by Marcus Wynne
"And then this," Robert said. He handed Charley a thin bone about three inches long. "This is for the woman."
"What is this?" Charley said.
"You give it to her when you find her, when you get away. When you and the black fella fight, she'll be able to help you better with this than with any gun. You tell her to point it at him."
"Point the bone at him?" Charley said.
"Yes," the two men said as one. "Point the bone at him. The bone is for who is in the flesh with that man up there. Your shotgun will do for the man. But you need to do for both if you're going to fight Anurra in the Dreaming or out."
"Will you come with me?" Charley said.
"Not in the song," the gap-toothed elder said. "Though I'd like to see his death myself. You're meant to go alone up there and we can't see how it will go. But you have everything you need to see it through, Charley Payne."
"Everything you need," Robert affirmed. "Time for you to go. You want to meet him in daylight and you're coming up here in the middle of the day. You want to have it all sorted before dark. You don't want to be out here after dark. If we see you coming, we'll fetch you out, but you have to have it all sorted by then. Do you understand? By the light of day some things need be done. Come dark it's a different set of rules and you'll be running hard if it's not sorted by then."
The gap-toothed elder cackled with laughter. "You'll be running hard either way, Charley Payne. There's a lot of dark things up in those hills and not all of them care for Anurra, but you'd be alone on foot in dark country and you don't want that. No, you don't want that."
"Thank you," Charley said. He put the crystal in his left front pants pocket and tucked the bone in beside it.
"That's good," the gap-toothed elder said. "Keep those things close to you, we know where you are and what you're doing."
"Do you know how I can get up there any quicker?" Charley said.
"Follow your instincts and your training, Charley Payne," Robert said. "A man with your background knows how to fight from the land. Use all your skills and knowledge to see you through. You'll be all right as long as you listen to yourself and not to him."
"He's been talking to you," the gap-toothed elder said. "Ever since last night. He's got something of yours in the woman, he's been calling to her, and now he knows you, he can see you in the Dreaming."
"What can he see?" Charley said.
"Only through a fog," Robert said. "We're helping you there. He knows we're out here, he knows who we are. He and us, we've got a long history. He'd probably try to kill us off right now if he weren't so worried about you."
"We've got as much to lose as you do, Charley Payne," the gap-toothed elder said. "You're not in this alone, though you'll feel alone. You're not alone. We'll help you best we can. Remember that if it comes to fighting… no fighting if you can avoid it. Just kill him, quick and clean, don't mess about. Kill him quickly and you and the woman get clear of here by nightfall. We'll take care of the rest of things, things you don't need to know about."
"I'll remember," Charley said. "I didn't see any weapons in his cave. Is he armed?"
The two elders looked at each other and laughed.
"Someday you'll understand better," Robert said. "He's got all kinds of weapons, just not the kind you're used to seeing. But yes, he's got the weapons he started with last night because he knows he has to fight you on this side of the Dreaming. You're too hard to fight only in the Dream."
The other elder looked up at the sun, then back at Charley. "Go, Charley Payne. We'll be waiting for you."
They stood there as though to see him off. Charley screwed the hat down firmly on his head and strode off, his attention now on the hills ahead, his vision probing beneath the trees and the turning path in front of him. He didn't know what was happening. He had only his deepest instincts to rely on and they told him this: something larger than himself was moving through him, something that was a force for the good, and that would sustain him in the fight ahead. He kept his eyes fixed on the hill that grew steadily in his vision and he strained to see the mouth of the cave where the shadows slanted across to hide it.
There it was, a darker place in the shadows. Up there Kativa and something that went by the name of Alfie Woodard waited for him.
3.17
They had a harrowing climb up the rock face. Alfie had untied her wrists and wedged her into the crack of the rock chimney, then wedged himself beneath her and forced her up with thrusts from his hips in a frightening parody of sex. He literally threw her from the chimney into the cave, his strength seemingly superhuman. Then he came in behind her and retied her wrists.
"Do you know this country?" he asked her.
"A little bit," Kativa said.
"More than that, I think, love," Alfie said. "I know lots of things about people I take an interest in."
"… I studied here…"
"Based out of Jowalbinna, weren't you? Bit farther from here. Could walk there in a day, though."
"Yes," Kativa said, "I was in Jowalbinna."
They were in the back chamber of the cave, where dim sunlight filtered down from a crevice far above. A small stream of water sprang from the wall and made a tiny, still pool against the wall before it disappeared again into the rock. Alfie sat down, his back against the wall.
"That's fresh water, there," he said, pointing to the spring. "Can you reach it all right?"
"I can't drink with my hands tied," Kativa said.
"Sure you can," he said. "Just lie on your side and your mouth will be right there, you can lap it up as nice as can be."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Ah, that's the question, isn't it?" Alfie said.
Kativa couldn't see his face clearly in the shadows, but his eyes were wide and staring in a strange way and gleamed with feral light from beneath the hat he kept on his head. She turned away from his gaze and looked around her. This chamber didn't have the walls covered with images as did the outer chamber, but the single largest image on these walls, the centerpiece for all the others, was the large ochre image of Anurra. This was his home, his base, and all the smaller images round it told a story of conquest and killing, of men suspended upside down, of crying women, of children twisting in the gnarled hands of the Quinkin.
This was his home.
"What will I do with you, Kativa Patel?" Alfie said, more to himself than to her. "I could keep you for a while, work love magic on you, I could kill you, I could let you go. But there's that man out there… he's a strong one, your Charley Payne. He's a tough old bird and he won't just go away if I let you go, no, he's got blood on his mind."
"You killed his friends," Kativa said.
"Yes, I did. Purely business, though I might have used them if there had been more time. You don't know much about your friend Charley Payne, do you, Kativa?"
"I know that however long it takes, he'll get to you."
"He has a reputation for that. Did you know he was a killer, too?"
Kativa didn't rise to the bait. She felt a little bit of slack in her bonds and looked at the walls while she worked at her wrists.
"Oh, he's a killer all right," Alfie went on. "One of the best, supposedly, till he grew a conscience and got tired of being used. He and I, we're a lot alike, me and Charley Payne. Reading his file was like reading my own. We both got tired of killing for other people— even though we're quite good at it. That happens to men like us, you know… we reach a time in our life when it doesn't seem important anymore, the jobs, the missions— and we want to change our lives, do something different with our time. But we have all this time invested in being something that the regular world just doesn't really understand. Doesn't really want to understand. We're killers, and the truth is, at one time, we liked it. But I've grown tired of it, had enough a long time ago. What I do for myself is to help something else, to make a power grow. You felt that, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you mean," Kativa said.
"Don't pretend," Alfie said. "Your life hangs by the sheerest thread right now. You're a woman involved in men's magic and you know what happens there, don't you? What's your role in all this? How do you think you came into play?"
"I helped him find you."
"Yes, you did. That was fine work, too. Who'd of thought there was an expert on the Laura rock art working in Minneapolis?"
Alfie laughed.
"You've seen me in two of my faces," he said. "You've seen the face I wear when I go out into the world, where being an Aborigine isn't necessarily a cross to bear. That Alfie, he's a card, isn't he? I made him up from here in the cave, a man with a pleasant face who does my work for me… and there's this other Alfie, the one who comes and goes unnoticed, just another Aborigine in his bush clothes, probably just another drunk Abo… and then there's another Alfie, and it may be that he's the truest one of all. He's the one those old souls in Minneapolis saw before they died."
Kativa shrank as far as she could, the man's gaze on her like a weapon.
"It's not what you think," he said. "I'm not a rapist. I don't require you in that way. I used to have needs like that, but it's easy enough to tend to. That's something I save for my time outside. No white Australian woman would be involved with an Aborigine, and Aboriginal women…" He laughed. "They sense something going on with me. Real drag, that.
"You know about the Dreaming," he said. "You know about the demands of witchcraft, you know how all that works. These people, they're tools, a means to an end, to brighten the flame that surrounds me in the Dreaming. You've seen that in your own Dreaming. We're all there, you, me, Charley Payne, even the twisted little souls I gobbled up… they're all here. This is where they all come to. This is just one in a long series of battles that have gone on since the Dreaming. You, me, Charley— that triangle goes back.
"Look, here," he said, pointing to an image on the wall. A thin black Timara Quinkin fought with a miniscule Imjin Quinkin. The Imjin had four smaller Imjin painted inside his belly. In the background was a stick-thin female Timara Quinkin, with long pendulous breasts, hiding herself behind a rock.
"That's us there," he said. "Or so I was told by someone. Do you know how old that image is? Over fifty thousand years old, the scientists would say. Whether you believe or not is irrelevant, Kativa. Because what's true will be true whether you believe in it or not."
Alfie stood up. He studied her from beneath the down-turned rim of his bush hat. He went into the front chamber of the cave, then returned and sat cross-legged across from her, his back to the wall. In one hand he held a nut-brown human skull, in the other his submachine pistol, which he set carefully beside him.
"This man told me," he said, holding the skull balanced in the palm of his hand. "Me mate and fine teacher, Ralph. Ralph, meet Kativa, Kativa, Ralph."
He held the skull out toward Kativa and grinned at how she shied back against the wall.
"Don't worry, girl. He won't bite. Good man he was," Alfie said. He set the skull down and picked up the submachine pistol, which he stripped and began to clean with a small cleaning kit in a round metal tin. He seemed satisfied to work in silence while Kativa watched him. He quickly reassembled the weapon, working the slide back and forth. Then he inserted a magazine and chambered a round.
"There, that's ready," he said.
Then he stood up and stripped off his clothes, standing naked in front of Kativa, who stared at the scarification that striped his body. He look a loincloth and wrapped it around himself, then took his cloth roll of paints and began to hum as he painted himself. It didn't take long. He took a long bone from a stone shelf and put it through his pierced septum, then took out his partial plate and exposed his knocked-out teeth. When he was through, he took the skull in one hand and weighed it.
"We'll be busy in the front cave for a while," he said. "You'll be quiet or else I'll gag you. There's no toilet arrangements for you, so you'll have to hold it or do it in your pants. You may as well spend some time in the Dreaming yourself. You've been doing that a lot lately, haven't you?
"Right, then, Ralph?" Alfie said to the skull he held in one hand. He went into the outer chamber of the cave and left Kativa alone. The slanting light that filtered down into the back chamber seemed dull, and the day's passage somehow quicker. From the outer chamber came the droning hum of a didgeridoo, not loud, but steady and insistent, just above the threshold of her hearing.
3.18
His caution had cost him a lot of time, but at last Charley stood at the foot of the chimney beneath the shaman's cave. He'd hidden nearby for an hour, carefully watching the cave mouth, and he'd seen nothing. But he'd heard things, words carried on the hot still air, and then the drone of a didgeridoo. Charley felt the pressure of time now. It was late in the afternoon and he had a long hike to get up the back way above the cave mouth. The elder's insistence that he do what needed to be done in the light of day nagged at him. He would prefer to strike at night, take Alfie out fast and hard in the dark when he would be most tired, then take his time getting out of the area— or even stay the night till light filled the sky again.
But that thought chilled him more than the prospect of the fight to come.
He turned and moved along the face of the cliff, away from the chimney, and found the narrow footpath that led up and around the hill. The trail petered out quickly and he picked a course through the shattered fallen sandstone slabs and the boulders that dotted the hillsides like granite eggs. The ground was rough, and there were numerous holes. Water seeping from the incessant rains of the wet season had worn holes in the softer stone to make caverns beneath. Somewhere among the holes was one that opened into the shaman's cave, but he didn't want to go that way. The best way was the hard way: straight down the rock face and into the cavern.
He was nearly to the top when he saw the snake. It was as thick as his wrist, winding vigorously toward him, and it seemed as though it were coming right for him, the forked tongue probing the air, tasting for scent. Charley stepped back to avoid the snake and stepped into a sandstone hole that seemed to suck his foot down and hold it fast while he fell backward. There was a wet pop and a sudden sharp hot pain in his ankle and he knew he was in trouble now. The snake paused for a moment, as though to survey the scene, then coiled for a strike at his leg. Charley struck at it with the shotgun butt again and again. The snake struck at the stock, leaving little wet spots where it spilled venom. Charley couldn't free his leg, but he pinned the snake down with the butt of the shotgun even as it wormed closer to him, then took out his Commander knife and stabbed it right through the skull, pinning it to the ground. The snake thrashed back and forth, trying to lift its head.
Charley eased his foot out of the hole, limped back a few steps, and sat on a boulder to assess the damage. The ankle was already swollen and discolored; he had a significant sprain at the very least. He couldn't tell if it was broken, but it hurt like hell and every time he put weight on it, pain flared as though his ankle were on fire.
He was in trouble.
He looked at the snake slowly thrashing, then at the hilltop above him. No other choice, no other option. He had to go forward as best he could. He picked up a heavy stone, then limped back to the snake and thoroughly crushed its head before he took the knife out. He flicked the still twisting snake away with the butt of the Mossberg. Using the shotgun as a cane, he limped back to the boulder. He wiped the knife off in the grass, then cut a long continuous strip of cloth from his jacket. He wrapped the ankle tightly, then relaced his boot carefully over the swollen ankle, then added another length of fabric tied over the boot, doubling his support. He stood and gingerly put weight on the foot. It still hurt, but the support made it tolerable for now. He looked up the crest of the hill at the falling shadows and grimaced. He'd be lucky if he made it to the top and then the ledge that overlooked the cave's mouth in two hours.
He didn't want to fight in the dark, but it looked as though he had no choice.
He toiled
his way up through the boulders, biting back a scream when he banged his ankle against a rock. He used the shotgun as a cane, the duffel bag a sweaty nuisance across his back, and it was as though he could hear the two elders speaking to him.
We told you, Charley. He's slowing you down. Come full dark, that's how he wants it, you in the dark. You've got to hurry, Charley Payne, no matter how it hurts, because come full dark, if you haven't engaged him, it will be too late. Keep going and don't stop, it's not only your life in this life but in the Dreaming that counts…
"Son of a bitch," Charley said to himself. He chanted an old army marching song to distract himself from the pain. "C-130 rolling down the strip, Airborne Rangers on a one-way trip, stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door, stand right up and jump some more…"
He couldn't help but be aware of the slanting sun. The sun that had weighed so heavily on his head slanted across his shoulders now; it had fallen a measurable distance since he'd left the foot of the cliff. But he was almost to the top of the hill, and then he had only to make his way around to the front of it, where he'd surveyed the tree before. He struggled through the brush as the climb grew steeper. He grasped at heavy stones to pull himself along, and pushed with the shotgun. The butt of the shotgun grew dusty and scarred, but that was the nice thing about a pump-action shotgun, it would function no matter how dirty it got.
At the top of the hill he rested. His lungs gasped for air, and his whole body trembled with the effort it had taken. His foot throbbed angrily and the pain seemed to echo in every fiber of his being. He felt nearly done and he hadn't even started yet. He limped slowly and cautiously through the boulder field atop the hill, pausing from time to time to force his heart rate down and to look and listen for any watchers. Finally, he stood beside the big tree that marked the point above the cave's mouth. He set all his gear down and stretched out on his belly, then inched slowly along to the edge of the cliff. He listened for a few moments, then carefully poked his head out to take a look.