Walking to the Stars (16 page)

Emu was tough and tasteless, Samuel decided, really not worth the eating, unless you happened to be hungry, and he hadn't done anything that day to make himself hungry.

Talgerit ate Samuel's share.

After dinner, when the sun had set, Talgerit put thick pieces of branches on the fires and took his ragged clothes off again.

This time, after he'd sung and shuffled his way around the clearing, he sat down beside the pile of feathers, with pieces of grass beside him, and began to wind and bind and twist the feathers, tongue protruding from his mouth in his effort.

It wasn't until he'd nearly finished the first one that Samuel realised what the shape he was weaving was; he was making baskets of grass and feathers for his feet. Somehow, Samuel had always thought that a Featherman would put feathers on his arms, the same as the Inca priests had done, but of course that was his own cultural assumption. There was no reason why Noongar Feathermen would do the same, no reason why they wouldn't make feather shoes for themselves instead of capes.

Talgerit went off that night, wearing his feather shoes and nothing else.

The van didn't start easily the next day, even with coals from the fires, and Nick said, “Have we taken the van as far as we can?"

Talgerit shook his head. “Not time to leave it yet, we can drive a bit further, to the place where the Wagyl came down the hill, that way.” He pointed to the west, and Nick could see the darker green of taller trees that marked a waterway.

"Is that the Avon River?” Nick asked Talgerit.

"Dunno,” Talgerit said.

"I've got maps,” Samuel said, and he took his bag out of the back of the van and rifled through it. “Here,” he said, holding a map out to Nick.

Nick spread the map out on the dirt beside the van and the three of them knelt down around it.

"Kutter Kich,” Nick said, pointing at Wave Rock on the map. “Quairading. There's the road we drove down, through Balkuling and Kauring.” He tapped the map. “This is where we are, I think, Mt. Stirling."

A river snaked across the map close to Mt. Stirling; the Avon river, which became the Swan River.

Samuel tracked his finger across the map. “And there's Perth."

"Long way to go yet,” Talgerit said.

Even once they got the van started, it didn't run well, sputtering and complaining, but they coaxed it down toward what had previously been York, but was now a blackened collection of stumps and charred bricks.

The bridge had burned, too, leaving only twisted metal pylons in the riverbed, and Nick parked the van beside the road and turned the motor off.

"Going to swim and walk now,” Talgerit said.

Samuel took his bag, with his maps and papers in it, as well as the half bag of flour. Nick took his medical bag. Talgerit tied a strand of material torn off his T-shirt between his feather boots and slung them around his neck, despite the smell they were beginning to give off from the bits of emu still clinging to the ends of the feathers.

They crossed the shallow river, where the bridge had been, wading between the pylons. The town was ruined, the bush beginning to reclaim the land, the trees encroaching amongst the foundations of the houses, and Talgerit said, “Dead people are here."

He led them out of the town site quickly, almost running, and headed inland, away from the river and the ruins. The other side of the river valley was a large hill, outside of the town, and even Talgerit slowed down going up the slope, scrambling up the hillside.

At the top, they turned around and looked down over the valley and the river, and even in the midday sun the place looked haunted.

There wasn't any question of which way to go, a peeling and faded road sign made that clear, when they found the remains of a bitumen road on the other side of the hill.
Perth, 102 kms
it said, and the arrow pointed west.

"Toward the sea,” Talgerit said.

They walked, following the road, broad bitumen expanse, designed to carry trucks and buses, now slowly being taken over by the bottlebrushes and gum trees, but it felt like they were walking between tall trees, and even in the sunshine it was cool and shady.

Soon, the shapes of the trees were visible, looming over them, casting a deep shade, and the ground smelt of wet soil, not bitumen.

Samuel stopped, gripping Nick's arm, and he sounded panicked when he said, “Nick! Talgerit! What's happening?!"

"Dead trees,” Talgerit said. “There used to be a forest here, and the land remembers."

A phantom kangaroo hopped past them, appearing from nowhere, and disappearing just as rapidly, and Nick said, “Seems the land remembers other things, too."

Talgerit's dog yipped, up ahead of them, and Talgerit said, “C'mon."

Every step forward, the remembered forest became more and more real, and Nick wound his hand securely around Samuel's wrist and hung on tight. If the stories, and songs, were true, the land remembered lots of things, more than just trees and kangaroos.

They kept on walking, focussing on the faded painted lines on the bitumen, trying to ignore the phantoms around them, Talgerit pausing occasionally, with his dog, to wait for Nick and Samuel to catch up.

It was hard work, as hard as walking through real forest, and Nick found himself inordinately proud of how long Samuel kept going, eyes down on the road, ignoring his surroundings. For someone who was terrified of devils and small people, he did remarkably well.

The sun set, up ahead, and Talgerit kept them walking until it was so completely dark that it was impossible to find the lines on the road.

"We need water,” Nick said. “And to sleep, Talgerit."

A sphere of light formed on Talgerit's hand, lighting his face, then slowly their surroundings, and Talgerit did not look pleased. “Bad place to stop,” he said.

"Are there any good places here?” Nick asked rhetorically, and Talgerit shook his head.

This was the bad lands, the place that no one went voluntarily, there were no good places and Nick knew it.

Talgerit led them down into a gully, lighting the way with a sphere of light, and they all stumbled and slid down the hillside, unable to distinguish real boulders and trees from remembered ones, not by the ethereal light of the sphere.

They found a clearing, where there were neither real nor remembered trees, and Samuel sat in the middle of it, his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes shut, hanging onto Talgerit's dog, while Nick and Talgerit foraged a little, collecting twigs and leaves to start a fire with.

They found water, at the bottom of the gully, and Nick took Samuel down there to drink while Talgerit started the fire with one of his spheres. The bush around them rustled, and eerie faces peered out of the darkness. When Nick lobbed a rock, the rock sailed right through the figures, but they still drank from the creek as quickly as they could.

The fire was burning brightly in the darkness when Nick stumbled back into the clearing, pulling Samuel along behind him.

They had damper, flour mixed with water to make a paste, then stuck onto twigs and held over the fire, because, as Talgerit said, “No good hunting, can't tell live from dead, and it won't be good eating dead."

Talgerit built the fire up high, so sparks flew up into the night, to keep them warm in the cold that crept up the gully, and Samuel shivered and wrapped his jacket closer around himself. They sat like that, the three of them around the fire, and things that Nick didn't know the names of were attracted to the light of the fire.

They saw remembered people, too, ghosts of Noongar and whiteman both, peering out of the darkness, and Samuel kept his eyes tightly closed and hung onto Talgerit's dog and Nick.

None of them slept.

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Morning came late, with sunlight not managing to struggle through the gloom of the gully enough to cast a shadow. Talgerit took Nick's pocketknife and went down to the creek to get them breakfast.

They heard him shrieking, and Nick took off down the hillside, stumbling and falling, Samuel right behind him, to the creek.

Talgerit was up the creek a little, underneath a eucalypt on the bank, struggling with something, shouting and yelling, his dog yipping frantically and jumping in and out of the water.

Nick charged up the creek, slipping over rocks, Samuel struggling to keep up with him. Talgerit was wrestling with an enormous thing, easily the size of his dog, with massive pincers and a brown and blue shell.

It had one pincer around Talgerit's ankle, and Talgerit had the knife in the back of its head, but Talgerit was obviously feeling more pain than the thing. Nick picked up a decent size rock and crashed it into the thing's head, and Talgerit's dog got his teeth into the other claw and shook his head and wrenched the claw off.

It didn't take much, after that, to force the claw open and free Talgerit's foot, and Talgerit aimed a vicious kick at the dead thing with his good foot.

"Bloody thing,” Talgerit said with feeling. “Bet it tastes good."

Samuel looked down at the claws and body, and the only shape that fitted in his experience was ‘lobster'.

"It's enormous,” Samuel said. “I had no idea lobsters got so big."

"It's not lobster,” Nick said, flipping the carcass over and inspecting the underside. “It's marron, freshwater crayfish, just ten times bigger than it should be. Wash your ankle in the creek, Talgerit, and I'll look and see if you need stitches."

They sat around the fire, the marron buried in the ashes, sizzling away, and Nick poured alcohol over Talgerit's wound, making him flinch, then sewed him up quickly, drawing the edges of the cut together to keep dirt out and speed healing. Samuel could well believe Talgerit's claim that he didn't scream when he was scarred, since he bore the suturing stoically.

The marron tasted amazingly good, fresh from the ashes, its charred shell falling away to reveal pink and cream flesh that melted in the mouth, and Talgerit got the privilege of cooking and then bashing open with a rock the claw that had done the damage to him.

Going back to the creek for one last drink of water was not appealing, though.

The gully seemed to have changed shape during the night, and the path they had taken to find the clearing and creek was no longer there. Talgerit muttered, “Boyee,” when they found their way blocked by boulders.

"Do we climb over?” Samuel asked, looking up the slope.

"No!” Nick and Talgerit said simultaneously, and Talgerit's dog barked, across the gully.

"Follow the dog,” Talgerit said. “Dog always knows which way to go."

Following the dog was hard work, with even Talgerit struggling to cope. Samuel's leg ached, where he had broken it, an ache that just grew and grew the more they struggled through invisible forests, and up real hills that never seemed to end.

He'd given up being scared that morning, when the monster attacked Talgerit. Eating the lobster afterward had not really been any consolation, even though Talgerit and Nick both seemed to consider it the ultimate victory. Samuel would rather live in a world where lobsters lived in the ocean and stayed the right size.

"Why was it so big?” Samuel asked Nick, when they sat down at the top of a hill so Talgerit could rest.

"Radiation,” Nick said. “We're at the edge of the blast zone now. And a lack of predators, at least until Talgerit came along."

"Good eating,” Talgerit said, and they all inspected the wound in his ankle. It was nasty, and if he survived, Talgerit was going to have a huge scar, but considering the hatched scarring across Talgerit's back and chest, he might actually approve of this.

"It nearly ate you,” Samuel pointed out, and Talgerit shrugged and grinned, a flash of his usual cheerfulness showing through.

"Good eating."

Once he'd decided he was beyond being scared, Samuel found he could keep going much longer, even with his leg hurting. They walked on, through the day, up and down hills, sticking to the painted lines on the old road where they could, resting for Talgerit's benefit, following the dog.

It rained, making the day even darker. Rivulets ran beside the road, and they drank the water while they could get it. At dusk, after Talgerit had lit one of his spheres to guide them, Samuel realized they were being followed.

"Something's behind us,” he said, tightening his grip on Nick's arm. “Something moving."

They heard a deep rumbling noise, like thunder far off, and Talgerit said, “Boyee! Run!"

They ran, a strange stumbling, halting flight, sticking to the road, and when Samuel glanced over his shoulder, a fucking boulder was rolling at them, actually rolling at them, and he had a horrendous moment of realization as to what the boyees he'd heard of were.

He clenched his teeth tightly together to stop himself from praying, clenched his mind equally tightly, and his arse, and Talgerit shouted, “That way!” and pointed down into a gully.

Samuel didn't care how large the lobsters were, he'd rather deal with one of them than a fucking rock that could chase him, and they all plunged down a slope, slipping and falling, to splash into the creek and up the opposite slope.

Talgerit was stooped over at the top of the slope, amongst the bushes, breathing hard and clutching his ankle, blood oozing between his fingers, when Samuel and Nick made it up the gravel beside him.

"Shh,” Talgerit said, and Samuel held his breath to stop his chest and throat from rasping, and the bush was silent. He couldn't hear any bird sounds, no breeze rustled the trees, there weren't even any flies buzzing around them. It was silent.

"It's gone,” Nick said and knelt down beside Talgerit to prize his fingers off his ankle. “That's not good, Talgerit. I need to wrap it up."

Talgerit pulled what was left of his T-shirt off and handed it down to Nick, who tore it with his teeth and tied it tightly around Talgerit's ankle.

The Wagyl scale was secured around Talgerit's neck by twine, and it glowed faintly in the dusk now it wasn't covered by his clothes. Talgerit slung his emu feather boots back over his shoulders so they hung beside the scale.