To Taste The Wine

by Fern Michaels

  Harlow Kane’s eyes glittered angrily. “Picnic?”

  “Everyone is gone, Father. Mr. Tanner went to fetch them back so you wouldn’t have to leave me alone.”

  “Don’t talk foolishness, girl. Where’s my wife?”

  Emma shrank back in fear, whimpering as she brought the hem of her skirt up to her mouth.

  “I won’t ask you again, girl. Where’s my wife?”

  Emma minced her way to the kitchen window, never taking the hem of her dress from her mouth. “Mr. Tanner doesn’t want me to tell you they went to the Blue Mountains. I told him I tell you everything, Father. I’m a good girl, not like Mother.”

  “The mountains?” Emma nodded. “Did you tell Tanner that’s where they went?” Emma nodded a second time.

  Harlow paused, frowning as he calculated the odds of overtaking his wife—and her lover. Chelsea and the Aboriginal had a two-hour head start, with Tanner following closely behind. Providing he went in the right direction, he had three hours of hard riding ahead before he’d sight his quarry. Harlow nodded in satisfaction. He could make it. Without another word to Emma, he left the house.

  Mounting his horse he slapped the reins and dug his heels hard into the animal’s flanks. The horse responded by rearing back his huge head and driving forward. The sound of Harlow’s whip cracking the satiny hide was loud in the still, midmorning air.

  There was only one thought in Harlow’s mind as he drove the animal beneath him: kill Tanner and Chelsea. His life had been fine until they’d conspired together to ruin him. He’d been an upstanding member of the WGA—he’d had wealth, position, power. All that was gone now. Gone with the hot winds, lost to him forever. And it was Tanner’s fault. He’d lost his oldest daughter, thanks to Tanner’s and Chelsea’s intervention. His son—flesh of his flesh, who was one day to have run his beloved vineyards—was now lost to him, too. In debt to Tanner and a like amount to Abernathy. He was wiped out now; how could he ever hope to pay his son’s gambling debts—to save face? Once he killed Tanner and Chelsea, Franklin would come back and run the vineyards. There would be no debt … and no reminder of his wife’s infidelity.

  When he heard a horse wickering softly in the brush, he reined in to investigate, a crafty look on his face. Tanner’s horse, and from the looks of things quite lame. So, Tanner was on foot. He’d catch up to him soon. And wherever Tanner was, Chelsea and the brat wouldn’t be far behind. He smiled, an evil grimace of pleasure at what he was going to do. He thought he could almost smell Tanner’s body scent. With a diabolical gleam in his eyes, he looked down at the trail and the broken branch. It was a sign from above. God in His infinite wisdom was showing him the way to the sinners.

  Chapter 18

  Tingari walked tall and strong, little Gaby slung safely over her shoulder. The Aboriginal’s rhythmic strides rocked the baby, lulling her to sleep. Behind her, Chelsea trudged along, already too weary to consider another step. They had been walking since early that morning, taking a northwestern path where Tingari had said they would find safety. The heat was overwhelming and thirst a moment-to-moment agony. The afternoon sun beat down upon them relentlessly, and finally Chelsea begged Tingari to take a rest.

  “Mitjitji will follow. She will not think of heat or thirst. Mitjitji will think of safety.” Tingari raised her arm, pointing off into the distance. “To stay here is to die. There is water. There is food.”

  She spoke with such certainty that Chelsea was forced to follow, the reward of food and drink pressing her onward. The shadows were already long and the angry sun a deep crimson on the horizon when Tingari motioned that they would soon make camp. Gaby was crying miserably, her little voice hoarse with thirst.

  Throughout the day Chelsea had noticed the change in the landscape as they covered the distance to the Blue Mountains. Tall, dry grasses that had been green before the drought had given way to a shorter, stubby growth that tore at the hem of her skirt. The earth, parched and cracked, had spit upcroppings of rubble and rock that dug into the soles of her shoes and threatened an unwary ankle. Tingari, barefoot as always, covered the land as though it were carpeted with cashmere. Her huge feet were tough-soled and her long legs carried her steadily. In the heat of the afternoon, Tingari had removed her simple cotton dress and made a sling to carry Gaby. Chelsea was awed both by the Aboriginal’s beautiful body and her lack of embarrassment at her nudity. This was her proper setting—out here under the sky, walking proudly over the harsh land—not the formality of a house encumbered with unnecessary furnishings. This was Tingari’s place, her world; and she embraced it with an inward faith, born of thousands of years in race memory, that it would always nurture and keep her safe. It was that knowledge of the land, that unnerving instinct for survival, upon which Chelsea was counting. If anyone could find safety for herself and Gaby, it was Tingari.

  “Soon now, Mitjitji.” Tingari had grasped her arm and was pulling her along. She’d been heading in this westerly direction since late afternoon as though she had a particular destination in mind.

  “How soon?” Chelsea gasped. Life about the house on Bellefleur had not prepared her for such an expenditure of energy. She sucked on the smooth round stone Tingari had put in her mouth to tease the saliva glands and keep her mouth moist.

  “Soon. There we will camp.” The Aboriginal pointed into the distance, where Chelsea could almost see a ridge amid the foothills. It looked so far away, too terribly far.

  Evening had fallen when Tingari quickened her pace. Chelsea forced herself to keep close, fearing the Aboriginal would leave her behind in the darkness. In a few minutes they skidded down the slope that led to the foot of the ridge.

  “No more, Tingari, I can’t go another step.” Gaby was crying, a fretful, hollow sound. Even Tingari couldn’t comfort her. “The baby is hungry and thirsty,” Chelsea said breathlessly.

  “First water, then food.” Tingari motioned for Chelsea to rest at the base of the ridge, putting Gaby into her arms. “First water, then food,” she repeated.

  Chelsea peered dully into the darkness. Not even Tingari could provide the basics of life in this wilderness. Ancient trees peppered the landscape, their twisted, ghostly arms reaching for rain that had never come. The brush underfoot was kindling dry, the earth itself parched to a powder that clung to the skin and invaded the eyes. Chelsea collapsed against the stone ridge, trying weakly to comfort the baby, wondering how quickly death would come in this godforsaken place. Not even the stars glittering in a velvet-black sky seemed to speak to her of a presence of God. She wanted to cry but was too weary, and too sick. Nightmarish illusions of herself burying her dead child made her shiver. Between death and her child stood one lone woman, black of skin and wise in the ways of the ancients. One woman, proud and determined to see them through this nightmare. Upon Tingari rested their safety, and it seemed too immense a burden even for her.

  Off in the distance, Chelsea heard Tingari working among the trees. Pounding, chopping sounds echoed in the night. In a while Tingari returned, carrying a large twisted limb and several pieces of kindling. “Come, Mitjitji, there is water.”

  “Water? Where?” Chelsea struggled to her feet while Tingari took Gaby into her arms.

  Wordlessly, Tingari led her into a thicket. “It is there, in the tree.” Working diligently, she began chopping with the sharp edge of a stone into a bulging knot just beneath the bark. Chelsea heard the wood split and saw Tingari lift Gaby to hold her against the tree, directing the baby’s mouth toward a miraculous trickle of moisture that dripped from the knot. Patiently Tingari worked with Gaby, encouraging her to drink, wetting the child’s mouth and cheeks with the precious water. She murmured in her strange tongue, cooing, urging, teaching Gaby to take her water from God’s own reservoir.

  After Gaby and Chelsea, Tingari drank as well, swallowing the precious liquid in thirsty gulps. Then she offered the trickle a second time to Gaby, who, experienced now, drank quickly and efficiently. Finally, placing the baby once a
gain in Chelsea’s arms, Tingari knelt at the base of the tree and chanted, giving her thanks to the tree’s mamu for sharing the water of life with them.

  Back at the ridge, Chelsea was able to rest more comfortably. Water for Gaby had been her primary concern. Food was a secondary and less urgent necessity.

  Tingari had gathered more kindling and was working quickly with stone and stick to start a fire. Slowly the embers caught, consuming one blade of grass at a time until Tingari had fed enough fuel to give them light.

  “Mitjitji will place stones around fire. Mamu of fire is greedy, eating all in its way.”

  Chelsea knew Tingari was warning of a brush fire and she worked as instructed to surround the campfire with stones and clear away the vulnerable brush grasses just beyond the circle’s perimeter.

  It seemed a very long time until Tingari returned. The dress in which she’d slung Gaby was now bundled under her arm and seemed to be alive with squirming creatures. Startled, Chelsea grabbed Gaby and pressed herself against the stone ridge. “What have you got there? What is it?”

  “Food. Life,” Tingari answered simply.

  Instinct told Chelsea she didn’t want to know what was captured in the dress, so she turned her face away, hoping not to hear the sound of the rock or the last futile cry as Tingari took its life. Soon the stench of burning pelt smoked in the fire, and as Tingari worked, Chelsea believed she saw the long smooth tail of a rodent. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned away once again.

  Surprisingly, the meat was palatable. Chelsea took the bits offered by Tingari and chewed them lightly before putting them into Gaby’s mouth. Somewhere, Tingari had found the hollow burl of a tree, which she’d brought back to camp filled with water from another tree knot. Her thirst quenched and her tummy full, Gaby yawned sleepily and curled into Chelsea’s lap to be rocked to sleep.

  “You haven’t eaten, Tingari.”

  “This one does not eat of living things,” Tingari reminded her. “Many of my race eat, but not Tingari. It is my belief. When the sun rises, it will show the way to carnaba root and coolibah. Then Tingari will eat.”

  “Did you know we’d find water in the trees?” Chelsea asked.

  Tingari nodded. “The signs were shown. It is a place I know. All the people of the land know many places like this one. This place has great mamu from many who have passed and from many who are dead. It is to a place such as this that Tingari will come to rest her bones.”

  “You already know where your grave will be?”

  Tingari nodded. “There is no child of Tingari’s loins to lay me there. So Tingari must choose the time to set her mamu free.”

  Chelsea heard the abysmal sadness in the woman’s voice. Tingari had told her of the duties an Aboriginal must perform for his ancestors, and setting their bodies in a predestined place was one of them. Without a child to bury her, Tingari must choose the time of her own death in that secret place where she believed her mamu would be set free to dwell again in some other life form.

  “Tingari, is this a graveyard for your people?”

  “No, Mitjitji. It is a place of Dreaming. It is where Dreamtime begins. Come, I will show.”

  Placing Gaby in Tingari’s arms, Chelsea picked up a burning branch and followed the woman to the face of the ridge, then up a steep path and into a shallow cave. There, Tingari indicated with a wave of her arm that Chelsea was to hold the torch closer to the rock face. Ocher and crimson caught the light and reflected dimly off the smooth rock.

  “Tingari’s people before this life,” she explained, pointing to an owl-like drawing. It was crudely yet beautifully drawn, simple straight lines indicating a plumage of feathers, and just above it a handprint, ancient as time itself, outlined in deep red ocher. Farther down the rock face were other drawings, stick-line interpretations of hunters, their spears held above their heads; and obviously female figures, large, pendulous breasts and fuzzy-haired, all of them with dilly bags slung over their shoulders like peddlers’ sacks.

  “It is Namarakain, the spirit who dances from sickbed to sickbed. See her long teeth that eat the souls of the dying.” Tingari shivered unexpectedly, sending chills up Chelsea’s spine. “There is Thunder-man. He holds the lightning in his hand. Here are more hunters. See, barbed spears and skin throwers. This is where Tingari comes from. These are her people.”

  Tingari’s voice resonated off the stone cliff as she explained her people’s history. In the beginning of Dreamtime, the beginnings of life, the Aboriginals had decorated stone cliffs with pulverized rock mixed with water. They were nomads, living together in small family groups, often spending their entire lives without seeing or knowing a stranger. Yet they knew others walked the land, and in that basic need to communicate—or perhaps to leave their mark upon the earth—they began to draw on rockfaces near watering holes. Each painting was a story, a narrative of their life. Tingari said she had seen rock paintings of the evil spirits upon which the people’s misfortunes were blamed. In painting their likenesses upon the rock, the people had hoped to drain the spirits of their power. Other pictures chronicled great hunts or depicted a natural catastrophe such as fire or flood.

  Some paintings held mystical charms, Tingari explained. Spiny anteaters, egg-laying mammals that were hunted as a delicacy, were often painted in the hope of magically increasing their numbers. Often a panorama of fish was drawn in the hope of bolstering the supply in nearby ponds and rivers. But no portrait was ever drawn of a living person for fear of entrapping that person’s mamu in the rock. All the dancers, hunters, and stick figures were faceless. Neither did Tingari’s people ever develop a written alphabet. The only signature of an artist to be found was the handprint stamped above the paintings. All over the land there were caves and rockfaces such as these, Tingari explained proudly. Her people had walked where none others had gone; not even the white man and his modern ways could conquer the land and live from it like Tingari’s people.

  At the campfire once again, Tingari chanted a song as she fed more kindling into the fire. She had shared some of herself with her friend, Mitjitji, and with that sharing had come a peace of her soul.

  “Tingari, where will we walk tomorrow?”

  “Not walk. Here Mitjitji and Gaby stay with Tingari. This a good place, good mamu. We not stay long. Soon he will come for us.”

  “Who? Who will come?” Chelsea cried, frightened. But Tingari was chanting and praying, and nothing could extract an answer from her as she rubbed warm ashes over her arms and legs and prepared herself for another day protected by her ancient spirits.

  For two more days Chelsea and Gaby stayed with Tingari at the cliff rock. By day they searched for water, storing quantities of it in burled tree knots Tingari had fashioned crudely with her sharp-edged stones. While Chelsea sought the area for the carnaba and coolibah roots Tingari preferred, the Aboriginal was busy trapping the evening meal. Wisely, Chelsea never asked what she was eating and feeding Gaby. Just the shape of the tiny bones she picked and the furry pelts Tingari buried along with the entrails told her more than she wanted to know.

  On the third morning Chelsea awakened to find Tingari searching the horizon. “What is it? What do you see?”

  “There is nothing to see. There is to feel. Soon. Soon.”

  Before she could question further, Tingari loped off into the thicket to begin the day’s chores. Gaby played nearby with several smooth stones Tingari had provided. The sun danced off the baby’s gleaming dark curls and had burnished her skin to a golden brown. At that moment Gaby’s resemblance to her father was astonishing, especially in the teasing little grin that lit her eyes when she held out one of the stones to show her mother how clever she was.

  In the torpid heat of the day, they rested in the shade of the cliff rock. Waves of heat vaporized and shimmered in the air, creating a huge mirage of a cool blue sea. But Chelsea knew there was no sea, only the vast expanse of wilderness, cruel and beautiful and unforgiving.

  Beside her, Tingari bec
ame alert, peering off into the distance, searching the horizon. “Soon. Soon,” Chelsea heard her murmur.

  That afternoon Tingari approached Chelsea and spoke quietly. “Mitjitji will take baby and walk that way,” she said. “Tingari will walk there.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “There is where Boss Kane looks for his wife.”

  At the mere mention of Harlow, Chelsea’s heart began to pound with fear. “I can’t. We’ll stay together. You can take us deeper into the outback. You know how to hide from him.”

  “There is no place to hide, Mitjitji. Nowhere is safe. Thunder-man throws his light, the land will burn. Take baby, go.”

  All the fragile security Chelsea had felt since coming to Tingari’s Dreaming place evaporated like the chimera of a mirage. Nowhere safe. Harlow looking for her and the baby. The baby!

  “Tingari, show me where to walk. You take the baby, she’ll be safer with you. Tell me what to do.”

  Tingari shook her head. “No. Mitjitji will be safe. Tingari leaves a trail for Boss Kane to follow.”

  “Don’t you see?” Chelsea anguished. “I can’t take care of Gaby out here. Only you can do that. I don’t know how to find water or food. Only you can do that! You swore to me, Tingari. You swore you’d always protect my child. You swore it on the mamu of your own dead child! You’ve got to save Gaby!”

  Tingari shook her head, sadness filling her eyes. “Tingari’s heart is here.” She touched Chelsea’s breast with the flat of her hand.

  “And my heart and my thanks are here.” Chelsea’s slim white hand reached out to touch Tingari. “But the child comes first; before anything, Gaby comes first! Show me where to walk. Tell me how to leave a trail.”

  Hours later, Chelsea ran a path through the brush as Tingari had told her. She was intent on leaving a clear trail for Harlow to follow; Gaby’s life might depend on it. Rivulets of perspiration rolled down her face as she stumbled over the hard, dry ground. The front of her dress was soaking wet, making the thin material cleave to her body. She knew what the loss of that precious moisture could do to her unless she could replenish it. Already she was dizzy with fatigue, but she drove herself onward, praying that Tingari would carry Gaby to safety. Bless Tingari.