Something to her left.
A biped. Walking. Loping through the grass.
Tall and dark in the spilled moonlight, a white snout sniffing the air, like a bear that smells you before it sees you in your yard.
Heather fell to her knees. It must have seen her. How could it not?
It was close.
Forty yards to her—
And then, to her right, she saw that there were two of them.
That same white skull. Hollows for eyes.
Even without making any noise, she was giving everything away.
Her arm throbbed. Her shoulder hurt. Blood rolled down her fingers into the parched grass. She was trembling all over. It was as if a spotlight were on her.
They were hunting in pairs. Hunting her.
One looked at the other and they nodded and kept going. She was trapped between them. The one on the left was on a path that would take it within feet of her.
All she could do was kneel in the dirt and keep still. They were both carrying something. Something she recognized. Something blacker than the dark around them.
In the bright southern starlight the unmistakable shape of a Remington 870 long-barreled pump-action shotgun.
As they got closer, she saw that they were wearing denim overalls and had animal skulls on their heads. Wolf skulls. Or, more likely, dingo skulls.
There was a moment when all three of them were on the same line of longitude and then they walked past her and kept on going until they reached an ATV parked on the grass.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an American!” Kate yelled into the spinifex. She sat on the ATV and lit a cigarette. “You’re all cowards! Skulking there in the dark! Well, the dark’s your only friend. Get a good night’s sleep, ’cause ready or not, tomorrow morning, here we come! You’re gonna work tomorrow. You hear me, Heather? Work. And this is one massage that ain’t gonna have a bloody happy ending!”
Kate and her partner laughed, flipped on the lights on the ATV, and began driving back to the farm.
Well, if they’d been trying to terrify her, they had succeeded. And this was only the start of it. Civilization meant nothing here. Perhaps it had always meant nothing. There were no monsters on Dutch Island, but the beast was man, had always been man.
She was shaking. Goddamn, she could do with a cigarette. She gulped down the air and tried to calm her nerves. But it was hard. The day had tossed her about like a deerskin kayak on the Sound.
“Come on, Heather, just get up and walk, one foot in front of the other.”
She got up, and the grass and the Milky Way brought her to the eastern shore.
Petra was waiting by the big eucalyptus tree.
“You made it!” she said, hugging her.
“The kids?”
“Hanging on.”
“Owen?”
“Yes.”
“I got the water.”
“I’ll give it to him. I’ve done first aid; I’ll rehydrate him carefully.”
Heather followed Petra to the beach.
Petra gave them the water.
Heather watched them drink.
It was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen in her life.
Petra drank and then, finally, Heather drank.
The kids started to revive. Within minutes, they were alert and chatting to each other. Amazing how resilient they could be.
Amazing.
She asked Petra to come and talk to her.
“What is it?” Petra asked when they were out of earshot.
“I got hit by two shotgun pellets. You’re going to have to dig them out with the penknife. One’s in the back of my arm, one’s in my shoulder. I can show you exactly where, and there’s good starlight.”
Petra looked skeptically at the stars and waning sliver of moon and shook her head. “Show me,” she said.
Heather took off her T-shirt and bra and lay down on the beach. “Can you see?”
“Perhaps we should wait until morning.”
“No. Now, please. I don’t know how it works but…I think…the danger of infection.”
“I can try, if you want. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll…OK. I’ll get something for you to bite on.”
“Talk to me about something.”
“What?” Petra asked.
“Holland…no, that thing you were talking about. The dream lines.” Heather put a twig between her teeth.
“Yes. I’ve been reading a lot about that since I got here. It’s quite interesting. The Aboriginal people were often nomadic, following what they thought of as dream lines through an actual geography that was also a mythological landscape. By following these ancient routes, they believe that they sang the Earth into being…”