Songlines

by Carolyn Denman

  That caught my attention. ‘What happened to my mother?’ I asked, trying to sound casual. Just how much did she know?

  ‘Oh, honey, sorry,’ she said, laying her hand on my arm. ‘I suppose no one has ever really told you the truth about that. It’s not right. You should know.’

  ‘It’s not Aunt Lily’s fault. She only knows bits and pieces about Eden. She’s told me everything she can.’ I felt a bit defensive. After all, Sarah could have filled me in at any time if she really believed it was important enough.

  ‘I know. I’m not blaming her. Harry should have told you more. Although I know Lily wanted us to wait until you were a bit more mature to find out about all this, so I guess it was right that he deferred to her judgment.’

  We sat down on a rickety garden bench that had seen better days. At least it was in the shade.

  ‘Your mother fell into a severe depression when your dad died,’ she explained, moving along to give me a bit more space on the bench. ‘She started to cross over into Eden regularly. She said it made her feel better, and it worked … for a while, but there was something about the place that messed with her mind. She began to stay there for longer and longer periods of time. Each time she returned she would be a little bit more disconnected. She began to forget things and became … irresponsible. She just couldn’t seem to get her priorities straight. One minute she would be all over you, saying how much she’d missed you, and the next we would find her wandering by the river, having forgotten that she’d left you in the house alone. Lily did an amazing job of trying to keep her grounded, but eventually she … slipped away. The last time I saw her she was in tears, saying that you had died. She was holding you in her arms at the time and you were sleeping peacefully. We tried to explain to her that you were fine but she’d finally tipped over the edge. She left for Eden that day and I never saw her again. Harry went after her …’ Her olive eyes glazed over as she got lost in her memories. Then she gave herself a little shake. ‘When he returned he told us your mum had all but forgotten this world and didn’t … want to remember.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Even though your aunt would never admit it, I think she was relieved. Watching what you went through each time your mother left you again … and having to pick up the pieces each time … I’m so sorry, Lainie. This can’t be easy for you to hear.’

  It matched what Aunt Lily had said, but that didn’t make it any better. My mother had still left me alone. Suddenly the rickety bench I was sitting on felt a lot more stable than the rest of the planet. So many reactions fought for priority that I just squashed them all down to deal with later, and tried to focus on the questions I had instead. ‘So that’s why you and Harry avoid going into Eden? It sends you crazy?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not so much crazy, it just makes you forget. You’re in another world, so this one just sort of fades away. I’ve never been there. I don’t want to risk losing my family.’

  We sat silently for a while and I reflected on the way I had struggled to pay attention to what I was doing as soon as I had crossed over the boundary. It was easy to see how quickly memories could slip away. Perhaps it was a good thing though—I wouldn’t miss Bane and Aunt Lily so much if I couldn’t remember them. That was the moment I realised that I was actually contemplating what it would be like to live there. Another world. A whole other life. In Paradise. And it was calling to me louder and louder every day. There had to be a way in.

  ‘Sarah, is it really possible to resist these compulsions? If it protects the ones we love?’ If she was able to avoid going into Eden then perhaps I could go in and avoid the temptation to return, despite my ties to this world. My attachment to Bane wasn’t necessarily compulsive, but it felt awfully close.

  ‘I would do anything to protect the people I love. I believe we always have a choice, even when it comes to Eden.’ She was on the verge of tears and I could see how conflicted she was between following her role as a Cherub and doing what was best for her family. Her words echoed Harry’s so closely that I wondered how many more ‘choices’ they had both been forced to make. I tried to shift the subject to a less painful topic.

  ‘I think Harry would like to come home if we can find a way, and I think there might be one. Bane and I found another cave. There was an Event Horizon there, but it was a dead end on the other side—in both worlds.’

  She looked up at me, a fascinated expression brightening her serene face.

  ‘Bane couldn’t cross it,’ I continued. ‘He walked through it but nothing changed for him. He just couldn’t sense me at all when I crossed.’

  ‘So presumably there is still only the one place humans can get in to Eden?’

  A shiver of revulsion went down my spine at the thought; it was the same feeling I got when people tried to lie to me. Humans. Crossing over the Event Horizon. The mere idea of it made my teeth ache. ‘But they’re not allowed.’ The bleak flatness of my rebuke seemed to startle her almost as much as it did me.

  She was quiet for a moment, and then asked in a subdued voice, ‘So if we can find another place for Cherubim to cross, would you go?’ Her gaze was as piercing as my answer was quick.

  ‘Of course. I want to find her, and I want to know why the river music is so sad. And I want to help Harry to get home, somehow.’

  ‘No,’ she said, fiddling with her silver bangle. ‘I mean, if you want to go, that’s up to you, but Harry …’ She breathed in very deeply, and there were emotions swirling around her that I couldn’t decipher. When she relaxed again, her voice was steady. ‘If Harry wants to stay there, then please don’t try to talk him out of it.’

  Chapter 31

  I carefully fed the rolled up fire blanket through the hole to Harry. He draped it over his head and crouched down so it gave some protection from the sword’s heat.

  ‘I’ve felt the boundary in a few places,’ he said. ‘It’s always right up against the cliff face, though, so there’s nowhere to go. I’ve spent all day exploring caves and tunnels with no luck. They all either stop or twist around and head back out again. I get the impression the boundary runs along the full length of the cliff. At the southern edge I felt nothing. Like a wall that just finishes where the cliff starts to descend to the river. I haven’t been to the northern end but I would guess that the same thing happens. The Event Horizon has been neatly set up to coincide with the one place that’s physically inaccessible.’

  ‘Except for this tunnel,’ Noah pointed out, moving my hair aside so he could see what was going on.

  ‘Correct, except for this tunnel, which is guarded by the sword,’ Harry confirmed.

  ‘Clever design, really,’ I noted, elbowing my best friend away. I had to appreciate the tidiness of the system. Although why would there be an entire stretch of boundary wall that Cherubim could pass through if there was no way for us to do it? I had a theory but Bane wasn’t going to like it. And if I was right, it would only work from this side, so there was still no way to get home again. ‘So what’s the landscape like where you are?’ I asked him, checking over my shoulder to make certain that Bane and Tessa had remained outside as promised.

  ‘Magnificent. Everything a garden should be. It’s quite open, but the fields are lush and green, not like home. There’s a bright river running through this valley, lined with trees so tall that you feel like an ant under them. And flowers everywhere. The air smells …’ He shook his head, at a loss for words. ‘I haven’t been out of the valley area, but I believe there’s a whole world here. I wish you could see it.’ His eyes had a new shine behind them. I had never heard him speak so effusively before, and I could hear the passion in his voice. I wanted in. And if the landscape was as open as he said, my idea should work.

  ‘Is there any way for you to get to the top of the cliff, Harry?’ Noah asked, making me wonder whether he had arrived at the same conclusion.

  ‘Not easily,’ he replied. ‘I would take me weeks. As I me
ntioned, the river cuts through it to the south of here. The northern end just gets higher till it joins a mountain range—a pretty spectacular one, actually.’

  Noah’s gaze flickered to me. He had the same look on his face as when he had come up with the ice-blocking plan, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. Even if Harry had been able to get to the top of the cliff, he couldn’t jump off it through the boundary because it was the wrong direction, but we could. The next step would be for us to try to find out if the boundary ran vertically as well. Could we cross into Eden somewhere along the top of the ridge?

  While Noah stepped back to draw himself a little map on the floor with his finger, I took the opportunity to ask Harry as many questions as I could before he disappeared again.

  ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘I need to know if you found her.’

  His smile was sad. ‘Yeah, she’s here.’

  ‘But?’ I prompted. There was definitely one coming.

  ‘But she doesn’t believe me when I tell her you want to see her.’

  ‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Why wouldn’t I want to see her? Does she think I’m angry with her?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  I hesitated. ‘Well, yes. Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see her.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘That isn’t the problem anyway. The reason she doesn’t believe me is because she thinks you’re dead.’

  I found I had somehow sat down, and Noah’s face was close to mine, full of concern. His luminous green eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘Lainie, are you all right?’

  ‘My mother. She really is alive,’ I told him in an unsteady voice.

  ‘I know. Mum told me. I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up.’ He seemed a bit hurt. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  My hands were trembling, but I wasn’t crying, thankfully. ‘Because I wanted to know for sure. If I’d said it out loud and then found that she was dead after all, it would have been worse.’

  ‘Lainie logic,’ Harry said to Noah, as if he was trying to be helpful. And Noah nodded back as if he actually had been.

  ‘Why does she think I’m dead?’ I asked Harry.

  ‘That’s a bit hard to explain. I honestly don’t have the words.’

  ‘Then what about if I come to her?’

  He smiled. ‘That might convince her.’ He adjusted the blanket, shifting his feet about. They were bare and most likely burning. I was running out of time again.

  ‘And the music? Did you find out why it’s so sad?’

  All three of us automatically looked over to the tiny streamlet, trickling its way between the rocks over by the wall. Poignant echoes of loss and tragedy bounced silently around the cavern, heard only in our minds.

  ‘I did,’ Harry said. ‘But that one is even harder to explain. And even harder to fix. Maybe if you come, it will help.’

  As if I needed any more excuses.

  Then I broached the last of my most urgent questions, the one that had been filling my brain with all sorts of panic-inducing scenarios.

  ‘Harry,’ I muttered, leaning into the hole again, ‘just what are we capable of, exactly?’

  His eyes flicked up at me, but he didn’t answer.

  ‘I mean, what happened that morning, with the fire … I don’t really know how I did it. What if I do something wrong next time? We were messing with things we weren’t prepared for. Shouldn’t we have some sort of training or something? I mean, I can’t even have a pet snake without a licence, so how is it that I’m allowed to mess with the weather?’ Beside me, Noah nodded, fiddling with my braid the way he often did when he was worried.

  ‘Your authority frightens you.’

  ‘Damn straight!’ I agreed in a strangled voice. ‘How did you learn to control it all?’

  ‘Control it? Lainie, I hate to tell you, but I didn’t even know what we could do until I … built … this!’ he said, waving his hand at the huge pile of rocks separating us. ‘And I was terrified. I’ve never even heard of any of us doing anything so …’ He hunched deeper into the protection of his blanket.

  ‘Never? So there’s no precedent for any of this? But how do we know what we’re supposed to do? What if I go crazy and destroy the universe or something? Surely there are some rules, or limits, or something!’ My voice was getting unattractively squeaky, even in the hushed tone I was trying to stick to.

  Harry pushed me back gently, reached through the hole and picked something shimmery and small from one of the rocks. It was a Christmas beetle—they were everywhere at this time of the year. Biting thoughtfully on his tongue, he examined it with eyes that held the very essence of peace. ‘My uncle used to love these. He used to spend ages just watching them. He was fascinated by their shine, and incredible colours. I asked him once why he wasted so much time watching bugs walk around, and he said, “When it all becomes too much to handle, I ground myself with the things of the Earth. The small things. The scent of the dirt, the feel of the rocks, the dance of the insects.” ’ Harry smiled and placed the beetle on my shoulder. ‘We belong to the Earth, Lainie-Bug. We were sent here in human form for a reason. If you don’t know what to do, then just be human.’

  Right. Like that was ever a simple thing to do.

  ‘Eden bugs, Harry?’ I rescued the poor creature before it crawled under my collar, and he laughed at the reminder.

  ‘Actually, yes. After all, Eden is just a compilation of the best the Earth has ever had to offer, didn’t you know?’

  I told him that if that was true, then I was going to be very disappointed if there weren’t any dinosaur-related fire-lizards.

  We arranged to meet again in three days’ time. We needed a chance to explore. I also had a meeting in town to attend the following day. Councillor Lleyland had requested a meeting with the Kolsom representative. It was time for me to meet Mr Alex Beckinsale properly.

  The dusty old receptionist showed us into the councillor’s air-conditioned meeting room and I poured myself and Aunt Lily a glass of water from the jug on the table. My hands trembled with uncharacteristic nervousness. There had to be a reason we were called to attend a meeting in person and it wasn’t likely to be a positive one. Humming under my breath, I fidgeted like an ant on a hot plate as we waited for Councillor Lleyland and Mr Beckinsale. The water tasted weird.

  The moment they walked in together I knew we were in trouble. Not just because I recognised the lawyer as the same man I had seen in the library, but also because they had obviously just held a separate private meeting without us present.

  The mining executive was again dressed in an expensive suit and tie that looked mighty uncomfortable in the heat. He looked like the sort of man that clipped his nose hair every Friday, and his chiselled features were backed up with a charming smile that would have fooled most people. I was not most people.

  The councillor introduced us all politely, but as I shook hands with the young lawyer a multitude of images smashed into me that were so vivid I struggled not to react violently. As it was I held onto his hand a bit too long as I tried to absorb everything I was seeing. His smile widened, probably assuming I was being swayed by his charm, and I snatched my hand back awkwardly.

  The first few minutes of polite chitchat were a complete blur to me as my mind frantically tried to sort and filter the information I had been hit with. Never before had I seen such vivid images of someone. Usually I only got fleeting impressions, but like a super-fast preview to a movie, I had just seen jumbled images of this man being picked on as a boy by his classmates for being too clever at school. I had seen him get drunk and cheat on his girlfriend. I had also seen an image of his father hitting his mother as he screamed in frightened outrage, cowering under the kitchen table with his toy dinosaur. Later that night his mother had bundled him up, and they had snuck out of the house as she’d rescued them bot
h from an abusive situation. I watched him as a teenager again as he arrogantly asked the school counsellor which career would be the most likely to make him rich, then in the same moment saw a vision of him years earlier, crying because his mother had sold his computer so they would have enough money for rent. There were plenty more. Including a frighteningly familiar scene out in the bush during the night.

  The vivid splattering of images was random and confusing, but they all had one thing in common. In each vision I could feel exactly what he had felt. Sitting as still as I could, I struggled not to either burst into tears of sympathy or stand up and slap him across the face. This man was incredibly ambitious—and not in a healthy way. Too many of the images contained intense feelings of either fear or fury. I had no doubt that Mr Beckinsale was capable of violence. It bubbled just under the surface, controlled more by his intelligence than any real self-discipline. I wished I could just dismiss the images as some sort of wild daydream, but they felt far too real, and I knew I was getting the information because he was a threat to the one thing I was born to protect. I remained frozen, wondering just what this man was scheming to do next. I didn’t have long to wait.

  Councillor Lleyland cleared his throat. ‘Now that the shire has decided to back Kolsom’s application for a full mining licence, I believe it is my duty as a council officer to ensure the relevant landowners are fully informed,’ he announced to us with an ingratiating smile. ‘I’ll provide any assistance you require to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement with Mr Beckinsale here.’ He was trying hard to ignore the icy glare that Aunt Lily was directing at him and I wondered what he had been offered to make him change his attitude so completely from the last public meeting he’d attended—or had he just been telling the community what we wanted to hear? Generally I tried to assume the best of people but after what I had just ‘seen’ of Mr Beckinsale I couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing any of the councillor’s dirty laundry.