Robyn Hogan

Blurb: Fox and Amy think they are in control of their Australian bush environment and play deadly games on city visitors. Jacques, older but ‘weird’, entices them to help him explore and map underground caves and they enter a beautiful, dangerously unknown environment.

When City Boy lies injured and Jacques becomes irrational, Amy and Fox must find the way out; escape from the maze of caverns where foul air wanders and the twinkling flowstone beckons.

And exciting, realistic, sometimes sinister adventure. Suitable for children 8 years and over.

FLOWSTONE: Chapter One
 

Fox and I hate visitors. And we especially hate visitors’ children. Our parents seem to have a steady stream of city friends who call. Sometimes they are invited, for lunch or, dread of dreads, to stay the night. Others just drop in, waving a bottle of French champagne and a package of stinking cheeses, claiming loudly, ‘We mustn’t let you rustics get rusty!’ or something equally stupid.
          If it is just adults Fox and I can disappear and, as long as we show up by sunset, nothing is said. But when they bring their perilous children then our weekend is wrecked. Some even have the hide to bring their poisonous dogs. We hate dogs, too, but for a different reason.
          Fox goes to ground when visitors arrive but, somehow, I always get caught. It often takes me a while but I can usually track him down.
          ‘Just one kid, Fox. Fat and soft. Shorts, long socks and a cream T-shirt with the Eiffel Tower or the Colliseum or one of those starchy buildings,’ I reported.
          Fox scowled, twisting wire tighter into the fence he had decided to mend.
          ‘And he has this bike, shiny and Christmassy, so we can ‘all go for a nice ride’. I mimicked his mother. I had to raise my eyebrows and put my head ont he side to do so.
          Slowly Fox stood up. ‘We’ll ride as far as the creek then we’ll walk. It’s a bit dangerous down there. He might get a scratched knee…’
          ‘…or a skinned nose!’
          ‘One thing’s for sure he’ll get wet – and a little bit dirty, too, perhaps?’
          We both laughed as we trotted back to the house.
          ‘Well, City Boy, what would you like for lunch? Peanut butter or jam?’
          Before he could answer his Mum chimed in. ‘Alex prefers salad sandwiches.’
          ‘They’d melt where we’re going,’ I told her.
          ‘Besides they’re a bit heavy to carry,’ Fox added.
          ‘What are you ding, Amy?’
          ‘Getting lunch Mum. We’re going to take our visitor for a picnic down the creek. A peanut butter picnic.’
          ‘What a lovely idea. Help yourselves to a few apple juice packs too.’
          ‘No way. Fresh, unpolluted, undiluted, country creek water, Nature’s very own, will be our drink today.
          ‘Oh, Amy, really!’ but she was a bit distracted and unprepared for visitors so she let us be.
          We slapped some marge and peanut butter on a few slices of bread, shoved them all in a plastic bag and went out to the bikes.
          City Boy whinged quite a bit through the ride. Mainly because we took a short cut along a wallaby trail rather than use the road. Thistles caught in his socks, pricking and scratching him. Fox and I wore tough jeans, so we weren’t harmed. Besides, we know to bring our feet in centre, off the pedals, in the rougher thickets.
          The creek was cool and fresh, as always. City Boy slid from his bike, dropped it and flopped onto a fallen log. His face was redder than a parrot’s breast, his hair wet and dripping. He looked done in.
          ‘I get asthma, you know,’ he gasped.
          Fox and I looked at each other. Was it possible to kill him this easily? The thought hung between us.
          ‘Is there gold in the creek?’ he asked.
          Quick as a platypus splash Fox answered. ‘Further down there is.’
          His eyes glistened. We knew he was hooked. We began hopping along the stones at the water’s edge, working our way down to the waterfall and deep pool.
          ‘Are there snakes?’ he asked once, fearfully. We walked too fast for him to say much.
          ‘No. Only water pythons,’ Fox told him.
          As we neared the danger zone we jostled the visitor into the lead. It made him feel important – and we knew that narrow chasm. It was possible to step to one side, duck quickly under the cascading sheet of water and be on the other side on a smooth, safe rockshelf by a broad pool.
          The visitor walked right into our trap. His feet touched the first damp mossy stones and, as he stumbled, the water wall unbalanced him and he slid, screaming, the metre or so into the pool.
          Fox and I ducked under the fall and onto the rockshelf in time to see him surface. He came up, screeching hysterically. We stopped laughing. He was in more than the usual sort of trouble. He was twisting and turning, splashing and grabbing in the water.
          ‘Python! There’s a python got me!’
          Then we, too, could see it. Long, stiff and luminous green, it lifted in the agitated water.
          Alex, in total panic now, was gulping in water and sinking, rising to the surface, screaming, gulping and sinking again.
          Fox and I stepped into the pool. The deep part, where Alex was drowning, was only as wide as the waterfall chasm. Deeper waters lay beyond but he was not near them. We reached out, grabbed him as he surfaced again, and pulled him to the shallows, then onto the dry rock. We stretched him out, face down. He coughed, heaved in a spasm, grazing his knees on the rock so blood oozed, and spewed.
          He lay there most of the afternoon, moaning, sometimes sleeping, uninterested in eating. He never once mentioned the gold. Shadows were spindly, the sun slanting low across the grass, when we arrived back at the bikes. We rode home along the road. The gravel is no cushy trip either by Alex did not complain.
          Goodbyes always take forever and the adults were in the first phases.
          ‘Where did you go to?’ our father asked us.
          ‘The waterfall.’
          ‘Is Mick Gray still running his siphon hose in that pool?’
          ‘It was so nice of you children to entertain Alex,’ his mother simpered before we could reply to Dad.
          ‘Good for Basil and Amy to have other company once in a while,’ he answered her. ‘They spend too much time alone.’
          Alex climbed into the back of his mother’s car, clumping into the corner furthest from us. We two stood well back, looking shy.
          ‘Maybe Alex could spend a few days with you these holidays.’
          No doubt about it, his mother was persistent. Our guess was Alex would not return.
          But we were wrong about that, as we were wrong about other events last summer.
 

FLOWSTONE: Chapter Two
 

The sky was barely light when Fox woke me. Beyond the flat, baked yellow grass of the paddocks a mist hung, in the hollow below the hills. But even as I looked out, sleepily, assessing the day, the dampness began to fade, and the beached grey sky brightened to a clear, lilac tinged blue.
          It was going to be another hot day. I twisted back to Fox who was standing by my desk twitching my red ball point in his hand.
          ‘What’s up?’
          ‘It’s going to be a real scorcher. We have to get going early.’
          Fox never actually discusses plans. He presents them ready made. Sometimes I don’t even question him. Like now. I swung my legs over the side and, stretching for my jeans crumpled on the floor, shook them into shape. As he left my room I dressed, used the toilet without flushing it, and met up with him outside. He was releasing the gate to the fowl coop and stepped quickly under the black wattle tree which shaded the henhouse. The hens moved out slowly, and I stood well back, not to disturb them make them raise an alarm. Even so, one of the crazy things launched herself into an air glide, flapping and squawking. At the same time a batch of black cockatoos screeched past overhead and the hen’s noise was drowned.
          I moved towards Fox, still under the tree. He was slapping sunburn cream on his face and handed me the container to do the same. Then he replaced it high on a limb, twisting a piece of tie-wire round to hold it.
          Such are the devices Fox uses to smooth the way for his disappearances. He never lingers, he never creates a noise, and I am learning, though I admit I still feel sneaky, dishonest.
          Next we picked up the bikes and were on our way, peddling through the rapidly heating, breathless morning.
          We were almost to the waterfall when Fox stopped, drawing aside to a fresh mound of soil, heaped up by a wombat on its nocturnal wanders. The hole beyond lay broad, wide enough for us to climb in, deep claw marks etched along the sides.
          ‘Do you reckon he’s asleep down there? Or still out pinching pasture?’
          We had not spoken a word since my room; I had no idea of Fox’s plans or why the urgency.
          ‘Looks like he might have turned in. Claw marks are pretty fresh.’ He picked up a handful of loose soil and ran it, hour glass fashion, into his other hand. ‘We were watched yesterday.’
          My mind raced, reconstructing the scenes, searching for the sign that had eluded me, but not Fox.
          ‘The high rock. The one with the crack down its length.’ Tilting his head so he faced me, he ran the soil through his hands again. ‘There were eyes peering out of that crack.’ He flung the dirt back onto the wombat’s heap.
          ‘Only eyes there would be frogs’ or a lizard’s.’ We had often climbed over that boulder. A narrow fissure along the top, filled with enough soil for short grasses to grow and wither, and a wider, open one down the face towards the deep pool. About as wide as a finger. Otherwise it was a solid grey boulder, larger than many, but not the largest.
          ‘Human eyes, Ame. One at a time. Shifting back and forth. Blue human eyes.’
          He stood there, nodding his head as if to settle the information and allow a rational explanation to surface. He seemed sapped of confidence and I tried to be gentle.
          ‘There’s no way into that rock. Or behind it. No place for a person to hide. Perhaps you saw a flower. One of those little, bright, trailing ones.’
          It seemed a reasonable suggestion. The other one crashing through my brain had more to do with spirits and gods and ‘little people’ but I dared not mention them to Fox. He says I read too much rubbish anyway; but I cling to the thought that the old myths might one day be shown to be the truth.
          ‘Let’s hope so,’ he sighed, worry in his tone. Then he grinned his slow smile. ‘Let’s go check it out.’
          We clambered on, came to the waterfall and, dodging under, sprang onto our broad rockshelf. The water level had fallen further since yesterday; the darker grey dampness rimming the pool demonstrated the loss. The fall, too, carried less volume – or so it seemed. We looked to the fissured rock but the morning was too early, the crevice a thick black shadow striping the rock wall. The sun was not yet high enough to light the split.
          Crouching down, I cupped water into my hands, splashed my face then, gathering a double palmful, flung water towards the rock. Some fell short, bouncing in the pool, its sound lost in the waterfall’s song; a little darkened the grey boulder and seemed to glare at me briefly before it dried in the warm air.
          ‘Knock, knock. Anyone home?’ I called and turned to Fox for his reaction.
          He was walking back towards the rockshelf carrying a battered, half burnt fence post, a length of rusting wire twisting from it. Dumping it at the edge of the water he peeled down to his swimmers, folding and stacking his clothes neatly behind him, and anchoring the pile with his boots.
          He pushed the small log into the deep pool and manoeuvred to sit astride it. It turned and dipped alarmingly, spurred by the uneven placement of his weight and the churning of the spilling water. He grinned as he straddled his steed, settling his position. Mick Gray’s green siphon hose, City Boy’s python, rose in the swirling water but fell as Fox, paddling strongly, floated to the further side of the deep pool, to the fissure.
          We know the water is too deep for standing there; by riding the log Fox would be able to look into the crack. Funny we had never thought of looking into it before. It seemed he would be able to steady the log long enough to grasp the flower I now felt sure he would find.
          He was rising upwards for a closer look when the piece of wire caught in the crevice, the post jerked and dipped, and Fox fell off. Head first. I began to laugh, then shivered. The log bobbed on the wire which was stuck firmly in the rock as if a hand held it.
          And Fox did not surface.
          I began to scream – without sound – my heart pounded, my knees shook, the bright morning darkened. ‘Do something! Do something!’ hammered somewhere behind my eyes.
          I reached for my sneakers, fumbling them off and, fully clothed, slid down to the water, my eyes never leaving the rock face and the log gently rubbing against it.
          ‘Wow! What a break! Get a load of this!’
          Fox’s voice, loud, excited, halted me mid stroke as I stretched out ready to push down into the pool depths. I looked up as the sun streamed onto the rock face, directly into the crevice. Shining through the crevice was an eye. Fox’s left eye which shifted, quickly replaced by his right eye. Then the left again.
          Stunned, I stared. ‘He must be dead’, I thought, surprised that his spirit was free so soon, before his spent body could even surface. Screams of terror welled inside me again.
          ‘Come on, Ame. It’s easy. Follow the crevice down. It opens out into a mouth. Just float through.’
          Caught between two worlds now I sat in the shallows, the splashes from the cascading waterfall forming coloured sparkles round me, dimming my sight.
          ‘It’s okay, Ame. You can do it.’
          I looked to the rock face, to the shifting bright eyes, to the water surface and the anchored, impatient fence post, its burnt side rotating in and out of the rocking water. Then the old wire snapped, the post dipped, swung round, floated past the boulder, down the pool length.
          ‘Fox!’ My voice was a broken scream as I realised he had to be dead, his body downstream by now, washed with the undercurrent. And, typical Fox, his spirit, his soul, was hanging around to tease me. I had no idea how long I had sat watching but the log, now at the far end of the pool, ceased its bobbing trip, jammed between two jutting rocks.
          ‘Amy!’ Fox’s cry drew my attention back to the fissure. ‘Stop daydreaming! Come on! This is crash!’ Even across the space of the pool his excitement was palpable. He came on too strong to be a ghost.
          ‘You wretch’, I muttered as the dreadful fear lifted, my limbs steadied. He wasn’t dead at all. Quite the contrary. I concentrated on his instructions, glided across the pool surface and, at the rock, plunged down, my hand sliding in the slime of the crack. I could feel the coldness of an unknown depth grasping at my feet. Then my hand was in space, rockless water. Tucking my head on my shoulder I drew my legs up, out, and kicked slightly. My arm shot into air, then my face and I scrambled onto the shelf, knee deep in water, to stand beside Fox.
          It was like being inside a bubble, shadow all round except for the slash of light and colour down one side. And the view out! Through that narrow slit the pool rippled and danced, the fall cascaded in rainbows and, on the basking grey desert of rockshelf, a curious magpie strutted. The net pile of clothes and my scattered sneakers were a world away.
          I half turned to Fox and said something. But my voice sounded hollow, sinking into the water swirling slowly round my legs. Vaguely, I felt something nibbling at my toes but it was the sudden realisation I was alone which truly panicked me.
          I screamed. Great piercing shrieks; white cockatoo shrieks. Echoes caught up with fresh screams then one huge sob gulped from em. I was drained.
          Into the silence dripping round me Fox spoke. ‘Got it out of your system, eh?’ His eyes met mine – through the fissure.
          ‘Where are you?’ I could barely whisper and already a soreness was settling into my throat.
          ‘Can’t you guess?’ He spoke in his bantering style and I knew the slow, wide smile would follow. But I could not see it. Instead, flopping hair and upside down eyes met mine. Always, it seemed to others, Fox could disappear, but I knew his was the knack of blending in with the environment. This act was different. Horror thoughts teased me again. Was he dead? Was I dead? Were we both dead?
          I crouched down in the knee high water and, feeling the rock wall, slid through the hole to surface in the pool. Fox, astride the rock now, grinned down at me, his white teeth gleaming through the dirt that covered his face. Indeed, his whole body was covered in soil.
          Weak, giddy and weak, I pushed myself round the boulder to the smaller rocks that edged the pool that side and dragged myself out. Too weak to speak, to think, to feel.
          Fox slid down and perched beside me. The fresh smell of the water contrasted with the sharp, sour odour that was Fox.
          ‘It’s the greatest find, Amy. Come on.’ He grabbed my hand, hauled me to my feet, water scattering from my clothes, and started dragging me across a dry section of the creek bed.
          We stopped near the bank, by a wild briar. One prickly branch, pale pink roses scattered along its length, struck bravely upwards. Beneath, the rest of the bush, nibbled and broken, lay tangled against a boulder, fresh brown soil spilling from near its roots.
          Fox dropped to his knees and, slipping one hand, an arm, his head, a shoulder, wriggling his body on loose pebbles, he slid under the briar. And disappeared.
          An underground passage. We had never thought to find one on our side of the Gorge. Bungonia Gorge, a few kilometres to the east, is riddled with limestone caves and tunnels, but none were known of in our area. I scrambled in after Fox and crawled and wriggled behind him beneath the dry creek bed to the water cave.
          It was a fantastic game. We would have liked to stay all day but the sun was climbing in the cloudless sky, its heat blistering. We rinsed the dirt off and headed for home. I was awfully tired as we peddled the last metres. The country ached for rain, our fruit trees drooped, wilting. In unspoken agreement we dumped the bikes and set about our day’s tasks.
          ‘About time you two showed up. We asked you to start that watering early, before the day became too hot.’
          ‘Yes, Dad,’ we muttered and set off with our buckets.
          ‘Wonder if Old Human Eyes was watching us today.’
          For a moment I did not understand Fox. Then I remembered and my blood ran backwards.
          ‘We know the how but not yet the who or the why.’
          Fox made the words sound like a promise.
 

FLOWSTONE: Chapter Three
 

Over the next few days I became very tired of Fox and his obsession with Old Human Eyes. His obsession, though, did prove to me that he had not invented the observer, just to tease me. And that he had not discovered the cave and tunnel earlier himself; a thought which had crossed my mind more than once.
          The hot westerly winds of mid-summer had arrived and scorched the remainder of our pasture, bleaching the yellow grass white and brittle. The stems crumpled and broke when the sheep, heads down, searching for food, tramped over. And the merciless wind lifted the straws away, leaving great patches of bare, hard, brown earth. There had been no real rain since early September and the older ewes, one by one, were lying down and dying. Only the crows grow fat in this type of weather. Large, gloating, black birds, ceaselessly cawing their cadaver chorus, loud even against the wind’s howl. They ate their fill.
          Carting stock water from the creek to every living thing we wanted to save made the days long. Still, Fox found time to visit the bushland part of the creek, searching for – or was it hunting? – his quarry. I did not have the energy to go with him and I worried while he was gone, counting the minutes into hours.
          Once I would not have cared so but, since finding the underground tunnel, I realise the bush is not as familiar as we had felt it to be. That someone could watch us without us knowing has wounded both our prides. Our belief in our bush craft skills had been smugly positive and Fox seems to think that finding Old Human Eyes is the only possible method of restoring that confidence.
          As if all this was not burden enough, the worst possible news bit us at dinner tonight. Alex is coming to stay.
          ‘Good God, Mum, you didn’t agree, did you?’
          ‘I couldn’t turn poor Nancy down, Amy.’
          ‘I don’t see why not. It’s not our problem, it’s theirs. “Poor Nancy” indeed! Can’t you see she’s taken you for a sucker?’
          ‘That’s enough, Amy,’ Dad interrupted. ‘You are not to speak to your mother like that.’
          Furious, I turned on him. ‘And what about all this family conference stuff you’re always preaching? Discuss this, discuss that, put the cards on the table. All that junk.’ Saliva surged in my mouth, I was actually spitting in rage. ‘But when it comes to a real decision, one that affects us, Fox and me mainly, you don’t even pretend to consult us!’ I had pushed my chair back and was standing facing him, breathing hard, my fists clenched.
          Mum came and put an arm round my shoulders but I remained taut, vibrating inside.
          ‘Amy darling, why does Alex coming upset you so?’ She sounded puzzled, as if sensing an undertone, then brightened. In her ‘I’vegotagoodidea’ voice she added, ‘we’ll make him work. Another pair of hands will lighten your chores. He’ll have to pull his weight.’
          ‘And quite a bit of weight he is too.’ Dad laughed to show he had made a joke. The tension in me eased a little but the argument continued.
          ‘Why? Why does he have to come here? Hasn’t he any friends?’
          ‘I’ve already explained that. Nancy feels his father’s re-marriage is such a blow Alex needs a complete break from the city. Besides, his father, although it is his turn to take Alex, doesn’t want him on the honeymoon. And Nancy’s holiday has been booked and paid for and she can’t cancel at this late stage.’
          I shook my head in wonder. ‘Really gross. Now correct me if I’m wrong,’ my voice, larded with sarcasm, challenged them, ‘his Mum’s going on a holiday, he was going to stay with his Dad but now his Dad is getting married again – probably to some bimbo he’s been living with for yonks – and we, total strangers, have to have Alex to stay.’ I looked from one to the other, incredulous. I slumped back into my chair and pushed the remains of the casserole round my plate. I was no longer hungry. ‘I don’t believe it.’
          ‘Not total strangers. Nancy and I were at school together.’
          ‘And how long is it since you last saw her? Ten years, you said last week.’
          I rose, picked my plate up and, storming the few strides to the sink, dumped it in. Anger welled up again and I whirled on them. ‘You know what? You’ve been set up. She came down here to case this joint, to sound you out. She’s using you. City slick and simpering in her stiletto heels, she’s made mincemeat of you.’
          Sudden doubt flicked across their faces. I jumped at the chance and changed tactics. ‘Please, please say “no”,’ I begged.
          ‘Oh, Amy, I’m sorry. I should have realised you and Basil don’t accept city people very well any more. But it’s too late now. We can’t put him off.’
          She meant well, I knew, but was just too silly kind. I looked at Fox, leaning against the door jamb. It was time he took part.
          ‘Speaking of which,’ Dad looked at his wristwatch, ‘it’s time I left to meet his train.’
          ‘To-night!’ I screeched. ‘You really did get done, didn’t you?’ I was shaking and nodding my head in disbelief.
          ‘Well, that’s as may be.’ Mum began to stack the dinner dishes. ‘It’s been arranged, he’s on his way now and it is up to you two to take care of him.’
          Fox spoke at last. In a drawl. ‘We might just kill the little fat toad.’
          Mum and Dad looked at him, astonished. I could feel a smile starting to glitter my eyes.
          ‘After all, with a loving, loyal family like his he might be better off dead.’
          They stood silent, obviously trying to decide whether he was serious then, full of remorse, they both spoke saying the same thing. ‘Oh, kids, we’re sorry.’
          Fox had won the argument in a way. He and I were unlikely to meet much interference from them when we wanted to dump City Boy for our own pursuits. And that was what really mattered.
          ‘Anyone coming to meet the train with me?’
          ‘You and Mum go. Amy and me, we’ll clean up here and have the kettle boiling when you get back.’ They left quickly, running late.
          ‘Strategist,’ I grinned at him as I began washing the dishes, ‘have you any plans?’
          ‘Forget that turd. I’ve found our quarry.’
          My hands stopped moving in the hot sudsy water. ‘And – ’
          ‘He’s a bit weird.’
          I resumed washing the plates and stacking them for Fox to dry. There was no point in prompting him further. He would tell me as much as he wanted to, no  more, no less, and in his own way.
          He wiped the plates slowly. I handled the cutlery piece by piece so as not to reveal my impatience in clatter.
          ‘I don’t know what to make of him. He looks sad. He was sitting on that cliff top, above the wide creek bend pas the fall. He seems to have a sort of camp there. But I found another one, or, rather a motley collection of gear, on top of the Spiderman wall further down.’
          ‘He’s not from the gaol?’ That he might be had been my biggest worry when Fox was out looking alone. A direct result of the dint in confidence we both felt since learning of a spy roaming our bush, watching us. Goulburn Gaol is not all that far away from us though we never give it a thought usually. But, over the last days, I had carefully checked every local radio news broadcast I could. Although I had not had much time in the house to do so. And, at night, the television, a hopeless source of news as it only seems to carry items for which bright film clips are available, drowned out the radio. My outside time, though, had offered plenty of opportunity to notice Polair, the police helicopter, and I had not seen it. Although the winds might have been too gusty for its use.
          Such is the way I worry. By chewing ideas round and round, over and over, like a cud. Fox, like a crow, alights in on the core of the matter.
          ‘He doesn’t look a crim type. Not that I’ve ever met too many face to face,’ he added, grinning. ‘Actually, well,’ he dragged the words, ‘I’ve never met a crim at all, have I? Not unless, of course, Old Human is one.’
          ‘You mean to say you have made contact with this guy?’
          Fox grabbed a handful of cutlery, watching intently as he dried the knives and forks in quick succession, but I knew he was thinking, deliberately ignoring my question.
          ‘I’d stake my life he’s not a crim. I didn’t get a feeling of violence. He just seemed … lost.’
          ‘Not too lost if he can find underground tunnels.’ I began bailing the water out of the sink. We were recycling every possible drop we could for the garden. ‘Perhaps he’s just a lost speleologist,’ I giggled.
          ‘Yeah,’ Fox guffawed in appreciation then added, seriously, ‘he has to be some sort of expert to find that tunnel, doesn’t he? I mean, I found the water way in by accident and it was pretty easy to recognise the earth way out from there. But he had to know that that depression beside the briar was a cave doline, just by looking at it.’
          ‘A what did you call it?’
          ‘Doline. That’s the technical name for a dip in the ground which leads to a cave.’
          So! Fox had been looking up information as well as searching the bush.
          The sound of the returning car brought us back to the realisation that our privacy would be limited for the next couple of weeks. ‘To-morrow, Ame, we find that guy. Together. I don’t want to meet him alone.’
          Then Alex, flanked by our parents, walked in. He looked scared, trapped, utterly miserable.
 

FLOWSTONE: Chapter Four
 

I suppose City Boy was of some help. Certainly, on the afternoon following his arrival we seemed to have a couple of hours for ourselves. And the best part was Alex was so knackered he slumped in front of the television, groaned, shut his eyes. In no time at all he was asleep, breathing heavily. ‘As quick as two shakes of a lamb’s tail,’ Mick Gray would have said. The television chanted some mindless quiz game but City Boy did not stir.
          Fox and I left while the going was good. Hollow storm clouds were building up and the breeze off them cooled us a little as we set out, walking swiftly, across the paddocks. If Fox was right in his calculations, this was a shorter way than following the creek. And we would not be as exposed when we approached the cam site.
          Once beyond the bare pasture lands we slipped across our boundary fence and into the undeveloped tussock and scrub hills which adjoin our property. Various animal paths, sometimes lost in sucker thickets of wattle and Argyle apple trees, lead through the gravel hills and we trotted along, maintaining a nor’easterly direction, climbing steadily up, the storm rumbles behind us. When the pathway led along a shallow dry drain we knew we had almost reached the creek; this drain could ripple and sing and run too wide for leaping in wet times. Now it was just a strip of tangled, dried up tussock. The hill behind rose steeply. We leant against a boulder, taking a breather, summoning our energy for the short ascent.
          ‘We’ll take it quietly. Try and get a good look at him before we make contact.’
          ‘Do we have to meet him?’ I wasn’t so sure I wanted to face up to someone who had seen us at play.
          ‘Dunno, really.’ Fox was teasing a wraith of a spider out of a crevice with a twig. It seemed to take all his concentration. I waited, watching the black shadows racing across the ground as the dry clouds scudded past overhead.
          ‘Let’s just check him our first? After all, you said he seemed a bit weird.’
          Fox nodded and flashed his quick grin. ‘Agree. We’ll go up the hill here, keeping well back from the cliff face. The trees are pretty big up there and there’s plenty of boulder coverage as well. Keep some between us and the cliff.’
          We found a foothold each, lurched ourselves up, over the rock we had been leaning on and, quietly, systematically, clambered to the crest. The slope was such we had to crouch well into the hillside, often steadying ourselves by grabbing tussocks. After about forty metres we reached the wide plateau like top.
          Most of the hills where we live are gravel topped and crowned with straggly peppermint gums, blue leafed native apples and black wattles which grow where nothing else will. On this hill, though, the soil must be deep as ancient yellow box gums hum softly in the wind. It makes the sheer cliff drop on the creek side all the more surprising. Or did once.
          Carefully, but confidently, we worked our way through the area towards the cliff face. Usually, at this time of day, a few kangaroos can be startled. None to-day. That makes us both wary; we fell we are not the only humans on this hilltop. Small birds flock past us, twittering; a kookaburra laughs from somewhere lower down the gorge.
          The man’s voice, clear and sing-songy, reached us before we spotted him.
          He was standing atop a tall boulder only a couple of metres away from the cliff face. He seemed to be chanting but stopped as we caught sight of him. Then, placing his hands either side of his neck he moved them, palms pressing hard against his ears and hair, upwards until both arms extended at full stretch above his head. And the chanting began again. Again and again he went through the same movement and chant but, though we strained to hear, we could not understand the words.
          Tall and thin, wearing heavy boots, his torn blue shorts and dirty whitish T-shirt, hardly meeting at his middle, flapped in the faint breeze. Surprisingly, he wasn’t all that old, probably seventeen, maybe eighteen.
          Abruptly, in the course of one of his arm raisings, he jumped backwards off the boulder and strode purposefully away. Flitting carefully, we followed, keeping our distance. He dropped out of sight. Slowly, slowly, we crept, watching where we placed our feet. A sudden crack of a dry, dropped tree branch or twig could sound rifle-shot loud in this situation. But the man was not as wary and a clinking of stones guided us to him. Fox circled out a little then nodded, grinning at me. I shuffled close to him.
          Our quarry was in sight again but this time he was sitting in a grassed depression. Arranging stones.
          Cross-legged, head bent low in an air of intense concentration, he selected out and moved stones from one little pile to another, sometimes swiftly, sometimes with caution. Rather as chess players, good chess players, make their moves.
          The stones, of various sizes, were roundish and smooth looking; obviously from the creek bed. He must have made several trips up and down the hill collecting them.
          Fox and I looked at each other and he shrugged his shoulders slightly in answer to my frown. Thunder rumbled round us, the hilltop darkened but the man continued his task, seemingly oblivious. Until he spoke.
          ‘Did you murder your fat fool friend?’
          He did not lift his head, his unkempt hair hiding his face from us, but his voice was loud, strong and definitely directed at us.
          I gasped, overbalanced and shot my hands out onto the ground in front of me. Fox’s reaction was quicker. Still on his haunches he swiftly sidled backwards into the trees hissing at me to move that way too. Before I could, a hail of pebbles like bullets landed round me. I screamed, twisted and began running, slithering really, doubled over, half falling, away into the trees.
          Suddenly the whole area lit up. A shattering crack seared my ear drums and screeched around inside my head. Then silence. Deep, terrifying, silence. Into the quiet came the noise of breaking, tearing wood. Just a small splintering sound at first, it gathered momentum, crunching and crackling, whooshing and whistling, creaking and grating, as if the earth itself was opening up.
          Fixed in position, pinned and anchored by fear, I looked in horror as a giant eucalypt split apart and crashed, with a heart-tearing protest – and so close flying twigs of branches flailed round me. A strong, pungent stink filled the air. The tree was still settling onto the ground, limbs crinkling into place, when a deep roaring wind raced across the land, bending and twisting the treetops frantically, mercilessly.
          ‘Fire!’
          The man’s voice was faint against the wind and I recognised it only as a sound, not a word, at first. But he was jumping up and down, scattering his pebble piles, and pointing gleefully. Little orange flames were licking the inside of the torn tree, flickering and dancing along its great split.
          ‘It’s too green and sappy to burn,’ Fox said in my ear. I turned to him with what I’m sure was a soppy look; I was worrying terribly about his safety. Just the sight of him, his tossing hair and wide grin, was a marvellous relief and I began to think rationally again. Thoughts eased in and assembled.
          ‘But the grass isn’t,’ I retorted as one tongue, longer than the others, lunged on the wind and smoke curled a couple of metres away from the tree. The dead leaves there sprang to life, glowed, flared and raced across the ground with the wind. Suddenly there were dozens of little streams of fire speeding and zigging across the bush mulch.
          ‘We’ve got to stop it. We’ve got to try,’ I wailed.
          We rushed towards the tree and each tore a branch off and began thrashing at the flames. As fast as we put one patch out another sprang to life.
          ‘Stay with the wind,’ Fox called once, ‘if it turns, run, don’t wait.’
          ‘Yes,’ I gasped. Sweat was pouring down my face from the heat and the effort of belting the burning earth. Dead wood, lying in the grass and leaves, was catching on, halting the progress but intensifying the heat. My eyes were stinging from the smoke and the dust and I found myself praying mindlessly. ‘Please, God, please let us win, please God.’ Whenever he moved closer I could hear Fox muttering but I knew he would be swearing, not praying.
          ‘Oh no!’ His agonised scream carried against the wind. ‘The madman! He’s in front of it!’
          I raised my head to see the man leaping, loping down the hillside, a Pied Piper leading pockets of flame.
          ‘Leave him be,’ I croaked and swung my branch with renewed determination. Slowly, slowly, it seemed we were gaining, the wind easing as the fire moved into the lee. I dashed back to the tree and wrenched off a fresh branch. The blackened area crunched beneath my boots; little puffs of dust and soot rose in my pathway. The new branch felt heavier in my aching arms but I renewed my attack, head down. Wallopping flickers of flame.
          ‘Whoa! Stop there!’ The man’s voice halted me. The wind had dropped momentarily so his words were clear. But he was not calling to us. Instead, he was talking to the fire as he poured water on the ground in front of it. That he had a bucket was surprising; the slight regard he showed for his own safety was infuriating.
          ‘He’s bonkers!’ I shouted with horror.
          ‘Get to the creek and stay there,’ yelled Fox.
          But the man danced a jig, swinging the red, plastic bucket. ‘You fight fire with water,’ he called with a dignity at odds with his behaviour and loped off towards the creek.
          The wind picked up again but kinder, more breeze like. Even so it flared more outbreaks into flame. Then there was a new sound thrumming through the bush. Fox and I straightened and grinned at each other as the sharp smell of the approaching rain swirled towards us. Not all the clouds were empties.
          Fox whooped. ‘You fight fire with water – just as the man says,’ and he tossed his branch aside. The first fat drops sizzled as they fell then the rain poured hard and savagely, soaking us, cooling us, making us shiver with cold. We cowered against a broad tree trunk, a wilder wind now whipping us wet. The curtain of water round us parted and the strange man faced us.
          ‘I am mad,’ he said in the rich, precise voice so at odds with his expression, his appearance, ‘but I don’t murder my friends.’
          As swiftly as it began the rain ceased. We had had no more than a few heavy millimetres. The lightning fire was quenched; the drought was not broken.
          ‘We haven’t murdered him.’ My voice surprised me. It was so matter-of-fact. The man thrust his face close to mine and I added, ‘yet’ and blushed with horror.
          He kept his face near to mine and, as my back was hard against a tree, I could not move. Yet I was not afraid; there was no menace in his action. Rather, it seemed he lacked awareness, perception, of his position.
          The clouds passed with the rain and we were suddenly bathed in sunlight again. A low, glowing, late afternoon sunshine that sparkled on the leaves and the damp ground and made long black stripes of shadow stretch across the charred, dewy grassland.
          ‘You camp hereabouts?’ Fox spoke too loudly, aggressively.
          The man stepped back and turned. I grabbed the opportunity to slip from the tree and stand clear, ready for flight.
          ‘So what, little buzzard?’ His reply, too, was aggressive.
          ‘Well, don’t go lighting any fires.’
          ‘There’s no need to preach at me. I said I was mad but I’m not a fool.’ He jerked a clenched fist at Fox the, to the astonishment of us both, placed his two hands either side of his neck and slowly stretched his arms upwards in the same movement he had used earlier, when he was chanting. It looked a pathetic, useless action and I suddenly felt sorry for him.
          ‘What do you do for food?’ I asked.
          ‘Junk,’ he said, ‘junk.’ He seemed to smile but I wasn’t sure. He dived a hand into a pocket and produced a crumpled chips bag or, perhaps it was a wrapper from a chocolate bar. I had no intention of taking a closer look; he had demonstrated his answer sufficiently well. ‘And I eat at the truck stop on the highway. When the old belly growls loud enough.’
          ‘How do you get there?’ Fox strolled towards me, his head down, interest rather than aggression in his tone.
          ‘Shank’s pony. That’s what that old busybody, Mick Gray, calls it.’ He suddenly lurched off, crossing the burnt area beyond the fallen tree. ‘You know, walk,’ he called back, ‘be seeing you.’ His words rang quite musically through the trees as he turned and waved. Then, with a jogging gait, he flitted off through the bush and out of sight.
          Wordlessly, Fox and I turned and trotted across the plateau and down the hillside, crouching and slithering in the steep parts. To the west the sky gleamed clear, innocent, but storms raged across the south between Goulburn and Bungonia and out towards Windellama. Black, heavy clouds slashed and segmented with wild lightning, presented a brooding background to our sunlit home nestling on its ridge. The house seemed so close and welcoming but we knew it would take us near on an hour to reach even moving as quickly as we were.
          We did not speak until we were out of the hills, heading south and crossing flatter country.
          ‘Question is,’ said Fox in his shorthand way, ‘how much do we tell?’
          I am always inclined to say too much, get carried away, and I think Fox is trying to curb my habit by settling details ahead of any confrontation.
          ‘I’m sure to blurt out about the fire. I mean,’ I half turned to him, waving a cloudward pointing arm, ‘with the like of those storms there’ll be electrical fires springing throughout the ridges. And, unless it rains as it did on ours, the bush will be blazing in no time. Probably the electricity supply has been cut off already in anticipation.’ I added that a little glumly. I was yearning for a quick, hot shower but, without power, our water cannot be pumped. It could be a long, foodless, waterless evening ahead. Such days had happened before.
          ‘Fair enough,’ Fox interrupted my gloomy thoughts, ‘the lightning strike, the fire and our action are on the agenda.’
          We crossed through our boundary fence, ducking between the top plain wires and the hingejointed netting. We could just as easily have crawled under through what seemed like a rather new wombat pathway.
          ‘Damn,’ grunted Fox, ‘another one to be fixed before we put stock in here again.’
          ‘We could mention the wombat scrape,’ I suggested, tentatively. Truth was I was not too keen on trying to talk about the man. I felt sure Mum would go off her rocker and no explanation would calm her down. Certainly not the type of explanation bound to tumble out of me at the moment. Best to avoid that subject totally.
          Fox must have felt the same. We were almost up to the house when he spoke again. ‘Righo. That’s settled. The fire – any detail except the man – and the wombat damage.’
To be continued