Rise of an Eagle

by Margaret Way

  'Don't let's talk about it yet.'

  'What?'

  'Don't what me, little one,' he returned her curtness. 'I know you're bright, but you're no match for me.'

  'Don't make me laugh.'

  'You used to laugh.' There was affection in his voice. 'When you were so high.' He sketched a level somewhere near his waist. 'You were the most entrancing little girl I have ever seen. Full of magic. All your recklessness never brought you ill luck. Witches aren't frequent visitors to the Outback, but someone sure left you on our doorstep.'

  'They must have,' she said sarcastically.

  'You bestowed your affection once, Morgan. Now you take the most careful handling.'

  Derision tilted her mouth. 'I have never noticed your being careful with me. A lot of the time you go out of your way to be particularly hateful. Like today. Anyone would have thought the sight of me offensive,'

  'I wouldn't enjoy anyone laughing at you behind their hands.'

  'Tell that to your mother.'

  He caught her shoulders and actually shook her. 'I expect it was the only damned dress she had. We don't have any elves in our house.'

  'And all those females who chase you are as big as amazons.' she said wretchedly. 'It's obvious I need an armed guard around here. Would you take your hands off me, Ty? You're bruising my shoulders.'

  'Wild creatures need a little breaking in,' he responded, regarding her with hard disfavour.

  'And this is my home, if you don't mind. Stick to your own world, Ty. This section of it is mine.'

  E.J. was buried, not in the old station graveyard, but at the place he had designated, at the foot of a prominent station landmark, a sandstone pillar that reared bizarrely from the vast spinifex plains. The body faced toward the desert and no sooner was the ceremony concluded than the first heavy silver splatters hit the blood-red earth. Everyone ran for the cover of the vehicles, but Morgan continued to stand by the graveside, oblivious of the lurid look of the sky and the thunder and lightning that crashed all around her. She had grown up with violent passing storms, and in any case her feelings were so profoundly complicated that she was long past worrying about getting soaked to the skin.

  The minister, a kindly man, tried to speak to her, but she shook her head violently to ward him off. She had too much to think about. It was a terrible, terrible thing to be consigned to the barren earth. Yet in a day or so after this early spring storm the flats would be covered with a myriad of wild flowers. They would reach the vertical face of the pillar and cover this fresh mound.

  Her relationship with her grandfather was the strongest bond she had ever forged in her life. She didn't really know whether he had loved her, or whether he was capable of love as most people knew it, yet her entire existence had been given over to pleasing him. He had never rewarded her with even a glimmer of softness or indulgence, but she had not despaired. At her own centre was a strength. God knew how she had acquired it. Her mother was a recognised social butterfly. The father who had been fool enough to break his neck in a riding accident E J. had classed as a weakling. His fatal flaw was that he had not inherited E.J.'s peculiar brilliance. EJ. had been a mighty empire builder; but who could desire such a thing when he lay buried, not mourned but with silent sigh of relief? Surely a man would always lack love when he could not give it. What had caused E.J.'s inner desolation? His perceived rejection as a child? Being passed over for a golden young stepbrother? Her grandfather might not have loved human beings, but he did have a special affinity with the lonely, timeless grandeur of the desert.

  Morgan's hair ran in slick ribbons. The grey dress was soaked. Red mud from the grave was running over and into her soft leather shoes. For an instant she felt terribly faint, as though her loss had drained her of her habitual fight. She was an actress, of course. She wasn't really as tough as everyone thought. If only her father had lived. She struggled with the emotional desert of her life. As a university friend had once suggested to her, though she came from one of the richest landed families in the country, she had much to be depressed about. She had never been able to enjoy a single laugh with E.J. unless it had been something bitter and sardonic. There had been none of the shared joys of family. She realised now that E.J. had deliberately kept her from her golden relatives. He had enrolled her from the beginning in a rival boarding-school and, though she had made friends quite easily, no one had ever been allowed to visit her at the Hartland stronghold. She was the heiress with the traditional dilemma. The poor little rich girl, condemned to loneliness and isolation. Not even Marcia came to visit, though she kept in touch with her infrequent replies to Morgan's long letters. Another girl might have been very seriously affected, but Morgan had some power from her inner self. Many a time she thanked God for it.

  I only need you, she always said in her prayers.

  The new, world that might have opened with her immediate and instinctive attraction to the young hero-figure Ty, E.J. had gone out of his way to destroy. Was it possible a man so feared and respected as. her grandfather could be jealous of an adolescent boy? That was the truly frightening thing about E.J. He had seen Ty as his logical and fitting heir, but this only made his terrible resentments surge up. Did a king really hate and fear his successor? What was she thinking about? She was E.J.'s heir, wasn't she? His only grandchild.

  Someone came for her before she took root.

  'Leave him to heaven, Morgan,' Ty called loudly above the thunder. I'll never get over what he did to us. Not in a lifetime!'

  A kind of terror E.J. might hear them made her slump against Ty's lean, powerful shoulder. He looked down at her pale, drowning face, the glazed eyes, then lifted her high in his arms.

  'You little fool! He wasn't worth all this suffering.'

  The Hartland women, not wanting to risk water damage to their impeccable image, were already seated in the big green station-wagon that had brought them to the grave-site. Now they looked out in horror as Ty carried a distraught-looking Morgan to join them. She was waving her slender arms in the air, for all the world like a witch being prevented from casting a spell.

  'Get in,' Ty ordered tersely, getting one hand on the door handle.

  'Not yet! She almost leapt out of his arms' Tm going to walk and walk. What's the matter with you people. We've just buried E. J.'

  'And good riddance,' Ty returned balefully.

  'I'm not going, Ty,' Morgan cried wrathfully, oblivious of the storm and the pelting rain. 'As God is my witness, I'm going to walk back to the house. I don't even care if a tree falls on me.'

  'A hit on the head might be good for you,' he replied savagely. 'All right, if you won't come, I'll walk with you.'

  'Ty, darling,' his mother called in distress, 'if Morgan must walk, let her. She'll come to no harm.'

  'You think so?' He pushed an exasperated hand through his rain-soaked hair. 'If she fell in a pot-hole she could drown.'

  'Ty, for God's sake,' his sister, Sandra, protested, 'you know Morgan swims like a fish.'

  Ty ignored her. 'You drive, Sandy,' he said. 'Let's face it, I can't let her do it alone.'

  'Oh, do please get in, Morgan,' Cecilia begged. 'You're calling such attention to us.'

  'I'll get soaked, Ty,' Sandra wailed from the back seat.

  'The blasted things that concern you,' Ty lashed out at her. 'Buy another pair of shoes.'

  'Please do as Ty says,' Cecilia advised her daughter quietly. 'I knew from first thing this morning that it was going to be a terrible day.'

  While the beautiful, immaculately groomed Sandra battled with the elements to make it to the driving-seat, Morgan swung away. She had no intention of following the long procession of vehicles; she would walk uphill, holding on to the acacias, and take the path to the creek- crossing. The creek would probably be running deep by this time, but in one place a series of huge boulders formed a natural bridge. There wasn't an inch of Jahandra she didn't know.

  She had scarcely gone a dozen paces before Ty caught up with her
, his elegant black suit liberally spattered with red ochre.

  'I beg you, don't be stupid enough to try the creek,' he gritted.

  'Don't worry about me, Ty,' she called. 'I can take care of myself.'

  'Let me tell you, I'm prepared to knock you out,' he cried forcefully. 'The creek will be running a bumper.'

  'There's the crossing.' Even fighting with him was an invigoration.

  'I fear for you,' he exclaimed wrathfully, and caught hold of her arm. 'Don't you know you've used up your nine lives?'

  They were standing facing each other in all the drama of the storm, both of them soaked, both apparently oblivious of it, as their blood filled with anger and pain and the underlying queer excitement.

  'I've got many more in hand,' she told him. 'Why didn't you go with your mother and sisters? They are so dependent on you as the big strong male, it must be a real pain.'

  'I wish to God you had a little of their helpless femininity,' he charged her. 'I can promise you you won't see thirty if you don't get yourself in hand. The way E.J. brought you up shows how hostile he was to women. You were reared as a boy. A little bitty kid was abandoned to an old crazy. You ask me to mourn for E.J.? Well, I'll tell you I despised the old tyrant. And you know the main thing I despised him for? What he did to you. Do you realise your whole life has been a kind of terror?'

  'You bastard!' It was so shockingly, painfully true, Morgan saw it as brutality. She brought up her two hands and began to beat at him with her clenched fists.

  'Stop that!' He got hold of her under the elbows, lifting her off her feet. 'Another word and I'll throw you over my shoulder. How does that grab you?'

  'It comes with the name.' Her green eyes glowed brilliantly in a drowned face. 'There's no way a Hartland could be anything else but a bastard!'

  'If you really want to get back to the homestead in safety, do you think you could be co-operative enough to leave this all to me?' Ty muttered harshly.

  'Please yourself.'

  'That's impossible, Morgan. Believe me.'

  Though his touch disturbed her, she did not resist him when he took a firm hold of her hand. Had things been different between them, even on this terrible day, it would have been a wild sort of delight to be pulled up the hill in the driving rain. It was a silver-grey world of swirling mist as the cold rain hit the hot earth and the birds chittered madly from their shelters in the winging trees. The wind was driving the foliage sideways and, though it buffeted Ty, his tall, powerfully masculine body sheltered her from the worst of it.

  When they came down on the creek, the scene to Morgan was beautiful beyond description. Here, under the intense shelter of the trees, the driving wind was a dull roar but its force was abated. The trees, the water- lilies, the verdant green of the reed-beds, were washed clean, and a sparkling silver wall of water gushed from upstream and rushed into the lower levels, crashing against the mossy boulders, creating miniature waterfalls. Ducks, apparently too exhilarated to take off, were dipping madly up and down like small boats in a storm, their plumage enamelled by the windswept waters. It was as though the creek, dormant through the dry, was receiving a great boost of power. Overhead, but well away, a great fork of lightning tore the heavens asunder, so that even the air vibrated with the tremendous thunderclap.

  'For God's sake!' Ty grabbed Morgan and held her to him as a great white light sprang up through the coolibahs to be followed by a peculiar yellowish glow and the smell of sulphur.

  'That's E.J. passing,' Morgan whispered against the hard wall of Ty's chest.

  'I don't envy whoever has to put up with him.' Ty yelled, just as though he had heard her, when now the wind rushed deafeningly through the great stretch of passage.

  It was the huge coolibah they had often sheltered beneath when day storms were flying about the stations. Surely an omen? Had E J. passed to the Sky World or the Devil's Place? Morgan pulled away and rushed down the gentle slope to the creek. There was something hypnotic about water. Something marvellous, enticing. Perhaps when she came back in spirit form she would elect to take the form of an undine melting away into emerald pools.

  She cast off her ruined shoes, moving now with speed and agility. Life was as turbulent as the flash-flood waters sweeping the long line of billabongs that made up the creek. She was soaked to the skin. What did her dress matter? What did anything matter, come to that? Jahandra was hers. She would rule it with justice and mercy.

  Just as the wall of water hit her slight, supple body, spinning her sideways, Ty grabbed her from behind, pinning her like a child as he sorted out the best way to proceed. Like Morgan, he was finding a kind of exhilaration in the savagery of the storm, and the expensive clothes he wore meant nothing to him. The flood level was rising very fast, and he knew very well that without him she would have been swept off her feet and carried downstream. Not that it would have bothered her. Morgan had lived all her life with danger.

  In a way it was a kind of insanity. Debris in the form of fallen branches was now being carried along by the increasingly churning waters. When he had them safely out, Morgan, for all her recklessness, found herself palpitating against his arm like a spent bird. His body was warm and vibrant with power. Such physical strength a man had. Such a vast reservoir of untapped energy! The fact that she was revelling in his strength was a mystery to her. As a child she had adored him, his quick wit and his charming manner, the way he was so tall and fearless and handsome. When she first came to read of the exploits of Alexander the Great, she always visualised him as her golden cousin, Ty, Robert Tyson Hartland, the one E.J. had really wanted for his heir.

  'It's a good thing I'm so prepared for your madcap behaviour,' he said explosively, releasing her so that she fell back against a tree.

  Morgan only laughed, straightening up and reaching for the long wet silk of her hair and pulling it away from her face. 'Another thing you can hold against me.'

  'Of course, it's part of your attraction,' he said tightly. 'Let me look at that. You've scraped your arm. It's bleeding.'

  'Oh, don't worry about it, Ty.'

  'Damn you. Show me.' It was obvious he felt like shaking her.

  Slowly, without a word, she held up her arm and he turned it to look at the soft blue-veined inner skin. A thin gash about three inches long was oozing tiny beads of blood, and as she stared at him in shock he brought down his mouth and drew gently on the wound.

  'No!' Her face flushed with colour and she felt an unbelievable panic.

  'Antiseptic.' He looked up, catching the extent of her inner turmoil.

  'It could make me die! She was talking utter nonsense. Still she stared back at him in horror.

  'What are you really frightened of, Morgan?' he asked her somberly. 'Some powerful magic?'

  'Frightened?' Her emerald eyes flashed.

  'You're giving every indication you are.'

  'I didn't realise you were a vampire.'

  'Then you're a fool.' His eyes were very blue and very searing. 'Maybe I hunger for a little affection.'

  'No, Ty.' She shook her glistening hair, 'I have no tender feelings for you.'

  He gave an ironic smile. 'So why are you panting when I touch you? Why have your eyes grown so strange and enormous?'

  Morgan drew in her breath sharply. She felt a surge of some primitive emotion, something alien. She backed a little and came up against the pale bole of a ghost- gum. Her grey dress was clinging to her like a gossamer second skin, moulding a body so fluid and sensitive that one could perceive clearly its naked form. Her olive skin shone golden, her raven hair, rain sequined, hung wild and loose, and her slanting, luminous eyes held an expression of bright fear, out of keeping with her character.

  She was trembling now, while he stood quite still, watching her.

  'It's all right.' He held out a hand to her as though there was nothing unusual about treating her like a creature of the wilds.

  She stepped forward, though her senses were tremendously alert. The deluge had eas
ed to light rain and the predictable shining arch of a rainbow fell through a blue rent in the heavens to the earth below.

  'Come here to me.' His voice was very quiet and gentle.

  'It has stopped raining. Almost.'

  He cupped her triangular face between his two hands, and while she stared up at him in a kind of thrall he lowered his head and kissed her. Not on the temple, or cheek, as sometimes among company he did carelessly, but on the tiny black beauty spot an inch from her mouth.

  She closed her eyes. She didn't respond, but she could not break out of the trance, He kissed her again. This time along the delicate line of her jaw. It was all so terribly strange, but she couldn't move. She, the fearless, had been rendered without power. His mouth feathered along her high cheekbone, brushed her pencil-fine, slanting brow. She turned her head slightly and his lips touched the other side of her face. Lightly. She was not completely sure what was happening. What was behind this impossibly sweet, dangerous ritual? Ty was opening himself up to her. Why? After years of hurt, all they had done and said to each other, was his affection disguised?