All Our Shimmering Skies

by Dalton, Trent

  She rests the empty corn can on top of the rock. ‘See if you can hit that,’ she says.

  Greta rolls her eyes, reluctantly plants her feet in a shooter’s stance and aims the handgun at the corn can. She fires a shot and the bullet chops the head off a young rock fig growing out of a rock wall across the creek, some ten feet above the level of the corn can.

  Molly laughs. ‘Point and shoot and phone an eye doctor.’

  Greta feigns anger. ‘I’ll point it at you if you’re not careful.’

  ‘Have another try,’ Molly says.

  Greta inhales deeply and aims again, her left eye closed tight and her right eye zeroed in on the can with its aluminium top peeled back like an open hatch on a submarine. Her tongue licks her bottom lip and she stops breathing as she pulls the trigger.

  And no bullets explode from the barrel.

  She looks at the gun in confusion and she pulls the trigger once more. Nothing but the click of the trigger. She pulls it again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.

  ‘There’s no more bullets,’ Greta says.

  ‘What?’ Molly replies.

  ‘Who flies into battle with a gun with only one bullet?’ Greta asks.

  Molly holds the gun now. She feels the weight of it. ‘He only needed one, for himself,’ Molly whispers.

  Greta shakes her head.

  ‘Just put it in the bag, will ya?’

  They walk on.

  *

  Five miles along the silver road. Six miles. Seven. In the afternoon, Molly rests against a bronze quartzite boulder being colonised by red shells of wild ruby dock weed. She sips from her water bag, reading her Shakespeare.

  ‘Which one are you up to?’ Greta asks.

  ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ Molly says.

  Greta lights a smoke. She has six left.

  ‘You can just call it Hamlet,’ Greta says.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Molly says. ‘But I like to use the full title.’

  ‘Where are you up to in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, Bard of Avon?’ Greta asks.

  Molly places the open book in her lap. ‘I just passed the bit where the gravediggers are wondering if Ophelia should be allowed a Christian burial if she took her own life,’ Molly says.

  Greta nods, drags on her smoke.

  ‘Do you think Ophelia killed herself?’ Molly asks.

  Greta exhales a long cloud of smoke. ‘Course she did,’ Greta says.

  ‘He doesn’t write it like she definitely did,’ Molly says. ‘He says a branch might have broke and she fell in that pond.’

  ‘She didn’t struggle too much in the drink, though, did she?’ Greta replies, stretching out beside the creek edge, resting her head on her propped arm. ‘Ol’ Bill’s bein’ all cagey because it’s hard for blokes to admit a woman might choose death over putting up with more of their bullshit.’

  Molly nods, thinks for a moment. ‘Do you think Ophelia deserved a Christian burial if she took her own life?’

  Greta shrugs. ‘Poor girl wasn’t thinkin’ straight,’ she says. ‘That’s what men can do to ya, Molly. Drive a girl bonkers; make her wanna go sleep forever in the nearest brook.’ Greta looks into the clear creek water.

  Then she turns to Molly, realises the girl has invested more in this question than humour could return for her. ‘God would take Ophelia in, don’t you worry,’ Greta says, nodding. ‘I reckon He’d know she deserved a proper burial and the only thing she didn’t deserve was some of those fellers in her life.’

  Molly smiles weakly.

  ‘You think there’s more good fellers in the world than bad fellers?’ Molly asks.

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of good fellers in this world,’ Greta says.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Romeo Montague,’ Greta smiles.

  Molly smiles, too. ‘I like him,’ she says. Then she looks up to the blue sky. ‘I reckon my mum didn’t deserve some of the fellers in her life.’ She looks over at Greta now.

  ‘Yeah, I reckon you’d be right there, Mol’,’ Greta says.

  ‘One of Ophelia’s gravediggers was saying this thing about whether or not she went into that water or if that water came to her,’ Molly says. ‘I wonder about that with my mum. Did she go to that grave in Hollow Wood or did life bring the grave to her?’

  ‘Life’s always bringin’ the grave to us, kid.’

  ‘Yeah, but why bring it so early to some and so late to others?’

  ‘I’m afraid Hamlet’s mum was right about all that, Mol’,’ Greta says.

  ‘I forgot what she said about it.’

  ‘She said all that lives must die,’ Greta says. ‘And she said we all know that shit’s common.’

  ‘That shit’s comin’?’ Molly ponders.

  ‘Common,’ Greta clarifies. ‘That shit’s all too common.’ Greta drags on her smoke, rests her head back on a rock. ‘But I guess it’s always comin’, too.’

  *

  The silver road bends through a forested gully and then a brief canyon lined with hanging five-fingered ferns that look to Molly like a thousand little green hands reaching out of the rock face. She tests the echo of her voice and it bounces through the canyon.

  ‘Marlene Sky,’ she hollers between two hands.

  Birds fly out of the canyon, startled by the noise. Rainbow bee-eaters, hooded parrots, bustards and two northern rosellas with black, white and blue-violet wings.

  Molly and Greta can feel and smell the humidity of the north. Everything sweats. Everything is damp. The walls of the canyon are smooth and stained black by water run-off. Greta’s saddle shoes slip on wet, slimy rocks and she fights to fill her lungs in the thick air and she doesn’t feel like smoking so much in these strange places.

  The silver road meanders on through great green palms shaped like wood screws stuck in the earth and passes a great sandstone outcrop that Molly sees as a giant wombat, except the wombat wears a jagged battle helmet on its head with shards of sandstone jutting abruptly from the top in case the wombat’s unlikely battle foes – echidnas dressed in chainmail, possums wearing platemail – choose to leap atop its head.

  Molly pauses to stare at a majestic green emperor dragonfly caught and tangling itself further in the sticky web of a St Andrew’s Cross spider. The dragonfly looks to Molly like something flown by the Wright brothers, with a torso made of what seems to be some rare kind of soft velvet pea beaded on a black string, and a scorpion’s tail and vast wings that are clear but somehow shimmer with purple light as the dragonfly flaps in fear of being so close to the web’s master builder.

  ‘The dragonfly’s still alive,’ she calls to Greta, who has stopped to scratch the back of her calves with a stick. ‘The spider’s comin’ to get him now,’ Molly says. ‘I’m gonna pull the dragonfly out.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Greta says. ‘That spider probably hasn’t eaten a meal in days and it’s gone to all that trouble to build a web to catch some lunch.’

  ‘Does it have to eat something so pretty?’ Molly asks.

  ‘Don’t think spiders give a damn about pretty, Molly,’ Greta says.

  ‘They just haven’t seen a Carole Lombard film yet,’ Molly says. ‘I’m gonna pull the dragonfly out.’

  ‘How could you be so cruel?’ Greta responds. ‘I reckon a dragonfly would be better than rump steak to the average spider, and you’re gonna come along and rip that poor spider’s lunch away just as it’s tucking its serviette down its shirt front. What sort of monster are you, Molly Hook?’

  *

  At a small freshwater spring Molly and Greta stop to share a can of corned beef and refill the water bag. Molly scoops her half of the corned beef onto a plate fashioned from a strip of smooth paperbark and sits on a flat rock by the spring.

  Greta complains of a throbbing pain in her lower back. She slips off her emerald dress, turns her back to Molly and asks her to inspect her lower spine. Molly places her paperbark plate of corned beef on the fla
t rock, walks over to Greta and immediately spots two fat leeches sucking their way along the top lining of the actress’s underpants. There’s another leech crawling up the back of her left thigh.

  ‘Leeches,’ Molly says.

  ‘What?’ Greta gasps. ‘How many?’

  ‘Three,’ Molly says.

  Greta executes a strange shuffle that makes her look like she’s barn dancing. ‘How big are they?’ she asks, panicked.

  ‘Well, judging by their size I’d say they’ve had main course and they’re progressing to dessert.’

  ‘Get them off!’ Greta howls.

  ‘Nah,’ Molly says.

  ‘What are you talking about, “Naaahh”?’ Greta exclaims. ‘Get the bloody bloodsuckers off me, Molly!’

  ‘You’re best to just let them have a feed and then they’ll drop off all by themselves,’ Molly says.

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘It’s not. They keep all this filth inside their stomachs, and if I was to go ripping them off halfway through a meal, there’s a chance some of that filth could get stuck inside your open suck wounds.’

  ‘Suck wounds?’ Greta repeats.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Molly whispers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One just crawled on to your backside.’

  ‘Get that thing off me!’

  ‘Just relax and let them finish up,’ Molly says. ‘Besides, just think of all the trouble they went to crawling up those long pins of yours. They probably haven’t eaten for days and now you want to just rip them away from their grub. What sort of monster are you, Greta Maze?’

  ‘Molly, get them off me, dammit!’ Greta screams.

  ‘All right, all right,’ says Molly, who has already found the paring knife in her duffel bag. ‘Don’t chuck a willy.’ She scrapes the paring knife gently and carefully beneath the narrow head of each fat-bodied leech, flicking them in turn from Greta’s pale skin.

  ‘You’d better move away,’ Molly says. ‘I think those leeches have got a taste for German rump.’

  Greta rushes across the flat rock, slipping her dress back over her shoulders, zipping it up at the back. But then she freezes because she hears something moving in the wall of scrub fringing the freshwater spring.

  ‘You hear that?’ Greta asks.

  ‘Hear what?’ Molly replies, finding the place in the scrub where Greta’s eyes have been drawn.

  Stillness now. A bird whistle. A trickle of spring water. And the actress and the gravedigger girl staring at a wall of palms and cycads and banksias.

  More a feeling than anything else. No evidence for it. Just a chill down Greta’s spine.

  ‘You think he’s following us?’ Molly asks.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Yukio.’

  ‘You guys on a first-name basis?’

  Molly shrugs. ‘I’m just saying his name.’

  ‘I think we’d be dead by now if he was following us,’ Greta says.

  Molly turns back to the rock beside the spring just in time to see something she has to look at twice to be sure it’s not an illusion, not deep-country magic: the wide, black-brown wings of a wedge-tailed eagle plummeting downwards.

  Greta spots the bird now, too. ‘Ahhhh!’ she screams.

  Molly is frozen by the silent predator and keeps watching as it swoops down to her flat rock and, without ever touching ground, claws two large clumps of her corned beef in its large talons and then arcs back up and out of the clearing as gracefully as it entered it. It’s an act so bold it could only be the work of a queen. Close up, Molly could see how beautiful she is, how regal, how strong. If she’d wanted to, Molly tells herself, she could have lifted the whole duffel bag in those deadly talons – food cans and rock heart included – taken it high into the sky and back to her family to inspect her plunder from Horace Hook’s pantry.

  Molly can push only one word out of her voice box. ‘Wait!’ she calls to the eagle.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Greta says. ‘What the bloody hell was that?’

  ‘She was beautiful,’ Molly says. ‘Have you ever seen anything so pretty?’

  ‘Scared the shit out of me,’ Greta says. ‘Cheeky bitch stole your lunch.’

  ‘She needs it more than me,’ Molly says and shrugs. She thinks to herself for a moment. ‘Imagine being that brave, Greta. Only mums are that brave. Mums with kids to feed.’

  Then a thumping sound from beyond the spring. It sounds like it’s coming from deep beneath the forest floor. A thunderous drumming in hell. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  ‘What is that?’ Greta asks.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Something heavy pounding into earth.

  Molly has no answer for Greta. She reaches for her friend, the shovel she calls Bert because Molly and Bert are on a first-name basis.

  *

  The gravedigger girl follows the thumping sound along the silver road that runs through an avenue of blue cycad trees with leaves the colour of the moon. Thump. Thump. Thump. Louder now. A thin walking trail branches off the road of shimmering mica and Molly and Greta branch off with it, Molly leading the way, gripping Bert’s handle ever tighter as the thumping grows ever louder.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. Something being crushed. Something breaking into pieces. Rock.

  Then a noise so loud it hurts Molly’s ears and makes her shoulders jump. An explosion inside a cave.

  ‘Gelignite,’ Greta says.

  Molly quickens her step, follows that sound along the thin trail, which breaks through a screen of ferns and hanging vines into a clearing where Molly stops before what she can now see is a small mine built deep in the heart of the deep country. Thump. Thump. Thump. Molly and Greta kneel behind the cover of a thick fern bush to assess the scene. There is a rudimentary crushing plant housed beneath a triangular shed of rusting corrugated-iron sheets leaning on poles made of the blue cypress pines Molly and Greta have been passing since the Clyde River. A tin mine most likely, Molly tells herself, built against a sloping wall of dark grey rock crawling with weeds and vines.

  Two men in blue singlets and wide-brimmed hats are overseeing the crushing of hulking chunks of white quartz. The rocks are being placed under a motorised crusher made out of three heavy, rusting steel-block stamps that are being raised and dropped by a series of rusting camshafts.

  Thump. The steel stamps pound so hard upon a quartz boulder that the rock breaks into four pieces. The miners then feed the pieces into a rattling jaw crusher that mashes the stone into a gravel that will be transferred to a sluicebox, which Molly figures must be somewhere close to this mine, beside a natural waterway. Cut along the upper side of the rock slope is a small rail line about fifty yards in length that extends from the crushing plant to the mine entrance, a hole blasted into the side of the rock face, just like the ones Molly remembers her father showing her on Top End bush camping trips not so long ago when Horace Hook still walked in light moods. Horace told her most of those blown-out mine shafts were only useful now to the ghost bats who call them home during the daylight hours. ‘But there’s fellers still finding their riches all across this country,’ Horace said. ‘And they guard those treasure holes the way a magpie guards its nest. Every bastard is a threat.’

  The mine entrance is not much wider than the door to a two-man tent and a man emerges from it now, hunching down and pushing a cart of mined ore. He wears a singlet and pants and a brown stockman’s hat. His brown beard is full and billowing down to his chest.

  ‘His skin,’ Greta whispers.

  Molly looks closer. There are small lumps across the man’s arms and shoulders. Ulcers and scarring. His right cheekbone is abnormally enlarged and the skin on his forehead is swollen and so dry it’s started to crack like the clay in Hollow Wood Cemetery during a drought. The man lifts heavy rocks from the mine cart into a hopper connected to the crushing plant and Molly can see now that three of the fingers on his right hand have been severed at the middle knuckle. On his left hand he’s missing his thumb and forefinger.

&nbs
p; ‘Let’s keep going,’ Greta says, standing and turning to go back the way they have come but she stops because she is confronted by a large man resting a pickaxe on his shoulder, filling the width of the trail back to the silver road. Greta inhales sharply, reels back at the sight of him. His face, too, is dry, and so swollen that it looks distorted, like it’s been moulded out of shape. There are patches of scarring and discolouration across his neck and arms. Welts and small growths. But Greta is drawn mostly to his eyes. He has no eyebrows nor any eyelashes, and he only has one eye he can see out of, his left one. Where his right eyeball once was, there is an empty socket containing a thin pool of blood. His nose is distorted and big. Molly can’t remember when she last saw a man built like this. He’s a giant to her. Big broad shoulders. Big biceps. Big legs. Big fingers and thumbs. Big brown hair on his head, in natural and careless curls.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, softly. A thick Irish accent. His face is so stiff his speech feels like old air being forced through a crack in a mountain. ‘Not so easy on the eye am I?’ He chuckles to himself. ‘We’ve been up here so long we almost forgot what we must look like to pretty girls like you.’

  Greta gives him a halfhearted smile. She studies the man’s face.

  ‘You two lost or something?’ he asks.

  Molly jumps on the question. ‘We’re going to find Longcoat—’

  ‘My feller and this one’s dad are camped back along the plateau,’ the actress interjects, with a natural ease. ‘We were out looking at the birds and butterflies when we heard that rock crusher thumping away and we thought we’d come and have a look at what was scaring all the birds off.’

  The man with the pickaxe nods. He looks at Molly and she nods too.

  Then the large man smiles. ‘Well, let me fix you a warm brew before you go.’

  The crusher hammers into another chunk of quartz. Thump. Thump. Thump. Twigs and dry leaves break beneath boots behind them. Greta looks over her left shoulder to see the two miners from the crushing plant now standing behind her.