Songlines

by Carolyn Denman

  Another cloud dissolved away and I felt so tired. It seemed as if I had been struggling for an eternity. As soon as I gathered one storm cloud in, another would be wrenched from my grasp by the selfish northerlies. My skin quivered with tension and when I stole a glimpse of the fire I saw no less than four places where burning embers had started new spot fires along the far ridge. At any moment now, the multiple fire fronts would join up and tear the valley apart. Despairing, I fell to my knees, lost in my madness but screaming at the sky to do my bidding anyway.

  Strong arms lifted me to my feet. I opened my eyes to tell Bane to leave me alone but it wasn’t just him.

  ‘Noah?’

  He smiled grimly, his pale hair slick with sweat from his helmet and his green eyes wild with fear—or was it anger? He had ridden his dirt bike right up to where we were. Perhaps he had come to force me to take shelter, but how could I explain to him the overwhelming need I felt to stay and fight? All three of us were in terrible danger now because of me, but how could I have stopped either of them from coming? For that matter, how had Noah even known where to look for us? I hadn’t felt him approach despite being so close to Eden—the storm had taken every shred of my concentration. Even now I could sense it slipping back to the south, unable to make war on the northerly gusts without a commander. Slamming down my doubt and guilt, I closed my eyes and started to pull patiently again at the tangled threads of air currents. Giving up was simply not an option.

  To my intense relief they began to move much more easily. I felt Bane’s hands gripping my shoulders, holding me up, as well as Noah holding my hand. A distant part of my overwhelmed brain noted that Noah was speaking confidently in the language I had never known existed until now. His words joined with mine, wrapping my appeal in powerful expressions of uncompromising support as together we commanded and cajoled the clouds into submission. His self-assurance was exactly what I needed. He was Noah. The same Noah that always, always made me see things the way he did. I trusted him much more than I trusted myself. I always had. And now his words were throwing out the same call to arms as mine were, and everything became absurdly easy. Quickly now, the cold air pummelled its way to the north, building up moisture as the storm system grew. A sharp crack of thunder split the air and madly I fought to bring the clouds closer. Lightning without rain would be disastrous. But finally a welcome splatter hit my face as we both shouted at the sky.

  With a cry of relief I threw my heart out to the storm, and the rain obeyed and began to pelt down like a volley of arrows on a war host. Very soon we were soaked to the skin, laughing hysterically at the sky in the innocent way children do when they’re chasing bubbles. I couldn’t believe we had done it! Bane picked me up in his arms and spun me around, utter relief shining through his laughter while Noah fell to his knees with a gigantic grin on his face, looking out over the drenched valley where the impossible tempest was soaking the dry foliage.

  Putting me down, Bane whispered in my ear. ‘I told you so.’

  I tried to stomp on his foot, but he was ready for it and danced aside. But he didn’t let me go. Instead, he began to waltz me around the rocks, his wet cotton shirt clinging to him in a very intriguing way. He sang as he spun and twirled me around, making me laugh.

  ‘Is that Boom Crash Opera?’

  ‘Well we are dancing in a storm,’ he defended. ‘If you can hum the Man From Snowy River theme whenever you’re nervous, I can have this.’

  ‘Is that what I hum?’

  He just laughed, deep and throaty, and I finally got a real taste of what he was like without all the angst, and he was glorious. We danced with rain pouring down our faces and I wanted it to last forever, but as we passed behind a massive granite boulder, he stopped singing and froze. Lightning reflected from his silver irises, as if they were backlit by something deep in his soul. Utterly lost in his intense gaze, I couldn’t even blink away the rain. Could he see what I was feeling? It wasn’t fair! My defences were non-existent in the aftermath of what had just happened! After a long moment he drew a deep breath and shut his eyes, breaking the dazzling hold he had over me and turning away. His fingers slid from my elbow to wrist as he started to let me go, and an instinctive stab of despair shot through my chest in blatant defiance of what my brain was trying to lecture me about.

  At the last second he paused, and his warm fingertips lingered on my palm.

  He murmured something huskily under his breath, and then with a sudden firm grip he tugged me in against his chest. Rain dripped from his hair as his lips boldly found mine, and I immediately forgot all about the storm and the fire, and found out just how quickly an entire world could fade from memory.

  Chapter 22

  A sharp crack of thunder brought us back to our senses way too soon, and Bane pulled away from me, looking as regretful as I felt. The ecstatic light that danced in his eyes was still there but his posture had become tense and protective. Standing on the top of a hill in an electrical storm probably wasn’t the safest place to be, and it would be typically ironic of me to be struck and fried by my own summoned lightning. A lingering yearning for his touch pulsed through my racing heart but I forced myself to untangle my fingers from his. For a few seconds neither of us could move but then another brilliant flash streaked across the sky like a giant electric cattle prod. Guiltily I kept my eyes away from his face as we made our way back around the giant boulders that we had climbed upon the first time we had come. I couldn’t believe I had let that happen. He deserved so much better. He should be with someone he chose, not someone who was chosen for him.

  Noah was still kneeling at the edge of the cliff, staring out over the valley, unblinking, so I carefully knelt down beside him. For all I knew he might have been in such a daze he was in danger of falling off the edge. He turned to face me with a frenzied look in his eyes.

  ‘Lainie? Did we just call a storm?’ he asked in a shaken voice.

  ‘Yeah. Apparently so. The fire’s going out. We’re safe now.’ I tried to sound calm, the way you were supposed to with accident victims, but my head was spinning with unanswered questions. I’d felt the power Noah had summoned with his words as clearly as I’d felt my own. He must be a Cherub too. Had he known? What did that mean? Were we somehow related? The sudden thought that we could be siblings just numbed my mind. Not possible. No way.

  ‘How exactly did we do that?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea. I just knew I had to do it. How did you find me?’

  ‘I can always find you, Lainie. Maybe I’m compelled to protect you too? Like Bane?’ He looked dubious, and sort of childlike in his confusion.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that’s it. I think you had to be here too. Do you think you would have still come here if I wasn’t around?’

  He looked back over the valley. ‘Yeah. I had to come. I just woke up and I knew I had to come out here. The quickest way was through your farm so I convinced Dad to let me go to help you. I knew there was a fire without even seeing anything.’ Worry and guilt clouded his face. ‘I can’t believe I abandoned both our families in a bushfire!’ He buried his head in his hands and his shoulders were trembling.

  ‘Noah, no! It’s okay! You saved your family from a bushfire, and everyone else,’ I assured him, standing up so I could pull him back from the edge. ‘I need to call Aunt Lily, tell her everything’s all right.’ I went to find the backpack with the radio. The rain was still pelting down and thunder still shook us every few seconds, and I shivered from the sudden drop in temperature. Bane started to put his arm around me but then changed his mind. Suddenly I was relieved that Noah hadn’t seen us kissing. I didn’t think he could have coped with any more surprises. I wasn’t sure I could either.

  After reassuring my aunt, we started the bikes up again and headed back down the hill. This time I let Bane drive. As we began the long trek back I huddled behind him, my arms clutching him too tightly around his waist.
I just wanted to hold him and not have to think about what I had just done because my brain kept trying to come up with alternate explanations for what had happened, and I just couldn’t trick myself into believing any of them.

  When we finally pulled up by the house, Aunt Lily was waiting for us. There was a CFA pumper in the driveway and Bane quickly offered to put the bikes away, probably so he could hide in the shed until the fire crew had gone because they were all frowning at us. To them we just looked like three foolish teenagers who had headed out into the bush to sticky-beak at the fire. Beyond irresponsible in our community. Tessa Bright emerged from behind the truck dressed in her CFA jacket and thick yellow over-trousers that somehow made her look less likely to faint than usual. In fact, the way she was strangling her helmet and glaring at Noah made me think that perhaps he was in for a lecture that his mum would be impressed by. He glanced back at her, shamefaced, but as she started to stride towards him, he turned tail and practically ran into the house. Apparently cranky girlfriends were a lot scarier than bushfires or unexpected supernatural powers. I happily let Aunt Lily shepherd me inside as well, while she went back out to talk to the volunteers. I was indescribably grateful to her for dealing with them.

  Noah called his mum to make sure everything was okay at his place while Bane snuck in through the back door and came to sit with me at the kitchen table. I smoothed my hand over the wood and listened to the fire crew outside arguing about the impossible weather. The old wooden table had heard its fair share of crazy discussions lately and it was about to witness another one. After a few minutes I found the energy to get up and change into a dry set of clothes and Bane generously found something for Noah to wear. After that I put on a pot of coffee.

  Eventually we heard the pumper leave to join the crews at the fire scene; they would still have a long day ahead of them assessing damage and ensuring the fire was completely quenched. It certainly could have been a lot worse. Without the miraculous rain, that fire could easily have taken out any number of farms as it headed south towards the township. I wasn’t sure if Eden would have been directly impacted by the fire itself; however, the thick bush was our best defence against intruders. A fire would have opened up access in all sorts of ways. For starters, the CFA crews would have been automatically required to inspect the area to ensure there were no spot fires, and I didn’t doubt that others would have had no problems sneaking in at the same time. I sincerely hoped that the fire had stayed far enough away from the ravine to keep the fire crews from nosing around too closely. I would have to keep a mental eye out.

  ‘The pumper made it here in record time,’ Aunt Lily said as she came in and poured herself a coffee. ‘They arrived about half an hour after you left, Noah.’

  Realising how completely we’d all abandoned her made me feel a little ill.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Noah was a Cherub?’ I asked bluntly, watching her. She froze mid-sip, staring first at me, then at Noah. The utter shock on her face told me what I’d been hoping for. She’d had no idea.

  ‘Noah’s a Cherub? What happened out there? Where did this amazing storm come from?’

  The ground was still shaking every few minutes from the thunder, and the rain kept shifting between pelting downpours and a steady soaking. Noah squirmed a bit, but stayed silent. Once again, it was up to me to steer the conversation.

  ‘Noah and I … pulled it up from the south,’ I said hesitantly. I still couldn’t quite believe it was our doing, but I couldn’t deny the immense power I had felt. It wasn’t a random lucky coincidence. I knew we had made it happen. ‘What’s the deal here, Aunt Lily? The Bible only talks about two Cherubim.’ Although, it dawned on me that if my mother really was still alive then that already made four of us, including Noah. How many more?

  ‘What’s a Cherub?’ Noah asked, confused.

  ‘Cherubim are the sentinels that guard access to the Garden of Eden,’ I explained. Noah looked at me blankly. Great. I knew he hadn’t done the research for that English essay. We were going to have to start from scratch. Aunt Lily had left the computer tablet switched on to check for the latest updates on the fire so Bane searched up a copy of the Bible and slid it over to Noah.

  ‘Time to brush up on some Judeo-Christian history, my friend,’ he advised with his wry sideways smile, showing him where to read from. Other than being on the school soccer team together, they were not what I would have considered ‘friends’. He seemed to be trying to make an effort to connect, given that Noah was apparently going to be part of our secret little world.

  We left Noah to familiarise himself with the Creation story while I poured a couple of glasses of river water. Noah gulped his down without noticing how brown it was because he was too engrossed in what he was reading, but he held it out to me for a refill. He read the story three times before leaning back in his chair and rubbing his forehead.

  ‘Are you implying that I’m one of the Cherubim that were appointed to stop people from getting back into Eden? ’Cos I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if I was thousands of years old. And I didn’t realise the Bible was set in Australia.’ The confusion on his face was almost comical.

  Aunt Lily turned to me. ‘Are you sure about this, Lainie? Are you sure you didn’t just tap into his energy or something?’

  I was pretty confident it was more than that. ‘Noah and I pulled that storm in together. And he told me that he woke up and knew there was a fire even before I did. I don’t understand though—I thought it ran in the family? Didn’t I inherit it from my mum?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ She turned to Noah, twisting her fingers through the handle of her mug. ‘I’ve known for years about your mum, Noah, but I had no idea that you were a Cherub. I think it would be best if you talked to her about all this. Trying to get a straight answer about Eden from anyone is difficult for a mere human like me. I only know bits and pieces. But it was your mum who told me that Harry had crossed over there.’

  Mrs Ashbree was a Cherub now too? Just how many of us were there? And where had she been that morning if she had just as strong a compulsion to protect Eden as we did? Harry’s words played hauntingly in the back of my mind. There was always a choice. Sarah Ashbree, who was so protective of her family, had managed to stay home to help them rather than go haring off into the bush like a lunatic. It was nice to think we might one day learn to have a bit of control over our compulsions. Particularly if it would otherwise put people’s lives at risk. I glanced guiltily at Bane and my aunt while she explained to Noah about Harry being a Cherub and how he had caused a landslide to help safeguard the pathway.

  ‘So now he’s stuck there?’ Noah surmised. ‘Because he blocked himself in?’

  Everyone else looked about as defeated as I felt. Harry had been gone for weeks. If there was another way into or out of Eden other than through that cave, he probably would have found it by now, which meant that either there wasn’t one, or he didn’t want to come home. And surely the threat of a bushfire in the valley would have lured him out if anything could.

  ‘We’ll get him back,’ I said with far more confidence than I felt. ‘If he can cause a landslide and we can call a storm, then unblocking a cave should be a piece of cake.’

  But Noah just stared at me, his face rather pasty. He didn’t have to say it. What we’d done had been spontaneous and instinctive, and I had no idea how to replicate it. And it had shaken me like a box of Hundreds and Thousands on to fairy bread. I wasn’t ready to even contemplate doing anything like that again any time soon.

  ‘Have you been tired and shaky too, Noah?’ Bane asked, handing him his third glass of water and breaking the awkward moment. It was a good question. Noah was an eighteen-year-old guy. He ate like an elephant. Certainly for all the fruit I consumed he could polish off his fair share too, but he ate plenty of everything so it didn’t seem out of place.

  ‘Yeah, totally stuffed. Tessa keeps telling me to go t
o the doctor. Why?’

  ‘Apparently there’s something in the water you need that’s been messed up by the local mining,’ he explained.

  ‘Is that why Harry brought around those drums of water before he left? I thought it was a bit strange at the time. Mum refused to answer when I asked about it.’

  ‘And did you?’ Bane asked. ‘Go to the doctor, I mean.’

  Noah smiled ruefully. ‘And say what, that my girlfriend doesn’t think I’m energetic enough?’ Then he groaned. ‘I shouldn’t have dodged her just then, should I? She looked furious with me.’

  Bane looked at me, his eyes going wide. My mouth dropped open as a suspicion began to form. He subtly put his finger to his lips and I nodded. We would want to be pretty certain before we told Noah that Tessa was supposed to be his bodyguard. He was a sweet guy but I was pretty sure his male ego would struggle with that one.

  A heavy feeling settled in my chest as I thought about what that meant. Tessa Bright? Linked to Noah the way Bane was linked to me? But Noah was mine. I had always looked after him! Where had she been the day he’d burnt his leg on the exhaust of his first dirt bike? Or the day his Aunt Kelly had been killed in that car accident? When had she ever bullied him into studying for a maths test? The ferocity of my sudden jealousy shocked me into silent retreat. There was simply too much that I had to think through but I just couldn’t get my head around it all.