Nomads

1.

‘Extinction is the rule.

Survival is the exception.’

Sagan

Scar wakes in the dark just before sunrise, in those moments when morning is passable for night. The air is still and hard, cold like stone, and infused with smoke. A single bird begins a song, stopping and starting as if testing the waters, seeing if anyone else is awake and ready to begin. The light grows, imperceptibly at first and then all at once, like the birdsong. Soon a cacophony of sound rings in the dawn. She keeps her eyes closed, and for a moment imagines she’s lying in her bed, when layered beneath the wattle bird coos and the magpie’s warble, there’d be traffic sounds. The road that ran by her house would be filling with cars. An endless stream. People. The cogs of civilisation. Such a far-away concept now. The bird call is too loud for her to fall back into sleep, so she opens her eyes and stares up at the looming trees. Their twisted bows swathed in orange, like warpaint against the rest of their snowy skin. Further down the mountain they don’t have that colour, and they grow straighter, yet both thrive. Sometimes in these moments, when everyone else is still a sleep, Scar thinks she can sense the lifeforce of these trees, feel the presence of their being. Their silent, eternal knowing. The leaves shift in a light breeze as she watches them, and when the same breeze reaches her she realises there’s a warmth to it that wasn’t there yesterday – hasn’t been there for months. There’s a scent too, something sweet breaking through the smoke and eucalyptus. Pollen. It must have swept up here on the night winds from the valley.

Spring.

She hasn’t known what day it is for years – doesn’t even know what year it is anymore (she could guess), but she knows when the seasons change. She used to marvel at how the weather shifted on the same day the calendar said it was a new season, as if nature recognised the human construct of time and decided to go along with it; or perhaps humans just got the calendar impeccably right. There are no calendars anymore, but still the seasons change like someone flicked a switch. Could it be the first day of spring? How accurate could her inner compass of the seasons be? She’ll never know, but after weeks of wondering, something primal tells her it has now happened.

She unzips her sleeping bag and pulls on her black leather boots, laces them tight around her ankles. The others are still asleep, curled deep in their sleeping bags like caterpillars in chrysalis. Four lumpy, grey, blue and red cocoons, all still and silent. She brushes through the ashes from last night’s fire with her fingertips, skin too hardened for the few red coals beneath to harm her. She piles on a few handfuls of dry leaves, then layers on sticks, small to large. A moment later, like the melting of ice, curls of soft smoke emerge from beneath the leaves.

She tiptoes out of camp. By the time the flames engulf Mary will be awake. She’ll stack on logs and boil water for tea.

Scar wanders through the trees, still heavy with sleep. She pulls her woollen shawl tight around her chest, breathing short sharp breaths in and releasing them slowly through her mouth, and heads towards the eastern spur. She steps through the scratchy silver scrub that blankets the mountainside, fallen bows and smooth grey boulders, like headstones. Thick fog had rolled into camp last night, filtering silently through the trees, and now it descends the slopes, revealing the tops of neighbouring mountains. Here on the side of the mountain, where there are fewer trees and more sun reaches the ground, the scrub is green and thick. She finds an opening in the hip high brush and squats, bracing herself against the icy air. There are small mounds of snow amongst the rocks and sphagnum, insulated by the dense leaves.

Shivering off the cold she stands, urgently pulling her black Kevlar jeans back up and, as she does every time, envies male anatomy. She’s used to it now, but she’ll never not yearn for a toilet and four walls. She wraps her arms around herself and stares for a moment at the stillness of the bush – the only movement her breath in plumes before her. She’ll miss this view. The grey green swells of hill and stone, the black lines weaving across them – creeks and rivers, the veins of the forest. The sky, so vast yet so close, so readable.

It’s harsh, unforgiving wilderness, as dangerous as it is beautiful. Ironic, that its danger is the very thing that makes it safe.

She walks back towards camp, and she feels before she could possibly know, that something is wrong. She senses within herself an urgency to get to them, but she doesn’t run, for underneath that feeling is another – one of futility. A feeling there’s nothing she could do anyway. As she weaves briskly through the silver trunks of young eucalypts, eyes locked ahead, she thinks she can hear crying, but she’s too far out to tell whether it’s in her mind or in her ears. Her own steps are loud, leaves and sticks crunching under her foot falls, and her breath, her blood, her lifeforce pounding in her veins.

She knows before she sees.

The image is spliced by trunks: Allira crouching beside Bill’s sleeping bag. Ruby is standing behind her, a few feet back, holding a blanket tight around her. Now she sees Mary, crouched also beside Bill. Both women are hunched forward, and yes, Allira is crying, but noiselessly.

Scar goes to Ruby, puts her arm around the little girl’s shoulders AND holds her to her hip. Looking over Allira’s shoulder, she sees Bill’s face, hard and colourless, eyes half closed, mouth open.

‘Oh, Bill,’ Allira whimpers, tears dropping from the tip of her nose.

‘Shh,’ Mary coos, touching Allira’s arm, which is holding Bill’s. ‘He didn’t suffer.’

That’s not true, Scar thinks. She steps forward, guiding Ruby forward also, and puts her hand on Allira’s shoulder. ‘Your sister needs cuddles,’ she says softly to Ruby, and the girl crouches at Allira’s side, wrapping her skinny arms as far as she can around her big sister. Allira sits back and embraces her with one arm, and takes Scar’s hand with the other, sobbing softly into the top of Ruby’s head.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ Mary says in her gentlest voice, and pushes herself up stiffly.

Scar watches Mary’s old, bony hands as she stokes the fire and fills the pot from the water drum. Her skinny frame isn’t unlike the narrow, knobbly trunks surrounding their camp, her hair the same silvery grey. She’ll be next, Scar hears her inner voice whisper, and looks back at Bill. He’d had a grating cough all winter – as long as they’ve known him. It made Scar’s blood run cold every time she heard it. That cough hurt, she saw him wince and hold his sternum every time it tore through his body, and recently he’d begun holding his back too. Something malignant was growing in there; he’d known it, she’d known it. If the others had known, they hadn’t given it away. Allira might not have experienced this kind of slow death before, or perhaps it was a bit of denial; she and Ruby had bonded quickly with Bill. They’d called him Uncle, and that was the only time Scar had seen him smile.

She crouches beside Allira and lightly, carefully, touches her fingertips to Bill’s eyelids, closing them down for him. His skin is cold and stiff, he must have been gone for hours. The only thing the same as it was before is his bushy grey beard, soft and fluffy, neither warm nor cold.

‘What should we do with him?’ Mary asks quietly, standing a way off from the group. ‘We can’t bury him. The ground is too hard.’

‘Bit soon for that conversation, don’t you think, Mary?’ Scar says, twisting to hold her gaze.

Mary, hands on her hips, turns away.

Scar puts her arm across Allira’s back, holds the sisters to her side.

Two cups of tea and perhaps an hour later, Allira is sitting beside the fire, staring puffy eyed into the flames. Her dark hair is a feathered mess around her forehead, and she’s wrapped herself and Ruby in her sleeping bag.

‘We should take him to that platform of rocks overlooking the river,’ she says. ‘Where he told us his stories. He can look up at the sky there.’

Scar nods. ‘He’d love that.’ No matter how accustomed to death she is now, it still feels strange sitting across from Bill’s body, drinking tea and discussing where to place him.

Also, she feels guilty, for she’s aware of a feeling of impatience, like a seed that has lain dormant is now splitting open and emerging from a husk inside her. It’s time to leave. They came up here for the autumn, but they’d stayed for Bill. He wouldn’t have made it back down the mountain, and on some silent, private level, she’s been waiting for this.

Allira sniffs and her face contorts again. She kisses Ruby’s forehead and squeezes her eyes shut, spilling tears down Ruby’s face, who wipes them away with a look of disgust that makes Scar smile. Allira laughs through her tears and apologises. ‘Are you alright? Do you understand what’s happening?’

Ruby nods, composed as a Queen. ‘His body’s going back to the Earth, like Mum and Damen and Jack and Izaac. But he’ll be back.’

Allira nods. ‘What do you think he’ll come back as?’

Ruby thinks for a moment, then smiles and says, ‘I think he’ll be a koala.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was furry and liked to sleep a lot.’

Allira laughs, and so does Scar, but with her laughter, come quiet tears. She’d been very fond of him, from the moment she’d met him on the mountainside, with his clear eyes and kind, open face. And once she’d gotten to know him she’d enjoyed his gentle manner and almost serene nature. Still, the tears surprise her. They normally come much later in her grief, when she’s had a chance to miss the person. Perhaps it’s Ruby, and the innocent, matter-of-fact attitude of a six-year-old towards death that bruises her resolve. But it isn’t sadness that moves her exactly, just pure emotion. And love. Love, with one less place to go.