The Swan Book (26 page)

There were battalions of stink beetles crawling over each other and the salt. Plague grasshoppers jumped away at the coming of strangers. Moth storms swept across the lake. Crimson and orange chats whistled from the heath of spinifex, pittosporums, mulga and eremophila scrubs growing along the sides of the lake. The girl saw green twisting clouds of budgerigars crossing their paths at various times throughout the day. Up high, harriers and kites cried out as they glided in the thermals. To look back was to see fine salt crystals dusting over their tracks as little storms of salty filaments gurgled about in the desert air.

That was during the day. The salt glowed at night, and the body of the lake moved differently when the ancestral winds lowered themselves from the skies and whistled eerily across its surface. The night spoke in dreams which took the wandering thinker far below the surface, to be jostled in a spirit sea populated with the salt-encrusted bodies of millions of grasshoppers, shoals
of tiny fish bones, brine shrimps, larval fish like splinters of glass, colourless moths, seeds and stalks; grotesque bloated grunters, bony herrings, frogs, tadpoles and water birds that had perished in the increasingly saline waters, and been entombed when the water evaporated.

The girl dreamt of swans, chaotically misshapen creatures frozen in death that were forcing their spirits through films of salt to reach her during the night. Had they come searching for truth, but found encasement? She awoke from dreams where her fingers were red raw from trying to peel away the salt to straighten the pinion feathers of the swans and let them fly.

They passed through old times, coming through hillock after hillock covered in spinifex, of Country that had a serious Law story for every place, and of everything belonging to that place like family. The genies kept calling the names of these places which were thousands of years old, and which joined the Law stories of naming, titles of belonging, maps of exclusiveness that ran like this, throughout the continent. Oblivia kept quiet. Listened to the names. Tried not to think in case the spirits heard her and dragged her into their realm. She would not die on this country.

While the genies were drifting even further back into ancient times with their name calling, Warren Finch was making the equivalent leap into the future, and impatient to get a move on and back to his job of bloody well running the country, he told the genies to speed it up. They were getting out of here. Before the bloody country got fucked up good and proper by Horse.
That cunt of a man. Can't turn your back on him for a second.
The genies looked concerned, but not overly bothered, having seen it all before, on other occasions when they had to get him out of a jam. Tops! They might make him last another few days out in the bush. Yep! The boss! Too right! Power crawled like a pack of cut snakes
through his body. He was an addict to it. Addiction? They knew he wouldn't last long. Couldn't. They had seen the man explode if he was not in control. They knew that what was left for him was time. But, like the man said, he had work to do, and everyone knew how toey Warren could be if he didn't get a fix from being in charge, and feel the power surging through his blood. He would chase it down anywhere. Do anything to assert power.
Why couldn't he just chase that girl around a bit more? Crazy thing had his measure already.
Warren always thought it was a waste of time to hold up the entire country just for the sake of a few people getting in his way. Well! Bring it on. He knew it. They knew it. Impatience was a fact of life. Yep! Everything will be fine
. I will be fine. The girl will be fine.
He convinced himself of it.
She would grow up. Why wouldn't she? What else could she do?
He was bored of marriage already.

Doom, Mail and Hart understood the deal: they could only hold him up for as long as they could possibly get away with it. Already he had imbued every molecule of air with the stench of Horse Ryder. Rah! Rah! Rah! Can't keep still for a minute.
Can't stop talking about Horse Ryder.
But, even they thought he would maintain some interest in the girl he had taken. His keepsake. This little challenge he had set himself – a promise wife. They knew the threats on his life were real this time.
Why can't he take it seriously instead of worrying about what Horse is doing?
The girl saw an endless journey ahead in an unchanging landscape that they would continue walking forever. Just like ghosts! Perhaps they had already crossed over into that world. Would she escape? Do ghosts escape?

A day passed of counting the fluffy fledglings transforming into orange wash and white feathers that were hidden in the grasslands by the shores of saltpans while waiting to fly. The country was consuming the girl's memory. She could not carry the past and had to let some of it go. A few of her old messages
to her swans had returned from places that no longer existed – address unknown. The Harbour Master had come along and saw the burden she was carrying, and for a while, he walked beside her while trying to persuade her to give up some of her treasured nightmares. He sat around in the salt sorting out which thoughts should stay, which should go, telling her off for sending away anything he thought was really valuable. He was the kingmaker of policy too.
You always need a few of those bad thoughts to chuck around.
He kept telling her how he could not stand the sight of Warren Finch
. Look at him. Stalking along. Planning and scheming some other stupid thing – probably how he is going to kill you off since he is sorry he bothered with someone like you in the first place?
And the genies?
Mate! I know a ghost from the Middle East when I see one.

Maybe you are from the Middle East yourself,
the girl growled and walked away from the Harbour Master who was piling up her thoughts into salt columns of what was to be kept, and what cut loose.

This is not all we do,
Doom said, feeling that he ought to prepare the girl for their departure – once the owls left the desert after the rats perished in these hottest months.

There was a shop he owned, he said, in the city where she would live. She did not understand what he meant
. Cities are where people die.
That was what old Aunty always said about cities.
Illness places. You will be arrested for being a terrorist.
She wondered about what he said, and thought:
But I like it here now.
He looked at her sadly.
You could ask Warren about the city.
Could she ask him what would happen to her? Why would she do that? Speak!
To terrorists from the city?
The salt lands now became unreliable, temporary in her mind.
I specialise in many things. Birds. People. Books. I am not always there. Travel with the boss a lot. Love to spend time at the shop though,
Doom said.

He explained that he, Edgar and Snip were all involved in specialist trade and had the most beautiful shop in the city. It was the place where you could feel the country:
This place. I made a place in the city to hold my heart. Like this place.
He said that they sold birds, old butterflies from all over the world, exhibited rare eggs and feathers, bird books, snake books, musical instruments, traditional maps of routes and footpaths, maps for following foxes and bees, old instruments for finding dreams, stars, or fossils. This was the place to seek professional advice on cultural law, societies, myths and almost anything anyone needed to know of the human condition from Edgar, Snip or him –
the filler of ears, the purveyors of information.

She was to learn that Snip loved nothing more than selling his customers gadgets to find stars, and that Edgar Mail specialised in selling old sheet music he had collected from elderly men and women in the inner laneways of ancient cities. He also recorded and spent tireless hours publishing the music from these works. His own music was printed on the old printing press in this shop. They believed in their enterprise.
Our customers are people seeking knowledge about the world. Mostly from the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Australians? Not too many. We are specialists you know. You will probably want to visit us from time to time.

Oblivia tried to anchor these new pictures of the genies in her mind, but she had no idea of how to hold the details of what she had never seen. Their words died as soon as they were spoken and buried in her mind. She squinted in the sun, had to blink to see what lay ahead in the endless story of yellow lofty crags in salt lakes, owls, rats, snakes, when she saw a speck in the horizon of blue skies. Yellow! White! Blue! Black!

A Lake of White Water

A
lake of white water, not a mirage, lay far ahead. This was where she saw the swans. Black wings swirled down from the clear blue skies to skid across the water. The girl thought it was her dreams catching up with her, coming back in the daytime. She needed to run to see if these were her swans but knew not to, to watch from a distance the swans gliding on the white water,
while I glide swanlike…I glide and glide
. From the sides of her eyes she saw the hurdles. Warren Finch would see she had not forgotten the swamp. She never knew how the genies would react.

Questions surfacing in her mind about leaving ran from the girl, and disappeared into the vista of the white sea. She felt homesick, a terrible yearning to go home. She ran towards the swamp that wasn't there. The swans saw her coming over the salt, and before she had a chance to come anywhere in reach, they snapped loose her spirit from theirs, and took to the air. She watched until they were out of sight, flying further ahead, in a south-easterly direction.

Warren watched her run.
Sure! Sure! I'll be there.
He spoke loudly into his mobile phone.
I am ready. Let's do it.
His words caught her,
ran along the surface of her arms as she ran, and as though a net he threw had unfurled over her, she realised in this moment, that she was attached to him. She would never escape, even if she ran forever from a world that had fallen apart.

Doom tried to console the girl about the swans flying away.
They were not your swans. They are free birds.
They belong somewhere else. She felt residues of bad luck lurking inside of his voice. It was his bad luck that the swans had sensed, why they had flown. Around their feet, a little breeze picked up grains of salt with dead grass and carried these along, signalling the owls to start their retreat, back towards the east coast for the summer.
Most would not reach their destination,
Doom said sadly.
So much work done for nothing. Why breed?
He knew that they would all be gone that night.

Hare stew.

Meal fit for kings. And a queen. Eat before the lizards steal it.

The Milky Way lit the landscape, and Snip took the girl away from the campfire to give her a lesson about the night sky.
I think you will like it. There is something pretty special up there tonight.
She had learned a lot about the alignment of the planets from him. The genies often pointed to the path in the west where Venus would fall earlier each night, until in the winter nights it was Mars that was the first to fall.
Remember! Winter rains will fall on this land, and in the middle of the night, a cloud of mist will descend to touch the earth.

Remember to come back here,
Snip said, as they stood on a hill, staring at the sky.

The thought of returning seemed unlikely. She could not imagine how it would be possible.

These are the methods of positioning yourself for finding South,
he said, explaining that they were in the galaxy of the Milky Way that rose like smoke from the horizon until its river of stars ran directly above them. Their light rebounded off the salt and it was this
phenomenon that seemed to make the stars shine more brightly. He showed her how to position where she was by drawing a line through the Southern Cross and joining it to a line drawn to the halfway point from The Pointers.
This will form a V for you, and from there, if you draw a line down to the horizon, you will know where to find South.
Or another way, he explained, was by forming the same triangle by drawing an imaginary line down from the brightest star in the sky,
Canopus
, and across from the star
Achernar
which sits low in the southern sky.

However, this is not what I really want to show you,
he said, taking her hand, and pointing her fingers along with his into the northern world of the sky, he drew along the stars the outline of a swan in full flight.

Do you see it?

She nodded, seeing the swan's long head arching down towards earth.

That is the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. The star of its tail is a supergiant named Deneb. Look for it up along the Milky Way. If you can find it in the sky, you will be able to follow it North, until the weather becomes warm again.

She continued looking at the swan's changing position, wondering how she would remember to find it again.

Don't always look in the same place. He will move across the sky. Remember you will only see Cygnus at the onset of winter. Just like your swans I imagine.

In the darkness with a dying fire, they waited for the final moment when the earth opened the spinifex grassland abodes and the hands of the spiritual ancestors released the owls like pollen into the skies. The swooping waves of owls flew over their heads, the young travelling eastwards with their parents in a colony of thousands.

Men may do the same one day if they fear too much. Imagine it. Imagine a dust cloud travelling right through this country.
Snip's voice was almost a whisper, and in that moment, the clouds heralding the cool change appeared from the east, travelling in a westerly direction.

While the girl and Warren slept, the genies were searching for a few stray owlets in the spinifex. Doom said there had to be one or two that had not fledged. He promised one for Oblivia to keep as a pet.
In the morning I will have one for you,
he said. She thought of this owl while sleeping in a low-lying valley filled with white flowering lilies that shone in the starlight breaking through the clouds.