September Moon

by Candice Proctor

A peculiar lump filled Amanda's throat as she stared down at a portrait of a young woman painted on ivory and framed in a delicate filigree of gold. It was an expensive piece, worked by a skilled artisan. She glanced from the miniature to Hannah. "Your mother?"

  "Yes."

  Swallowing hard, Amanda leaned forward to study the woman who was O'Reilly's wife.

  She was beautiful. Her lips full and deliciously curved, her nose straight and thin, her face as heart-shaped as Hannah's. Her eyes were a wide, clear brown, her skin a pale cream, her hair as dark as the night.

  "Do you see?"

  Amanda looked up into Hannah's beautiful face, framed by waves of ebony. Her chin was stronger than her mother's, and she had that intense, intelligent stare that marked all three of Patrick O'Reilly's children. But in every other way, Hannah was the image of Katherine.

  Amanda dropped her gaze back to the miniature. "Your mother is a lovely woman."

  Hannah picked up the miniature and stared down at it with a curious combination of longing and something darker, something fierce, that came perilously close to being hate. "She's even prettier in real life."

  "Do you remember her?" "Of course. I was five when she went away."

  "And Missy was only a baby."

  "So?"

  "Did it ever occur to you," said Amanda, feeling her way carefully, "that it might be the reason your father treats Missy differently? Because he's raised her by himself, without her mother, from the time she was a baby? It can't have been easy for her, never having known her mother. Perhaps he's felt he needed to go out of his way to make up for it."

  She could tell by the arrested expression on Hannah's face that the explanation had never occurred to the girl before. Her brown eyes practically glowed with a desperate kind of hope. Then it was as if something slammed shut, as she refused to believe it. "It hasn't been easy forme, either."

  "No. I don't suppose it has. But you're very good at hiding your pain, Hannah. Perhaps your father never realized how badly you were hurting inside."

  Hannah regarded her steadily, until Amanda had the uncomfortable sensation the girl saw more than Amanda had meant to reveal about herself. "You grew up without a mother, too, didn't you?"

  Amanda sighed. "Yes. And you're right; it's never easy, no matter what your age. It's one of those things I suppose no one ever gets over."

  For a moment they sat together in silence, but it was a companionable silence, born from the knowledge that they shared a unique bond, forged from their common pain.

  Reluctantly, Amanda thrust back her chair. "I must hurry if I'm to have time to change for supper."

  As she rose, she glanced over and noticed Sally standing in the shadows, staring at her. Lately, Amanda often found the Aboriginal woman silently watching her when she was with the children. "Did you want something, Sally?"

  Sally stared off over the desiccated hills. "Big kangaroos and possums all tumble down," she said, a faraway, almost frightening expression in her eyes. "No good for blackfellow. Soon blackfellow tumble down, too."

  Disconcerted, Amanda glanced back at Hannah. "I don't understand."

  " 'Tumble down' means to die," explained Hannah. "Are you going to let Jacko do it?" she asked Sally. "Are you?"

  "Do what?" asked Amanda.

  "Papa wants Jacko to do a rain dance. Try to break the drought. But Jacko said he couldn't unless Sally agreed. He's her nephew, you see, and she's considered a pretty powerful witch woman herself, among her people."

  Sally nodded. "Jacko makum rain for O'Reilly."

  Amanda smiled. "Surely Mr. O'Reilly does not honestly believe—" She broke off with something like a gasp as a hideous apparition appeared at the edge of the veranda.

  It stood upright, the size and shape of a man. But its body glistened red and white in the sunlight, and it had feathers. A scream formed in Amanda's mind, but she managed to trap it before it erupted and embarrassed her. Because the apparition, she realized almost immediately, was actually Jacko.

  He had stripped off his stockman's clothes and painted his naked black body with white clay and red ochre mixed with oil, and then covered himself with emu down. Beside him walked O'Reilly, carrying some kind of a bark vessel and a string bag.

  "Where do you want to set up?" O'Reilly asked, hesitating in the center of the garden's small chamomile lawn.

  "This looks good, I think," said Jacko, turning in a small circle. His English was considerably better than his aunt's. So good, in fact, that it sounded strange coming from his now naked, primitively painted figure.

  O'Reilly set down the bag and the hollow bark basin that Amanda realized was full of water. Then he sauntered over to join them on the veranda, his step hesitating for a moment when he saw Amanda. "Why, g'day, Miss Davenport. You here to watch, too?"

  Her gaze met his and for a brief instant the memory of everything that had passed between them the other night, with all the emotions it had aroused, shimmied in the hot air. She felt her cheeks grow warm, felt her breath hitch and catch in her throat. She stared at him, at his sun-streaked hair and straight dark brows and narrowed blue eyes. Then she saw his mouth curve faintly, and she jerked her attention back to the naked stockman.

  "Surely you don't credit these native legends," she said.

  He came to stand beside her, his body big and sun warmed and intimidatingly close.

  "Why not?" He shoved his hat back on his head. "I've seen enough things in my life I bloody well can't explain by any of the natural laws or religious beliefs I was brought up to accept. Besides, when I think about it, it simply doesn't make sense to me that God would present all the keys to holiness and spirituality to a few million Europeans, and damn the rest of the world to a soulless wasteland."

  "That's blasphemy," she said automatically.

  "Maybe." He leaned in closer. "But I'd deck myself out in chicken feathers and dance down the streets of Brinkman buck naked myself if I thought it would save this land."

  He looked at her in that intensely challenging way he had, and she suddenly felt somehow less than him. Less than what she wanted herself to be. She swallowed hard, her throat feeling almost too raw to let her speak. "Would you explain this ceremony to me?" she asked quietly.

  His glittering blue eyes held her gaze for one pregnant moment; then he nodded to where Jacko had knelt on the ground to remove a collection of small smooth stones from the bag and carefully align them in a pile. "The rain stones are from Cadnowie," O'Reilly said as Jacko placed a clear, faceted crystal at the apex of the pyramid of red and gray stones. "Because it never runs dry, the water hole is considered a powerful link to the rain spirit."

  As she watched, Jacko straightened and lifted the water- filled bark vessel. "The water in the bark is from Cadnowie, too," O'Reilly continued as Jacko began to move, his body jerking in quick, rhythmic jolts. "And see that green twig he carries? It's from a needlebrush. Their roots are a good source of water if you're ever lost in the bush."

  Suddenly, Jacko flung back his head and let loose a strange, animal-like howl.

  "The dingo is Jacko's totem," O'Reilly explained as the stockman danced around the stones in slow, measured steps, his voice now rising and falling in a singsong chant. "It's part of what connects him to this land."

  Jacko dipped the twig in the bark and flung a sprinkling of water over the stones, the drops glistening like diamonds in the late afternoon sun.

  A cooling breeze skimmed across the garden. Amanda glanced up at the sky and saw that the scattered white wisps she'd noticed earlier had coalesced into one big cloud that seemed to hover over the garden.

  Jacko twirled round and round, his body angled forward, his knees bent, his feet flat, his head jerking back and forth as if to some silently pounding music. The wind gusted again, shaking the high boughs of the trees and lifting the hair from Amanda's forehead with a breath of moist air.

  And then it began to rain.

  "It worked," squealed Hannah.

  Big, scattered
drops hit the ground, filling the air with the scent of dust and wet earth. Amanda could hear the rain pounding on the roof, see the leaves of the trees and shrubs in the garden shivering beneath the impact.

  But on the surrounding hills, the sun shone bright and hot and dry.

  Jacko stopped dancing and slowly straightened. "It's raining," he said in disgust, glancing around. "But only on the bloody garden."

  Sally shook her head as if to say, I knew it wasn't going to work. "Drought spirit no take rain stones oudda fire till all sheep tumble down," she said, and went into the house.

  O'Reilly stepped out into the open. "Still skeptical, Miss Davenport?" he asked, letting the rain beat down on his hat and shoulders.

  "It would have rained anyway," Amanda insisted, although she wasn't sure she believed it. "I noticed the clouds earlier."

  O'Reilly held his hands out at his sides, his palms uplifted, his face turned toward the sky. Already the rain was easing off, the cloud dispersing. But to her surprise, his dimples flashed, and she heard the rich rumble of his laughter. "Well," he said, "at least Chow won't need to water the garden."

  She looked at him. At the water splashing on the planes of his upturned face and trickling in rivulets down his lean cheeks. At the curve of his lips. At the bare column of his tanned throat and the strong, capable breadth of his wide shoulders. She felt the breath easing in and out of her lungs. Felt the moist air cool against her face. Felt time grind down and stop as she looked at him. Just looked at him.

  She'd already known that over the course of the last two months, what had begun as simple physical fascination had turned into a deep, frightening desire. She'd known that what had begun as antipathy had gradually shifted to a grudging kind of liking that was deepening into affection.

  But what she hadn't realized was that at some point, without her being aware of it—without her even wanting it— liking had turned to love.

  She felt her love for this man swell within her until it burned in her breast like an ache. An ache that was never going to go away.

  And was never going to be fulfilled.

  Ten days later, Amanda was sitting on the veranda, darning one of her stockings and listening to Missy recite the times tables when the strange wailing sounded again.

  "Four twos are eight," Missy chanted, hopping from one flag in the garden path to the next. At the edge of the garden behind her, the laundry that Chow had done earlier hung dry and still in the fading, late afternoon light. "Five twos are ten. Six twos are twelve and seven twos are—" She broke off, her small body stilling as the low-pitched, unearthly moan echoed once more through the shadowy hills.

  Amanda set aside her mending and rose to her feet, her attention, like the child's, focused on the. brooding, alien landscape now throbbing with an eerie, inhuman voice around them. "It's started again," she whispered.

  "I asked Sally why someone keeps playing the didgeridoo," said Missy. "But she wouldn't tell me."

  Amanda's startled gaze flew to the child. She had never discussed the moaning drone with Missy. She wasn't sure if it was because she hadn't wanted the little girl to see how troubled she was by it, or if she'd simply been unwilling to discover that Missy was a part of whatever trick her siblings were playing. "What's a dig... a dig... "

  "Didgeridoo," repeated Missy, grinning as she always did whenever she discovered she knew something her governess did not. "It's a long, hollow, sticklike thing Aboriginal men play."

  "You mean it's a musical instrument?"

  "I guess so."

  It was music of some sort, she realized now. Only so strange and atonal that she hadn't recognized it.

  Missy stared at her solemnly. "Liam said he told you what it was, but that you were so scared at the thought that there were Aborigines in the bush, watching us, that you didn't want anyone to talk about it."

  "He said that, did he? Clever."

  "You mean he made that up?"

  When Amanda didn't answer, the little girl's hands curled into two angry fists she held clutched against her sides. "That's mean. He and Hannah did the same thing to Miss Sutton. They convinced her she was the only one who could hear it because she was about to die, and she got so nervous she couldn't eat or sleep. She jumped at the least noise and started talkin' to people who weren't there. And then one night she set her candle so close to her bedroom curtains that they caught on fire. Papa finally had to send her away."

  "In other words, she went mad," said Amanda quietly. "Tell me, which one of your governesses died here?"

  Missy shook her head. "None of 'em."

  So the dead governess was just another part of Hannah's tale. The knowledge should have been a comfort to Amanda, only it was not. The idea of some poor silly creature driven out of her mind by the wind and the wild, wide-open spaces was infinitely more frightening than the thought of some spinster dying of a heart attack in her bed.

  Amanda gazed out over the dusk-darkened hills, still vibrating with that strange, haunting music, and a shiver of fear ran up her spine. The ghostly moaning had been disturbing enough when shed thought it a prank. Now she knew that somewhere out there sat an unseen, primitive man who was deliberately filling the air with this primeval beat. She listened to it echo on and on, until she imagined she could feel it seep into her, pound through her, become a part of her blood.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the dull wailing stopped. In the startling quiet, she could hear the butcher birds and wagtails chirping their evening songs from their nests down by the creek. She glanced nervously at the dark, empty house behind her. "Why is everyone so late tonight?" she said, half to herself. Not even Chow and Ching had returned yet, and Sally had been gone all afternoon. The atmosphere of the homestead suddenly seemed alien, as if the familiar had been invaded by the unfamiliar.

  "Miss Davenport," said Missy, tugging at her skirt. "What's that?"

  Amanda's gaze followed the child's pointing finger. A tall, black figure hovered at the far edge of the garden, outlined clearly against a splash of white-blooming roses. It was the figure of a man, unnaturally silent and menacing, his arms poised above his head, as if he held some strange weapon.

  Amanda felt a ball of fear wedge in her throat, choking her. "Missy," she croaked. "Does your papa have a rifle?"

  "Mm-hmm." The little girl nodded her head, her gaze fastened on the strange apparition at the bottom of the garden. "He keeps it on a rack over the door in his bedroom."

  Amanda took the child's cold hand. "Come with me. Quickly."

  Feeling paralyzed by fear, Amanda somehow managed to walk through the dining room and parlor and pull a chair over to the door so she could climb up and take Patrick O'Reilly's gun down from its rack.

  "Now, Missy, this is important," she said, carefully checking the gun's mechanism. It was primed and ready to fire. "I want you to go into my room and wait for me there."

  "But I want to stay with you."

  "No, darling." She rested one hand on the little girl's quivering shoulder. "Please, just do as I say."

  Leaving Missy safely inside, Amanda forced herself to walk back through the quiet, shadow-filled house and out onto the veranda.

  The dark figure at the edge of the garden waited for her.

  Amanda raised the gun to her shoulder and carefully sighted it in. "Who are you?" she called, her voice quavering but strong.

  An unexpectedly cool gust of wind fanned her cheeks and sent a scattering of dry leaves rattling across the flagstones. The man seemed to waver, then stood firm. He did not answer.

  "Identify yourself," she demanded, using the traditional formula. "In the Queen's name, I call upon you to answer, or I shall fire."

  The dusty, eucalypt-scented wind gusted again, moaning through the eaves. The man seemed to lurch forward. Amanda's sweaty fingers tightened around the butt of the gun. She wanted to scare him away, not shoot him. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she swung the rifle barrel until it pointed a good ten feet to the left of the man
's upraised arms, and carefully squeezed the trigger.

  The gun roared and spit fire. The recoil slammed the butt painfully into Amanda's shoulder, knocking her backward and bringing startled tears to her eyes. The man jerked and flopped over backward.

  "Oh, my goodness," she gasped, lowering the gun.

  "You killed him," said Missy in awe, sliding out from behind the dining room door.

  "But I couldn't have. I didn't even aim at him. I am certain I.. ."Amanda chewed her lip. "Oh, heavens."

  She did not know what to do. The man could be hurt and in urgent need of help. She couldn't just leave him down there alone to bleed to death while she went for help. Then again, he might not be hurt at all, but lying in wait for her, ready to grab her if she came near. Oh, God. What should she do?

  The gun still gripped tightly in her hands, Amanda stepped cautiously off the veranda with Missy trailing silently behind her. Her full, crinolined skirt brushed the boxwood and lavender edging the path, filling the air with sweet, familiar scents so oddly at variance with the strange, shrill calls of the white corellas coming in to roost in the gums down by the creek.

  Her footsteps slowed as she approached the end of the garden. Her heart pounded and her knees shook and she almost turned around and ran back to the house.

  The light was fading fast, the setting sun staining the sky an unnatural shade of cerise. But there was enough light to show Amanda and Missy that there were no white roses blooming in this corner of the garden. Instead, the chemises, handkerchiefs, and pinafores Chow had washed and hung up that morning now lay tumbled ignobly in the dirt.