Chapter One: Thus

 

Sunlight glinted off frosty blades. Thin gold beams pierced the dew.

Gossamer threads of low mist trailed across open paddocks.

 

Daylight fell, darkness receding into the long shadows lengthening in

broad swathes over the green turf.

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A girl in track-suit pants and pink t-shirt, strawberry blonde hair tied

in a rough pony-tail, yawned broadly, mouth agape, snaggle-toothed;

like a very skinny hippopotamus in need of an orthodontist.

 

Shrugging off the lingering warmth of her soft bed, she squatted on the

deck of the verandah to put on her running shoes. Cursing the cold, her

numb fingertips and her lazy habit of kicking off her shoes without

untying the shoelaces, she unpicked the hard, crusty knots. Succeeding

at last, she loosened the mud-caked tongues and tugged them on.

 

After closing the sliding door carefully after her, imagining her father’s warning to “Close that bloody door!” and his threats of a plague of mice invading the house, she willed her wooden legs into motion, gingerly feeling her grudging hamstrings, coaxing blood into her tetchy toes.

 

As she passed the chicken coop behind the shearing shed, a feeble “Pwark!” greeted her. Feathers puffed up against the chill air: a hen, half-buried in the straw. Rather as she had been buried in her pile of blankets minutes before, trying to reject the summons of her alarm clock.

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“At least someone has some sense,” she muttered to herself.

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Reaching the metal gate of the race, she grappled with the latch, opened it and, once again took care to ensure it was closed behind her (“Close that bloody gate!” she heard in her head, “Or there’ll be sheep eating your mother’s flowers!”) Stubbornly rejecting her reluctant legs’ pleas for clemency, she broke into a stiff jog.

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“Come on guys,” she mumbled, “Gotta run. Gotta be strong for Saturday.”

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She imagined herself jumping in the air to accept a team-mate’s long pass, spinning a graceful pirouette in the single same movement, and executing the perfect lob over her opponent’s head, the ball swishing silently through the hoop. The crowd of onlookers roared …

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Dreams of glory dissolved as one foot squished in a slushy puddle and the other squelched in a sticky, muddy mire. A pipe running to a feeding trough had sprung a leak. Her right shoe was instantly a-slosh with icy water. She extracted the left, taking care the shoe accompanied the foot.

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Momentarily she cursed the hardship of the aspiring netball champion’s sorry, sleepless lot. Then, shedding self-pity with an impatient shake of her head, she broke into a half-sprint.

 

Ahead of her in the dew and green several sheep looked up in mild surprise at her intrusion into their calm, cold world. A magpie warbled in the mallee bordering the paddock and, as if this was a sign to stir, the ewes bleated dully and ambled off with their lambs trotting behind them.

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The girl ran off in the other direction along the fence-line.

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Most mornings now for the past two months she had done two circuits of the middle paddock. When she had started it had not been so cold and the ground had been harder and browner. Now, with the netball season reaching its end, she was persisting, despite a sprained finger, which had stopped her playing for the past two weeks.

 

Her best friend, Melanie, had taken her place in the team. They had been friendly rivals for the goal-shooting position ever since the Under Tens, and now, yet again, if Sam were picked to play against Dudley, Mel would be left out.

 

She wasn’t sure how Mel would take being dropped. She could hear Mel saying, “Don’t be an idiot. I don’t care, Sammy, that’s how these things go”, but though this was how Mel would usually react, she also knew that Mel had as many fond dreams as she herself did and she didn’t want to hurt her closest mate.

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She reached the far corner of the perimeter fence and struck a ninety-degree turn that took her down past the three-quarters-empty dam. A bow-legged spindly lamb, that looked as if it had barely been born, sat in her path.

 

“Doesn't know it should be scared of me,” Sam thought.

 

Not wanting to frighten it and have it run off and separate itself from its mother, Sam detoured closer to the dam and ran through a shallow sheet of water lying in a hollow. The lamb bleated and stayed where it was. Sam silently wished it well.

 

She had never liked the way the livestock on the farm were treated. She understood that they could not afford to be sentimental, that it was necessary, that the animals were her parents’ livelihood and that nothing much could be done about it, still, when it came to the lambs, she couldn’t help wishing none of them had to be sold. Their fate troubled her, but when her father herded them into the yards for drenching, tailing or drafting, she mostly bit her lip and turned a blind-eye to the harshness of it all.

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“Right. Next post I pick up the pace; one after that, I sprint to the end!” she goaded herself to finish her run as strongly as she could, concentrating hard while the breath rasped out of her heaving chest, the ground thudding mutely under her feet.

 

A bitter breeze bit her bare cheeks and she nearly slipped over as she pounded past another dumbfounded ewe and its lamb, before coming at last to a flailing halt at the corner gate. She bent over double, gasping, her head light.

 

“Dudley, watch out!” she thought triumphantly. Slightly delirious as endorphins and adrenalin throbbed through her, a sense of accomplishment glowed in her heart at having pushed herself so hard. “I’m going to score twenty points this weekend.”

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She suddenly felt sure Mel would happily relinquish her spot in the team.

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Revived by these positive thoughts she broke into a tired jog and set off back to the house. 

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“Sam, you’re going to be late. Get a move on!” her mother yelled as she clomped on to the wooden deck, spilling mud like sheep droppings in her wake. “Don’t make a mess with those filthy feet of yours,” her mother intoned mechanically, knowing full well she had little to no chance of Sam hearing her, let alone doing as she was told.

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Her sweaty daughter wearily un-shod herself, using the heel of one foot to force the shoe off the other. The knots in her shoe-laces remained tight, shoes scattered behind her on the verandah as she disappeared inside.

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Hope was nibbling a particularly delectable patch of clover.

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A long white worm blindly squirmed past her nose. Curious, she sniffed cautiously at this new phenomenon. She had not yet encountered such a creature in the seven days since her birth. She wondered at its elasticity and stark lack of woolen cladding. Even that strange two-up that had just noisily and inexplicably fled past her had been covered

in something!

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Still, after watching the cold slimy thing struggle on for a few more inches, she blinked and decided she just had to accept its weirdness. Two legs or none, you could only chuckle at such things. She flicked her tail, stuttered “Ma-a-ah!” at her mother feeding near the dam a short stretch of grass away and, having located another choice three-leaf, resumed her contented munching.

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The sun was rising with surprising alacrity and the crisp earth started to soften under its warmth. Hope basked in its light touch. She had already learned to love this time of the day and how the blackness suddenly gave way to brilliant colour that spread steadily from the horizon and suffused their golden-green home.

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Hope bleated at her mother and her mother bleated back in reassurance. “Yes, I’m here,” her deeper round tones affirmed. Hope skipped along over toward her. She managed not to fall over her own legs, successfully negotiating the shallow dip in the ground and holding on to her flimsy grip on the earth. Nearby, her twin brother and two of their friends were eating and chatting and occasionally dancing about for the sheer exhilaration of stretching their slender legs.

 

She and her brother had encountered many of the other new lambs since they had entered the world one crisp clear morning, but knew very few well. Many of their friends were actually half-siblings – different mothers sired on the same gruff-looking

ram who resided in pomp and isolation a paddock or two away.

 

“These long-leaf are my favourite,” the plumpest of the lambs mumbled between chews, spitting out several wads of semi-digested cud in the process. “They’re the sweetest!”

 

Mower was an enthusiastic connoisseur of the grasses on which they grazed. He had identified the location of the choicest patches and could recommend the best eating, at the slightest encouragement from anyone who cared to ask, in any part of the paddock, giving precise details of current length, thickness and juiciness. His voracious appetite and relentless mastication meant he had grown a little rotund though he had come in to the world less than two weeks before her. Hence, his name; although some recounted another story of the day of Mower’s arrival into the world, when his mother had tired of

his relentless sucking and impatiently pushed him from her teat, at which point the infant had bawled loudly a single syllable, “Mo-o-o-r-r-e!” Coming from his immature throat, this had sounded more like ‘m-o-o-o-w-e--r!” Whichever you believed, either explanation fit his character and insatiable need to feed.

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“I like three-leafs best,” retorted Fuzz, so-called for the odd fizzy appearance of the wool around his rump. Fuzz liked a good argument and Mower was a ready target when it came to the subject of food. “Long-leafs are too much work,” he drawled laconically, eying Mower out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see if he’d take the bait.

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“Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Impossible. Load of cobblers. Drivel and nonsense! Never, never, never!” Mower’s response was predictably emphatic. “You wouldn’t know a blade of fine rykuyu from roo poo!”

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“Don’t knock it! Daggy says we might have to get use to eating anything we can lay our teeth into if it doesn't rain soon,” Fuzz rejoined.

 

“Daggy’s an old grumble-bum. She farts and turns around for a whiff just so she can complain about the stink!” Hope’s twin, Spring, offered loudly, at the same time looking guardedly over at an old ewe munching away alone by the copse of trees in the centre of the Grass.

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Daggy was eight years old and seemed to have acquired a profound pessimism along with the wisdom of age. She over-whelmed all and sundry with her tales of doom and gloom and was constantly foretelling misfortune and foul futures for individual members of the Flock.

 

“She scares me,” piped Spindle, another frail and feeble young lamb who had just wandered into the conversation. “She reckons I’m a goner!” 

 

“Why?” Fuzz asked.

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“Says the dark-wings will get me.”

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“Gut rot!” Spring scoffed. “What does she know? She says that about any lamb who gets within earshot!”

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“Stay close, Spindle,” Hope mumbled through a mouthful of cud, “And you’ll be right.”

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Across the fence-line, immersed in the grey shadows of the Mallee, the magpie whose warble Sam had heard, perched aloft a thin branch and scowled down benignly on the world at his feet.

 

“Whatcha thinkin’, Rembrandt?” A tiny voice within the bush called up to the old magpie.

 

The bird twitched from one craggy claw to the other, narrowed its eyes and cast a dim look on an impertinent joey nibbling narrow-leaf directly beneath it. “You gungurru young’uns should hold your tongue.”

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“Aw, c’mon, Rembrandt!’ whined the joey, “Get over it. What you reckon about the rains? Are we getting a soaking tonight?” 

 

“Couldn't say rightly. Maybe, maybe not. Wouldn’t be telling you anyway! Go on back to your kind!” The old bird ruffled its graying black and white plumage and turned its back.

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“Don't be so crotchety, Rembrandt. Crikey! Just wanted a chat. Hey, have you heard this one: what’s black and white and red all over?”

 

“I’m sure I don't care.”

 

“A sun-burnt maggie!” the joey guffawed, chuffed by his own sparkling wit.

 

Rembrandt blinked, unimpressed. “Where’s your mother anyway?”

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“Mum’s just down the fence a bit. Found some excellent tucker – new shoots. I’m going down there in a second. Get me a good feed before we head for a doze.”

 

“You lot only ever think about food. Your mob want to be careful staying round here this late. The two-ups will be round here soon most likely. Lambs’ll be getting a tailing one of these days. And they’d as soon shoot you lot as look at you …”

 

“Hey, a roo’s gotta eat. Leave me alone if you can't be civil. I’m off. Nakkiota !” the joey finished cheerfully, blinked happily at his reticent host and, turning on his tail, hopped off through the scraggy scrub.

 

The magpie watched him go.

 

“RARK!” 

 

No sooner had the joey left, than an even older bird alighted a couple of trees away from Rembrandt. The polished sheen of its jet-black plumage stood in odd contrast to the disheveled nature of its tail-feathers. Its age was hard to determine from its

appearance, but Rembrandt knew the crow had seen at least a score of winters, and had a heart to match.

 

“Good morning, Rembrandt.”

 

“Good morning, Titus.”

 

“Keeping company with gungurru again, I notice,” the old crow croaked.

 

“No harm in that, Titus, surely, even from your crooked perspective.” Rembrandt returned coolly.

 

The sun behind the dark bird silhouetted him against the morning sky. The light seemed to be sucked into his black shape, negating the sun’s warmth.

 

“We Winged should stick together, I say. Mingling with those below us only confuses things.”

 

“There are no rules about where we find our friends, Titus.”

 

“Maybe, maybe,” Titus shook one wing. “However, you know as well as I that hunger dictates how long friendship lasts. Such friendship is limited. When time comes - push to shove - we cannot afford good manners.” 

 

“A choice we each make, Titus.” Rembrandt eyed the bigger bird uncomfortably. “I will not feed on my friends, though you may.” The words stuck in Rembrandt’s craw as he spoke.

 

“Ah, no need to get touchy, my brindle friend.”

 

“Grim as ever, Titus. I will not stay to make small talk with the devil on such a fine morning. Life is too short. Goodbye, Titus.”

 

“Has ever been thus on Karta, Rembrandt. This is the way of things,” the crow persisted.

 

“Vicious fowl!” the magpie thought to himself and, lifting his wings, took several steady wing-beats away and off into the paddock, a head-wind forcing him to fly low over the flock of sheep.

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“Do not pretend. You are not so high and mighty that you can deny the truth!” The crow cawed loudly at the magpie’s diminishing figure.

 

A hundred yards away from Titus, the lambs were frolicking. The dew had burnt away now and the heat of the sun pumped the young blood through their veins. They skipped and jumped, savouring the precious warmth of the reluctant winter sun. They were playing one of their favourite games: dam-chasey. The rules were simple: it involved chasing one another down one side of the dam and racing back up the bank on the other side. Spring led the way each time, followed closely by Fuzz and Mower and Hope.

 

Though Spindle’s stick legs meant she was always last, she was not put off and kept up her fruitless pursuit as happily as any of them. The breeze ruffled the longer grass near  the foot of the dam and the sun glinted off the shallow puddle that was all which remained of the dam water.

 

From his vantage point, the crow’s sharp, beady eyes gazed intently, surveying each lamb in turn.

 

“Has ever been thus …” Titus repeated quietly to himself.

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