After they got this business with the lost totem thing taken care of, they might even want to settle in Australia. So far, she liked what she’d seen, especially here in the northern tropics. She could get a job teaching or something related to languages, and Ned could become a famous artist. Their children would be comely and intelligent, and take on noble causes like fighting for Aboriginal rights and protecting the Queensland rain forest. It was a wonderful fantasy, and might even come true if they could chase Ned’s Furies away. Suzanne sat down on the bed beside him. That was a monumental if. Thinking about it pulled her back to the list of things needing to be done, like finding a rental vehicle and making preparations for the next leg of their journey. Ned moaned again.
She stroked his arm. “Neddy? Are you awake?”
Ned rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Sort of.”
“It’s a beautiful morning. Want to go walk along the beach before we try to get any business done?”
“What time is it?”
“Um, eight-thirty-ish.”
Ned fell back on the pillows. “Too early.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Come back to bed, m’love.”
Suzanne was sorely tempted, but she knew if she gave in, it could be noon before they got out of bed, which might delay everything for another day. She leaned over, kissed him, and wriggled out of his grasp.
“Well, I’m going for a quick walk. Sleep in if you like, and when I get back we’ll call around for a vehicle.”
Suzanne got dressed in shorts and a cotton shirt, pulled her hair up into a high ponytail, and stepped into a pair of flip-flops. Then she stood with her hand on the doorknob for a moment, debating whether to leave him alone.
Ned lifted his tousled head. “Wake me when you’re back.” He buried his face in the pillow.
Suzanne shut the door quietly behind her. She felt a little uneasy, leaving him like that. His physical and mental well-being fluctuated, often without warning. Ned seemed to be following some homing instinct that felt “right” when he was on target and “muddy” and confused when he was off. She had the image in her mind of an old-fashioned dowsing rod questing for hidden waterlines running underground. Neddy was like a human dowsing rod, pointing toward something invisible, yet becoming more convinced of its presence the closer he got to it. Like the dowser, he was after a source; he was convinced that if he could get back to the locus of the original wrongdoing, the place where this dreadful taboo surrounding the stone had taken place, he could somehow make it end. Chewing her lip, Suzanne hesitated, then stepped out into the bright sun flooding the street.
The lodge was within walking distance of the shoreline, and it wouldn’t take her long to reach the beachfront walkway known as the Strand. Suzanne headed down Fryer Street toward the winding beachfront esplanade where it seemed at least half the citizens of Townsville took their morning constitutionals. Wandering along the Strand with the deep azure waters of Cleveland Bay, and beyond that the Coral Sea, off to her right, Suzanne thought about what they might be facing once they got to wherever Ned felt was their destination. He’d tried to do a trance drawing the first night they’d come here to see if he could make an actual map, but no connection had been made.
But last night was a different story, when he’d jerked awake in a cold sweat, trembling from the visitation of his taipan guardian, as he’d begun to call her. Suzanne wasn’t fond of reptiles, and it made her squirm just to hear his recount of the dream where the golden snake-woman had whispered in his ear, tasting his cheek with her forked tongue while keeping that terrifying other one away from him. Despite this fear, Suzanne understood that Ned’s love/hate relationship with serpents was what powered his visions, which they now needed if there was to be any chance of ending this inherited saga.
What had really convinced them they were on the right track was the white-haired Aboriginal man at Nielson Park beach in Sydney who’d taken one look at Ned’s drawing of the sacred stone and told them not only what it was and what sort of clan it likely belonged to, but also why it was such a powerful object and that Ned would do well to fold up the picture and keep it in a private place. Persons were obliged to be speared for displaying another clan’s tjuringa in public, he’d warned them. If someone had in fact stolen it, he’d said, it would mean the greatest of calamities for the one who was the thief as well as the people from whom it had been taken.
From then on, Ned had been more careful about showing the drawing around, instead asking people if they’d seen the landscapes in his other pictures. That was when he’d found out about the Foundation of Aboriginal Affairs on George Street. More than a few people had told him to go there if he wanted to talk to some real Aborigines. Suzanne had decided to stay behind in their Sydney hotel room while he went alone to check the place out. With her pale skin and Anglo features, she had been pretty sure her presence wouldn’t have helped his cause all that much.
Walking down the Strand with its dazzling blue sky overhead and scent of flowers on the breeze, she remembered the waves of anxiety she’d endured that night, sitting alone in a hotel room in a strange city halfway across the world from home, not knowing if Ned had found this notorious Foundation or gotten into any trouble. As the hours ticked by she began to rehearse in her mind what she would do if he didn’t return, and even went so far as to look through her passport to find out what one should do to report missing foreigners. She tried not to think about the possibility that she could be stranded in this place with no way to find her husband of just seven months, but as it got later and later, with still no word from him, she’d begun to think the worst. Even a short burst of tears did nothing to relieve her rising panic.
Finally, toward dawn, she’d heard the door unlock. It was Ned, so excited he couldn’t sit still. He’d seemed oblivious to her tearful state and sat on the bed trying to tell her about the trio of young Aborigines he’d met loitering outside the converted funeral parlor that served as Foundation headquarters. They’d been predictably suspicious of him, but when he’d shown them the scale markings on his arms and told them he had a taipan spirit totem, and that he was from the United States and had been on the fringes of the nascent Black Power movement in San Francisco, they’d decided to call him Brother. Back at the Foundation they’d introduced him to an elder whose black eyes had stared at Ned for several uneasy moments and then contemplated his pictures for a solid twenty minutes before he was prepared to share what he thought about them.
Eventually, once he’d sorted out how Ned was to be properly addressed, which he decided was “brother of these three,” he advised Ned to head up the coast to Queensland and look around in the sandstone tablelands and wilderness gorges, especially in the Laura River area where there were many escarpments with caves like that picture he’d drawn. But he also warned that Ned might want to have a guide with him who knew how to avoid the Dangerous Places. Ned told her, laughing, how he’d suppressed the urge to tell the old man that he didn’t want to avoid such places—he was specifically trying to find one.
His new Aboriginal friends had been kind enough to return him to his hotel and wish him well on his journey. All that took place nearly a week ago, and now here they were over a thousand miles up the coast, still following the pull of that invisible spirit-line back to … where?
Ned seemed convinced that the sacred site he needed to find was somewhere in the rock-strewn landscapes of his artwork, hidden among all the rock shelters where Aboriginal ceremonies had taken place over the centuries. Caves filled with Dreamtime rock art were the most likely, they’d both agreed, and locals had confirmed there was a lot of it in the area from Cairns to Cape York. So they’d headed north.
Anxious, she turned around and headed back to the lodge, kicking herself for leaving Ned alone for even fifteen minutes.
By the time she reached Fryer Street again, she was hot and sweaty. The hotel parking lot was empty except for two men standing beside an old Land Rover, talking and laughing in what her Southern friends wo
uld have called a “good old boy” way. She pegged them for locals, in their T-shirts, work shirts, khaki shorts, and hiking boots, until she realized one of them was Ned. He had taken so immediately to local culture she hadn’t even recognized him.
“Ah, here comes the love of my life,” he called as soon as he spotted her. “Ollie, meet Suzie, my wife.”
Suzanne smiled at the stranger, wondering what the hell Ned had gotten them into now. To her, Ned said, “Suzie, this is Ollie Barnes, and he’s driving us all the way to Cooktown.”
Over a dinner of Spanish mackerel and mangoes at a packed bar & grille, Oliver Barnes, mechanic for hire and otherwise jack of all trades, brushed his sun-bleached hair out of his eyes and explained himself.
“When I was havin’ a bit of a chinwag with your hubby here about Land Rovers and such, I mentioned that I’m headin’ up to Cooktown to check on my mum who’s not been well this past year,” he said, between bites of a salad the size of small gardens. “She lives by herself and it’s just me that looks after her.”
He uncorked a bottle of rich, fruity wine. Shiraz that appealed to Suzanne. She resisted the urge to gulp it down in a couple of swallows.
“As I was telling him,” Ollie said, refilling her glass, “I’ve been keeping that Land Rover humming for the last ten years; she’ll go anywhere. There’s nawt mechanical I wouldn’t have a stab at. Fair dinkum, that is! You can take it to the bank.”
Suzanne looked at Ned, wondering how much of their mission he’d imparted to the enthusiastic Mr. Barnes whose gray eyes twinkled with mischief under his sunburned squint.
“I explained to Ollie that I’m doing illustrations for a book,” said Ned, turning his eyes to her. “We’re researching Aboriginal rock art, especially anything to do with sorcery and magic.”
“Plenty of that around,” said Ollie. He bit into a sausage roll and nodded cheerfully. “The start of the Wet’s not the best time of year to be going walkabout, y’know. Much better if you’d come in June.”
“Sorry, that couldn’t be helped. Our schedules just didn’t work out for any other time of year,” Ned said. Suzanne was again struck by his ability to lie so glibly on the fly.
“Do you think the roads will be passable?” she asked.
“What roads?” Ollie chortled. Suzanne blanched.
“Hey now,” he said, patting her on the shoulder, “y’just need the right equipment, vehicle, guide, and provisions, that’s all. I wouldn’t advise the two of you to just take off into the never-never by yerselves, obviously.”
“What would you advise?” she asked.
“That you hire me to be your driver, tour guide, and bush tucker expert,” he said grinning. “I was born in Cooktown and know a lot of places along the rivers—that would be the Palmer and the Laura—what nobody’s ever seen. At least, no white bodies.” He was chuckling, leaning back in his chair. Suzanne smiled; she wanted to trust him, and she was pretty sure that Ned already did.
She searched his face. “So, Ollie, do you think you can take us around to some of these sites, and, um, keep us out of trouble?”
Ollie folded his hands over his flat stomach. “No worries, mate, she’ll be apples all the way.”
Suzanne assumed this meant something to the effect of hunky-dory. She was warming to him and was beginning to think his sudden intrusion into their saga was a stroke of good luck. It was easy to see that Ned had bonded with him and was relating to him like a long-lost friend.
Ollie turned to Ned. “About that rock art, what kinds of sorcery pictures are you keen on, mate?”
“Well, we’re hoping to find images of dingoes and serpents, and maybe evidence of curses or magic spells, anything that would make the book dramatic and exciting.”
Suzanne bit her lip. “When are we talking about leaving?”
“As soon as we can,” said Ned.
“Then tomorrow morning we’ll have a cuppa and just get on with it. I was getting bored around here fixin’ Kombis and Rovers. Looks like you blokes have something far more interesting on the barbie. So I think I’ll just help you out, for an appropriate fee, of course. An experienced guide like meself can’t be had for free. We can stop over with my mum up in Cooktown; she’ll be glad for the company. Just don’t let her overfeed you.”
“Cool, man, er, mate. You’re a life saver,” said Ned, and Suzanne could tell he meant it.
“Thanks, Ollie. Really,” she added.
“No worries. It looks like your little trip is right up my alley.”
She wondered, though, how much of Ned’s story Mr. Oliver Barnes was buying. He seemed like a character who’d heard it all and then some, and she couldn’t see them fooling him for long.
She sighed and held her wine glass out for a refill. It really didn’t matter what he believed or didn’t believe, as long as he could get them where they needed to go, and from the way he talked, he seemed plenty capable. Perhaps a little luck had crossed their paths, after all.
Chapter 27
December 1969
Sunset over the Endeavour River at Cooktown was as beautiful as Ollie’s mother had promised. Ned reached his hand out to help Suzanne onto the grassy hilltop where they had a spectacular lookout over the river’s mouth. Across the water, rocky outcroppings protruding from tree-covered hills.
The silver-gray water was dappled with an archipelago of green-topped islets. Across the inlet, hills became a silhouette against a gray and yellow sky. Just below curdled clouds, the sun shot through in a dazzling spotlight of lemon-white, reflected as a single bright patch on the slumbering water. Ned and Suzanne stood arm in arm, watching the tiny spits of land turn black in the fading light.
“Worth the whole trip so far,” Suzanne remarked.
Ned pulled her close. “Better than anything I could paint.”
The warmth of her shoulder against his chest and her hair brushing his face calmed the tumult inside. He felt in range of the target now, his nerves so jumpy he could barely sit still. But standing here, surrounded by rocks and trees and water, Ned enjoyed a quiet moment’s respite.
The bones of the continent and the deep azure waters of the Coral Sea were vastly more ancient than the settlement Captain Cook had founded here in the 1700s. Ned felt that antiquity through the soles of his feet as he walked barefoot over the grass and rock. Something inside him was trying to reconnect to the land.
“Suzie? Are you sorry?”
“What? Of course not.” Suzanne was looking up at him. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else on earth right now.”
Ned closed his eyes. “I mean, are you sorry you met me? If things don’t turn out all right, I apologize now for ruining your life.”
“Stop,” she said. “We’ll do what we have to do, and then we’ll go home. Or who knows, maybe we could even settle here.”
Ned gave her a squeeze. “Trippin’ idea, a landscape painter wouldn’t hurt for subject matter here, would he?” He encircled her in his arms. “Sydney would be cool, too.”
“Brisbane,” she said.
“Cairns.”
“Townsville?”
“Alice Springs.”
“Hey, we didn’t go there.”
“I know, I just like the sound of the name.”
Suzanne was laughing now, and Ned’s heart felt lighter. It soothed his soul when she laughed.
“We could name our firstborn Alice,” she said, grinning.
“Whatever you like,” he responded, playing along. She hugged him back with more warmth than usual, which made him wonder. This was the calm before the hurricane, the remaining moments in which you could gather your belongings and strap yourself in before all hell was unleashed. He was being pulled strongly now and felt certain that somewhere down one of those four-wheel-drive-only tracks of the Outback his nemesis waited.
When they reached Mrs. Barnes’ small cottage, Ollie met them at the door.
“I was about to come looking for you two,” he said, running rough fingers through his b
lond hair.
Ollie’s mother, a short, squat woman whose gray-brown hair was pulled tightly back from her face and snagged with the claws of a pink plastic hairclip, beckoned them out to the tiny screened back porch. “Have a stubby before dinner,” she said, handing out short bottles of beer from a portable cooler. “But only one each, mind,” she said, “coz yer might want to take a few with you. How long did you say, lurv?”
Ollie chugged at the bottle and wiped his mouth on the tail of his camp shirt. “The Rover’s fueled and ready and all the camping gear’s stowed. I think if we leave early in the morning, we could get into the Outback past Laura by sundown, camp on the river and then spend a day or two muckin’ about, and then a service stop in Laura or Lakeland on the way back. So, on the outside of four days all told, assuming we don’t get stuck or flooded and have to dig ourselves out.”
Mrs. Barnes nodded. “Sounds ‘bout right.” She reached out and patted Ned on the knee. “You blokes have a safe trip, and I’ll be lookin’ fer yeh ‘bout this time next week, if Ollie here does his job right.”
They were up early next morning, and although Ned felt an urgency to be off, Ollie’s mother refused to let them get away without a hearty breakfast of fried eggs and tomatoes, avocado slices, spicy potato salad, and just-baked scones with ginger jam.
When they were finally ready to leave, she followed Ned and Suzanne outside and stood with them on the front stoop of the cottage. A bougainvillea heavy with dark salmon-pink clusters covered a trellis over the doorway so that everyone except Mrs. Barnes had to duck under its thorny arms to come out. It had rained that night, and the yard was dappled with puddles. Droplets of water sparkled all over the garden in the morning light.
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