The Rain Heron

by Robbie Arnott

  Daniel felt slightly manic, but also light, somehow loose. He watched his lieutenant, how she smiled, how she wiped at her forehead. How her face had taken on a mild glow.

  43

  THEY LEFT THE property soon after, and found that the world they’d gone to sleep in had been changed by the night’s wet violence. Muddy puddles reflected the bright-clouded sky, giving the land an illusion of greater depth and texture. Greenery showed itself in fresh shoots that had lain dormant in the dry earth. Vapour wafted up from the soggy paddocks, slanting their view of the land in the distance. In the changed nature of it all Daniel was reminded of the storm of the previous night, and what Lieutenant Harker had said to him about his parents’ farm.

  He pictured his mother feeding the dogs, his father driving out to the milk shed, stopping every so often to hoe at thistles poised to seed. He tried to think of what they’d be saying when they ran into each other throughout the day, but the little phrases they used together—the verbal tics that each family develops, ones he used to know so well—wouldn’t come to him. If he heard them spoken out loud, they’d be familiar. Even just one, a simple comment from his mother to his father, and he’d know them all, every little piece of the uniquely textured lexicon that threaded their lives together. He imagined their busy bodies, their moving mouths, but the images came to him in silence.

  Daniel decided that he’d go see them as soon as the mission was over. He’d go straight to the farm. Light bounced from a puddle and shone into his eyes, rousing him from his thoughts. He tried to return to them, to remember how his parents spoke, but as the truck took the next bend he was distracted.

  The truck swerved around a sharp corner and was greeted by a steep descent into a tunnel of dense, dark foliage. The road plunged and twisted, and above them the light was obscured by leaves. Daniel stared out the window, trying to come to terms with this abrupt change of landscape. The vegetation was hedge-like, with sharp, glossy leaves and a paucity of visible branches. Red berries blinked in the green. A wild-holly hedge, thought Daniel.

  After the third or fourth bend the leaves thinned, and he could see larger plant life beyond them. At the sight of a large spreading canopy the word oak occurred to him, and when a group of skinny, white-black mottled trunks shot up straight he thought birch. More trees blinked through the holly hedge, shapes of wood he could not name. Occasionally he saw a steely flash of rock, or cloud, or a body of water.

  They continued to lose height, dropping into a valley. When the road flattened and straightened the holly gave up its grip on the asphalt and pushed back from the truck, allowing the true forest to show itself.

  The dark hug of the hedge had given their descent a touch of gloom, a feeling almost subterranean. But now there was light, and air, and Daniel could see the spreading oaks and elms that lay beyond the holly, and the copses of birches and gnarling walnuts and other trees. A forest breathed around them, dappled and wide. Beyond its border lay steep hills, much like the one they had driven down. The forest attempted to climb up these valley walls, but made it less than halfway. Where the trees ended lay mossy meadows, cut apart by ancient fences of rough-stacked stone. These meadows rose at harsh angles into rounded fells, ending in domed peaks of hazy grass. They were clouded here and there by sheep, or perhaps goats, although no shepherds could be seen.

  They drove on. Nobody spoke, although Daniel was sure that the others felt what he did—the disquieting sense of having emerged from a cave or woken up in a strange house. The glossy green of the hedge, the varied greens of the trees and the pale green of the meadows combined to overwhelm his vision with verdant colour. It was only the white specks of sheep on the fells and the occasional blueness of the sky that kept him from feeling dizzy. Still, he felt wrong-footed, confused at the lushness of the place, until the truck rounded yet another corner, and a large lake cut into view.

  It stretched for at least a few kilometres, running from the holly hedge to the base of a far-off fell. Its surface was a sharp grey, untroubled by wind or wave. Small islands, thick with trees, hung anchored towards its centre. The road ran along the water, tracing the frame of the lake. The soldiers stared at the light glancing off its face—even the private, who should have been watching the road.

  That day they passed one small village. It was only nine or ten houses, a couple of larger buildings, and a little jetty that hung calm and still on the water. No cars sat on the verge; no boats were tethered at the jetty. The only sign of human habitation—the first they’d seen since they left the mountain—was smoke rising from two chimneys. Glances flew around the truck. The smoke puffed, a steady stream of burnt-white.

  Harker lifted a hand to touch softly at her bandages. This movement—this ginger graze at the site of her wound—seemed to remind them all why there were there, what their purpose was. The silence, and their journey, continued.

  A while later the light began to slant over the fells. They pulled over near a thinly wooded area close to the water’s edge and made camp. It did not take long to set up their tents, to make a fire. Afterwards, the scout went to the water and stood unspeaking in contemplation of the valley, the smudge of forest, the darkening hills. Harker went to her tent. Daniel began to make dinner, the same combination of dehydrated rations and powders as they’d eaten the night before, but as he ripped open a sachet of dried soup, the private stood up.

  I can’t eat that stuff. Not again.

  He grabbed his rifle and marched across the road, into the trees. Daniel watched him go. The scout looked at Daniel, shrugged, then turned back to the water, as if the lake and its ring of rising meadows held something for him that the others could not see.

  Daniel sat feeding sticks into the fire. He was exhausted—partly due to their relentless travelling, partly to the poor night’s sleep and partly to something else: a sense that things had gone too wrong to be righted. The fire grew higher. He began to feed it larger logs, to coax it into a state of embers. Suddenly he wanted to march into Harker’s tent, to talk to her in a fast, loud voice about the bird, where they were going, why they were doing it, about the generals, about his parents’ farm, about the woman she’d shot—but as soon as he pictured himself pulling at the zipper of her tent he realised how absurd the idea was, how he would never do something like that. A gust of failure swept through him, and for nearly a minute he fought back a choke of tears, until his turmoil was violently disturbed by the crack of gunfire.

  Silence, then another burst of bullets. Soon afterwards Daniel heard the heavy crunch of boots, and managed to wipe at his eyes and pull himself together before the private strode into the clearing. Something dark and ragged hung from his free hand. As he neared the fire, Daniel saw that it was a long-legged hare.

  Dinner, said the private, shaking blood from the wet fur.

  He sat down, pulled out his knife and began skinning the animal. He did it with ease, almost boredom. Daniel watched him underarm the hare’s twisted guts into the trees. The private lifted the naked meat to his eye, then looked at Daniel, a question in his expression.

  Daniel extended a palm.

  Here. I’ll cook it.

  The private handed him the stringy corpse. It felt far too light to have recently been leaping through a forest. Daniel retrieved a small frying pan from their gear, and began to build a recipe in his head with the few ingredients they had: hare meat, salt, dehydrated peas. Moments later the scout returned from the lake, his eyes wide, as if he’d forgotten where he was.

  When the hare was sizzling in the pan, Harker emerged from her tent, sniffing at the air. She looked at her soldiers, expressionless, then went back inside. Daniel felt the same sense of failure he’d battled earlier. But then she came back out with a small jar of dark liquid in her hand. She walked to the fire and poured a splash of it into the pan. Salt-tinged smoke rose into the air. Daniel and the other two soldiers leaned forward. They’d never seen this jar before, had no idea what Harker had done to their food. She could have
poisoned them. But the smoke smelt so rich, so full of unknown flavour. Harker stowed the jar inside her jacket. Then she blinked at them, and it took them each a moment to realise that she was trying to give them a conspiratorial wink.

  Daniel padded the meagre hare meat out with dried lentils and rice, and thanks to Harker’s unknown seasoning the meal became the finest that any of them could remember eating. An alien savouriness bloomed on their tongues, at once gamey and delicate. It tasted, thought Daniel, like a chef had isolated the coppery flavour of blood and somehow rendered it delicious, if that were possible. All four scraped their plates clean and picked at the small bones. A sense of contentment rose between them, an unspoken wonder at the pleasure of the meal.

  After they were done they washed their plates in the lake and returned to sit by the fire. Daniel assumed Harker would go straight to her tent, but instead she seemed happy to stay with them, crouching by the coals. The private threw a large fallen limb onto the low flames. The scout, who was shivering despite the fire, looked at the truck. After a moment of staring—as if he’d decided on a hard but correct course of action—he went to it and retrieved the heron’s cage.

  He sat it away from the fire, nearer the lake. With a deft movement, he pulled the oilcloth free from under his wrapped, knotted coat. Then, with cloth in hand, he went to his pack and fished out a few candles. He returned to the fire, ignoring how his comrades were watching him, and held one of the candles towards the coals while spreading the cloth over his knees.

  As soon as the candle began to drip he held it over the cloth. Daniel realised he was aiming the dripping wax at the punctures the private’s rifle had torn into the material that morning. The scout worked fast, shifting and turning the cloth in one hand, aiming the messy stream of wax with the other. It did not take him long to go through three candles. When he was done he stood and held the cloth out, inspecting his work. Wax now sealed all the bullet holes, creating glossy windows in the stiff, dark fabric.

  The scout looked at them. When no one spoke or moved he gathered a breath and turned to the cage. He undid the knots in his coat, before sliding the cloth once again underneath it, feeling with his eyes closed, making sure it covered every inch of the bars. When he was satisfied he retrieved his coat and pulled it on. He returned to the fire, yanking his sleeves, buttoning his collar.

  The cage sat there, once again black, still unmoving. A hum of anticipation rose in the air, although all four of them remained silent. The private lifted his feet off the ground. The fire lowered. Finally, Daniel spoke.

  How did you know that would work?

  The scout poked at the fire with a stick.

  I didn’t.

  He stirred light into a dying coal.

  It might not.

  Daniel went back to looking at the cage, wondering what they’d do if something went wrong, if the bird escaped. He realised he was hoping that it would—that in a flash of damp anger it would explode through the damaged cloth and meld itself into the night-shining lake.

  As he was imagining this, colour began to appear in the cage, visible through the small windows of wax. Pulses of blue light, flickering and shimmering, at times bright and loud, at others subtle and shaking, almost hesitant; a tiny aurora, playing under the cloth.

  Perhaps, thought Daniel, the bird was trying to communicate with them. Or perhaps it was bored, or agitated, or experiencing an emotion they could not comprehend. Or maybe the bird was sleeping—maybe this show of restless colour was a projection of its dreams.

  They watched the caged light dance through the wax. It was a long time before any of them went to their tents.

  44

  THE NEXT MORNING they left the lake behind and rose over the stone-rimmed fells onto a blond prairie. Feathered stalks of grass rose to waist height. Falcons plunged into this sea of grain, emerging with red fur in their talons. It was unbroken by forest or fence, and felt wilder than the farmland they’d seen earlier on the trip.

  As they travelled, a smudge of colour began to rise on the horizon. At first Daniel thought it might be a low bank of storm clouds, but as they got closer it took on solidity, and colours of grey and black and green, and a uniform cragginess to its roof. Over the next hour it revealed itself as a low, long range of unbroken mountains, sitting unavoidably in their path.

  The scout pointed at the range.

  We go into the highlands. There’s a plateau over the ridge.

  At the base of the nearest peak the road began curling upwards, switchbacking along the face of the range. Large rocks gathered on the slope, held apart by copses of short, leafless trees. The going was slow as they twisted back and forth across the mountain, and the endless turning began to make Daniel feel sick. He looked backwards, down onto the plain of wild grass and the deep green valley beyond it, trying to settle his stomach by focusing on the unmoving horizon.

  Below the sky, on the road they’d taken that morning, he could see a small black shape. It was too small to be a car, but it appeared to be moving like one. Daniel blinked. He kept twisting his neck back and forth as the truck curved up the range. The black shape disappeared, and he decided it must have been a far-off bird hanging in the air, perhaps one of the hunting falcons, its flight giving off the illusion of road travel.

  Then he saw the shape again. It was still on the road, and it had moved closer, slightly closer. The truck turned yet again, and he swivelled his neck, and he felt sure that he would throw up, and then the road finally crested the top of the range, and the plains below were gone.

  Their path levelled out on a high, colour-drained plateau. Daniel contemplated this new, rugged world though his window with half-sick wonder. The few scattered trees were even lower and thinner than they’d been on the ascent. Grey and teal dominated the land, extending in dull undulations to the bright-blue horizon in all directions. The world felt split open, splayed apart by the sky’s clean reach.

  The scout leaned out the window.

  Nice country.

  Nobody spoke in response. The landscape stayed like this as the road crawled slowly but gradually higher. Ragged rocks, leafless trunks, untamed tussocks of tough-looking grass. An occasional group of boulders, tumbled together at random. That night they camped beside one, employing the formation as a wind barrier. Daniel allowed an open fire, which they used to light the evening and heat their rehydrated food. This time, Harker did not offer her dark formula to the pan. He watched the night and blinked at the flames before falling into his tent, where he was netted by sleep.

  The next morning he woke up strangely calm. He had slept well, and he had forgotten the black shape he’d seen on the road the previous day. Light was fuzzing across the ceiling of his tent. It was late, far later than he had slept in years. Not since his conscription could he remember being prone as the day broke. Yet there he was, flat and tranquil as the sun burned high. He got up and left his tent, wringing out his sleeves, wiping his face with a dry sock. Water stood on the stalks of grass. The scout and private had the fire going again, were heating beans, no sign of hurry in their movements. Lieutenant Harker had packed her tent back into the truck, and was standing by the road doing the slow stretches she had once always done: legs, arms, back, neck, in practised succession, slow beauty in her limbs.

  The familiarity of this image and the quietude of the camp reminded Daniel of all that he admired in his lieutenant. The misery and failure he’d felt beside the lake was gone, and the reverence he’d felt for Harker before their mountain mission returned and swelled within him. He waited for the lieutenant to finish her movements.

  When she did, Daniel came to her side, not looking at her but instead studying the plain of rock and tussocks that ran from their feet to the horizon. When he spoke, he made sure he stayed out of her reach.

  Feeling better?

  She pulled at a toe, her ponytail brushing the rocky ground, and did not answer.

  Are you still in pain?

  Of course.

&nb
sp; Can you at least let me look at it again? I might be able to help.

  She stopped stretching. She looked up at the sky, then at the rocky land around them. After what felt to Daniel like a long time, she looked at him.

  When I chose you for my squad, she said, I’d thought you’d be like this. I knew it, actually. I’ve always been a good judge of character.

  At first, Daniel didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t known she’d deliberately chosen him. He’d thought his assignation to her squad had been random. Eventually, he said: Like what? What do you mean?

  Kind, she said. I thought my team needed a bit of kindness. It sounds stupid, I know. Others would have called it softness, even weakness. But I saw you there that day, huddled with all the other involuntary recruits, and I thought: there’s a person who’ll probably do the right thing, given the opportunity. And I thought that might come in handy, at some point.

  She spoke airily, almost with detachment. As if he was only half-there, or only half-listening.

  Again he didn’t know what to think, what to say. So after a minute, he just said: Thank you.

  A minute passed before he cleared his mind and spoke again.

  Please. Let me look at your wound.

  She resumed her stretching.

  Why?

  So you don’t get infected. So we don’t have to bury you somewhere up here, so we can deliver this…bird to the sanctuary. So we can complete our mission, lieutenant.

  Harker pulled an arm across her chest.

  What’s the point?

  He frowned.

  The point? I only know what you told me. The generals want it because they heard it existed, and they’re in charge. Maybe they think it will make them look powerful. I don’t care. I just want this to be over—

  No.

  She stretched her other arm.