All morning, clouds of mauve-and-white smoke billowed over the hills. The air was acrid and sharp and it made Lucy’s nose and throat sting. Lucy sat on Mrs MacMahon’s verandah and watched a helicopter hover over the river. It scooped up river water in a barrel suspended from a long rope and then flew off to bomb the flames.
In the late afternoon, the sky grew dark and the horizon turned a coppery orange. When the sun sank behind the hills it looked like an angry burning orb, gold against the orange-and-black sky.
Lucy and Big slept the night in Mrs MacMahon’s spare room in narrow single beds. Lucy woke before dawn to the sound of rain falling gently on the corrugated tin roof. She sighed with relief, rolled over and fell back into a deep and peaceful sleep.
The next morning, Bob Timmins from the CFA picked them up and drove them to Avendale through charred and blackened landscapes.
Lucy sat in the back but leaned forward to listen to the grown-ups’ conversation.
‘We were lucky,’ said Bob. ‘If it had happened in February, we would have been in big trouble, but the bush hadn’t dried out so much and we managed to contain the fire. Won’t be too much risk of another big fire this year now that the scrub’s burnt back. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that flames didn’t jump those breaks you put in around the house and valley.’
Driving through the burnt-out bush was like travelling across a moonscape. Charred trees stuck up like spiky poles, black against the blue morning sky. Someone had left a pile of bread and fruit on the side of the road and a lone kangaroo was sniffing it.
‘I hope Wally the Wombat’s all right,’ said Lucy, swallowing hard. It was tricky talking when you were trying not to cry. To see so much of the beautiful landscape blackened and bare made her insides hurt. The road wound up the hillside, and Lucy braced herself for what was to come when they reached the crest and started the drive down into the valley.
Lucy leaned forward in her seat so she could see what lay ahead through the windscreen. As they crested the hill and drove past the wide brown-and-yellow firebreak, the valley lay beneath them with the old homestead nestled firmly in its heart.
Avendale had survived.
There were stray patches of black and brown where spot fires had broken out, but the centre of the valley was gold and green and the fruit trees on the hill above the river, the vegetable garden, and the house lay untouched, beautiful as ever. Lucy wanted to shout with happiness.
Then they were driving across the creek and up to the house. There was the jeep, sitting down near the jetty; the chickens were in the veggie patch, happily pecking away at Big’s lettuces.
Lucy started to cry. She couldn’t help it. The tears spurted from her eyes, and when she jumped out of the car she ran onto the verandah and kissed the front door of Avendale. She heard a scuffle beneath the threshold, as if Wally the Wombat was welcoming them home.
Bob Timmins jogged down to the river and drove the jeep up to the house. Big invited him in for a cup of iced tea, but he said he had other properties to check on. When Bob had left, Lucy poured two long glasses of ice-cold tea and put them on a tray with a plate of Big’s homemade Anzac biscuits. She carried them out onto the verandah and leaned over to nip two sprigs of mint from the plant by the front steps. Big smiled as Lucy added two leaves to each glass.
Lucy sipped her iced tea and gazed out over the valley. The river that had nearly taken April and Jimmy was the same river that two nights ago had saved them – their pathway to safety. It made Lucy think of that other river, the deep, dark river of time that connected the past with the present.
‘Lucy,’ said Big. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’
‘Before you say anything, there’s something I have to tell you. I broke my promise. I promised you I wouldn’t go back into the paintings again, but I did. I crossed over into winter. I didn’t see you. I saw Jimmy and Lulu and Tom, but you were away at boarding school. I’m really sorry. It didn’t make any difference. Tom wouldn’t listen to me. I couldn’t stop him from going to New Guinea. I couldn’t stop him from dying there.’
Big sighed. ‘That was the thing I wanted to talk to you about. Tom didn’t die in New Guinea, though in a very real way, the war took him from us.’
‘What do you mean? You said he died in New Guinea!’
‘No, I said his plane went down there. He survived the crash, but he was very badly wounded. They sent him home to us and he died here at Avendale two years after the war was over. It’s why I painted the four seasons on the walls of his room. I painted the valley for Tom so he could feel he was in the valley even though he couldn’t leave his bed.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Lucy, I couldn’t tell you the whole truth about Tom. Not while Claire’s life was hanging by a thread. I kept thinking, what if history repeats itself? What if our Claire never recovers? I didn’t want to burden you with that worry.’
A fat tear rolled down Lucy’s cheek and plopped into her iced tea.
‘But you lost Tom and now I feel like I’ve lost him too.’
‘No one is ever lost as long as we remember them, but you can’t live in the past.’
‘That’s what Tom said,’ sniffed Lucy. ‘But then I lost the one thing he gave me. A bluebird brooch. He pinned it on my chest and then I lost it up at Pulpit Rock on the same day.’
‘A bluebird?’ said Big.
Suddenly, Lucy remembered. She reached for her silver heart locket and opened it. Inside was the tiny blue-and-silver wing that she had found wedged in a crevice on Pulpit Rock. She laid it on the palm of her hand and stared at it.
Big reached across and carefully picked up the broken wing. Then, without speaking, she drew a gold locket from the folds of her cardigan. On the front of the locket was a tiny enamel bluebird.
‘Tom sent me this the week before his accident. I keep a photo of him inside it.’
‘I keep a picture of Claire inside mine!’
‘Well, it’s not only the photo that I want to show you,’ said Big. She undid the chain from around her neck and put the locket in Lucy’s hand.
‘Open it,’ she said.
Inside lay the photo of Tom and opposite it, wedged into the oval hollow of the locket, was a one-winged bluebird.
‘Take it, Lucy,’ said Big. ‘It belongs to you.’
Lucy took the broken brooch and fitted the tiny wing to it. They were a perfect match, though the wing was more faded and tarnished than the bird.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucy.
‘One day, not long after Tom died, I was climbing Pulpit Rock and a glimmer of silver caught my eye. Wedged deep inside a crevice was this bluebird brooch. When I tried to pry it out a piece broke off. I searched and searched for the missing wing but it had disappeared deep into the rock. I suppose this bird was never going to fly until its true owner returned to Avendale.’
That night, after Big had gone to bed, Lucy slipped into the outside–inside room. The paintings were more beautiful than ever now that Lucy knew them so well. But they lay still in the moonlight. Somehow, deep inside, Lucy knew that they would never open to her again.
All her adventures lay ahead of her.