The Girl from Snowy River

by Jackie French

  I thought my back would hurt more tonight, but it’s funny, it hurts less than it has since I fell. Maybe Sister Burrows is right: the more I move it the better it will be. And now I can really move. It is so good to look down at things again, instead of always up.

  I’m tired but I’m too excited to sleep. Nicholas said that bad things would happen, but they would pass. Maybe that means that I will be able to walk properly again. But he said that very, very good things will happen too.

  Maybe now I can walk — or might be able to walk and won’t need nursing — Sandy will…it’s funny, I can’t even write it down, perhaps because I want it just to happen, not imagine it by writing it. Maybe Sandy could get a Soldier Settler grant on another mountain near Batlow, not as high as this, of course, with better soil. But even if he did, I’d still miss the Rock. Dad said once that when he stood on the Rock he could feel his feet connected deep to the centre of the earth, and ever since I’ve felt the same.

  Somehow the Rock isn’t just Nicholas, but Sandy — Sandy as he used to be and Sandy as he is now — and Mum and Dad and the brumbies, and everything that made up my life.

  Things change, of course — so much has happened in the past few years, in the last year too. I can accept things changing, but I don’t think I can bear losing the Rock.

  Although that’s silly. You bear what you have to bear. And if you can’t, maybe you die, like Mum. But I don’t want to die, not for a long, long time. Not even if I have to leave the Rock.

  It was a day of heavy clouds, fat bellied and green tinged. First they covered the mountain top, then the paddocks and, finally, the house. At last the rain began, not so much falling as sweeping from all around.

  Flinty was glad she’d sent Kirsty and Joey off to school with a change of clothes. They could both stay at the Macks’ tonight, while Andy stayed at the Mullinses’. She’d be alone here for the first time in her life.

  It felt strange, but good too. She could never be truly alone up on the mountain. Not just because of Snow King in his paddock and the hens, but the wallabies pulling at the shrubs to eat the new shoots, the sugar gliders munching at spring blossom, even the tiny bats that flew across the house at night. One had got into Mum’s wardrobe once. Mum had screamed, but Dad had lifted it carefully and put it on the stand by the water barrel…

  Only a few weeks earlier it had seemed that she would never be alone for more than a couple of hours again, that someone would always need to lift things for her, even help her use a chamberpot.

  Now she could walk slowly around the kitchen and down the corridor, holding on to the walls for support. It was still a long way from walking outside, much less climbing a hill or riding a horse, but one day that would come too.

  She still couldn’t stand up by herself, unless she pulled herself up by her hands on the kitchen table, or lay down on the bed, holding her legs out straight, then rolled off at an angle so that her feet touched the floor while her arms pulled at the bar to heave herself upright. It was clumsy, and took too long and was so awkward she wouldn’t let even Kirsty watch her. But at least it got her upright. Every day of movement made her back feel better. When the pain screamed at night she could even walk around till it eased. She was careful not to lift anything heavier than a teapot or saucepan of potatoes, and tried to move smoothly so her back didn’t jar. And each day she was sure that it grew better.

  The house creaked around her. Any ghosts on the mountains are kind ones, she thought. I need this time. Time to drink it all in, to store my memories, instead of bustling about getting meals and making sure Joey has dry socks.

  She’d promised Andy not to get out of her chair and try to walk when she was alone unless she really had to. He was scared she might fall. But it was too tempting to resist and, after all, what could happen to her with the chairs and tables for support? She stood carefully, and walked around the table — really walked, she thought, able to lift her knees now too.

  No need to make a proper dinner just for herself. There were cold potatoes — Sandy had brought some new ones up from the Macks’, where they’d been in the soil over winter — and dripping in the food safe, and half a cabbage in the scullery. She fried it all into a big pan of bubble and squeak, ate a third of it and left the rest to reheat for tea and breakfast.

  She stayed in her chair darning that afternoon. The half-hour on her feet had exhausted her. As the shadows lengthened she brought in firewood so she didn’t have to go out in the dark. She wheeled herself onto the front verandah in the late afternoon to look down the track, just in case the others decided to come home. The rain had washed away the fog: it eased slowly as the darkness grew. Stars swept across the sky in their own strange tides, until clouds smeared them into black again.

  No one was coming. She wheeled back in, chilled, ate her bubble and squeak, and warmed a bran poultice to take to bed, with the luxury of the lamp beside her so she could read as long as she liked, an old book of Dad’s called Mr Midshipman Easy. She’d read it so often she could almost recite it now, but that didn’t change the joy of the words, or the feeling that she too was there, facing the grey waves and flapping sails.

  Would she ever see the sea? She was happy enough to see it only in books, especially if seeing it meant getting shipwrecked. Besides, it would take days to get to the seaside. She’d rather have the pinky-purple haze of indigofera, or the white fuzz of thorn bush, or the shine of new bark that left the snow gums streaked with grey and green and red. You only get that once a year, Dad said. Three score and seven years for a man, so you only get that many springs too, and Christmases and birthdays.

  Dad hadn’t even managed three score… No, she wouldn’t want to miss even one of the seasons of the mountain, just to see the sea. But maybe it would be different when she had to live down on the Drinkwater plains.

  She blew out the lamp and slept deeply, waking at rooster crow, the kookaburras chuckling afterwards. There was a new note to their call this morning. An almost…shocked sound. Apart from that the world was strangely silent.

  She slid into her chair and wheeled over to the window to open the shutters. The world glowed so bright she almost had to shut her eyes.

  Snow! Pure white, too recent to even be flecked by wombat and bird prints or the longer marks of the roos. It was deeper than she’d ever seen it: two feet high about the house perhaps, piled up even on the edge of the verandah. But up on the mountain…

  It was as though giants had played in the night, making new cliffs and mountains. But these cliffs were snow — massive tall drifts right across the mountain above the paddocks, the edges crumbling as she looked.

  The clouds hung below the Rock, across the valley. This was her miracle then, unseen by the valley below, her world of ice and trees and beauty.

  What miracle of cloud and wind had made this frozen landscape? She dimly remembered Dad saying that spring snow was always the deepest.

  There’d been spring snow the first year he’d been on the mountain, so soft and deep he’d sunk to his knees, when the house was just what was now the kitchen and scullery. Spring snow sucks in the sunlight, then beams it out tenfold, he’d said. She looked up at the harsh blue of the sky and smiled. It really did look darker because of the snow, just like Dad had said, as though most of its light was below.

  Well, today’s snow wouldn’t last. Even now, as the sun rose above the ridge, the first icicles were dropping from the roof. She could almost see the soft top of the snow turn to a brittle crust of ice and the snow below it melt. She turned to stoke up the fire. By midday the snow would have melted into a flood…

  She stopped, her hands still on the chair’s wheels. She had never seen snow as deep as this. When this snow melted it would bring a flood, perhaps the biggest the valley had ever known.

  No one down in the valley would be able to see the snow, not through the layer of fog. The fury of water would appear with no more warning than a few seconds of roaring and thunder. It would surge across t
he creek flats, where the sheep grazed on the new grass that had sprung up after the last floods, where the men and horses ploughed to put in the spring crops.

  This flood might grasp higher than any flood before — even, maybe, to the schoolhouse nestled by the road. It would come in a torrent, gaining speed as it crashed down the mountain till it was captured by the Snowy far below.

  Nothing could withstand the strength of a thaw flood down from the heights, she thought. How many sheep and cows or pigs would die today trapped in the paddocks as the flood wave washed them against the fences? How many farmers might be ruined? The Macks, the Mullinses, the Colours of the Valley, all the kind, dear neighbours…

  She had to warn them. She couldn’t warn them! She had an hour, perhaps, while the snow melted and the flood gathered, another hour while it hurled itself down the mountain…

  It took an hour to ride to the Mullinses’, another half-hour to ride to each farm in the valley. Less, if you galloped. But there was no one here to gallop down to the valley, only a crippled girl in a chair. No horse to ride, except Snow King in his paddock.

  If only a yell could reach the houses below. If only someone might call by, Sandy or Mrs Mack. But no one would be coming up through the mud today, not till Joey and Kirsty late this afternoon, and Andy tonight.

  By then it would be too late. Far, far too late.

  There is only me and Snow King, she thought. You’ll probably never be able to ride again, Sister Burrows had said. Riding could damage her back more than it had been before. And galloping Snow King might strain his legs, split a bone or strain a tendon, be damaged so that he’d never be a racer, maybe never even canter across the hills. Both horse and girl crippled, if they galloped down the mountain now.

  A blob of snow slid off the roof and landed with a plifff outside. The thaw was coming even as she hesitated.

  She couldn’t do it. It was impossible, even without the risk to herself and Snow King. She couldn’t even walk as far as the paddock, much less get on a horse.

  Impossible. But she had to try.

  Chapter 38

  19 November 1920

  Dear Diary,

  I think last week I felt a tiny breath of what the valley men must have felt facing the enemy. You do what you have to do, because if you don’t it’s worse.

  No time for warmer clothes. Even boots would be a struggle, taking minutes she couldn’t spare. She wheeled herself out to the back porch, planted her slippered feet on the ground, then stood by the back steps.

  Stairs. It had been eight months since she had walked down steps. Nor was there solid ground to walk on after that, just slush more than ankle deep. She could manage to lift her knees as she walked around the kitchen. How could she struggle through snow?

  She grabbed the railing, and twisted one leg down, twisted again, and the second leg followed it.

  Another step. Another. Her slippers were already drenched, but the woollen socks would help keep her feet from freezing. Even wet wool keeps the heat in, Mum whispered, years away but still a comfort in her mind.

  Help me, she said softly to her parents, to the Rock and to the mountains. Please help me now.

  At last — ten seconds or ten years later — she stood at the bottom of the stairs, grasping the rail. The paddock gate was maybe fifty yards away.

  Fifty yards uphill, with nothing to hold on to, through melting snow in lumps and bumps across the ground. Fifty yards might as well be fifty miles.

  She had to let go of the railing now. She had to walk properly, to climb. She lifted a leg…

  Her back wasn’t strong enough to lift her foot above the snow, and there was no way she could force it up through the slush. Desperate, she bent and lifted her knee with her hands, moved it forwards, let it fall down.

  Squish! Her foot landed in the snow, met solid ground below. Somehow she was still upright, even without the rail to cling to.

  She lifted her other leg. Up and down. Squish! Up and down…again…again…again…

  She must look like Frankenstein’s poor monster, like the picture in the book, the wretched creature lurching about on legs that weren’t really his. Her legs didn’t feel like they belonged to her either. But somehow she made them move.

  One step. Another step lifting her knee with her hands each time. She had to go faster, but if she went too fast she’d fall. If she fell perhaps she’d never get up again, would lie in the snow freezing. If the thaw came Joey and Kirsty wouldn’t come home to find her for perhaps days. Too late for her. Too late for the valley.

  Another step. Another.

  There was no pain. Almost no pain, just a blankness where pain would be if she let herself think of it. Pain could come later, when she had time to deal with pain. Small cascades of chilly water trickled off the stable roof. The sun, that great beaming bully, was climbing higher.

  Another step, another. Sweat trickled down her back. Pain sweat, not from heat. Almost to the paddock gate now.

  Stupid! She should have brought some bread, an apple — something to tempt Snow King to come to her. Would he even remember her? He had only known her for a few months and hadn’t seen her all winter and spring.

  He knew her. She heard his whinny, heard the hooves, half muffled, half crunching through the crust of snow. He cantered up to her, tossing his head, then pig-rooted, part showing off, part rejoicing as she had been in the sheer abundance of light and snow.

  No saddle. She couldn’t carry it, much less put it on. At least he wore a headstall, though of course no bit and reins. There was a piece of rope hanging on the gate latch. She could attach that to his headstall so at least she had a lead rope — not much with which to control a spirited horse like Snow King, but better than nothing. She would be able to use it against his neck to indicate to him when she needed him to change direction and pull on it to slow him down. But without a saddle, how could she get on?

  Once she would have grabbed a handful of mane, sprung up and, dropping her left shoulder, swung her right leg over easily before settling herself on his warm, broad back. But her legs couldn’t spring now, not without a whole spine to tell them how to move. Instead she opened the wooden gate and hauled herself up onto it with her arms, strong from months of wheeling. She managed to get her feet up onto the second rung, to balance there. ‘Here, boy! Here!’

  Snow King tossed his head as if it was a game. She bit her lip. ‘Please, boy! Come on, Snow King.’

  He stopped prancing and skittering. For a moment the brown eyes looked at her. She realised suddenly that he understood her. Not what was important perhaps, or why, but that this was important, the most important thing she’d ever done or asked him to do. Slowly, miraculously, he settled. He walked towards her, and then stood next to the gate, as quiet as Empress.

  She pushed herself from the gate towards him. She landed lying across his back, half on, half off. He snorted in surprise, trotting a few steps so she thought she would slither off. But then he steadied again.

  Her arms couldn’t lift her legs and cling to Snow King too. Her legs had to move themselves. Move! she told them. Lift! The right foot shifted just a little. She made another effort, sweat trickling down inside her shirt despite the cold, and suddenly her leg obeyed, twisting onto one side across his back while the other stayed where it was, her body lifting so at last she was where she had longed to be all those months indoors. Astride Snow King’s back among the blaze of white and mountains.

  Balance was second nature. But to gallop over rough country you had to grip with your knees and thighs — not to mention use them to signal to the horse you rode. Instead her legs just hung there.

  Impossible to gallop down the track. Even more impossible to take the short cut, to guide Snow King over wombat holes and through thorn bushes, balancing on a horse’s back, no saddle to keep her steady. No stirrups, though even if she had them they’d be no use.

  But it had been impossible to get from the house to here. The impossible had to keep on hap
pening.

  Her back screamed. She ignored it.

  She tapped Snow King’s neck lightly with one hand and clicked her tongue, hoping he’d understand hand gestures instead of the nudge of her heels.

  He did. He began to walk, through the gate, down to the track. She bent low, over his neck. Even before she urged him with her voice he understood.

  He surged like the stream in torrent, like the Snowy down its bed. He galloped as smoothly as water, neck arched before her with his head almost statue still as he scanned the track in front of his flying hooves. It was as though they had suddenly become part of the mountain, like the wind itself made way for them, parting to let the horse and rider through.

  Past the Rock, with its breath of chill. Snow King didn’t even falter, as other horses did, although his ears pricked up a little. Around the corner, then another…

  She had to turn him off the track here to take the short cut. She pulled on the lead rope and shifted her weight in the direction she wanted him to go.

  Perhaps he sensed the old tracks where Empress had been. But at any rate he leaped over the first of the bushes, his hooves sure even in the slush.

  The fog was below them, like a massive wall shutting out the world. Snow King plunged into it, as though trusting his rider to take him where it was safe. All at once the world was another kind of white: the snow invisible under his hooves, the air clammy and cold.

  And then they were out into clear bright air. She glanced back at the smooth white barrier. You’d never guess the deadly burden of snow above.

  A branch lashed her, almost unseating her. She cried out, bent down again as low as she could go onto Snow King’s neck. He had never been ridden in rough country, as far as she knew, only in the paddock and on the track. But perhaps he understood, because he kept clear of overhanging branches now. Even when he soared above the wombat holes his stride stayed so smooth it was as though they flew together, horse and girl.