Elizabeth threw herself into Daniel’s arms as he climbed the verandah steps. He brushed back her hair, a bemused smile playing on his lips.
‘I’ve been gone three weeks, Lizzie – not three years.’ His smile changed to an expression of tender concern. ‘Lizzie? What’s all this about?’
She pulled away, composed herself, then captured him with earnest eyes. ‘Darling, you must listen to me.’
Lizzie confessed her suspicions about Belle and Luke in a great outpouring, the words flowing unchecked, right there on the verandah, before he’d even set foot in the door.
Daniel didn’t want to believe it. He denied the possibility, even reprimanding her for allowing imagination to get the best of her. But a final, searching look at his wife’s troubled face convinced him. Relocating the tigers took on a fresh urgency. It would also serve as a pretext to separate the young lovers.
Daniel planned to lead Luke, along with Bear and the tigers, into the mountain wilderness. Years ago, he’d explored deep into the ranges, guided by an old musterer named Billy. As a boy, Billy’s Aboriginal mother had taught him to navigate the remote maze of canyons, caves and undisturbed forests lying to Binburra’s north.
Daniel’s favourite place was a rocky pass, enclosed on either side by sheer walls of stone, which were striped and patterned with shadows, fringed with jagged sandstone battlements. This was Loongana Warraroong – the Pass of the Tiger, and thylacines used to be common there. Billy said that, once upon a time, the pass led to a track down the escarpment, an entrance to a vast, lost valley where families hunted abundant game and walked for weeks without reaching its limit. What was it Billy said? ‘A place hidden from everything but sky.’ Then an earthquake blocked the way, sealing the valley within colossal, unscalable cliffs.
‘I can show you how to get down to the valley,’ said Billy. The pass walls were honeycombed with caverns, filled with paintings and rock carvings. Into a cave they went. To Daniel, it had looked like all the other caves. But as they progressed into its dim recesses, it led sharply down. Ancient steps lay carved in limestone. After half an hour of climbing in near-darkness, they stood on the valley floor. Daniel had looked up, staggered by the sheer size of the cliffs rising around him, forming an impenetrable natural fortress. It was to this place that Daniel would bring the tigers.
‘You must go at once, my love,’ urged Elizabeth, when he told her his plan. ‘Before it’s too late.’
‘I wonder if the cubs will follow us,’ said Daniel that evening in his library, after he’d told Luke of his idea.
‘Of course they will.’ Luke could barely contain his excitement. ‘They’re completely bonded to Bear. We’d better give them time to rest up in the middle of the day and, where possible, travel with the moon at night. I wager we’ll not lose them.’
Daniel’s expression turned grave. ‘There’s one more thing, Luke. My wife tells me you’re overly fond of Belle, and she of you.’
The guilt clouding Luke’s face gave him away.
‘This must stop, of course,’ said Daniel. ‘There’s no future in it. Unfair it may be, but such a match is impossible.’
‘I understand, sir,’ said Luke, feeling like a fraud. He’d not give Belle up this time, not even for Daniel.
At midnight Luke met Belle in the stable to say goodbye. The round moon, framed in a high window, lit the space with a soft radiance. She lay wrapped in his arms, while warm, sleepy puppies pressed against them.
‘I wish I could come with you to Tiger Pass.’ Belle traced his lips with her finger. ‘I asked Papa, but he said no. He hardly ever says no.’
‘Your father suspects something between us.’ Luke ran his fingers through her chestnut hair. ‘He warned me off.’
‘Did he?’ Belle sat up. ‘Don’t you dare let him spoil things.’ She kissed him in sweet, slow motion, stirring his blood.
‘Nobody will tear us apart.’ He pulled her close. ‘I’ll find a way to marry you, Belle. I promise.’
Luke and Daniel left on foot the next day at dawn. The terrain would soon become too rugged for horses. Bear wore a pack and carried his share of provisions. Daniel half-expected the young tigers to run off on release. Instead they stayed close to Bear, slipping easily into old patterns, rippling like shadows through the foggy forest. It was only out here that the perfection of their camouflage became apparent.
Ten years had passed since Daniel had last navigated these forests, and he surprised himself with his sure memory of the land. They stopped for lunch by the banks of a stream. Luke shared some mutton with the animals. The cubs curled up for a nap in the sheltering roots of an old King Billy pine. Daniel and Luke hardly talked, each lost in private thoughts.
For three days they travelled, forging higher and higher into the ranges. As they climbed, their voices loosened, and Daniel told Luke about the bounty scheme. It mystified Luke that, for a pound, so many men wanted to destroy these rare tigers that he and Daniel sought so fervently to protect.
The animals grew more bewilderingly beautiful as they moved through the ancient forest. Playing against a backdrop of paperbarks. Slinking across moss-encrusted logs. Paddling in crystal streams. The cubs graced the elemental landscape, utterly completing it.
Daniel knew their strange journey – humans in companionship with thylacines – could never be repeated. Such extraordinary coincidences had led to this alliance. And now the thylacine stood at the very edge of the extinction precipice. Luke, too, seemed filled with melancholy. They travelled in meditative silence, experiencing a heightening of their senses: a poignant, ever-deepening connection to the land.
At mid-morning on the fourth day they reached their destination. The sun shone warm in a cloudless sky. With Bear and the tigers bounding on ahead, they entered the pass. The first thing Luke noticed was the stillness. He’d never been to a cathedral, but imagined it might feel something like this. Pale purple shadows softened the cliffs’ jagged edges, and the air hung heavy in the silence. Luke felt the awed reverence of a pilgrim.
A river ran through the ravine, narrow at times, then widening into a chain of dark, rocky pools. At the end of the pass it plunged, a topaz cascade, down a bottomless cliff. Tiger Pass was, in fact, a little hanging valley suspended high above a vast natural amphitheatre. For the longest time Luke simply looked, the scene one of such majesty that he couldn’t absorb it all at once.
They retraced their steps, passing dozens of small caves peppering the rock walls. Daniel stopped beside a tall Huon pine. A thousand years before Christ was born, the little pine seedling had taken root beside this nameless river. Growing through the infinitely slow passage of centuries, weathering wind and sun and rain, until its twisted trunk rose sixty feet into the sky. It had served as a landmark for animals and humans alike, but the hunting parties were gone now. The ancient tree arched its branches in supplication, trailing pendulous, feathery foliage across the rocks as if to wipe away their tears.
‘This is it.’ Daniel pointed to a large cave formed by an overhanging granite shelf near the base of the pine.
In they went, followed by the inquisitive animals. Looking up, Luke saw dozens of drawings on the rocks, handprints and concentric circles. People sheltering in this cave system over thousands of years had mixed ochre with their own blood to make these timeless images. As they ventured further in, the painted likeness of a thylacine gazed eerily down on them.
At the rear of the cave a fissure opened up in the floor, leading to a precipitous pathway. Daniel lit a pair of candles and gave one to Luke. King, with the keen, wide eyes of a night hunter, leapt surely down, and they all followed. Bear brought up the rear, his bulky frame almost becoming wedged in the narrow gap. With an enormous wiggle and whine he managed to squeeze after the others.
Flurries of tiny squeaking bats swarmed round their ears and vanished into the void. Water dripped from the roof. Points of cold light, furnished by a myriad of glow-worms, illuminated the clammy walls. A filigree of green and gold lichen crept over the rocks. Just as Daniel said, crude steps were carved into the steepest parts.
After a difficult descent, they emerged from the base of the cliff through a leathery curtain of gumleaves. Now they stood on the valley floor. Luke looked up. Above the cave entrance, vertical cliffs towered hundreds of feet into the sky. Stands of beech opened into protected, grassy glades. A startled mob of fat, grazing pademelons bounded into the sheltering forest. The young tigers showed a keen interest in their traditional prey. Uttering high-pitched yips and with quivering jaws, they took off after the fleeing wallabies. Only when Bear failed to join the hunt did they circle back.
Strange, beehive-shaped domes were clustered at the edge of the sandstone escarpment. ‘This was once part of an ancient inland lake,’ said Daniel. ‘Its bed gouged from the wilderness by long-vanished glaciers. Weather eroded the soft sandstone, revealing these wind-carved towers of iron.’
Despite Daniel’s explanation, Luke couldn’t shake the feeling that the odd terraced towers were sculpted by an invisible human hand.
They set up camp in a cave a mile further west, at the bottom of the waterfall, beside its deep, reflective pool. It provided an ideal base for the youngsters to be reintroduced into the wild. Their plan was to keep Bear and the cubs hungry, thereby encouraging them to seek their own food.
On the first night, the animals stayed close by. Morning found them sound asleep in the ferny nest Luke had made for them at the rear of the cave. They slept the day away, while Luke explored with Bear, familiarising the dog with his new surroundings.
As afternoon wore into evening, the hungry cubs awoke. They hung around the camp for a while, unsuccessfully begging for food. Then King trotted off into the forest, followed by his sisters. Bear whined, watching them go, then gave his customary sharp bark and took off after the cubs. Luke grinned at Daniel. Now all they could do was wait and hope that Bear would bring them safely home by morning.
At first light the animals emerged from the mist, bellies distended, and snuggled down in their bed to sleep. Bear sat companionably with Luke for a few minutes. Fresh blood spattered his chest. Before long, he too curled up and slept.
This became the pattern of their days. The animals hunting nightly. Daniel and Luke exploring, collecting specimens and sketching rock paintings. Late winter sun shining in a cloudless sky. The cliffs reflected its warmth so it almost felt like spring. Luke’s worries faded into the background: grief over Angus’s death, guilt over his forbidden love affair with Belle – how could one worry in such a paradise? He could stay like this forever.
After an idyllic fortnight, Daniel announced it was time for him to return to Binburra. ‘I’ll be back in a few weeks. Once the tigers are settled, we’ll dynamite the cave entrance up at Tiger Pass to seal off the valley. I want you to search for signs of other thylacines. My hope is that our cubs might mate with wild tigers to form a safe breeding stock.’
Luke nodded, thrilled to be appointed to such an important task. The prospect of living rough with the animals as his sole companions didn’t daunt him. Bear was no longer the only one torn between two worlds.