As Stars Fall

by Christie Nieman

  She turns and pushes her way through the rippling wall into the parklands. The scrub thickens and the slope gets steep as the land plunges away towards the valley.

  The voice is in the valley. She pushes harder, her dress tears, her feet get scratched in the leaf and stick litter, cool patches of soft mud squelch up between her toes. She descends.

  The voice is at the creek. She slides down between two rocks and onto the rock at the edge of the creek. She lands, one foot splashing into the cold water. From the rushes on the other side of the creek dark eyes watch her; large, soft, sad eyes.

  The question and the answer.

  Mum?

  thresholds

  Selina

  My two curlews live in the dry woodland just outside Murramunda. I know they’re the same two birds each time I come, because I put leg-tags on them: red, yellow and black, bottom to top. Sometimes after dusk I’ll see the two birds playing together. It’s amazing, the way they interact. It surprises me, and makes me a little shocked at myself. I can’t believe I’ve never really thought about it before: an animal living its life, forming its partnerships, raising its children, caring for them as I care for mine. They have a whole life which is theirs, just as we have our own. Why do we think other animals are so different from us?

  The science tells us that having only these small fragmented patches of habitat – islands in a sea of farmland – puts local Bush Stone-curlews and other species at risk of extinction. The science makes it clear that because of us they are on a threshold, able to be wiped out by small things, like a bad land-management decision, or a fire. And the science teaches us that as more land is cleared, curlew numbers decline, and the science predicts that if we protect and connect woodland ecosystems on farmland we could halt that decline; we could save curlew lives.

  If the science is so unambiguous, why do we keep clearing their land? Why do we continue to destroy their homes? Are we waiting for science to go one step further and tell us what to do?

  But science can’t tell us that. Science can’t tell us anything about right and wrong. It can’t tell us what it is like to be a curlew. It can’t tell us what it is like to be anything: dog, cat, bird, tree, beetle. It can’t even tell us what it is like to be another person. Science doesn’t tell us anything about subjective experience. And because of this, science can’t tell us what to value, or how to act. Science can teach us how to save curlew lives, yes; but it can’t tell us whether those lives are worth saving.

  Science can’t tell us this, but we often try to imagine what it is like to be another person, to figure out the best ways to act. We even try to understand our pets: we read them by watching them, imagining how they might feel, what they might need or want. So why can’t we use our imaginations and our empathy, as well as our science, to help us figure out what we should do?

  Because when I look at my curlews and I empathise and imagine, it seems obvious to me that we are not the only species on earth that has a feeling of being itself, of having worth. I feel sure of this. Maybe I’m wrong, but that ‘maybe’ is exactly the point. If we can never prove it, if we can never know for sure, then there is only one safe way to think. And it is this: that, like us, other species are important. They matter. Even if they do things differently, they care about themselves and their lives. Therefore, we should too.

  But we humans don’t think like this. We set ourselves apart. I am so afraid that we won’t change the way we value other species. I’m afraid that, without us even noticing, we will continue to disrupt and disturb rare ecosystems and push them over their thresholds, dispossessing their resident species. And I’m afraid that by the time we realise what we are doing, it will be too late.

  That is my greatest fear: that one day when we finally stop focusing so hard on ourselves, we will lift our heads, we will look around, and we will find that we are alone.

  Ash Wednesday

  Robin

  It was ridiculously early. No-one in their right mind would be awake. But then, I couldn’t have said with one hundred percent confidence that I was in my right mind. I’d been awake most of the night. Or at least I think I had. Mum had finally got home just before eleven. I was in bed, pretending to be asleep, but she knew I wasn’t. She poked her head up through the trapdoor and said, ‘Hey, honey,’ like nothing was wrong. I refused to speak to her and rolled over to face the other way until she retreated. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire and the folder and Selina Antonella and her pair of curlews.

  Selina was that woman, the one who died in the hills up behind my house.

  And her curlews, the birds she loved, now separated, one by the creek in the park near Delia’s house in the city, paying me visits, and one by the creek in the country near my house.

  And I thought of the way the folder in the letterbox was addressed to me: ‘Flame’ Robin Roberts.

  Flame. As in candle. As in spark. As in fire.

  I lay with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling – the diagonal roof sloping up from just above my head to its apex and then down to the opposite wall, and the gaps from my missing photos stared at me oddly, like a broken smile, in the orange glow from outside.

  Delia wasn’t sick.

  The glow flickered.

  She wasn’t sick, but this was worse.

  The ceiling flickered gently with orange light as the horror crept over me. And then suddenly it was like my awake brain kicked in, like it suddenly woke up. It said, ‘Danger!’ and I said, ‘Shit!’

  I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. A wheelie bin had been pushed from the street so it was right up against the side of our house, right outside my mother’s bedroom, and set alight. The flames flung themselves out the top of the bin and grabbed on to the wisteria that trailed itself over the front of the house.

  ‘Mum!’

  I hurried down the ladder, yelling all the way.

  Mum went through the same process as me – sleepy eyes, followed by awake eyes, followed by exclamation. ‘Shit!’ she said.

  She jumped out of bed, grabbed the phone and a broom, and had a moment’s hesitation while she decided which one to give to me. She threw me the phone, and while I called the fire brigade she used the broom to pull the burning wisteria away from the eaves of the house.

  The fire truck came in minutes, and the flames were out in seconds. A few neighbours came out of their houses and then drifted back inside once the firefighters were gone. Two bored-looking police officers asked a couple of bored-sounding questions. Did we see anyone? Did we know anybody who might have done it? I looked at the pile of cigarette stubs on the kerb, my mind throwing up the picture of the open back door, but I said nothing.

  And then it was just Mum and me sitting alone on the kerb next to the stinking plastic puddle that had been our wheelie bin, and watching as the sun touched the tops of the skyscrapers of the city with echoes of fire.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You and Mr Krietcher were talking the other day when I came in.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘About something that happened.’

  Mum paused. She looked at me sideways.

  ‘Were you talking about Delia?’ I said.

  Mum sat for a moment, sad and thinking at the same time. ‘Yes, we were.’

  ‘Was it that her mum died in that bushfire behind our house?’

  Mum breathed out heavily. And then nodded.

  I had guessed it, but somehow I still wasn’t prepared for the answer. To have it be true made me feel like crying, or screaming, or gripping something so tight that my hands would never be the same again. It was too terrible and too true and too close. How could they deal with it, Delia and her brother?

  ‘Thomas told me about it when he found out where we’d come from. Delia’s mother was a biologist with a university, or something like that. They found her in her four-wheel drive with the keys in the ignition. Do you remember how they had aerial photos of the burnt-out
car on the front of the paper? There for the world to see, for her children to see.’ Mum’s voice was tight with outrage. I held my face still. I felt the same way she did. ‘I couldn’t believe it when you ended up in a class with Delia, it was such a strange coincidence, and then when you became friends with her . . . I just didn’t know whether to say anything. Thomas says that Seth, her brother, just hasn’t coped at all, that he’s really gone off the rails. And Thomas is worried about Delia, too. I’m sorry if I seemed discouraging, but I thought it might be too much for you to handle right now. But that’s life, isn’t it? We can’t always be protected from it.’

  I thought of Delia and the curlew in the parklands, staring at one another across the creek. I thought of Delia trying not to cry.

  I thought of my dream, and Delia’s brother. Seth – that was what Mum had called him. That was his name. I thought of his eyes, the curlew’s eyes, and the feeling that I was being watched. And then I thought of the little piles of cigarette butts on the street outside my house, and by the creek in the parklands where I’d first seen the curlew, where I’d first seen him, the orange glow of a cigarette by his left hand. I thought of the open door and my missing photographs. I thought of the curlew on the roof, watching me. I thought of the injured curlew in the backyard, needing my help.

  And I thought of the fire that started it all. Selina had been there alone with those curlews when the fire came through. And I had seen it. I’d stood in the paddock by our house and watched the bright line of fire sprint over the top of the ridge and tear through the reserve, consuming everything in its path. Consuming her. And I thought about myself, only hours later, crouching by a log in the bottom paddock, my world disintegrating, and a curlew crying. Maybe one of the curlews crying.

  Delia had read what I read. What did she think? How could she explain it to herself? How did I explain it to myself?

  Mum reached out and took my hand. ‘And it seemed to me that after everything that girl had been through, she could really use a friend. And if she had chosen you, then all I could do was step back and admire her taste.’

  I couldn’t be friends with Delia.

  I couldn’t help her.

  I couldn’t stay.

  And he was clearly out of control. Seth. Breaking in and stealing photos was one thing, but the fire in the bin against our house had shaken me. I knew it was him, as surely as I knew anything. And he had pushed it up against my mum’s window . . . Was he trying to hurt my mum? Or was it just me? Suddenly I knew, in the flesh on my bones, that I was inextricably mixed up in this; in something primal and inexplicable. Something had been sparked that night in the hills of Murramunda by Selina’s death, by heartbreak and the curlew; a bond had been cast between the woman and the bird and her son and her daughter – and also me: there, in the sparkly darkness behind the dam, my world changing too, my heart breaking too, the curlew was my witness: the same curlew.

  I didn’t understand it. That didn’t matter. What I did understand was that right now it was dangerous. It was all about death. The curlew was slowly dying. Seth didn’t seem to have a great grip on life himself. And if he had had his way, my mother and I could have just been killed. This was a mystery that needed to be handled right, and I was pretty sure Seth wasn’t doing that. I didn’t know Seth. I didn’t know what he was capable of. I certainly didn’t know why he was angry at me. But I didn’t think I should stick around to find out. I needed to get away from whatever this was. I definitely needed to shift it away from my mum. I needed to leave, and trust that the danger, to her at least, would leave with me.

  The odour of the burnt rubbish hanging in the air smelled of things decaying, of things rotting and dead and burnt. I needed the fresh air of home in my lungs. And in the end the curlew in the parklands wasn’t just about me. Or Seth. Or Delia. Or even Selina. It was also about the curlew. It didn’t understand the strangeness that had brought it here, but I knew it couldn’t stay. It was the only thing I could properly know: that I needed to take the curlew home. For the curlew’s sake. For all our sakes.

  Delia

  The saucepan of water is tick-tick-ticking on the stove. In the kitchen Delia listens to the rush of white noise begin to grow in the bottom of the pot. She is carried outside on the rush. There is a new day in the backyard.

  Calm. She feels calm. She has a sense of having been soothed, having been released from tension, from confusion, from pain; from the strange agony of having to consciously form words, take breaths, make movements. It is as if time has been turned back, as if a handle winding something up inside her has stopped. She doesn’t need to understand, and she has been released.

  She moves into the backyard, stretching her wet hands, wet from the water in the sink, warm water made cold by the outside air as she reaches for the latch of Ripper and Slasher’s cage. The birds cluck impatiently, brushing their feathered breasts up against the chicken wire, scraping their beaks across the mesh like prisoners with enamel mugs against the bars.

  There is a broken bottle at her feet, some of it scattered into the chooks’ pen. Did her father drop it? Throw it? Or Seth? Something happened last night after the policemen left – sounds through the wall: yelling, whimpering, a thud. She can’t remember. She doesn’t lose any calm. Seth is not at home; his door was ajar as she came down the hall. She looks up at the window of her father’s bedroom. The curtains are open. He isn’t home either. She is home alone. There is a single perfect spider web in front of her father’s window, it catches the early light. It makes the window seem fractured.

  The chooks mutter frantically.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ is what her mother says to them. Delia stays silent. She smiles softly.

  She moves her bare feet carefully through the glass. She stops. Her feet are muddy. They have scratches on them. Her nightie is torn along the hem. She frowns. How did that happen?

  The chooks are impatient. They demand her attention. She flicks the latch and the gate swings open. Ripper is a bit slow; she has a limp. And as she tries to hop out of the cage after Slasher, Delia scoops her up and examines her foot. Ripper gives an outraged trill.

  There is blood. The scatter of broken bottle has made it into the chook pen, and there is a piece of glass lodged in the soft part of Ripper’s foot. Delia puts her hand over the bird’s eyes. Ripper quietens. With her bare foot she manoeuvres Slasher over the low fence into the veggie patch, away from the glass.

  ‘All your Christmases, Slasher,’ is what her mother is saying in her head. Delia smiles.

  She flicks off the gas under the saucepan as she goes past the stove, Ripper kicking again with her eyes uncovered. Delia grabs an old pillow case from the linen cupboard and puts it over Ripper’s head and body, keeping the bird safely in the dark with only her feet hanging closed-clawed out the bottom. Ripper is dripping blood. Delia fills the bathroom sink with warm water, Ripper still stowed under her arm, and adds antiseptic. She dips the bird’s feet in and notices the blood on her hands. The grey water turns pink. The mirror fogs up. She finds tweezers and holds the bird tight under her arm and deftly plucks out the glass. The bird squawks and she put its feet back in the warm water to soak. She looks out the window, dreaming, still dreamy, trying to catch a dream she had. Why are her feet muddy?

  On the street outside a car lurches onto the footpath and off again. The car manages to stop just before a tree further up the street. It is her father’s car. It takes a moment for the sight to penetrate further than Delia’s eyes.

  And then, suddenly, all her calm leaves her.

  Seth gets out of the driver’s side of the car and shuts the door without locking it. Delia ducks for no reason. She stops breathing. She peers out the window again.

  Seth walks, consciously steady, along the path in front of one, two, three, four houses, to stop in front of their house, bend down and try to figure out the mechanics of opening the gate. He is fidgeting and fumbling. Squinting at the latch, trying to make it give up its secrets. He messes
with the latch for a second more before kicking the gate open, the wood around the latch splintering, and marching darkly up the path. He is dirty, smudged, his face is changed by . . . by ash, or cinder, smeared black into his hair. She feels the hair prickle on the back of her neck. She doesn’t move. She hears him putting his key in the front door. She watches the back of the bathroom door as if it would give her answers or escape.

  She hears the front door slam back against the wall with the force of its opening.

  She jumps up, Ripper under her arm, streaks across the tiles and locks the bathroom door. She leaps back and crouches in the bath. She is holding Ripper’s feet, willing the hen to stay silent. She hears Seth’s steps moving up the hallway past the bathroom door. She smells him from under the door – he smells of decay, of fire, of toxic ash. He has burned something. She looks down at her fist tight around Ripper’s claw. Ripper has gone quiet, blood slowly dripping from her foot between Delia’s fingers. And Delia remembers her dream. Not a dream at all. Her muddy feet, her torn nightie. The curlew. Her mum.

  She puts the chook down in the bath, unwraps the pillow case from around the bird’s head and body, and lets her stand on her own in the tub while she looks around the bathroom. There are some jeans in the laundry basket. She pulls them on. There is no top, so she tucks her nightie into her pants.

  Seth said he was going to fix it. He said Delia wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore. He said he would get her. He wouldn’t let her haunt Delia, or invade Delia’s dreams. Her. The curlew.

  Delia climbs onto the edge of the bath, squeezes out through the small window, shuts the window behind her, imprisoning the chook, and creeps along the fence line across the grass to the street.