“You can come with me, you know. You can spin the wool. I saw you do it with Sister Margaret. I’ll shear, you’ll spin and we’ll go into town and sell it and then get fat on butter.”
Leonora rested her head on her shoulder and listened to his voice like it was a song. In the distance the church bell rang dully, and James’s brows fell heavy again.
“I gotta get out of this place.” He held his knees and rocked, looked out over the water. “Something about this place turns people mean and I hate it. Sometimes I feel like I could get mean and I don’t want to.” He looked at her desperately. “I don’t ever want to turn mean, Leo.”
A final ring rose from the bell, then died in the air. He watched her profile for a moment, noticed the odd way the sun etched the lines of her forehead, nose and chin as if they glowed. Then he threw his legs back over the edge of the cliff and laid his head into the grass playfully.
“Know what your problem is, Leo?”
Her face grew worried.
He smirked and closed his eyes. “You talk too much.”
A few days later, James and Leonora met at the curved trail of the church. A rush of sprayed pebbles and laughter met their ears and Michael Langley and two other boys plowed over the stones, whipping past them. Michael turned, held his neck as if choking before running clumsily down the path.
James watched them disappear. “Ignore them, Leo. Bunch of idiots.” When he turned to her she was still as stone, her eyes glued to the sea. Realization hit him slowly, but she knew already and a flash of heat shot through his veins. He tried to speak, but his throat tightened. “No, Leo,” he whispered.
Like a snapped rope, she tore to the cliffs, but he was stuck with heavy feet, mired in dread. “Leo, no!” he screamed, and pulled his muscles to hurry and catch up.
He found her in the only place she could be, in front of a pyramid of boulders and a wild rosebush. He stood several feet behind and she did not turn around. Her body was stone again. James breathed hard through his nose and his lips stretched against his teeth. “Don’t look at it, Leo. Don’t look.”
Leonora finally turned, her face pale. Her lips were open and her chin crinkled. Her eyes were wide circles of bewilderment and horror and grief so deep it physically pained his chest. James stepped forward. “Leo . . .”
But she turned from him and ran hard along the cliffs and he did not follow. His eyes fell to the ground, to the clump of yellow feathers that ruffled in the wind and stuck to the edges of the rosebush, and anger welled inside—an anger he’d never known, an anger that clawed his insides and made him dizzy with hate. He turned toward the orphanage and beat the path with a steady, determined pace.
CHAPTER 14
Father McIntyre’s cassock draped over his thighs as he pulled his legs uphill, the exertion laboring. The evening descended and the sky turned indigo. A thin slice of moon paled above the steeple like a lizard’s eye.
Growing winds reminded him the ocean was near. Father McIntyre focused on his stilted breathing, surprised by how out of shape he had become. His black shoes navigated the rocks, temporarily flattening any long grass that grew between. A small wool blanket swayed in his arms. He crossed the line on the path between comfort and vertigo, but he huffed through it, knowing if he stopped he’d lose his nerve. He owed the child at least this much.
Father McIntyre found the little girl sitting against a gnarly gum, her head buried in her arms. He stilled for a moment to calm his breath and then approached, gently covering her shoulders with the blanket. “It’s all right, dear. I’ve got you now.” He picked her up into his arms and tucked her head into his neck. She was light as a feather.
Father McIntyre carried her away from the cliffs and the vertigo lifted. A few stars peeked through the darkest line of sky as he brought her into the church and settled her into his office chair.
“James told me what happened,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Leonora. Children can be cruel. Deeply cruel.” They were words that would mean nothing and he struggled for inspiration, swept his mind for words that could console. He lifted her chin. “Leonora?”
Her pupils rose slowly and met his and his heart pulled. He stared into aged eyes that had seen too much sorrow for one lifetime—old, sad eyes trapped in a beautiful sweet face that held no hate, though it had every right to. Father McIntyre knew those eyes, knew them so well that he saw himself in their reflection. A deep sadness overcame him and tears formed. Memories trickled to the surface and he could not pull away from her pain, his pain. He knew what he had to do, even if it meant opening a part of his past long locked away.
He fell into thought for several moments, his features grave as he gathered enough strength to proceed. He sighed, found the key tucked in the desk drawer. He took down a long wooden box from a shelf and brought it back to his desk, unlocked it. He hadn’t looked inside since he was a child, but he never forgot for a moment what it held.
His bottom lip twisted as he held his jaw tight and pulled out a square photo. The paper, sepia with age and ripped slightly in the corner, had creases marking years of folds. His thumb covered one of the faces and he moved it slowly, uncovering his face as a young boy. Father McIntyre placed the photo on the desk. “This is a picture of my family—my mother and father, my two younger brothers. That’s me with the hair sticking up.” He pointed without joviality.
The sound of a rifle fired in his mind and he jumped invisibly. His nostrils flared; he could almost smell the smoke. “I was just a little older than you.”
Leonora, still as a statue, stared at the picture.
“About a year after this photo was taken . . .” He paused. The rifle blasted again and he closed his eyes. “My parents . . . passed away.” He swallowed the lump filling his throat, but it didn’t pass. He remembered the feel of the gun as he tried to push it out of his father’s hands; the coldness of it and then the enormous heat as it smashed his mother across the wall. An icy rush washed over him. He had watched paralyzed as his father turned the gun on himself and fired. “They went to Heaven,” he said softly.
Father McIntyre pushed the gun, the faces, away and spoke clearly. “We were all alone, my brothers and me. We had nothing. No money. No food. No parents.”
Her eyes were on him now, watching him closely from under lowered lids.
“I was sent to live with my uncle and his wife. My two little brothers were sent to an orphanage.” Fresh pain stabbed as he remembered seeing their tiny, scared faces—two faces he promised to protect and never saw again.
“In less than a week, I had lost my parents and my brothers. In a matter of a week, my world crumbled.” His gaze bore through her and fell far away. “I didn’t understand. My whole world, my life, my family, swallowed up. I wanted it all to stop . . . the insanity to just stop. I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to breathe. Didn’t want to speak.” He looked at her intently and said softly, “So I didn’t. I folded into myself and I stopped talking. I just stopped.”
Leonora’s tiny hands tightened on the blanket folds.
“It wasn’t something that I chose to do and my life was much harder because of it, but I just couldn’t. Every time I wanted to speak, something closed. My uncle would scream at me to talk, hit me. The kids at school tormented me to no end. The more I was abused, the deeper my voice hid. I wanted to disappear, to fade away.” He stared above her head as he spoke, as much to himself as to the child.
“I suffered greatly until that was all I had left in my life—suffering. I didn’t want to exist anymore, Leonora.” His face twisted and his eyes burned with restrained tears eager to fall. “And I almost didn’t.” He remembered the razor, the sharp pain from its blade and the calm. He remembered the bright blood and the hope, the flow of death. “I almost disappeared.”
His gaze carried to her face, the sadness weighing in his dark eyes. “I don’t want you to suffer as I did, Leonora.”
Their eyes locked and a communion forged that went beyond age or gender—went below ski
n and resonated to the organs and blood. Beyond his pain and the memories, something screamed in victory. For this was what he had lost, the soul’s connection to another, and the fire lit and spread across him to the parts that had begun to numb and take him over, and it overshadowed the blood and the pain and the death.
A tear filled the corner of the girl’s eye where it sat heavily before releasing down the side of her nose, over her cheek, and then swept to her neck. It was the first time he had seen her cry and he smiled gratefully, for if she allowed herself to feel she could heal.
Father McIntyre rose from his desk and knelt, taking her little hands in his. He worked through a constricted throat and pleaded, wanting her to understand the significance of his words. “I know your story, Leonora. I know what happened to you in the desert. I know things have happened to you that should never happen to a child. Things that shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
Panic entered her face and he was afraid she might try to flee. He held her hands tighter. “I don’t know why you were left, but I do know that it was no fault of your own. Only God knows why people make the decisions that they do. What’s important is how you deal with the pain. Don’t let it consume you. Don’t let it turn to hate and consume those around you.” He smiled weakly. “You have better days ahead of you, Leonora. This I promise you.”
Warm tears fell from her face onto his hands and he squeezed her fingers gently. “I know you feel alone, Leonora. But you are not! You weren’t even alone in the bush. God was and continues to be with you at every moment, protecting you, watching over you. Don’t you see? You were meant to survive; you were meant to be found.”
The warmth of truth seeped through his veins. “You were meant to survive. There is so much light in you, Leonora! I don’t want you to fade into the darkness; God doesn’t want you to fade into the darkness.
“You are loved, Leonora.” His eyes rimmed with tears as he emphasized each word. “You . . . are . . . loved.”
As he held her hands, something broke inside of her. A cry, almost inaudible, released from the depths of her soul. Father McIntyre’s chest burned as he pulled her to him, holding her in his arms while her body shook with the force of sobs, her tiny body crumpling. In choked whispers, he repeated over and over in her ear, “You are loved, dear. You are loved.”
Time did not move as they held together in the small and cluttered office. Only after her shoulders had stilled and her eyes no longer spilled heavy drops upon his sleeve did he pull away from the embrace. He put his hands on either side of her face and tilted her head until her exhausted eyes met his. He smiled. “You’re still here, Leonora.”
When he thought she was ready, he rose and held out a hand. “Come with me. There are some people who want to talk to you.” Wearily, she took his hand, and they walked into the hall. The sky was fully black through the windows and the only light came from the open door of his office and the wider ones opened in the rectory. He brought her to the doorway. She froze and would not go farther when she saw the boys sitting in the pews, their backs toward her and heads down but for one.
“It’s all right, Leonora. Trust me.” He squeezed her hand and moved her down the line of pews. “Michael,” he ordered fiercely, “stand up!”
Michael stood and turned around, his head bent. “I’m sorry, Leonora.” He raised his head quickly, revealing a bloody nose and swollen left eye.
Thomas rose next. His left eye closed nearly shut and he missed a front tooth. “Thawwy, Leonowa.”
Patrick stood, tried to blink beneath his bruised and cut left eye. “Sorry, Leonora.”
“Go on to bed now!” Father McIntyre snapped. “You’ll be doing Leonora’s chores for the next month.”
Leonora sat next to the boy in the last pew. His right hand was bandaged from fingers to wrist. A line of red bled through the gauze at the knuckles. And she leaned in and placed a small kiss to James’s temple.
CHAPTER 15
And so they healed.
Supplies came first—lumber, mortar, bricks, nails, shingles—the tools to patch the orphanage. Plants and animals came second—trees, seeds, sheep and chickens—the tools to sustain it. Next, wooden crates hauled new textbooks from Australia, not from England, textbooks where Australia’s history didn’t end in the early part of the century, where more discoveries than the first Swan colony filled its pages and the maps proved that yes, Western Australia was a territory. Leonora’s money, though not a lot, had gone far and Father McIntyre held no more regret in using it.
And so they healed.
James’s hand mended and its wound left no scar, but the memory of his knuckles against bone had changed him. He hated cruelty, violence—it made him sick to his stomach—but this was different; this had been justice and he’d known nothing of it before. He had always felt the jabs and punches of inaction, a helplessness that soured and left him weak. But justice tingled his blood.
His mother’s diary still held tight to his back at every moment, though gone was the fear of its discovery. And in the parts that he read the etchings of a mother and a father had begun to take form and they spoke to him with guidance. His mother was closest when he smiled or smirked or sat quiet without scowl. This woman was made of sun and warm breezes and the perfume of flowers. His father was closest when he worked or studied hard, when he grunted under the weight of filled burlap or galloped the horses at top speed. This man was made of earth and strong wind and the scent of freshly scythed grass. But he never felt his father so close as when he clobbered those boys and his father whispered in his ear, not with malice or with hate, but with righteousness. And when it was done, and his hand lay cut and open, there was approval and pride. For a man, a man, stands up for those who can’t stand or speak for themselves.
And so they healed.
James was quiet next to Leonora and even the waves seemed hushed below their dangling feet. She scanned his profile, searching for the reason of his silence and with clear worry that she was the one who had caused it. But she needn’t have worried. His silence was active and slightly embarrassed and had everything to do with the butterflies dancing in his stomach.
James stood suddenly and reached inside a hollow log cradled between roots. He returned with hands behind his back. He stared at the ground between them for a moment before thrusting out a hand, a brown-papered package held in his palm. “It’s for you, Leo.”
James bent to his knees and watched as her thin fingers pulled at the light rope that gathered the paper in a neat pinch. The brown paper opened and she did not move, did not blink.
“I made it,” he hurried, then swallowed. “I’ve been working on it for weeks.” His nerves twitched under the silence. “Do . . . do you like it?”
Still she did not raise her head or flicker an eyelash and his chest fell. He was a fool! A pile of sticks—tiny sticks intertwined with yellow feathers into a scrawny nest. He wanted it to remind her of the bird, the happy memories. He had even smoothed a small, white stone to a perfect egg and placed it in the middle. But it was fragile and rudimentary and laughable.
He blushed. “It’s stupid. Never mind.” He grabbed for it, but she pulled it to her chest defiantly and her eyes were stretched and wet.
He sat back then on his heels and the butterflies left his stomach and he knew she saw the beauty in the gift. She carefully pulled the brown paper away and let it float to the ground while she cradled the round weave of sticks and feathers delicately in her palm. She picked up the tiny stone egg and held it to the sun where it reflected perfectly in the light. She touched the yellow feathers tenderly, a slight smile upon her lips with a beautiful memory. When she looked at him again, her eyes were two glistening pools of wonder and gratitude.
Then the winds hushed and a new sound, never before part of the sea or the cliffs, a sound as delicate as flower petals and as beautiful as the tiniest songbird, wafted from the softest of souls. Leonora’s lips parted. “Thank you.”
And so they healed.
PART 3
CHAPTER 16
The medic’s tent differed little from the diggers’ save for size. Cream canvas, squared with four corner poles then peaked in the center with two more, could have been a tent for a traveling circus except that tickets were limbs and not a soul was begging to get in, just out.
Ghan hobbled to the tent, pulled back the heavy curtain door that flapped half-opened. The smell of ammonia, alcohol and lye, a three-ringed antiseptic nightmare, hit as a wall and he nearly turned back, but his wooden peg leg was stuck an inch in the mud.
“For the love a Jesus!” he cursed. The ground sucked like a wet kiss as he pulled the end free. He scanned the mud for its source, looked at the pitched roof for a leak, then asked to no one, “Where the ’ell all the water come from?”
“They sprayed the tables off,” said a man smoking in the corner on a small wooden chair. A wool blanket hung from one shoulder and crossed his chest.
“Yeh, Bianchi?” Ghan asked. The man nodded, his face dripping with sweat.
“Crikey, yeh must be roastin’ like a pig in that blanket.”
The man’s eyes were all pupils as he took another drag of the cigarette. His hand quaked violently. But it was cold terror that wet his face, not heat. Poor bastard. Ghan’s stomach turned queasy. The canvas held in the humidity, suffocated the fresh air and reeked with sweet, rancid blood. He wanted to vomit.
Ghan’s wooden leg picked blindly over the wet spots and clopped on the dry until he could safely sit down next to the man. Ash spilled from the stuttering cigarette onto the blanket, but the bloke was too lost in pain and fear to notice.
“Yer arm?” Ghan asked. No need to mince words.
The man nodded, glanced at the blanket’s raised bump.
“Took my leg ’bout a month ago,” confided Ghan.
Bianchi looked at the wooden leg and swallowed. He took a hard inhale of tobacco smoke, sucking his cheeks all the way in, and then threw the stub into the mud where it simmered. “I can’t do it,” the man said, defiant.
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