The Winter Door, page 1
ISOBELLE CARMODY
WINTER DOOR
GATEWAY TRILOGY 2
About Untapped
Most Australian books ever written have fallen out of print and become unavailable for purchase or loan from libraries. This includes important local and national histories, biographies and memoirs, beloved children’s titles, and even winners of glittering literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Supported by funding from state and territory libraries, philanthropists and the Australian Research Council, Untapped is identifying Australia’s culturally important lost books, digitising them, and promoting them to new generations of readers. As well as providing access to lost books and a new source of revenue for their writers, the Untapped collaboration is supporting new research into the economic value of authors’ reversion rights and book promotion by libraries, and the relationship between library lending and digital book sales. The results will feed into public policy discussions about how we can better support Australian authors, readers and culture.
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For my nephew John, who has the courage to be gentle
If human lives be, for their very brevity, sweet, then beast lives are sweeter still. But sweetest of all is the Mayfly day. That life, between sunrise and set, is pure ecstasy.
1
There was a rattle of hailstones against the window. Rage looked up, startled, but there was nothing to see. Her own reflection got in the way. She went close to the glass, looking through her shadow. Even the gnarled lemon tree that grew right outside the window was invisible. It was so dark that the glass might have been painted black.
And it was only five o’clock in the afternoon.
The window shuddered under another onslaught and the lights dimmed for a moment. Rage reached up to pull the curtain closed, wishing her uncle was home. He had left a note saying that he had gone out to check the fences and would not be back until late. That meant he had gone to the far paddocks where the build-up of snow had already brought down the shakiest of the ancient fences. If the snow went on piling up, there were likely to be none left standing by spring, and that would mean no agistment fees. Better to work on the worst of them now, despite the weather, her uncle had decided. It wasn’t that she was afraid of being alone when it grew dark, but tonight the darkness seemed so thick that it might have been a black fog, or the pelt of some huge dark animal prowling the night.
Inside her head, Mr Johnson’s voice ordered her not to let her imagination run away with her and she bent resolutely to the few dishes and pots rattling under their muffling layer of suds. Scrubbing energetically at the bottom of the pot she had burned scrambling eggs that morning, she half-wished she had a Cinderella-sized pile to wash, which would last until her uncle came home. The wind rose to a shriek, and Rage decided to turn on the radio to drown out the sound. Reception was always bad on the farm but anything was better than listening to the wind screaming like a murder victim in the backyard.
The radio crackled to life with an advertisement.
‘… new range of cars made for all weather conditions …’ the announcer wheezed.
Rage smiled a little, remembering the pale, freckled old salesman at Hopeton Motors who had sold the four-wheel drive to Uncle Samuel. He had possessed a damp-looking forehead and gingery whiskers, and one of those huge, white chomping smiles that made you think All the better to eat you with! His smile had grown thin by the time they were ready to drive away, though. Rage guessed that the salesman finally agreed to Uncle Samuel’s price just to get rid of him. Probably he’d thought her uncle’s unsmiling silence some sort of clever tactic.
The radio announcer returned and explained that it was right on five-thirty and that the news would be coming up after the next song. Then a singer began a lonely wail to the sound of a twanging guitar. Rage dried a plate, thinking wistfully of the dishes she had washed whenever Mam cooked up one of her experimental seven-course meals. Even doing the dishes with Mam had been fun. Or at least it had been until they came to live with Grandfather who had forbidden chatter and who had thought laughter was some kind of cheekiness. There had been no experimental meals then, no extravagance, and very little laughter. Even after Grandfather died, Mam never again laughed much.
Unbidden, the hateful memory assailed her of that night at the beginning of last spring when Mam had failed to come and get her from school. Again she saw the way the headmaster’s shoulders had hunched as he spoke to the police. Oh, how she had wanted to run from the room and escape what he would tell her. But there was no use running away from bad news—even back then she had known that much—it only flew after you like some terrible bird of prey.
The news had been of her mother’s car accident, of course.
Mam was still in Hopeton Hospital all these months later. At first she had been in a long and dangerous coma from which no one had expected her to wake. But then she had wakened, to the amazement of the doctors and nurses, and Rage had thought that it would only be a matter of weeks before she was well and could come home. Only she had weakened and grown paler and now there was talk about moving her to Leary, where the hospital had better facilities and all sorts of important specialists.
Overhead, thunder cracked and echoed and the music fused into screeching and hissing. Then the radio went dead and the lights went out. Rage stood up and groped for the candle and matches that were on the sill in every room, but even as she took them up, the light came back on. She set the candle in a bottle just the same, and laid the matches by it in readiness.
This was by far the worst winter she could remember since they had come to Winnoway farm. In fact, it was the worst winter anyone could remember, according to the radio. It seemed like storm clouds were always either clogging the horizon or massing in the sky above. Mam loved unpredictable, difficult weather, from wild electrical summer storms with hot gritty winds that dried out your eyeballs, to chilly spring days when the sky sagged grey and purple overhead. The only thing she didn’t care for were the sorts of perfect, sunny days with flawless blue skies that most people were always wishing for. Mam said there was no mystery in such days.
But after a winter that had lasted so long, Rage thought that even Mam might start yearning for a simple warm day with a bright clean sky. Rage wouldn’t have bet her life on it though, because Mam was as unpredictable as the weather she loved. Or she had been, and maybe she would be again, if she ever got out of the hospital.
The radio came to life with an asthmatic wheeze and the announcer began to speak mid-sentence in a fuzzy but serious voice about the dangers of black ice on the roads. Then he was quoting statistics about the number of car accidents since the start of winter. Just as he came to the end of the news, the radio squawked and died again.
Rage wiped the sink down, wondering if Mam was watching the storm and longing to be out in it. She had a bed by a window in Hopeton General, but the nurses said that she slept most of the time. Hearing that had made Rage afraid but the doctor who treated Mam had told her that it was a different sort of sleep from a coma. She had asked then if Mam could fall into another coma, and the doctor had said he thought it highly unlikely. But that just meant almost no, which was the same as possible. Last weekend when they visited, Mam had been awake but seemed half-dazed. The doctor explained gravely that Mam needed lots of quiet and calm so they had begun giving her medication to make her sleepy.
In the car on the way home, Rage had told Uncle Samuel about it and that was when he had told her, as the doctor hadn’t, of the hospital’s wish to shift Mam to Leary. He said that Mam had to undergo two more serious operations, one on her spine and one on her neck, but that these must wait until she was stronger. The trouble was that although she had wakened from her coma, she just didn’t seem to be getting any stronger and the need for the operations was growing. The doctors had to find out why she wasn’t improving and they felt that would be easier at the bigger hospital.
Rage had wanted desperately, then, to tell her uncle why she thought Mam wasn’t getting well. Uncle Samuel and Mam, his sister, had been brought up by their cold, harsh father, Rage’s grandfather Adam. Uncle Samuel had rebelled as a teenager, and had run off, and some time later, Mam had left Winnoway farm, too. It was while she was away that Mam had brought Rage into the world, and when she came back to Winnoway to nurse her father, she brought her little daughter with her. That was what Mam had told Rage, but since the accident, Rage had learned enough to believe that her mother had gone back because she had grown too tired and too sad to keep on moving from place to place. Maybe she had also wanted to be where her beloved brother could find her, if he ever tried. But he hadn’t and Mam had slowly sunk into a quiet, deep sort of sorrow that had lasted through Grandfather Adam’s death and right up to the accident. That was why the doctors had found it impossible to wake her afterwards. Part of Mam had not wanted to wake.
Rage licked her lips at the memory of how close Mam had come to dying. For the first time in her life, Rage had disobeyed everyone to run away from the elderly next-door neighbours who were taking care of her, and had undertaken the trip across country on foot to see Mam in the Hopeton Hospital. A lot of strange and incredible things had happened on the way there, but the most important thing was that she had got there and had managed to wake Mam. That waking had been so much like a fairytale that Rage had expected them all to live happily ever after. Uncle Samuel’s arrival had been like part of the fairytale because he had agreed to stay and look after her and the farm while Mam convalesced, and Rage knew how much it would mean to Mam that her brother had returned.
Rage thought back to her first meeting with the tanned and slightly dangerous-looking man from her dreams. Her uncle had a faded scar that ran down one cheek which she hadn’t dreamed, but his long, wild dark hair was tied back with a rubber band just as she remembered. He had looked so grave and serious that her heart had quailed for a moment at the thought that he might be like her stony grandfather. Then his lips had quirked into a smile that had been echoed warmly in his eyes.
‘Will you go back to the jungles after Mam comes out of hospital?’ she had asked him over their first breakfast together at the next-door neighbours’ house. Mrs Johnson had invited Uncle Samuel to a celebratory breakfast.
Her uncle’s eyes had momentarily clouded at the question and Mrs Johnson had quickly changed the subject by asking him about his travels. Yet Rage had been sure that her uncle would stay. She had felt as if she would split open with joy at the thought of how happy Mam would be to see him. Mr Johnson had driven them into town in his wheezing old utility after breakfast and, seated in the back behind the two almost silent men, Rage had smiled and smiled until her face hurt, thinking of her uncle as a prince returning from afar to release Mam from the dark enchantment of her sorrow.
But they hadn’t lived happily ever after. Because real stories didn’t end. They just went on and on even after people died. One person’s life was just part of a never-ending story in which there was happiness and sadness and who knew what else.
Uncle Samuel had intended to go right in and see Mam that first day, but the doctor had stopped them both and had asked Rage to wait outside his office. When they came back out, Uncle Samuel had looked troubled. He took Rage into the garden and told her that the doctor felt it would be better to wait a little before breaking the news of his return to his sister. Any shock in her weakened condition could be dangerous.
Everything in Rage had cried out to her to tell Uncle Samuel that Mam wanted to see him more than anything else in the world. Uncle Samuel was a grown man with eyes that were a lot older than the rest of his face, and Rage was a child, yet she had the feeling that she might have convinced him to disobey the doctor if she had spoken out at that moment. But the thought of how dreadfully thin Mam’s wrists had grown, and the bruise-like shadows under her eyes, had kept her silent. Because Rage knew that seeing her long-lost brother would be a shock for Mam, even if it was a nice one. So she had found herself letting her uncle extract a promise from her not to tell Mam he had returned until the doctor gave his permission.
That permission had never been given, and every day that passed, Rage regretted her promise, for Mam had grown steadily weaker. Rage was convinced now that seeing Uncle Samuel was the only thing that would save Mam. No one had mentioned that she might die but, just lately, Rage thought that she had seen it in the eyes of the doctor and the nurses. She was outraged that they would not tell her something so important after all she had gone through to find and waken her mother in the first place! Rage stuck out her chin and resolved that tonight she would tell Uncle Samuel just how often Mam had gazed at his picture and reread the one letter she had got from him while he was away. The trouble was that even if he believed her, Uncle Samuel might still refuse to see Mam because the doctors had advised against it. He had spent his whole life disobeying everyone and everything and, although he had never said so, Rage was sure that he blamed himself for what had happened to his little sister. Now he was so determined to do what was right, how could Rage convince him that, in this case, the right thing might be disobedience? She would not be able to make him understand without explaining what had happened to her in Valley, and if she told him that, he would think her a liar or mad.
If only there was someone to advise her. In stories there was always a true friend or some wise old mentor who told you what to do. She smiled, thinking that she was as bad as Mr Walker, who had always been disappointed when life did not reflect his beloved fairytales.
Rage glanced over her shoulder at Billy Thunder sprawled on the mat in front of the pot-belly stove, her heart twisting with grief and love. Most times she felt such a strangling mix of emotions when she looked at the big toffee-coloured dog that it was better not to look at him. There was no telling what Billy thought now, or if he even experienced anything that could be called thought. He seemed content to lie by the fire and to tag along after her or Uncle Samuel. There was nothing to tell that he remembered the journey to Valley, or even that he missed Mr Walker or Elle or Goatee, whom they had left behind. Perhaps he had forgotten it all—the firecat that had lured them all through the enchanted bramble gate, and his own striking transformation into an almost-human boy.
Rage got up and went over to sit beside the dog, angling her back to soak up the warmth radiating from the stove. Billy sighed and laid his head against her. Like all dogs, he seemed instinctively to know when she was unhappy, but how much more than that did he understand? Did he remember enough to be sorry that he had chosen to come back with her and thereby resume his animal form? Or was he now dog enough to be content to be with her on weekends and after school? Was it enough for him to lie by the fire and go for walks and eat bones and sleep by her bed?
She began gently to scratch between his shoulder blades. He had once told her it was the place a dog most wanted to be scratched because, no matter how he contorted himself, he could not reach it.
‘Dogs spend their whole lives with that spot driving them crazy. And humans wonder why they howl at the moon and try to bite the wheels of cars,’ he had said.
Now, he gave an ecstatic yawn and sort of melted sideways onto her knee, one big paw winding slowly in the air. Rage smiled at the sight and reflected that, in a way, it might be better if she could just forget all that had happened in Valley, too. Sometimes it really felt like she had dreamed it—her journey in search of a wizard who could give her magick to waken her mother, the death of Billy’s mother, Bear, and the old dog’s strange second transformation. It would be so easy to let herself believe that it was all a story she had told herself.
Except that it had happened, because Billy was the only dog left. He might have stayed in Valley with Elle and the other animals, but at the last minute he had jumped through the world gate to follow Rage, and in their world, he had become a dog again. At the time she had thought it was lucky he had turned back into a dog because, as a boy, he would have suffered all sorts of complications, since officially he didn’t exist in her world; he had no human birth certificate, no school reports, no health records, not even a human vaccination list. For a while after their return, he had been a strangely alert and intelligent dog, and she had supposed that he remembered everything and was his new self inside the old shape. But as the months passed, he had gone back to being merely a sweet-natured, boisterous young dog. She had discovered then that, much as she loved Billy as a dog, she missed the keen mind that he had possessed in his human shape.
Another flash of lightning lit the kitchen, and this time Rage counted. It was not long before the thunder crashed, which meant that the storm was approaching rapidly. It was almost seven o’clock now, according to the mantel clock, and she chided herself for wasting so much time daydreaming. Fortunately her only homework was to read some of a play by William Shakespeare, called A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had seen a pantomime of the play the year before, but the drama teacher had explained that the real play was far more complex and beautiful. The school had got funding to bring in a troupe of real actors who were to rehearse and then perform the play later in the term, and there was an exciting if unconfirmed rumour that some of the students were going to be allowed to perform in it. It was even said that one student would later be able to spend their work-experience week with the troupe. Rage got up and found her copy of the play in her school bag. She had tried to read it on the bus to the edge of town, but it was nothing like the pantomime: it was written in old English with lots of strange words she had to look up in the footnotes, and the jolting of the bus over hard lumps of snow made it impossible. In the end she had put the book aside and drifted into a daydream of the plump little winged man that the witch Mother, Rue, had created and named Puck, and wondered if it had been the wizard who had told her the story of the play.
