My Year Without Matches

by Claire Dunn

  “On this night of balance,” says Chloe, “may we receive the guidance we need to come back into equilibrium with life, so that we may follow clearly our hearts’ desires.”

  With a squeeze we drop our hands, Chloe reaching behind her to fish out a brown leather pouch. I feed the fire as she unties the beaded string that holds the pack and begins shuffling. Choosing one from the pack, she lays it on the dirt in front of her.

  “The lover,” she exclaims, blushing.

  “Ooh, do tell,” Nikki prompts, knowing full well the answer.

  “Well, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Niko and I are, well, seeing each other, you know, without seeing much of each other,” Chloe laughs.

  “Well, I’m not exactly shocked, Chlo,” I say dryly, having long noticed Niko’s binoculars pointing towards one particular featherless bird. Another couple. The tenacity of the human species in finding a mate, despite obstacles such as almost complete isolation, is quite astounding. That now accounts for everyone on the block except for me and Shaun, and I’m fairly sure he is angling to amend that.

  Nik and Chloe giggle over the card, while I shift uneasily with the now-familiar feeling of being on a very different path this year.

  I drop my head back to look at the sky as I shuffle, the broad sweep of the Milky Way overhead, and the smooth slip of the cards in my hands. I fumble the deck, and a card jumps out of the pack and lands face up in my lap. I tip it towards the fire. A woman dressed in furs sits alone in a cave by a fire, a single cooking pot by her side. My heart thumps at the image, as if wanting to leap into it. “That’s me,” I say quietly, with an ache in my chest.

  “The Hermit,” says Chloe, looking at me curiously. Switching on her head torch, she reads from the tarot book.

  “With the light of summer fading it’s time to turn inwards.” She raises one eyebrow. “The duality of light and dark exists within humanity and in the work of spiritual transformation. The mystic must descend into the abyss alone to face her own inner darkness – the shadows of the ego – in order to emerge into the light. It is time to turn your face from the external world and go within. Do not ignore the call.”

  Above us, a tawny frogmouth strikes up a sonorous beat.

  Niko’s parting words flash back to me. “Sooner or later,” he said with a strange smile, as I scribbled notes in my journal, “sooner or later you’ll find that as you track the questions, the questions start tracking you.”

  6.

  When we walk back into camp the next morning, Ryan and Shaun are bustling about in the communal kitchen amidst piles of boxes.

  “What’s going on?” Nikki asks.

  “Kate’s asked us all to be out of the kitchen by tomorrow – they’re running a day course and need the space,” Shaun says.

  “Good excuse to get us out of here and into our shelters,” adds Ryan wryly.

  “What – today? But I’m not ready,” I say, panicky, thinking of my empty shelter and all the fire preparations not done.

  I hurriedly join in dividing up the bulk dry supplies into separate bags. Well, since I wasn’t going to make the move myself, it seems I am going to be pushed. This makes the tarot card from last night look more like a premonition than guidance.

  As I wheelbarrow my rations down the shelter trail, a wind picks up ahead of a rumble of thunder. I grab some firewood and stash it inside my shelter. Not that it’s any guarantee of dryness. It hasn’t rained for weeks, so my thatched roof and untarped lean-to are entirely untested, and now my back-up communal shelter is gone.

  I recently tried starting my faithful old car, for the first time in over a month, to find the forest had lulled it to sleep. Although it was a buzz to throw away the last key in my possession, as I watched it being towed to the wreckers I realised how comforting it had been to know that a couple of kilometres away was a little metal nest, which I could crawl into at any time – and use to escape if I got desperate. Now, unless I beg or hitch a ride, I am a prisoner of The Block.

  Heavy-set clouds overtake me on my way back to the kitchen. The first raindrop spanks the tin roof, the second follows a few moments later, a third and fourth coming rapidly. Shaun, Ryan and I look up from our packing sharply. D-day. My feet don’t want to move, as I remember my dream from a few weeks ago, in which my lean-to was a giant sponge saturated with water. Oh God, if it isn’t watertight, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

  Ryan bolts first, followed shortly after by Shaun. Curiosity finally sends me hurtling towards my shelter too, my heart pulsing in my throat. The rain picks up behind a gust of wind, battering my shoulders as I bound over fallen logs on a shortcut. Diving under the lean-to, I crouch and crane my neck into every corner, expecting a torrent of water to flood in any minute, as if through flywire. The rain throws down fierce bundles that splatter with muffled thuds on the paperbark. Okay, so far so good. But, more importantly …

  My stomach lurches as I run to my shelter. Water droplets are sliding down the outside of the grass and disappearing into the sand. Please, grass, please work. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. The wind whistles in behind me. What was that on my hand? Oh, it’s just my hair dripping. Rain raps loudly on the chimney cap, as if demanding entry, misty sprays wafting in through the smoke gap. I search for signs of drips, but the rain actually seems to be staying on the outside. I can’t believe it. Any drips on me? I’m so wet I can’t tell. But I don’t think so. No drips. Oh my God, my shelter is waterproof!

  Hang on. What was that? Splat. And that? Splat. And that? Splat. Three raindrops collect in the sand near my feet in an almost perfect triangle. “Stop, stop, stop,” I whisper, squatting next to them. Another drop lands in the middle of the trio. They join together in a huddled pool, waiting for back-up.

  “Ouch!” My head bangs on a rafter as I stand. I run my hands along the runners, panning for signs of the intruders’ entry points, but they’ve hidden their tracks well. I crouch again, frowning as the pool makes room for subsequent drips. I count the seconds between drops, as one does between lightning and thunder. I will them to stop. Fat droplets continue to splash in at five-second intervals.

  Ryan bursts in, drenched. “Howzit going?” he yells.

  I point down at the drops.

  “Is that it?” he asks.

  “I think so,” I yell back. “You?”

  Ryan gives me a thumbs up and an enormous grin.

  “Dunny, we’ve done it – it’s working!” Ryan says, grabbing me by the shoulders, before catching a drip in his eye. We burst out laughing. The drops slow to ten-second intervals. I guess if this is as bad as it gets, it’s pretty good really, the drips close enough to the centre and slow enough not to pose much of an issue.

  Back at the lean-to, a steady trickle is running in at the back but flowing straight out again. I reckon I can live with that too.

  “Woohoo!” I yell, pulling Ryan out into the rain, water sliding down my upheld arms and my back as we twirl.

  Shaun marches in, his face as dark as the storm.

  “If it wasn’t raining I’d burn it down,” he thunders.

  I flick my palms up in a question.

  “Ten more bundles,” he says definitively. “Ten more bundles and it’ll be sweet.”

  Ryan and I laugh and grab his hands, the wind and rain spinning with us.

  *

  “This feels really strange,” Ryan says, as we walk down the main trail together later that afternoon en route to our shelters. Around us the bush sparkles and gleams in post-storm bliss. I’m relieved that his coldness towards me is thawing, partly in response to my own warmth, but also, I suspect, because the honeymoon period with Nikki is waning.

  I, too, feel jittery, both scared and a little excited about the first night alone with my own fire. If I get fire that is. It’s a big if.
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br />   “Yep, I hear you. All you couples will be having fun without me …” I say.

  “Thought you wanted to be the hermit?” Ryan says, elbowing me. “But, anyway, I reckon I’ll be the one who goes days without seeing anyone … well except Nik, maybe,” he says dubiously. We arrive at my junction.

  “Well … good luck. Hope the fire gods are good to you,” Ryan says.

  I laugh nervously, really wanting to follow him and his easy fire-making muscles.

  “Yeah, night then … see you … whenever.”

  I walk, heart in mouth, to the start of my shelter trail. It is strange knowing there’s no group fire to fall back on. This is finally it. I stoop under the banksia branch archway and look ahead to my destination. The wet paperbark roof is mottled with rusty reds and charcoal greys. Nestled between ancient white buttresses, the grass hut could be a hobbit home. It’s so adorable I just want to squeeze its cheeks. All I need now is a flame to warm my hearth, and I’m home.

  I stand between the two structures, deliberating. My swag is still in the lean-to. It’s pretty crowded in there with all my kitchen stuff, but for some reason I haven’t moved into my shelter. I haven’t even had a fire in there yet. I’m not sure why, but I feel a bit guilty as I walk away from it.

  *

  Outside the lean-to, I lay my hand-drill kit down in front of me, piece by piece, like a surgeon positioning instruments. A tinder bundle sits expectantly on my breakfast bar, a teepee laid in the kitchen fireplace with precision.

  I look down at the sticks. I’m feeling hopeful, although there’s no reason why I should. What’s to say today will be any different to every other that I have tried and failed? The other night Nikki mistook the squeal of my firesticks for the high-pitched whine of the resident plover. It’s the noise of a novice – indicating that the wood fibres are glazing and becoming glossy rather than grinding, due to lack of pressure.

  Kate has been giving me private lessons, but they usually end with me sulking as she effortlessly glides it home.

  “How bad do you want it?” she asked recently. She was shocked as I held out my hands in reply, blood weeping from two stigmata-like blisters. Her next words were slow, carefully chosen.

  “Remember: you have to want it more than anything, but give up the trying.”

  I wince at the first spin, the blisters sending piercing shots up my arms. The pain numbs to a throb but the blisters are still problematic – speed humps in the mid-point of every spin. Every millisecond of lost heat matters. I grit my teeth and press my palms more firmly into the stalk.

  Just warm up the board. No need to rush. Wait until dust collects.

  I maintain a steady rhythm, floating up the top of the stalk, trying to ignore the acidic pressure in my biceps. My breath is laboured and sweat beads collect on my upper lip.

  Keep spinning. Keep going. You can do it.

  The board starts squealing as it loses pressure. I switch to speed. Up-down, up-down. Sweat drips onto the sand. My forearms are shuddering, every muscle screaming at me to stop. I peek at the notch – the wood dust’s not even half full.

  It’s no good. You can’t do it. You’re never going to be able to do it.

  Anger stampedes through my body. I can’t keep going. I drop my sticks to the ground in defeat.

  *

  Slumped on my swag considering whether to try again, I sit up when a stream of chattering shadows passes over me. The birds gurgle as they land with a pancake thud against one of the scribblies. I run out with my torch. Yellow-bellied gliders! They let loose another waterfall of chortles, taking off like a school of fish, splashing from tree to tree. I’m watching them disappear when something else swoops in low, alighting on one of the lean-to poles. I turn towards it slowly, creeping in for a better look. A bird, white as a whisper, balances on the edge of my roof with the poise of a china doll, its only movement the blinking of its enormous childlike eyes. Strange and ghostly creature, blown in on some passing mist, where do you come from? What is your errand? It answers with the call I’ve heard most nights. This is no lost traveller, but my invisible neighbour, the owlet nightjar.

  “Good night to you too, sweet one,” I offer, as it flies away, its exit as silent as its arrival.

  I am alone, blissfully alone, in the wild forest. At last. I begin to dance a little jig between the two shelters. I don’t give a hoot what the others are doing.

  The owl in the distance does, though – unleashing a woohoo that booms across the forest like a foghorn. I freeze in recognition: the powerful owl, the largest of the forest owls and one of the rarest.

  It has shown itself to me only once in my life, at a forest blockade. It had been a dramatic week, with thirty loggers from the local town turning up and threatening to physically evict us, despite our attempts to befriend them with an impromptu sausage sizzle and a slab of VB. Finally, we secured an agreement from the government that the old growth would be left alone. While our tents were being dismantled, I walked up a dry creek bed near camp, full of gratitude for the opportunity to play a part in the protection of hundreds of old trees and their inhabitants. As I lay face-up on a mossy log dotted with milky fungus, my gaze was drawn to a large tree hollow. Suddenly the space was filled with an enormous bulk of brown speckled feathers. Two dark eyes stared down at me momentarily before their owner flew directly overhead. I gasped, knowing it was the owl I had marvelled at in books and heard spoken of in reverent tones. In my mind it existed more in spirit than physical form, a mythical creature, and yet there it was, the powerful owl, right in front of me. I accepted its visit as an acknowledgment of our efforts.

  Woohoo!

  After sweeping the coals together, I launch down the main trail and across the bridge in the direction of the call, following the trail south to where the road dips level with a paperbark swamp. I stop. The forest has fallen silent, even the frogs pausing their symphony, as if also in wait.

  Woohoo!

  I spin around, the call so close it reverberates in my chest. I drop to a crouch, brushing spiderwebs from my face as I stalk into the brush. A cricket chirrups and I jump. The air is thick with expectation. I stop short of a swamp turpentine tree to wait for the next call. The hairs on my neck prickle. I feel as if something is watching me, the gaze weighty with presence. I look up, scanning the branches, at first seeing nothing but pale leaves and stars. Then my eyes lock with two huge yellow irises. The creature grips a branch with finger long talons, its mottled brown feathers embroidered with moth-wing intricacy. Its wings lift and shake, as if slightly irritated, before settling. My body has turned to stone. Breaking our stare, the owl lifts its beak skyward and puffs out its chest to deliver a ground-shaking holler. Unfolding broad wings, it looks down to demand my gaze for another split second before launching like a hang-glider into the night. I melt to my knees, swaying in the wake of its flight.

  *

  What a day, I think, as I walk back down my shelter trail. No fire, but a royal welcome nonetheless. I cast a guilty look towards my shelter as I crawl, exhausted, into my swag and crash out.

  I wake in the middle of the night, my heart beating. It must have been a dream, I tell myself, and snuggle back down in my sleeping bag. Starting to drift back off, I vaguely register a slight rustle coming from the paperbark above. Pricking my ears, I realise the rustling is not the subtle stop-start of a skink, but one uninterrupted movement. A slithering. My eyes snap awake. I grab my head torch and shine it above me.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaim, my torch illuminating the triangular head of a snake poking and prodding at my mozzie net, its scaly body suspended like a hammock between the net and a roof beam.

  I hurl myself out of the swag and net. I spin around quickly, not wanting to lose sight of it. Exposing a red belly, it slides down the side of the net, searching doggedly for a way into my bed. I cringe as I imagine
myself still asleep. With a figure eight, the snake turns abruptly to follow its tail back through a hole in the paperbark. Great, I’ve got a poisonous snake living in my roof. I weigh up my options: try to get the snake out (unlikely and dangerous), try to go back to sleep (unthinkable) or move camp. In one swift motion I undo my mozzie net and fling my swag outside, checking each layer to see there aren’t snake babies writhing beneath.

  Without even the wan light of stars inside my shelter, I can barely make out my hand in front of me. I wave my torch around to ensure the snake hasn’t followed me in. There’s nothing bar a few spiderwebs. Tossing my swag down, I tie the mozzie net to a beam and warily climb in. I cross my arms over my chest and wait for my heart to slow. The shelter smells of damp hay bales and clay. A few stray blades of grass sway in the chimney gap, stars twinkling behind them. My breath deepens. When my eyes adjust, I can make out the individual bundles. Divided up by the criss-cross of the runners, my roof looks like a giant patchwork quilt arching over me, every square inch alive with the memory of the sweat and struggle of its creation.

  I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to move in. I’m here now, I silently assure it.

  I lie wide awake, staring up into the dark dome, thinking of all the coming nights we will spend together. The shiver of anticipation that runs through me runs through my shelter too, its grass feathers rustling. I look down into the hearth, the stones cold and stiff.

  Flinging off my sleeping bag, I run out to scoop up the untouched kindling from the lean-to fireplace and prop it up in the shelter hearth, sitting the tinder bundle on a flat stone next to me.

  I begin spinning the stalk: slow, slow, slow.

  “Breathe through it,” Kate’s words come back to me. “You’ve got all the strength you need. Channel it up from your core.”