Cale and the Hidden Stones, page 8
Cale returned to the opening in the floor of the tower. He could barely see the first metal rung, and the hole seemed bottomless. He froze near the edge and all his old fears swept through him.
“Come on,” Rosie muttered behind him.
Cale summoned courage from somewhere and sat on the edge of the hatch and reached for the first rung with his foot. Half turning, he kept a grip with his arms as his other foot found the second rung. Then he was climbing down, and the darkness was lifted as the fear faded. It was one of the hardest things he had done and the adrenaline made him feel light headed.
Rosie followed without hesitation, despite the now heavy and cumbersome backpack. She struggled to close the hatch; finally she discovered that pushing the door upward released the latch mechanism and it closed with a bang as she scrambled down the rungs. Noise didn’t seem to matter now. Heavy rain pounded the top of the tower and louder thuds on the wooden roof could be heard. The full force of the front was bearing down, and she felt a sense of disquiet.
They must run now.
They made their way down the stages of the tower, fearful not of discovery but of disaster, though they couldn’t express this in words to each other. Reaching the choir stall, they found the door was locked again. This was unexpected. They briefly huddled on the landing, crouching out of sight of the body of the church. The wooden boards of the ceiling above them seemed to creak as the tower was rocked by the weather, and they grew panicky with fear. The need to run was now overwhelming, but the door was locked in front of them.
“Hit the door,” said Rosie to Cale.
Cale blinked at her. She made a fist and hit the door herself, careless of the noise. Trying the handle, the door now opened. They rushed through, down the steps and ran like the devil was behind them. The startled warden gaped at their helter-skelter passage and then they were gone. The creatures riding the wind had been thwarted by the wooden roof and had lost interest. They rose back into the air, pushed upward by the strong winds of the cold front, returning to the skies over the sea.
***
The creature stirred from the warm red rock in which it lay. Many days and nights had passed but no one had come to disturb his rest. He grew uneasy. The world had changed while he slept. The earth was noisy and busy. He could hear the great machines that tore out the red rock and metal towers that sucked gas from below the seabed, but it wasn’t this that made him uneasy. His burden seemed different. Something was changed. Perhaps his long vigil was coming to an end. A great restlessness was growing in him.
He paused and thought of the white sisters. He looked upward searching the blue sky for a sign. They would know what he wished to find out. But they were beyond his sight.
He thought of that one who could have helped him, but that one was not so easily found and he had no sense of his presence. He decided that he would wait for the great wind; the wild, unpredictable maelstrom that would form out to sea. The conditions were right; the sea was warm and the air was cool. He longed for a great wind, to ride as he had in the past and to see all things from a great height. He longed to fly, with a passion that only a creature bound to the earth could understand. His fierce little face grinned with anticipation and he crept back into his rocky dwelling to prepare.
***
They made their way back towards the bus depot, Rosie taking the lead, but she was unsure of the way and they stopped frequently as she tried to get her bearings.
It was then that they ran into trouble. Their hesitant behaviour attracted the attention of a small group of older youths. They were hanging around, smoking, being loud and unpleasant.
“Need a hand?” one of them said in a loud voice and mocking manner. “We can help.”
They came and clustered around Cale and Rosie. She was defiant, looking up at the one who had spoken. Cale stood silent, cowed and uncertain.
“Perhaps you got something useful in here?” said the same youth, reaching for Rosie’s backpack and the fragment it now contained.
This was going from bad to worse.
Cale spoke up.
“Leave us alone,” he said, moving closer to Rosie who held tight to her backpack. The group closed around them.
“What’s this then?” said a loud, raspy voice. A large figure loomed suddenly behind the group.
It was the bikie who had admired Uncle Andrew’s car. He loomed over the teenagers with his long-sleeved leather jacket barely confining his ample belly and massive arms.
“You got somewhere else to be?” he suggested to them, stroking his long grey and brown beard with one massive hand. They quickly dispersed, grinning as if they didn’t care, which was true.
The bikie smiled at Rosie and Cale, and they smiled back.
“Don’t I know you two?” he said, giving them a closer look. “You were with the old geezer and his Falcon XR.”
“That was my uncle,” said Cale, happy to see a familiar, if daunting, face.
“I remember you. Your name is Bruce,” said Rosie, who had been paying attention at the time. “Thanks for helping us.”
“No problem for me,” he said with a smile. “Not sure why I wanted to come to town today, but lucky for you I did. That lot are just a nuisance. No real harm. Where are you heading?”
They told him and he walked them to the bus depot. Something tugged at his mind but after they left it faded and he wandered off about his business.
Chapter 9: Hide and seek
“I didn’t see you at lunch today,” Uncle Andrew commented at dinner that night.
Cale didn’t want to lie to his uncle.
“I was with Rosie,” he said neglecting to mention where they were.
“Oh,” his uncle replied. “Have you finished with that book on the city?”
“I let Rosie take it home to read. She’ll bring it back in the morning,” Cale replied, sweating about the state of the book, which had got a little damp during the trip to the city. He hoped Rosie would get it dry by the morning.
His uncle raised an eyebrow, but the anticipated tirade didn’t happen. Clearly Rosie now had some credit with him.
“Okay,” he replied, willing to let it rest.
***
Meanwhile all was not going so smoothly for Rosie.
Her mother had been very displeased with her wet clothes and hair. Her pants had some black stains that looked for all the world like tar and she may as well throw them as out rather than try to clean them. Her own day hadn’t gone well, with the wet, unseasonal weather stopping her from doing the washing.
“Didn’t you think to get out of the rain?” she repeated for the third time as she applied a hair dryer to Rosie’s unruly tangle of damp red hair.
Rosie could hardly say she had got caught by surprise where there was no cover. Her mother thought she’d been next door all day, within easy reach of shelter. The book from Uncle Andrew was propped open in Rosie’s bedroom. The pages were only damp on the edges and she hoped the book would be dry by the morning. That wasn’t even her fault, for once, as Cale had had the book but hadn’t managed to keep it dry in the sudden downpour.
But the most difficult thing was the stone fragment. She had expected Cale to claim it from her as soon as they had returned to his uncle’s house. He hadn’t. Cale had held the hefty stone in his hands and gone all thoughtful. He said that she had been given it and it was only right that she now looked after it. This had disconcerted her. As usual, she had not thought beyond the immediate task.
“The old man talked about protecting the stones, about guarding them and keeping them safe,” Cale said. “We’ve taken this one from the place it has been safely kept for who knows how long. I feel that we have to be very careful with it. You got it when I couldn’t. I think you earned the right to keep it.” She couldn’t argue with him and was pleased by his trust.
But now that she was back in her own house, with the uncomfortable weight still in the bottom of her backpack, she was worried. She was normally careless with her things, as her mother constantly reminded her, and she was not used to thinking about keeping and hiding and protecting. The fragment of stone was too heavy to carry with her everywhere and would be difficult to conceal in her room. Her mother frequently turned the room upside down in a fit of housekeeping. Rosie’s joy in finding the stone had now turned to concern at keeping it safe.
And some other things were giving her cause for concern. Sometimes, when she looked sideways at the granite benchtop in the kitchen, the surface flickered like a shadow running across it. She was used to the glitter of quartz in the polished surface, but this was new. When she looked at it directly, there was nothing to be seen. The flickering movement in the corner of her eye was unsettling. She considered really looking at the granite surface, as she had done in the tower, but she didn’t want to know what she might find. Perhaps she had never noticed before, or perhaps the weighty object in the bottom of her backpack was having an unsettling effect on the local wildlife, or on her. That was not a comforting thought.
Her sleep was usually undisturbed and quick in coming. Not tonight. She took ages to find sleep and then she had vivid, unsettling dreams that she couldn’t clearly remember when she woke.
The night was long.
***
The next morning a weary Rosie and an excited Cale met in the warm shelter of the greenhouse. Cale was full of energy and Rosie found him engaged in a new book, his notebook to one side.
“What have you got there?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about where the next fragment might be hidden,” Cale replied, looking up from his book. He picked up his notebook. Reading from it he said, “Your journey will be deep into the cold, wet land of the far south and to a high place that is dangerous and full of deceit. The deceitful one who dwells there will thwart all seekers until the one comes to claim it. Follow your heart, use your wits, and you will succeed.” He put his notebook back down. “So I asked my uncle if he had a book about the ‘high places’ of the far south,” Cale said. “He happened to have this one.”
Cale showed Rosie the cover of the book he had been reading: ‘Ranges of the Great South – ancient, beautiful and treacherous’.
“There is a peak,” Cale said, partly reading from the book, “the highest in the southern range, that is often covered with mists. These mists are believed to be the visible form of a mischievous spirit whose reputation for deceit is legendary.”
“That must be the place,” Cale said with excitement. “We have to go there.”
Rosie groaned, still struggling with their last success and not at all ready for the next challenge. The tables had turned and now she was being led by Cale’s unexpected enthusiasm. Finding the first fragment had bolstered his confidence.
“How are we going to get there?” she asked, but her thoughts were pre-occupied with the fragment concealed in her backpack.
“We’ll work it out,” said Cale. His confidence was undaunted.
“What am I going to do with this?” burst out Rosie, taking the stone from her backpack, close to tears. Tiredness and frustration combined to see her spirits at a low ebb. Cale was surprised at her angst and drew his thoughts back to the present and the stone fragment.
“You can carry it with you everywhere,” he suggested, “or we can hide it somewhere safe until we need it again.”
As he said it the thought came to him that the three pieces had a purpose, but the purpose eluded him. There were many thoughts bubbling beneath the surface of his mind, but he couldn’t get a grip on any of them.
“I can’t carry the thing with me all the time,” Rosie responded with some heat. “It’s too heavy. People will notice. I’ll become Rosie the bag lady, Rosie the hunchback.”
“Then we need to find a hiding place,” replied Cale calmly. “Somewhere we can get at easily but is secret and secure.”
Cale picked up the fragment and his thoughts became clearer. He sat for a moment with the object in front of him, sketching it in his notebook. At first glance it seemed a little shapeless but there was a curve to the stone and the smooth surface, as he peered closer, could almost have been covered in writing but the engraving was obscure, worn down by time. He peered at the writing, almost able to make sense of it but then it blurred into wriggles. He closed his notebook.
“Let’s explore Uncle’s yard and see if there is a place to hide the stone,” he suggested, giving the fragment back to Rosie.
The greenhouse was part way down the backyard, in sight of the house but obscured by the vegetation on the side facing the house. Cale already knew that one corner touched the side fence of Rosie’s house. No point in going that way. They worked their way past the other side of the greenhouse. The deeper backyard was a tangle of tree and shrub but there seemed to be a winding path that led through. They came to the back fence, an old but still sturdy grey wooden picket fence. It was very different to the street-facing wall at the front of the house. That was red brick and very tall.
“Dead end,” said Rosie, leaning on the fence with one hand.
The fence tilted under her weight and she fell through. It was a hidden gate. Cale rushed after her and held open the gate before it closed, stepping through himself. On the other side was a kind of no man’s land.
“It’s the old laneway,” said Rosie. “All the old houses had them. We don’t have a laneway behind our house. My father said it had been closed and the land given back to the residents years ago.”
They could see a little way in either direction before other, newer fences blocked the lane. It seemed only this part of the old laneway remained, just two houses on each side, four houses in total. Dry grass and straggly weeds made the place seem desolate and unfriendly. Rosie explored the fence opposite.
“I think this has the same type of secret gate,” she said, pushing with both hands.
Sure enough, a section of picket fence swung up and she was through. Cale was uneasy now. He quickly followed her, meaning to get her to come back. This house’s backyard was exactly as overgrown and tangled as that of Uncle Andrew. It didn’t have the sense of neglect that they felt in the old laneway, but rather the benign neglect of a gardener who liked the riot of colour and shape and didn’t apply the pruning shears very often. Cale could see a large lemon tree in one place and a massive fig tree in another. They couldn’t see the house whose backyard they had just invaded, and hopefully couldn’t be seen. Cale worried about dogs and an angry neighbour who would find them in the backyard.
“Someone’s coming,” said Rosie, much more experienced as this sort of caper than Cale. “Quick, into the bushes.”
She seemed to melt into the undergrowth, silently and swiftly. Cale blundered after her just in time. A rustling of the bushes closer to the unseen house indicated what Rosie had suspected, someone was coming. There was a faint tuneless whistling that Cale thought familiar.
Uncle Andrew emerged from the direction of the unseen house and made his way confidently to the back fence. He barely broke stride as he pushed the pivoting section of fence and went on his way.
“That was surprising,” Rosie said as they emerged from hiding. “Who’d have expected your uncle to be here? He walks as if he owns the place.”
The same thought occurred to both of them.
“Do you think that your uncle owns this house as well?” said Rosie. Cale had to agree. It was the only explanation that made sense. It would explain his uncle’s frequent absences.
“We had better keep absolutely quiet about this,” Cale responded with feeling. “My uncle has been very good to me and I’d hate to hurt him. His secrets go no further than us.”
Rosie saw the strength of Cale’s feelings and nodded her agreement. She sighed, so many changes in such a short time. She was suddenly the custodian of a mysterious stone and a large secret when such a little time ago she had been free and easy with things and with the truth.
“I bet he keeps the car here,” said Cale as the pieces fell into place, though they hadn’t yet grasped the full extent of his uncle’s secret. “He’ll have gone home for his morning cup of tea,” he added.
“Good,” said Rosie, “time to explore.”
They ventured all the way up to the back of the house, which was old but in good repair. There was an ancient free-standing laundry outside, with large concrete troughs, and next to it was an outside toilet. In the laundry they found an old grey metal box with a clasp. It was dry and solid. It had likely been used for tools or supplies of some sort. It was empty.
“We could put the stone in here and lock it,” said Cale. He produced a small padlock from a pocket, along with a key.
“Just like a boy,” said Rosie. She placed the stone fragment into the metal box, cushioning it with some old hessian bag. She was a little hesitant, but the plan seemed okay.
Cale locked the box with the small padlock.
“We were lucky to find such a great hiding place,” Rosie said, though she still had an uneasy feeling that the fragment was not so easily hidden.
In this she was correct, and even as they spoke the stone fragment was having a subtle effect in the neighbourhood. Life was going to be rather interesting for the residents of the leafy suburb.
“I’ll hide the key somewhere here, and then either of us can get to it,” said Cale.
They looked around and finally decided on a tin on a high shelf. The key went under the tin.
They left the ‘back house’ as they had begun calling it, passing through both secret gates and listening carefully for Uncle Andrew. No sooner had they settled back into the greenhouse with relief than a sudden rustling outside the entrance alerted them to Uncle Andrew’s incipient presence. He opened the door and smiled awkwardly when he saw them both. He had a letter clutched in his hand and didn’t notice the guilty look on their faces.
