The Flyer (27 page)

The bush seemed bigger than it had before. The sun was brighter and higher. The wind not quite as harsh. Even the rickety sound of the creatures in the trees were less threatening than they had been the last time Helen had wandered through the gathering at the Fortescue River.

She’d checked on her patients from her visit two weeks ago, verifying that Nanara’s mother’s eyes were completely healed. Jayla and her husband had made as much of a recovery over the loss of their child as one might expect after only two weeks. The celebration was in fine form, and everyone was happy.

Or maybe they only seemed happy because Helen was. She couldn’t imagine looking onto the world right now and seeing anything other than pure bliss.

At the moment, she was tending to a man who had sliced his foot several days before her visit. As it was too infected to close with stitches, she had cleaned it and applied a balm. At the moment, she was dressing it with cotton gauze.

Paul was nearby, playing with a collection of sticks with a group of young girls. Every so often, her gaze would travel across the sandy ground and catch him looking at her, a smile perched on his soft, full lips. A rush of pleasure wound through her veins.

“Come quickly! Come quickly!” called a little boy who ran from the outside of the camp.

Paul leapt up from his game and caught the naked child in a two-handed grip around his shoulders. “What are you hollering about, Kaleb?”

“Djuru was climbing down into the gorge. The rocks fell on him. He isn’t moving,” Kaleb answered, tears running over his dusky cheeks.

Helen hurriedly finished bandaging the old man’s foot and gathered her things. “Kaleb? Can you take me there?”

The boy nodded.

She looked at Paul, who handed the child over to a woman who might have been his mother. “I’ll need a few strong men to go with us in the event Djuru can’t climb out on his own.”

“Of course,” Paul responded, already moving in the direction of Blue and several others.

Within a short time, a rescue party had been formed, and they began to trek through the sparse forest.

More than an hour passed, and they had yet to reach the site. Sweat soaked her shirt, making the thin fabric stick to her flesh. No matter how many times she pulled it free, it would once more plaster to her skin.

“Here.” Paul handed her a canteen for the tenth time since they’d left camp. “You haven’t been drinking enough.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, putting the warm metal rim to her lips and swallowing a mouthful of tepid water. “Do you think it’s much farther?”

“Hard to say,” he grunted as he climbed over a rock, then bent to help her over it.

“Jiminy Crickets, if they left from camp, it can’t be much longer, can it?”

“They were hunting.” Paul shrugged his wide shoulders. “The hunters can follow any number of game into these hills for more than a day, easily. But I think we’re close. Kaleb didn’t travel overnight to get back.”

“How do you know for sure? For all we know, he could have run for days to reach the gathering.”

“Nah. He doesn’t have any brambles in his hair, and the paint on his back hasn’t rubbed off. It was a day trip at most.” He glanced down at her, his crooked smile firmly in place. “What?”

“I can’t help it. You amaze me sometimes.”

“Amaze you? I can’t see that. I’m just an ordinary bloke in an extraordinary world, that’s all.”

“No, there’s something about you that makes everyone feel … safe.”

“I don’t care about anyone else, love. I want you to feel safe, that’s all.”

“Here!” The boy scrambled up the face of a huge boulder, his bare feet like suction cups on the rock.

If Helen had to climb that, she was in trouble. “Paul, I think I might need a little help up the side of that rock.”

“You’re not climbing the rock, Doc.”

She frowned. “Of course, I am. I have to get down to where he fell.”

“No worries. Me and the boys will climb down and bring him back up to you.”

“No, you can’t.” She tossed her bag onto the rocky ground and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I need to assess him first. If he has broken bones, I’ll need to set them. You can’t just haul him out like a sack of potatoes, for crying out loud.”

“There is no way I’m lowering you down over that ledge.” Paul tipped his hat back on his forehead and crossed his arms.

“You don’t have a choice.” She planted her feet and mimicked his posture. “I’m the doctor.”

“Listen up, Doc. On the other side of that rock is a drop-off more than eight hundred feet high. The ledge isn’t smooth, either. It’s cut with thousands of pieces of sandstone. Loose sandstone.”

Helen swallowed. “Eight hundred feet?”

“Aye. And that’s not all. There are all amounts of creatures living in the crevices. Spiders, for one.” He raised an eyebrow.

She took a deep breath and steeled herself against the shivers that permeated her very bones. “I’ll still have to try. Now, give me a boost, will you?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Fine. I’ll have some of the others do it.” She picked up her bag and stomped to where Blue stood, looking at the smooth boulder. “Blue, can you and the others help me scale this rock?”

Blue looked at Paul over his shoulder.

“Don’t look at him. I don’t need his permission! Will you or won’t you? Your son’s life is at stake.”

“It’s a dangerous fall,” Blue mused.

“I’m aware of that. Please, we haven’t much time.”

Paul appeared at her side. “If anyone is going to hoist your delicious little ass up this rock, it’s going to be me,” he whispered into her ear, so closely that the moist heat of his breath made her shiver.

She adopted his half grin and started to climb.

A moment later, with Paul’s help, she reached the top and glanced over the edge.

Eight hundred feet looked more than eight million from her vantage. A ledge grew from the side of a cliff that was nearly straight up … and down. Vertigo made her vision blur, then spin. She closed her eyes and pulled herself back over the edge.

“Rethinking things a bit, are you?” Paul quipped from below.

“No. Throw me the rope.”

“Are you cracked, woman? Climb down from there so we can get him the bloody hell out.”

“Paul, will you listen to me? I’m lighter. I can already see his leg is broken. He’s in shock. I’ll need to treat him before we even bring him up the face of the cliff. You can’t do it. But you can haul me up when I’ve finished.”

“She makes sense, Paul. With Djuru’s weight, and yours … It would be easier for the lady to go down,” Kadin replied.

“We’re wasting time, Paul. Toss me the rope.”

For a moment, he looked as though he would refuse, but ultimately he threw a rope to her. She began to tie it around her waist, but Paul stopped her, climbing the rock and straddling the ledge next to her. “Like this,” he huffed.

He ran the rope through her legs, looping it around her waist, then back through her legs again. In the end, she sat in what amounted to a rope swing. “Do not let go of the rope, do you hear me? Not for one second.”

She nodded, swallowing hard.

“Helen? Are you certain about this?”

“I am. I’ll be fine. Really. I just won’t think about spiders.”

Spiders.

Paul growled, but gently lowered Helen over the edge of the cliff. “Put your hand just there … on that branch. No, the other one,” he directed.

What was it about Helen and her infernal idea that she could do anything she wanted that made his blood boil? She should have let him go down the face. He shouldn’t have let her. Most women were perfectly content to let their men make decisions for them. He had to fall in love with a woman who had her own mind and knew how to use it. “Put your foot on the ledge to your right. Your other right, love.”

He wouldn’t be able to breathe until she was safely back on solid ground and not hanging from a rope eight hundred feet from certain death. Sweat poured over his forehead while he struggled to keep the rope steady.

Directly behind him, Blue held to a portion of the rope, sliding it forward when Paul called for more slack. “A bit more now, mate. She’s almost there.”

The rope cut into his hands, the rough hemp burning his fingers.

“There. She’s landed,” Paul announced, the relief in his heart almost more than he could bear. “Tie yourself off to the largest section of the tree before you do anything else, Doc.”

“I will,” she returned, her voice sounding a million miles away.

“I hate this. I really hate this,” he mused aloud.

“What do you hate?” Blue asked.

“I’m sorry, mate. It’s your boy down there. It’s hard on you, too.” Paul stretched his back, loosening the muscles for when he would have to haul Helen and Djuru back up the rock face.

“My son is a man. He makes his own choices. He’ll be fine.”

“How can you be so sure? The Ancestors talking to you again?” Paul forced a small smile before peering over the edge. Helen was checking Djuru’s pulse. He was awake, and they spoke to each other in low voices he couldn’t hear.

“They’ve told me nothing about this. But they’ve told me about your woman. And you.”

“Too right. And what have they said about me?” Paul wasn’t certain he was supposed to know. He leaned over the edge. “Are you nearly ready, Doc? You’re making me more than a little nervous up here!”

“Nearly. Another few minutes.”

Blue joined him at the ledge. “You have to give her the time she needs. Her path is different from yours. You can’t force her to love you. You must let her come to you.”

“What are you talking about? I just want her to come off the ledge.”

Blue laughed. “The Ancestors don’t talk to me in our time. They have a time of their own.”

“I don’t want to wait. I want her now.” He ran his fingers through his hair and replaced his slouch. He checked on Helen again. She was tying the rope around Djuru’s waist and groin just as he’d tied it around hers.

“She will come to you when the road ends. In the rainbow of time, but you must allow her to find her way.”

“What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

“We’re ready!” Helen yelled.

Paul and the others positioned themselves carefully and braced themselves for the weight. After a few moments of struggling, they pooled their efforts and hoisted Djuru to the top. In pain and unable to even speak, Djuru could do little more than hiss when they laid him gently on the soft ground.

Next, they brought up Helen. She wore a huge smile on her beautiful face, her eyes full and bright. She lived for this. Spiders or no spiders.

Paul would have to learn to accept it. Because he lived for her.

“I’ve set his leg with a temporary splint, but we’ll need to get him back to Port Hedland as quickly as possible,” Helen whispered. “If we sit him at an angle, he should fit in the plane with me just fine.”

Blue stood over his son with a grim expression in the aged lines of his face. “He is a strong boy.”

“Yes, he is. He isn’t out of the woods yet, but I think he’ll recover in time.”

“He is my only son.” Blue raised his gaze from his son to Helen. “Did you know that?”

She offered a smile meant to comfort. “I didn’t.”

“The Ancestors show me many things in the Dreaming. They told me you would come. They told me my son would come back. They didn’t show me this.” He sat on the ground next to Djuru’s bedroll and brushed one shaking hand in the air over the younger man’s face.

In the distance, a mysterious noise chirped. Helen frowned, looking over her shoulder, trying to see into the black of night. “What is that?”

“They are playing a healing song for my son,” Blue answered without opening his eyes. “It is what I would do for them.”

Curious, Helen left the glowing ring of light cast by the fire and followed the sound. When the music stopped, she continued in the same direction. Several feet away, she found another fire circle, this one populated only with men. The light danced among the trees, bringing the otherwise sedentary trunks to life among the shadows. Each of the men had stripped to the waist, their dark bodies painted with the same stripes and dots she’d seen on her first visit. Their long, thick hair had been slicked back with white mud. The expressions on their faces were both solemn and wise; at the same time, they were hopeful and proud. On the far side of the fire, she found Paul. His bare chest bore the same designs as the others. His blonde hair fell to his shoulders, loose and free. Like him.