Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  ‘What happened to her after that?’

  ‘She turned back into a fish.’

  ‘And the man?’

  ‘He turned into an island, right in the middle of the lake. Samosir.’

  ‘And the kid?’ I said. ‘What happened to him?’

  Domino shrugged. ‘Fuck knows.’

  I propped myself up on one elbow and smiled down at her, liking the arch in her narrow eyebrows, the way it made her look like she was always seeing the world with surprise. Her hair was splayed out around her head like a melted halo, lying on the dirt, traces of it stretched out among the tufts of grass like threads of gold and silver. ‘You know, seeing all that stuff in Alim’s place, I was thinking about the drugs they found on the bus—’

  ‘I can guess what you’re thinking, Alex. They weren’t mine.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I just came over from Oz; you think I’d be carrying dope?’

  I nodded once and she reached up to touch my face.

  ‘You were pretty cool back there,’ she said. ‘The way you came with me from the hospital, running from the cops. And in Alim’s place, I could see you were uncomfortable, but you went with it. I like that. I reckon you’ve got balls, Alex.’

  ‘And you really weren’t scared?’ I asked, thinking she was far stronger than me. Either things didn’t bother her, or she buried them deep.

  ‘When I went back? Nah, not until he came in,’ she said.

  ‘I thought … I dunno. I mean, I don’t see how you managed to get out without him seeing you.’

  ‘I told you, I hid by the trapdoor. He came in, went to the far end, and I slipped out. What did you think? You think I did something to him?’ She looked at me, amusement in her eyes, and she retracted a little as if to study me. ‘You did, didn’t you? You thought I did something to him?’

  ‘No, I …’ I shook my head. ‘Well, maybe it crossed my mind.’

  Domino moved quickly, lifting her head and pressing her mouth to mine. She kissed me and let her head fall back to the ground. ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘You really think I could do something like that?’

  I looked down at her and shook my head. ‘No. Of course not. It was just a thought. I was scared for you. There was another guy there, with some kind of rifle. He looked like he wanted to use it.’

  ‘I saw them. You get much of a look at him?’

  ‘A bit. He had a kind of wispy moustache and beard. Bandy legs. He looked pretty mean, actually.’ I couldn’t help smiling to myself now that I was away from it. ‘You know, he looked kinda like he was a bad guy from a film.’

  Domino nodded.

  ‘You know who it was?’

  ‘Sounds like Danuri,’ she said. ‘And yeah, I suppose he is pretty mean, but he wouldn’t have done anything. Not to us. Too much to lose.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Without us, they’d be fucked. Hendrik understood that. It’s what made him such a good guy.’ She sighed. ‘Wonder what they did to him, poor bastard.’

  ‘You want to tell me what you’re talking about?’ I asked, passing her the joint.

  She took it and banished all curiosity from my mind by moving to kiss me. ‘Forget it,’ she said against my lips. ‘Thinking out loud, that’s all.’ Then she withdrew to drag on the joint. She filled her mouth and pressed it against mine, blowing the smoke into me. It felt as if she were reaching right down inside me. I held the smoke in my lungs, keeping my mouth against hers until I could hold it no longer, and raised my head to blow it out into the night.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said, pulling me back to her, bringing our mouths together again.

  As we kissed, I moved my hands over her body, fumbling the dress up over her thighs, over her waist, reaching underneath and running my hand over her cool breasts. Alim’s gun was forgotten now. The crash, the hospital, the running away – all that was gone. All that remained was the beauty of the night and the air, and the intoxication of closeness. I didn’t stop to think of the speed with which it was happening because, since coming here, everything had happened in a tidal rush. Everything was cascading around me and below me, lifting me and carrying me along. I just closed my eyes and went with it. Enjoyed it, as Domino crushed her mouth against mine, showing me she wanted me to go on, pushing my head down onto her chest, wanting to feel my warmth on her skin. I broke away, kneeling before her, using both hands to lift her dress as she reached to unfasten the stolen trousers. I slipped her underwear from her, taking care not to touch her injured thigh, the material twisting as it came past her tattoo and over her feet. I sat back and looked at her, naked in the moonlight, her skin tightening into goose bumps, her breasts flat against her chest. The scrape on her thigh, the bruises that spotted her body, were nothing more than discoloured patches of skin in this light.

  ‘Now,’ she said to me. ‘Now.’

  I put my hands under her knees, ran my fingers down her calves, and only then did I sense my own hesitation, knowing that something was still to be said. ‘Maybe we …’ I shook my head, feeling awkward, not wanting to spoil the fluency of the moment. ‘I mean, what about … you know. Protection?’

  ‘You don’t need protecting from me,’ she said, taking my hands, guiding them where she wanted them to go.

  ‘No, I mean …’

  ‘I know what you mean, Alex.’ Her hands still over mine, still moving. ‘But it’s time to let go. Lose control and enjoy the moment.’ Then she was sitting up, pushing me back, pulling off my trousers and straddling me, moving me inside her and leaning over, her hair in my face, her lips on mine, and I had never known it could be so wonderful, never imagined this had been waiting for me.

  10

  We lay together, side by side, feeling the cool air on our skin until it became too cold and we gathered the clothes that we’d strewn around us in our rush to be together. I pulled on the stolen trousers and sat down to put on my shirt as Domino slipped the dress over her head, stretching her arms and letting it fall over her.

  ‘I need some new clothes,’ I said, looking down at myself.

  Domino rubbed my thigh in an absent-minded way. ‘We’ll have something for you. Maybe in a day or two we can go into town, buy some things.’

  ‘A day or two?’

  ‘There’s something else you might want to see.’

  ‘Out here? For a day or two?’

  She shrugged, leaned back and pulled me down beside her. ‘You don’t have to come,’ she said, turning, running her hand under my shirt and stroking my chest. ‘You can do whatever you want. Isn’t that why you’re travelling?’

  I sighed and closed my eyes to the stars, basking in her touch, still feeling the hazy sensation in my head left by the dope.

  ‘You can be whoever you want. Go anywhere, do anything,’ she whispered. ‘No one can make you do anything you don’t want to.’

  I felt myself smile.

  ‘You could get up right now and leave,’ she said. ‘Or you could stay with me a while longer.’

  I turned to look at her. ‘I think I might stay awhile. Do you want me to?’

  Domino took her hand away. ‘It’s not up to me, Alex, it’s your choice.’

  ‘What if I said no?’

  ‘Then it would be what you wanted.’

  There was no sunrise of any note, the sky just grew light. As the day brightened, though, and the air filled with the scent of damp earth, I saw the full beauty of the lake below me. From where we sat, overlooking a small, natural bay, the water was a sheet of glass reaching out from one mountainous shore to the other. Far below us, where the ground levelled out, the land was a mix of colours, a patchwork of light and dark green. One or two points of white, toy villages dotted along the shore, an obvious spot for fishermen to make their homes.

  To my right, beyond the village we’d visited last night, beyond the line of the highest and furthest pines, the mountains of the Batak Highlands rose into the clouds. Sheer, dark walls, two thousand feet
high, erupted from the lake and burst into the sky, their craggy surfaces streaked with the foam of young waterfalls.

  To my left, at the foot of an abrupt drop, the land was softer, rising and falling in gentle undulation, the dull green of rice paddies visible on the hillsides. Further away, perhaps two miles from where we were sitting, the trees began again, a wilderness of pines and thicker, leafier trees, laurel and tanoak and beech, clinging to the hillsides, securing the land, keeping it from falling into the lake. Even in the misty light of a cloudy morning, the view was enough to take my breath away. Heaven on earth.

  ‘That’s where we’re going,’ Domino said into the grey dawn. ‘Where you’re looking right now. Those trees. That’s where we’re going. But we have to go down before we can go up.’

  I turned to her.

  ‘If you want to, that is.’

  ‘What’s there?’ I asked.

  ‘Wait and see.’ She stood up. ‘You want to come, or you gonna stay here?’ She looked down at me. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘There’s something I need to know first.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I stood up beside her. ‘Can we get something to eat anywhere round here?’ I opened my arms to the wilderness. ‘Other than pine cones and soil, I mean.’

  ‘You got munchies?’

  ‘Call it whatever you want,’ I said. ‘But if I don’t eat soon, I’ll not be going anywhere.’

  Domino kissed me and headed for the slope in front of us. ‘Come on, then, Mr Traveller, let’s go find some food.’

  It took us twenty minutes or so to make our way down the gentle stretch of the slope. The ground was bare here, the soil exposed and damp, hampering our progress. We were wearing only flip-flops and they gave no grip on the slippery dirt. Nearing the end of the more placid gradient, though, it became obvious that my initial observation had been incorrect. The ground did not continue to slope at a steeper incline towards the flat, but fell away at a sharp angle.

  ‘We’ll never get down there,’ I said, coming to a standstill.

  ‘Sure we will. There’s no other way.’

  ‘In flip-flops?’

  ‘It’ll make it harder, but yeah, why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ I put my hands on my hips and looked down. ‘Because we’ll go arse over tit,’ I said. ‘Break our necks and die if we’re lucky; break them and live if we’re not.’

  Domino sat down and rolled a joint while I walked a hundred metres or so in either direction along the top, looking for a way down. I scanned the hillside, hoping to spot a quick way out, but there was nothing. We were in the middle of nowhere. Apart from the few buildings below us, I could see no sign of life whatsoever. No other route down.

  ‘Come and sit here,’ Domino called to me. ‘Don’t be so fuckin’ antsy. We’ll smoke awhile, then make our way down.’

  ‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where are you planning on doing that?’

  ‘There’s a path,’ she said, lighting the joint and patting the ground beside her. ‘It’s hard to see, but it’s there.’

  ‘A path? You’re sure?’

  ‘Well, I should be. I’ve been up and down it a hundred times.’

  ‘A hundred times?’

  ‘Well, maybe not a hundred.’

  ‘But more than once, right?’

  ‘Sure. I mean, it’s a little tricky, you wouldn’t want to lose your footing but yeah, it’s there.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to lose your footing?’ I asked, eyeing the joint in her hand. ‘So is that a good idea?’

  ‘Course it is. It’s a great idea. The best. Help chill you out on the way down.’ She smiled and beckoned me over again. ‘Loosen you up. And when we get down there, we’ll get something to eat. Curb those munchies.’

  I shrugged and went to her. ‘You know, I think you might be mad.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you like about me?’

  She was probably right. It was what I liked about her. As if the rules that applied to everyone else didn’t apply to Domino. She did whatever she wanted to do, and I found that enticing. Part of me wanted to be like her, to throw off my cloak of conservatism and guilt and allow myself to be free like she was. And in that moment, standing in the hills surrounding Toba, I thought maybe I was coming close to what I was looking for. Back home I’d been a caring son who’d cut the thread of his own life to care for a decaying mother. I’d been left with a gaping hole when she was gone, filled only with the nagging doubt about the decision I had made for her. Now I could see that I was running away from that as much as I was looking for a new direction. And here I was picking up my life thread again. Here, I could be different. If I wanted to be brave, I could be. If I wanted to be carefree and reckless, I could do that, too. I could rise above myself or fall below. At least, that’s what I thought. But the truth is always different from what you imagine in a moment of intense feeling. What I didn’t understand then was that I couldn’t just change myself. I couldn’t just be someone else.

  Domino had said it would chill us out, but I still wasn’t sure the ganja was a good idea. I tried to give myself over to it, think the way she did, feel the things she did, be what I wanted to be, but I didn’t have her confidence and I couldn’t help feeling anxious as we began the descent.

  For a time, we walked the crest of the drop, close to the edge where the ground was unstable and looked as if it might break away at any moment. In some places the vegetation was thick, sparse at first, but thickening as we progressed along the edge until it was at my waist, lush and green, firming the soil.

  Eventually Domino stopped and pointed to a small gap – a narrow, worn patch in the dirt that cut through the undergrowth and snaked down the hillside, twisting from side to side like a poisonous and treacherous reptile. ‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘Probably safer that way.’

  I showed my hand and bowed like a gallant knight, waiting for her to lead the way.

  At first the path was manageable. It was wide enough and dry enough for us to pass without too much trouble, tacking our way down the steep face. But as we progressed, the dirt became firmer, worn down to the rock by countless years of weather. Here the smooth stone was damp where it had retained moisture from the first morning air, and I felt less secure. The tread-less rubber of my flip-flops offered no grip at all, and we were both forced to slow our pace.

  ‘Thought you said it was easy,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘I think I left it up there,’ I said, looking up and behind me, immediately regretting it because it made my head spin.

  ‘Well, it’s not far now,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll find it again when we get to the bottom.’

  ‘Find what?’

  ‘Your sense of adventure.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Maybe.’

  I watched her moving along the path, admiring how she managed it with apparent ease, despite her attire. She’d pulled the dress up to her thighs, tied it in a thick knot, and I wondered if perhaps it was forcing her to take small steps, if that was how she made it look so easy. I tried to tighten my own steps, keep my feet steady on the slippery rock, but it was a mistake to change my method and as soon as I did, my foot slipped and I collapsed to one knee, reaching out for the undergrowth above me, between two sections of the snaking path. ‘Shit.’

  Domino stopped and looked back. ‘You all right?’

  I took a deep breath, steadied myself, crouching on the path. I nodded and looked down at the settlement below, not far from the lake. We were about two hundred metres up now, and the water looked different from here, more choppy. There was a breeze channelling down the hillside, buffeting the flat land below us and launching itself across the lake, raising the water into small waves, which curled and crashed at their peaks.

  There were a couple of boats, not much more than dark pencil lines on the surface of white-tipped waves. Early-morning fishermen in their dugouts, feeding their families, making a living.

  ‘Not to
o far now,’ Domino reassured me, but I could see for myself that there was still a fair distance to go. If I were to head straight down, as the crow flies, or as the body would tumble, I guessed I’d reach the bottom in good time, but the way we were moving, snaking from side to side, it would take us a while to reach level ground. It would be far easier to approach the settlement by boat, from a safer place across the lake, and I wondered if Domino had brought me this way for the adventure. If that were the case, then I needed to show her I was up to the challenge.

  ‘Come on, then,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Let’s do this. I’m starving.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said, taking the next bend in the path, turning and looking up at me. ‘Getting pretty peckish myself.’

  She was about eight feet below me, facing the opposite direction, and as I looked down at her, the cloud over the mountains in the distance split in two for a brief moment and a tiny arc of the sun glanced over the dark crags. It spilled light across the lake, catching the surface of the waves, glittering like gold dust and lighting the world before me. All I could see was brilliant water and an orgy of greens and blacks, stretching ahead of me. It was as close to paradise as I had ever seen, and I felt as if a hand had reached over the Batak Highlands and touched my heart.

  I drank it in, soaked up every last drop of it and looked down at Domino’s face, seeing her remarkable green eyes and her glorious figure. Everything was forgotten. Nothing mattered but what I could see in front of me right now.

  Then I slipped.

  I shifted my weight without thinking. I was too wrapped up in what I was seeing to be aware of what I was doing. I adjusted my balance on the smooth rock, my right foot slipped, and I came off the path, my other foot going out from under me. I was able to grasp my fist around a tuft of grass, tall and thick, but the soil it used for purchase was thin and infirm. The plant came out of the ground with little resistance and, with a handful of vegetation, I began my rapid descent to the valley floor.