As Stars Fall

by Christie Nieman

  Murramunda.

  They are taking his sister. Taking her back to where they killed his mother. Heat wells up in him. He is feeling woozy. His sister. They are taking her, the only thing he has left. He falls back from the window and trips over the edge of the bed. He hears the engine rumble into life. Still clutching the article, he scrambles to the front door, but the ute is already moving slowly away from the kerb and down the street. He runs to the kitchen to grab the keys to his dad’s car. On the table next to the keys there is a manila folder and a hastily written note:

  S.

  Gone to stay with friends for a couple of nights.

  The folder is full of Mum’s writing. I thought you might want to read it. I’m sorry I didn’t show you earlier.

  Have taken R+S.

  Don’t worry about me.

  D.

  He grabs the keys and the note and, after a moment’s hesitation, shoves the article with the picture inside the folder and takes that as well, and runs through the front door, slamming it behind him. He leaps the low fence onto the footpath. The ute is just turning out of their street. He runs to his dad’s car where he left it parked across the footpath, starts the engine, slams down the accelerator, and the car leaps off the kerb and onto the bitumen and down the road after them.

  Delia

  Delia is practically sitting on Robin’s knee, squished between Amber and Andy on the bench seat in the ute, barrelling up the freeway. The afternoon is hot and the ute has no air-conditioning. Sweat forms wherever her body touches anything – her back against the seat, the bottom of her legs on the vinyl, the sides of her legs pressed up against Amber on one side, and Robin on the other. Ripper and Slasher are in the back of the ute, in cages under cover with the curlew, and with all those other amazing chooks.

  As they drive, Robin suddenly lurches forward, hitting her head on the windscreen, and a moment later they all see what Robin has been so eager to look at. A huge eagle hovers over the freeway, almost completely still in the sky, the cars passing one by one beneath its shadow. Suddenly, without knowing she is going to say it, Delia asks, ‘Why do you like birds so much?’

  Too late she realises that this is one of those things that makes people think she’s too abrupt, or rude, or strange – to ask a question she really wants to know the answer to, without preface or context. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Robin. Robin, craning her neck to watch the bird as the car passes beneath it, answers straight away. She says, ‘It’s like each species is a friend. They have personalities.’

  Robin sits back and twists around to watch the eagle through the back window, and for Delia, the simplicity of Robin’s response hangs bright in the air. It’s just like something her mother might have said.

  The eagle recedes in the distance and Robin settles back into her seat. And then she says, ‘That’s why when species go extinct, it is like a kind of death – that whole personality has died, that whole way of being in the world. It’s like someone, a person, a friend, someone you know really well, someone you love, has died. And then that’s it, they’re just gone.’ She makes a final sweep of her hand. A cutting-off. A no-going-back motion. Her hand gestures ‘the end’.

  Delia tries not to respond, but the words are like a punch in the stomach. They are so heavy and so true and so solid. Her mother is just gone. She’s not in the curlew. She’s not in her notes. She’s not hidden somewhere Delia can find her. She’s just gone. Gone, gone, gone. Delia’s whole body freezes to ward off the pain.

  It is a split second before Robin slaps her hand over her mouth. ‘Shit!’ she says through her fingers, and looks suddenly utterly shocked as she grabs Delia’s hand. ‘Delia, I’m so sorry! I’m the most horrifyingly awful person, can you ever forgive me?’ She looks so appalled at herself that Delia almost laughs at her. Almost. She manages to nod.

  *

  Leaving the freeway the ute twists and turns through some of the most beautiful country Delia has ever seen. With the windows down the whole landscape is buzzing with the sound of hot-day crickets, drilling the view in through her ears as well as her eyes. The scene flares with heat, but each golden paddock is bordered by bush, pockets and gullies of inviting dappled shade, flashes of running water between the trees.

  The ute pulls into a long driveway, following a fence line around the curve of a hill, and when they finally approach Amber and Andy’s little weatherboard house, Delia sees a woman, short and round, standing and waiting for them in the yard with a tight grip on a young girl.

  ‘I thought when you called you said you were coming straight back?’ the woman yells. ‘I’ve got to get Steph down to the clinic for her shots before half five and the station wagon’s just died. Come on – out! I’m commandeering this vehicle.’

  Delia scurries out of the cabin and helps the others to get all the birds in their cages off the tray, and Mrs Dooley tears off with her unwilling passenger down the gravel driveway. Delia watches the only means of transport disappearing off into the distance in a cloud of dust.

  Robin says, ‘Don’t worry, she won’t be long, and then we can go up to the reserve . . . If that’s still what you want to do.’

  Delia hesitates, and then nods. A slow, sure nod.

  Seth

  Seth is surprised his hand hasn’t melted the steering wheel, after two and a half hours on the freeway with his hot palm gripping the wheel tightly in a desperate attempt to keep on the road. Patches of his vision and time are snatched sideways, slipping the car to the side of the road and over the rumble strips. The trees are moving, leaning out in front of him over the road. He blinks hard and grips the wheel so tight that his hand bleeds through the bandage. Smears of red and yellow appear on the wheel. He can’t stop. They have Delia.

  On the freeway he can see the ute up ahead, driving straight and steady through kilometre after kilometre of cleared land. But when they hit the tree-lined and winding roads into Murramunda, he loses them. He speeds up to try to catch them, but they’ve disappeared.

  So now, here he is, adrift in the countryside around Murramunda.

  He doesn’t know anything about the place. He doesn’t know anything about the people who have taken his sister. Well, he knows something. He knows that one of them is Flame.

  He drives aimlessly. Half an hour or more seeps away as he drifts down side roads, past paddocks, sheds, sheep and bush. There is no-one around. The whole place is deserted. He drives back along the main road, and suddenly the road becomes the town’s main street. Only one or two cars are parked, but they have the look of cars that have been sleeping where they are for a long time.

  He crosses the railway line and is suddenly out of the town.

  Murramunda, blink and you’ll miss it.

  Where had he heard that before? It takes him a moment to place it. His mother. His mother loved this place. ‘Murramunda is a gorgeous little town,’ she’d said, ‘but blink and you’ll miss it.’

  He can’t believe the steering wheel is surviving. His hands, his whole body, have become hot iron. The steering wheel should liquefy under his fingers like butter under a hot wire. He comes around the corner and sees an old church hall surrounded by vehicles. The whole town gathered in one spot. He slows down, fighting a faint, and then suddenly he spots it – the white ute, nestled among the other cars.

  Some kind of church gathering, he thinks, but as he slides his dad’s car between a rusty old Ford and an ancient, crumbly cypress tree, he sees the sign over the door: Murramunda Medical Clinic, open 4 p.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday.

  Seth goes up the ramp and peers around the doorway. The ute is here; they must be here too. Inside, it looks just like an old church hall – there is a piano in the corner, and pews line the walls – but it is packed to the rafters with kids and their mothers. Some of the kids are crying, the women ignoring them while they tell off the boys who are playing up, throwing magazines around. One boy makes a break for the door.

  ‘Joshua, you’ll get back here or
your father’ll know about it.’

  The kid stops at the door – not because of his mother’s threats but because he has come face to face with Seth: hulking in the doorway, huge and still ash-stained. There is a scream from behind the doctor’s door. The boy in front of Seth gives a boyish holler too. All the mothers look up.

  Seth hears the receptionist speak, maybe to him.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, vaccination day is always like this.’

  Seth wants to run – what a mistake coming in this door.

  ‘Jesus, love, you okay?’ She is talking to him.

  Seth is light in the head, his heart beating a million times too fast, he wants so badly to run, but he starts swaying. One of the mums states the obvious.

  ‘Jeez, he doesn’t look too good.’

  Two girls sitting next to each other on the piano stool start to slam out ‘Chopsticks’. There is a hum in Seth’s head like an old fridge, then he realises it is an old fridge, standing in the corner of the room. He sways, sending frantic messages to his legs. Run. Or at least walk. Or at least hold me up. Seth falls, not as hard as he should because the receptionist has been creeping up on him and goes down with him, under him, trying to support him. A sea of small faces look down at him – he’s more interesting now he’s fallen down. Or maybe just more accessible. One mum is saying, ‘Well at least he’s distracted them all from their shots.’

  Seth’s brain manages to get to his voice. It crackles out the only thing that feels like a key to the whole scene.

  ‘Flame,’ he says.

  ‘Flame?’ says the receptionist.

  ‘What an odd thing to say.’

  ‘Is there a fire nearby, love? Should we call the brigade?’

  Seth shakes his head. He’s got it wrong. There must be another key. His mind searches. The front of the envelope. Flame Robin.

  ‘Robin,’ he says.

  ‘Robin?’

  ‘Maybe he means the Roberts girl.’

  ‘You after the Robertses, are you?’

  Seth manages to crackle, ‘Flame Robin Roberts.’

  ‘Well, mate, you know we don’t know you from a bar of soap, so we can’t just go telling you where they live or anything.’

  ‘I thought they’d moved out, Sharon.’

  ‘Nah, Rod’s moved back in. Saw him yesterday.’

  Seth tries to pick himself up, but slides back to the floor. Lead in his bones. ‘They don’t know me,’ he thinks. ‘No-one knows me.’

  ‘Let’s get Dr F. to have a quick look at him.’

  Some murmuring and clunking, doors opening and closing. A sniffling. ‘Wipe your nose, Teneale.’

  He has to get out of here. ‘I’m fine. I’ll . . . I’m . . .’ He tries to lift himself.

  The piano slams out ‘Yankee Doodle’.

  ‘Shift that pew. Steph Dooley, get off that piano, you’re driving me bonkers.’

  They hoick him up into an old carpety armchair. A very old man’s face appears and there is a stark light first in one eye, then in the other. The man puts his cool hands against Seth’s forehead, sticks two fingers under his jaw and holds them there, looking at his watch.

  ‘I’d like to get Shire involved. That hand looks bad. He’s running a terrific fever. Could be serious. And I’m not sure, but . . .’ The light flashes once again into Seth’s eyes and the old man says almost to himself, ‘Yes. Probably.’ And then louder, ‘Fluids, Sharon, and I’ll call him in at Shire A&E.’

  Seth starts to stand – he’s not going to hospital again – but the receptionist gently pushes him back down into the chair.

  ‘Now, love, have a cup of tea and then we’ll drive you to hospital. Won’t be long, duck.’

  Some girl on the piano plays ‘Three Blind Mice’, and the receptionist clatters around in the corner near the buzzing fridge, rattling tea things. Seth is ignored and taken care of. It’s familiar. A sort of sideways care. Something present that needs no point made about it. Like a sick kid allowed to stay home with their busy mum for the day. Seth is horrified by his reaction. He starts to cry.

  One of the mums tuts. ‘Better give him a bickie too, Shaz.’

  Seth stands, staggers, and runs out of the hall and down the ramp. He collapses into the driver’s seat of the car, turns the key in the ignition and takes off, bouncing the car over the rough guttering and onto the road out of town. No-one comes after him. He drives fast. Too fast. He drives away from the town, tears pumping out of his eyes. He’s struggling to breathe. It’s like every kilometre he drives he is running with his own body. He is gasping. He feels weak. He feels lost. He is lost.

  He pulls to the side and suddenly stops the car. The folder of his mother’s things shoots forward from the passenger seat and onto the floor, spilling its contents. He sits, waiting for his body to finish what it is doing. Eventually the shuddering subsides and he leans his head on the steering wheel, looking down through tears and snot and breathing through his mouth. His mother’s papers are everywhere. He reaches down and picks one up from under his foot. And when he lifts it the sight of his mother’s handwriting is like a kick in the guts. He reads a line: It is really beautiful up here: a complicated green-grey mosaic. Her voice is in those words. Her lost voice. My birds seem perfectly content here, living in their open woodland just outside Murramunda. Seth drops the page back onto the floor. He can’t read it. He hits his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. Why is he here? Why?

  There is another piece of paper on the floor near his foot. He is looking at it through the steering wheel. It is a map. A map of Murramunda, and directions to the study site. He stares at the square marker on the map. There. His mother died there. The site is marked down a long fire track off the main tourist road through Murramunda Scenic Reserve.

  He looks up. He can see a brown sign down the road in front of him. An arrow. Murramunda Scenic Reserve. Underneath the sign there are other, temporary signs in bright yellow.

  Warning.

  Recent fires have rendered vegetation unstable. Trees may fall.

  Road signs have not yet been replaced. Some roads are closed.

  Drive with care.

  He doesn’t hesitate. And he doesn’t breathe. It’s automatic now. It’s obvious. He has no choice. He presses his foot on the accelerator, points the car out onto the road and takes the turn. He drives up the hill, through the trees, and into the reserve.

  Robin

  I wasn’t sure about the curlew. Mostly it seemed just fine in its cage on the Dooleys’ kitchen table, despite the smear of dried blood on its wing, but then there were moments when its head seemed to droop unnaturally. Was it just having little cat naps? Did curlews take cat naps?

  Mrs Dooley was back in half an hour. She introduced herself properly to Delia. ‘So you’ve come up to help Robbie and her dad sort their place out, have you? That’s nice of you. Pretty nice of your parents to let you off school, too.’ The upwards inflections at the end of her sentences let me know she wasn’t buying any of my explanations. ‘Ran into your dad down the street, Bobbie – he must have forgotten to mention you were coming up.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  Andy said, ‘I’m just going to take the girls for a drive up through the hills, Mum.’

  Mrs Dooley gave me a hard stare then said, ‘Alright then. But mind the track through the reserve. Don’t loiter under any trees.’

  ‘I’ll be back after I drop them over at Bobs’s house. Where do you want the curlew, Bobbie?’

  ‘Can we take it with us? Dad will know what to do.’

  ‘You want to leave your chooks here for the moment, Delia?’ Andy had the cage containing Ripper and Slasher in his hand.

  ‘Um, if I could. Is that any trouble?’

  Mrs Dooley took the cage from him and held it in one hand. ‘No, darl, of course not. We can just chuck them in with ours. They’ll be happy enough. Have to say, though, I don’t know many girls your age who travel with chooks. You’re a bit of a strange chicken yourse
lf, aren’t you?’

  Delia smiled quickly and turned her head away. We loaded the curlew into the back of the ute. I only covered the cage halfway. I thought the bird might like to see its country. Everyone piled into the cabin, and at the back of the ute Mrs Dooley and I pushed the tray shut.

  She lowered her voice conspiratorially. She said, ‘So, Bobbie, there was a young man down at the clinic. He was asking after you. He was a good-looking young lad. Swarthy – that unshaven look they’re all doing these days. Now what might that be about?’ She had her eyebrows raised suggestively.

  I stared at her for a moment. Could it be true?

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. I sounded unconvincing even to myself.

  ‘He didn’t look so good, though. When you see him, maybe tell him to get his behind back to Dr F. He needs a thorough checking-over, I’d say.’

  Why was he here? Was he following me? The curlew? Delia?

  I climbed into the cabin and Mrs Dooley leaned in the window on my side.

  ‘And Robin Roberts,’ she said, ‘don’t think that I’m not going straight inside and calling your mother’s mobile to make sure it really is okay for you to be here in the middle of a school week. Seems quite unlike her, somehow.’ She gave the door a double tap and walked down the path with Ripper and Slasher as Andy drove us away down the road.

  So Mum would be pissed off. I knew that already. The minute I turned up on Dad’s doorstep he would’ve called her. But it didn’t matter now. I was here. I’d made my choice. And when I saw the look on Delia’s face as we turned into the scenic reserve tourist road, and she looked around at the blackened trees, it seemed like I hadn’t chosen at all. That something had chosen me. And her. And Seth.