Sunlit Shadow Dance (46 page)

Then they loaded
Belle’s pack in the
helicopter and flew home.

That night they stopped at Timber Creek.
It was a story telling night about Mark and Belle. It was the wake
Mark had never had and a memorial for Belle. It might have been sad
but it was not. Those who knew Mark told a story of him, those who
did not know him told a story of other lives he had touched.
Belle’s father told of his daughter and Anne read from the
diaries.

It was not quite celebratory,
but in all the minds and voices there was joy and forgiveness as
well as pain
. They remembered a man of two parts, the good and the bad
and the woman he had lost who regretted nothing.

She stood on
the cliff took, looking out over the valley below. The sun was just
touching the horizon and, as it did, suddenly the whole world lit
up, lighting not just the ordinary world, but her world too. It was
fully alive again for her first remembered time with blinding and
full color. The color was more beautiful than she could ever have
imagined.

As the color
came back so too did the memories, the good and happy but along
with them the pain and horror as well, all she had been and all she
had done. She cringed with pain in her soul as it all came rushing
back, the awfulness of it; her awful part. Slowly it too faded as
she looked far out, her mind moving past it.

In that last
sunlight of the fading day she could see the shadows dance. She
remembered how, all the years ago, Mark had brought her here and
had told her how, in that last fading light, the shadows came out
and danced, those of the people who had lived here over fifty
thousand years.

He had asked
her to bring his remains back to this place and they had. They had
scattered his ashes across the hills and sand plains below. Now he
was one of them, walking amongst them, a shadow dancing amongst
other shadows in that last sunlight.

She felt his
joy, his joy for himself and his joy in seeing her again. She heard
the spirits singing in that last light, more beautiful than any
sound she had heard before, all life’s emotions mixed and blended
into ten thousand, thousand voices. And his voice sang loudest.

He stood there
beckoning, waving, signalling and calling “Come to me. We can go
together into this other place; leave the pain of this world
behind. It is a good place. I want you there. Come with me, come
now.”

Now she was
only Susan again and loved only Mark. She remembered still, as if
from a great distance, Vic; how she had shared her life with him
and loved him too. They had taken Mark’s children, her children and
they had even created their own children together and they had
given them all a good life. But Mark was her first and truest love,
she was his Susan and her spirit must go to him, it must answer his
call.”

As she stood
at the cliff top gazing out across the rocks far below, she knew
she would now soar from here like an eagle and fly to Mark. She
would rejoin his crocodile spirit to that of hers and be complete
again. She would leave behind all the pain that she could not bear
to remember.

She stepped
forward to where there was only air.

Far below a
small cry came, penetrating somehow through the other world music
and last sunlight where still the shadows danced. It was the voice
of her child, David. “Mummy, come back!”

It pulled her
back. Again her feet stood on solid ground.

She knew that
this boy, the new Mark, needed her more than the other Mark, as did
Vic and Anne and little Vic and the others, even one unborn. So she
must learn to live with the pain, accept what she could not change
and take joy in life’s little things.

She looked
back out, Mark was calling again, but now she knew it was not for
her he called. As she watched another girl came out of the shadows,
she had dark hair; this girl looked like her but was not. She
answered him, singing in a beautiful French voice.

“
Non, je ne regrette rien.”

As
Susan watched she was joined by another and then another girl, and
finally there were four. She knew all their names, the one with
dark hair, the two brown and the one of glorious shimmering blond.
They all joined hands and danced towards the other spirit shadows
in that last sunlight.

Susan watched
as the light faded and then they were gone. Now she was Jane again,
the remnants of Susan had passed from this place.

She walked
across the flat ground to where they all stood and they all
enfolded her in their big and little arms. She was glad she was
still here. She stood with them all in the now fading twilight as
the sun travelled across another sky. She knew that all these other
ancestral spirits had gone there too, Mark’s spirit, the crocodile
spirit that had tried to take her there, along with the spirits of
other women he had loved and who had gone before.

But it was not
her time to go there, she would live and love in the world of men,
watch her children grow and their children too, share their joys
and pains and live again in life’s colors. It was enough.

In the months after they
returned from the desert
Jane gradually got the rest of her life in order
and did what more she could to make reparations for the harm Mark
had caused.

For Amanda the police had sent her things
to her family. They asked the family what to do with the money and
the notebook of her travels. The family asked they be sent to the
man who had loved her, the money had come from him and the notebook
was of value to him. He and they were now agreed for him to read it
and write her story. The family also sent him one the rubies. He
kept it and was glad in her memory. It was something of beauty to
remember her by after all he had suffered.

But that was not reparation from Mark,
just a return of what Amanda had owned along with Mark’s gift to
her. Jane wanted to do something from Mark’s estate for Amanda. So
she wrote to the family and asked if there was more she could
do.

A month later came a
reply.
“We
would like to erect a memorial for our daughter at the place she
died, something in her likeness that others will know her
by.”

So on the hill of the
mine
Jane
arranged for the erection a stone cairn. On its side a likeness of
Amanda’s face was made out small ceramic tiles and pieces of
colored glass, things that would not fade in the bright
sunlight.

For Elin’s family, the police sent them
her things from the grave. Alan told Jane that the fabulous opal
now sat in a local museum in Sweden, donated in Elin’s name. The
family had brought Elin’s mortal remains home and buried them in
the boat grave alongside her mother, the warrior queen and her
warrior daughter. On her graveside they put a small plaque to the
man who had loved her in his desert kingdom.

Jane
knew it was a thing that would have
pleased Mark and wrote to tell them so. They sent her a photo they
had taken of this place.

One day as
Jane was going through the many
things of Mark’s that had gradually been located and come to her.
In a box she found a series of mining leases for this part of
Queensland, over thirty in all. Two of these leases were for the
mines where Elin and Amanda had died. So the final thing Jane did
was she transferred the one to Elin’s family and the other to
Amanda’s family. If there were yet things of value in this ground
it was their right to discover them, if not at least these places
held the memories of the last resting places of their children. A
year later the two families met on these rocky hills in the desert
to agree on a small joint mining venture named after their
daughters, with the profits going into the Lost Girls
Trust.

The final
piece of the jigsaw was Josie. Jane traced the bank transaction
where Mark had transferred the money into her name, as told in his
diary. It gave her a real name, Josephine Kelty. Then they traced
her mother but her mother was dead, and there was no other next of
kin. So Jane arranged for Josie’s bones to be placed in a coffin
and taken back to the place in the desert where they found her.

It was in the
next winter when the wildflowers were again in bloom. Rather than
putting a headstone on the grave, they put a small bronze plaque on
the cliff below the inscription that Mark had carved; just Josie’s
name and date of birth and death. Mark’s headstone told the
rest.

Then they and
their children and their friends walked in the desert for the rest
of the day gathering all the wildflowers they could find and piling
them above the grave. When they had finished the pile was as high
as their heads and almost obscured the stone. They hoped that for
many more years the children of these flowers would again bloom in
Josie’s Place.

The months and
years rolled on by. It was wonderful for Jane to have all her
colors back and gradually more pieces of the memory of her former
life came back too. They did not all come at once but, like the
myriad pieces of a jigsaw, when looking the other way one would
suddenly remember a piece and where it fitted, then reach for it
and place it.

So now, five
years on, the jigsaw of her mind was mostly complete, just
occasional spaces that may or may not be filled in the fullness of
time. She knew some pieces may never return and her jigsaw would
always resemble one of those much loved family favourites, built
over and over again as time rolled on. These, like hers, had odd
empty spaces, places leaving room for imagination to fill. She
called these life’s missing places.

She remembered
that morning when, as Susan, she had killed her lover, it was a sad
place but the pain was gone. His spirit lived on in the lives of
his children who she and Vic watched grow, Nathaniel, now
apprentice air mechanic, soon to be a pilot, David, quiet and
studious, but having a magic touch with animals, he could calm a
wild horse and he rode like his father. Some days when he smiled
Vic said Mark had returned to life. Annie had the least of Mark, at
first she seemed to be Jane’s Susan child. But one day Uncle
Antonio sent a photo of his sister, Mark’s mother, from when she
was a girl of Annie’ age. The resemblance was so strong that Jane
felt she was looking at a photograph of her daughter. So now she
knew another part of Mark lived on in this child, along with a part
of her too.

She remembered
too, from within her own mind, on that morning of killing the
crocodile spirit had sought out and found entry to her soul. In her
anguish, as they tore at Mark’s body, she sent out a part of her to
be with him in the place of crossing. Into that place, left empty,
slid a remnant of another, the spirit of his devourer. Slowly its
power had grown within her, filling her mind, taking over her
spirit.

She remembered
too those days of her vanishing, seeking to escape it. On that
early morning she climbed into the car with the other Mark man as
he drove to the waterhole in the pre-dawn light. She knew he was
really just a fisherman but now she thought he had been sent to
meet her, the man to escort her back to her first true love.

Susan had
wanted to go back to Mark, Emily not. They had fought inside this
car for the control of her body and, with Susan feeling cocky that
she had won, Emily had seized her chance. She did it as they came
to the red traffic light where the Arnhem Highway began. Emily had
opened the door as they stopped and jumped out. She fled, bare
footed across the dirt, with her overnight bag grasped in her hand
while Susan was left in the car, holding the plastic bag that
contained the Baru crocodile spirit and the pink sandals.

Susan had not
been able to find her way back to her, try as she might. While, for
a brief moment, she was Emily she knew Emily was not in a safe
place. So she must leave Emily behind too if she was really to
escape from all the evil that had filled the life that had been. So
she tore Emily, protesting, out from her body and from her mind
too. Then there remained to her only an empty body and empty mind
with no life spirit living within.

So she had
chosen a new name, Jane. But she had to be Jane somebody. So she
had chosen a remnant of Mark, in the first B name by which she had
known him, Bennet. It was a fitting name for her children to hold.
She had, after all, made her marriage promises to him, their
father, on that last night, perhaps that was the night when her
children were conceived, so the name was rightfully theirs to
keep.

At a roadside
stop nearby she had found a marker pen and printed Jane Bennet on
her bag’s label, lest she loose even this memory of her past
life.

There was a
road train parked nearby, its decks were empty of cattle, but still
with the manure and other excrement of where the cattle had been.
She climbed to the upper deck, up above eye view. She found a clean
corner and lay down. There she slept, finding comfort in the animal
smells. She slept for a long day. The truck went on and on,
sometimes stopping for a short time. The sun rose high and then
went down. She was sheltered from wind and most of the sun in her
secluded corner. Late in the next night it stopped at another
roadhouse, on the road to Queensland, at a place called Barkly
Homestead which she remembered from before. She climbed down, had a
drink from the tap and climbed back up and slept again.

Next day,
somewhere in Queensland she left this truck, hunger having forced
her exit. She found a place to shower and change her clothes, then
bought a meal. Having eaten she found another different truck, this
time a goods truck, again empty except for furniture blankets. She
slept again for many hours, revelling in the comfort of her blanket
bed.