The Rain Heron Page 3

  Ren didn’t move.

  Fine.

  Will you be okay?

  He tried to look again at her arm.

  I have nothing on me, but I’ll try to get some more bandages to you. Antibiotics, if I can find some.

  Ren was going to ask him how he’d deliver these things, how he’d find her, but her bones and joints were aching, and her wound had taken on a fierce throb, so she just said: I’ll be fine. See you when they’re gone.

  Then she turned and walked away, ignoring the words Barlow shout-whispered at her back, words she couldn’t make out.

  It wasn’t until she was halfway back to the cave that she realised she was being followed. On a better day, with sharper wits and more energy, she would have picked up on it straight away. As it was, it took the sound of a rock slipping into a stream to alert her. The splash was followed by a rustle: someone hiding behind a bush or tree. Ren didn’t turn around. She stretched her back, as if she was tired—and she was, she was exhausted, but not in the way she was feigning—and began moving in a zigzag pattern, tacking north here, east there, creating an unpredictable pattern through the trees. She picked up her pace until she reached a boulder field, which she hobble-sprinted into, throwing herself behind the largest stone in sight.

  She waited. Her arm was approaching agony, and she was sure that at any moment she would vomit. But she didn’t, not even when she heard the sound of boots walking towards her. They stopped on the other side of the boulder. Two voices spoke in hushed sentences she couldn’t make out before the boots crunched and turned. The sound of receding footsteps was all Ren could hear; still there were no birds, no ravens, no whoosh of wind on branch. She waited half an hour before inching out from behind the rock and slinking back into the trees.

  The mountain was vast and the forests were thick, but now they knew she was there, they would eventually find her. This should have terrified her, but all she could think of was that she’d forgotten to show Barlow the trout; that she’d hauled four fish up and down the mountain for nothing; that it was the first time they’d arranged to meet, and not traded a thing.

  10

  WHENEVER SHE MOVED the wound spat pain through her: bright, harsh jolts that emptied her lungs and jellied her knees. She could no longer travel far. Hunting, foraging, cleaning, gathering—all were now vastly more difficult, if she could do them at all. Creating fire was impossible.

  If the soldiers were looking for her, she didn’t notice. For four days she couldn’t venture past her clearing. Unable to cook, she grazed through her stores of dried meat and nuts. She slept a lot, or tried to. She unwound the bandage daily and washed it in the stream, before dabbing more disinfectant around the wound. She couldn’t tell if it was getting better. Blood still oozed from the gape in her flesh, and the muscle didn’t seem to be knitting itself back together. At least it wasn’t infected, she told herself. At least she wouldn’t have to cut the whole thing off.

  Most of her time was spent sitting outside the cave, watching the wind play with the tops of the pines, waiting for cones to fall to the ground. Counting the crashing cones, watching for changes in the wind, listening for intrusions in the soundscape: these were the only things she had to occupy her. Locked in this quiet, almost meditative state, she succumbed to memory.

  First came images: a long beach, a fraying palm, a tide frothed with foam, slow-changing traffic lights beside a string of faded shopfronts. Suddenly she could feel the coastal city she was from: the salt twisting through her hair, the granular itch of sand on her skin, the lancing heat of asphalt under a bare foot, the squint of sunlight on salt water, the tight sting of burnt skin.

  And there was more, more than mere glimpses and physical sensations; scenes played through her mind, fast and loud. Shoving a lawnmower over a tussock of high blond grass, feeling the whirring blade catch on a rock, hearing its roar peal out into the suburb. Ordering a second bottle of wine—or was it a third?—in a restaurant while familiar faces and voices swam around the table, laughter bouncing as duck fat slicked the inside of her cheek. Sleeping on a thick bed, not alone, waking up with heat and flesh and hair pressed against her back. Sitting in her car outside a school, the radio shouting ads and music as she waited, watching the children swirl through the low iron gates towards her.

  And these were just the start, just the surface, the smallest slivers of her old life reaching up to scratch at her while she sat, her back resting against a hard cliff, her arm throbbing hot as the wind rushed through the pines and her breath grew shorter, sharper, faster.

  11

  SOMEONE FOUND HER on the afternoon of the third day after the accident. She was sitting in her usual spot beside the cave when she heard them approaching. Their footsteps were soft, not cracking any sticks, not disturbing any undergrowth. She looked in the direction of the sound and saw only trees. The footsteps stopped. She lurched up, ran inside the cave and came back out clutching her knife. Her tracker was waiting for her, standing in the centre of the clearing.

  It was Barlow’s son. A slender boy of ten or so, with brown hair and bony extremities. She had never been this close to him, had never realised how much he looked like Barlow. The knobbly joints, the narrowness in the cheeks, the chin. A wary kindness leaking out of him, a tinge of innocence or good intentions. She felt a sudden and powerful desire to be near his father. She lowered the knife.

  She couldn’t remember his name, if Barlow had ever told her what it was.

  He was holding a palm out towards her. In his other hand he held a small calico bag. His eyes were wide but his face was still, his posture hunched, as if she were a spooked deer he was trying to placate.

  She spoke first.

  Who followed you?

  Nobody.

  How do you know?

  He motioned at the mountain, at the trees.

  I grew up here. I can tell. They didn’t even see me leave the village.

  How did you find me?

  Dad said you’d be up here somewhere.

  Why didn’t he come? Why did he send you?

  The boy shrugged.

  I’m smaller. There was more chance I wouldn’t be noticed.

  And you’re sure you weren’t?

  He nodded. He looked around the clearing, at the cave, at her garden.

  I’ve been looking for two days. I followed the streams until I found a trail.

  There is no trail.

  He looked at the ground.

  Sorry. It just seemed like a path.

  A moment passed until Ren spoke again.

  You should leave.

  I will. I’m sorry. Dad just wanted me to bring you this.

  He took a few steps towards her and dipped his free hand into the calico bag, fishing something out. It was a wad of white gauzy material.

  Dad said you’d need these.

  Then he pulled a small glass bottle from the bag.

  I’m not sure what these are, but he said they’d help.

  Ren held out her hand, and the boy placed the bottle into her palm. She held it up to her eye to read the label. She didn’t recognise the brand, or most of the words, but she could tell that they were antibiotics. She held the bandages and the pills back out to the boy.

  I don’t have anything to trade.

  The boy backed away, the bag in front of him like a shield.

  You don’t need to give me anything. Dad said you’d make up for it. A few deerskins, he told me to tell you. When you get them.

  Ren looked at the things in her hand. At the boy. Back at the bandages and pills.

  Thank you. Thank your father for me.

  You’re welcome. I’ll tell him.

  He glanced again around the clearing.

  I better be going. I’m only supposed to have been gone for a day.

  Yes.

  She thought she should thank him again, but she’d already done it once. She’d forgotten how to reiterate things, how to press with emotion.

  The boy nodded b
efore turning and setting off on the path Ren always took when she left the clearing, the path she had been sure didn’t exist.

  She went to the stream, where she unwound her current bandage, washed her wound, applied disinfectant cream and tied on one of the new ones. The fabric was tight and fresh against her arm, and smelt of something old and familiar to her: clean, starchy sheets. She shook the memory away. The pain was still there, still throbbing hot, so after hesitating she opened the bottle of antibiotics and pushed two of them into her mouth, along with a handful of stream water. The pills felt huge and unwieldy in her throat, but she got them down.

  This swallowing suddenly and unexpectedly filled her with a sense of success. She thought: I can swallow pills; I’m not so weak; what else can I do? She walked to her fire pit and grabbed a thin stick before sitting down next to a branch riddled with blackened holes. She positioned the stick so its point was poking into the flattest part of the branch and began twisting it between her palms. Pain lanced out from her wound, but she felt strong, angry. She twisted harder, running her hands down the stick and bringing them back to the top, grimacing with effort and agony as her wound screamed and her arms ached and the stick swivelled. She thought she would run out of energy, or that she’d pass out, but then a thin curl of smoke plumed out of the branch. She increased her speed, a final furious effort, before twists of smoking wood shavings began screwing up beside the point of the stick. She threw it aside and scraped these smoking twists into a clump of dried leaves and bark fibre, which she cupped in her hands and began blowing at with long, slow breaths. The smoke increased, billowing up into her face, stinging her eyes and dragging coughs from her throat before orange flames leapt out of the tinder, nearly burning her hands.

  She tipped the flames into the pit and added more leaves, then twigs; then, as the fire danced higher, thicker sticks. When it was crackling evenly she filled her cooking pot at the stream and set it on the coals to boil, adding dried mountain herbs, some stunted yams and two potatoes she pulled from her garden.

  An hour later she was eating hot food and drinking thin, warm broth for the first time in days. The starchy food and sloshing water churned with the antibiotics in her stomach, making her dizzy. Above her the sky was dark and clear, a navy sheet shot through with stars, and with fuzzy clarity she remembered that she loved the mountain. The scrubbed, endless sky; the sweet-clearing scent; the tossing wind and the bending trees and the high peaks and the running, freezing glassiness of the streams. The world felt new to her again, fresh and wild and kind, and she was filled with gladness that she’d come here, that she was living like this and that she would die like this, surrounded by nothing but trees and moss, with fresh air blowing across her skin.

  It would be so nice to sleep out here beneath the stars, she thought, so quiet and easy. But eventually she hauled herself back into the cave, as the coals were glowing low, winking orange into the trees.

  12

  THE NEXT MORNING she woke up feeling better than she had in days. Her arm still hurt if she moved it, but the throbbing had stopped. Her lungs felt strong; her body was rested; even her mind was clear. She felt a renewed sense of purpose, of capability. Then she smelled smoke.

  She rushed to the front of the cave, filled with flashing thoughts of fire, of coals, of the stream and how much water she could carry. But when she burst into the clearing she saw that she wouldn’t need to dash about, that there was no emergency. There was a fire, but someone was tending it. Someone in front of the pit, blowing on the embers, adding twigs and tinder. Someone with a small frame, wearing a uniform of brown and green, an auburn ponytail held high above her skull.

  The soldier was crouching low, with her back to the cave. Ren hesitated; she didn’t know if she should run to grab her knife or just run, as far and fast as she could. As these thoughts cycled through her, the soldier called out.

  Good morning.

  Her voice was soft, deep, deeper than Ren had expected. She stood up—slow, elegant, as if standing was part of her morning stretching routine—and turned. Ren saw the same smooth face she’d noticed when she first saw the soldiers: the calm expression, the lineless skin. Again the thought came, unbidden: she’s young enough to be my daughter.

  Sorry for startling you.

  Ren stood still, wary. The soldier waited. Eventually Ren found her voice.

  What do you want?

  A pistol was hanging at the soldier’s hip. The sight of it—the snug holster, the jet-black metal—made her conscious of the veins in her neck, the blood pulsing at her temple.

  The soldier smiled.

  Some help.

  I can’t help you.

  Why don’t you come over here?

  She motioned at the logs by the fire.

  I won’t hurt you.

  I’m fine here.

  The soldier turned back to the fire and sat down on a log beside it. She grabbed a stick and began poking at the coals. Ren was going to say something else, to tell her to leave, to shout it, but the soldier was clearly not planning on leaving. Ren went back into the cave and picked up her knife. For a moment she stood there, clutching the rubber grip, breathing heavily, trying to slow her pulse. Then she walked back out into the clearing, making sure her spine was straight and her strides were sure, and sat on a log opposite the soldier.

  She glanced up as Ren sat down, noticing the knife without reacting. A moment passed before she spoke.

  Five years? Six?

  What?

  How long you’ve been up here, said the soldier.

  She gestured at the clearing, at Ren’s garden.

  I’d say you’ve been here half a decade. I suppose it makes sense. The coup happened about five years ago. You aren’t the only one who fled it.

  Ren didn’t answer.

  The soldier gazed up at the trees, at the rich blue field above them, and drew a long, deep breath through her nostrils. I can see why you came here. Why wouldn’t you run somewhere this beautiful?

  I’m not running.

  No, I guess not.

  She exhaled, turned her face away from the canopy. Her mouth shifted slightly, as she looked at Ren, refocusing.

  Boys, she said. Always so confident.

  Ren didn’t respond.

  So noisy, continued the soldier. Even when they think they’re being quiet.

  Something was thrashing inside Ren’s throat. She saw Barlow’s son’s face in her clearing, the wary kindness, and she saw Barlow’s face, warm and thin and bright.

  Don’t hurt him.

  The soldier frowned.

  Why would we hurt him? He’s a child.

  She kept poking the fire, needling her stick into a coal until sparks spat out.

  Ren waited, watching the fire grow, until she felt calm enough to speak again.

  Who are you?

  The soldier placed the stick on the ground. She ran a hand over her hair, up into the ponytail.

  My name is Lieutenant Harker. And as I said, I’m here to ask for your help.

  I live here alone. I don’t bother anyone; I don’t go anywhere. There’s nothing I can help you with.

  Harker leaned back onto her hands, another movement that seemed more like a practised stretch, a ritualistic movement. You’re wrong. You’re probably the only person who can.

  Ren tried to keep her face as placid as Harker’s, but she couldn’t. Her eyes narrowed, her shoulders bunched.

  Harker kept talking.

  We’re after something that lives here. And seeing as you’re up here alone, and you don’t go anywhere, you’re the perfect person to help us find it.

  What are you talking about?

  Harker stood up and leaned down to touch her boots, showing the back of her head to Ren, her hair dropping low.

  We know. We know it’s up here.

  Nothing’s up here.

  Harker straightened up. She stared hard and straight at Ren.

  The bird. The one that comes from the clouds. The
rain heron.

  A long pause followed. Ren wanted to laugh, but nothing came out. Finally, she said: That’s just a story.

  I know.

  A fairy tale, Ren continued, willing her voice to take on an edge of incredulity, of sarcasm, thinking she could gain power by doing this, by showing humour at this absurd idea. I didn’t think soldiers believed in fairy tales.

  What we believe is irrelevant. It’s not our job to believe. It’s our job to follow orders.

  Harker pulled an arm across her chest.

  And our orders are to come to this mountain, to capture the bird, and to return it to our superiors.

  Flames were jumping to the height of Harker’s knees. The clearing fell silent, save for the crack and spit of the fire.

  I can’t help crazy people.

  Are you sure?

  Ren wanted to call her crazy again, to say that nobody had seen a rain heron in centuries, if they’d ever seen one at all, that it was just a story told in schools. But she stayed quiet.

  Harker kept looking at her, as if expecting Ren to continue. After a few moments she blew out a long sound of frustration, or maybe sadness. A tiny fold appeared in her forehead.

  A shame.

  She reached into a pocket of her trousers and retrieved a small bottle. Ren blinked. It was her antibiotic pills, the ones Barlow’s son had given her.

  A shame, Harker repeated. She opened the bottle and poured the antibiotics into the fire, then turned and walked out of the clearing, merging into the green.

  Ren rushed forward. Flames danced around the little oblong pills, cocooning them in heat and harsh light before swooping over their smooth bodies, turning them ashen. She reached into the pit but instantly jerked her hand back, blisters already forming on a burn, as the chemicals inside the pills began to fizz and bubble up and out of each pale shape—black-rimmed bubbles that swelled and burst and reformed until all that was left of the medicine was a small acrid plume of sooty smoke, rising to mingle with the air of the forest.