Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [33]
‘Careful, Pete.’ Mary paused, wiped the sweat out of her eyes and pointed to the left. ‘Over there. It’s not so steep.’
Slowly, painfully, they inched their way higher.
The clouds had changed colour now, changed from pink and fawn to a dazzling white. Like puffs of cotton wool in a sky of Reckitt’s blue, they bobbed and curtsied along the farther slope of the ridge, almost within the children’s hand grasp. And below them Mary could see more cloud: strato-cumulus: layer upon layer. Her hopes rose.
‘Careful near the top, Pete. T’other side may be a cliff.’
They reached the crest together – the longed-for crest, swept by a cool, moisture-laden wind – and stood, hand in hand, looking down on the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth.
They couldn’t see much detail in the valley itself, for it was blanketed in cloud, but the general layout was clear. It was a rift valley, steep-sided, about three miles wide, splitting the hills like an axe-cut. Through occasional breaks in the cloud the children could see belts of woodland and the distant gleam of water.
Peter danced on the crest of the ridge.
‘Just like the darkie told us, Mary. Food and water. Yeemara and arkooloola.’
The girl nodded.
For a moment the clouds drifted away, revealing a broad, slow-moving ribbon of water, reed-lined, dotted with water-birds, and beautiful as the river that ran out of Eden. Then the layers of strato-cumulus closed up. But the children had seen their vision: knew they’d been led to the promised land. Hand in hand they scrambled and slithered into the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE girl lay on her side, propped up on one elbow, cutting the fourteenth notch into a branch of yacca. The boy watched her.
‘How long you reckon we been here, Mary?’
She counted the notches, first those on one side, then those on the other.
‘Eight days in the desert. Six in the valley.’
It seemed to both of them far longer. The past, especially to the boy, was like another world.
They lay beside a shallow lagoon, both of them naked – for on their third day in the valley the girl’s dress had been torn beyond repair by the claws of a koala. In front of them the reed-fringed water, motionless as glass, went looping away down-valley; behind them the hills towered up, their summits wreathed in cloud; on either side of them the virgin forests, dark as a cathedral vault, sprawled almost to the water’s edge. It was midday, and the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth lay motionless, asleep in the heat of the sun.
For six days the children had wandered slowly up-valley, exploring the curving lagoons, the reedy marshlands and the belts of semi-tropical forest. They had found a number of animals, fish, and reptiles; and a great multitude of birds; but of human beings there was never a sign. They had had plenty to drink and plenty to eat – not always what they’d have chosen (for the water duck eluded their every trap and snare) – but at least something: fruit or vegetable, reptile or fish. Now they had come to an especially beautiful reach of the valley, and the girl – much to her brother’s disgust – was preparing to make a home –‘just a hut of reeds,’ she had said, ‘in case we want to come back.’ Peter had jibed at the idea of home-making. ‘Gee, Mary,’ he’d said, ‘what we wanna house for? If it rains, we can shelter in the forest.’ But the girl had seemed so disappointed, that he’d agreed to call a halt until the reed-home was made.
He wasn’t, in one way, the least bit sorry to have an excuse to rest; to lie back in the lush, sun-hot grass and assimilate all that had happened in the last few days. They had seen such wonderful things; especially since they had come to the valley….
They had gone first to the lagoons: to the chain of looping billabongs, fed by underground springs, that lay like a string of sapphires spilt into the hollow of the valley. At first they’d had eyes