As Stars Fall

by Christie Nieman

  We sat there for ages. At about the twenty-minute mark I whispered to Delia that we didn’t have to stay any longer if she didn’t want to, but she was determined. It was great. We sat there for about an hour, and she didn’t move a muscle, I didn’t even know if she was breathing. She’d make a hell of a birdwatcher. Anyway, we sat for ages, and then I heard Delia suck in her breath. We were rewarded.

  There it was. It had just stepped out of the rushes and into the clearing on the other side of the creek. It was about four metres from us. I couldn’t believe it. A Bush Stone-curlew, standing right there. I swear it was looking right at us. It was amazing. That eye, close up, was like a person’s eye. Watching me.

  It stood there for a moment, and then it sat, lowering itself down on its legs until its belly was on the ground. Its feathers seemed ruffled, a little untidy, not flush with its body as you would expect, and it breathed with its beak open even though it wasn’t very hot. I didn’t know about curlews, but I did know that when chooks behaved like that, it meant they were not especially well or happy. There were dogs around up on the path, in the distance. They were barking and leaping around together. The bird was aware of them, you could tell. Two of the big hairy predators came wrestling down the hill towards us and the bird stretched its neck, freezing still. When they had raced back up the hill it stood and took a slow precautionary step towards cover, and that’s when I saw its ankle.

  ‘It’s got leg-tags,’ I whispered. Delia didn’t move. ‘Leg-tags are good,’ I explained. ‘It means we can look it up on the bird-banding website and find out where it comes from – usually tags mean they’re part of a study, or a monitored population, or from a specific sanctuary. Let’s see if I can make out the colours.’

  At first I frowned, and then I got goosebumps. It seemed like the coincidence was too big. My mind froze trying to figure it out, trying to rise above the reverberations of my dream this morning, the way the two creeks had melded into one. There must have been some sort of Victorian statewide banding project going on, some drive to band all endangered birds . . . But from the little I knew about these things, the bigger the project, the more variation there was in the tags so that they could track individual birds: there was no point tagging one hundred birds exactly the same. But just a few, of a particular group, belonging to a particular sanctuary or study, then they might give birds matching tags . . .

  ‘Can you see them?’ Delia asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can. They’re red, yellow and black, bottom to top.’

  Seth

  He reaches the top gate of the parklands and walks through the trees. This makes him uneasy. He doesn’t like being here anymore, among the trees. He likes to see all around him now, he feels nervous when bushes block his view. His skin is itching and hot, like fire ants are crawling around under the surface. He scratches bits of his arms until they bleed.

  He’s feeling scared. All the time. Of everything. It’s come back to him, the same fear, that same horror he had the day he came home and everything turned to pain. The day he came home in the dark and saw Delia lying on the couch with her head in their dad’s lap, his dad’s hands around her head like it was a coconut that might break apart if he released the pressure. He couldn’t understand the scene, couldn’t see why they would be sitting there like that. Seth thought Delia was sick. He thought she might be dead, lying there. And then, when his dad said, ‘Something terrible,’ he still thought he was talking about Delia.

  But no. Not Delia. Their mother.

  At the time he couldn’t make it real. He’d had a sudden image of his mother from only weeks earlier, sitting next to him on one of the rides at the show, her hair streaking out behind her in the night. His beautiful chocolate-eyed mother – the same eyes as his: dark, ready for laughter, ready for mischief – with her face lit up by the garish carnival lights, giggling like a teenager. How could she be dead?

  The bushes in the parklands are busy around him: hiding shadows, fracturing light, making confusing fragments out of reality. Seth scratches his arm, pushing his fingernail under the skin until a trickle of blood runs down. When the guy behind the church saw his arms he told Seth he should go easy, that maybe he was getting messed up: that he should ease up if he was getting scared and paranoid and deluded and crazy. He could do himself harm. Or someone else.

  Skittering off the path, shying away from the bushes, something about the memory of that carnival night unsettles him. Their ride together, him and his mother, that glorious lively image he has of her: it’s an imaginary slice of time, he has trouble believing it exists. Seth had seen his parents there, at the show, by accident. His parents were filming, collecting footage for one of his dad’s documentaries, his mum assisting; Seth was there separately with his friends, Mick and Jarrod and Nige and the rest. His father was busy focusing a camera on a piece of rubbish on the ground when Seth caught sight of them through the crowd, through the ruckus, like strangers. Removed from him like that, he could see that his mother looked bored, her duty to her artiste husband keeping her from the heaving world around her which, it seemed to Seth, she longed to join. And on a whim, and without a word, he left his friends, ran up behind his parents, grabbed his mother’s hand and snatched her away. He didn’t even see his dad’s reaction. He ran them to the nearest ride – a rollercoaster, just about to take off. They leaped in, already gasping, already laughing, already thrilled. And then, as they dipped and plunged, shrieking and giggling, Seth thought he had never seen her freer, he had never seen her happier than she was, there with him, plummeting through space, so full of joy, and so incredibly alive. He’d never had more fun. And he’d never loved her more. How could she be dead?

  The thing that unsettles Seth most about this memory is that it wasn’t just his mother who was happy. Seth was happy too. It had pleased him to bring his mother so much joy out of nowhere, transforming her life for a moment when she least expected it. And in his own memory his old self stands out: yes, bright and bold and happy.

  Seth shies away from a clump of tall grass. A dog barks and he flinches, knocking his hand against himself painfully. How had he done that: brought joy, summoned happiness, for her, and for himself? How is it possible that he had been so happy? Because now there is only fear, always with him, never resting, never leaving. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is safe. Someone you love can be taken from you at any moment. On any normal day. Life is not good and predictable. Life is only a flimsy mask for death. Life is death. How could he have been happy then? There can be no joy. No real joy. And there can be no love. To love is to invite fear. He will never feel that love again, never that joy again. He won’t feel it, not love, not fear; not for anyone.

  And he doesn’t need to. He’s found another way to live. And it’s fine. He doesn’t believe what the guy said about the drugs, about fear and paranoia and violence. And Seth knows that the guy knows that it’s not the drugs that have got him all flighty like this. Because he certainly didn’t have any issues when Seth bought more. No. The drugs are fine. The drugs are good.

  It’s not the drugs. It’s Flame.

  It’s the fire girl. The girl who set his hand on fire. She was after him from the start, but now, since he used her name like that, Flame, it’s like he’s given himself away: she’s got the scent, she’s on his trail, hunting him through the streets, turning them to bush so she can hunt him better as a fox, or as fire, or just as herself. And Delia used her name too, called her ‘Flame’, wrote it on an envelope: summoned her.

  The thought of Delia makes his chest hurt. He’s vulnerable there. It is too late. He loves her. He can’t undo it. He feels a spike of fear, a rush of panic. A stabbing in the stomach of pre-emptive pain. He has to make sure she is never taken away from him. To make sure he never has to feel that again. He has to make sure she is the last person he ever loves. Ever.

  He thinks again of what he saw in the parklands, Delia’s terrified face. And Delia’s nightmares every night, all hot and drench
ed in sweat. He’s sure now it’s the fire girl, getting in her dreams, eating her up from the inside, taking her away from him. He can’t let her do that.

  He walks with his head down, hurrying. He’s going down to the creek. To get the bird. The bird belongs to the red girl, it dragged him to her. He has to kill it.

  No. No, he’s confused. The bird was trying to warn him. The bird brought him to her, showed him. It was trying to make him aware so he could . . . what?

  He needs to understand. For Delia. He needs to know more. Why she’s after them. What she wants. Who she is. She could be anywhere at any moment. She could mess up the streets and come after them. He has to know how to get her first.

  He makes his way along the hillside, scratching his arms, until his spot by the creek comes into view. And then he stops. He can’t go down there. His fear has taken form. His spot is occupied.

  By Delia.

  And the bird.

  And the red-haired girl.

  Delia

  ‘Yes,’ Robin says to her. ‘I can. They’re red, yellow and black, bottom to top.’

  Delia gasps. She can’t help it. Red, yellow and black. Somewhere inside she’d known it, but she hadn’t believed it. She had refused to believe it. It’s not logical. And then Robin, looking shocked also, says, ‘That’s so weird. I just saw one up at Murramunda. It had the same tags.’ Delia turns her head to see if Robin has understood, has really understood, and at her movement the bird freezes.

  Robin lets the binoculars fall from her eyes, and sits there cupping them in her lap, frowning at the bird. Staring. And then, slowly, when she becomes aware that Delia is looking at her, she says, ‘Oh, sorry. Did you want the binoculars?’ and holds them out to her. It is almost as if Delia isn’t there. She is an afterthought.

  Delia hadn’t realised how hopeful she was. She thought Robin might meet her eye, might see her, might understand everything that was in her mind, and then, unlike Delia, know what to do. But Robin obviously hasn’t read the pages in the folder. Or she hasn’t understood. Delia is still alone with this.

  Delia takes the binoculars, slowly, carefully, trying not to scare the bird, trying to hold her fingers steady while her mind says over and over, red, yellow and black, red, yellow and black. She holds them to her eyes, struggling with the unfamiliar technology, and the focus dips in and out. She manages to see the leg-tags through the fog, and it’s true, the colours are just as Robin said.

  She moves the blurry lenses upwards to the curlew’s head, wildly scrolling the knob back and forth, the focus zinging to and fro. And then suddenly she gets it right. The curlew’s face is there in her vision, crisp and sharp, real and up close. Delia gasps again, her stomach muscles plunging against her will. Because the curlew is looking right back at her. It is looking right down the lenses, right through the glass: an intense, focused stare. The curlew holds the stare for a moment too long as Delia struggles for air – those eyes, looking right into her – and then, obviously spooked by the noise of her breath, it lowers its head and disappears into the safety of the rushes.

  The minute it is gone Robin leaps up. Delia, still sitting, lowers the binoculars from her eyes and holds them tightly in front of her. And then she stands up slowly and hands them back.

  ‘Thanks,’ Robin says. She is jiggling about on the spot. Delia can’t help it; she searches Robin’s face again for something, anything.

  ‘Well then.’ Robins seems agitated. ‘Well. I’ll see you tomorrow at school.’

  It’s true. Delia is totally alone in this. Panic lodges beneath her ribs, a string-key that winds the tension on with every inhalation.

  ‘Yes,’ Delia says. ‘Yes. See you tomorrow.’

  Robin

  Delia walked off up the hill, and I started up the path the other way. My mind was working fast: there was a curlew in the park and the leg-tag colours were the same as the curlew at home. I couldn’t understand it. I had thought that my dream, and the way the two creeks had merged, was just my brain being creative with all the junk that was floating around in my head – seeing the curlew by the creek in the city, and then seeing the curlew by the creek back home with my dad. I mean, that’s what dreams are, that’s what they do. But with the two curlews having the same leg-tags, it kind of made the two creeks merge in real life.

  And the way the curlew had stared like that, when Delia was looking at it, I’d never seen anything like it. It made my skin prickle. And I knew that it had freaked Delia too. The way she’d gasped like that, one of those shallow raggedy breaths you do when you’re trying not to cry. I didn’t know what had upset her, but I just didn’t really have time to think about it. I wanted to get home to check if my Birds of Australia book said anything about leg-tags. I didn’t know if it was strange to have two the same so far apart. It might be common. Maybe every curlew had them. But why would they? I needed to be by myself and think really hard about all of this.

  And I didn’t want to talk to Delia about it because actually, right at that moment, it had scared me. I couldn’t help feeling that this was no coincidence. That somehow, all of this had to have something to do with me. It felt intensely personal. It felt painful.

  Creeks and curlews.

  When I was halfway up the path I heard a guy’s voice shout. ‘Delia!’ He sounded really angry. And I turned around and across the park I saw the guy with the dark eyes from the creek and my dream. He was grabbing Delia around the shoulders and pulling her up the hill away from me. He seemed a bit agitated, and he was looking over at me, and pointing. For a second I thought, ‘Shit, he’s attacking her,’ but Delia seemed to know him: she took his wrist and held it and he relaxed a bit and he put his hand on her shoulder, more gently, and they walked off together up the hill.

  I wasn’t dreaming now, and there he was too. The guy whose eyes had taken over the curlew’s. I watched him moving away up the hill. There was something of Delia about the way he walked, the way he held his body upright but kept his head bent a bit forward. And as they walked away he turned back and looked at me really intensely, and it was just like the way the curlew had stared at Delia, and it was just like in my dream, the curlew’s deep dark eyes and then his eyes. The intensity of his eyes made my guts clench. But not from fear. And not only my guts.

  So. That was the brother.

  No wonder my mother was worried.

  Tuesday

  Seth

  It’s morning. Seth is in the narrow factory-lined street near the girl’s house. He’s going to find out who she is, what she is up to. He’s going to do it the old-fashioned way. He can’t trust anything, anyone. Not Delia, since she was with the girl again, with the bird. Not the bird. He’d arrived early and waited around the corner until he saw the girl and her mother drive off in their car. He was shocked when he saw her – it was her, it really was her, at this house. Walking around like she was just any normal person. But her hair gave her away – fox fire on top of her head.

  He sits smoking cigarette after cigarette against the factory wall in the side street between her street and the station, watching the empty house and waiting for all the commuters to go to work and school. He lights up a new one, swapping it out of his bandaged hand as soon as it is alight: just straight cigarettes this morning, he needs his wits about him.

  ‘Seth!’

  He drops his smoke. A guy in school uniform, the same uniform as Seth used to wear, is walking along the street, heading towards the station. It’s a mate. One of his old mates from school. Jarrod. A good guy. Someone he hasn’t seen in ages.

  ‘Jesus, Seth, where have you been?’ The guy stops, standing over him, his shadow falling across Seth’s feet. ‘You fell off the face of the earth.’

  Seth’s blistered fingers shake as he retrieves his cigarette from the footpath. ‘I’ve been around.’

  ‘How have you been? What’d you do to your hand? Are you okay?’

  Seth is being looked at a certain way. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to be
looked at like that. Pity stinks.

  ‘Yeah, good. Yeah.’

  ‘And your sister? She’s –’

  Seth cuts him off by standing up and, with a jab of his thumb over his own shoulder, saying ‘I gotta –’ Seth heads off away from the station, hands deep in pockets, shoulders hunched.

  Jarrod seems pissed off. ‘Right. Okay. Fine then.’ There’s a pause and then Jarrod yells after him. ‘Hey, Seth, you used to be a nice guy, so try to remember that, and try to return my bloody phone calls once in a while!’

  Seth acknowledges the words by touching his ear to his shoulder without looking back. And as soon as he gets around the corner he leans his back against the factory wall and slides down, crouching.

  He hadn’t expected to be seen, to be recognised. To be called by name. It’s rattled him. He opens up the tin of angels, all lined up there in a snowy-white row, just waiting to help him. Just one to get his nerve back. Because he needs to do this. He needs to know. It’s for his sister. He needs to keep her safe. He needs to know what they’re up against. He pulls one out and lights it and waits a while, smoking and watching the house. People walking down the street to the station alter their stride to walk past him where he sits. They look at him strangely. They give him a wide berth. He is tired. So tired. He has been dragging his leaden bones around for days. He is exhausted. And he is hot, the fire under his skin. He pulls on the joint, tasting the tobacco as much as anything else. He can practically feel the tar congealing in his lungs – black and thick and viscous. It suits somehow, that somewhere in his insides there is a seething ashy substance, sticky and dark.

  Finally, when there are no more pedestrians on the street, he stands and crosses the road to follow the small cobbled lane down the side of the house to the corrugated-iron fence of the backyard. He slips easily through a gap. The tiny square yard is mostly concrete, with houses abutting on two sides. If he laid himself down twice, end to end, in either direction, that would be the length of it. He assesses his entry points. Double glass doors back onto the yard from the kitchen, and from the bathroom, one of those windows that winds open on a narrow angle when you turn the little handle inside. The bathroom window is slightly ajar, not enough for a hand, but that’s okay, he doesn’t need a hand. It takes him ten minutes, but he manages to inch the wind-up handle around with the uneven end of a piece of wood, until he can get his arm in and open it the rest of the way. He’s skinny enough to slide himself up and over the washing machine and into the bathroom/laundry. He catches sight of a mirror – and someone sickly and sweaty and dark looks back at him. Someone menacing. He quickly looks away and steps out into the kitchen and lounge room and passes through to the hallway.