Walking to the Stars (3 page)

The vibrations hurt his leg as the van rattled over the potholed road, and it was cold and very dull, listening to the old lady drone on and hearing Dr. Nick's economical replies to her questions. Samuel began to nod off.

Something flickered in the darkness ahead of them, several somethings, leaping across the road like they were avoiding the headlights, and Dr. Nick braked the van hard, muttering under his breath.

"Owww,” Mrs. Pocock complained as Samuel grabbed his sore leg to hold it steady, and panic poured into his veins.

Shapes jumped in and out of the lights, as big as large dogs, pitch black with red eyes reflecting in the headlights. Samuel crossed himself reflexively as Dr. Nick brought the van to a skittering halt.

"La Madre de Dios,” Samuel said, voice shaking, and he would have given anything to still be wearing the cross his mother had given him years ago. “Who are they?"

"What?” Dr. Nick said. “What are they? They're devils.” He leant across the cab of the van and rummaged around in the glove box and picked out a painted stone. “Stay in the van,” he said.

"Devils!” Mrs. Pocock wailed, and she began to bang her hands against the side of the van.

The things, the devils, seemed to have noticed them; they were milling around in the headlights, staring up at Samuel, pink tongues hanging out, red jaws and white teeth gleaming.

A little one jumped up, at the windscreen, snarling and hissing, clinging onto the vehicle with vicious claws, and Samuel was so scared that getting out of the van was an impossibility even without a broken leg.

"Bugger,” Dr. Nick said, and he undid his seat belt and opened the car door.

Samuel watched, stunned, as Dr. Nick walked out into the crowd of those... things and waved the painted rock around. The things, the devils, scattered, scampering off into the darkness, even the one that had been eyeing Samuel through the windscreen.

"What?” was all Samuel could make himself say over the banging from the back of the van, and Dr. Nick climbed back into the driver's seat and leaned over the back.

"It's all right, Mrs. Pocock,” he said reassuringly. “They're all gone, you're quite safe."

He sat back down and did his seatbelt back up, and Samuel repeated, “What? What were they? Were they demons?"

"Devils,” Dr. Nick said. “And, just as a courtesy while you're on Noongar land, don't make the sign of the cross on your body. It's exceedingly bad manners."

Samuel blinked, and the van lurched forward once again, shaking his bones.

"The stone?” he said. “Was that magic?"

Dr. Nick shook his head. “Not really. It's a travel stone, given to me by the Feathermen to guarantee me and my vehicle safe passage through their land. The devils should have respected it. I shouldn't have had to get out and tell them to move."

Second gear, third gear, grind and crunch each time.

"Feathermen?” Samuel finally said. “Who are they? More creatures?"

"Feathermen are the clever men, the leaders, of the Noongars. They're people."

The rain had eased up a little and the van picked up speed in the darkness, rattling and bouncing over the rough road, until Samuel was sure he could feel the broken bits of his thigh bone grinding together.

He was tired, his leg was aching, and the old woman in the back of the ambulance was talking to herself quietly. There were... things... moving around in the darkness, Samuel was sure, half-seen shapes slipping behind half-seen trees. It wasn't until a kangaroo bounced across the road in the headlights that Samuel realized that he wasn't seeing demons or ghosts, but ordinary animals, and the surges of panic began to ease.

It was a comforting thought, even if the kangaroo did seem to be about four times larger than he expected, coming right up level with the top of the van. It wouldn't be good to hit one of them, they must weigh as much as a human.

It was late when Dr. Nick shook Samuel's arm to wake him up, and Samuel couldn't quite believe he'd fallen asleep, but maybe he'd dreamt the devils, maybe he'd hallucinated them.

Dr. Nick helped Samuel out of the van and walked slowly beside him, and Samuel leaned heavily on his crutches in the mud. Someone was standing in the doorway of a house he could just see through the rain, lantern in their hands, and it looked like he'd found somewhere to stay.

Samuel woke in the damp cold, but it was too still and too quiet to be the freighter. Birds were calling, a dog barked in the distance, and he remembered he was on a farm.

He'd gone to sleep with his clothes on, so once he located his crutches in the dark room and worked out how to lever himself upright, he was free to hobble to the bathroom.

Dr. Nick had shown him the piss bucket the night before, and Samuel was glad that was all he needed because rain was drumming steadily on the metal roof and the actual toilet was across a garden from the house.

Neither of the light switches he tried worked, just clicking backward and forward, but a faint light shone from another room, the kind of golden glow that meant a fire.

A young man looked up and nodded as Samuel entered the room. The stranger was dressed in muddy and tattered clothes, sat at a bare table in what must be the kitchen with a plate of bread in front of him.

Samuel vaguely remembered meeting him the night before while he was mostly asleep. Josh, that was his name.

"Morning,” Josh said. “Want some bread and jam? The jam is excellent. I've got the kettle on, too."

"Please,” Samuel said, as he leaned his crutches against the table and lowered himself into a chair. Light came in through the window now, faint and pale, so it wasn't the middle of the night as Samuel had thought. It showed an austere room, with clothes propped on racks in front of the fire and shelves full of jars, with sacks of dried goods along the wall behind Samuel.

He could smell something weird, over the obvious scent of the bread and jam, steaming clothes, and the wood fire. It smelled fatty, and not very pleasant. Josh bit into his slab of bread and jam and lifted an eyebrow.

"What's that smell?” Samuel asked.

Josh sniffed, then lifted his hand across the table to hold it closer to Samuel. “That?” Josh asked, and Samuel nodded and wrinkled his nose involuntarily. It smelled like an animal had died on Josh's hand.

"Lanolin,” Josh said. “If you put it on your hands, it stops them from cracking in the cold. There's a tub of it by the backdoor, next to the wash trough there. You'll need it if you're going to help out here."

"What is it?” Samuel asked, finding himself watching Josh's hands carefully while he cut a slab of bread then pushed it across the table to Samuel.

"Wool fat,” Josh said, as though that answered everything. “Where you from?"

"Guyana,” Samuel said, and Josh looked at him blankly. “South America, next to Brazil."

"Guess you don't have sheep there,” Josh said. “I've never met someone from South America before. What's it like?"

Samuel glanced out of the window to where the grey outline of trees was visible through the rain. “Warm,” he said. “How come your lights don't work?"

"No electricity here,” Josh said. “There used to be, but it stopped working years ago. Something about the solar array, I think. I was just a kid at the time, so I don't remember."

"I can fix arrays,” Samuel said. “Show me where the panels are, and the batteries, and I'll see if I can get the system going again."

Josh nodded and rubbed a hand over his cropped dark hair, then picked up his slab of bread. “Sure,” he said, and he waited while Samuel found his crutches and pushed himself upright.

The wooden boards were cold and gritty under Samuel's bare feet, and when Josh pushed the screen door open and held it for Samuel, a black and white dog lifted his nose hopefully.

"That's Harold,” Josh said. “Don't let him in the house. All the panels are there, on the shed roof,” he said, and he pointed out through the rain at an outbuilding the size of the house. “Don't know where the batteries are, but Dad will know when he comes in from seeding. He's on the tractor for the morning, giving me a break, since I worked all night."

Samuel looked at Josh with new respect, and he began to suspect that Josh wasn't disinterested or stupid, just exhausted.

The area at the back of the house, up to the wire fence that Samuel could see, was vegetables; at least the plants he could recognize were. He could see trees, too, around the edge of the garden, and sheep just visible through the rain on the other side of the fence. The ground smelled different, not rich and loamy like he was used to, but sharp and slippery, and the soil between the plants was made up of wet red gravel.

Josh yawned, covering his mouth full of half-eaten bread with his hand, and movement across the garden, behind the small building that was the toilet, caught Samuel's eye.

Something was lumbering across the paddock, something big and grey, and it seemed to be pausing to eat the pasture intermittently.

"What's that?” Samuel asked. “That thing?"

Josh yawned again, and said indistinctly, “Harold, go way back."

The black and white dog lurched off his blankets and down the steps to the garden, barreling through the rain with his nose down, tail held out long behind, and Samuel could hear him growling over the constant rain.

The dog disappeared through the strands of wire, and barked once, loudly.

The thing lumbered closer, and Samuel could see it was a hulking huge kangaroo, the size of a horse, loping slowly through the rain.

The sky was lighter, possibly as light as it was going to get, and when Harold appeared again, circling around the back of the kangaroo, Samuel revised his estimate of the kangaroo's size upwards. It was huge, compared to the dog.

Samuel could feel a thud at each step it took, wet and dull, and Josh bent down and picked a lump of dirt off the grid for boot scraping on the top step, then tossed the clod hard in the direction on the kangaroo.

The clod fell short, disappearing among the plants in the garden, but the kangaroo lifted its head and peered at the pair of them.

Josh said, “Procoptodon,” under his breath, then whistled sharply, twice, and Harold barked loudly and kept barking.

The kangaroo picked up the speed of its loping, a steady thud-thud, with a louder thud as it cleared the wire fence into the next paddock. Josh whistled, long and steady, and Harold barked and bounded back through the wire fence.

"That was a procoptodon,” Josh said. “If you see one heading for the veggies, make sure you yell out and wake me up, or we'll lose the whole lot."

Harold trotted through the plants and up the steps and presented himself in front of Josh for a pat.

"Good boy,” Josh said in a gentle voice. “Good dog."

"I didn't know kangaroos got that big,” Samuel said, watching the procoptodon cross the next paddock and disappear into the rain and trees.

"They don't,” Josh said. “Not exactly. Procoptodons aren't kangaroos, not really. They're kind of like land spirits or something. I don't understand exactly, but Dad knows these things. You can ask him."

Any hope of dismissing the previous night's experience with the devils was washing away in the rain, dripping off the edge of the verandah, diluted by the huge kangaroo that wasn't really a kangaroo.

"What are devils?” Samuel asked. “Do you know?"

Josh shrugged, and put the last bit of his bread into his mouth. “Kinda,” he said indistinctly, then he swallowed. “There used to be small animals called Tasmanian Devils. What you saw was kind of the spirit form of them, or something. They won't really hurt you, at least not much. Guess you saw some on the drive here, right?"

Samuel nodded, and said, “Yes. Your father made them go away with a rock.” It sounded ridiculous to him now, saying that on a wet morning, but the cold was seeping into his bones and his leg hurt, and he really didn't want to see another impossible thing right then. “Can we sit down?"

The kitchen was still dark, but Samuel sat down at the table gratefully anyway. Josh fiddled around with the fire and then moved a kettle over onto the open top, where it promptly spat and hissed.

"Want some tea?” Josh asked, and when Samuel nodded, he spooned coarse brown powder into a pot, then carried the pot over to the stove.

When he brought the steaming pot back and put two mugs on the scarred and scuffed table, Samuel sniffed experimentally, trying to get past the smell of the wool fat again. It smelled earthy, and burned, and he scrunched up his nose. “What kind of tea is this? I don't recognize the smell."

"Chicory,” Josh said. “I think that technically it's closer to coffee, and Dad says it is sacrilegious to associate the word ‘coffee’ with this, so we call it tea.” He smiled, a sudden flash of normality in a bizarre world. “Guess if you're from South America, you get to drink coffee all the time."

Samuel nodded, and watched Josh pour the brown liquid into the mugs, and took the mug that Josh pushed across the table to him. He sipped the liquid, bitter and smoky, and said, “I think your father is onto something. Whatever this is, it's not coffee."

Josh nodded. “I've only had a coffee a few times, when we take the wool clip to Albany. There's a cafe there, and it has just the most amazing food, and different types of coffee, with milk and sugar."

Sugar Samuel could understand, but the lack of milk puzzled him. “Why don't you keep cows?” he asked. “Or is this the wrong kind of land?"

"No refrigeration,” Josh said. “We can't store the meat or the milk, so there's no point. We tried milking the sheep, but unless we hand-reared them, it just isn't worth the effort of catching the bloody things. And hand-rearing sheep for a few cups of milk just doesn't make sense. Sometimes, if a patient has no scrip but has killed a cow, we'll get some of the meat instead, and that's really good."

Samuel was quiet, and the fire crackled and the rain kept drumming overhead.

Josh pushed his chair back from the table and said, “I'm going to go sleep for a while. Harold will bark like crazy if there's trouble. Just make sure you keep adding wood to the fire, or the washing will never dry and you'll freeze."