Bitterwood, June 1993
Ducking through the low doorway, I continued on my way into the heart of the icehouse. The air was so cold it felt moist on my skin, the darkness so dense it deadened my torchlight. I shuffled into the room, pushing aside strings of cobwebs. Thunder echoed dimly through the thick walls. Earth and grit sifted from between the roof beams. I trained my light on a spot near the entryway.
Long ago, I had spent the night in this place. A dark night, in the company of spiders and cockroaches, rats. And . . .
The torch wavered in my hand.
Memory froze me in place.
That distant night, I had stumbled backwards and come to rest on that spot, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. Scrabbling my legs, trying to disappear, arms locked around my shins, my face pressed into my knees. I had not cried, hadn’t made a sound. Was too scared. Just breathed, and tried to think, think of anything. Tried to think lovely thoughts. I had told myself a story, I remembered. One of my father’s fairytales from the days before he got published. Picturing myself as the fearless princess who disguised herself in a bearskin to rescue her prince. Over and over I told it, as though it had the power to ward off the terrifying vision on the opposite side of the cramped room.
I shone my torch at the centre of the floor. Set into the flagging was a large rectangular grate. Beneath it was a shallow drain which had once carried away the meltwater produced by stored blocks of ice. Once allowed me to escape this place.
The torch beam crawled. Slowly, to the other side.
There, in the corner.
Not a pile of discarded bricks after all. Not a bundle of old rags.
But someone. A small someone, slumped on the floor, back against the wall as though sleeping.
I went over. The skeleton was delicate, the jumble of small bones blurred by dust, collapsed within the decayed confines of what had once been a girl’s dress. There were shoes, and a long thin strip near the skull that might once have been a ribbon.
I kneeled beside her. ‘Orah.’
My voice whispered around the walls. As though in answer, muffled thunder cracked somewhere overhead. The tremor that followed drew a shudder from the support beams around me. More earth rained down from the ceiling, drawing my gaze upwards. Solid, I told myself. The icehouse had already endured more than a hundred years. It would not collapse now.
A network of spider webs, as fine and white as silk, shrouded her bones – connecting a shoulder blade to the wall, lacing between delicate finger bones, creating a veil over her ribs and spine.
Who was she, really? She had survived a shipwreck, lost her mother in the dark water. Clung to a lifeboat until the early hours of what must have been a terrifying night. She had been rescued by a boy she came to love. She had gone to live at Bitterwood, and filled two empty hearts with hope. How glad she must have been to discover her father alive, only to plunge into bitter disappointment when he left in the night without saying goodbye.
And then, her fall.
I could see Hanley gathering her from the rocks below the headland, rushing with her back to the house. Weeping quietly over her stillness as he laid her on the doorstep, promising that everything would be all right. But it hadn’t been all right. She had died of her injuries, and Edwin had brought her to this icy crypt, locked her in the darkness, kept her here for more than sixty years. He had guarded her memory, and then, when he knew that his own death was near, he’d burned the album containing her image. Burned away all trace of her – or so he’d thought – to stop anyone wondering, asking questions. To stop them uncovering what he’d done.
Thunder rumbled outside and more rubble sifted from the ceiling. Still, I lingered. It seemed infinitely sad to think of this bright girl entombed here, while year after year and only a few feet above, butterflies danced in the wildflowers, and the song of the ocean drifted up from the cliffs below.
My fingers tightened around the ruined bracelet in my hand.
Understanding came in a rush.
Mum had been here that day. She’d been inside the icehouse. Located the keys, perhaps, or simply discovered the door unlocked and gone in.
Where she had found the remains of a young girl.
She would have known it was Edwin’s doing. Because who other than my grandfather had keys to this subterranean place? No wonder she had been in such a rush to find my father; no wonder she had slipped on the headland in her haste to return to the cottage and find him. No wonder she’d been careless on the rocks where I had told her he might be—
I thought about my dream. About the crushing guilt it always inspired in me, bringing with it the echo of my mother’s voice, drifting from far away.
I’m trapped here, Lucy. Why did you lie?
Loosening my fingers, I looked down at the bracelet in my palm.
It hadn’t really been my mother’s voice calling through my dreams. Just my own guilty conscience laying blame where no blame belonged.
Into the darkness, a whisper.
You only see what you want to see, Lucy . . . If you believe something to be a certain way, then that’s exactly how it appears to you.
The truth, I realised, wore many masks. Eyes were deceptive, seeing what you told them to see. The heart, on the other hand, never lied.
Somewhere in the dark behind me, the wind murmured against the walls. I became aware of a muffled scraping and tearing. The wind picked up, and I wondered if it had caught the door and was preparing to slam it shut. But the tearing noise increased, as though the earth itself was splitting down the middle. Soil and gravel began to rain around me, falling faster and thicker than it had before. I shone my torch to the rafters and saw a steady stream of dirt and small stones sifting down.
It was time to go.
Lifting the ribbon from around my neck, I drew out the gold heart charm and placed it on the floor beside Orah. Next to it I laid the bracelet chain with its tiny padlock clasp. Then I got to my feet.
‘I hope you found Warra,’ I whispered. ‘Wherever you are, I hope you’re loved.’
Then I turned and, feeling somehow lighter in my spirit, I hurried out.
Taking the steps two at a time, I ran up along the passage towards the open doorway. As I reached it, part of the roof collapsed behind me and a beam swung down, striking my arm, knocking the torch from my hand. I staggered through the doorway, bursting out into the garden, only stopping when I got to the edge of the orchard.
Soaked to the skin with rain and whipped by the wind, I hugged my arms around my body and looked back. As I did, lightning lit the sky. The scene burned into my eyes. The verdant green hillock. The churning clouds behind. The rain lashing sideways, driven by the wind. At the centre was the dead oak, its silvery trunk leaning on an angle, its bare branches quivering. As the world went dark again, the great trunk groaned, listing further over. Roots split and tore from the ground, spraying soil and stone. The tree gave a shudder, and finally fell. With a violent crash that seemed to shake the world, it collapsed onto the hillock.
The rain began to lash harder. The wind hurled a cloud of leafy grit into my face, but I held my ground, transfixed as another lightning flash illuminated the wreckage.
Beneath the oak’s heavy trunk, the knoll had collapsed. Where there had once been a mound, was now only a bank of rubble and shattered branches. The icehouse door lay on the path, its sturdy timber frame skewed around it. The icehouse was gone. The passageways under the hillock that had once led underground, the thick walls insulated with sawdust and stone, the rock ceiling upheld by support beams, and the silent chamber at its heart – all now buried beneath a heavy load of stone and debris.
Where the bones of a lost girl were finally at rest.
While the storm raged outside, I sat in Edwin’s office by candlelight, staring at the strongbox set into the wall. The power was out, the telephone had gone dead. I had navigated my way through the dark kitchen by the glow of embers in the Warmray, found a stash of candles in the pantry, and then gone upstairs to change my sodden clothes for dry ones. I found a first aid box, using what was inside to disinfect and then bandage my arm. Nothing felt broken, but bruises were already blooming and the skin along my forearm was grazed where the beam had struck it.
All the while, Basil had trailed behind me, meowing fretfully. He now sat on the desk enjoying a wash, apparently unbothered by the rumbling thunder outside.
The icehouse keys were still in my pocket. I took them out. Crumbs of soil still clung to the large brass key where I had used it to dig the bracelet from the icehouse floor. I set that one aside – I wouldn’t need it anymore. I had assumed that both keys belonged to the icehouse, but as I examined the smaller one, I couldn’t help wondering.
It fitted perfectly.
I turned the strongbox handle, and with a whisper of metal on wood, the door opened. The emptiness inside was a shock. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d been expecting. Jewellery. Bundles of cash. Silver candelabras.
A box of secrets.
Anything but emptiness. I shone the candle into the cavity, just to confirm what I was seeing. Then the soft light caught the edge of what at first I thought was a book. On closer inspection, I found it was a slim bundle of papers tied with black ribbon.
A shiver of anticipation flew across my skin.
They were letters.