The Flyer

by Marjorie Jones

  Helen shouted with a sudden, immense freedom taking hold of her soul. They were airborne!

  Higher and higher they climbed—into the sun and the empty space of pure joy. Wide blue skies surrounded her in a freedom she hadn’t known existed. Even though the wind and the roar of the engine drowned out every sound save her deepest, most internal thoughts, she could have been reclining on a cloud. Far below, the earth hovered like a leaf in the breeze, unmoving and splendid. Miles upon miles of desert stretched to the horizon, which curved with the outline of the planet, far below Paul’s wonderful flying machine. Above her, the sky climbed heavenward.

  She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry.

  With Paul’s careful touch on the controls, she wasn’t the least bit frightened.

  Gently, Paul banked the huge wings to the left—a gesture she understood to mean something of interest could be found on that side of the plane. She craned her neck to look down, and when she finally managed to peer almost directly over the high edge of her seating compartment, she smiled. No fewer than dozens of camels lumbered over the desert floor, reddish-orange dust billowing behind their comically awkward movements. Following the dust, she found the cause of their alarm. A pack of wild dogs chased the dromedaries, their malicious intentions clear to anyone.

  Frowning, Helen found herself drawn to the natural spectacle until several dogs leapt on the closest camel, smaller than the others, bringing the majestic beast to its knees almost immediately.

  She turned away, closing her eyes while Paul leveled the plane.

  A few moments later, the plane descended slightly. Gradually, they flew lower and lower while approaching an area of the desert sprinkled with more brush and darker red earth. Lower still, they flew over a wide river with a pristine, sandy beach on one side and a mass of trees on the other. Paul banked and, seemingly out of nowhere, a long, narrow strip of ground opened beneath them.

  When the wheels touched the earth, the plane bounced once, then rolled to a gradual halt. Paul turned off the engine, the propellers stopping almost instantly.

  “Are you all right?” Paul called from the pilot’s seat behind her. His voice sounded far away, a remnant of the engine’s deafening power.

  She nodded, pushing herself out of her seat and climbing over the edge of the fuselage. Paul appeared, offering his hand to assist in her descent.

  She took it and leapt to the dry, red earth. The tips of her fingers tingled where Paul held them, and Helen’s mouth turned as dry as the dirt. She swallowed, willing herself to drop his hand, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Thankfully, Paul seemed to have more control. He released her fingers, then smoothed his hand over his leather cap, pulling it free. The sun captured the lightest strands of his hair like a halo.

  Mesmerizing.

  Fright leapt into Helen’s throat. She couldn’t allow herself to feel … anything. Gathering what little control remained from the pit of her stomach, she turned away and hurried around the wing to the front of the plane.

  All around her, the Pilbara stood proud. A thin forest of tall trees with bright white trunks stood on one side of the landing strip, offering a well-needed diversion. Tall grass grew in thick patches on both sides of a wide river.

  Above the trees, the sky stretched forever, and the billowing clouds were reflected in the water.

  It looked like paradise.

  Paul joined her, his unique, masculine scent adding to the majesty of the land she admired—as though he were a part of it, somehow. “Sorry about that dingo mess. I didn’t see them, or their … intentions when I banked to watch the camels.”

  Helen swallowed. “I’m fine, really. It’s all a part of nature. But that poor camel.”

  “A camel is no match for a pack of dingos, I’m afraid.”

  “Obviously not. I suppose I should expect that sort of thing, out here in the wilderness. I’m simply not used to it, that’s all.”

  “What are you used to?” Paul returned to the side of the plane and reached into the storage compartment, retrieving her medical bag. “Here, love, give me your jacket and I’ll stow it inside.”

  She shucked the jacket while she joined him, then handed it to him. “I’m used to the polar opposite of everything I’ve seen here so far. My parents insisted on private schools, and no lady would be so brash as to expose herself to direct sunlight … heaven forbid.” She fanned herself playfully.

  “That’s your mother talking, I reckon.”

  “You’d be correct. My mother also insisted I attend every cotillion or other fashionable event in San Francisco, determined that I find and marry the most eligible bachelor in the city.”

  “Yet, you’re a doctor. An unmarried doctor. Hardly a profession for a lady, especially a lady of leisure.”

  “My father is a doctor. He had no sons. Simple.”

  “It must have been a challenge for you, being a woman.”

  When he quirked his left eyebrow and looked down at her, Helen’s pulse fluttered. Whether the reaction came from the intensity of his eyes, or the intensity of his statement, she couldn’t be sure.

  It had been difficult, but not just because she was a woman. There were other girls in her medical-school class, other women who had thrown off the bonds of domesticity as their only option.

  She glanced away, looking for anything that would provide the means to an entirely different conversation. She didn’t want to explain why she’d become a doctor—how it had been her father’s dream and her mother’s nightmare. Nor did she want to remember the last year of her life. A year that had cost her everything. A year she could never get back.

  She didn’t want to remember Reginald and the horrible choices she’d made.

  4

  Paul immediately regretted speaking his mind. Crikey, when would he learn to keep his mouth shut? The exhilarated light in her eyes had vanished, and she now stood with her hands tucked deep inside her pockets.

  With an obviously forced grin, she lifted her face and scanned their remote surroundings. “So, which way is it?”

  If he’d been with any other woman, he would have been thankful for the change in conversation. He’d never been one to require involved relationships with the women with whom he shared his time. Even the one time he’d thought to marry, he’d considered the longevity of his father’s sheep station and the mutually beneficial business arrangement to be gained from a union with a woman who was also a landowner. But while he was with Helen, a part of him wanted to soothe her pain away, to find out what had caused it in the first place. As desperately as his heart itched to find out more, he picked up her bag and hoisted it over his shoulder instead. “This way, love.”

  They hiked into the tree line beside the landing strip. The gathering place lay on the far side of the Fortescue River. Lined on either side with gum trees and long grasses that swayed in the light breeze, the Fortescue offered shelter to more than a few wild creatures Helen would probably want to avoid. He glanced over his shoulder to check her progress through the increasingly moist marshlands on the river’s edge. Her tiny feet, encased in thick black boots, sank into the mud an inch or two, but she kept pace with him. She was tough. He had to give her credit for that.

  When they reached the billabong where he stored a small boat, he stopped. He dropped her bag and turned to face her. “Have you ever seen a croc slide?” he asked.

  “Can’t say that I have. You’re not going to fight one right now, are you?”

  A fresh chuckle tickled the back of his throat. “No. But since you’re standing in one, it seems like the perfect time to point it out.”

  She leapt forward, crashing into his recently healed chest with the force of a wounded rhino. He would have cringed, but any lingering pain from his battle with Bessie was overpowered by the electrifying currents that raced through his gut the minute he came into contact with Helen’s warm, supple frame. She hadn’t bound her breasts this morning. He nearly groaned aloud.

  “Where? Where is it?
” She panted the words, unable to catch her breath as she clung to his shoulders.

  “Whoa, there, love. There’s no need for that, is there?” His body argued the point. If she wanted to crawl inside of him, he’d be cracked not to allow it. Still, he hadn’t meant to frighten her, and a part of him embraced the guilt. “A croc slide is only what the lizard leaves behind. There’s no danger here presently.”

  She seemed to relax, the set of her shoulders falling just enough to press the tips of her breasts against his chest. He stifled another groan and brushed a random strand of hair off her full, partially opened mouth. She brought her eyes to his and stared deep into his soul. Dragonflies hovered around the water’s edge, the buzz of their wings lending a kind of primitive music to the curious light in her gaze. Fire broke out in his loins, forcing him to step back.

  She dropped her hands, moving farther away. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  Could have fooled him. He thought it was more than nice. He ran a hand through his hair to clear away the image of her body beneath her rugged clothing. She probably meant that it hadn’t been nice to frighten her, of course. “It wasn’t intentional, but you need to know what a slide looks like if you’re going to be working in the bush.”

  He pointed out the muddy evidence of the billabong’s most recent houseguest, making sure she understood what striations and claw markings to look for and how to gauge the size of the animal that left them. “This croc was just a tiny thing, maybe six feet long. No worries. He’s off cooling in the water somewhere now.”

  “How do you know?”

  He could tell her the crocodile was less than a stone’s throw from them, its beady eyes peering over the water’s surface behind her. But after her reaction to the slide, he decided against it. He’d need to get her safely across the river first. “Just a hunch. We’d better get moving. Busy day ahead.”

  They crossed the river with no challenge from the croc. By the time Paul landed the boat, Helen had regained her easygoing composure and contented herself to study the area. After they secured the boat to a tall palm tree, they hiked farther into the sparse forest. Each time she spied something new, her face lit up like a candle at Christmastime.

  When they passed a tight knit grouping of palms, Helen halted in the middle of the narrow trail that ran straight between them.

  “What are those?”

  Paul slowed his pace and followed the direction she pointed. Before he could answer, she slid next to him.

  Her presence did more than disturb him. It overpowered his sense of honor and decency while visions of her naked and sweaty flashed all around him.

  It hardly seemed appropriate to seduce her in the middle of a path, in broad daylight, with more than likely half a dozen Aborigines spying on them, so he tucked his burgeoning desire aside.

  “Are they coconuts? Those black, roundish-looking things.”

  She finally tore her concentration away from the trees and looked at him. The lines of curiosity in her brow vanished, replaced with smooth, fresh-as-cream skin. “Do you see them?”

  “Aye.”

  “What are they?”

  “What?”

  “Up in the trees. Are they some kind of misshapen coconut?”

  He wanted to hold her. He wanted to make love to her, right there, right then. It had been almost an hour of hiking deep into the bush, her backside swaying beneath a pair of strides that hugged every lush curve. The sun hadn’t yet risen to its full height, but it might as well have, given the amount of heat surrounding him. How long could he maintain his distance when all he really wanted to do was kiss her bloody mad?

  “Paul?”

  “What?” He snapped himself free of the intricate net she threw over him simply by existing. “Oh right. Bats.”

  Her eyes grew to round, glittering moons. “Bats? Are you serious?”

  He looked up to confirm his assumption. “Aye. Flying foxes.”

  “There are so many of them. Are they dangerous?”

  “Oh aye. Deadly. Sharp, pointed teeth. Man-eaters, every one.”

  Whatever color Helen’s cheeks had gained on their overland trek drained at his words. She stepped closer, almost touching him. All he had to do was lift his hand a fraction and he could stroke her face, touch her hair. Heat escaped her body and wrapped his in a torment of delicious fire.

  As though the breeze were too much for her, Helen swayed, her eyes boring a hole into his very being. Her lips parted. Her breath hitched.

  If he lowered his head, just a few tiny, insignificant inches…

  The brush on either side of Paul scattered, rustling amid a half-dozen bare footsteps. “Don’t you listen to a bloody word this whanker tells you, lady. He’s a lying bastard if there ever was one.”

  Helen leapt backward at the sound of the unexpected voice. Turning, she immediately backed into Paul’s chest. Three men approached from the forest, their bare, black skin covered in white mud, their hair caked in the same substance. The leader of the trio looked oddly familiar, and when his laughing gaze settled on her, she recognized him as the man who had spoken to her in Port Hedland the day she’d arrived.

  “Blue,” called Paul over her head. “It’s bloody good to see you, mate. How are things at the gathering?”

  “The same,” the old man replied, stopping a few steps shy of Paul and Helen.

  One of Blue’s companions smiled and offered his hand to Paul. Paul removed his arm from around Helen’s shoulders to shake it. Immediately, she missed the contact.

  “The old man said you’d be coming today. I didn’t believe him,” said the tallest of the newcomers.

  “You should know better than that, Jeremy. Blue knows everything.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Sorry, mate. This is the reason you’ll have to put up with me for the day. Dr. Helen Stanwood, I’d like to introduce three of the sorriest blokes in all of Australia. This is Blue—mind what you say around him, he likes to wax poetic about life in general—Jeremy, and Kadin.”

  The three men nodded in her direction. Kadin, apparently the youngest, asked, “You’re a doc?”

  “I am,” she answered, expecting yet another comment on her gender.

  Instead, the boy tilted his head to one side and crossed his arms. “My sister isn’t feeling well. Would you mind having a look at her?”

  Swallowing a lump that formed from either surprise or pride, she nodded. “Of course, I will. Lead the way.”

  The small group made their way through the thinning forest for another quarter hour before they reached a huge encampment of sorts. There were no tents or other forms of shelter, but dozens of campsites had obviously been forged out of the wilderness. The river must have wound its way around the forest through which they’d passed and now flowed in a wide, shallow stream with bare, sandy beaches on either side. In the center of the stream, a few feet from shore, a group of naked children splashed and teased each other, the water barely covering their knees.

  The camps stretched as far as she could see on either side of the river. At first glance, it seemed as though hundreds of Aborigines huddled in groups of ten or twelve around small fires, tended to by half-naked women. Most of the men concentrated on painting each other’s bodies with the white mud in a dizzying series of lines and dots.

  Kadin pulled on her arm, bringing her attention away from a scene that she assumed few Americans had ever seen. “My sister’s over here.”

  Suddenly nervous, Helen glanced at Paul.

  His smile brought her comfort and an unexpected measure of confidence. “It’s fine, love. There’s nothing to worry over.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “Nah. Blue and I have things to discuss. Kadin will bring you back.”

  This was why she’d come to Australia in the first place, wasn’t it? To tend to those who needed tending? To bring medicine to places that had never had it?

  Steeling herself for her first test in the wilds, she to
ok a deep breath and followed Kadin to his sister’s camp.

  “How old is your sister?” she asked Kadin as they approached a group of four women who crouched around a fifth, lying in a curled heap in the shade of a squat tree.

  “We don’t measure our ages, but she became a woman three summers ago.”

  “What has she been complaining of?”

  “Her stomach hurts. She thought she was going to have a child, but her woman time came yesterday. Her husband left yesterday to gather herbs with our mother. They have not returned.”

  At first, the women didn’t make room for Helen, but after a few words she didn’t understand from Kadin, they parted. Almost hidden behind their wide frames, the young girl huddled in the fetal position. Her flesh had turned an ashen gray color, and her eyes spoke volumes about the pain she endured.

  Helen knelt beside her and pressed her wrist to the girl’s forehead. “What’s her name?”

  “Jayla,” her brother answered, his voice cracking. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I don’t believe it’s too serious. At least, not life threatening, if we can help her through it. She doesn’t have a fever.”

  “But what’s wrong?”

  Jayla mumbled something in her exotic and unintelligible language. The message was clear, however. Any woman would know the fear and desperation winding through the sobbed words. Helen stroked Jayla’s cheek, then turned to Kadin. “I’ll need you to leave for a little while. Can you tell the women to stand just there?” she asked, pointing to the edge of the fire pit. “Tell them not to allow anyone through. I’m sure your sister doesn’t want anyone to see her like this.”

  “I don’t understand,” he replied, his face drawn into worried lines.

  “She was going to have a baby, Kadin, but the baby hasn’t survived. I need to make sure everything is fine, and in a few days, her body will heal. I’m afraid her soul may take a while longer.”