Melory jerked awake. Was it over?
Was her last memory nothing more than a nightmare and she awake to the
comfort and warmth of her old bed and the security of the long-standing farmstead
of her youth, her father in the next room snoring himself through the small
hours of the morning and into the promise of his sixtieth birthday? The remote
tranquillity of dawn-light broke over her with a wave of panic. The memory of her home was the dream, not the
towering giant pines at the base of which she and her sister now huddled.
The night had been spent in a chilling
embrace, the women clinging to each other, unwilling to admit to their
predicament, unwilling to sleep. Unknown
noises had assailed their ears, their senses alive to the stealthy movements
surrounding them. How had they slept in
this even for a moment? How could anyone
when emotion vacillated between heart thudding panic and terrified resolve? But
she had, Melory’s doze involuntary, hugging Lorrie compulsively for warmth, for
the familiarity of not only her humanity, but her symbolic security in the
alien vastness. She bristled with ground
litter and pine needles like a hedgehog curled into a tight protective ball,
trying to forget the final moments of her dream, a dream she had prayed had not
been memories of reality; the crumbling highway and fading death knell of the
imagined rumble of the grating rocks. A
dream now replaced by the eerily, hauntingly beautiful chorus of birds in full
voice.
Melory was dew wet, her leather jacket
creaking, her jeans clinging and cold.
She looked about the clearing before her as sunlight eased back the
curtain of black, and grey fingers spread a dance of colour across the world, a
stream of morning light bedecking the grass and flowers with the richness of
diamond sparkles. She breathed sweet
air, aromatic and pungent as everything roused to attention. The glory of the
birds’ song faded to a spattering of calls and twitters interspersed now by
sounds both normal; the chirp of cicadas and hum of flying insects buzzing
lazily in a morning dance; and ominous; the rustle and crash of heavy
footfalls, snuffles and snorts of larger unseen beasts foraging beyond sight.
Lorrie roused, stiffened beside Melory
announcing her own return to consciousness.
“It’s all still here, then?” she said, her voice croaky and morning dry.
“Depends what you mean,” Melory replied. “If you mean sanity, then no, it seems very
much absent. The road, the rock slide,
the car are all still… missing.” Now that was an understatement! “This,” she waved at the surrounding forest,
“however, is still very much here and so unfortunately are we.”
Melory waited momentarily for any hint of the
returning panic they had both suffered when realisation had finally overtaken
them. They had been thrown free of Lorrie’s
car as the landslide had consumed them, a brilliant blaze as bright as an
explosive sun searing their sight, all sound, an oppressive force that knocked
breath and consciousness from their bodies…and they had awoken to
miscomprehension, bruised, abraded yet very much alive and in total confusion.
“How many hours have we been gone, do you
think?” Lorrie ventured after a moment of fitful silence. She did not sit up but stared solemnly into
nowhere, it appeared her panic tempered, resting her head on her arm, trying to
find a more comfortable position against the rough tree roots. Idly Lorrie
scrubbed a finger over her teeth and grimaced.
“I could so do with a toothbrush about now.”
Pulling a face, Melory shrugged, “I don’t
know, perhaps eighteen hours by now, although my watch says it’s five past one
in the morning which can’t be right.”
“No matter, they’ll have started searching by
now, then.”
“Da and the others? Fat lot of good it’ll do them; or us. We’re not in the gorge anymore are we?”
Neither spoke for a moment. No! They were not in the gorge. Where exactly they were, they both still had
no idea.
“We’ve missed the celebration good and proper
this time,” Melory murmured with a sardonic sigh. She couldn’t help the guilt that welled
unbidden in her. Her uncle Joe had
phoned on Friday especially to remind her, eager because she had consented
finally, determined to do all in his power to make her keep her word and yet
equally offering her an excuse should she find it necessary to renege right at
the last moment. He knew her, knew her
so well. But she hadn’t! That was the thing; this was not meant to be.
Lorrie snorted as she sat, her shoulder
brushing against Melory’s, comfortably solid, “I think the celebrations will
have fizzled quite dramatically, don’t you?”
“We should have stayed where we were.” Ok, this was not the first time Melory had
let loose with that lament and even as she spoke she knew its futility. She had wanted to find the car…a bright red
beckon to their distress, but there was no car to find and she could admit
nothing else.
“Don’t start that again!” Lorrie said impatiently. “How would that have helped? That bloody panther’s still out there
somewhere and we were right in its way.”
Melory shuddered at the thought of the dark
feline, her fear a palpable thing. It
had come across them bare moments after they had found each other and
ascertained that they were unhurt only to be frozen by its untenable presence,
a beast unknown on the Mainland, unknown in their whole country… Like a rabbit she had been paralysed, waiting
for the inevitable; death and to be devoured.
Her stomach did a lazy roll… but it had not come and when the creature
had taken particular note of them, its huge orbs glowing golden fire, curious,
alien, it had leapt at them as if to scare them into motion, then sauntered
away as they had screamed and scrambled from the glade running faster than they
had ever run through the thickness of pine litter and up towards what they
thought would bring them back to the shattered highway. But it had not. They had been tossed from the verge of the
forest onto a sparse open ridge, to the sight of grey peaks and a dark green
mantle that spread before them as an eternal blanket that covered the entire
earth… unbelievable!
“No! No, you’re right, of course, but…”
Melory rubbed her stomach idly, her voice dropping away. It had no force or reason behind it. There was no argument for their situation, no
explanation. The scene that greeted her
was immutable, absolute. She did not
imagine this, it was as authentic and insistent as a touch to her own skin, and
the breath that filled her. “God, I could go some breakfast right now, myself!”
Her sister’s face paled. They had no food, they sat in the only
clothes they possessed, damp and dirty. Neither had a handbag nor a mobile
phone with which to call for help. More
importantly without that help they had no tenting equipment, not even a single
blanket.
“We seem to have come rather ill-prepared for
this,” Lorrie mumbled as she rose determinedly, stretching the stiffness from
her back and rubbing her thighs and calves with vigorous strokes to aid the sluggish
circulation in her legs.
Who could have come prepared for this? They had not left their homes thinking
anything other than that they would reach the West Coast farm and now be at the
stifling bosom of their tense and somewhat fractured family. Who prepares for a
landslide, a car wreck; a consequential, unbelievable displacement? The Gorge was gone. The forest of Southern
Beech and Pohutakawa, fern and mistletoe, gone; replaced by the heavy mantle of
ancient, stately wilderness, a vast expanse of conifer, unrelenting and dark.
Lorrie bent to drink from a deep, icy brook
cutting through the valley they had found before the darkness had halted all
chance of progress the previous evening.
Melory watched the play of emotion swamp the heart-shaped face as Lorrie
stared at the ripple and shine of her reflection. The depths of her dark, chocolate-brown eyes
glistened with hopelessness, her full, bare lips drawn and pensive. The bleakness etching her expression caught
at Melory’s heart. What possible chance
did they stand? Here; alone.
She had been right the day before, her
pessimistic insight definitely irritating Lorrie as they huddled in the dark,
but it could not have been truer.
People, even those inevitably more experienced than they were, succumbed
to the hostilities of such rugged environments.
They would die; of exposure, of starvation…
Lorrie swallowed hard, the click deep in her
throat vibrating up and down as if she tried to stifle pain. The memory of
falling, the burning heat of being awash with fire; consuming, volcanic breath
that had sucked them both into unconsciousness flared anew in Melory’s mind –
was Lorrie remembering it? Was she
reliving the confusion, the insanity?
The flare of despair dissipated sharply from her sister’s features, the
spark of determination rising as she aggressively flicked the water’s surface
shattering the reflection of her bitter expression. “Perhaps we’re dead
already,” she growled.
“What? What did you say?” Melory came up
quietly behind her and crouched at the water’s edge watching the ripples
disappear into the pull of the streams current.
Lorrie turned and considered her twin, “I
said, perhaps we are dead.”
