Carrier (3 page)

He started to climb the fence and my stomach swirled with nerves. All of the warnings about the male species that Mum had drummed into my head since I was a little girl shouted at me to hurl the rabbit and run. But for once I ignored them and listened to my own voice.

The boy stopped at the razor-wired top and dangled one of his hands over.

‘I won't climb right over. Just pass it up to me. I promise I won't touch you, even though I'm safe.'

I slipped the backpack on backwards so that it rested against my stomach and tucked the rabbit in before beginning to climb. I only needed to go three-quarters of the way because Patrick's arms were long enough to reach down.

As I became close enough to pass, my hands trembled as I took the rabbit out and held it up with a shaking hand. He took it.

Next I passed the figs and this time our fingers brushed.

I gasped. But it wasn't because I was worried about the Y-Carrier. It was because it was the first time I'd touched somebody other than my mother in over ten years.

Patrick's eyes widened. ‘Sorry. But it's okay. Remember, I'm not diseased.'

I didn't say a word. I was too busy storing the feel of his warm fingers against my own inside my treasure trove of memories. Even if I never saw him again, this moment was mine to keep and to draw from in the many lonely years to come.

Still, in a reflex action, I wiped my hand against my shirt. His eyes followed and took stock of my gesture.

‘Do I have to show you my chest again to make you believe me?'

It was difficult to tell in the moonlight whether Patrick was being serious or attempting to lighten the atmosphere with some humour. But my face heated anyway and I shook my head and sort of stumbled back down, falling hard on my bottom.

Bone-splitting pain radiated from my tailbone down to my toes. I'd jarred nearly every bone in the lower half of my body.

‘Are you okay?' Patrick asked after he descended back down his side of the fence in a single, graceful leap.

I dusted down my clothes, picked up the torch and aimed it at the ground, making a sun in the dirt. My rear end felt as though it had been kicked twenty times.

‘I'm fine,' I said, because something light and warm was spreading through my chest. I'd done what I'd always dreamed of doing since I was little. I'd touched a stranger. I'd smiled and he had smiled. My food was now his food. That was the domino effect. It meant that I existed.

As I stepped back, away from the fence, I finally allowed the wide smile that had so wanted to stretch my face since the moment I saw him; my jaw muscles tingling from being so stiff and unused most of the time.

‘You're small, but you seem strong,' Patrick said through the fence, his eyes full of admiration, ‘a bit like my mum.' He smiled, transforming his boyish features into something beautiful. ‘She always wanted a daughter, but ended up with just us boys.' His intense gaze left my face and swept down to my toes and back up again, making me wish Mum hadn't chopped all my hair off. It would be nice to have someone think I was pretty.

‘You're the first girl I've ever seen,' he added, before clearing his throat.

My cheeks warmed and I glanced down at the fading torch-sun in the dirt.

‘I've got to go,' I whispered, shuffling back from the fence. I wanted to add ‘my friend', but didn't because friends don't keep secrets from each other. A real friend would have told Patrick about his dad.

‘Goodnight, Lena. Thank you.' His voice faded as darkness swallowed him whole. The sound of my name on his lips made me smile again.

As I turned away, my eyes shot up to Alice's star in silent prayer.

Please, by some miracle, let the man Mum shot not be Patrick's dad. Please, Alice.

I approached the house carefully, as if it weren't my own. The dingos were silent again. Perhaps, intuitively, they'd understood I hadn't truly left them.

While I crept up the veranda steps, I wrapped my arms around my body in a hug.

I had met a boy. A boy named Patrick, who had used my name and confirmed my existence in the world.

I took one last, longing look at the moonlit night — seeing it for the first time as something other than a nether of danger — before opening the door to the house and entering.

Mum didn't answer when I knocked on her door. I jiggled the doorknob but it was still locked. However, when I pressed my ear up against the door, Mum's faint ragged snoring put me at ease.

That night, I dreamed again.

In my dream I rested my hand against Patrick's bare chest, the vibrations of his heartbeat tickling my palm. But seconds later I shrieked in horror and drew my hand away, because his torso was no longer smooth and tan, but instead blanketed in a raised red rash.

The next day, with Mum still taking refuge in her room, Alice was never more missed. How fun it would have been to sit on the veranda's love seat with my cousin and giggle about Patrick in the same way the girls in my novels always did about boys. Perhaps I would have introduced her to Patrick. Then together she and I could have snuck out and visited with his family.

To pass the day away I tidied the house, refreshed our water supply, cooked a root vegetable stew and left a bowl outside Mum's bedroom door, milked Nanny and replenished the dingos' water. Luckily we didn't need to feed our girls — they were supreme hunters; the only thing they ate of ours was the internal organs and the bones of our catch. Otherwise, they were self-sufficient which was a good thing, because we'd starve if we had to share our food with them all the time.

Finally evening came and it was time to get dressed. For the first time in my life I actually considered myself in front of my bedroom mirror, my eyes lingering over my short hair. I sighed with disgust. Though my hair hadn't been long for years, this was the first time I was really bothered by the fact.

When I was a kid I'd had hair so long I could sit on it. The colouring was unique to Dad and me; light brown with streaks of red and gold. Fire hair, Mum used to say. But one day, not long after we had lost Alice, while I was playing hopscotch, the squares drawn in the red dirt with a sharp stick, Mum seized me by my hair, wrapped its length around her knuckles and chopped it all off.

I was only seven years old and hated Mum for doing it. My flaming hair was the only pretty thing about me — Alice had said so — and Mum had hacked it off like it was the end of an old, frayed rope.

I'd refused to eat for days after and wore a hat constantly, but eventually I'd caved and accepted the loss of my one beauty. I even became used to it. A couple of years later I'd learnt of Mum's motive. Make Lena look like a boy and perhaps if those men, Alice's men, came roaming again, they'd take no notice. So in her mind, she was protecting me.

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, making the strands neat.

My face was round, with a small nose and wide, brown eyes. With longer hair I might even have been sort of pretty, but without it I was at best a young, delicate boyish-looking girl who looked dirty most of the time because you could never really wash the red dust from your skin and hair. I was perpetually tanned or bronzed; whether it was from the sun or the dirt I didn't know, because I'd never had a true break from either one.

After throwing several things into my backpack, I locked the girls in the shed again — this time I had to chase them for several minutes before I managed to get them through the door.

On my journey to the fence, I hesitated when passing by the enormous salmon bark. A light evening breeze was blowing, the leaves on the ancient tree making ghostly whispering sounds.

Three mounds of sand — one higher and fresher than the others — now rested beneath its shade. Invisible cold fingers of death traced my skin and left me with goose bumps that wouldn't rub off no matter how hard I tried. I bent my head and muttered a small ‘sorry' to the stranger who now rested there, before shuffling away as quickly as my legs could go.

Soon the sun disappeared over the horizon and darkness fell as softly as ash over the property. I plonked myself on the ground beside the fence, setting the container of stew and thermos full of goat's milk down before making a pillow out of Dad's jacket. I rested my head and stared up at rapidly darkening the sky.

Time passed.

Once shy stars now brightened and swirled against the night in clusters like thin streams of milk. The calls of the nocturnal kept me awake, though I knew it was now past candle-out time.

Nerves pooled in my lower belly. Patrick hadn't showed yet, and minute by minute, my hope at seeing him again died. I started to wonder if perhaps he'd indeed found his father and therefore had no reason to roam this way again.

Above all else I wanted Patrick and his brothers to have their father back. But I couldn't help the cold emptiness spreading inside me like winter frost at the idea of never seeing him again, of not having anyone else in the world but Mum.

An hour later the shed had grown silent, and I yawned, picturing the warm bodies of my girls huddled together on the floor of the shed. With all the excitement from last night and the dream about Patrick with the rash, sleep hadn't been easy.

Drawing my shirt tighter around me, I concentrated on the stars in a desperate bid to keep awake. The star I'd named Alice was much harder to find when the sky was lit up like this. But just before my lids closed over what was the most spectacular ceiling I'd ever slept beneath, my tiny star winked in the north-westerly sky, letting me know that I wasn't as alone as I felt.

*

A creamy mauve sky stared back at me when I opened my eyes again. It wasn't early enough to herald morning birdsong, but light enough to know that the rising sun was not too far away.

Scrambling into sitting position, I nearly screamed when I spotted Patrick lying on the other side of the fence. He was propped up on one elbow and resting his head in the palm of his hand. His eyes remained fixed on me as though he'd been watching me sleep the entire night.

I ran my fingers through my hair and rubbed at my face.

‘Morning,' he said, a gentle smile curving his lips.

‘How long have you been here? How long have I been sleeping for?' I knew it was a stupid question to ask, seeing as it was nearly morning, but I was a little lost for intelligent words. All this extra light made me feel self-conscious and not as confident as I had been when the shadows of darkness had cloaked us both the other night.

Patrick's eyes were green-grey, like the ocean I'd seen in pictures, not dark brown as I had first guessed. My family were all brown-eyed. Only Alice had had icy blue, and of course I hadn't seen them in years, so Patrick's ocean eyes were a sort of novelty — at least that was the best excuse I could offer for not being able to drag mine away.

He was up on his feet within seconds.

I did the same and held out the food container and the flask of milk.

‘I made a stew. But I'm not sure if it's still okay to eat seeing as it spent an entire night out here. The goat's milk in the thermos should be okay...I hope.'

‘Thanks. The night was fairly cool so...' Patrick shrugged and smiled softly, showing a little of his teeth. The front two were slightly crooked, the left one overlapping the right one a little. Everything about him was so fascinating I found it hard to not stare.

‘My brothers and I will pretty much eat anything anyway,' he added. His eyes widened and his smile disappeared. ‘Not that I think your food is bad or anything. I bet it tastes great, just like that rabbit.'

‘I knew what you meant,' I said, with a smile, hoping to elicit another one of his, but Patrick's face grew serious.

‘My brothers wanted to thank you themselves,' he said, his eyes to the floor. ‘But I told them that you lived far away, and that you probably wouldn't be able to leave your mother to make the journey. It's too dangerous to drag them all out here.' He shrugged. ‘They were pretty sad knowing they'd never meet you.'

In the time it took me to glance back at my house and turn back round to face Patrick, my decision was made.

‘Then I'll come to see them,' I blurted, the first rays of sunlight warming my back. ‘Not today, but maybe tomorrow?'

Patrick stepped forward and gripped the fence with both hands. ‘You'd come see them?' His eyes flickered in the direction of the house and back. ‘Will she let you?'

‘My mum is...indisposed right now. I don't even think she'd notice if I was gone, at least for a day or so.' It felt strange, talking like this, making plans without Mum. I pressed a hand to my mouth, my forehead and my cheeks, searching for some sign of delirium, but I felt perfectly fine. This was real. This was me — planning a visit to somebody's house.

‘Even if she doesn't let me, I'm going to leave.' I shook my head at his frown and the worried look in his eyes. ‘Don't worry,' I said, my heart coursing with excitement. ‘This has been a long time coming.'

‘Are you sure?' he asked, rubbing his chin and shaking his head from side to side. ‘I sort of don't blame your mum for wanting to keep you penned up in here. There are not as many Carriers around as there were, say, five years ago, but there's still some floating around.' His ocean eyes held mine. ‘You have to be certain about this, Lena.'

Before I could change my mind I nodded.

Patrick swallowed thickly before his face broke into a wide smile that showed most of his teeth. ‘They are going to go crazy when they see you — in a good way.' He shook his head, still smiling. ‘What time should I meet you tomorrow?' he asked.

A morning bird broke out into a bright, chirpy song and for some reason that bird inspired me.

I shook my head and grinned back at Patrick.

‘Forget tomorrow. Come tonight. I want to leave tonight.'