THE INTERLOPER TURNED AROUND, considered us.
I hadn’t seen him since I was a child. Couldn’t quite believe I was seeing him now, but I recognised him straightaway: the clear brow, the piercing eyes, the thick beard. He was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a leather strap, an array of tools and weapons on his waist.
He seemed in pretty good shape for a feller who’d been dead for years.
‘Andulka.’
He walked back over to where we lay.
He knelt beside Danny, took hold of his wrist, leaned closer, listened to his chest. Looked across at me, a brooding power in his glance.
‘This the Jangala boy?’
Was, I thought miserably, nodding. Pity you came too late.
From his belt he pulled out a little paperbark roll. As he opened it I caught a glimpse of its contents: bones, rosin, quartz crystals the size of duck eggs, a pearl-handled dagger, a hair-string ball.
I sat and watched.
He plucked a pair of feathers from somewhere—the air?—placed them on Danny’s lifeless eyes. His hands touched together lightly, then parted to reveal a thin flame flickering on his upturned palms. He blew on the flame, then lowered it onto the boy’s chest, where it seemed to settle for a moment, then vanish.
Suddenly he got active. He began to pummel Danny’s body—shoulders, legs, arms. He rubbed the abdomen and thighs, his elbows working vigorously. Like he was channeling an amateur physio in a bush footy league.
A swelling appeared under the boy’s ribs. I frowned, puzzled. The lump became the focus of Andulka’s attention. He pressed it, squeezed it, lowered his mouth to it and sucked noisily. He closed his eyes, chanted, and then—or so it seemed to my dazzled eyes—reached into the tumescence and drew out a crystal.
Took a few steps away from Danny, hurled the crystal away to the west.
He turned back to the boy and squatted, eyes closed, humming lightly. Finally he stood up and turned to me. ‘He want water, he cured proper.’
Cured? Christ, he was hopeful.
Danny was dead. Like everything and everybody else connected to this disaster.
I let my eyes and mind drift out over the eastern plains, lose themselves in the smoke still billowing up from the wreck below. I wondered whether I should climb down and see if any sign of life remained down there. Thought of all the things they’d done; decided not to bother.
I should be getting back though, I supposed. Alerting the authorities, those of them who were still alive.
Then I heard a soft groan.
Looked across at Danny. His mouth moved, ever so fleetingly. My heart skipped. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He put a hand to his face, rubbed his eyes and blinked, shook his head. I crawled across to him on my knees.
‘Emily?’ he whispered.
‘My god.’
‘Wha’s happening?’
My tongue was frozen.
‘Anything to drink round here?’ The words resonated with a clarity and focus I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. ‘I’m perishin.’
Half an hour later Danny and I were sitting in the front seat of the blue Rover. His head was swathed in the bandages I’d found in a first-aid kit in the glove box, but he was breathing with relative ease. He moved to one side, touched the window, groaned with pain. I fired up the motor, glanced back at Andulka.
‘Gotta get the boy to hospital. You won’t come back with us?’
He shook his head. ‘Not my place.’
‘Mob of whitefellers sniffin round here in an hour or two-you want your privacy, you better bugger off.’
As we moved away, Andulka put a hand on the sill, leaned into the cab.
‘What I bin say to you one day? Take time, listen to country?’ His voice was loud, like that of a man who’d spent too much time on his own. He inclined his head. ‘Look like you getting there.’
He tapped the vehicle. I put it into gear, moved off.
I thought about old Gypsy’s lament for the songs of her country. Maybe they were being broken, those songs. Maybe the forces bearing down on them were irresistible.
But which of us could say?
Maybe the music was more subtle, more durable, than we gave it credit for. Andulka sure as hell hadn’t given up.
And as long as that remained so, there was hope for us all.
I touched the brake. Called back at him, ‘Not doing too bad yourself, old man!’
He might have grinned, but I couldn’t be sure. He turned away and began methodically working his way back down the hill, the open plains ahead of him.