. I don't even know how to describe it. It was ... uncanny. Like the howling of the wind, or the whimpering of an animal, only deeper, louder. And it went on and on and on. Don't tell me you didn't hear it?"

  "No. But if you'd ever been in the stinking din of a shearing shed, you wouldn't wonder at that. When was this?"

  "Near dusk, as Liam and Hannah were walking back up to the homestead. I'm certain they heard it. But for some reason they pretended not to. I thought perhaps they're planning to play some new trick on me."

  She watched the wind flutter the shaggy ends of his hair against his neck, and she had an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch him there. To feel the pulse that beat low in his throat.

  "You want me to talk to them?" he asked.

  "Oh, no. Please don't," she said hastily. "I just thought you might be able to tell me what it was, that's all. Thank you. Goodnight."

  She turned to go back to the house, but his hand shot out and caught her by the wrist, stopping her. Heat sizzled up her arm and crackled in the air around them. She sucked in a startled breath, her gaze flying to meet his.