Excerpt From
THE LAND BEYOND GOODBYE
by Barbara Scott Emmett

A tap on her window at midnight. A light scratching, a whispered name. Moonlight spears through the gap in the curtains - a silver wedge slicing a triangle of light out of the blackness.

Jessica peered out into the darkness. ‘Rose? Rose!’
      ‘You gotta come with us, mate.’ Rose and another lubra stood on tiptoe, their glittering eyes just above the level of the windowsill. ‘Tonight’s the night. Your night.’
      ‘Rose! What are you doing here? How did you get here?’
      ‘This my sister, Mona. We come for you.’
      ‘But...how?’ Jessica peered at the other woman. Rose’s presence was unnerving enough but her sister’s gaze punctured Jess’s whole sense of herself. Eerily calm, she observed Jessica with that same x-ray vision Rose possessed. To look into her eyes was to allow her to scour your mind. Jess dragged her eyes away.
      ‘You gotta come, mate.’ Rose’s voice was urgent. ‘Come with us. Now.’
      ‘Where to? Have you got the Toyota? Is Jamie with you?’
      ‘No man tonight, mate. Tonight’s women’s business.’ Rose’s eyes, the whites catching the moonlight, held Jessica’s. ‘Come on.’ She beckoned with her whole hand, her fingers at right angles to her paler palms.
      ‘But...why?’
      ‘You wanta go ‘way from here, yeah? We take you.’
      ‘Well, yes, I do want to leave but...’ Jess stared into Rose’s serious face. Did this woman know everything about her? Could she even hear her thoughts? ‘How did you know?’
      ‘No talkin’ now.’ Rose clucked her tongue. ‘Come on Djess-icka.’
      Jessica was speechless. This was the first time Rose had ever used her name. She was touched. Touched but afraid of its portent. Your name was powerful. Your name held your soul. Reluctantly, she began to dress, pulling on a pair of loose linen trousers and a cream shantung shirt. She slipped her feet into elasticated plimsolls. But wait a minute, what was she doing? Why was she going out in the middle of the night just because Rose said she should? She glanced at the window. Rose and her sister still peered over the sill, their eyes fixed on her. Jess didn’t want to go with them, but she knew she had to. Why, she didn’t understand. She simply knew she had to.
      Creeping through the house, she paused at Joey and Sherry’s bedroom door and listened for a moment to their laboured breathing. A bedspring creaked and she moved hurriedly on. The snores of Ben Rossi echoed from the living room where he lay sprawled on the settee. Jess glanced in. He was in singlet and underpants¾ gleaming white in the moonlight¾ one brown leg splayed out so that his foot was on the floor and his crotch in full view. The room was rank with sweat and bodily gases. Screwing up her nose, Jess continued on through the kitchen. Closing the flyscreen door carefully behind her, she stepped out into the moonlit compound. Rose and Mona waited at the corner of the house, accompanied by Mutt and Jeff, the dogs sitting calmly at the women’s feet, their ears pricked.
      ‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’
      ‘Nothin’s wrong, mate,’ said Rose. ‘Tonight’s a special night, is all.’
      ‘Special night?’ Jess’s clothes were already damp; the air was thick with humidity. ‘For what?’
      Mona reached out and placed her hand comfortingly on Jess’s forearm. ‘Don’ be frighten’, girl,’ she said, her diction slow and deliberate. ‘No harm come. Only good thing.’ Jess looked into the woman’s serene face, so like Rose’s but somewhat older. Wiser, too, if that was possible. For a moment she stepped out of time and into the truer reality encompassed by the woman’s eyes. Anxiety slipped away. Cosseted by Mona’s deep compassion as though soothed by a motherly embrace, Jess inhabited a tranquil otherworld for several seconds. Then she blinked and was back in the present. Mona tightened her grip, pulling her in the direction of the white paling fence. Rose took her other arm and Jess knew she was committed to going with them. Wherever they took her, whatever happened, she had to go with them. Mona turned and raised her forefinger at the dogs; Mutt and Jeff sat upright and alert but made no sound, no movement.
      The women led her to the fence, helped her over it and started down the gentle incline that led to the river valley. Pushing through the waist-high grass, Jess once again cursed her inability to pick suitable clothes. Her thin trousers were soon soaked with dew; her silk shirt clung to her clammy skin. But at least the plimsolls were better than sandals. Her feet had some small protection from the rocks hidden in the long grass. In single file, Rose to the front of Jess, Mona to the rear, they plodded towards the ghost gums that shone like whitened bones in the silvery light. The arc lamp of the moon picked the three women out, casting long shadows that flitted ahead of them across the motionless grass. Jess stumbled into hidden boulders several times but managed not to fall. Rose and Mona trod as though they knew exactly where the gibbers were and avoided them without a thought.
      After half an hour of steady plodding, with no sound except the mournful chirrup of the cicadas and the swishing of the wet grass as they moved through it, they reached the first straggling trees. Jess looked back. Lovatt Creek was no longer visible. The side of the valley, sloping more steeply the further down they went, hid the house from view; only the windsock on the pole above the outhouse was visible, limp in the airless night. A rain cloud rolled across the moon plunging the world into darkness and Jess paused, her hand resting on the rough trunk of a tree. Ahead of her Rose also stopped and turned; behind her only the quiet breathing of Mona disturbed the still air. Jess shivered, though the night was sickly warm.
      When the cloud passed the women pressed on, though the moon gave less light the further they went into the shadow of the trees. The boobook owls called warnings as they passed. Jess refused to think about snakes or spiders, trusting in Rose’s bushcraft to keep them safe. But when they pushed through a tangle of undergrowth and found themselves on the muddy bank of the misnamed Alligator River, she held back. No alligators inhabited this river¾ but crocodiles did. Freshwater crocodiles were considered harmless but the big salties could roll a person under in seconds.
      ‘Swim,’ said Rose.
      ‘I don’t think so,’ Jess said, backing off. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’
      ‘No danger here, darlin,’ said Mona, brushing a strand of hair back from Jessica’s face. ‘Women sing croc upstream. ‘M dreamin there ‘til mornin.’
      ‘No.’ Jess shook her head. ‘No.’ Mending broken bones was one thing. Picking up communications from ancestors was another. But singing the crocodiles to sleep? No. Definitely not.
      ‘Sometime,’ said Mona softly, ‘woman must cross ‘m water. Good for spirit.’
      ‘No... No!’ Jess twisted wildly in the women’s gentle grip. But though their touch was light, she could not break free. One to each arm, they drew her into the river. A scream rose in her throat but before it broke free, the women began to sing, quietly, in lilting voices. Wading through the shallows at first, but soon in deeper waters, they urged her on until their feet no longer touched the silky mud. And so, with a sense of fatality, Jessica swam. The water was cool on her febrile skin, washing away the film of dust and sweat. The gentle lapping lulled her, soothed away her anxiety. She gave herself up to the experience. Be here, now. Be in the moment.
     Swimming easily, three abreast, the women navigated the swollen river. Moonbeams flashed on the ripples and the lubra’s calming whispery song contained Jess in a protective bubble of sound. She swam without fear now, her arms and legs moving in a rhythmic breast stroke as though she was executing an aquatic form of tai chi. Her body skimmed the water, buoyed up by her growing sense of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. She expended no thought on this phenomenon; she simply allowed it to be so. Rose and Mona fell silent as they all made their way across the broad river, swimming in formation. When her feet again touched shallows, Jessica stood up, exhilarated, skin tingling. Breathless, her eyes bright, she felt fully alive for the first time in a dozen years.

On the other side of the river the women began their long walk. A walk that lasted for hours. Jess was beyond disbelief. She did not question how she could walk for so long and not be tired. She did not question the steady one-foot-in-front-of-the-other progress. She ceased to be amazed that the way was obstacle free, that she seemed to float above the surface of the earth, that her head was light, her eyes unseeing. She was on a treadmill, walking, walking, walking. Time was conquered, and distance. If necessary, she could walk like this forever. Crossing scrubland, passing through eucalypts, paddling across rushing creeks that were bone dry only last week, climbing to higher ground, treading the edge of an escarpment that sloped steeply to the flood plains in the distance. She no longer asked how this could be. It simply was. When the moon was almost down, the women stopped. As one, all three stopped walking. Wherever it was they were going, they had arrived.

******