Maddy’s chest filled with an ache. The look on Nana’s face both scared and pulled at her heart. She didn’t know what to do. But Grace had gone ahead, splashing straight down into the water, so Maddy followed. Nana Mad was hers, not Grace’s.
They waded out into the middle of the creek, moving quickly from sunlight into the shadows. The creek bed grew slippery with silky mud and stones. In the middle, they held hands to keep steady, but they still fell and when one did the other did. Nana watched them come with her hands in her lap. When they reached her, she said hello like they’d come for tea.
Maddy and Grace tried to lift her from the creek bed, but each time they overbalanced. In the end, by burying their feet deep in the mud, gripping one elbow each and heaving, they got Nana first onto her knees, then onto her legs and then walking. Dripping and panting, they led her out of the creek and back onto the sandbar.
Her clothes were in a pile near the mess left by the ants.
“Elenaki,” Nana said, combing Maddy’s hair back from her face with her fingers. “Look at you. Brush your hair.”
She said the name with drawn-out vowels and a big roll at the back of her throat. Kkhh-eh-lay-nah-khi. That’s why Maddy didn’t understand at first.
“Who’s Elenaki?” she asked.
Nana laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, like it was some big joke.
Dressing Nana was like dressing a doll. Her arms bent too easily or not at all. She’d worn gumboots without socks and now one of her damp feet was stuck. Through the whole fuss all she wanted was to pet Maddy and call her Elenaki and koukla.
“Promise,” Nana Mad said, shaking Maddy’s arm. “You won’t go away.”
“No,” said Maddy. It seemed the right thing to say. “I won’t.”
At last Nana’s foot slid into the gumboot, and Maddy and Grace led her back along the Wilam track. Sometimes Nana wouldn’t lift her feet and seemed confused about what they were for. They had to clear the path of its thick bark ribbons or she just walked right into them and fell over.
When her parents had said that Nana was forgetting things lately, Maddy had thought they meant people’s names or where she put her purse – things like that. She had never imagined this kind of forgetting. She wondered if Nana would forget what other parts of her body were for. She wondered if Nana would forget to breathe.
She didn’t know what she would do if that happened.
But as they walked, Nana Mad turned to Maddy as though Maddy had the answers to all the questions she couldn’t remember. The trust in Nana’s face made Maddy proud somehow. She took Nana’s arm with a stronger grip and stood taller so her grandmother could lean heavier.
Like she’d seen Nana lean on Mum.
And then she realised.
“It’s Ellen,” she whispered to Grace. “Elenaki. It’s Ellen. She thinks I’m Mum.”
They went further. Nana grew quieter. She started eyeing Grace Wek. By the greenhoods she stopped. There was a cool wind stirring and the smell of rain. Nana stepped behind Maddy.
“Who are you?” she asked Grace with suspicion.
“It’s just Grace, Mrs Spyrou,” said Grace.
Lots of people would have been scared when Nana Mad went mad for real. Not Grace. Grace kept talking in this soft, light voice like she hadn’t noticed anything. Her hands moved as she talked, and sometimes her long fingers accidentally brushed against Nana’s hand. Nana was hypnotised by the soft voice and her eyes followed Grace’s circling hands like they were faraway birds – and then she let herself be led quietly home.
Nana had left her house wide open and the gas stove still burning. The kitchen ceiling was spotted with slow circling blowflies. Sometime in the morning she had got up and walked out.
Maddy turned off the gas and rang Mum. There was a pause and Mum said she’d be right there.
By now Nana was a bit better. She remembered Maddy, and knew her house.
But she was still confused about Grace. She stared.
“You’re a black one!” Nana said, peering into Grace’s face. “A dark horse, eh?”
Maddy felt herself flush to the soles of her feet. Her parents always said never – never ever – mention a person’s skin colour. It was rude and it was never necessary. Nana hadn’t heard that rule.
But Grace snorted like a horse, and it made Nana giggle.
“It’s just me,” Grace told her again.
“I have a horse in Cyprus,” Nana told Grace then, like it was important. “In the morning she put her face in my window. Like an alarm clock.”
“Lucky,” said Grace. “I’d love a horse.”
“I was lucky then,” Nana said. “Really, really. The horse was black. Her breath smell like apples. She come when I call, like a dog. Her mane was long, long. Down to the ground.”
Nana’s hair was stuck to her face like seaweed and she was wrestling her feet out of her gumboots.
“My feet,” she said and flopped back. She was almost crying.
“Here, Nana,” said Maddy and bent to tug off the sticky boots.
“The soldiers took her,” Nana whispered to Maddy.
Outside, there was a faint squeal of tyres and the sound of breaking gnomes. Moments later Maddy’s mother rushed in. Nana’s eyes snapped opened.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Maddy’s mother said and sat gently next to Nana.
Then Mum collected Nana Mad into her arms. Long shadows formed outside the front window and slowly the sun sailed over the house but still Mum held Nana. It grew dark but nobody turned on the light.
“Why did she call you Elenaki, Mrs Frank?” asked Grace.
“Elenaki just means ‘little Ellen’, in Greek,” Mum said. “I wasn’t always Ellen Frank, you know. I used to be Eleni. Eleni Spyrou.”
“Mrs Spyrou was telling us about her horse,” Grace said. “The black one. With the mane.”
Maddy’s mother smoothed the hair back from Nana’s sleeping face.
“It’s not important any more,” Mum said. “She forgets things. Unimportant things.”
She was looking and looking. Like she was looking for all those things, thought Maddy. Those unimportant things.
“But,” said Mum, “it was my horse, actually.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ex-Kakopetria
When trouble came to Eleni Spyrou’s island of Cyprus in the turquoise Mediterranean Sea, she’d just had her eighth birthday. She still chased donkeys and picked wildflowers, and ran in a gang through her town of Kakopetria where she and her family had always lived. She loved wild roses, deep-fried cheese with jam and her little black mare, Stonewall.
On Eleni’s birthday she brushed Stonewall until she shone. She tied her mane and tail with ribbons. Her friends climbed the horse like a mountain and tried to ride her in groups. But Stonewall never kicked or bit or tried to wipe the girls off against a post like some horses.
It had been a beautiful day. The kind of day you remember, shimmering and sweet. Then the next day, deep in the mountains, they heard the planes buzzing like wasps.
Soon after they heard the planes, people from the mountain villages started coming to Kakopetria. They came silent or weeping: arriving on foot or by bus, by donkey or three-to-a-scooter. They came in clouds of dust: the children dragging suitcases with both hands and wearing everything they owned at once. Every day these dust clouds came and people stepped out with ashen faces. The children looked at Eleni with the eyes of stray cats.
They were the refugees.
Soldiers were fighting in the northern towns of the beautiful island in the turquoise Mediterranean. They were sending the children home from school. They were threatening the parents and closing the shops, and sending everybody away. The soldiers didn’t care where people went when they left, only that they did.
At first Kakopetria pitied the refugees. They gave them water and shelter, and whatever food they could manage. But some people asked what the refugees had done to draw the evil eye? Others said t
hey weren’t real refugees, but spies for the soldiers. Or thieves. When she heard this talk Eleni grew scared – and she wasn’t the only one.
The refugees trailed bad luck like veils. Their misery lay over the village and nobody knew what to do with them. Many people just wanted them to go away.
But then the soldiers came to Kakopetria. They crashed into the cool sleeping houses during the quiet afternoon, when people had lain down to nap as they always did after lunch. The soldiers shouted terrible words and pushed the adults around with guns. They came like that into Eleni’s house.
Mr Spyrou emerged from his room and the soldiers pointed their guns at the middle of his chest. He stood very still in his crumpled white shirt and fixed his eyes on Eleni and her mother. His eyes said Do as they say.
They packed one suitcase each. Her mother hung her good pots around her neck with string, and tried to stuff her wedding quilt in her suitcase but was stopped by her husband. Then the soldiers took the big brass key from the hook and locked them out of their own house. Before they left Kakopetria, Eleni went to find Stonewall.
But Stonewall was gone. There were only a few ribbons left, blowing about in her field. A boy said some soldiers had loaded her up with weapons and headed west. So Eleni went back to the square and found her parents.
And then eight-year-old Eleni Spyrou was one of them.
A refugee.
A bad-luck stranger.
In her bedroom that night, Maddy took the photo of the Karatgurk from under her pillow. It was smeared and crushed from the nights she had slept gripping it. The stars were faded now. There was only the blur left. Sophie-Rose’s finger blur.
Maddy thought about the Weks and Nana Mad, and the little girl Eleni, who grew up to be her own mother. All of them forced to leave home. To leave friends like Sophie-Rose. And streets like Jermyn Street. She wondered what happened to everything they left behind – the good pots, the wedding quilts, the little black horses. All the smooth white pebbles arranged in spirals and circles.
And then she thought about the people left behind. People still waiting in the queues. Their sad and their angry sorts of homesickness.
Mum came in with a pile of folded washing. She put it on the bedside table while she closed the windows. That washing smelled good – homey.
“But what did you do?” Maddy asked suddenly. “Where did you go?”
“We walked south,” Mum said, sitting on the bed. “I remember we slept on the ground. It wasn’t so bad until we got to the port.”
In the port town they waited to be told where to go. They spent their days going from queue to queue, and they spent their nights where they could. Sometimes that was in big strange-smelling sheds, a small part of a big strange-smelling crowd. It was never the three of them any more. Their family became a public thing, with people watching all the time.
Little Eleni grew thin and quiet.
She didn’t want to play.
She dreamed about Stonewall every night.
Then one day a man at the head of one of the queues said yes. They could go. They could go to Australia.
“Anyway,” her mother said in the end. “We came to Melbourne and Popi moved us out here and that was that. My parents never wanted to move again.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” asked Maddy. She couldn’t believe she’d lived her whole life without knowing about Mum and Cyprus and the soldiers.
“I didn’t want to scare you,” her mother said. “Or you know – depress you.”
“I’m not depressed,” said Maddy. She felt angry at the soldiers, sad about Stonewall, proud of her mother – all sorts of things. But not depressed. Actually, she felt better than she had for a while.
“Good,” said her mother.
There was a sleepy calm in the bedroom.
“But you wanted to,” Maddy said. “You wanted to move. Because you went away with Dad.”
“Oh yes.” Her mother closed her eyes and sighed. “I wanted to leave. I thought about running away all the time. It was bad enough before Popi died but after, Nana wouldn’t stop remembering. All she talked about was the village and the soldiers and that wedding quilt. Even after you were born she wouldn’t stop. She was angry all the time.”
“Nana’s still mad, actually,” said Maddy. “At you.”
“Yes, well, she can join the club then, can’t she?” said her mother, shrugging sadly.
It was hard for Maddy to hold a grudge against the homeless little Eleni Spyrou, Ex-Kakopetria: Dweller in a Shed and Loser of Her Horse. It was much harder than holding a grudge against the Home Breaker, Ellen Frank: Friend Smasher and Stealer of Sanctuary.
“I thought Nana was the family grudge holder but next to you, she’s an angel of forgiveness,” her mother said, turning off the lamp and standing up. “Nana would never stop calling me daughter, no matter how angry she was. But you! You’re the queen, the president, the empress of angry.”
Maddy saw her mother’s hand hanging at her side, loose and pale in the moonlight. The fingers were awkward, like the hand wanted to reach out and touch her. Like it wanted to tuck her in but wasn’t sure it was welcome. Maddy reached out and took hold of it.
Slowly and carefully, Maddy plaited her fingers through Ellen’s. She pulled her mother down towards her and laid her face on her cool arm. Strangely, the cool made her feel warm – and then with no warning she was crying. The hot tears rolled, the ice inside melted.
“I miss Sophie-Rose so much,” said Maddy.
“I know,” said Mum.
And Maddy Frank knew that she really, really did.
That night Maddy dreamed that the Jermyn Street fairies came home. In the dream she heard them coming, calling in familiar voices. Just as the lead fairy was clearing the peak of the dark mountain, she sat up in her dream bed. Just as the flights were crossing the moon-shadow gums, she ran to the dream window. The lead fairy was out there, hovering over the yellow stubble, listening. Putting the tiniest of horns to her mouth she was calling Maddy by her full name. Madeleine Jean Frank, called the fairy in a firm tone. Dream Maddy called back and the lead fairy heard and darted left, coming in to land on the windowsill. The others followed and just like that they moved back into Maddy’s dream room: the blue and the yellow ones, the ones with horns, the ones with bee fur. All of them.
The thing was, she had thought she must leave them behind. She had thought they were for babies. But they were her fairies, actually, and indigenous to herself. Maddy Frank was their habitat. She needed to keep part of herself wild for them.
Chapter Fifteen
What’s Important
Mum had told Maddy that Nana was losing her memory. She said it was called dementia – demensha. Nana Mad was getting very old and her brain was getting very old too. Bit by bit she would forget most things. She said right now Nana mostly remembered what was important to her – like keeping part of the Cyprus garden wild for fairies. But sometimes she remembered wrong – like who owned the black horse.
She couldn’t help forgetting. Sometimes it made her angry.
“But then,” said Mum, “she forgets what she was angry about. So that’s all right. And also,” she added, “you can tell her the same story and she’s just as interested the second or third time. It’s relaxing, actually.”
“Will she forget me?” asked Maddy.
“I don’t know,” Mum said. “Nobody knows what someone else will remember. But if she does forget, you can remember for her.”
“What about when I’m old though,” Maddy said. “When I’m just plain Mad. Will I get it?”
“What time is it?” asked Mum, suddenly.
Maddy and Mum were late. They’d stopped in Whittlesea to buy Maddy a pair of the Plenty boots. Maddy was watching her feet now as they walked the bush track. They looked strong, tough, solid. Like they belonged here. And they looked cool.
Brilliant, actually.
It was planting day and Grace and Nana Mad had gone ahead into the gorge
, down through the white gums to the bank of the Plenty River. Maddy could hear the river. And her grandmother was calling Coo-ee back through the trees to guide them. She’d forgotten a lot of things but she still knew the secret places of the orchids.
Maddy Frank decided it would be ages before she was old enough to forget like Nana Mad. And meanwhile, the light was dropping through the trees and making silver puddles in the undergrowth, and everything smelled clean and good. She just couldn’t think about getting old any more. She took off up the track, running in her new boots towards Nana’s Coo-ee.
Nana Mad and the planting party were meeting deep in a part of the bush where the only paths were fire trails. The orchids had to be planted where nobody would trample over them, or ride dirt bikes through them. Even people who only wanted to look could hurt them by accident. Orchids were not rare, just as Nana said, but they were sensitive. They had to be planted in the right places.
The almost-finished school project had a whole section on this: Where the wild orchids grow has to be secret. Indigenous orchids need a safe place to grow. They need to be protected while they regenerate …
“Coooo-ee!” called Nana. Her voice came from straight ahead.
“Are we nearly there?” Mum panted behind her.
“I can see them,” said Maddy.
Nana and the planting party were gathered by the river. Sunlight was bouncing off the water and rippling the underside of leaves. The men and women moved round each other in the clearing, orbiting inside these constellations of lights. They were unpacking the orchid pots.
Every pot held a new orchid. Every new stem shivered in the fresh air. Every new leaf and bud trembled. Watching, Maddy found she was holding her breath. They looked so soft. So breakable. But Nana had said, one orchid alone might be delicate, all together, they were a tough mob.
The project was clear on this point also: Orchids can live in the soil, on rocks, up trees and even under ground. There is an orchid for every place on Earth.
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