September Moon

by Candice Proctor

  A familiar, lilting melody floated through the still house, picked out by a sure hand on the piano. Amanda lifted her head, listening, puzzled. She recognized the tune; it was "Greensleeves." And she was very sure that she had never seen it among the sheet music in the dining room.

  She walked quietly through the empty parlor to stand in the shadow of the doorway. Hannah sat at the piano, her hands now still on the keys.

  "My mother used to play that song when she was sad," Hannah said without looking up. "Right before she left, she played it all the time. I remember lying in bed at night, hearing her play it, over and over again."

  Amanda stayed where she was, afraid to draw too near. She had come to realize long ago just how vulnerable Hannah was beneath the tough, prickly front she showed the world. But Amanda had never seen the girl this open, this exposed. "You miss her, don't you?"

  Hannah nodded, her head bowed. "It's funny, isn't it? I hate her, because she went away and left us. Because she didn't love me enough to take me with her. Yet... I still miss her."

  Amanda rested one hand against the wooden door frame, her heart twisting with empathy for this lonely, hurting child. "Your mother only went to Victoria at first, didn't she? To her parents? Perhaps she didn't mean to stay away forever. Not at first."

  Hannah's chest lifted on a shuddering breath. "Before she met that Frenchman, you mean? Maybe. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Because when she met him, she decided she loved him more than she loved us. And she left us for him."

  Amanda didn't say anything. Privately, she had come to the conclusion that Katherine O'Reilly was probably a spoiled, selfish woman, who had never loved anyone as much as she loved herself. But Amanda wasn't about to say that to Katherine's daughter.

  "Liam was only three years old when she left," Hannah said. "I still remember him waking up in the night, crying for her. Papa used to sit by the fire and hold him, for hours. Sing to him. Tell him stories about his shearing days. I was always awake, too. But I didn't cry. And I never let Papa hold me."

  Hannah's hands slipped down to her lap, her fingers splayed, taut, against the worn cotton of her moleskins. "At first he tried, but I would just wiggle out of his arms. Eventually, he stopped even trying. I remember telling myself that if I didn't let him hold me, if I didn't let myself love him, then it wouldn't hurt if, someday, he left me, too."

  Hannah lifted her head to show Amanda a tear-streaked face. "I'm scared, Miss Davenport. What if something has happened to Papa, and he doesn't come back? He's been gone so long. I don't want to lose him, too."

  "Oh, Hannah ..." Unable to hold herself back any longer, Amanda went to enfold Hannah in her arms. She was afraid the girl would push her away. Instead, Hannah rose up to meet her.

  "I'm scared, too," Amanda admitted in a broken voice as they clung to each other.

  Perhaps, she thought, as she felt Hannah's arms tighten convulsively around her, she should have lied and told the girl her fears were groundless, that there was nothing to worry about. But Amanda had too much respect for Hannah's intelligence to even attempt it. Hannah was growing up.

  She felt a sob shudder through the girl's slender body, and realized with a slight sense of shock that Hannah's head was level with her own. In another six months, Amanda thought, Hannah would probably tower over her. The girl was growing up, and she was going to be tall.

  Like her father.

  Later, Amanda went outside and stood in the garden. She could feel the gritty sweat trickling down her forehead as she stared at the blackened stalks and curled, dead leaves that were all that was left of the beautiful white rose that had once scrambled up the veranda post to riot over the homestead's roof. Tears welled in her throat. She tipped back her head and blinked up at the hard sky. The endless summer sun poured down on her, relentless, merciless. Deadly.

  If O'Reilly were here beside her, she thought she could probably take anything this land threw at her. But he wasn't here, and she missed him desperately. Memories of his hard, male body haunted her. She ached for his touch, for his kiss. For the sight of his smile and the sound of his voice, for the gentle, reassuring warmth and strength of his presence. A dozen times a day, something would happen to make her wish she could tell him about it. Her triumph the day she trimmed Hannah's hair. Missy's progress with her letters. The funny thing Liam said when Campbell startled them all by taking a bath and changing his clothes. All the little joys and traumas of life she wanted to share with him.

  But he wasn't here.

  Swiping at her damp face with her forearm, she swung away from the veranda to walk slowly through the withered ruins of Katherine's garden. It was breaking Chow's heart, killing the garden like this. First, he'd stopped watering only the annuals. But as the creek-bed water hole he used for irrigation sank lower and lower with each passing day, he'd had to let the perennials die, too. Now the bushes and the trees were dying, and if it didn't rain soon, he was going to have to use well water to keep the fruits and vegetables alive.

  Unless the wells all ran dry, too.

  Amanda paused at the enclosure wall and looked out over the barren landscape, shimmering in the afternoon heat haze. There was nothing left anymore. Just red sand and naked rocks; no grass, little brush, dying trees. She felt the hot, dry wind whip around her, loosening her hair, slapping her skirts against her legs. She imagined she could smell the death the wind carried, hear the echoing groans of the thousands of animals dying out in the bush.

  Sometimes, it seemed to her that the only living things left moving, the only things prospering in this living hell of a drought, were the crows. She could hear them out there, flapping their wings and cawing, day and night. Caaww, caaww. Sometimes she thought she might go mad, listening to the hot wind and that ceaseless, macabre crowing.

  And, sometimes, she found herself afraid. Not just that something awful had happened and O'Reilly was never coming back. But afraid that when he did come back, he would look into her eyes and know. Know that as much as she had grown to love this wild, desolate land, she still feared it— feared it more than ever before, because now she had seen what it could do.

  The closing of a door brought her head around. She watched Christian step out from beneath the veranda and squint up at the harsh sun before he walked toward her. He'd grown thinner in the last few months—gaunt and careworn, like the rest of them. This was to be his last visit to Penyaka. The Brinkman mines were closing, and in just a few days he would be leaving, driving south to Adelaide to catch ship for home. At the thought, she felt a fierce pang of sorrow, accompanied by a twist of envy that shamed her. And scared her.

  He came up to her and she gave him a bleak smile that he didn't even try to return. His serious gaze met hers, and held it. "Come south with me, Amanda," he said, for they had slipped into using each other's first names long ago. "You can't stay here. Not anymore."

  She swung to face the dying Ranges, her fingers gripping the stone wall before her. "I can't leave, Christian. You know that. I can't leave these children."

  "I think you should take them to Adelaide, too. To their aunt."

  "But O'Reilly—"

  Christian came to stand beside her and put his hand over hers. "I honestly think when he comes back and sees how bad things are, O'Reilly's going to want you out of here, himself. Besides—" He bit back what he'd started to say. But she knew what he was thinking. That something might have happened to O'Reilly. That he might not come back at all.

  They stood together, watching the wind lift eddies of dust off the valley floor to swirl up and around, then dissipate in the furnacelike air. After a moment, she said, "This wind is so hot. Do you think there's another dust storm coming?"

  By now Amanda knew all about dust storms. About how they began with a vivid brown cloud on the horizon that seemed to rise up as it approached. About how it just kept getting hotter and hotter, until the temperature reached 120 degrees and still kept climbing.

  She knew how the sky would become over
cast and thunder would rumble, but there would be no rain. How the wind would rise, filling the air with thick red sand until anyone unfortunate enough to be caught out in it could see barely two feet in front of his face. The wind would blow faster and faster, and the dust would just keep getting thicker and thicker, choking the life out of every living thing in its path.

  In an attempt to escape it, the magpies and bronze-winged pigeons and diamond sparrows would overcome their fear of men and crowd into the outbuildings and under the verandas of the house—anywhere they thought they might find shelter. When the storm finally ended, Amanda, would take down the rags and towels she used to cover the cracks around the homestead's doors and windows. But she hated to go outside, she hated to find the tiny, lifeless bodies of the bush birds littering the wind-scoured yard.

  "The windstorms usually come out of the north," Christian said, twisting to squint into the light of the sinking sun. "As long as the wind stays from the west, we should be all right."

  She nodded, her gaze focused on a persistent pall of dust that hugged the valley floor. "Someone's coming," she said. She was always scanning the horizon, always looking for O'Reilly's return. But this was a wagon, not a man on horseback. And it was coming, not from the south, but out of the northeast.

  She'd grown accustomed to people stopping at the station for a night or two. At first, they were mainly swagmen— drovers and shepherds who'd lost their jobs when the stations they used to work for had laid off men, or closed down completely. But lately, there'd been families, too. Tilted carts pulled by dying bullocks or horses, driven by men and women with the hollow-eyed look of those who have given up all hope of ever enjoying life and are simply trying to endure it.

  Sometimes, those driven off the land by the drought had no livestock left alive. They came on foot, seeking food and water that was always freely given. But sometimes they didn't make it to the house; Penyaka's stockmen would bring in tarp- wrapped bodies and Amanda would supervise their burial in the little cemetery across the creek bed.

  "Looks like a family," said Christian, watching the wagon lurch toward them. "God preserve us. When will this end?"

  He walked with her to the front gate where they stood together and waited. It was only a small cart, pulled by two gaunt horses and driven by a scrap of a boy that Amanda at first took to be no more than twelve, until he drew close enough that she could see his face. Then she realized he was more likely fifteen or sixteen, only underfed and work-worn. Beside him walked a tall, brown-haired man with thin, sloping shoulders and tattered clothes.

  "Good afternoon," Amanda said. "And welcome. Come in and have some tea. One of the men will see to your horses."

  The man pulled off his dusty hat to reveal a pale com- plexion and deep shadows under his eyes. "Thank you, ma'am, but we've a sick child in the cart here. If we could just camp in the shade of the trees there, and if you'd let us have some water, and maybe some chlorodyne if you've got it, for my baby girl—"

  "What's wrong with her?" Amanda asked, starting forward. She reached the back of the cart where she caught a brief vision of a tiny, fair-haired child lying beside a weeping, distracted woman. Then the mingling odors of vomit and feces and blood hit Amanda in the face, and she reeled backward.

  "Oh, goodness," she said, gasping. "We must get her in the house at once."

  "But Amanda," said Christian, backing away with his handkerchief to his nose. "It may be typhoid."

  Amanda whirled to face him. "Would you have me leave a child out here to die?"

  "No, but—"

  She spun back to the father. "Bring her into the house. And Christian"—she glanced at him—"perhaps you could ask Ching to heat some water?"

  He nodded and hurried off.

  She worked quickly. The mother was practically incoherent with exhaustion and grief and her own sickness, and the father and brother had been sick, too. But with Chow's help, Amanda soon had the little girl cleaned up and tucked into the guest bedroom. Amanda dosed her with chlorodyne and meadowsweet tea, but the child could keep nothing down.

  "She must have a doctor," Amanda whispered urgently to Christian when she found him pacing the parlor floor. It was late now; the children were asleep. "If we can't stop this purging—and soon, that child will die."

  Christian regarded her anxiously from the far side of the room. She noticed that ever since she'd touched the child, he'd been careful not to come too close to her. But he hadn't left, either, and she was grateful to him for that. "There's a doctor in Edeowie," he said. "I can go for him."

  Amanda brushed the loose hair out of her face with the back of her hand. "How far is that?"

  "Forty miles."

  "My God." Amanda's hopes sank like a crushing weight in her chest. "You'll never get there and back in time. Isn't there anyone closer?"

  "No. It'll have to be him." Christian reached for his hat. "If I leave right away—"

  "Wait." She stretched out her hand to stop him, then curled her fingers and dropped her arm to her side when he flinched. "No, Hermes will never make it. We'll send one of the men. Can you arrange it? Tell him to choose a fast but sturdy horse. With any luck he can be back with the doctor tomorrow."

  Amanda stood for a moment, her hand on the door frame as she watched Christian hurry off. If only O 'Reilly were here, she thought, then pushed the painful, useless wish out of her mind and went to sit beside the weakening child.

  She was a pretty little girl, Amanda thought, staring down at the child as the hours of the night stretched out. Soft lamplight played over pale blond hair, big gray eyes, a fine-boned face, pinched now with misery and dehydration. She was only six years old, the father had said. Missy's age.

  Amanda lifted her gaze to the exhausted mother, dozing fitfully in a chair on the far side of the bed. The woman couldn't be more than thirty-five, but she looked old, her once-blond hair streaked with gray, her shoulders hunched with despair, her face set in sad lines. Unconsciously, Amanda's hands slid down to press against her own empty womb, and she knew a terrible fear for the future, for her own unborn children, who would live their lives—and die—in this wild, strange place.

  It was such a cruel land, she thought. Cruelly treacherous and dangerously, frighteningly isolated. Shaking off the thought, she reached for the little girl's fretful hand and held it comfortingly.

  Amanda sat beside the child for hours, wiping her damp face, coaxing her to take sips of cool chamomile tea, then holding the basin for her when the spasms hit again. Amanda tried to stay awake, but at some point during the long night she must have nodded off. Her head jerked, and when she raised it, she found herself staring into the child's open, sightless eyes.

  "Dear God," Amanda whispered, covering her slack mouth with her hand. "No. Oh, no." Glancing at the still sleeping mother, Amanda felt the tears well in her eyes to run silently down her cheeks, and knew she did not have the strength to wake this poor woman and tell her that her little girl was dead. She felt too defeated, too hollowed out inside by waves of sorrow.

  Then rage rushed in, blinding and hot. Standing, she went to jerk back the curtains from the French doors and stare out over the rained, moonlit garden and the dark, looming bulk of the Flinders Ranges beyond.

  From the beginning, this land had frightened her. Attracted her, stirred her, and moved her, but frightened her, nonetheless. Now she had grown to love it. Yet what she felt for this place was still fierce.

  And fierce love is always so close to hate.

  Patrick O'Reilly reined in at the top of the hill and let his gaze rove slowly, achingly over the heat-cracked rocks and parched earth of the dying land sprawled out before him.

  Hell, he thought bitterly, it's not dying. It's dead.

  He touched his heels to the chestnut's flanks and let the tired horse amble down the hill toward the homestead lying bleak and quiet in the shimmering, suffocating afternoon heat. The loose dust from the track billowed up around the horse's plodding hooves to hang heavy in the h
ot, lifeless air.

  He was alone. Of the men he'd taken south with him, some had hired on at the stockyards in Port Augusta, where they'd sold some of the sheep. He'd left a couple of shepherds with the mob in the pasturage he'd finally managed to rent all the way down in The Coorong. The rest had decided to stay in Adelaide, rather than brave the drought again. There wouldn't have been much for them to do here, anyway. Not on a station stripped of three-fourths of its livestock.

  Easing the horse down the hill, O'Reilly let his gaze rove over the scattered buildings. He felt a sudden lightening in his heart, a racing of his pulse at the thought of finally seeing Amanda again. Seeing her. Holding her. Touching her. ..

  Sometimes it seemed to him as if there hadn't been a single minute, night or day, during the last two months when he hadn't thought of her, hadn't wanted her. He'd carried south with him a hundred different images. Of Amanda, kneeling in a bed of thyme, her cheeks flushed, her head thrown back as she laughed and laughed and laughed. Amanda clutching his arm, her lips parted in a silent prayer as she watched Hannah ride Fire Dancer to victory. Amanda with her eyes squeezed shut, her face flooded with rapture as he drove his hard body into her welcoming softness.

  Amanda hugging Missy close and whispering, "I'll stay, darling."

  He swung out of the saddle at the homestead gate, his gut twisting sickeningly as he took in the desiccated ruin of Katherine's garden. God in heaven; the place looked as if it had been blasted by hell. Deserted. For one heart-stopping moment he wondered if things had got so bad here in the two months he'd been away that they'd all left.