“Were they in the war and everything?” Owen asked.
“Yes.”
“Did either of them kill anybody?”
“Yes.”
“If we have a rifle, could we go down to the ferry and sort of hijack it?” Owen asked.
“Maybe. I think they tie it up on the far shore, but I’ll check tonight.”
“I’m hungry,” Olivia said.
“I’m thirsty,” Owen said.
“I know,” Heather said.
There was nothing else to say.
She took out the pack of cigarettes, her own cigarettes back again. She lit one with his lighter.
“Can I have a puff?” Owen said.
“No.”
“Why not? You’re smoking.”
“It’s like parents always tell kids: Do as I say, not as I do.”
Silence.
A lagoon of blue sky. A green sea. And that sun pouring down countless photons into the dreary, withered yellow valley on the very northern tip of Dutch Island.
Owen was staring at the trees. “Do you remember what they told us at Uluru? A single gum tree standing by itself might be evidence of an underground water source. And here there’s four of them.”
They stared at the eucalyptus trees.
“They’re drinking from somewhere,” Olivia said after a while.
“You two wait here in the shade and I’ll see what I can find,” Heather said.
“I’m coming with you. Two eyes are, like, totally better than one—I mean, four eyes are better than two,” Owen said.
“I’ll help too!” Olivia announced.
They walked to the base of the biggest tree. It was old, blackened, and weather-beaten; all the bark had gone from the trunk, and the lower branches crumbled to the touch. It wasn’t dead, though—there were leaves on the upper branches.
The soil around the tree was dry red dirt filled with large rocks and smaller white stones. Little spiky tufts of grass were growing up through the browner bits.
Heather bent down, dug two fingers into the soil, took out a clump of earth, and examined it. It fell apart in her hand.
Olivia was watching her. She grabbed a handful of soil and held it up to the light. “What does a spring look like?” Olivia asked.
“A little bubbling thing of water,” Heather said. “But I don’t see anything like that. More likely it’s beneath the ground. Maybe very deep.”
In the book Olivia had been reading, Dark Emu, there was something about the Aboriginals digging deep wells into the aquifers in the desert. Although Australia was a dry continent, rain had fallen on it for hundreds of thousands of years and accumulated underground in layers of rock. Perhaps there was such an aquifer here.
“We’ll keep looking,” Heather said. “Those handprints on the rock mean that people did come here in olden times.”
Owen was walking around the tree in widening circles looking for any signs of water.
“What was that?” Olivia said.
“What do you hear?” Heather asked.
“The dogs are coming this way.”
“We may have to move soon,” Heather said.
Olivia dug her hand deep into the soil and took out a handful of dirt. Six inches down, it was even drier than on the surface.
Heather took the rifle off her back and helped move the earth as Olivia dug into the soil with two hands, burrowing into it like a Labrador.
Owen joined in, scooping a handful of dirt into his palm and running it through his fingers.
For two kids whose father had been killed and who were scared, hungry, and thirsty, they were doing very well.
“Does it feel moist to you?” Heather asked.
“It’s like the graham-cracker base of a cheesecake.”
Heather smiled. “Yeah, it is like that, isn’t it?”
While Heather kept watch, they dug farther into the soil, but it just seemed to get drier and drier the deeper they got.
“How deep do these roots go down?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know. Many hundreds of feet? I’m not sure,” she said, looking at the mesa. Now Heather could hear the dogs.
She took out the binoculars and saw a red motorcycle.
A mile away.
“OK, forget the water, guys. We’re going to have to move.”
“I don’t think I can go much farther. My legs are cramping,” Owen said.
“I know, sweetie, but we’ve got to go.”
There wasn’t much fight left in any of them. They’d had no food for two days. Hardly any water. The sun still had four or five hours to go before it sank into the mainland.