The Rain Heron Read online

  When he finished talking, the hole was rough and uneven but as deep as his neck, and I told him it would do. He climbed out, and together we slung Alec’s cold and hardened body into the earth. I took the shovel from the boy and began heaving dirt onto Alec’s chest. The boy kicked more of it down. At some point I began crying again, and for a while I forgot that I wanted to help the boy, and how I had decided that I wanted to keep living. I cursed the northerner and his two-bullet limit. The hole filled, and Alec, all of Alec, disappeared.

  65

  I DON’T KNOW when the boy decided to help me. It could have been when I told him the bird was still with me, or when he learned of our plan, or as I broke apart at the burial. I suspect it was when he saw the bird with his own eyes.

  Not long after we buried Alec, he asked how I was planning to get the bird back in the cage. I told him I wasn’t sure. I’d thought of heating the aviary, putting fans through the door, forcing the creature into a cloud I could collect in a bottle. Half-thoughts of vacuums had occurred to me too, as had chemical solutions that I could use to corner and subdue it.

  Let me try, the boy said, seeing my hesitation. I think it trusts me.

  The bravado of youth. I had no reserves to argue.

  I followed as he took the cage into the aviary, closing the door of the building behind me, and waited, hanging back. The boy sat on the floor in front of the door to the enclosure. Soon the bird flashed into being, falling as thick rain into itself, right in front of him, on the other side of the glass. Bubbles rose from its back. Its beak opened, and I heard the sound of a breaking wave. The boy waited. I waited. The bird preened, flapped, and then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it came apart in a spray of hanging mist.

  The boy stared. The mist hovered. After a minute he turned to me. I saw his face fold, his confidence fail, and I was reminded of how young he was. He’d thought this would work—that looking into a creature’s soul could somehow win its trust. I tried to think of something comforting to say, before an idea occurred to me.

  I’d been carrying it for so long, and had never found a proper use for it. For years I’d thought it would one day come in handy, either as a weapon, a distraction or a bartering tool. But I’d never needed it. I’d only used it once, and that was recently. It hadn’t even been necessary—I’d just wanted to cheer Daniel and the men up.

  I told the boy to wait, then went to my room to retrieve it. When I returned I was holding it before me in a tight grip. The boy looked suspicious. I waved it at him, trying to smile, but he didn’t understand. I supposed there was no reason he would—and that I may as well just try it.

  I took a deep breath, looked into the mist, and opened the door to the enclosure. The mist picked up on the change in the air and began wafting towards the aperture, and as it did I unscrewed the lid of the jar I was holding. The ink sloshed, glossy-dark in the glass. For a moment, I remembered taking it from my aunt’s house. I remembered opening my skin to draw it from the ocean. I felt a throb in the old scars on my forearm, and then I hurled the glinting liquid into the centre of the approaching cloud.

  The ink met the mist in a wild, brilliant confluence. The liquids merged in the air, and began to spit and roil as they raced through a swirl of colours, forming the vague shape of a cloud. Purple-green dominated its hazy body. Orange, vaporous tendrils darted from its edges. Its inner depths held the darkest wink of black, along with flashes of sharp light that could have been miniature forks of lightning. A tiny clap of thunder followed each flash, even as multicoloured rain began to spatter the aviary floor.

  I heard the boy gasp, but I didn’t take my eyes off the shifting cloud. I waited for it to settle, for it to assume a manageable form, although I didn’t know if something like that would actually happen. I realised that I had no idea what would come next, and that this might have been a very bad plan.

  After a few minutes the floating storm of colour began to reveal something: the rain heron. It came slowly into view, in the centre of the riotous mist. At first it was just a wing, then a talon. Then a beak showed itself. Eventually the entire bird swam into its own shape, hanging in the flickering colour. Its body was limp, although its eyes were wide and rolling.

  I grabbed the cage, its door still closed, and pushed it into the mist, which offered no resistance. Through the cloud the bars went, then through the body of the bird. Its eyes continued to spin, and it didn’t notice as it returned to its prison. I wanted to say sorry, to apologise to the creature in a meaningful way. But I did not have the art of apology—I never really have. I just watched the bursts of colour rolling through the bird’s wet body, and remembered how squid would hang in the cold ocean, before I tossed the wax-marred cloth over the cage’s frame.

  The colour disappeared from the room, as quickly as it had sprung to life. I retreated from the enclosure, cage in hand. Everything felt muted, forlorn. Cider-gum leaves showed blue-green through the glass roof. The boy was looking at me as if I had told him a terrible secret, or had revealed a different, truer version of myself—as if I had torn off my skin and shown him my bones.

  66

  OUT IN THE air, in the peace and power of the cider-gum forest, I slid the cage onto the back seat of Alec’s utility. The boy’s trail bike fitted on the tray, and we threw our bags and whatever food we thought might last into the cabin beside the cage. I asked him if he knew how to drive. He hesitated, saying he technically knew how to operate a car, that it couldn’t be too different from a bike. I climbed into the driver’s seat and told him he’d have to let me know if I was drifting, or taking corners badly, as my eyesight wasn’t what it once was.

  Over three days we crossed the damp, shining highlands, our time brightened by the persistent beauty of the landscape. We didn’t speak much. Each night the boy slept in the utility, with the northerner’s empty pistol still looped into his belt. I had my tent. We woke to the call of birds we could not see, the flash of new-fallen snow.

  We passed no other vehicles—not in the highlands, not at any time on our trip. After crossing the plateau we descended to the golden prairie, where falcons still dived into the long, feathery grass. Beyond that we dipped into the valley of the lake. The forest was as green and thick as I remembered—tough oak, patched birch, dark-shining holly—and the lake still flat, huge and steely.

  Once we’d reached the floor of the valley I found it hard to concentrate on the road. I was so distracted by the lake’s reflections, and the dense greenery of the forest, and the cold romance of the hills beyond the water. I kept staring at the rough, tumbling stone fences that stitched the steep fields together and wondering how old they were, how many generations had come and gone since the stones were first stacked together.

  Watching the world and thinking about fences helped me forget about Alec, even if only for a few moments. Again and again he returned to me. I saw him walking in the gums, through corridors of lichened rock. I felt him knock against my shoulder. I closed my eye, and saw him dead. When I did that, the utility swerved. Beside me, the boy slept.

  In the late afternoon we passed the small collection of houses by the water—the ones the men and I had seen on our way to the sanctuary. Smoke still rose from the chimneys, but this time I decided to stop. The light was fading and we needed to camp somewhere. I no longer cared if someone saw us.

  I pitched my tent near the water, and once it was up I walked down the jetty. It was short, almost quaint, built with wide gaps between its handsome wooden slats. The boy came with me, probably wondering what we were doing. I sat down, hung my legs over the edge of the timber.

  The sun had fallen behind the hills. Only faint slants of light were left, climbing over the humped, muted-green summits. When the stars began to show, the boy turned to me.

  I’m sorry I shot your friend. I didn’t mean to.

  I breathed deep and slow before I answered.

  I know. You were trying to shoot me.

  He opened his mouth to defend himsel
f, but I waved him down.

  I’m not objecting. I wish he hadn’t moved. I wish you had shot me. But here we are.

  At that, he said nothing. The stars grew in number and brightness. The forest went dark on the edge of the shining lake.

  67

  WE GOT UP early the next morning and were on the road before the sun was fully risen. Through the holly-hedge tunnel we drove, before we climbed the far hill of the valley and emerged onto the long plain of abandoned farms. We passed the stone house where I’d hit Daniel. I stared down the gravel driveway, at the sombre grey building, and remembered how hard I’d struck him, and the look on his face after he’d recovered from the blow. After that I stopped paying much attention to the world outside the windows. The boy stayed quiet, and the bird made no fuss. The only way I could tell it still lived was the occasional huff of steam that fogged at the wax and seeped under the curtain of its cloth. That night we camped in a paddock full of cruel tall thistles.

  The next day was much the same. The only real change was that both the boy and I became restless. We knew how close we were to our destination, and we fidgeted in our seats, fiddling with mirrors, seatbelts and sun visors. Soon after we began driving, we passed a place where a river broke into several streams, and that afternoon we were climbing through foothills covered in pines.

  The trees thickened around us and my nerves began to rise. My original plan had been to return the bird to its grotto alone, or with Alec. But as it was, travelling with the boy, there seemed no way I’d do it without first going to the village. I wanted to talk this over, to explain my plan to the boy, but he brought it up before I could find the words.

  I’ll direct you to my dad’s house.

  He looked back at the cage.

  He’ll know what to do.

  I couldn’t fault his logic, and I couldn’t argue without revealing my cowardice. So I nodded. Not long after, we crested the final rise and entered the village. My nerves began to shake out as sweat, as trembling fingers, as shallow breaths. I remembered the things I’d ordered my men to do, the last time I’d been in this place. I remembered the boy’s father—how he had tried to calm me down after I’d lost my eye, and how I’d kicked out his legs and screamed at him. I remembered the way his face had fractured when I shot his companion. My vision blurred, and the car veered across the road.

  Here, said the boy. Stop here.

  I heard him late, and braked suddenly. The car lurched to a stop. We were outside a small house built with orange terracotta-like bricks. The street around it was empty. The boy jumped out and, before I could say anything, marched towards the door, which burst open as he was halfway across the road. A man I recognised rushed out, ran to the boy, and took him in a low, fierce embrace. The boy returned the hug, staying as silent as his father. I could see tears blotching the man’s face, and his shoulders and back were heaving.

  I didn’t want to get out of the car, but I knew I had to. I gave them a few moments together before opening my door. By then they’d let each other go and were speaking. I’d hoped the boy had mentioned me, had prepared his father for the shock, but from the way the man’s face still glowed with joy and relief I could see that my presence was yet to be raised. There was nothing to be done. I stepped onto the road, closed the door, and waited to be noticed.

  When the boy’s father saw me his face blanched, and he grabbed at his son and pulled him behind his own body. It reminded me of Alec, stepping into the path of a bullet meant for me, and the arrival of that memory, along with the nerves and shame I was already feeling, nearly pitched me to my knees. But I stayed upright. I held out my hands, showing empty palms. The man shuffled back. His face had lost its love, its joy, and was drawn up tight and cold with fear. The boy was saying that it was okay, that I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. His father wasn’t listening.

  I didn’t think talking would help. There was nothing I could say to this man that would make him change his mind about me. There was no way I could make things right, other than by what I had come there to do. I reached into the truck and grabbed the cage. I placed it on the road and stepped back.

  The boy had wriggled free. Finally the man looked down at him. He saw the gun in his son’s waistband, and flinched. He looked back at me, at the empty holster at my hip. Wariness began to swim across his face, taking over from the terror.

  I took a step forward. I pointed at the cage, and was about to tell him everything when a sound intruded.

  A click, then a creak. The door that the boy’s father had come through was reopening. I waited for another son, or a daughter, or his wife to come out with a shotgun, ready to blast me to pieces. If that had happened, I don’t think I would have run.

  The door opened. It was a woman, and she was unarmed. She was strikingly thin, and she wore a thick woollen cap on her head, a scarf twisted around her neck and shoulders. She must have been the boy’s mother, but she did not run to him the way his father had, which I thought strange. She came through the doorway in a slow shuffle, and stopped to lean against the outside of the house, as if that short trip had weakened her.

  I glanced back at the father, hoping he was beginning to calm. But he was looking at the woman at the door, and seemed worried. The boy was looking at her, too, with the same apprehensiveness. Puzzled, I returned my gaze to the woman. With a stiff twist of her neck she looked at me, and I could tell that the movement cost her something more than physical discomfort. And then, finally, I saw her.

  It was the eyes; I found her in her eyes. They settled on me, and I saw them as they were when her head had been lying on my lap, after I had wrecked her world and pushed her to breaking. I did not need her to do what she did next to recognise her—which I’m sure she knew, but she did it anyway. With slow hands she unwound the scarf, revealing the purpled birth of a huge, X-shaped scar, mottled and warped into the base of her throat. Blue threads poked out all over the shape of it, the ends of amateur stitches, running haywire through her skin.

  I find it hard to describe how I felt then, or what I was thinking. Everything was still. I was hit by shock, and relief, and a deep, flesh-rattling dread. My mouth went dry. I gazed at the boy, demanding with my eye to know why he hadn’t told me she had survived. He shrugged, but not kindly or apologetically, communicating that it was a reprieve I hadn’t deserved. I looked back at the mountain woman, who was staring at me, her eyes hard as ever, the blue threads snaking through her flesh where my bullet should have killed her. I opened my mouth. I came very close to climbing back in the utility. But in the end I did the only thing that could distract us all from the torture of this reunion. I reached down, grabbed the cage and lifted it into the air.

  We all stood still. I wanted desperately to say something, to tell the woman I was sorry, to tell her what had happened to me. Seeing her alive, I suddenly wanted her to understand me, to know me. But even as I struggled for words, I saw that she was no longer looking in my direction. She was staring at the cage.

  Wet, soft light had begun to blink through the wax.

  68

  THE BOY SPOKE first. As the heron’s light played, he began telling his father and the woman I’d shot about what had happened on the plateau. He told them that I was there to return the bird, that I knew I’d made a mistake. He repeated that I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I stayed silent and kept holding the cage.

  When he stopped speaking, his father looked at me, fear still on his face, but a question, also. I realised he was asking me if what his son said was true. I nodded, and tried to look trustworthy. The man let out a slow breath, then turned away from me. Without speaking to the boy he ushered him inside the house, deftly pulling the pistol from the boy’s belt at the same time. The mountain woman went with them. Still I stood there, unmoving, until she turned on the threshold, regarded me for another moment, then indicated the house with a stiff nod.

  It wasn’t easy to follow her. Again I came close to climbing into the utility and driving away. But somehow
I gathered the courage to go in that little house, where I found the three of them sitting at a small table. I put the cage by the door and lowered myself into a chair. The boy was still talking, telling his father about his trip across the plains, about all the things he’d seen. He didn’t mention Alec, or what had happened at the sanctuary.

  I didn’t speak and I avoided looking at the mountain woman as she stared straight at me. I still wanted her to know me, and I felt a great need to apologise, but every time I opened my mouth I realised how absurd that would be.

  Eventually she put me out of my misery by pulling a pen and pad from her pocket and scribbling. She ripped the paper from its spiral spine and held it out to me.

  My name is Ren.

  I read it, then looked up. The mountain woman kept staring at me, her face grim, and I realised this was important to her, that I know her name.

  Oh, I said.

  I began introducing myself, then remembered I’d done that before, weeks earlier, by her cave. I trailed off. When I looked at her again she motioned at the mess of rent flesh and twine in her neck, then pointed at her closed mouth. She scribbled another note.

  I never talked much anyway.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I looked at Ren’s scar and suddenly saw Alec, the blood rushing from his chest. Again I tried to speak, and managed only a high, fractured wheeze.

  But I could see she was smiling—that for her there was a glint of dark humour in the fact that we were meeting again, like this. Her smile cracked something open in me. I was shaking. I think I started to hyperventilate. She gave a wave of her hand, wrote another note, and passed it to me.

  Did you really come here to return it?

  I slowed my breathing and met her gaze.