Winter came soft-footed, bringing mild blue-sky days, and crystalline views across the range. The forest showed a different face: muted, gentler. Gathering strength for the fertile eruption of spring. Kim had forgotten how much she loved this time of year in Tingo. Clear mornings, cool nights. No more uncomfortable humidity. Leeches and ticks in abeyance, mosquitoes and flies as well.
Kim and Taj still worked together. Their passion for the job of rewilding remained, and the dingo project was proving to be a success. Since their release a month earlier, the animals remained elusive, but all indications showed they were thriving. And they weren’t just living on rabbits. Taj had shown her several kills: wallabies and a goat. Her fears for the dingoes had so far been unfounded, yet Kim still missed them.
She also missed her old relationship with Taj. Although physically there, he wasn’t available in the same way as before. He stuck strictly to business. He didn’t stop to point out sleepy koalas or decorated bowers or roosting owls. He didn’t forget himself and indulge her boundless curiosity with snippets about his old life. He found no excuse to touch her.
She wanted their old rapport back, the close connection and easy banter. This new Taj was tightly controlled, formal, always on his best behaviour. It was what she’d asked for, she knew that, but perversely it was driving her mad. She even missed their arguments.
‘Should we go get another tankful?’ she said, spraying the last seedling of the waving field they’d just planted.
Taj shook his head. ‘They’ve all been well watered.’
Kim stuck her finger in the soil. ‘I’m not so sure. Winter’s our driest season. It might not rain for a while.’ Taj stopped spreading mulch around the roots of a little cassowary pine and headed for the ute. ‘Where are you going?’ asked Kim.
‘To get another tank of water.’
‘But you said we didn’t need it.’
He swung to face her, his expression unreadable. ‘And you said we did.’
‘Bloody hell, Taj. Since when do you do what I say?’ She lightly punched his arm in frustration. There it was, that inexplicable frisson of excitement that always happened when they touched. Surely he felt it too. Was that why he stepped back so swiftly? Kim dragged her fingers through her hair. She could hardly blame him.
She groaned and looked at her watch. ‘Don’t bother. We should get back anyway. It’s almost school pick-up time.’ Taj nodded and wordlessly began collecting tools. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you,’ she said. ‘The dingoes are already making a difference – to the creek flat plantings anyway. The goats are leaving them alone, and even the wallabies are steering clear. Do you think that’s because the pack has found a new den site lower down, closer to the creek?’
Taj loaded the mattocks onto the ute. ‘Perhaps.’
Kim tried again. ‘The creek’s much closer to Mel’s boundary. I hope they don’t start bothering her sheep.’ He began gathering up the trays of empty pots that were scattered over the ground. ‘What do you think? Will they go after Mel’s sheep?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘When you released the wolves in Afghanistan, did they ever go after local farmers’ flocks?’
‘No.’ He climbed up on the tray, and began securing the tools with jockey straps.
Argh . . . she hated this! The way he shut down. She hadn’t realised how much their conversations had meant, how special they were. Nobody else could fill that space.
Ben was witty, endlessly entertaining, and made her laugh. She felt relaxed and safe with him, happier than she’d been in a long time. But he didn’t intrigue her the way Taj did.
She could talk to Mel about dogs and orphans and the wildlife corridor. But Mel didn’t possess the breadth of vision or the encyclopaedic knowledge of ecosystems that Taj did. Nobody else understood the true significance of what they were trying to achieve.
But Kim didn’t just miss shoptalk with Taj. It was so much more than that. She missed discussing politics, art, philosophy – all manner of things. She missed his out-of-the box thinking and questions that came from left field. ‘If you could go back to any moment in history, when would that be?’ he’d ask, as they toiled side by side, ripping the earth into furrows for planting. The conversation that followed would make time fly. Or he’d gaze at the sky and say, ‘I wonder if you see blue the same way I do?’
Once, when they’d spent all day clearing a waterway choked by lantana, Taj asked her, ‘Is there anything people do that isn’t selfish?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I look at that stream and wonder – did we work so hard to help the stream, or to help ourselves because it makes us happy to bring it back to life?’
‘Does it matter why we did it?’ asked Kim. ‘As long as we did it?’
‘Maybe it does,’ said Taj. ‘Maybe intention is everything.’
‘Seen that way, even love is selfish,’ said Kim. ‘We want to protect our loved ones because they bring us joy. Because we can’t afford to lose them.’
‘And what if we can’t protect them?’ he said. ‘What then?’
Something intensely personal in his tone put a lump in her throat. ‘All we can do is our best,’ she said. ‘Then we have to move on, without guilt. We owe it to them. We owe it ourselves.’
Taj had pondered her answer for a long time. ‘That is wise advice,’ he’d said at last. ‘Perhaps you should follow it.’
These conversations remained with her, sometimes keeping her awake until the early hours. Pondering. The stillness of night helped Kim see things more clearly. Slowly, tentatively, she’d been piecing together the broken pieces of her life, making sense of them. And now, without Taj to act as a catalyst, she’d come to a dead end.
Taj stowed the last rake onto the tray, and put up the gate. ‘Are you ready?’
No, she wasn’t ready. Not for this. Not to be cut off from that other part of Taj’s life. The part that knew where the lyrebirds danced and the brumbies ran. The part full of richness and meaning that challenged how she saw the world. His stories of Afghanistan, which connected her in some small way to Connor. When would she ever be ready for that?