Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

‘She won’t find out now.’

  When he didn’t reply, Jamie danced silently up to him, turning out her feet, still doing the ballet thing. She kicked Bobby lightly in the back, and when he still didn’t respond she kicked harder. ‘What’s up, Bobby-boy. Crying for your mummy?’

  Bobby gave a yell and grabbed her ankle.

  ‘You’ll be the one crying, once I’m done with you.’

  Jamie shrieked and tried to twist free, but her foot slipped on the mossy stone and she crashed onto her bottom. In an instant Bobby was on her, pinning her beneath him, covering her slender body with his own large one.

  Sliding back behind my rock, I sat heavily on the ground as understanding came to me. The locket Jamie had just tossed into the water had glittered in the sun like something valuable, because it was valuable.

  At least, it had been to Mrs Drake.

  The memory had left me feeling jittery.

  Suddenly, my palms were damp and I kept wanting to look over my shoulder. Crouching, I ran my hands across the smooth surface of the granite, collecting particles of lichen and moss, trying to regather myself. I had hoped that returning to this place would jog my memory of Jamie’s death and, now, after my flashback about the stolen locket, I felt close. Too close. The vault had opened, but I wasn’t ready. Perhaps I should come back when I felt stronger, when my heart didn’t pound so painfully, when my limbs were not so weak and prone to trembling.

  And yet I lingered, as if the rocks had cast their spell on me once more and trapped me here. Except tonight – and it was almost night, I noticed as the sun began to swan-dive into its ocean of deep pink clouds – it wasn’t the joyful spell Jamie and I had experienced as children. There was something dark about the place, as if the sun-warmed granite beneath my feet was vibrating, rumbling like an ancient beast on the brink of waking from long hibernation.

  The trees and bushes that flanked it swarmed with shadow. I searched the dark-infested trunks, seeing figures crouched or standing, as if someone was watching.

  I looked back along the track I’d taken to get here, and willed myself to walk towards it, but I couldn’t move. The fragment of memory thrown up by my hypnosis session rushed back around me, terrifyingly real.

  There had been a struggle. Jamie had crashed backwards against the upright wall of stone, hitting her head. Her scream echoed around me, amplified and shattered into, not just one scream, but many, and then the sound was no longer erupting from the throat of a girl, but somehow blaring out of the stones around me—

  Dragging in a breath, I tried to shake off the hallucination, but the screams continued to rise around me. I covered my ears and began to run, wanting only to leave this place and return along the track to the safety of the farmhouse. As I neared the edge of the rocky shelf, the toe of my runner caught in a crevice and I lurched forward, hitting the rocks with full force. My head rang with the sudden silence. I tried to move, but I was locked against the ground, immobile, as if the granite had somehow seeped through my defences and turned my limbs to stone.

  Sometime later, I woke in darkness. I was no longer on the flat shelf of stone overlooking the river. The roar of the rapids was dim, muffled, as if in the distance. A smell lingered in the air: dampness and the powdery scent of lichen, the sharpness of animal dung. Somewhere overhead a branch creaked like a rusty hinge, but there was no other sound.

  Vaguely, I remembered crawling. My body was stiff and sore after my fall, and I had wanted to find somewhere out of the wind to rest until I recovered enough to walk home. I had rested against a large boulder, but then something shifted; the embankment had given way and swallowed me.

  I became aware that I was curled on my side, and that stones were digging into me. My joints ached, and the skin of my elbows and knees stung as if I’d been bitten by fire ants. Worse was the feeling that something enormous crouched over me – not an animal, but a large mass the size of a planet. Stretching out my arm, I reached up and my fingertips grazed damp stone.

  That was when I became aware of the cold.

  My shoes were gone, and I’d lost my cardigan, too. I was shivering, my thin jeans and tank top useless against the chill. I groped around. I seemed to be lying in a dirt cavity; a cave hollow or grotto.

  I crawled towards where I believed the opening to be, but I bumped my head on a sloping bank of earth. It seemed to take forever, wriggling around the base of my hollow, seeking an opening, not finding one.

  Finally, I curled into a ball to contain my body heat, but I was already shivering uncontrollably. Lying very still, I breathed deeply and tried to stay calm. My panic over the vision that had swamped me on the rocks had dimmed, replaced by a new fear.

  No one knew where I was.

  My body was jarred, my ankle swollen and sore.

  And I was cold. Very, very cold.

  Even if by some miracle Pete did come searching for me, how would he ever know where to look? He couldn’t know about the rocks, or that Jamie had died there. He couldn’t know that I’d returned here in search of answers.

  Squeezing shut my eyes, I tried to find the doorway into sleep. Instead, I found myself sliding into the silvery twilight of the past. A riverbank, and my sister casting her shadow across the rocks as she leaned out over the water, a glittering chain swinging from her fingers . . .

  When I found the place where Jamie had thrown the locket in the water, I stripped out of my clothes, folded them, and laid them on a dry rock. Then I waded into the river.

  The water was icy. My body prickled all over with goosebumps. When the water reached my knees, my breath left me. When I was waist-deep, my teeth started clacking like castanets. When it slapped my chest, I sucked in a gulp of air and let out a groan.

  Then dived under.

  A watery world folded around me. I groped among the pebbles on the riverbed, my fingers throbbing with cold. Sharp fragments of quartz cut into my feet, and my knuckles bruised against water-smoothed knobs of granite and jasper. The freezing water stung my eyes, but I all I could think of was finding that locket and proving to Mrs Drake and everyone else that the Wolf was innocent.

  Something string-like slithered between my fingers. I made a grab for it, but it was just a length of old fishing line, the catgut festooned with sparkly air bubbles. I yanked at it, hoping to snap the line, but it whipped across my palm and drove the hook into the fleshy base of my thumb. I wriggled it, wincing as the barb worked deeper under my skin, and then somehow my frozen fingers fumbled it free.

  I was about to toss it back in the river, but stopped. What if it caught in the throat of a platypus or some other poor animal whose only crime was being thirsty? I wanted to keep looking for the locket, but maybe the fishhook was a sign that I needed to rest for a while and warm up?

  Halfway back to the bank, I saw a shadow dart from the trees.

  Two shadows. The sun was in my eyes, but I knew who they were.

  ‘Well, well,’ Bobby Drake said. ‘Check it out, Jamie – it’s the Little Mermaid.’

  Jamie’s laugh sounded like birdsong, only there was something sharp in it. I bobbed neck-deep under the water and glared at them, willing them away, mortified to be seen naked, even if one of the people seeing me was my sister. I didn’t have much to see, but somehow that felt even worse.

  Jamie slid something from her pocket, dangled it in the sunlight. It spangled, the chain reflecting liquid light, the bauble on the end winking pure silver.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re looking for this?’ she asked.

  I stared at the locket, astonished. ‘How did you—’

  Jamie twittered. ‘You silly nong! I didn’t really throw it in. What do you take me for, an idiot?’

  ‘But I saw something go in the water.’

  ‘I knew you were spying, so I threw a pebble to get you off our scent. Stop following us – and if you tattletale to Mum, you’ll be really sorry!’

  She whirled away, her dark hair swinging behind her as she strode off along the embankm
ent and vanished into the trees.

  Bobby came to the water’s edge. I squinted into the glare, but with the sun behind him, he was a dark featureless blob.

  ‘Spying little brat,’ he said nastily. Picking up a stone, he skimmed it across the water. I jerked out of the way, which made him laugh. Then he went over to where I’d left my clothes, and kicked them into the water.

  ‘Quit following us,’ he warned, ‘or you’ll be in deep doo-doo. That’s a promise. I got rid of your weirdo friend, and I can get rid of you, too.’

  Vaguely I registered that I was dreaming – the chill of river water, the icy wind on my bare skin, and the fear that tiptoed through my bones.

  But then the dream turned warm – at least it did along one side of my body. In my mostly-asleep state, I imagined it was Pete lying next to me. I nestled against his body heat, wishing he would raise his arms around me and hold me close, because the side of my body he wasn’t pressing against felt frozen. At least I’d stopped shivering. At least sensation was finally starting to circulate back into my hands and feet.

  I snuggled closer.

  A whine came from the dark. Then a wet tongue licked my face. I became aware that the air in my cramped prison had changed. There was still the damp mustiness of stone and earth, but I caught a trickle of cool night air. I breathed it greedily, and again I felt the sinewy wetness on my cheek.

  Through the grey fog of sleep came awareness: this wasn’t Pete. The body I was curled into wasn’t even human.

  ‘Bardo?’

  The kelpie whined and licked my face again.

  I let out a moan, and then as if a lifetime of terror had never been, I rolled into her and wrapped my arms around her warm body, buried my face in the soft fur of her neck, and wept.

  When I woke, Bardo was gone, but her warmth remained. I was gripped by a terrible desolate panic, fearing she’d abandoned me here in the dark. But then I heard barking. It was distant at first, but soon it drifted nearer.

  ‘Bardo?’ I had meant to shout, but my throat was so dry I barely made a whisper.

  There was a scuffling nearby, and then Bardo was back beside me. She nudged me with her nose, and I understood that she wanted me to follow her. She disappeared again, and I could hear a furious scratching, soil sifting and stones thudding against other stones. Again the dog darted back to my side, nudged me, and then went back to her digging.

  Following the smell of fresh air, I crawled across the cave floor. Bardo had dug away the mouth of the hole, which was now easily wide enough for me to crawl through. From beyond the hole drifted an eerie quietness . . . broken suddenly by the sound of footfall.

  ‘Ruby!’

  ‘I’m here,’ I called huskily, and Bardo began to bark.

  Pete’s face appeared in the hole opening. His lovely, pink-cheeked face, with scowl lines cutting into his brow.

  ‘Hell, Ruby – are you okay?’

  ‘My head hurts,’ I rasped, ‘but nothing’s broken.’

  ‘Take hold of my arm. I’m going to slide you out slowly. Tell me the minute you feel pain of any sort, and I’ll stop.’

  I gripped his forearm, felt the muscles bunch and tighten under my fingertips. I tensed and Pete began to slide me through the opening. Stones bit into my belly and I heard a tearing sound as my T-shirt caught on a splinter of stone, but then I was out in the air, and Pete was cradling me tight against him.

  The dogs yapped and circled us, rubbing their flanks against our legs and whining in anxious pleasure – but rather than flinch away or break into a sweat as I would once have done, I welcomed their nearness. And as Pete held me tight and safe against him, I felt the cosy warmth of love surround me.

  18

  Brenna, July 1898

  Rain streaked the window as the train drew into Armidale. The carriage was damp and a chill had settled on me. By the time I stepped onto the platform, I was shivering.

  A boy rushed towards me. He was scrawny and hollow-eyed, stooped like an old man, his clothes swimming on his bony frame. My gaze slid past him, then back.

  With a jolt I recognised him. ‘Owen!’

  He didn’t smile, just lifted his arm and gave a jerky wave. He was holding Fa Fa’s favourite black hat. As he approached I saw the hat brim was dusty and the crown battered out of shape. The blue kingfisher feather in the band was tattered as if moths had made a meal of it.

  I rushed at my brother and gripped him by the shoulders. ‘What’s happened? Where’s my father?’

  ‘At home,’ he said in a dead voice.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  Owen nodded, but didn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Why did you bring his hat?’

  The boy’s elbows tucked against his ribs, and he moved the hat out of view behind his leg. ‘I don’t know.’

  I took his free hand, found it ice-cold. Chafing it between my palms, I said gently, ‘Please tell me. Is Fa Fa terribly unwell?’

  Owen pulled his hand from my grasp and looked along the platform.

  ‘We’d better get back,’ he said in that same lifeless voice. ‘Do you have your baggage ticket?’

  I fumbled the slip from my pocket. ‘Alone? Why is he alone? Where’s Millie?’

  Owen flinched, and snatched the docket from my hand. Pulling Fa Fa’s hat onto his head, he darted away and ran the length of the train to the freight carriage. He stood patiently while the attendant checked the tickets and retrieved carpetbags and hatboxes and travelling cases. Finally my battered trunk emerged and Owen seized it and surrendered the ticket.

  We hurried outside and down the hill to the carriage. The horses were restless in the rain, their flanks wet and streaked with mud. I noticed that one had a red sore on its eyelid. Owen threw my bag in the dray, then fumbled one-handed with the tethering rope and released the horses. He checked the yokes and harnesses, and made to slip past me and up onto the driver’s bench, but I grabbed his arm.

  ‘Owen, you must tell me what’s wrong.’

  He wound the leather reins around his hand but said nothing.

  ‘It’s Millie, isn’t it?’ I persisted.

  Owen nodded, but made no attempt to elaborate. Finally he met my gaze, and the empty desolation I saw in his young eyes tore my heart.

  ‘Please, Owen, I’m dying of worry. I demand you tell me.’

  He paled. The dark in his eyes swallowed him. He stared up at me from under the brim of my father’s hat.

  ‘Fa Fa told me not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  Pulling from my grasp without answering, he escaped up the carriage steps and took his seat, staring straight ahead. I climbed up after him and settled my skirts, then gently took the reins from his frozen fingers. The horses quivered and snorted, blowing rain from their nostrils as we headed uphill from the station. Turning onto the Bundarra Road, I set them to a trot, all at once aching to be home and yet fearful of what awaited me there.

  My father’s wolfhound Harold met us at the gate.

  Like Owen, the old dog appeared diminished; his bones jutted knife-like from his flanks, and his coat was unkempt and crusted with mud. He darted skittishly around my feet as the I alighted and hurried into the house, leaving Owen to drive the buggy to the barn and tend the horses.

  Bursting through the back door, I ran from room to room. The once-gleaming floorboards were trampled with mud, my aunt’s prized rugs littered with debris and kicked askew. There was a sickly smell in the air that grew stronger as I approached the kitchen.

  ‘Millie?’

  The benches were cluttered with unwashed dishes. Crusts of bread and spilled food and bowls of curdled milk lay about the benchtops, and a branch had smashed one of the windows, letting in a puddle of rain.

  ‘Millie! Where are you?’

  Drifts of dog hair and mouse dirt and breadcrumbs littered the dining-room floor. Leaves had blown in from outside, and the tabletop was silty; a bird had made tracks through the dust at the head of the table where my father liked to sit.
>
  My father’s study was empty, his desk in disarray, the curtains drawn, and a stale smell in the air like spilled brandy and perspiration. I ran upstairs and knocked on his bedroom door, pushing it open.

  ‘Fa Fa?’

  He was hunched on the edge of the mattress, his elbows on his knees, his head resting in his hands. As he looked up and saw me, I gripped the doorhandle to steady myself. The skin hung from his cheeks, and his eyes were hollow. His hair had thinned and grown long, the faded curls now shot through with silver.

  I rushed to him and settled beside him on the bed, wrapped my arms around his shoulders. His bones felt brittle through his shirt, like those of an old, old man.

  ‘Where’s Millie?’ I said gently. ‘The house is in a dreadful state. You and Owen looked half-starved, and even Harold is skin and bones. What’s happened?’

  A thin hand reached for me. ‘Millie is gone, Brenna.’

  ‘Gone?’ I blinked. Black spots swarmed behind my eyes. ‘Where has she gone?’

  Fa Fa covered his face with his hands. ‘Get me a brandy, Brenna girl. And a pair of tumblers. I will tell you, my sparrow, but you must prepare yourself. I fear you are going to need a bellyful of drink to bear it.’

  ‘It happened soon after dusk. Millie had served dinner and was just bringing her own plate to the table when we heard the screams.’

  My father paused to wipe his mouth. He gazed at the strong cup of tea I’d laced with brandy, but he made no move to touch it.

  ‘We went onto the verandah. There was smoke in the air, and far off in the distance we saw the glow of a blaze. At first I thought it was bushfire, and that the shouts we could hear were to warn us of the blaze. But something made me go upstairs and load my rifle. Owen left first. His horse was already saddled and tethered to the post at the front of the house. I tried to call him back, but—’ Fa Fa’s eyes were pleading. He took my hand. ‘What poor Owen saw that night has addled him. They are all dead, my Brenna. The clan is gone. Men came to the encampment, just as they did all those years ago. They brought their swords and guns and wreaked bloody murder.’