We See the Stars

by Kate van Hooft

  I closed my eyes and listened to my tummy rumble. I licked my lips and felt the dry on them. Little bits of skin were flaking up and I pulled them off between my teeth. My throat felt scratched and empty. I found the water in the bottom of the bag, with the map.

  Arnold sat down on a tree stump nearby. He rubbed his hands together in front of his face and blew hot air into them. ‘Don’t drink all of that,’ he said. ‘We’ll need more later.’

  The water tasted rusted and the little plastic cap had tooth marks on it where Davey had chewed. I put it against my own teeth but I couldn’t make the dents line up. Suddenly my arms and legs felt heavy, and all I really wanted to do was go to sleep.

  ‘Do you know…can you see…?’ I asked. The thoughts fell out of my head and I pushed my hands up to my face to try to keep them there.

  ‘I can hear her, I think,’ Arnold said. ‘Just footsteps, and dripping water every now and again.’ He tucked his chin into his pyjamas up to his nose. ‘I could do without the drips, if I’m honest,’ he said through the cotton.

  I looked up at the sky and around us, but it was hard to see through the trees how far we were past the mountains. I didn’t think we were anywhere near the road anymore. The water settled in my belly and the rumbling went quiet. I shifted in the dirt until I found a patch of soft leaves. If you sat on them you could feel that they were wet and they’d probably make your pants muddy, but I settled down enough that I could feel my legs get heavy, and when I blinked my eyes stung. I kept them open long enough to see Arnold coming over and putting his arms under me, so that I lay on the ground but with my head in his lap. I looked up at him, and at the night behind his head, and when I closed my eyes I could still feel him, and his arms holding me up out of the dirt.

  I thought about Davey tucked up in bed making his little snores. I thought about Grandma in the spare room with her hairbrush out on the dresser, and Grandpa packed up in boxes next to the TV. I thought about Dad tucked up on the good couch in the living room, which was just opposite Mum’s door, and I thought about the morning when he came home from the hospital.

  The sound of him coming in through the back door had woken me up and after a while I got out of bed and went down the hallway, careful not to make a sound. I thought he’d have gone to the bedroom, so I was surprised when I saw him on the good couch. I went over to him on tiptoes. The light coming in from the window was blue but it was pinking up slowly, and the holes in the lace curtains were making the shadows jump around on his face. Mum’s bedroom door stayed closed, and quiet. I felt the air tickling the sides of my nostrils when I breathed in and out.

  I put my hand on Dad’s chest, right over where his heart was. I felt the thump under my fingers, and the push of air as the beat travelled along my arm and up into my face. My beats mixed in with his beats, and they got louder when they beat together, until you could only hear the thumping in your ears. I held my other hand over his mouth, but I cupped my fingers so he could breathe between them. I felt the pull of his breath in through his nose, the same as mine.

  Dad was awake, and he was watching me. I felt his eyelashes flick under my skin when I put my hands over his cheeks. When I took them away again his eyes were wet, and the birds had started chirping outside, and the light was turning golden. He lifted up the blanket and made a space for me beside him.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said, and I got in, lying on my side with the weight of him against my back. I heard him sigh and his muscles went loose around me. I felt his breath over the top of my head, going real quick until it slowed.

  ***

  I woke up on the ground with the mud underneath me. I tried to sit up but there was a rock under my shoulder, and the pain of it was so bad that I didn’t want to move. I rolled over onto my side and felt the leaves in my hair.

  It was starting to get light, which made it easier to see, but the trees were still too thick for me to see the mountains. There was a lot of scrub, and everything was wet from the dew. My stomach felt rusted over and it growled when I moved. I had to stamp my feet on the ground for a while to wake up my toes.

  Superman stretched his arms over his head and I handed him the map.

  ‘We need to get going if we’re going to find her today,’ I said, and he nodded.

  I found the compass in the bag and flipped it open. I held it straight out the way Jeremy had told me. ‘That’s north,’ I said, and I pointed in the opposite direction to where I thought the mountains were. ‘That means we have to keep going this way.’

  Superman looked up and around him, then turned the map upside down. He looked at me, and I held the compass out so he could see. ‘North,’ I said again, and I pointed. He turned the map around again. I took it off him and put it back into the bag.

  ‘Where do you think she is?’ Arnold asked. I hadn’t even heard him come up behind me.

  ‘He’s taken her,’ I said.

  Arnold looked at me with his head tilted to one side and his neck bones showing through the grey of his skin.

  ‘Perhaps Matthew tied her to a railway track and left when he heard the train coming,’ Arnold said.

  I drank the rest of the water in one go but I promised Arnold I’d fill it back up again as soon as we got there. After we rescued Ms Hilcombe she’d probably make us jam on toast and we’d get a lift back to my house. The most important thing was that we kept moving, and I walked fast, but not so fast that Superman and Arnold couldn’t keep up.

  My jaw kept clicking when I rolled the bones together, and I rubbed at my shoulder with my hand. The bag kept cutting into it, but it was lighter without the water. The sky was getting clearer as we walked, and if the sun hit you on the back of the neck the warmth spread down under your jumper and up along the top of your head. We walked until the sun was right on top of us, and I could feel the sweat sticking my jumper to the skin under my armpits, and it gave me goosebumps when I reached up to pull it away.

  ‘Is that a landmark?’ Arnold pointed to a tree stump so big that you could stand on it and stretch all the way out.

  ‘Is it on the map?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see any of this on the map, son,’ Arnold said.

  ‘We’re in the green,’ I told him.

  I swallowed the sour and as it got brighter I had to hold my hand up over my eyes to hide them from the sun. My jaw clicked, and each time the sound of it shot up the side of my face and into my eye socket, and the pain wrapped around the top of my head like I was wearing a hat that was too tight.

  ‘Is that a landmark then?’ Arnold asked. This time he was pointing to a mound of dirt that came up nearly to his waist. It was covered in twigs and sticks and dead leaves, and the smell of it hit you when you were still ages away.

  ‘I think that belongs to a bird,’ I said.

  Arnold picked up a stick and poked at it. ‘Is it a chicken? Oh, I’d give me right arm for just one more Sunday roast,’ he said. Nothing moved and he poked at it a couple more times to make sure.

  We kept walking.

  If you’d lifted up my shirt and tapped me on the tummy, the echo would have gone through my guts and all the way up my insides until it went round and round in my head. Superman kept wanting to stop and lean against the trees to rest his feet a little bit, and you could hear his tummy rumble over the top of the static in your ears.

  I kept the compass in my hand and I liked the weight of it. The needle kept pointing north and I went east to get to the river. The mountains kept rolling around behind us and it was hard to find a way through that was in a direct line. I sat down on a rock to look at the map again, but the sunlight caught the paper and I had to keep my eyes shut until the burn went away. They felt heavier every time I tried to open them.

  ‘Hungry?’ Arnold said. He sat on the rock beside me with his legs hanging over the side, and the bottoms of his pyjamas were getting shredded, and there were scratches on his feet deep enough to go through to the bone.

  I nodded.

  ‘Tired,’ I
said.

  He reached down and pulled a thorn out of the bottom of his foot, and he held it up in the sunlight to get a good look at it. It was as long as my little finger, and when he pulled it out he didn’t wince, even when it ripped through some of the skin.

  ‘Would you look at that?’ he said. When he held it up it wasn’t a thorn anymore, but a little bit of chicken bone. ‘Good thing we’re here in time for the roast,’ he said, and pointed over my shoulder. When I turned I had to shield my eyes from the bright of it, and they started to close by themselves, but just for a second before they shut there was only gold light in my eyelids, until they went red from the blood in the skin.

  ***

  ‘Simon!’ Grandpa said. ‘So good of you to join us. Grab a seat.’

  He was standing at the head of a table with the knife in his hand, set up right there in the bush where Arnold and I had been sitting, and Davey and Dad and Grandma were sitting on chairs around him, waiting for him to start cutting. The roast chicken was still so hot that there were little wisps of steam coming off it, and they rose up from the table into the sunlight, and got caught up along the branches of the trees.

  ‘Do you want the wishbone?’ Grandpa asked me.

  Davey’s face went red. ‘No, I want it!’ he said.

  ‘You had it last time,’ Grandma told him. ‘It’s Simon’s turn.’

  Grandpa cut into the chicken and bits of mud and grass started leaking out.

  ‘Davey can have my turn,’ I said.

  Grandpa looked at me and winked.

  The chicken was soft and he started pulling around in the bones of it. Davey got up on his knees on his chair and leant over to watch.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he said.

  ‘Davey,’ Dad said, ‘be polite, please.’

  Grandpa pulled the wishbone out of the chicken and held it up. He and Davey each hooked a little finger around one end.

  ‘One,’ said Grandpa. He bent down so that he was eye to eye with Davey. ‘Two,’ he said. Davey started giggling and pretended to pull on his side early, but Grandpa was ready for him and just let it slip from his hand. Davey kept laughing even though they had to grab it again. ‘Three!’ said Grandpa.

  The bone snapped and Davey yelped. Grandpa had the wishbone, and Davey only had the broken piece.

  ‘Ah well,’ Grandma said.

  Davey sat back down in his chair and put his chin in his hands. He had the little broken bone on the plate in front of him and he stared at it. My lips were dry and I licked at them. They tasted of salt, and dead leaves.

  Davey handed the broken bone to me. ‘Here, you can have this now,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, give us a piece, it’s been so long,’ Arnold said, and when I looked up, suddenly everyone was gone from the table, and it was just me and Arnold sitting in the bush in the dark. The bone was hollow and you could see where it had snapped off. There was a sharp bit right along the edge and if you pressed your finger on it hard enough you could cut yourself. I dropped the broken bone onto the ground and everything went quiet. A dead bee fell out of the hollow of the bone and landed on its side in the dirt. I shut my eyes.

  ***

  Superman shook me awake, and it was so cold that I didn’t mind the burn where he grabbed me. I got up and he walked ahead of me, which meant I just had to follow his cape, and when he ducked around a tree I ducked, and when he bent low to walk under a branch I did too. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure that I was following, and he kept looking at his wrist even though he didn’t have a watch.

  It wasn’t as bright anymore, which meant that I didn’t have to shield my eyes, but the sun was colder and it didn’t warm the back of my neck like it had before. My eyes burnt unless I closed them, but then I couldn’t see. We went down into a gully, and the trees got thicker and the air felt like it was wet, and I didn’t remember seeing this bit on the map but I held the compass and kept following east. I tasted the sour in my mouth and stuck to the back of my teeth and I had to keep swallowing to get it down into my throat. The letters from Matthew’s note kept coming up and I chewed on them, and I still had the water bottle in the bag but it was empty.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be there by now?’ Arnold asked.

  Superman stood at the top of the gully and looked over the treetops. There was a bit where the trees weren’t as thick, and he gestured that we should walk in that direction.

  ‘Jeremy wasn’t sure how long it would take to drive there,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know how long for walking, either.’

  ‘Did he tell you the bush would be this thick?’ Arnold asked. His footsteps were a bit slower than mine, so you could hear that he was falling behind.

  I didn’t answer, and Superman flew overhead to keep an eye on things, but when I looked again I saw it was only a bird.

  ‘Wait,’ Arnold said.

  I turned around to look at him. He was leaning on one of the trees. ‘I’m an old man,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep up.’

  ‘If we keep stopping to rest we’ll never catch up to her,’ I said.

  Arnold screwed his face up so that his eyes scrunched closed and his mouth was in a tight line.

  ‘’S’not my fault you had a nap!’ His face was going red and his eyebrows were crashing together in the middle of his face. ‘She didn’t even really like you that much,’ he said. ‘She just wanted you to keep all her dirty little secrets.’

  I felt a squeeze start up across my chest, and the cold air was rough against the back of my throat. I coughed until my eyes started to water.

  ‘Not true’, I said, and I rubbed at my cheeks to try and get the wet off them.

  ‘My legs are old and I want my tree.’ Arnold pointed off into the bush. ‘This isn’t my paddock. This isn’t mine at all,’ he yelled.

  I bent over at the waist and felt the wheeze coming up through my back. If I held onto my knees and coughed I could make a bit of space to get some air in. I held my hand out to Arnold to get him to be quiet, and I felt the rush of the blood going up and around my head, and if I closed my eyes I could feel the world tilt sideways, and I had to keep my feet firm and heavy on the ground so I wouldn’t fall. I saw a flash of red in the corner of my eye and then Superman put his hand on my shoulder. His hand was warm, and I felt it through my jumper and down on my skin.

  ‘I’m just so tired,’ I said, and I felt the ache in my legs from walking so far on them.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ Arnold said. When I stood up again he was watching me, and he picked at the dirt under his fingernails. ‘It’s the hunger, it’ll get you if you’re not careful. Here, give us that.’ He reached over and pulled the bottle out of my bag. ‘I’ll go fill it,’ he said.

  I looked up at Superman, and he brushed at the bottom of his cape to try and get the dirt off it.

  ‘Can you keep going?’ I asked him.

  He nodded.

  It got dark quicker than I thought it would, and even with the torch it was hard to see where we were going.

  Minus one

  It’s not light but it’s morning, and there’s wetness on the ground. Superman hasn’t slept well and there’s mud on the bottom of his cape. I’m sitting up with my back against a fallen tree and there’s a snail coming along it. If you look over it’ll stop moving, but if you look straight ahead and just watch out of the corner of your eye you can see it coming towards you. My hands are shaking from the cold but I don’t move them, and when the snail gets to my shoulder it puts out its little feelers and brushes up against my top. I blow on it a little but it doesn’t move. It’s left a little silver trail behind it. If you followed the trail it would take you back to its home.

  The thing is that it’s still too dark, and there are mountains on both sides of us now. The compass is still pointing north and we’re still heading east and the map’s still in the bag next to the bottle with nothing in it. If I put my tongue against the back of my teeth I can feel the dry and the hot of it. My eyes burn along the edges even if I close them. If I put
my chin on my neck it makes my jaw sore, and the pain around my head is tight on my skin.

  ‘Son?’ a voice says, and when I look up Arnold is sitting on the other side of the clearing. ‘Do you see the stars?’

  I look up and the little pins of light scratch along the outside of my eyes. For a second they swim there in front of me, and I reach out and grab one and hold it between my fingers, and if you grip too hard it breaks up into little pieces, and it smells like when your Grandma needs to get the oven going for dinner, and she makes the match light up by rubbing the red bit against the rough side of the box.

  ‘I see them,’ I say. There are little clouds coming out of my mouth when I talk, and my nose is so cold that when I touch it I can barely feel that it’s there.

  ‘See that one?’ Arnold says, and he comes over to sit beside me with his back to the log, and his feet are caked in mud and dirt. He points to the sun, which has just started breaking in through the clouds, and when I look up I get a burn on the back of my eyes, so that when I turn to him there’s a blur that blocks out most of his face. ‘Here,’ he says, and he reaches over and pulls the blur from my eyes. He holds it between his two fingers in front of my face.

  ‘Make a wish,’ he says, and when I close my eyes and blow I ask for Ms Hilcombe to come home.

  For a while Arnold doesn’t say anything, and behind the quiet I can hear running water. ‘Stars are so far away from us that they’re already dead by the time we see them,’ he says.

  ‘Are you cold?’ I ask.

  His pyjamas are so frayed at the bottom that you can see the tears in the cotton all the way up along his legs. He’s sitting so that he’s touching my shoulder but there’s no warmth in it, and I don’t want to try to hold his hand in case it snaps into little bits. My jaw rolls and clicks when I stretch it, and there’s pain along my bottom teeth.

  Suddenly I think I might cry, and my tummy rumbles loud enough for both of us to hear it. The sour milk keeps shifting and I can feel it washing up against my ribs and down in the bottom of my belly.