Holding my shoulders square in her hands, she stares direct into my eyes. “You’ve got my letter,” she says. “Marta would be more fool than I credit her if she ignores the strength of that recommendation.”
I nod. Marta is so far from my thoughts she feels like someone imagined.
Saice gives me a last smile, then Jago takes hold of my hands. “Take care, Ness,” he says. “Don’t let what’s happened here taint your view of Vidya.”
There’d be no gain in telling him it already has.
“I wish you were coming with us,” I say, voice tight as an unfurled bud.
It’s a foolish wish, for the walk would be beyond him, even though we have only half of it ahead of us – one of the scouts arrived last night to tell us that Alek would be waiting with a jigger, of sorts, beyond the place where the paras’ bomb damaged the line.
“I’m more use here,” Jago says. “Telling your story can be a way of healing, and who better to listen than an archivist recorder with time on his hands? And besides,” he smiles, “my old lungs prefer it to the city.”
“Mine too, old or not.”
“Perhaps that will bring you back to us,” he says, squeezing my hands.
I smile thinly. Perhaps. Perhaps distance will dull the sharp edge of my memories. “Look after Anjan,” I tell him.
She’d chosen not to come outside to see us off. “I’d feel like an intruder,” she’d said. “I’m only a visitor here.”
“So am I.”
Anjan had shaken her head. “You’ve earned your place in the community.”
Her words had left me winded. I wonder now whether they’re true.
With our farewells done, Saice and Jago and I stand awkwardly. Tanlin skips into our silence, taking no pains to hide her pleasure at leaving. “We can walk together,” she says, reaching for my hand.
When Truso strides towards us she slides away. “Good luck, lass,” he says. “And my thanks for all you’ve done.” He pauses. “Esha would have been proud of you.”
My voice curdles in my throat.
“You know you’ll be welcome any time you care to come back.”
Forcing a smile, I try to feel proud of my decision to leave. That it surprised no one but me makes me feel no less a traitor. Maybe Anjan was right.
Truso moves on, spreading farewells and thanks – reminding people, too, that they’ll be welcome if ever they decide to return. Some will. Vidya will be hard after the freedom of Ebony Hill – even after this.
Around me people move restlessly, ready to depart. I study the group: two young families from Dales and another from Pinehill, most of the survivors from Summertops, Catha and her daughters, a young couple from Home Farm whose children were sent back to Vidya with the first evacuees – in all, four men, eight women and eleven children.
Alongside those lost in the war, the exodus leaves Truso with a sizeable hole in his workforce, ameliorated a little by the seasonal workers from Vidya. But seasonals can’t mend the less tangible damage. My eyes drift towards the low hedge that hides the farm’s crop of fresh graves. It will be a long time before the Ebony Hill community regains its confidence and morale. Glancing back towards the farmhouse, I catch sight of Truso, on his haunches and deep in conversation with one of the departing children from Summertops. If anyone can mend Ebony Hill’s spirit, I think, it’s Truso.
“Right then,” Farra calls. “Let’s get moving. We’ve a bit of a walk ahead of us.”
People shuffle and mutter around me, picking up bags, calling for children. I swallow hard as our last farewells are made.
Eight scouts flank us, eyes scanning the slopes ahead as though they expect trouble. I tend to the view that any paras left in the vicinity will have their hands full with Brenon – but that’s no reason to be reckless. I’m grateful for the escort the scouts provide, and pleased to find Farra amongst them.
As we tramp out of the yard, Ronan falls in beside me. “I’ll walk with you to the first ridge,” he says.
Ronan has made his decision as I’ve made mine. I wonder if he has as many doubts.
“Where’s Jofeia?” I ask.
Colour creeps up his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
According to Aiya, he’s been like a lovesick calf these past few days. “Jofeia should know better than leading him on,” she’d said only yesterday, hefting her chopping knife.
“She’s flighty, that one,” Manet had agreed. “And too old for him.”
I decide against mentioning their collective wisdom to Ronan. “Will Jofeia be based at Summertops?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “At Home Farm. Lynd wanted to send her back to Vidya, but Saice vetoed it until her shoulder improves.”
Saice didn’t mention it to me. “She’ll be fine in a few weeks,” I tell him.
He doesn’t answer. Above us the sky has warmed to a drift of pink and gold, the clouds tattered like the fringes of a fresh-shorn fleece: a mackerel sky my Pa would have called it. Maybe Devdan would choose the same description.
We walk in silence past the abandoned farm buildings and over the rise to where the jigger line starts. I wonder if, like me, Ronan is remembering the day we arrived.
“Esha told me you didn’t want to come to Ebony Hill,” he says suddenly, startling my feet to a halt.
“It wasn’t that. I just … I didn’t know what I wanted.” I skip a step to catch up.
“I’m glad you came,” he says.
My breath feels suddenly tight. “Glad” is not a word I can use. And yet… And yet there’s more to having been here than just the paras’ attack. I scowl at the grass where it’s begun to grow stealthily up alongside the empty rails.
“And that you know now.”
I have to bend my mind backwards to find what he means: that I know now what I want. “I think I do,” I tell him.
He’s silent a few paces. “I just know I’m better here than in Vidya,” he says.
I study him. “If it hadn’t been for the paras, that would be true for me as well. But … I have to get some distance from this.” I wave an arm around the straggling group of refugees. “I’ll come back to help with the harvest,” I say, surprising myself. “If Marta lets me start straight away in med-sci, I should be due my first leave by then.”
Ronan takes a breath. “I’d like that.”
We walk on, eyes front, feet in time, our silence companionable. “Ronan,” I say at last, “could you—” I pause, chewing on my lip. I don’t know how to ask without sounding foolish.
He looks around. “What?”
“It’s just … I’d like to think there was something to mark where we – where Esha was – when…”
“I’ll make sure.”
Something eases inside me.
At the crest of the first hill I turn to look back. Ebony Hill stretches clear of the surrounding slopes, fog rising like smoke from the gullies that score the ridge’s flanks. So much has happened here; so much more than I expected, than any of us could have expected.
“I’d better head back,” Ronan says.
I nod, stripped of words. He shifts from foot to foot.
Dev strolls into our silence. “Good luck then, Ronan,” he says. “I hope it works out for you at Summertops. And you know there’ll always be a place for you in Vidya.” He smiles his wide smile.
Ronan nods. “Thanks, Devdan.”
The scouts are already shepherding the group on. “Come on now, people,” one calls. “We’ve a long walk ahead of us.”
Dev turns his smile on me. “We’d better get going, Ness.”
Farra’s hand comes from behind to rest on Dev’s shoulder. “Let’s just give them a moment there, Devdan.” He winks and I colour. It’s hard to tell how much pressure he exerts as he propels Dev away.
Ronan tilts his head to one side. “You’ll make a good medic,” he says.
“I hope so.”
He leans forward suddenly and kisses my cheek, only I move at the wrong moment and his l
ips meet my ear. I put an arm around his neck and hug him, for a moment burying my face against his shoulder. He returns my embrace, arms tight around my back.
“I’ll see you, then,” I say, as I let him go.
The corner of his mouth is already quirked in a smile. He walks backwards two steps, raises a hand, then he’s gone, striding quickly down the hill. “What makes anyone belong anywhere?” he had asked me once – and suddenly I know.
For all that the sea might run in my blood, and Dunnett Island hold a piece of me it won’t ever give up, it’s people that let you belong. Those you care for and who care for you. Part of me wants to run after Ronan and tell him so, but I don’t.
When Farra returns to fetch me he pats me kindly on the shoulder. “You can always come back,” he says.
I wipe at the speck of dust that’s blown into my eye.
“Good ends come out of the least likely things,” he adds. He grins and rests his palm flat against his side. “And I should know, eh lass?”
With his broad hand on my shoulder I turn to follow the group strung like beads along the jigger line. Two of the younger boys are balancing, arms outstretched, on the rails. As I watch one wobbles and falls. The other boy laughs. Mothers are interlaced between children. A toddler rides on her father’s back, head tucked sleepily into the curve of his neck.
Past the walkers, the rail line snakes along the spine of the hill, up a rise and over into the valley beyond, sunlight glinting on the metal before it disappears from view. I picture the road ahead of us, straight as an arrow past the lake, curving along the ridge above the ruined valley, hurrying down to the coast and the tiny settlement that clings between the line and the sea.
Farra plans to call on our way past to check that they’re all right – they’re too small to offer much defence against marauders.
The ribbon of shining line runs on in my mind: through the tunnels, above the sea, shuttered and shadowed by the wall of hills, clanking up and into and through the burnt-out remnants of the city – a lost city from a lost world – till it leads us finally back to a world that’s not lost, to my future, to Vidya.
About the Author
Anna Mackenzie lives with her husband and children on a farm in Hawke’s Bay where she avoids farmwork, grows an excess of vegetables, and fills her time with words. Ebony Hill is her fifth novel and sequel to The Sea-wreck Stranger.
Also by Anna Mackenzie:
High Tide, 2003
Out on the Edge, 2005
The Sea-wreck Stranger, 2007
Shadow of the Mountain, 2008
Copyright
The assistance of Creative New Zealand is gratefully acknowledged by the publisher.
A LONGACRE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand, 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand
For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand
Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group New York London Sydney Auckland Delhi Johannesburg
First published 2010
© 2010 Anna Mackenzie
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 1 87746 049 4
This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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