The Rain Heron Read online

  She lifted a thumb to the gauze.

  Thank you.

  Of course. But you must be in a lot of pain.

  He held out two tubes of pills.

  You need to take these. These are for pain, he said, shaking the first tube. And these are for infections, shaking the other. Take two each, every morning, afternoon and night. And drink lots of water, eat some food.

  He put the pills at her feet, and passed her a bottle and a pack of rations.

  She angled her chin away from him.

  Okay, said Daniel. Okay.

  It was clear that he should leave, so he stood up and washed his hands in the river, rinsing them hard and cold up to his elbows. He wondered if in the next day, and the ones that followed, he’d feel different: if putting distance between themselves and the mountain would change anything inside him. Then he went to his tent and crashed to sleep, his boots still on.

  38

  IN THE DEEP early morning his torso snapped up, a harsh awakening. Once he’d oriented himself he tried to go back to sleep, but found that he couldn’t stop recounting everything they’d done on the mountain. How they’d weakened the deer trap by sawing at its tripwire. How they’d stomped coarse camping salt into the loam of the hermit woman’s garden; how a zucchini had exploded under the heel of his boot. He thought of the ease at which rings of bark had come away from the trees, and how, in a green meadow splashed with purple and white flowers, they’d blasted apart a grazing buck and dumped the mangled corpse in the stream by the cave. How these plans of pressure and torture had come so smoothly from their lieutenant, as if she’d decided on them long before she ever came to the mountain or met the woman living there.

  He thought of how this approach—this methodical disintegration of resistance—was consistent with the way they’d behaved during the coup. Their squad was known for subtle tactics, led by their lieutenant’s uncanny nous for strategy, her nose for manipulation. She had moulded them into ambushers, infiltrators, outflankers. By the end of the coup they were primarily being used for shadow missions, spilling little blood but achieving significant victories. Minimal fuss or collateral damage. It was why Zoe Harker was celebrated—or mistrusted, if you asked the more bloodthirsty members of the military hierarchy—and almost certainly why her squad had been chosen for this mission.

  Daniel could not fault their actions, nor did he think he would have acted differently had he been in charge. He had, he remembered, not hesitated to swing the butt of his rifle into the hermit’s jaw the moment she began to disturb their plan on the mountaintop. Yet Lieutenant Harker obviously hadn’t planned to have one of her own eyes torn out. Nor did he believe that she had planned to shoot the woman they’d tortured.

  A gnaw started in his stomach. He felt afraid, although he wasn’t sure of what. Initially he thought this fear was for himself, now that their lieutenant’s wounding had compromised their mission. But then he came to realise that his fear was for her, and from the fact that there was little he could do to help her. He owed her so much. She was cold, yes, but she was also smart and merciful and, with one recent notable exception, nonviolent. He knew he was lucky. He could’ve been sent anywhere when the army yanked him out of medical school and threw him into a uniform, but it was in her squad that he ended up.

  He’d hated being forcefully conscripted: hated the idea of hurting people, of the hardship and monotony of soldiering. He had slow reflexes, and got no thrill from the adrenaline rush of danger. He’d assumed that he’d die early, had tried to prepare himself mentally for it. And without Harker’s planning and presence, he would have, many times over.

  Again he remembered her on the mountain—standing tall, until a mythical bird tore her down. Others thought her aloof, but he knew that she cared for them: that they all still lived was proof of this. Now that she was maimed, it was his job to care for her, and he didn’t know if he could.

  He thought of how cool and quiet she’d been as he swabbed at her wound, even as she winced in pain. Sleep took hours to reclaim him.

  39

  HE ROSE WHEN the sun did. Out in the lowland air he found Lieutenant Harker sitting not by the river, but by the fire. She was hunched towards it, her arms crossed over her knees. In one hand she held the pill bottles he’d given her the night before. They were full, and their caps looked unopened. He sat down, and was about to remind her to take them, how often and how many, when she spoke in a low and ragged voice.

  Do you think she survived?

  Who?

  The woman. On the mountain.

  Oh. I don’t know.

  You’re a medic.

  A memory flashed in his mind: his rifle butt cannoning into the woman’s chin, her head falling to slap at the mountain’s stone. Another scene quickly replaced it: Harker shooting the woman as she knelt in the clearing.

  It’s hard to say. I didn’t get a good look at the wound.

  The lieutenant turned her eye on him, fixing him in place until he swallowed and spoke again.

  You shot her in the throat. She’s dead, lieutenant.

  Harker stood and lurched off, her steps heavy and graceless. Daniel felt a sudden need to call after her, but found that he couldn’t say anything, not even to ask her about the pills. He sat there, watching the fire until the embers blinked black and the other soldiers woke up.

  40

  DURING THE NIGHT one of the soldiers had managed to speak with high command. Details of the mission had been passed on—the capture of the heron, the lack of radio signal, the incapacitation of the lieutenant—and, after a short time, their commanding officers had come back with orders. Eight of the squad had been ordered to the nearest city, where they would join a larger force that had been sent to quell unrest in the region. A group of guerrilla fighters had been shooting truck drivers and throwing pipe bombs into post offices.

  The other four soldiers were exempt. High command recognised the value of the bird, and wanted it taken straight to its intended destination: a formerly abandoned animal sanctuary, newly restored under the military regime, in the far eastern reaches of the country. Due to her injury, Lieutenant Harker would stay away from combat and remain with the heron as its escort. With her would go Daniel, in case her condition worsened, and one of the squad’s scouts, to help guide the way. The final member of the group was a tall, wide-chested private, chosen by high command without comment. Daniel remembered that this private had been the one to kill the buck and spread its entrails across the mountain woman’s stream. He had done so with more gusto than was necessary—had enjoyed the work, had done it well.

  As soon as these orders had been passed on, the soldiers broke camp. They packed their tents, kicked out the fire, checked and loaded their weapons. All but the selected four lost their confusion of the previous day and fell into habits formed by their training. Sluggish steps became swift strides; indecision became assurance. In fifteen minutes they were finished. Their trucks spat to life. They glanced at their lieutenant and the men who were to stay with her. A few looked like they might say something, but in the end none did. They let their tyres bite dirt and drove off, leaving the remaining quartet with a single truck, a stack of supplies, some containers of fuel, and a black-wrapped, leaking cage.

  Dust rose from the road and came to settle in a film on the river’s face. Lieutenant Harker had her eye closed and was pushing deep breaths through flared nostrils. The scout, a bony youth who rarely spoke, had opened his pack and was rummaging through it. The tall private kept his eyes on the receding trucks, watching until they diminished into nothing.

  Daniel looked towards the river, at the thick reeds in its shallows, at the dust on the surface. He was waiting for orders until he remembered that, technically, he was a sergeant. The rank hadn’t been gained through action or deeds—they’d given it to him only because of his medical skills. It dawned on him that, due to Harker’s incapacitation and his rank, he had become the de facto leader of their group.

  A stran
ge feeling came over him—as if he was witnessing this point in his life from a distance. He was a farm boy, a rural bookworm who’d dreamed of becoming a doctor, maybe a surgeon. The only authority he’d ever imagined wielding had been over nurses handing him scalpels. Yet he was about to order killers down a highway.

  He wanted to laugh, or scream: he wasn’t sure which. But he turned to the other three and tried to think of something sensible to say.

  Thoughts knotted his mind, and a weight sagged his tongue. He had never been good at coming up with ideas or speaking in public. Just as words were beginning to straighten in his throat the scout emerged from his pack, holding a many-folded sheet of paper.

  Got it, he said. Look.

  He unfolded the paper, revealing a splash of colours intersected by a grid of black lines.

  We’re here.

  He pointed at a blue line snaking through a splodge of deep green.

  And we need to get there.

  His finger slid to the other side of the map, over more green and blue and yellow and into a patch of dense whiteness.

  That’s where the sanctuary is.

  Daniel nodded.

  Okay. We had better get going.

  His voice sounded small in his ears. He turned to Harker.

  Lieutenant?

  She moved her chin up and down without opening her eye.

  Okay, he repeated. Okay.

  It occurred to him that he was always saying okay. He looked at the map, at the truck, at the river, back at the map.

  You drive, he said to the private, who nodded, but did not move.

  None of them did until the scout, finally realising that his role in all of this was expanding, raised an arm towards the road.

  It’s this way.

  They packed their gear into the truck. It was Daniel who hefted the heron’s cage, holding it at arm’s length, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. The bird might have been sleeping, if sleeping was something it did. As he swung it into the truck, he noticed how the private flinched as the cage came near him. Daniel looked at him, surprised—the private was the sort of man who prided himself on not flinching. He hadn’t blinked as he eviscerated the peaceful buck in the mountain meadow. But now his eyes were wide, his skin pale, his whole body tense. He was staring at the cage, his mouth slightly open. From under the cloth there came a faint gurgle, the sound of a stream breaking on a stone. The private flinched again. Daniel would have laughed—he did not like the private much—if he hadn’t also flinched at the sound and the way the cage shook in his grip. He carefully placed it in the back seat of the truck and got in beside it.

  Not long after they began driving the bird became active, perhaps woken by the bumps and vibrations caused by the corrugations in the road. The first sign of its displeasure was the temperature in the truck, which at first crept, then plunged downwards. They began to shiver, even Lieutenant Harker, and fog began misting from their mouths. Ice clawed at windows, mirrors, the faces of their watches. They turned up the heat, blasting stale warmth from the vents, but the bird responded by abandoning its ice wave and instead puffing clouds of steam from beneath the cage’s curtain. Their shivering ceased, replaced by noisy panting. Their skin swapped goosebumps for streams of sweat.

  Daniel passed Harker a bottle of water, which she did not drink. The scout wiped his face with a small towel he’d fished from his pack. The private refused to take his eyes off the road, even as his hands shook and his breathing shallowed. They turned off the heat and cranked down the windows. A breeze whipped into the truck, bringing the temperature back to normal, and within moments the bird reverted from leaking steam to breathing frost.

  This cycle of heat and ice continued into the afternoon, through four hours of driving, and all of it happened with the black oilcloth still fastened over the cage. Daniel knew he should say or do something, but he had no idea what. The day wore on, hot and cold and bitter. The constant alternation between shivering and sweating distracted him, and the only way he could remain calm was by staring out at the country around him.

  For the first few hours they had snaked through the foothills of the mountain ranges. The river they’d camped by was in sight at most times. Whoever built the road had designed it so its contours matched the course of the water. After a while the forest thinned, and the trees gave way to pastures of long grass. Weak fences, sagged with loose wire, cut these fields into what could have been farms, but there was no livestock, no crops, no machinery, no farmers. The grass had claimed the land, pushing stalks high and wide, obscuring all signs of worked soil. Soon after entering these wild fields the road doglegged, and over this bend Daniel saw the river’s death.

  Below a thistled hill it met a sudden scatter of rocks, and on their smooth faces it crashed, foamed and split into five tributaries. Two were substantial, almost new rivers in themselves, but the other three weren’t much more than brooks, almost trickles. All ran in different directions. The road followed one of the smallest, a stream which became a creek, which seeped into one of the lowest, greenest paddocks and must have then dived underground, through gaps in limestone or shale, for it did not come back into view.

  Daniel told the private to pull over for lunch. As the truck stopped beside the road he took a long, moist-hot breath—the bird was in a steam phase—and lurched out of his seat. In the welcome freshness of the grassy air he walked to the nearest fence and rested his hands on a strand of stiff bent wire. The unkempt fields stretched to the horizon in every direction except for the way they’d come from, where the forests and mountains were now distant outlines against the sky. The wind was soft and slow. Clouds were thick above him, grey cotton shading greyer.

  It reminded him of his home, of the little farm he’d grown up on, near the other side of the country. That farm had always been brimming with activity. He remembered wondering as a child if his parents ever slept. More idle memories rolled through him, days of harvest and shearing, dogs barking, dinners roasting in a hot kitchen. Sometimes, during the coup, he had caught himself looking forward to returning to the farm, helping his father fix the fences, doing all the chores he’d hated as a child.

  He gazed out at the abandoned fields, fiddling with these memories, until he remembered the mountain, and despite the pleasant sensation of the wind on his skin he felt wildly angry, and he wanted to twist the fence wire in his hands, to rip it apart.

  Soon he became aware that Lieutenant Harker was standing beside him. He hadn’t heard her approach—she was just there. In slowness, her grace remained. Daniel straightened up and offered her some of his water, which she did not take. He tried to force a light tone into his voice.

  That bird’s something else.

  What was her name?

  Sorry?

  Her name. The woman on the mountain. The one I shot.

  I don’t know. I’m sorry.

  Someone must have known.

  It’s possible.

  Lieutenant Harker shook her head.

  I never asked. It didn’t seem important.

  Daniel didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure if he should say anything at all. Minutes passed, until he broke the silence.

  Have you taken those pills? You really need to, every couple of hours, like I said yesterday when—

  Harker cut him off.

  Do you think we’re being followed?

  She had turned back to face the direction they’d come from.

  What?

  He looked at the road and saw no sign of vehicles. Nothing but gravel and the land all around it.

  By who?

  He waited for her answer, but she had apparently become bored of the topic. She walked back to the truck. The scout and the private joined her. The private turned the engine on. Daniel stared back at the road, still seeing nothing. He drifted back to the truck and got in. The private pulled back onto the road. Daniel waited for the bird to engulf them with mist or steam, but none came. In the front, the scout kept studying his
map.

  With no river to follow the road blanded out into a long, turnless ribbon. The lack of water changed the landscape; as the hours stacked up, the pastures lost their greenness, fading into beige and hazel. They flattened, losing the humps and rocks of the foothills, and their fences straightened and strengthened, gridding the land into stiff fields. There was still no sign of people. The fields poured on, yellow and dry, and their blondness began to feel eternal. No mountains rose in the distance now, no hills, just a weak tide of golden crests undulating towards the fuzz of the horizon.

  Nobody spoke. The bird stayed dormant, and Daniel was able to relax into the drive. He avoided looking in the mirror, at the cage or private or lieutenant, and concentrated solely on the world through the windscreen. The road was a black-grey thread cutting through the yellow fields. Tiredness scratched his eyes. The truck and the hours rolled on.

  The scout fell asleep, his many-folded map open on his chest. At some point the sun lowered to the height of the window, its streaks of light lengthening as it died into the horizon. This light hit Daniel’s eyes, shook him alert, told him they needed to find somewhere to camp. He began scanning the fields for signs of a stream, little dips or valleys or concentrated greenery.

  Soon he saw something better. It came out of the horizon as a wavering dark block, a slate smudge rising from the blond fields. When they came closer he could see what it was, and that it was built with huge, roughly cut grey stones. Thick mortar pasted them together beneath a shingled roof. Dirty windows, gleaming at regular intervals along the walls, revealed nothing about the interior.

  He raised a hand towards the house.

  Pull in there.

  The private steered the truck onto the gravel driveway that led towards it, and the shifting of their course, or the new angle of the strafing sun, awoke the scout. He blinked, stretched, rubbed his face. Lieutenant Harker remained silent.