Crow Country

by Kate Constable

  Wah! Wah!

  High overhead, the black dot of a crow circled in the pale blue sky.

  Sadie threw up her hands. ‘Help! Crows, help us!’

  Wah! Wah! The crow’s cries were sharp and harsh. It glided nearer, and dipped its wings like a signal.

  ‘Walter! This way!’ Sadie shouted, and stumbled after the big black bird. The noise of the trail bike grew louder; it was getting closer.

  The crow wheeled above them, cawing. Its cries could have been a warning or a command. Sadie ran on blindly, letting the crow lead her. Suddenly she realised they were headed for the dry lake. She’d never approached it from this side. But there was the caked yellow sediment, flaking in the sun like the scales of some prehistoric beast. And now she knew where they were running to, where the crow was taking them.

  Waah-waaah.

  The crow gave a cry of satisfaction and swooped down to perch on one of the stones in the ring. It folded its wings and stared at Sadie with a glittering eye as she ran, panting, down the slope of the hidden valley. She stopped herself just outside the circle. ‘Can I? Are we allowed?’

  The crow inclined its head, giving permission, and Sadie threw herself inside the shelter of the stones. She called to Walter, ‘We’ll be safe now!’

  Walter flung himself into the circle, and bent to catch his breath. ‘You kidding? We’re not safe here. He’s still coming.’

  They couldn’t see Lachie, but the drone of the bike was louder than ever.

  ‘This is Waa’s place,’ said Sadie. ‘The crows will protect us—’

  Walter shook his head. ‘Lachie doesn’t think this is a magic place. It won’t work . . .’

  The bike’s engine revved and snarled, and sud- denly the bike itself flew over the top of a ridge and roared down onto the lake bed, spraying yellow mud.

  Waah! Waah!

  One, two, three more crows fluttered down to perch on top of the stones. Sadie swung round. Every stone in the circle was crowned with a sleek black bird; more crows flapped overhead, cawing. She gripped Walter’s arm.

  ‘See? I told you they’d look after us!’

  The bike roared up. The sun glinted on Lachie’s hair; he hadn’t stopped to put on his helmet. He halted the bike about fifty metres away and revved the engine.

  ‘What’s he going to do?’ muttered Walter.

  ‘He can’t do anything!’ said Sadie. ‘He can’t get us now! The crows are guarding us.’

  Walter squinted across the lake bed. ‘We’re trapped here.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Sadie. ‘He’ll go, he’ll leave.’

  But even as she spoke, Lachie revved the engine to a deafening roar, and drove the bike straight at the stone circle. Sadie screamed, Walter yelped, and they jumped back, pressing themselves flat against the rocks.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ shrieked Sadie.

  ‘Trying to kill us!’ shouted Walter.

  But Lachie wasn’t going fast; he edged the bike forward, nosing it toward the rocks as if he meant to guide it right inside the circle. Then at the last instant he nudged the bike against one of the sacred stones. He drew back and butted the rock again. It wobbled.

  ‘He’s trying to knock them down!’ Sadie screamed.

  The crows rose in a cloud, flapping and cawing, and circled above the ring. ‘Stop him!’ shrieked Sadie. ‘Can’t you stop him?’ If only the crows would fly at Lachie, attack him, make him stop!

  Again Lachie drew the bike back, and again drove it forward. There was another sickening crunch as the front tyre knocked the tall stone off-balance. It lurched sideways, and Lachie hastily revved his engine and retreated out of the way. But the stone didn’t fall. Lachie spun the bike, spraying an arc of yellow mud high behind him. He lined up the bike again to take another run at the unsteady rock.

  ‘Stop it!’ screamed Sadie.

  Beside her, Walter stooped, and threw some- thing.

  The clod of dried mud shattered as it hit Lachie on the arm. He shouted out in shock. The bike slewed from under him on the slippery surface, and crashed over, flinging Lachie sideways. The bike’s wheels spun, spitting pellets of mud into the air. The crows sent up a deafening, discordant chorus, their cries of wah! wah! overlapping in a panicked din.

  Lachie lay on the ground, unmoving.

  Sadie broke out of the circle and flung herself down beside him. Blood trickled down his face; his eyes were closed. He’d been thrown clear of the bike, which still roared and bellowed like a wounded creature a few metres away. ‘Lachie? Lachie?’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Walter hugged his arms round himself, his face ashen. ‘I didn’t mean it. Is he dead? Is he dead or what?’

  ‘He’s hit his head on a rock, I think.’ Sadie felt sick. Blood was pooling beneath Lachie’s head, matting his hair. The memory of Jimmy Raven flashed into her mind, the sticky blood, the dreadful weight of his dying, and for an instant the world shimmered, wobbling like the dislodged stone. The two times blurred, between Sadie now and Sadie then, between Jimmy’s body and Lachie’s, between the darkness and the day. She lowered her head as the light throbbed and the crows’ cries echoed around her.

  Walter grabbed her shoulder. ‘Sadie, we got to get out of here!’

  Shock returned her to herself. ‘What? We’ve got to help him!’

  ‘What do you want to do, carry him back to town?’ shouted Walter. ‘It’s gotta be an accident; we got nothing to do with it. If he’s hurt bad, if he dies – if they find out we were in his house, if they find out I chucked something at him – oh man. Oh God.’

  Gerald Mortlock’s voice echoed in Sadie’s head. It was an accident, I swear to God! The same panic, the same despair . . .

  Was it the same story, playing itself out again? Was it her fault? She couldn’t let the same thing happen again . . .

  Walter sank to his knees on the yellow mud and buried his head in his arms. ‘You don’t know what’ll happen to me. They’ll send me away. They’ll lock me up. I’m on my last chance.’ He raised his head and stared at Sadie with haunted eyes. ‘If they lock me up again I’ll kill myself.’

  ‘We can’t leave him here!’ Sadie was weeping. ‘If we leave him here, he will die!’ She tried to lift Lachie’s head. He moaned, his face drained of colour.

  The story tells itself again . . .

  The three of them were in the grip of Crow’s story, just as Gerald and Clarry and Jimmy had been. But Crow couldn’t see, Crow couldn’t help them. Sadie was the only one who knew; it was all up to her.

  The world spun before her eyes. She tried to say, ‘Walter – you can’t – we have to—’ But her voice clogged in her throat, as if the yellow mud choked her. The crows shrieked overhead, their calls rose and fell as their wings sliced the air like razors. Black filled the sky; black filled Sadie’s eyes.

  She heard Walter cry her name, very far away, but she was falling down a tunnel and everything was black.

  'Sadie!’

  Dad was shaking her shoulder.

  ‘Sadie, come on, love. I need you now.’

  She nodded dumbly, clutching at the edge of the shop counter. The shop tilted and swayed around her like a merry-go-round, but she took a deep breath and the world firmed and steadied.

  Mr Mortlock had sagged across the counter, limp as a rag doll. ‘Thank God!’ he muttered. ‘I knew I could count on you, Clarry.’

  Dad’s face was expressionless. He bent and picked up the bundle of bloodied clothes that Mr Mortlock had left on the floor, and bunched them in his hands. ‘I’ll get rid of these,’ he said. ‘You should go.’

  Mr Mortlock picked up his hat. Silently he held out his hand, and after a moment, Clarry shook it.

  Clarry said in a low voice, ‘Are we square?’

  ‘We’re square,’ said Mr Mortlock.

  They didn’t look at each other.

  Sadie watched the two men as if they were figures at the wrong end of a telescope; they seemed tiny, diminished, hardly worth hating.

  Mr
Mortlock touched the brim of his hat and slipped out of the shop. Dad bolted the door behind him. He stood with his back to Sadie.

  ‘Seen worse things in France,’ he said. He glanced round, and there was a plea in his eyes; Sadie realised with a shock that he wanted her forgiveness.

  She couldn’t give it. She dropped her gaze. She was numb inside.

  After a moment, Dad cleared his throat. ‘I’d better put these in the stove.’

  Sadie found her voice. ‘No. I’ll do it.’ She held out her hand. ‘And your clothes will need washing.’

  ‘Don’t show your mother.’

  ‘No. I won’t.’

  She met his eyes then, and the look that passed between them was a promise. Sadie watched as her father shuffled out of the shop. He seemed to have aged a hundred years in a single night. She knew that she would never see him in the same way again; something had shifted between them. Never again would her father be her rescuer, her protector, all-powerful and wise. He had lost his authority forever. Now Sadie would be the one to protect Clarry.

  She took the bundle of Gerald Mortlock’s ruined clothes into the kitchen and poked them into the stove’s mouth. Flames flared, and shadows danced along the walls. In the hiss and crackle of the fire, Sadie thought she heard the sounds of mourning; she thought she heard wails and sobbing, and outside in the night, she heard an owl cry and the distant voice of a crow.

  Waaah . . . waaah . . .

  Dad had crept into the kitchen behind her. He was wearing his pyjamas; mutely he held out his own filthy clothes to Sadie. She stood and took them from him.

  ‘You go to bed,’ she told him. ‘Is Mum asleep?’

  He nodded. ‘Thanks, love,’ he croaked, and coughed into his sleeve.

  ‘Go to bed,’ she said again, and watched him shuffle away, stooped and broken, an old man.

  In the flickering half-light from the open stove, her mind far away, Sadie reached into the pockets of her father’s trousers, as her mother always did before the wash. Automatically she emptied coins and keys and lengths of string from one pocket onto the table, then reached her hand into the other.

  Her fingers touched soft fur. At the same instant, the crow cried outside. Sadie snatched her hand back as though she’d touched the hot stove.

  Then, slowly, she drew out a small bundle, wrapped in what looked like possum fur. She had a confused impression of small shifting objects beneath her fingertips before she dropped the bundle on the tabletop. A kind of horror, a kind of fear, ran through her like a shudder. It was the package that Jimmy had handed to her father before he died.

  Burn it, said a voice inside her head.

  And another voice, a voice that was and was not her own, cried out, No!

  The fire sputtered and flared; shadows wheeled across the ceiling like swooping birds. Two worlds, two selves, struggled inside Sadie’s mind, pushing against each other like two magnets.

  Then, abruptly, she knew she was Sadie – Sadie out of time, Ellie Hazzard’s daughter, Sadie from the future. She stood in the strange kitchen, in the flickering dark, and she was afraid. But she knew why she was here; she knew what she had to do.

  With shaking hands, she took the Blue Crane cigarette tin from her cardigan pocket – from the other Sadie’s pocket – and wrenched off the lid. Gingerly she picked up Jimmy’s precious bundle, his sacred objects wrapped in fur, and squashed them down inside the tin and pushed on the lid. She stood for a moment, pressing the tin between her hands.

  She couldn’t let the other Sadie destroy these things. To Jimmy, to his people, they were holy objects, magical objects, filled with mysterious power. It would be as awful, as disrespectful, as melting down the communion cup or the crucifix from the other Sadie’s church.

  She pushed the tin back into her pocket. It dragged there, too heavy for what was inside it. It weighed like lead.

  She took Clarry’s clothes out to the lean-to. She found a tin tub, half-full of water, with clothes already soaking, and she shoved Clarry’s shirt and trousers in among them.

  She stood in the cold air, in the darkness. A single light shone from above the pub; as she watched, it was extinguished. What time was it? The tin burned cold under her hand.

  Stars salted the sky overhead. Sadie began to walk, quickly, stumbling not up the main street but across the road and along the railway track, circling away from the few houses nearby, turning her back to the town. She pushed her way into the scrub that fringed the lake, into the bush. She swapped the tin from hand to hand, felt it bruising her palms.

  It was too dark to see properly; branches scraped and scratched her. She thought of Jimmy lying lonely in the cold ground with no one to say goodbye; dirt scraped over him like a dead dog. He was far from his own country, lying in strange ground. Now he could never go home.

  Tears leaked down Sadie’s cheeks. A crow called, and she followed the sound, pushing blindly through the bush. She stumbled and caught onto a tree trunk to save herself. Waah! called the crow. Here.

  She wound her hand around the smooth, slender trunk. It was a gum tree sapling, young and pure and perfect.

  Sadie fell to her knees and scrabbled at the dirt beneath the tree with her bare hands. Soon her fingers closed around a short, stout stick and she began to dig with that. The digging soothed her; it was a job to do. The earth was soft and damp. The sapling seemed to bend over her watchfully, its leafy fingers caressing her hair. She heard the tiny noises of the bush night: scampering paws, rustling grasses, the soft sad hoot of a mopoke, the mournful hum of the frogs. The night was alive, it belonged to itself. It was a separate world, as different from the world of day as the old world was different from the new. The day might belong to the other Sadie’s God, the God of churches; but the night belonged to ancient, nameless gods, to silent spirits, to Waa and Bunjil and all the others. Sadie dug into the earth, she made a hole in the body of the land, and as she dug, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  When the hole was deep enough, she placed the tin at the bottom. She covered it over with earth as reverently as if it were Jimmy Raven’s body she buried there. The other Sadie would have said a prayer; but Sadie didn’t know any.

  When the hole was filled, she pressed her hands down flat upon the spot and bowed her head. She felt the cold eyes of the stars stare down at her; the icy fingers of the night mist wreathed around her legs. She realised she was chilled to the bone; the thin cardigan wasn’t enough to protect her.

  Stiffly she clambered up, and turned to go. But suddenly panic seized her. This sapling, among all the saplings in the bush – she’d never find it again. What if – What if—

  She dropped to her knees at the foot of the young tree once more, and scrabbled in the dirt and the litter of fallen leaves until her hand closed over a stone. Laboriously she scraped at the base of the trunk, carving an S, a snake-shaped scar, into the bark. S for Sadie, S for secret, for stones, sacred stone, S for sorry. She let the stone fall and staggered to her feet.

  I’m delirious, she thought. I’m getting a fever. A violent shudder racked her body, and a chill sweat broke out all over her skin. She stumbled through the bush, dropping one foot in front of the other with no idea which way she was walking. I’m lost, she thought at last. If I stay out here all night, I’m done for.

  Clarry wouldn’t come looking for her; he didn’t know where she was, he was probably asleep by now. No one knew where she was. Dad would need help to find her. Jimmy Raven was the best tracker in the district . . .

  But Jimmy was dead.

  Sadie stumbled and fell. She rolled over and stared up at the tangled trees, silvered by the starlight, and another violent shiver shook her from head to foot. She would lie here for a little while to rest and catch her strength. Then she’d find her way home.

  She felt herself slipping out of the other Sadie’s mind, and the other Sadie seeped back into her own body, like dye curling through water.

  She closed her eyes, and the dark rolle
d over her like a tide.

  'Sadie! Sadie! Wake up!’

  Sadie blinked. Walter’s anxious face stared down at her.

  ‘You okay?’ He helped her to sit up.

  Lachie was still sprawled in the dirt. The trail bike sputtered feebly on its side. She must have only fainted for a minute, though she felt as if she’d been away for hours.

  Sadie clutched at Walter as she hauled herself to her feet. ‘We’ve got to help him.’ She pointed to the bike. ‘Can you ride it?’

  Walter blinked. ‘I dunno. I can try.’ He looked at the bike, then at Lachie. ‘All right, I’ll go and get help. You stay with Lachie, yeah?’

  ‘Okay.’ Sadie hugged her arms around herself.

  Waaa-aaah . . . waaa-aaah . . .

  A melancholy drawl signalled the agreement of a distant crow. Walter pushed his fingers through his hair. Then he jogged to the fallen bike, heaved it upright, and slung his leg over the seat. The engine growled, the bike jerked, and Walter almost lost his balance – then he was off. Sadie waved frantically as the bike roared away. She had a last glimpse of Walter’s face, scowling with concentration, as he disappeared across the lake bed, trailing plumes of yellow mud in his wake. The whine of the bike faded and there was silence.

  Sadie knelt beside Lachie and lifted his head onto her lap. He groaned, his eyes squeezed shut. She wriggled out of her jacket and wrapped it around his head like a bandage, pulling it tight to try to stop the bleeding.

  ‘You’re going to be all right, Lachie,’ she said. She didn’t know if he could hear her. She gripped his hand. ‘Walter’s gone to get help, they’ll be here soon . . .’ A terrible thought struck her. What if Walter didn’t go to the oval? What if he just rode away?

  ‘He’ll be back soon . . .’ she faltered.

  Lachie moaned and tried to struggle up.

  ‘Don’t move!’ cried Sadie. ‘Keep still.’ She squeezed his hand and thought of the other Sadie, lying in the bush, chilled through. Was that what made her sick, was that what killed her? Sadie shivered. Was that Crow’s punishment?