Into That Forest (5 page)

I raced to the other side, just in case the wallaby circled back round Corinna and as I am running I am so excited that I run into a damn tree and I bounce off - a real whack to me forehead and I fall to the ground. I heard Becky, all tizzy, laugh like I were a clown at a circus. I were a bit confused cos the tree hit me so hard. Becky ran past me, offering no hand to help, shouting at me,
Come on, gink!
Here! Round it up!
So I jumped up and seen the wallaby turning round cos Dave had headed it off. I seen out of the corner of me eye the bitch tiger coughing at us, knowing we were in the hunt too. It were like she were giving orders and both Becky and I knew which way to go to cut off the wallaby’s escape. And, you know, both Becky and I were coughing barking too in all the excitement. Trying to escape from the tigers the wallaby found itself hopping towards me and Becky and we ran towards it, spaced a yard apart so it couldn’t squeeze between us. It seen us, done a sort of a backflip and hopped back towards Dave, who jumped on the wallaby. His jaws were open so wide I thought they would break and he gripped it round the head. I heard, oh, maybe from a distance of thirty yards, the crunch of tiger teeth into the wallaby skull and I felt not disgust but joy. We all caught it! Holy Moses, oh me, oh me heart is going ten to the dozen just thinking about it, remembering that first time.

It were stone dead and Becky and me looked at each other, feeling we were like true hunters. We were panting as much as the tigers but I could see in Becky’s eyes and in the tigers’ eyes that we were all over the moon. Becky flopped onto the ground even more knackered than me or the tigers cos she hadn’t had food or milk for some time. But she were happy and she lied on her back and stared up at me, saying,
We did it.
And indeed we did and I were proud too. I were hungry and moved to the dead wallaby but Dave opened his mouth with a real big yawn of threat so I jumped back. He gulped down the brain and ate bits of the heart and guts and then left the rest of the carcass for us. I jumped in to take me meal but Corinna nipped me on the back of me leg - I knew the nip meant
Wait your turn!
But before the tiger could eat her fill Becky suddenly threw herself on the wallaby. The bitch bit her too. Becky yelped and ran back a few yards to rub the teeth marks on her leg but then she did a thing I didn’t think were in her. She began to crawl towards the wallaby, inch by inch, knowing the female tiger were sneaking glances at her as she ate but Becky didn’t care. The tiger nipped her again. Becky did not yelp this time but stood her ground. The male tiger, he did nothing but watch what was happening with a sort of curious expression as if interested in how the duel would turn out. Then Becky jumped up, pushed the bitch out of the way and buried her face in the wallaby’s bloody insides and, like she were a devil, she tore at it with teeth and fingers. She ate in a fury of hunger and growled when the bitch got close. I were amazed. I had never seen this part of Becky before. She were always a tame girl. I never seen her act like that; it were with such wildness. I were bug-eyed. She were braver than me too.

Becky stuffed herself. I tried to join her but she growled at me, warning me away. When she packed full her belly she sat in the grass, her mouth and face shiny red with blood. The female tiger then took her turn and I waited til last and I ate what were left. I were so hungry I didn’t care what I ate, so I gutsed meself. When I were stomach-packed I sat in the grass feeling woozy with food. Becky and I didn’t care we ate raw meat. Just goes to show you what hunger can do to a human. I watched Becky try and wipe her face free of blood with large dock leaves. She looked funny with a wet red face. I laughed and she did too. I were happy, as were the tigers who licked their chops free of blood. I realised that I had seen something of Becky that were new to me - she were really stubborn if she wanted something. She were brave, she were stubborn, she were smart, she were tough. A devil came out of the long grass walking that funny way like it were a rocking horse. It snorted and growled at us but we didn’t care. Then it gnawed and teared its way into the carcass til it had its full too.

That night, well, it were really a couple of hours before dawn, when we got back to the den we sat outside in the warm moonlight . . . all four of us. We were full as googs. Becky were thoughtful and touched her mother’s cameo a lot like she were thinking of home. I were yawning and thinking of going to bed when she noticed something.
Hey,
where’s your shoes?
I forgot I had taken them off during the hunt.
They hurt
, I said. Becky looked at her own shoes and I knew she were thinking that she might take hers off, but she didn’t. I think she were afeared she would become like an animal and stop being a human. She heard an owl hoot.
We have a barn owl at home
, she said, and sounded very lonely. The female tiger got up, and as she were heading inside the cave, she rubbed herself against me, sniffed me face and licked me hand. She were saying in her own lingo,
We are all in this together
.

It sounds foolish, but when you are so close to some creature like a tiger you get to really know them and that’s what Corinna were saying to me -
We are a pack.
I followed her inside, leaving Becky out in the night gazing face full of sadness at the moon, the owl, the cameo, like she were possessed by thoughts of home. I would have thought of home but I were dead beat and besides - did I have a home to go back to? Me mother were dead - that much was certain cos Becky told me. But what about me father? Maybe he were out with Mr Carsons searching for us. Becky prayed for this. Sometimes I’d see her by herself kneeling in the ferns, her hands pressed together, mumbling her prayers and looking at the sky as if her father were going to come down like manna from heaven. She were a bit older than me in age but she were much more older than me in many other ways, so she had this burden or sense of responsibility and I were the biggest burden of them all, she said to me more than once. She feared I were becoming an animal but I knew that without the tigers there were no food for us, no warm bodies to sleep with, us four snuggled like a bundle of fleshy yarn in each other’s embrace.

The tigers stopped being animals to me. They were Corinna and Dave. She were a bit smaller than him and she had black hairs sprinkled on her white upper lip. Dave’s were just white. He liked us but kept his distance cos he had a lot of things on his mind, like protecting us, keeping an eye open for prey or enemies like bounty hunters. Corinna showed she liked us by licking us and curling up with us whenever we slept. Though I have to say, if she didn’t like something you did, she’d nip you to let you know. Their eyes were full black and they had a sort of inner glow so that at dusk they shone green and sometimes red. They liked to bask in the sun but tried to avoid looking into harsh light if possible. It were something that I were learning. I might be studying them, but they studied us as well. When they looked deep at you, you knew they were peering right into your soul and they knew if you were lying or not. You couldn’t pretend to them that you were happy when you were not. They knew when we were down in the dumps and would nuzzle and comfort us.

One time I laughed and said to Becky,
Things are
topsyturvy, we sleep during the day and we be awake all
night.
She didn’t find it funny cos she knew that meant the tigers had changed us and she didn’t like that one bit.

There wasn’t a time when I realised I were becoming like a tiger, I guess it just happened, like it were natural. But when I think back there were signs that I had changed, and Becky too. Our sight got better at night. Once nighttime were as thick as mud to me, but now it were like clear water. And me hearing - I could sit in silence and hear so many things that I did not hear before: the movement of fern leaves, like the bristles of a brush being stroked, when a quoll were passing (the black ones with white spots like a starry night coming to life) or the sharp cry of pain in a tree when a quoll knocked a sleeping bird off a branch and catched it in mid-air; the squeal of a mouse being taken by an owl whose wings sounded like the creaking of a ship; the whisper of dead leaves as an adder slid over them; the coughing of a distant tiger, like a pipe-smoker clearing his throat of spew; a barking snake; a possum munching on fruit; the devils yowling and snarling like something from hell when they were fighting over a dead animal. And the smells - soon I could tell the difference between the dung of all sorts of animals. Even the most stinky shit were interesting cos it were mixed up with the smell of seeds, animal flesh and fruit. There were many sorts of piss and it told you all sorts of things - what sort of animal, how old, how pregnant, how sick. I could sniff shit and know what sort of animal it were, and when I got really good I could tell how fresh it were. We learned to be downwind so our prey couldn’t smell us. And I learned something else: Corinna stopped feeding me her milk when her teats dried up and I realised why she had taken a liking to us. Her pups had died or more likely been killed by a bounty hunter. She thought we were babies so that’s why she took us in. Then I said to Becky that I hated that tiger man who stayed with me and me parents cos he murdered tiger pups.

It were not only bounty hunters who killed them as I found out one late afternoon when we were walking through the bush. It started to drizzle so we took shelter under an overhanging rock that looked like some sort of sandy frozen wave. I were glancing up at the roof when I seen some paintings on it.
They must have been done by the
blackfellas when they were kings of Tasmania
, said Becky. There were four drawings of what looked like dogs but because they had stripes on them we knew were tigers. One had three spears sticking out of its flanks. We both went
Oh
at the same time, cos it made us sad to see how even blackfellas killed tigers. I remember us running our hands over the picture of the speared tiger, like we were trying to help it or save it cos there beside us was our saviours - Dave and Corinna. I felt terrible. For days I dreamed about our two tigers being speared by blackfellas and it were more nightmare, much more nightmare, than dream. Becky told me she had those nightmares too. See, we were family. We did not think that at the time, but when I look back, I know we were family and that’s the truth of it.

It were now summer, bright and hot, filled with so much lightning that trees burst into flames and burned for days. I loved going out hunting during these warm nights. We slept in the den of a day, keeping away from the terrible heat and the flies, millions and millions of them, that swarmed over us, filling our eyes and ears with their squirming, tickling bodies. And at night the snakes were gone. We and the tigers hated snakes. Sometimes at night we might come upon one of those damn snakes curled up on a warm log, its belly big with some small animal it had got, and the four of us made a wide circle round it, even though it weren’t interested in us.

One night when the full moon were glaring bright, we went hunting. We ended up passing through a forest of ferns taller than us when I seen a pair of bright burning eyes. It were a devil, and instead of being afeared I were cocky and I jumped at it, snarling and hissing like they do, and it took fright and skedaddled. Becky just shook her head, as if to say
You are a right Tom Fool, Hannah
, but I didn’t care cos I knew the tigers liked me courage. We drank water from the creek not far from the ferny forest and again Becky sneered at me for lapping up the water like the tigers but it were quick and water didn’t drip through me hands like it did to her. We four sat listening to the night sounds, hearing every little thing and Becky and me seeing into the darkness like we were born with sharp eyes. As we waited to hear the sounds of some animal we might kill come to drink at the creek, Becky looked up at the tree above us and climbed up it like a monkey. She made it look easy. When I asked what she were doing she said she had seen some fruit. She started throwing down berries the size of small apples. I tasted one. It were sour and I wondered if the fruit were poisonous but she said she had a tree like this one at home and it were safe to eat. She chucked down lots of fruit and then jumped down to join us. It was then that I were glad I had hands, cos it were easier to eat holding the fruit than for the tigers who only had their mouths. So I hand-fed them and you know what? Becky started to do it too. We could do things for them, and they could do things for us we couldn’t do.