I raced up to the Wiregrass, pedal to the metal, until I reached what I’d come to think of as Nash’s gully. I grabbed my bag and binoculars and walked into the hollow. There were no indications of recent activity. It didn’t look like he’d been here. I worked my way past the campsite then came to Nash’s hide. I clambered up into it, but again, there was no trace of occupation, unless you counted possum and chough shit. Something had nibbled at the Vita Brits, but I couldn’t imagine Nash was that hard up.
My eyes swept across the valley below, then travelled up the escarpment and settled upon the other significant local player in this drama: the mountain ash. It loomed over the slopes like a monarch, powerful and imposing. The eagle’s nest still appeared to be empty.
I caught sight of Nash’s climbing equipment on the wall.
Have you got the nerve? I asked myself.
I grabbed the equipment, scrambled across the slope until I came to the foot of the ash and gazed up into its upper reaches in awe. From my rough calculation, it looked to be about sixty metres high. It could have been worse. Apparently this species – eucalyptus regnans – is the tallest flowering plant in creation and can grow to a hundred metres. The first fifteen metres were clearly the toughest: there were no lower branches angling off, nothing to cling to.
But there was another option. The golden wattle closest to its base. It had branches and boughs spreading in every direction. Maybe I could use it as a ladder to tackle the first few metres then swing over to the ash? Only one way to find out.
I attached the spurs and harness, grabbed the ropes and scrambled into the lower limbs of the wattle. I worked my way up through the understorey, gingerly pushing through a gauntlet of sticks and spikes and foliage. I was halfway up when the branches began to thin out and bow down under my weight. I assessed the distance between the trees: time to have a go.
I took hold of my throw-line and crept out onto a branch. It was weaker than it looked and bowed down precipitously. Suddenly it gave way and I was dangling upside down, perilously close to falling. I threw a hand out and grasped one of the nearby branches, but that tore loose as well and I performed a mid-air jig until I seized a third branch, this one strong enough to hold me. A searing pain shot through my damaged ribs. I did what I could to breathe into the pain, to rise above it. I paused to regain my breath, steadied myself then lobbed the throw-line into the ash. It held at the first attempt, and I swung over. I spat out a mouthful of bugs and bark, gathered myself together and resumed the ascent. The spurs were invaluable; they gave me purchase, a measure of stability. I crawled around the eagle’s nest, relieved to confirm that it was empty.
As I ascended into the crown I began to understand why botanists call the upper canopy the eighth continent. It was another world up there. The higher you got, the more things changed. Birds and beetles looked at me, astonished. The background noise took on a different tone, a low, persistent thrum. A swarm of strange insects – caterpillars, green ants, weevils – crunched and crawled through the leaf-work. A spider floated in from god-knows-where and ran its web across my face. A big-eyed praying mantis froze, millimetres from my nose, scrutinised me then slowly backed into a camouflaging branch. I wondered if I was the first human ever to be here.
Looking down at the forest below, I was struck by how tessellated its structure was when observed from this angle. The trees maintained their distance from each other but worked in groups, gathering in geometrical patterns, maximising their exposure to light, minimising wind. There’s a term for this phenomenon: canopy shyness. I’d heard of it, but I’d never seen it so clearly before.
I was maybe forty metres from the ground when I decided the branches above me were starting to look treacherous and I was getting tired. Not a healthy combination. My ribs were throbbing, my head was spinning. Maybe this’ll do, I said to myself. There was a comfortable-looking fork just above me. One last effort and I hauled myself into it. I hooked in the harness, leaned back against the trunk and closed my eyes, getting some air into my lungs, some strength into my limbs.
Then I looked out over the Wiregrass Valley.
This is it, I decided. This is why I’m here. This is as close as I’m going to get to a bird’s-eye view.
I could see all the way down to the Windmark Valley. There were sporadic vehicles crawling along the road beside the river, a scattering of bridges and bed-level crossings running over it. A column of bikies roared up the valley like a black wind. I raised the binoculars, my gaze drawn to the various human endeavours of the district: vineyards, timber mills, berry farms and quarries. Distant chimneys emitted silver smoke. Ice-blue horses cantered over emerald paddocks.
I turned the glasses up on to the closer Wiregrass Valley and lost myself in contemplation of the more mysterious works of nature: rock and waterfalls, stretches of mud and snow, a patchwork of blue bush and green leaf. The sky was dark and ominous, the approaching thunderstorm unsettling the atmosphere. Then a strange thing happened: the sun emerged through a gap in the clouds and illuminated a rocky outcrop on a spur in the slopes opposite my own, on the far side of the Wiregrass Valley.
The outcrop was transformed into a fleeting image: a woman’s head, her hair composed of darkly forested slopes, her face of granite blocks stained by dark vertical lines – fissures? streaks of manganese? – that resembled tears. Her eyes were downcast. The light shifted and the woman’s mouth appeared to move. Some words came to mind: something inside me weeps black tears.
It was as if the woman was speaking directly to me. I heard her voice trickling like a high-country creek through the backwoods of my mind. Maybe it was just my imagination, but, even if that was all it was, I needed to listen. The face in the rocks was thin, quiet, intense, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Lost and lonely.
something inside me weeps black tears
Why did it look familiar? The answer came in a flash. Lucinda. Who must have resembled her mother. I thought about the necklace Lucinda was wearing the first time we met: a gold pendant with a red flower – a rose – upon it. It bore a striking resemblance to the flower that had been so deftly sketched on the card in Raph’s address book. Had the necklace been a gift, from mother to daughter?
Lucinda had mentioned her mother was away in Queensland. I remembered the shadow that flew across her face when I asked about her. Was she the missing woman? I thought of Meg, my crystal-gazing neighbour’s prognostications and shuddered: the drowning woman, the dying horseman. The brutal spirits abroad.
something inside me weeps black tears
I wasn’t seeing everything here, that was obvious. But I was getting a sense of it. It was extensive, interconnected, an underground forest, like Lucinda’s mycorrhizal network. I suspected there was more going on here than a jealous – even murderous – husband.
something inside me weeps black tears
I didn’t know what had happened to the woman who wrote those words. I didn’t know what had happened to Nash Rankin.
But I felt afraid and angry for them both.