The garden was still boggy, but higher up on the ridge behind the house I found an old trail that meandered away into the bush. I ran along it, splashing through puddles, my breath finding its familiar rhythm. When the trail grew too rocky to run any more, I slowed to a walk.
Sometime later, the trail ended at a fallen tree. I climbed up onto the vast trunk and walked along until I reached its twisted root system.
Before me stretched the north end of the reserve, a bumpy blanket of hills and valleys and shadowy trees that rolled on forever. The blue-grey river snaked through its centre, carving stony beaches and deep gullies between the vegetation. The hiss of water drifted up, bringing with it the scent of damp leaves and mossy pebbles.
Tom’s words replayed in my mind. Sometimes you just know, don’t you? But was it a hunch that made me so sure the campground girl was Shayla Pitney? Was it a gut feeling that made me think she was in trouble that day, perhaps even running from someone who might have attacked her? Or was I simply up to my old tricks, obsessing over the past again and projecting my own fears onto the situation?
Sometimes you just know, don’t you?
From the moment I found her, I’d sensed something was wrong. Not just on account of her head wound, but because of the general strangeness of it all. A girl alone and injured, her hands scratched up and her knees skinned, her bare feet bruised and torn. As though she had run for miles through the bush, but why would she do that? And how had she come to be in such a remote area in the first place?
I pushed my fingers through my hair and found the scar, then massaged the lump as though it might release the answers. But, as usual, there were only more questions.
• • •
Every day for two weeks I had nagged my father to let me go on the school excursion to Deepwater Gorge. I had just turned twelve and was desperate to prove that I was not the person everyone at school seemed to think I was. But for each of those fourteen days, my father bluntly refused.
‘I need you here to mind your brother.’
‘Please, Dad. All the other kids are going. It’s for a project. If I don’t go, I’ll be left out.’
Not that I wasn’t already. While my school wasn’t exactly exclusive, the other kids all managed to turn up in uniforms that weren’t threadbare. They got new shoes when the old ones wore out, had textbooks that weren’t out of date, and schoolbags that weren’t held together with gaffer tape.
Not that I complained. Things had been tough for Dad since my mother walked out. One morning we’d come down to breakfast and found the note. It was addressed to my father, but he was too hungover to read it so I’d done the honours.
You drunken bastard, my mother had written. Any love I might have once had for you is dead. I’ve had my fill of your bullshit and I’m leaving. Don’t try to find me. If you do, the cops will nick you for violating the restraining order I’ve got. In a couple of weeks I’ll send for the kids as I know they cramp your selfish style. Bev
After she left, my eight-year-old brother refused to speak about her. Instead, he started shadowing Dad, who didn’t appear to mind. If Dad drove to the shop, Duncan went along for the ride. If Dad sat on the back verandah to smoke, his little shadow would be there holding the ashtray.
Despite my endless letters to relatives and whoever else I could think of, I was never able to trace Mum. An aunt said she’d moved to Canada. Dad never mentioned signing any divorce papers, but he must have because a distant cousin later told us that Mum had hooked up with another man and remarried.
We never saw her again. Without her, what remained of our small family fell apart. Dad withdrew; Duncan started getting into trouble. And I just seemed to fade into the worst version of myself. Which was why I nagged so hard about the excursion. I loved orienteering, especially when combined with bushwalking. If I could show everyone at school that I was good at something, maybe even really good, then they’d see past my ratty uniform and scuffed shoes. Past the broken bag and too-long hair; past the sticky-taped glasses. Past the dad who picked me up from school in a beat-up old Lancer, reeking of beer and stale cigarettes.
For once, they’d see the real me.
‘Please, Dad.’
But my nagging fell on deaf ears.
So when the orienteering excursion rolled around, I packed my haversack and set off on foot. I’d worked it all out the night before. Deepwater Gorge Reserve was about fifteen kilometres outside of town. If I left at dawn, I could walk there in two hours.
But it took way longer. And by the time I got to the reserve, my school group was gone. I was sweaty and footsore, but felt sure I could catch up. So I headed along the path into the trees, using my compass to navigate northwest towards the gorge. As I walked, thunder boomed in the distance and the first spots of rain began to fall. An hour later it was drizzling. My jeans stuck to my legs, my hair hung in dripping ropes and as I searched the rain-drenched trees, my heart sank into my soggy shoes. Which way led back to the campground?
‘Hey, you look lost.’
I whirled around. A man stood on the track. He wasn’t a teacher, and looked too young to be the father of any classmate. Maybe an older student who’d come along as a teacher’s aide, or someone’s big brother?
But as he swaggered closer, I knew he was none of those things. His jeans were dirty and the flannel shirt he wore was ragged at the collar and cuffs, clinging wetly to broad shoulders. His light brown hair was cut in a mullet, short all over the front and long down the back. He smiled, slow and wide, and my twelve-year-old heart began to kick like a wounded frog.
His eyes.
Blue as gems in the gloomy forest. So blue that even though I wanted to back away, even though a panicked voice in my brain was screaming at me to run, I could do nothing but stand there in the rainy glade, holding my breath. Trapped by that blue, blue gaze the way a spider traps a fly.
• • •
By the time I got back to the garden, my track pants were muddy and my runners sodden. I stopped under the big magnolia at the back of the house and began my post-run stretches. My skin was hot and damp and my lungs burned, but my head was clearer than it had been an hour ago.
I did manage to run that day in the forest. To stumble away and race through the trees, mud skidding and sliding under my feet, branches whipping my face. Later, I woke in an airless place, without knowing how I got there. My head hurt and when I pressed my hand against my scalp it came away sticky. The cold darkness gobbled up my cries, and unseen things invaded the corner of my mind where the nightmares lived. But there were other memories too. Vague and disjointed, like flecks of blue sky through the clouds. A warm hand clasping mine. Being wrapped in a blanket, fussed over. The crackle of police radios. Sipping thin black cocoa so hot it burned my tongue.
I leaned against the tree and looked up into the branches. Dots of early afternoon sunlight shimmered through the leaves. Nearby, a willie wagtail chirped her warning. In the bushes, Poe’s black tail lashed to and fro as he slunk away into the shadows.
As the sun winked and smiled through the magnolia canopy, it seemed perfectly reasonable that my own ordeal at the gorge all those years ago was fuelling my fears for the campground girl. There was probably a more rational explanation for her injuries than the one I had dreamed up. She had doubtless recovered and gone home. And Shayla was most likely with her father, as everyone thought, having a blast with him on the coast.
I propped my sodden runners in a sunny patch against the back of the house to dry and bounded upstairs to change, then went in search of breakfast. Tom was typing up a storm on the verandah, so I left him to it and spent a few hours on the internet, answering emails and catching up on the news. After lunch, I worked on Tom’s interview, fleshing out a few of my ideas and scrawling some new ones. At four o’clock I remembered my runners at the back of the house, and went to collect them.
As I did, I glanced up.
The afternoon sun glared against the rear wall, highlighting every tiny detail. The sandy texture of the old red bricks, and the vibrant green of the rambling happy wanderer vine that invaded them. Tom’s new solar panels gleamed against the mossy terracotta roof tiles, and directly below, in the window of my upstairs bedroom, a draft fluttered the faded gold curtains.
A little way across was another window I hadn’t noticed before. Higher up than mine, almost hidden by the roofline. It was tiny for a window, but not quite small enough to be an air vent. And were those bars?
I shielded my eyes from the sun. To the left of the little vent-window was a long bank of stained-glass panels; a room I hadn’t seen yet. Could that be the other half of my divided bedroom?
Back inside, I raced up the stairs to my room and went to the window. The brass latch and hinges were stiff with age but after some tugging and pulling, they gave way. Leaning out, I inspected the external wall. The tiny barred window was a couple of metres to my right and high up under the eaves. I leaned out as far as I dared, but could see nothing unusual. At least, not from the outside.
I went down the narrow hall and through the end door, entering a long room. The leadlight window reached from one end to the other and captured the afternoon sun. Light filtered through the grimy panes, painting the floor and walls with red and blue and green and deep rose red. In the centre of the room was a rustic table and three chairs. At the far end sat an old firebox, and beside it a crate of cobwebby split logs.
There was no sign of the little vent-window. From outside, it had seemed closer to my bedroom than to the bank of stained glass. Could there be another room between my bedroom and the room I was standing in now? There was no doorway leading into it from the hall. Was the entry in here?
I placed my hand on the wall that abutted my bedroom. Not smooth plaster, as I’d expected, but painted plywood. The grain was rough and cool, the white paint yellowed by age and years of wood smoke. I walked along the wall, thumping it with my hand. The panels echoed dully, then at the far end the wood echoed hollowly. I hit it again, harder. Behind the dusty panel, something metallic rattled. When I ran my fingers over the beading that joined the panels, I found a satiny patch where the join was worn smooth. I gave it a push, and something clicked on the other side.
Sliding the panel sideways, I exposed a heavy iron door. The key was still in the lock, but the door was ajar.
I went through into a small, dim room, similar in size to my bedroom. There was no ceiling light and no switch. High on the wall to my right was the tiny vent window, its bars black against the afternoon sky.
In the centre of the room was a single bed, its iron bedhead jammed against the far wall. Beside it was an overturned chair. I went over to a tattered curtain and drew it aside to reveal a makeshift bathroom. It had a sink plumbed with running water, but that’s where the modern conveniences ended. A large iron bucket with a wooden seat must have once been used as a toilet. On the floor beside it was a tin full of wood ash and a battered scoop.
Someone had once lived in here.
But why? Why would someone live behind a concealed iron door in a house as remote as Ravensong? And why the barred window? Was it there to keep someone from getting in, or to stop them from leaving?
I went over to the bed. The covers were flung back, the pillow dented as though someone had recently got up and gone. A blackish stain covered half the pillow, with a large shadowy discolouration beneath it on the sheet. I bent closer. In the dim light, it looked like a bloodstain. I traced my fingertips over the blackened fabric, found it as hard and unyielding as old leather.
I stepped away from the bed, and felt something by my foot: a child’s picture book. I picked it up. It was a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen called The Nightingale. Its cover was sticky with dust, dog-eared and worn. Going over to the window, I tilted the book to the light, wiping off the dust with my sleeve. The cover illustration showed a Chinese emperor dressed in red silk, looking at a tiny brown bird in a tree.
The other room was brighter so I went out and sat on one of the rustic chairs. Placing the book on the table, I turned to the first page and began to read.
The emperor of China was walking in his garden one day when he heard beautiful birdsong. Surprised to discover that the exquisite melody came from a plain little brown bird, he captured the nightingale and imprisoned her in a cage. For many years she was his greatest joy. But one day the emperor received the gift of a mechanical bird made of gold and studded with gemstones. He soon forgot the real nightingale and the little brown bird escaped her cage and flew back to her home at the edge of the garden.
After a year, the mechanical nightingale broke down. Despairing, the emperor fell ill. The court started making preparations for his death – but that night the real nightingale perched on the emperor’s window and revived him with her beautiful song.
Tucked into the back flyleaf of the book was a loose page. It wasn’t from the picture book. It was smaller and rippled with age and ragged along one edge as though torn from another book. Both sides were covered in minuscule handwriting.
Wednesday, 19th October 1949
For the past four months I’ve been praying for a miracle. I think this might be it.
He gave Lilly a book for her birthday. We’ve been reading it over and over. We read and read, but still the ending makes no sense to us. Why did Hans Christian Andersen think the nightingale would come back to save the emperor after what he put her through?
The story makes Lilly cry.
‘It’s us,’ she blubs through her tears. ‘We’re the nightingales. And him—’ She flings out her arm and jabs her finger at the door. ‘He’s the emperor who’s trapped us in his cage.’
Her words make me angry. Not because they are wrong, but because they ring so true. Why did he give us this book? What’s he trying to tell us, that we’re here to save him somehow? Or that he’s trying to save us?
Despite our fury over the story, we can’t stop reading it. Can’t stop poring over its pages, studying the illustrations, reading and rereading as if somewhere in the story lies our answer. The key to our escape. Our miracle.
Lilly nagged me all day. ‘Frankie, when will he let us out? He can’t keep us here forever.’
‘He’ll let us go soon,’ I told her with fake cheerfulness. ‘We’re getting so big he can’t afford to keep feeding us!’
But it’s a lie.
Poor Lilly. She was nine when we came here. Now she’s eleven. Sometimes it feels like barely a week has passed. Other times I’m Sleeping Beauty and a hundred years have sped by outside.
When I reminded him about Lilly’s birthday, he insisted on a cake. Baked it himself in the wood stove downstairs, the sweet aroma drifting up. We drooled all morning, imagining double layers with pink icing and candles, maybe even fresh cream. But when he brought it up on a good china plate and set it on the table in the bright room, it was just a sort of sultana damper glazed with honey.
‘I’m afraid it’s the best I could do,’ he said, seeing our crestfallen looks. ‘Everyone’s low on supplies. Blame the war, if you like.’
To save his feelings we put on a show of enjoying it and washed down the dry crumbs with hot cocoa. But I felt bad for Lilly. It’s no way to celebrate a birthday, locked in this stuffy cupboard. Even the bright room doesn’t make up for all the time we spend indoors. Lilly should be out in the sunlight, having a proper party, playing with other children her age. Going to school, doing normal things. Instead, she spends most of her time worrying about when he’ll finally crack and drag one of us down to the chopping block. And when she’s not worrying about that, she’s chewing the ends of her hair ragged with boredom. We both are.
One year and seven months we’ve been here now.
And every day the same.
We climb out of bed and wash ourselves, do each other’s hair. Drag the bucket to the door for him to replace. We do our star jumps and bending, leaping on and off the wooden trunk until our blood races. Then if we’ve been good, he’ll let us in to the bright room to have breakfast and soak up the sun. We love the bright room. The sun brings rainbows through the stained-glass and makes everything seem better than it is.
After breakfast we do the mending and other odd jobs he needs. We rip up squares of newsprint for toilet paper, or very occasionally we’ll get the soft tissue the apples come wrapped in, and then we’ll use the scissors to cut it up. We peel potatoes and such, but when I offer to help with the cooking downstairs, he declines. Upstairs is our domain, he says. At least for now. The rest of the house and the garden belong to him.
Most days he lingers with us, telling stories about when he was a kid living with his grandad. He tells good stories, but sometimes he gets a little heated. Raising his voice, jumping up from the table and waving his arms about. Not to scare us. He just gets swept away.
And then yesterday after the cake he went and spoiled it all by raving about the war. How he can still hear the guns in his head. Still hear the moaning and the screaming. He started tugging his hair; it’s so long now, past his shoulders, each lock black as a shadow that turns to ink in the sun. Sometimes it escapes the shoelace he ties it with and sticks out around his flushed face like the hair of a mad person.
Lilly cried herself to sleep again tonight. Before she drifted off she clung to my arm.
‘Do you think she’s forgotten us, Frankie?’
‘Who’s that, my love?’
‘Mum.’
I swallowed the lump in my throat, remembering the newspaper article about everyone giving up hope. ‘Mum would never forget us, Lilly-bird. How could she?’
‘Will she come for us soon?’
Again I swallowed, rolling the lie over my tongue. ‘You know, little Lil, I think she might. First she just needs to figure out where we are.’
‘What if she can’t?’
‘She will. Mum’s smart.’
‘But she’s always sloshed.’
I kissed her head and slid my arm around her skinny shoulders. ‘She’ll find us, Lilly. I promise.’
‘How do you know?’
I thought a moment. ‘You remember when we came here, that day in the truck?’
She nodded. ‘We wanted to see the birds.’
‘It seemed a long way, didn’t it?’
She blinked, and a tear dribbled down her cheek. ‘We drove for days.’
I sighed, taking her hand. ‘It was only one day. Which means we’re not so far from home. Sooner or later, Mum, or Mr Burg from school, or the police – someone – will find us.’
A nod, a watery smile, but she didn’t seem convinced.
‘Come on,’ I said, tucking her closer beside me and nodding at the window. ‘Take one last look at the moon, Lilly-bird—’
Lilly remained silent as we peered through the bars at the night sky.
‘Come on,’ I encouraged. ‘Say your part.’
She hiccupped a little sob. ‘And kiss the stars goodnight.’
She’s asleep now. The tears dried in grubby smudges on her cheeks, her pudgy fingers curled against her palm. I hate seeing her sad. My sweet baby sister, the tiny girl I once cuddled and cooed over like a doll. My brave Lilly-pilly, so clever, with our mum’s quick mind and beautiful voice. But all her funny little songs are stuck somewhere down inside her, unable to get out.
My poor little nightingale.
The bird in the story escaped its cage in the end. But we could be trapped here forever. Unless he gets bored and decides to kill us. Ever since we came here, I’ve been trying to find a way out, but tonight after Lilly’s crying, I feel more desperate. As though the air in here is getting thinner and thinner and soon we won’t be able to breathe.
As I wait for night to fall, my mind wanders once more through the story and how the nightingale won the emperor’s heart with her song. And just like that it comes to me: our way out. Like the nightingale in the story, I could win the heart of our emperor. Gain his trust, make him love me. And then, the very minute he lets down his guard, we’ll slip through the bars and fly away.