‘Don’t anybody mention the siblings or Gerra no matter what. I’ll answer those questions if they come up,’ Uncle Sorren says.
I nod. They drop me around the back of the island Jacob’s Reach village sits on, and head back out to sea, to come in again to the jetty. I duck down behind some driftwood and check the place out. The beach is empty, the hills and trees above all quiet.
I run up the tideline and into the scrub, and pick a path through to the forest. I run a few steps and stop behind a tree and look around, then run a few more, the way I seen lizards run. Moving things is easier to spot than perfectly still things. The trees here have been sawn and axed more than ours, so the forest is open. On Cottage Hill we take branches for building but not much else. Jacob’s people burn them in campfires and stuff, so I can’t see how they won’t eventually clear this hillside. Marta’s right. They could live a bit more gently if they used some of our solar and batteries. The batteries and stuff was jus’ lying round anyway.
Finally I get to the top of the hill. There ain’t no circles of wood, but the way the land’s cleared in a big circle makes it look like they might have started. My foot goes down into some soft earth. A post hole, filled in, maybe? I take a step around in a circle and stomp my feet again. Another soft patch. No doubt about it, the siblings was here.
There’s a pile of cut logs as if it’s firewood drying. Behind the pile of logs there are some trees with things carved into them. And a stump with a firewood log sitting on it. I creep closer. There’s zigzaggy lines carved into the firewood log, made by a knife while the tree was alive. It tried to heal over those cuts a year or more ago, I’d say.
There’s a foot-scuffing noise, and I duck back into the trees. It’s the boy who took my croc. He was the only one in the village happy to see me and Marta, even if he laughed at me.
He’s walking head down, staring at the trail, so he hasn’t seen me, then he kneels in front of a tree with two corners cut into it, each one like the letter L. He pats the dirt under the tree and speaks to it quietly, then lifts his head and talks to the tree. ‘Well, Lucy Loo,’ he says. ‘I got my butt kicked for losing that rope, and kicked again for tearing my shirt in trying to get it back. Now look!’ He waves his hands at the tree and his sleeves unroll and flap about over his hands. ‘Now I gotta wear hand-me-downs from Tyrell Weatherman!’
I know who that is. That’s the guy who chased me and Marta halfway home.
The boy who helped me with the croc looks at the stump with the log on it. The one carved with the zigzaggy lines like the letters M and W. ‘No offence, Aunty. This here’s a good Tyrell-sized shirt, but it’s gonna be wore out before it fits me.’
He settles down with his legs crossed and goes back to mumbling at the ground.
I tiptoe closer and stand behind him. He’s pretending the ground is someone that needs updating on the news. He’s talking about fishing and food, and his da and someone who ain’t learned to play fair at footy yet.
‘What you doing?’ I ask.
He twists about. ‘How long have you been there?’ he asks.
‘Jus’ got here this second,’ I say, coz it’s prolly embarrassing to get caught talking to the ground.
‘I’m talking to my cousin, Lucy,’ he says. ‘She’s buried here.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I heard about burying people in the before-times, but with the rising sea and sinkholes, we generally burn the dead. It’s about the only time we have a fire. ‘Sorry about your cousin.’ I sit down cross-legged next to him and pat the ground like he did.
‘It was a while ago. But she liked to talk, so sometimes I come and talk to her,’ he says, and shrugs.
‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘She prolly gets lonely on this big old hill all alone.’
The boy waves his hands around at the other trees with things carved on them. ‘She ain’t alone. Uncle Silas is over there, and Grandma up there, and right here next to her is Aunty Meryn.’ He waves at a patch of ground in front of the stump.
‘Oh, so the things carved on them is the names of people?’ I ask.
‘Why’re you here, anyway?’ The boy frowns.
I wave back the way I came like it’s not important at all. ‘We followed a school of fish around the back of your island and saw some massive crabs, so Uncle Sorren dropped me off to do some crabbing there and said he’d take some spare fish around to your jetty to pay for the crabs while I was catching them, but he was so long gone I climbed the hill to see where he was. I best get back down there, in case he’s coming for me.’
‘You can see the village from jus’ down there,’ the boy says and points back down the trail.
‘Crab pots to collect,’ I say. My brain is saying, do what Uncle Sorren said, don’t mention the siblings, but my mouth wants to do something to help the other part of my brain that wants to know what happened. And coz I’m a doer, not a thinker, it blurts out. ‘Hey, when those Valley of the Sun people came, did something happen?’
The boy’s face goes pale and he stands up. ‘I ain’t s’posed to talk about them,’ he says. He turns and stomps on down the hill. Then he stops and turns back. He waves at the marked trees. ‘But if it was your mother …’ He shakes his head. ‘We din’t mean for the women to fall on the rocks. We ain’t killers.’ The boy puts his head down and runs.
‘Whose mother?’ I ask. But he’s gone.
I turn and run the other way flat out, back down the hill to where Licorice is sailing into view, coz what if he tells Jacob I’m here? Will my crab pot story hold up if I din’t bring no crab pots?
