Chapter 27
‘Booked in for a tandem flight for the day after tomorrow,’ Noah announced as he hung up his phone. ‘Assuming the weather holds. You do realise that this is the worst time of year for hang gliding. The winds are unpredictable.’
We had finished dinner and were all putting off getting up for our various evening chores. Tessa looked exhausted again. All she’d done was help to catch a few loose sheep and then drive Dallmin into town for a tetanus shot. I would have to pay more attention and try to predict what she wanted done before she could do it herself.
‘We can’t exactly wait for summer. We’ll just have to hope for the best,’ Aunt Lily said, hunching over the local paper to read without letting Dallmin get too close a look.
‘When will we leave?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t Sergeant Loxwood coming around to talk to me sometime?’
‘I’ll tell him you’re busy,’ my Aunt said, a bit too quickly.
The sergeant had called in when we’d been in town visiting Bane’s mum. He wanted to speak with me but said it wasn’t urgent, which was good, because everyone seemed reluctant to let him see me. Me included. The last time I’d seen the policeman …
‘How long will it take to get there?’ Dallmin asked, bouncing off his chair like he was ready to leave.
Noah clucked his tongue at his impatience. ‘If you leave tomorrow lunchtime, you’ll get to Bright by dinner.’ Then he nodded to Bane. ‘I’ve booked a hotel for you. Two rooms, I hope that’s okay. He’ll fly first thing the following morning, weather permitting. I’ve emailed you the details.’
‘You’re not coming?’ I asked. He was the expert when it came to hang gliding.
Tessa spoke up before Noah could reply. ‘Five and a half hours in a car? No thanks.’
The centre where Noah usually went was closed for the winter, so we were being forced to travel a lot farther than we would have liked. Then I remembered something.
‘Hey, what happened with the tandem harness? Did you get it back in time? You didn’t lose your pilot’s licence, did you?’ It would be dreadful if he wasn’t allowed to fly anymore.
Tessa laughed. ‘No problem. Noah charmed his way out of trouble, as usual. With everything that happened they were very understanding.’ In the corner of my eye I noticed Bane’s shoulders stiffen. Apparently so did Tessa. ‘In fact, he took me flying often in that first year,’ she said quickly. ‘I got my licence too. We made quite a team until recent developments made me have to stop,’ she said, rubbing her belly. ‘We even won the Mallee Hang Gliding Championship.’
I was intrigued. ‘How do you hang glide in the Mallee? It’s so flat!’
‘Car towing,’ Noah replied. ‘Tessa’s the best at launching me. She always seems to know the safest amount of tension to use. And her timing is impeccable.’
‘Are you certain that’s not cheating? She does have a bit of an advantage,’ I objected.
He spread his hands. ‘Using every available method to stay safe is not cheating. And the skill is in the flying, and reading the thermals, not just the launch. Tessa has her own trophy to prove it.’
My smile was full of pride. I knew she had it in her. She fidgeted in her seat again, uncomfortable with the praise—or was she easing her stiff back? Dallmin, Noah and I all raced to be the first to pass her a pillow.
‘I can’t even scratch myself without you three noticing. It’s a bit embarrassing,’ she mumbled.
‘We all notice, but not all of us treat you as if you’re about to fall apart,’ Bane remarked as he nicked the fitness magazine she was reading.
‘No, you’re too busy making sure Lainie doesn’t, and she doesn’t need it either,’ she countered, snatching it right back.
‘Point taken. Lainie’s doing great. She even managed to win over my mum today. Effortlessly. No small feat, given that I’m her only child. The flute playing helped. Did you teach her that, Dallmin?’
He looked at me. How much can I say about home? They are not permitted to know too much, is that correct?
I hadn’t considered that. Did he have an embargo on talking about Eden too? Only one way to find out.
‘Tell them whatever you’re comfortable saying,’ I suggested.
When any of us tried to talk about Eden we were literally choked by guilt, but he didn’t know the meaning of guilt, so what would stop him from speaking?
He turned back to Bane. ‘We all helped to teach her. She is just a child. She couldn’t play anything when she first arrived—it was quite funny. Even her singing was … strange. So was Annie’s at first, until her voice healed, and when she practised it became stronger and sweeter. Lainie’s voice is lovely now too.’
Noah looked ready to pee himself laughing. He’d heard me sing. Obviously he didn’t realise that any difficulty in hearing or replicating perfect pitch was a physical imperfection that was healed along with everything else when I ate the Living Fruit—or swam in the River. Maybe if I dunked him in the water a bit more often he would learn to carry a tune too.
Bane raised his eyebrows at me. ‘You can sing now? Wait till I tell Mum, she’ll be stoked.’
‘I wouldn’t go setting her up for a performance in front of your mum just yet,’ Noah warned. ‘Just because the jolly elf says she can sing doesn’t mean she’s up to Mrs Millard’s high standard. Your mum once kept me in at lunchtime until I could play All things Bright and Beautiful note-perfect on the recorder. Honestly, who keeps a kid in at lunchtime in grade three?’ He shifted to let Dallmin pick up my new flute from the table. ‘Besides, Dallmin’s incapable of saying anything negative, remember? I grew up listening to Lainie belt out tunes with her earphones in. I have scars.’
I threw a cushion at him before Tess could react. It was never going to hurt him so she barely flinched. It was a bit sad that I could no longer beat him up properly, it was fun back when I didn’t know it hurt Tessa.
Noah didn’t retaliate. He was busy watching Dallmin put my flute together and fiddle with a couple of the keys. A moment later, the ‘jolly elf’ launched into a complicated tune that would have made Bane’s mum faint. I grinned and sang along in the honeyed language we used for celebrations. We were the only ones in the room who could understand the beautiful lyrics, which was a bit disappointing, although at least that made it possible for me to sing them without being hamstrung by the embargo. The song was about the birth of a baby. We used to sing it a lot but it was so much more meaningful singing it for Tessa.
Intricate melodies echoed all the promise of what the baby would feel when he first experienced touch and sight and music. Bright notes welcomed the new mother-child bond in all its safe intimacy. Tessa and the baby were poignantly cherished by the power of the music, even though she couldn’t understand the meaning of the words. Dallmin and I poured all our love and devotion for them into our song so that by the end she was crying. So was Aunt Lily. Even Noah and Bane looked a little unhinged as the last notes faded.
After a few silent moments, Noah stood up and hugged Dallmin, and then me.
‘I stand corrected,’ he apologised. His eyes were full of affection as he helped Tessa up from the couch. She was still sobbing too hard to talk and she made my shoulder all wet when she hugged me. As Noah helped her off to bed, Dallmin flicked me a quick signal. Well sung. Joy-giver needs a new game.
The trip to Bright was uneventful. Seriously. Pretty boring. By the fourth hour even Dallmin’s excitement was starting to wear off as he told us the story, again, of how Sergeant Loxwood had helped them round up some loose sheep the day before, while Bane and I were in town with his mum. Dallmin seemed confused as to why the sheep hadn’t known what was wanted, and why we wanted them to be in a particular paddock anyway, and why the policeman had spent the whole time talking to Noah instead of standing in the right spot to block the sheep.
‘Seems strange that Nicole would have left a gate open,’ I said. Had she done it to annoy me? It sounded like something she would have done to get Noah and me into trouble when we were younger, but hadn’t she grown out of that? And this time I wasn’t the one who’d had to fix it.
‘You haven’t noticed anyone else around lately, have you? You know, in the state park?’ Bane asked. One wrist was hanging casually over the steering wheel, but he shot me a concerned look.
‘No, not really. Just someone near the river when we had our swim yesterday. Someone fishing, probably. Not a threat to the Garden.’
‘Unlikely that a fisherman would wander through our place leaving gates open,’ I said, not wanting to point out that it was more likely to have been Nicole.
‘Maybe Dallmin didn’t hook a gate latch on properly,’ Bane suggested.
I turned to see Dallmin’s reaction to the idea he might have stuffed up, but he was busy looking out at the scenery. Good. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for anything he did. He was innocent. I happily let the subject drop, and studied the scenery with him.
The landscape got prettier as we headed toward the High Country, but compared to Eden it wasn’t all that impressive. It used to be my favourite place on the planet. Now it was boring. Luckily, Bane had a good selection of songs to listen to, so he educated us on the best of each genre of music that he had on his play list. He started us with classical and moved through jazz, folk and indie pop, even throwing in some grunge and heavy metal. Dallmin loved it all. If we ever got him home he would have a lot of new ideas to share. I smiled at the idea of the jolly elf-people experimenting with screamo. As it turned out, Dallmin could rap with the best of them, even if he did cheat and throw in other languages to make it rhyme better. It was the first time hip-hop had ever made me laugh until I cried. Eden humour was the best.
It was well and truly dark by the time we reached Bright. After introducing Dallmin to the delights of a decent lamb souvlaki, we found the hotel and I spent a few minutes making it very clear to Dallmin that he would probably not enjoy experimenting with the contents of his mini bar. Alcohol was not a complication we needed. Finally, tomorrow, he would fly and then hopefully I could send him home. And what then? Was I really going to stay on this side of the Event Horizon? I looked at Bane as he rummaged in his bag for his toothbrush. Yes, I was. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to let anything divert me from doing everything I could to make Bane happy. And I was finally confident about what that would be.
There was a kind of sassiness in the way the wind whipped at the trees, as if it was trying to flick each one free of the glistening raindrops that clung to their heavy leaves. The flight instructor crossed his arms and frowned.
‘It will settle soon,’ I assured him. I gazed across the panorama, watching flocks of lorikeets criss-cross the valley, gathering their energy now that the sun was out again. Everywhere I looked there was evidence of human intervention. Shaved patches of winter paddocks stretched out across the base of the valley, dotted with clusters of tiny white rooftops, while the hills were slashed with tan-coloured dirt roads that linked the geometric patches of pine plantations. In the distance, the snow-laden squashed dome of Mt Buffalo held firm. Brutish and untameable. Yet, in just a few more weeks there would be enough snow for its slopes to be infected with a plague of happy snowboarders, wiggling downhill like slippery fish.
The human scars were disturbing, but it was still pretty. Almost as good as the view over my valley—from this side of the Boundary, anyway. Yet, coming to stand beside me, Dallmin didn’t seem to agree. He’d stopped inspecting the seams on the glider sails and had been pacing along the cleared part of the ridge, clearly disturbed by something in the view.
‘How many of these big cities are there?’ he asked me. ‘I have now seen Horsham, and Nalong, and now Bright. We also passed through many others. How long does each city remain before you put things back the way they were?’
It was Bane who filled in the gap when I couldn’t bring myself to answer. ‘We don’t. The people need somewhere to live, Dallmin. We can’t survive here without shelter, and there just wouldn’t be enough food for us all if we didn’t grow it ourselves. This is what it takes.’
‘Surely there would be enough for everyone if you just spread out more. Maybe you don’t realise how much world there is? Are you aware there are other lands across the waters? I could teach you how to cross the seas if you like.’
Luckily the flight instructor was chatting to his assistant and didn’t hear the strange comment.
‘We’ve mapped the entire planet, Dallmin,’ Bane explained. ‘And we’ve spread out to every land. We already trade resources between countries … to an extent.’
‘Are you saying there are even more of these cities than the ones I’ve already seen?’
‘These are just small towns. The cities are—’
‘Maybe we should just let him enjoy this one day,’ I interrupted. ‘I think they’re almost ready.’
We had waited impatiently for almost three hours for the conditions to settle, until the drizzle finally looked like it had passed for the day. The tour operators had eventually agreed to meet us on the ridge and said we should be good to go, and they had made all the initial preparations but were still a little hesitant. At least it had given us time to get the paperwork sorted. Dallmin had signed his name on the disclaimer beautifully—in an unknown flowing script.
I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on my logic. Dallmin’s innocent comments were inevitably going to spark some curious questions from people, and he seemed to have no problems talking about Eden. That could be disastrous. He needed to go home as soon as possible to keep the Garden safe. The sooner he flew the better. I needed the wind to die down a little. Eden needed the wind to die down, so I began to whisper. Words bubbled up from deep inside my soul. They didn’t feel very powerful and I had absolutely no control over them but I was hoping it would be enough. I was trying to settle the restless wind down. Surely that wouldn’t take as much power as calling the storm had?
A taste, like I was touching something metal with the very tip of my tongue, as an un-earthly language formed itself around my human-shaped voice. Authority and untapped resource filled my chest. Mine to call, and mine to use, because it was needed. Threads of thunder, just waiting for me to form the right phrases. It felt natural, and yet so overwhelming. Scary, for sure.
The launch assistant whistled softly through his moustache. ‘Wow, it’s really dropped away now. It’s become as still as a frozen pond. Might make it tricky to read the air currents if it stays like this.’ He plucked at his lower lip, studying the conditions.
Oops, too much. I tried to be more subtle, playing with the feel of the breeze. Maybe messing too much with the wind wasn’t such a good idea, I didn’t want it to become too unnatural. The last time we had messed with the weather, Noah and I had drawn in a massive storm front, enough to quench a bushfire in the height of summer. That wouldn’t be at all helpful here. Noah would have got it right. Was that how they had won the competition? No, it had nothing to do with Eden so he wouldn’t have been able to. Although, as I concentrated, I thought I could sense the difference between the cold and warm air pockets. Similar to how I had sensed the life around me while I was in the river. If Noah had also developed an affinity for the weather since calling the storm, that had to have been an advantage in his sport.
Bane was watching me with an amused expression. His look of adoration completely distracted me and I lost the tenuous hold I had on the weather. It didn’t matter. The operators were smiling and moving the glider into position.
Dallmin looked confident and business-like. Luckily, being long-lived meant that he could be incredibly patient when the situation called for it, even though I knew how excited he was. He let the flight instructor and assistant secure the double harness, his keen eyes taking in every detail of the procedure, and then he donned his helmet, throwing me a cheeky smile. Unnecessary as he thought it was, he knew everyone wanted him to wear it. Finally everything was ready. It was time for the jolly elf to fly.
His yodel of celebration echoed throughout the valley, startling three flocks of birds out of the trees below. The launch assistant put his hands on his hips and laughed at the obvious unbridled enjoyment the strange young man was having. I felt a slight surge of jealousy. Watching them take off brought back the wondrous memory of my first real look at the Garden of Eden. What an incredibly life-changing experience that had been. The actual, real Garden of Eden, in all its glory. Not only that, but the flight itself had been astounding. How could I have felt so thrilled and relaxed at the same time? How could it feel so peculiar and yet almost natural? And why the hokey hadn’t I thought to ask Noah to book me in for a flight as well?
A warm hand with a firm grip found mine when I moved closer to the edge to watch the glider’s spiralling dance. If that worried him, it was a good thing Bane hadn’t seen some of the things I’d been up to in Eden.
We could still hear Dallmin’s cries as they morphed into song. It sounded like he was praising the world for giving him such a good time, and I wondered what his instructor must have been thinking. Unnoticed tension in my body began to melt away as I watched them search out the thermal pockets. His obsession with seeing what the birds saw would finally be appeased. As soon as he was back home I had no doubt that his ‘experiments’ would continue, but that was no problem. At least he had some more information to work with now.
My bodyguard held me securely around my waist while we watched the glider circle the valley. His sweet breath tickled my ear, sending a delicate shiver down my spine. I smiled. There would be time for flying. Time for travelling and exploring all the good things of this world, and I could do it all with Bane. Noah had assured me he’d managed to avoid the lethargy that came with being away from Nalong by taking bottles of river water on his honeymoon, and had given me some innovative tips on how to explain the stash to airport security. My whole life was ahead of me and I knew what I wanted out of it. Visits to Eden would still be possible, but my heart was with Bane.
The flight lasted for almost an hour, much longer than they usually anticipated. Apparently Dallmin had some good insights for the instructor as to how to pick the best thermals to chase, giving them extra lifts. She told us he was a natural, although I think it had more to do with the hundreds of years he had obsessed over bird flight. During the car trip Dallmin had revealed that he used to jump off cliffs into the ocean regularly, with a piece of Fruit in each hand, so flying had obviously been a fixation of his for a very long time. No wonder he had noticed Noah and I arriving in Eden.
After he was extricated from the harness, he shared his exuberance by hugging every living thing in sight, including the flight instructor’s Labrador. No one seemed to find it strange, they were probably used to crazy tourists and their boisterous behaviour, and luckily he remembered to keep the kissing to a minimum.
‘An eagle flew with us!’ he exclaimed as he gathered me into a bone-crushing embrace. ‘It was so close I could look in its eyes. I could see what it saw … and it was looking at me!’
I am so happy for you, my friend! Now you have grown up a little bit more because you have experienced something new. I can see the joy in your eyes and it makes me smile. Out loud I said, ‘I think we should celebrate. This is an important day for you and those should always be celebrated.’
The flight instructor clapped him on the shoulder. ‘So what’s next for you, Dallmin? I have some brochures on some other activities in this area if you’re interested?’
‘No!’ I cried. That was the last thing we needed.
Bane interjected more politely. ‘Maybe some other time, thank you. Unfortunately we’re on a bit of a tight schedule, this trip.’
The guy nodded and continued to pack up.
‘Come on, let’s find some lunch,’ Bane suggested. ‘I expect even your celebrations involve eating something.’
A little while later when we had just used a slice of pizza to entice Dallmin away from entering a middle-aged couple’s caravan, Bane’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen before handing it to me. ‘Noah,’ he mumbled around his mouthful of barbeque chicken. I answered it, but didn’t get a chance to even say hello.
‘I need you b..back here, n..now,’ Noah stammered. ‘Tessa’s missing!’