Into That Forest (9 page)

On the way back I felt heavy with some darkness that were filling me mind just as the wallaby had filled me belly. Back in the lair Becky and I cried. Tigers don’t cry, but they know sadness, they know emptiness, and both Dave and Corinna were empty except for sadness. Their eyes were glazed with sorrow; there is no other word for it. I’d say they were grief-stricken and so were me and Becky.

Corinna spent days, maybe weeks in the den. She grew thinner, even though her mate brought her food. Then one day she come hunting with us, and even though she didn’t have much strength and gave up the chase after a quoll - which are devils to hunt cos they’re so shy and quick - it were a sign she were getting better. We were closer than ever before, not only because of what happened to the pups, but because Becky and me were now like tigers too. Becky’s language were fading, while all mine were gone. There were no reason to remember English any more. Words were no use to us when we were talking to the tigers, it were much easier to use our own language of grunts, growls, yawns, snuffles, coughing, looking, staring, so much so that if I’d mention the tigers to Becky, I’d call them ‘Da’ and ‘Cor’ - it were enough to understand who I were talking about. Me parents, well, they just slowly slipped out of me mind. They were like dreams, not real people
.

One afternoon after we left the lair and were thinking about what direction to take to hunt, Dave rose up on his back legs to peer over some tall grass and daisy bushes and seen something that made his tail wag back and forth so quick like I had not seen before. I followed his gaze and seen another tiger moving towards Corinna who were standing there in the open just watching this tiger coming closer and closer. Dave began hissing like a snake and he ran through the bushes to the clearing. Becky and me ran to join him, knowing he were angry and spoiling for a fight. The other tiger were a male and he were moving in on Corinna. The two males faced each other. They were real cross, hissing and coughing, their stiff tails wagging back and forth not as a sign of happiness like in a dog but in anger. Then in a flash they were fighting and biting and snarling and growling. They chomped into each other, and tried to yawn as wide as possible so they could fit their jaws round the other’s throat. I picked up some stones to throw at the other male, but Becky stopped me. She were like Corinna, strangely calm, while watching this - cos I s’pose they were confident that Dave would win the fight or they were resigned to whatever happened. The two tigers fought so wildly that soon they were raising a dust cloud. The wind got hold of the dust and it swirled round them like they were in a willy-willy of fury. There were blood on both of them and when their bodies hit the earth it shook with a loud thump. Sometimes they jumped away from each other, sucking in deep breaths, panting madly, with their tongues hanging right out, flies feasting on their bloody fur. Then they jumped back into the swirl. I knew that the two males were fighting over Corinna. I found meself yelling out
Da!
Da!
, egging him on. After what seemed like hours, but it were probably only a few minutes, the other male backed away, looked at me and Becky and then at Corinna. He were covered in clouds of insects licking his blood. Maybe he decided it just wasn’t worth it, cos all of a sudden he turned tail and limped away. Dave were weary and hurt too. Corinna licked his wounds and so did Becky and me. We helped him down to the creek where he drunked so much water I thought he might burst. Becky and me then washed the blood from him. He limped up to the lair and for several days lay there, eyes half closed, his weariness so deep that he dozed all day and night, trying to keep his eyes open just in case his enemy came back. But he never did. Dave were brave and Corinna knew it. She went out hunting by herself and brought back a rabbit for him. He were grateful - that were easy to see.

When I think back I see time were passing without me noticing. I lost me talking and lost me counting. It were the seasons I noticed: summer and autumn in the rainforests and hills and then winter down by the coast. We had four summers . . . That made me ’bout ten years old and Becky a bit more than eleven. Four years to a child is like an eternity. Every year I live now passes quicker and quicker but back then a year were an eternity so it were like a time without end.

Our world were a dark world. Most of our prey were creatures of the night like us. Sometimes at night it were like the whole of the bush were humming. There’d be the scratching, hunting, searching, fighting, snorting, barking, clicking noises of the dying bandicoots, the quolls, the mice, rabbits, dunnarts, possums, pademelons, grumpy wombats, swamp antechinus, potoroos, bettongs . . . it may be the secret dark world to humans but to me and Becky it were easy to see in. I knew what every silhouette, every shadow meant, no matter how quick the animal or bird were. Day were when animals hid in their burrows or in hollow trees, night were when we all came alive.

I learned what berries to eat if we were starving cos I watched what Dave and Corinna ate and most times the berries had no bad effect on me, but they could eat the native cherry til full while me and Becky threw up. One sort of berry was so peppery that I dranked water for two days trying to cool my throat. Snowberries and purple berries were good to eat. We caught enormous crayfish in the creeks with our bare hands. If we couldn’t find our usual prey then we hunted rats. They were tasty. We ate mushrooms that were like white tennis balls and a jelly shaped like an ear that growed on trees. We even ate goannas and skinks. If we wanted a pick-me-up we’d lick sassafras leaves.

I learned the countryside: the fens, the highlands of rock and stones, the rainforests, and what rivers we could cross. I saw orange-bellied parrots, wrens, wattlebirds, honey-eaters, currawongs, huge ravens and heard voices of a bird whose name I forget - it had a song like someone whistling a jig. Then there were the smells: dung, rot, fresh kill, old kill, the devils smelling like lanolin, the gum trees reeking of peppermint, forest floors smotheredin hairy toadstools that smelt of onion, then other toadstools that stanked of radish, fish, bitter almonds or even raw potato. There were special mushrooms that glowed in the night like hundreds of tiny lanterns. In summer the moors and fens were scarlet with flowers and the floors of the forests were white with petals of flowering gums and bushes. There were so much wattle that the countryside were yellow like someone had painted it during the night. Eyebrights and yellow bottlebrush and blue flowers stretched as far as I could see. It took a long time to learn the treachery of the earth - even Dave and Corinna were never a hundred per cent certain that the mossy ground we were walking on weren’t a fake floor. You think you’re walking on a real surface but it can gulp you up like it had tried to swallow Becky.

Difficult times were when it were bitter cold and prey weren’t to be found, when the rain fell day after day til the whole forest were so sodden every step were a squelch. During these rainy times even our den were damp and all you could hear were the constant drip, drip, drip of water hours after it had stopped raining. It were aching hard on the legs to walk through those sodden forests, and it were wet country ripe for those damn leeches. Then there were the time I were bitten by a jack jumper. It were only a tiny ant but I fell into a coma and Becky had to drag me to the den where the three of them cared for me. Becky were afeared I’d die, til two days later I woke up. I can say at me ripe old age, with me knowledge and the experience I now have, that you haven’t had a proper sting til you been stanged by a jack jumper.

I learned to read the eyes and body movements of the tigers and they learned mine and Becky’s. It’s why even now I can read a dog as easy as ABC. But there became a problem that Becky and I began to notice. The tigers tried to breed. The year after the bounty hunter killed her pups, Corinna had just the one cub but it died soon after birth. They tried more times but she never got pregnant again. Maybe it were the womb. Maybe after too many pups were killed the womb gave up.

A winter came that were more cruel than the ones before. The wind and hail were
like sharp icicles cutting through me flesh. Even covering our bodies in mud
didn’t help and there were times when we didn’t leave the lair because outside our
skin turned prickly with goosebumps and our teeth chattered so much we couldn’t growl or cough.

One day we were really desperate for food. Our prey were deep in their burrows and holes trying to keep the winter out, so we decided to try the bounty hunter’s place again.

When we arrived, he had just got back himself with two fresh tiger carcasses. He carried them to the lean-to and then chopped some wood. His horse must have smelt us because it began to get antsy, tapping the earth with afeared hooves and pulling at its rope, trying to get away. The bounty hunter thought something was up and he hurried into the shack and came back outside with a rifle. Once we seen that, we were out of there, skedaddling as fast as possible down through the shrubs and running through the kerosene bush til we could run no more.

There were no other food available so we returned to the bounty hunter’s to try and steal a sheep. His property were white with snow and smoke poured out of his chimney. He were home and therefore dangerous. But we were starving and we had no choice. It were hard to sneak up on the sheep cos Becky’s and me feet squeaked on the hard snow, so we had to approach them real slowly and quietly, all the time keeping an eye open for the tiger man inside the shack who were singing a song at the top of his voice. The sheep were under the tree to shelter from the falling snow. Before they knew what was happening we snatched one and the rest of the sheep scattered. The tiger man must have heard their bleating cos he stopped singing. We had little time to lose and we dragged the sheep across the snow leaving a trail of blood. I thought I heard a door open and we stopped, our eyes agog. There were no sound of footsteps and me ears ached with trying to hear. Then he started singing again.

We ate much of the sheep when we were enough distance away and then lugged home the rest. A couple of days later we were outside the lair preparing to go hunting. It were a still, cloudless day and the winter sun were trying to warm us. We were feeling good, I remember that, and so we didn’t feel the cold as much. We were moving through the snow across a ridge when I stopped. I smelt strange animals. I stood up, sniffed the cold air and looked over me shoulder. I couldn’t speak cos I were stunned to see two men on horses and they were close. They were tiger men - I were sure of that.

I heard meself bark in fright and warning. The two men rode their horses through the snow across the ridge towards us. They were so fast that I just stood there in shock. Becky yelled out for us to run and she hightailed it to the lair. But cos I were afeared I kept slipping on the wet rocks and when I picked meself up after a fall I heard one of the men shouting. I turned and seen a man with a wild black beard, wearing an overcoat and carrying a rifle, leap off his horse and run at me. The other man, a fat one, slid off his horse and he too came at me. The tigers were coughing and barking and running in circles, alarmed by me and Becky’s terror. The fat man slipped on a rock and fell into the snow, the other one were faster and thinner and he grabbed me. We both tumbled into the snow, but I jumped up first and as he tried to grab me again, I gave a threat yawn. But it didn’t make him back off, so I threw meself at him, trying to bite his throat. He were screaming and the other man grabbed me from behind. I were also screaming and hissing like a devil. They were grunting with effort trying to hold me down. They were saying stuff I didn’t understand and then the first man held me while the second ran across the snow to the lair. I barked out a warning to Becky. The fella holding me was struggling with me as I tried to escape. I barked to the tigers to help me and they started to circle us.

Out of the corner of me eye I seen the fat bloke pick up the rifle he had dropped in the snow and point it at the tigers. I felt meself filled with fury and I bit the hand that held the rifle. There was a sudden bang noise, like a clap of thunder, and we all stood still, shocked by the noise, then the tigers, knowing what the noise meant, ran off down the ridge, leaving me squirming with the fat fella. I heard the second man yell out something. He were standing at the opening to the den, then he crawled inside it. I heard Becky’s horrible screams and cries and barks for help. The man came out dragging Becky like a rag doll. She were kicking and snarling and coughing, then she spit at him til his beard were twinkling in the sunlight with her spit, then somehow she managed to pull away and ran towards me. I yanked meself free of the fat man and Becky and me ran to each other and huddled together in the snow, panting, crying, fear running through our marrow. The two men circled us, staring at us. We didn’t look at them, but into the distance - to where we would run to if we could escape. With a scream that pierced right through me, Becky jumped up and ran. The fat man threw himself at me and held me tight. The bearded man ran round in front of Becky, his arms stretched wide, crying out
Rebecca!
Becky stopped in her tracks and growled at him for a moment, then she went quiet as if really puzzled. I were puzzled too. The man knew her name. How did he know that? The two stared at each other in the panting silence til he grabbed her by the hand and led her back to me.