‘You’re holding up the group,’ a woman called.
Alice started. ‘Sorry?’
‘Keep up,’ the woman said primly. She stabbed the ends of her hiking poles repeatedly into the red earth.
‘I’m fine,’ Alice said. ‘No need to wait for me.’
The woman drew her fly net down over her greying hair and pink face. ‘As anyone who’s read their outback guide book knows, this place,’ she waved a hiking pole about, ‘is more dangerous than it looks.’
‘Thanks,’ Alice said, bemused. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
As they walked on, the woman swatted at branches with her hiking poles. Thwack, whip, whack, thwack, whip, whack. Alice flinched at every beat. The intensity of her desire for solitude made her even more irritated. Breathe, she told herself.
But her thoughts raced. At some point over the weekend, while Twig and Candy were telling her truths that irrevocably unpicked the seams of her life, Dylan had sat down somewhere, maybe at his laptop, maybe with pen and paper, and deliberately set out to silence her. Did he drink a coffee while he did it? Or did he crack open a beer? How did it feel, as word by word he drew back an arrow aimed straight for her heart? He’d helped himself to her life, to her body, to her mind, and he’d taken his fill.
Alice’s gut started to cramp.
Did he shake? Did he have remorse, even if only momentarily? Did he feel regret, as he took aim? Did he flinch or was he open-eyed when it was done? And in the days since, where was he? Where did he go? Did he have a dark and dank place he retreated to, where by lantern light he spun straw into gold, so he could reappear, transformed?
In front of Alice, the hiking pole woman came into focus. She crouched by the track. Opened her backpack and took out a small jar, leaning forward to scoop red dirt into it.
Alice took a sharp breath. ‘No!’ she shouted, launching forwards to whack the jar from the woman’s hand. It landed in the dirt with a thud. A few tourists turned, gasping. The woman sat in the dirt, a stunned expression on her face. Alice glared down at her, fists clenched.
‘Everything okay back here?’ Lulu pushed through the group.
‘No, it’s ruddy not!’ The woman got to her feet.
‘Alice?’ Lulu asked.
‘She was trying to take some dirt. I saw her,’ Alice said shakily, pointing at the jar.
Lulu squeezed Alice’s arm. ‘Okay,’ she said, looking Alice in the eyes. She glanced at the woman then back at Alice. ‘Okay?’
Alice nodded.
‘Ma’am, walk with me and I’ll explain why what you just did is a fineable offence in a national park.’ Lulu led the woman to the head of the group, glancing at Alice, frowning in concern.
Alice walked the rest of the way in silence at the rear of the group. Unsurprisingly, no one spoke to her. Lulu kept looking back until Alice waved her on. Alice thought to turn around a few times, to go home to Pip and crawl into bed. But leaving would only make more of a scene.
When she reached the viewing platform, Alice sat away from the group. Lulu’s voice drifted over to her while she kept her eyes fixed on the circular centre of flowers in blazing red bloom. Her thoughts turned to Twig, Candy and June. Then, her mother. Always her mother. Always.
She waited until her tears dried before she stood and followed the rest of the group down into Kututu Kaana.
The crater trail was in full sun. The sea of desert peas shimmered in the heat. A wedge-tailed eagle circled above. Finches chirped in the bushes. Alice closed her eyes and listened. The timbre of Lulu’s voice. The rhythm of the wind. The rustle of flowers and leaves. There was a pulse to it, the faintest heartbeat.
The sound of a zipper interrupted Alice’s fragile serenity. Hiking pole woman had broken away from the group, grabbed a jar from her backpack and was crouched next to the desert peas. As Alice watched, she slowly and deliberately unscrewed the lid and reached for the flowers with an open hand.
Alice threw her full weight at the woman, who screamed as she tackled her to the ground and wrestled the desert peas from her hand.
An hour later Alice sat outside Sarah’s office, her elbows resting on her knees and her face in her hands. She could smell her skin, burnt from too much sun. She remembered the scent of her mother’s skin: soft, clean, cool. The delicacy of her mother’s voice, the light in her eyes when she was in her garden among her fern fronds and flowers. June’s scents, her whisky and peppermints. The smell of the river, and the fires Oggi burned when they were teenagers.
Flashes of Dylan merged with memories of her father. Faces white with rage. The sour scent of Dylan’s breath, the mineral smell of her father’s fury, her body hurt and bent, horribly cold water, hands raised about to strike. The headquarters radio squealed with interference, reminding Alice of a baby’s cry. Who’d raised her brother? Did he have a good life? Was he happy? Did he know she existed?
‘Alice.’
She looked up. Sarah stood in the open doorway of her office. This time, her face was pained.
Ruby was sitting by the fire in her backyard when she heard a truck pull up out the front. She peered out to the driveway. Alice’s butterfly truck was packed to the hilt. Ruby refocused on the necklace she was making. She held the tip of a wire coat hanger into the flames and pushed it through the middle of an ininti seed. When it was cool she threaded it onto brown twine and reached for the next seed from the pile at her feet. She watched Alice get out of her truck, her dog at her heels. Her gait was strained and her eyes were sick. She looked exactly like a woman who’d lost her love, livelihood and home in one hit.
Alice sat at Ruby’s fire, staring into the flames. Pip scampered off to play with Ruby’s dogs. Three tall desert oaks sighed as the wind picked up. Ruby held her wire in the flames, waited for it to heat, and pushed the molten tip through another ininti seed. Alice stayed quiet. It took her a few tries before her voice was strong enough to speak.
‘Ruby, I’ve come to say goodbye.’
Ruby threaded the seed onto the twine and picked up another. The wind ruffled their hair. It was a northwesterly. That wind will make you sick, Ruby’s aunties had always said. It’s a bad one, that wind from the west. It’ll make your spirit sick. You’d better have the right medicine.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, Pinta-Pinta, about what fire means to you.’ Ruby burned a hole through another seed and pushed it onto the string. ‘I wanted to ask you where your fire place is.’
‘Fire place?’
‘Yeah. Your fire place. Where you gather around, with the people you love. Where you’re warm, all together. Where you belong.’
Alice didn’t answer for a long time. Ruby added another mulga branch to her fire.
‘I don’t know. But I … I have a brother,’ Alice’s voice cracked. ‘A little brother.’
Ruby lifted the string of ininti and tied the ends together in a knot. The necklace glistened, glossy and red, scented with fire. She held it out to Alice. Alice just stared. Ruby shook the necklace, gesturing for Alice to take it. The ininti seeds clacked softly against each other as Ruby pooled them into Alice’s cupped hands.
‘Bat’s wing coral tree seeds,’ Alice mumbled. ‘Cure for heartache.’ Her eyes were red.
‘Women in my family, we wear these for inma,’ Ruby said. ‘They give us strength during ceremony.’ Alice rubbed her thumbs over the seeds, lifted them to her nose, and smelled their smoky scent.