‘Besides what?’
‘She’s like me.’
‘Who? Liana?’
Her head gave a slight movement forward. ‘Yeah. I’m scared too.’
‘Why?’ I dipped my head to see her face but she wouldn’t say, nor did she seem ready to go to bed. Maybe she knew that I didn’t understand who she was and she wanted to tell me. When she did, it was all I could do to stop storming out to Blake’s room to ask why he hadn’t spoken of her. How can you omit a part of your life as important as that?
‘Do you live here all the time, Kerra, or just in the holidays like me?’
‘Of course I live here. I’m Kerra Townsend.’ Then she added as though she didn’t want anyone else to hear, ‘I’m Blake’s sister.’
2
The next morning I woke from dreams of a younger Liana running up our boarding hostel staircase in Pakistan, weeping. But when I hurried to hug and soothe her, it was Kerra in my arms, crying for her mother. I tried to shrug off the pall of the dream and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Blake was spooning scrambled eggs onto plates.
‘I should be doing that.’
He looked up. ‘It’s your first morning. You can start tomorrow.’
It didn’t seem the right moment to ask him about Kerra, and anyway, he started straight in about the horse riding. ‘If you get your jeans on, we’ll have the first lesson at eleven. Meet you out by the stables.’
I didn’t tell him I’d ridden in Afghanistan in January, but I guess that was only hanging-on-to-save-your-life kind of riding. Blake was going to teach me western style. The best for the land, he said.
Kerra waylaid me on the way out to the stables. She didn’t say where she’d been all morning, just surprised me by pulling my hand and saying I had to see the lamb. I followed her to what looked like an old dog run. A ewe stood in there, heavy from her wool, discoloured and bloody in places, hiding her lamb from view.
‘A dingo got her. On the back. They always go for the backside. The dingoes get through the Dog Fence and then they kill the sheep.’
I regarded the ewe with compassion. I knew what the Dog Fence was: 5000 kilometres of fence designed to save livestock from dingoes.
‘Then the flies got her.’
I stared at Kerra. ‘Flies?’
‘Where she was hurt, the flies laid eggs on it. She’s fly blown.’ Kerra said ‘fly blown’ as if she was telling me the sky was blue, like I ought to have known. My little sister Elly would have said, ‘Duh.’
‘Right. Fly blown.’ I committed that one to memory.
‘If you hold the gate, Jaime, I’ll get the lamb.’
The sheep looked much bigger with Kerra in the run with it. Soon she emerged with the lamb in her arms like Elly held Basil, our cat. Except the lamb’s legs dangled down to Kerra’s knees.
‘You can hold it if you like.’
‘Thanks.’
The lamb lay passively, staring at me. So the stories about meek lambs were true.
‘Dad’ll fix it later.’
‘Fix what?’
She gave a frustrated sigh. ‘The mother sheep. He’ll cut all that crappy wool off. That’s crutching.’
When I finally arrived at the stables, Blake was already there. He was busy feeding the horses and didn’t notice I was late. Horses poked their heads out of the half doors that looked onto the yard. A few shook their heads at me, as if they wanted me to notice them. Blake saw me step closer to one and he walked over.
‘They’re like dogs—make good pets if that’s what you want or do jobs for you if you educate them right. This one is Dad’s stallion. Got Arab blood in him.’ He looked too big and feisty for me.
‘Which one’s yours?’
Blake took me to a chestnut gelding almost as tall as the Arab. ‘He’s called Cador.’ His face crinkled into a smile as he scratched Cador’s neck. ‘That’a boy.’
‘Cador sounds Celtic.’
He hesitated, then said, ‘Mum named him. Her ancestors were Cornish—’
‘Mine too,’ I cut in.
‘—Cador was an ancient ruler of Cornwall and guardian to Guinevere.’ Cador snuffled at my raised fingers, then I patted his cheek.
‘So you’re a bodyguard, Cador. You look like one.’ I moved to the mare in the end stall. She was pretty with a light brown coat. ‘What about this one? Does she have a story too?’
Blake didn’t follow me. ‘She stays there. Richelle comes to exercise her.’ His tone was clipped all of a sudden and I wondered what I’d said wrong.
Maybe he realised how he’d sounded, for he directed me towards the yard where a dark brown horse was tied to a rail. ‘I’ll show you how to rub down. This is Rainmaker.’
What a name! ‘How come? She’s not white like clouds.’
‘It’s not because of her colour. When she was born we hadn’t had rain for over a year. We got seventy mil that day, hence her name.’ He picked up the grooming comb. ‘Brush her this way. She likes it. Then lay the blanket on, then the saddle. Always check the length of the stirrups. It’s easy to come off if you don’t have control.’
I never would have thought Blake knew all this when I’d met him at school in Adelaide. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said this was his twin, although he still had that warm presence I’d always noticed at school. I could feel him in the room long after he was gone. Funny, he’d never spoken much of the station, his way of life here, the horses. All of which reminded me: ‘Blake, why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?’
He barely hesitated in doing up the buckle under Rainmaker’s belly. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘You know you didn’t.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal. The subject never came up.’
No big deal? I frowned at him. My sister, Elly, was part of me, even if she did annoy me at times. I could never imagine not mentioning her to a friend I’d known for a year. Blake carried on telling me about how to mount and how to use my legs to steer and stop, while he led the horse round the circle in the yard. I suspected I wouldn’t get any more out of him about Kerra, and, besides, it took all my attention to make Rainmaker do what I was being asked to do.
‘Horses are like ten-year-old kids. They’ll try and get away with anything if you let them. So you have to treat them like one—reward good behaviour, punish the bad. Whoa! Now, Rainmaker didn’t do what you wanted, so make her back up. She hates that. She’ll respect you better now, but don’t let up. She’ll know as soon as you let your guard down.’
It sounded more like how to train dogs than kids, but it seemed to work on Rainmaker. I just hoped I could keep a firm hand. Whenever I didn’t ride exactly as Blake had instructed, Rainmaker was quick to take the advantage, as if she was expecting me to weaken. Learning how to ride properly was going to be very tiring. The years it must take to be able to belt across the paddocks like The Man from Snowy River. It looked so effortless in the movie.
Blake seemed pleased with me by the end of the hour, and I was too, even if I had only trotted round the yard.
‘Better not wear those sneakers tomorrow,’ he warned. ‘If you came off, your foot would go straight through the stirrup. You’d get dragged.’
‘I don’t have any boots with me.’
‘There might be some in the cupboard in your room. A hat too. You’re welcome to have a look later.’
Lunch time came and brought Richelle. There’d still been no talk about my jobs other than cooking the meals; nothing was said about looking after Kerra, which seemed a more needful task. After lunch there was discussion about checking the part of the Dog Fence near Mulga Spring, and Richelle was quick to offer help, ‘since Jaime can’t ride’. Then Blake said a few words to Richelle that I didn’t catch, and he tipped her hat back with a chuckle. She smirked at him. It sounded intimate: the banter that kids often threw at each oth
er at school. I hadn’t understood it at first but learnt quickly that sarcasm was a form of endearment. The closeness between Blake and Richelle excluded me as surely as if they’d closed a door in my face. I was dismissed to ‘have a rest’, as if I’d need one since I wasn’t used to outback life.
I smiled sweetly (I hoped) and retreated to my room, determined not to let Richelle bother me. Maybe Blake didn’t play around and tease me like that because he thought I wouldn’t understand, but I was surprised at the way it made me feel, as if I was new at school again and had no friends. I settled on the bed and thought about Kerra instead—a more comfortable topic. I wondered where she was. Not in the house, because I’d called. I lay back with a book, hoping she’d find me if she wanted. It wasn’t long before her head poked around the door as if I’d summoned her telepathically.
‘Come in.’
She was already on her way.
‘You want to help me find boots in the cupboard?’
‘Yep.’
The boots were in a box at the back just as Blake had said. Kerra pulled them out. ‘They must be my mum’s.’
I was thinking the same and wondered if I should use them. ‘Do you mind me wearing these?’ Blake obviously didn’t, but I hesitated to upset Kerra.
She answered with a totally unrelated question. ‘Have you known someone who died, Jaime?’
‘Yeah.’ I had to catch a breath as the questions came thick and fast.
‘Who?’
‘Liana. My friend in boarding school.’
Kerra turned her frowning face to mine. ‘The one you told me about? She died at school? Were you my age?’
I took a breath. ‘No, she died early this year. She was shot. In Afghanistan.’ I said that firmly, trying not to see the slow-motion footage of Liana that often replayed in my mind; her look of numb surprise as she fell. ‘There was a skirmish. We just got caught in the middle.’ My eyes closed, seeing her hand still in mine, the jerk on my arm as she fell.
‘Were you sad?’
‘Yeah. At first it was like I’d had anaesthetic and couldn’t feel a thing. My family thought I was coping well when I got home to Australia and I tried to keep it up.’ I stopped.
‘And then?’
‘When it hit me it felt like the stars had gone out and they would never shine again. Like I was going crazy.’
‘But it got better?’
I didn’t answer straight away. People didn’t ask questions like this. They often gave the subject a wide berth after a polite ‘and how are you now, Jaime?’ and I’d feel like screaming at them to just talk to me, even if they were scared of hurting my feelings. ‘I guess it’s getting better.’ Even if I still cried at times for nothing, but I didn’t tell Kerra that. ‘What about you? You must know. Did you feel like that when your mum died?’ Then I found out why she was asking. It wasn’t just morbid curiosity.
‘I don’t remember.’ We were quiet for a while. What could I say? I chose safer ground.
‘Who looks after you, usually?’
‘Mrs Crosspatch does, during school time.’
I stifled my amused gasp. ‘Is that her real name?’
Kerra had the grace to blush. ‘No, it’s Mrs Cowped.’ That didn’t sound much better and I glanced at her suspiciously, but Kerra turned her serious face to mine. ‘She has grownup kids in the city and visits them in the holidays, so that’s why you came this time. Last year Richelle looked after me but I don’t like her. I like Matt better.’
‘What about Blake? Doesn’t he look after you?’
‘I don’t like Blake looking after me. And Dad’s too busy. Sometimes I go out with Dad and we give sheep needles or fix fences. I help him.’
‘Is that where you were this morning?’
She nodded. ‘We were killing a sheep.’ My mouth gaped and she added, ‘That’s what we have for dinner. Sheep.’ Then she sighed the same little sigh like the night before. ‘Let’s have a rest together. Can you tell me a story? About when you were in Pakistan. Is it green there?’
‘Yes, it’s very beautiful.’ I could imagine why she was asking. There was only a small square of lawn in her outback garden. Even the plants were hardy with grey or white leaves. It reminded me of a holiday we had as a family. ‘Once Dad took our family—’
‘Who else’s in your family?’
‘Mum, Andrew, my brother and Elly, my little sister.’
‘You like your brother?’
‘Sure.’
Her eyebrows creased up as if she thought that was weird.
‘We drove through a mountain pass with snow on each side to a place called Chitral. We could see heaps of snow-covered mountains rolling back like thousands of meringues on a giant cake…’ I stopped. How could I explain the awesome beauty of the Hindu Kush ranges, the ‘Indian Killers’?
‘Is it a town?’
‘There is a town and lots of villages. It’s like a mountain kingdom, a lost one because it’s so difficult to reach.’
‘Did you meet the prince?’
I considered. I did meet a young man who was like a prince or who would have been a prince a hundred years ago.
Kerra tipped her head up, but still she didn’t smile. ‘You did.’
‘A sort of prince, I guess, but the culture is different there. I didn’t get to talk to him much.’ I thought of the romantic story I wrote about him last year. But it wasn’t really about him; it had been a way for me to process my feelings about missing Pakistan and learning to belong in Australia.
‘So what happened? Did you see snow up close?’ Her tone was so wistful I nearly teared up.
‘That was the problem. It snowed so much, the mountain pass we came through closed. Mum and we kids had to fly out in a tiny plane to be safe, while Dad waited to get our little van out through the pass.’
‘That sounds scary.’ I gave her a glance. Any other kid would have huge eyes, not her deadpan expression.
‘It was. Especially when the flight was cancelled due to the weather and Dad arrived home before us. He thought the plane had crashed on the mountains.’
Kerra watched me as I pulled on the boots.
‘What was the prince like?’
‘Like any other guy.’ I tried to shrug off her question as I stood flexing my toes in the boots. They fitted.
Kerra pouted slightly. ‘Tell me.’
‘He was very kind and polite—good looking like Blake, except his hair was brown not blond.’
‘Blake’s not good looking. And he’s def-in-ite-ly not kind.’ She said the word definitely with spaces between the syllables to emphasis it and I refrained from arguing with her. Most girls at school in Adelaide had thought Blake was hot, but then, sisters never did see the talent in their brothers.
An Akubra beckoned to me from a shelf in the cupboard and I tried it on. ‘Come on, let’s do something outside.’ Getting Kerra out of the house would be good for her. ‘Let’s go for a walk, hey?’ It’d be like a nature trail. Elly always liked stuff like that.
‘Okay. But you have to tell me another story.’ I was so flattered she liked my storytelling that I didn’t notice the dulled passion underlying her tone.
3
Kerra took me to the dam ‘near the house’. It was a bit of a hike but she kept me informed along the way. ‘This bush is called bullocky, that one’s dead finish.’
‘Why dead finish?’ I touched the leaves, thin like needles.
‘Dad says it’s the last thing to stay alive in a bad drought. When it dies it’s the dead finish of everything.’
I knew the grey bushes were saltbush and I’d seen mulga trees on postcards. The wispy branches looked as if they’d been hair-sprayed into their wind-blown shapes.
‘See these, Jaime?’ She showed me the branch from a bush that I later discovered was native mistletoe. ‘These ber
ries are called snotty gobbles.’
Apparently she was serious.
‘If you get lost, you can eat them. There are quandongs too.’
‘Quandongs?’
‘You know, little native plums.’ She said it as if she’d already told me. She always said things in a tone to make me feel the dumbest person alive. There was a lot I didn’t know and I began to feel like I had last year at school. I should have remembered that no kids in the city would have known all this stuff either, that this was Kerra’s country.
The dam was ordinary—brown and low on water—but it looked pretty through my lowered eyelashes. There were wild brown ducks making figures of eight before diving for delights in the secret world below. The sun glinted on the little waves they made. Two little birds—either swallows or finches, I couldn’t tell—swooped on the water as if it were an enemy to be teased.
‘This is really nice, Kerra.’ I took off my jacket.
She looked pleased. ‘There’s a rabbit. Look, Jaime!’ I wasn’t quick enough. Kerra went on about how the rabbits had to be killed because they wrecked everything. She didn’t sound as though she believed in what she said; more like she wished the rabbits weren’t bad and could be played with instead. It wouldn’t be the last time I felt the urge to shift her mind off the current topic. I began a story.
Telling stories was soothing, even if Kerra’s dead-tone questions at times were annoying. She lay back on the grass like a regular ten-year-old, her face upturned to the sun. At times like this she reminded me a little of Elly but Kerra wasn’t as exuberant or happy as Elly.
‘This is about a lake in the Karakorum Mountains in Pakistan. It’s called Lake Saiful Maluk and it’s near the top of a mountain, like an alpine lake.’
‘Hmm,’ Kerra said.
‘There was once a prince of Persia called Saiful Maluk who visited the lake on his travels. He was resting at the edge, watching colours dance on the water as the sun set, when he saw a pari—that’s a fairy—who lived there. She was so beautiful, and sang so sweetly, that he fell in love with her. He stayed by the lake every evening trying to catch another glimpse of her. Then one dusk he saw her bathing, and without thinking of the consequences, he stole her silken clothes. “Marry me,” he cried, and the pari agreed to become his wife. You see, paris have no power without their clothes and must love the human who takes them.
Finding Kerra Page 2