The Untold (16 page)

A
fter three days of walking, Jessie could find no more water. The labyrinth of rock had given way to thick scrub that cut her as she walked. Her skin itched as though she had been bitten by thousands of insects. Lumps appeared on her hands and her feet, blisters upon blisters. If she'd had a needle or some sterile thing, she would have pierced them, neatly and one by one, and let the fluid drain out of them. But she did not have a needle. She leant against the rock face in the full sun and, starting with her hands, ran her jagged nail under the blisters and broke the skin and watched the claggy liquid inside them ooze out. She could not allow her feet to become infected but the blisters hurt to walk upon so she broke them, too. She began walking. The broken skin drew dirt to it but there was nothing she could do. She could not wear her boots. They had become containers for food and now they were too small for her swollen feet anyway.

She marveled that there was any excess moisture in her body, any water to spare, water enough to swell her feet or rise in blisters.

She found shade.

Her hunger was gone but her thirst was everything. She picked out the berries from her boot. They stung against the cracked skin of her lips so she tried to place the berries on her tongue although it hurt to open her mouth wider. She chewed and chewed them to create moisture.

All of it felt like waiting and there was no clear path to take and
she missed her companion. The sun was disorienting and took up all of the sky and the bush was growing denser the higher she climbed. But still she was lucid enough to know the danger of her own thirst and that all day she had been stumbling. The ground beneath her was not a steady thing. Each step was uncertain and her feet seemed to sink through layers of dirt. She wished that days before she had filled her boots with water.

She walked on, barefoot, her gun strapped to her back, her boots hanging around her neck from their laces.

W
hen she discovered footprints, she doubted what she saw. She thought at first that she was tracking herself, but then she measured them against her own foot and discovered they were not the same print, they were smaller.

She followed the footprints until she reached a plateau and then she saw that the plateau opened out to a clearing. She crouched low in the bush and searched beyond it. She could make out a holding yard. It was made of cut branches woven together in a circle, designed to keep horses and cattle, but she could see no creature in it.

She heard a whistling sound and she flattened herself under the bush. Looking out again, she saw a dog.

She moved along the ground as she had seen snakes and goannas do in the mountains, and hid herself behind a tree. She peered out. A boy was standing in the clearing. He was just a child standing there next to his dog. The dog's ears pricked up. The boy said,
What is it, Ned? What is it?

The dog was still growling and edging closer to where Jessie hid but the boy was standing firm in the clearing.

Go get it, Ned—go get it!

And when she saw the dog come running in her direction she stepped out and yelled,
Down, Ned, sit down!

Who's there?
said the boy.

The dog was still barking so she stepped out into the clearing.
The boy moved closer and raised his gun and she said,
Don't shoot me, kid.

Who are you?
he said.

My name is Jessie
.

The boy stood with his gun pointing at her and the dog ran to his side.

Put your gun down.

It was weeks or more since she had seen another human and so much longer since she had seen a boy. They regarded each other and she could see the beauty of his form, as elegant as anything she had ever seen, mountain, river, rampart or tree. And as the boy and the dog stood visibly disbelieving what they were seeing—
a woman—
she wondered as she approached if beauty was just the thing itself or made more beautiful by the space around it.

Fucking Jesus, Ned. It's some kind of woman.

Mind your tongue
, she said, and laughed. As if she was one to say that.

Sorry, miss
, said the boy, and then the dog started barking and began to bark in a frenzy and the boy knelt down beside him and rubbed him under the chin, which made the dog quiet.

Kneeling there he said,
What brings you to here?

She knelt down too and didn't think much of it and just said,
The same things, I expect, that brought you.

The boy led her to his camp, which was near a waterhole, and it was the best camp she had ever seen. There were rocks there and boulders that formed like honeycomb and grottoes big enough to stand in. She could see that some of them were already lined with bedding and there were branches wedged into corners with things hanging from them—clothes and bridles and coats.

There are five more of us here
, said the boy,
but they are not here now. They are all off selling horses. And, miss, it is better that you don't tell anyone that we are here or not here because we like things as they are and you are the first to have found us. We have all that we need here and there'll be more when they get back, you'll see, 'cause they'll bring supplies. There'll be johnnycakes with golden syrup and Bill cooks things the best on the fire, like pumpkin and roo and fish from the creek. And when they come back they'll bring more oranges, too, and limes, 'cause Joe says if we don't eat 'em our teeth'll fall out—and Joe says that there are no tooth fairies here, we do not believe in 'em. Who would? And we've made a garden, too, but that's on the other side of the creek, 'cause it was bringing in too many roos and creatures on this side. More than we would want to eat or kill, miss. More than we would want to eat or kill.

They made a fire together that night. The boy gave her an orange and it was lit up by the fire like the brightest orb and he said,
There are only two left but they will be back soon and there will be more
. She shared the orange with the boy and it was the best she had ever tasted. The dog sat between them and he had calmed right down but lifted his head up occasionally and looked at her and then his head sank down meekly on his paws.
Don't mind Ned, miss. He's never seen a woman who is grown
. And she laughed because although she was a woman who was grown she felt no different to the boy or to how the boy must have felt—happy to have found someone to share an orange and a fire at the summit of the mountain.

They gazed at the fire and they saw all things in it, creatures of the earth and creatures of the air, and they took turns at naming what they saw or guessing what hybrid that creature could be.

The sky was vast and clear and hung above them, revealing
stories in its constellations for anyone who looked. And as the fire dwindled they did look up and they recognized some of its stories and some they did not know but told anyway, making the stars their own. It was the roof of their world and they were at ease with their world, looking up and feeling that they had explored great distances in the universe that night, all the while sitting by the dwindling fire.

They saw a girl spinning. Her hair was like a comet's tail, splitting against the sky. And when they blinked they could both see the thousand smaller stars that made the detail of her collar and a thousand more that made the buttons and seams from her wrists to her elbows. Hair and lace collars and buttons all made of stars.

As the girl was spinning, a Master of Menace bore down from the west, and his cape was made of darkness, not of stars. He threw back his cape and from his boots he drew a knife and launched it through the night, aiming at the girl who was still spinning.

And then out of the night a lasso fell around him and the girl got away and circled her opponent on her dappled horse. She circled him and then she did a handstand and the boy and Jessie saw all of this playing across the sky until they finally lost her when she flipped off her horse and tore out of their view.

What did you do down there, miss, with all of your days?

Rustled horses and cattle mainly.

Rustlin'—you mean stealin'?

Plain and simple. Horses and cattle, both. We'd bring them in, rebrand them and sell them on the other side of the mountains.

I'll be sure to tell Joe that
, said the boy.

And then he said,
You know we're a gang, miss. Me and Joe and the others. And you been rustlin'. I'll be sure to tell Joe.

The boy nestled his head into Ned's rump and his arm fell across the length of the dog's long body.

Don't mind us, Miss Jessie
, said the boy, his words running together in his tiredness.
Ned and I sleep out like this all the time. 
The boy and the dog then closed their eyes in unison.

Jessie fed more wood into the fire and arranged herself on the other side of it. By the time she lay down the boy was sleeping, his head rising and falling with the breathing of the dog.

She rolled onto her side and put her hand under her temple, as a pillow. But she did not close her eyes. She could not take her eyes off him.

D
ays and days passed and the boy kept saying,
They'll be back soon, miss, they'll be back.
All of his talking was like a mad little tick and she began to worry for them, Joe, Bill and the others. She imagined them, hungry as thieves.

Jessie and the boy set themselves jobs to keep their minds off the others' absence. They tidied the camp and chopped wood. They waded across the waterhole to the green garden, where everything grew beautifully in rows—spinach and lettuce and rhubarb, and pumpkin vines that had been cordoned off with string. The whole thing was fenced off with pieces of chicken wire tied together with twine. Attached to sticks stuck into the ground were tins made into propellers that whirred in the wind.
We made them to keep the birds away
, said the boy. She asked the boy whose idea it was to grow their food and he said,
That was Joe. He is the oldest one here. He is sixteen.

More days passed and Jessie began to wonder if it was just going to be her and the boy and the dog forever, and if something had happened to the rest of them. And she worried more for them when she turned her mind to all the things that can happen droving horses and selling them. She did not tell the boy her concerns. But by the way he was fidgeting, she guessed he was thinking the same thing.

It was half dark when she was woken by a vibration in the earth like an earth tremor and it soon heralded a great cavalcade of horses and then the sighs of their riders dismounting.

She watched them from her bed, which was a cave in the rock, and she could see the riders all drawing nearer the fire, where the boy was waiting. She could see from their silhouettes that all of them were lean and some of them were as tall as saplings, and they all stood gently together, and they all leaned down to embrace the boy. Then the one she took to be Joe lifted the boy onto his back and jigged him around the fire until they were all laughing.

When she rose the sun was high in the sky and the boy was up and he was unloading supplies into the camp kitchen, which was another cave with its opening on the ground. The cave was deep enough to stand up in and the gang had built shelves, balancing them on rocks and sticks, and on the shelves were cans of things and things in sacks. Hessian bags covered the opening of the cave and some of them were rolled up and tied and the boy passed supplies under to someone on the other side.

The boy said,
Jessie, this is Bill
.
Bill is the best cook on the mountain.

Bill was standing behind the makeshift curtains and he opened them gingerly.
Hello, Jessie
, he said. His voice was strangely deep. He had a mop of black hair, eyelashes that swept his cheekbones when he blinked, and dark, golden skin. From his eyes and his skin, Jessie guessed he was Aboriginal. She offered her hand and he shook it back but there was no doubt that behind those lashes he was regarding her with suspicion.

Jessie wandered around the camp and saw signs of its inhabitants that were not there before. Boots kicked off outside the caves, saddles propped up off the ground and ropes in circles in the dirt. And then walking into the clearing she saw that while Joe and the others may have sold horses they had brought back a dozen more.
The horses in the holding yard were wild; kicking and bucking and biting, they were trying to establish who ruled in the yard and beyond. She observed them all with a distant curiosity, wild creatures fighting, until she saw what she wished she would see. Houdini was in there among them, more ragged than she had last seen him, but still rearing up like any belligerent stallion.

There was no way out for any of the horses. The branches were piled high and made sharp at the ends. Jumping would mean breaking their neck or their legs in the tangle of sticks. She couldn't bear to see Houdini in there, scraping around wild and fighting with the others. Keeping her head down, she let herself in through the thatched gate. Houdini saw her, made a path to her, and then they walked a lap of the yard, around its edge, to calm the chaos of the others. When she neared the gate again, Jessie opened it quickly and together they slipped out.

There was a wooden box near the holding yard with leather straps for hinges and when she opened it up she found what she needed—brushes, bridles, ropes and leads. While Houdini pushed his nose into her neck she chose a brush. And then she led him to the shade of a tree, away from the holding yard and the brimming discontent of the other horses, and she brushed him down.

Under his coat patches of skin had been torn and healed rough and other patches were covered with burrs. His mane was matted into cocoons and within them were live colonies of insects. She clipped them out and brushed him down and he stood as still and content as she had ever seen him.

She was about to swing herself up onto him to ride him through the bush when the boy appeared and behind him Bill and an older boy she took to be Joe.

And it was Joe who said,
Well, what have we here? Who's this who has found us and now rides our horses?
He was smiling, though, and his eyes were kind and bright.

This is Houdini, my horse, and I am relieved to find him. I had to leave him to his own devices or we would not have made it up the mountain, him or me.

How do we know it is your horse?
said Bill, whose voice now was high-pitched and nervous.

Well, he let me lead him out of that ruckus and brush him down and soon you will see me ride him.

The boy was turning stones over with the toe of his boot and Joe and Bill looked so serious standing there.

We'll need to consult with the others
, said Joe,
about if you can stay
.

I had not thought of it
, said Jessie.
The boy and I discovered each other and we have been good company but now that you are here and I have my horse, it may be best to leave.

We'll talk on it with the others
, said Joe.
Jessie nodded without speaking, then Joe added,
You see, you are the first to have found us and the boy tells me you can rustle. As you may have guessed it, that is what we do, and though we're not recruiting it seems that you've traveled a long way—it's a long way up, we know. It seems that it is some kind of coincidence that you have found us, though we do not yet know where that coincidence might lead to. But give us the day to talk it over and we'll make a decision about what we should do.

Jessie nodded again and swung up onto Houdini's back and rode him slowly out of the clearing. The boy came running after her. He'd wrapped up half a fresh damper in a bit of cloth.

This is for your lunch,
he said.
But come back before dark.

It was still early morning.

I'll be back
, she said.
Don't worry about that.
And she winked at him and turned Houdini towards the scrub. When she looked back, the boy was still standing there, watching.

For so long, she had wanted to be in the mountains. She had thought only of escape. She had dreamt of her freedom and now that she had it, she did not know what to do with it. She led Houdini along a ravine and then she sat by it, as if the ravine itself would speak up and offer her counsel.

She ate the damper the boy had given her, then she lay down on her back and watched the clouds passing over. There were forms racing cloud to cloud and she could see creatures in those forms and creatures becoming other creatures, each thing changing and nothing ever visible for long. And it was all set against the pristine sky and it was all moved along by the wind.

Houdini tore at the grass with his teeth and the sound of it was music to her ears. She lay there with Houdini beside her until the clouds became like wool, all spindling over.

She thought of the boy. The boy reminded her of Bandy Arrow. Yet she knew that no matter how much time she spent around the fire with the boy, it was not a story she would share.

It had been thirteen years since she had last seen Bandy Arrow, and the last time she had seen him was the fall. It remained so clear to her, the sounds and textures of it, and she wondered how that memory, after all these years, could still carry such feeling.

The night of his fall, she was standing on the balustrade, urging him forward. On the tightrope he was as light as a feather and his balance was perfect, and yet he was afraid of heights. She had climbed the ladder with him, as she did every night, and every night she said to him,
Bandy, don't look down
. There was no safety
net at Mingling Bros. Circus and that was what set the circus apart—the danger was real. From the balustrade, she would concentrate on his feet and will him safely, step by step, across the rope. Mirkus called the two of them “the winning combination”; with Jessie's help, Bandy had performed the stunt successfully every night for a year. But this night, for some reason, he looked down.

To her eyes, his feet were not the first things to slip. It was his body that shifted away from the rope and he fell sideways and then down. He landed feetfirst. There were screams from the crowd and then gasps of awe as some of them thought for a moment they were witnessing something miraculous, a freak performer. But when he hit the ground he kept on traveling, his spine on a vertical path downwards, his legs redirected. The incompatible destinations were measured at his knees and like a hinge without a spring he collapsed.

She rushed down the ladder and to his side along with Mirkus, the ringmaster. And she had cried as she held Bandy's head and turned it to the side while he vomited out the shock he was in.

It's nobody's fault
, said Mirkus.
Sometimes we just fall
.

He called for a stretcher and Bandy Arrow was loaded onto it and carried away. Jessie went to follow but Maximus said,
We must keep performing, that's all we can do.

And so she did.

And when the show was over and the crowd shuffled out, she returned to the place where he had landed. There were strokes in the dust where his fingers had made trails and his limbs fanned out.

She traced his imprint on the ground. That was it. She knew she would not see Bandy Arrow again.

W
HEN SHE WOKE
it was almost dark. Houdini was standing, a towering creature, nudging her arm with his nose. She sat upright. She felt odd—as if some great fissure had finally opened up, and all of the convolutions of herself were meeting at the surface, like so many coincidences at once. And somewhere in it all was her own distinct nature.

Sitting by the ravine she felt her past was not behind her or beneath her, it was everywhere at once, living through her, and the boy and Joe and Bill were just like those she had known before and here on the mountain was something like a second chance, a chance to love well, and she did not yet know its limits.

When she returned to the camp, the gang was all sitting around the fire. She could see the boy and Joe and Bill and another three among them. Joe stood up and welcomed her and she sat down and they all smiled at her and she could smell sweet things roasting on the fire.

Joe remained standing.
The boy says you are a rustler. We know that you are brave enough to take on the mountains and walk through a yard of wild horses and lead your own horse out. And you know we have a gang and we aren't recruiting; we are solid as we are. But now that you are here, we believe there is some fate in it. You have seen that we bring in wild horses and some of them are branded and we sell them, and we sell cattle in the same way. And we prefer to live here, as we are, for now. We are safe from all that would harm us. But there may be a day when we have to move on and each of us will do that as they please. One day we may build a house of our own and all of us will live in it together. And there may be a time when we don't have to do things that are illegal.
But that day has not come and until it does we'll keep on because we have all run from something one by one. Just as you have found us we have all found one another, like magnets attracting. And now we are happy that you are among us. And not to offend you, miss, but we guess you are older than us—old enough to sell our stock at the sale yards.

Joe sat down and everything fell to silence. He was a natural leader and he took things seriously and he spoke with all sincerity. Joe looked to Bill and their eyes met and both were brightened by the flame. Jessie took in the other faces around the fire, all of them young and bright and shining, and they were all looking at her quietly, waiting for her to respond.

Joe, all of you, riding horses and stealing cattle is what I do, and I know I do it well. And it is my good fortune that I have found you. I have been in these mountains alone for too long, and without knowing it, it is your company that I have craved. I would like to be counted as one of you.