The Disappearance of Ember Crow (33 page)

Grandpa didn’t seem to be around, but I still found it soothing to sit and stare at the water with Nicky at my side. Nicky had been my shadow ever since I returned to the Firstwood, the faithful companion who trotted at my heels and understood the worries of my heart. It was a strange thing – he’d been Ember’s little brother in his last life. He was my dog in this one. And he seemed to know that I needed him nearby right now.

I was afraid of so many things, but most of all of the future.

No one had any idea where Neville Rose was, or Terence Talbot for that matter. The Electrifier wasn’t talking. We’d organised for Leo to warn Belle Willis about the toxin in the girl’s system, and to supply her with the antidote. He’d told Willis that he’d acquired it in the course of watching a shady character in Spinifex City who he’d only just realised was the former Prime Talbot. Willis appeared to believe him. She seemed quite charmed by Leo. But I had no hope that the Electrifier would betray Terence. My only comfort was that both Leo and Delta were hunting him, so wherever he was, Terence was on the run. Except I couldn’t shake the dream of Neville standing on the hill of death. I was haunted by his escape, and by what might come from it.

There was a noise behind me, and I twisted to see Ember coming through the forest. She’d returned five days ago, along with Jules. He was alive, but his body was struggling to accept the nanomites; he had good days and bad days. On the good days he was almost normal, on the bad he could barely move. Ember didn’t know how to fix it yet, or even if she could. Strangely, the situation seemed to bother Jules a lot less than it bothered Ember. He didn’t mind at all that she’d put nanomites in his body to save him, and he’d been dealing with his poor health with endless optimism and good humour. I’d never liked him so much before. I had to concede that maybe Ember had been right all along to see more in him that I had.

She sat down on the other side of Nicky. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Ash, I wanted to …” Her voice trailed off. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“
Something’s
wrong.”

I sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about the taffa dream. I know you don’t believe in those dreams, but I think Starbeauty has something to do with them, Em. I think they’re real.” I’d filled her in on Starbeauty and everything else she’d missed out on after she came back. “It was a warning. But how am I supposed to stop the death of the world? And about the only advice Grandpa and Starbeauty gave me was that I need to understand my power, and I don’t know what that means!”

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Before you say it,” I told her, “they’re not talking about Sleepwalking.”

“I know.”

I blinked at her. “You do?”

She nodded. “Think about it this way, Ash. You changed something that could have derailed the reform process into a rallying point for revoking the Accords. You’ve changed the world. Again.”

“I didn’t do it alone–”

“That’s my point! You were able to save Prime Willis, in the end, because Jeremy Duoro saved you, and Rae Wentworth Mended you. And because of Nicky, who helped you to Sleepwalk. And Connor, of course, who was little more than an assassin before he met you. And then Belle Willis convinced everyone the Tribe were saviours, and she wouldn’t even have
been
Prime if she hadn’t been caught up in what happened at the centre the last time you were there. Don’t you understand what that all means?”

I frowned at her, puzzled. And then I saw it, stretching out like one of Georgie’s webs – the many linkages I’d made on which events had turned.

My jaw dropped. “My power. It’s … to connect. To – to love.”

Everything connects
, Grandpa had said.
But not everyone sees those connections
. I finally understood the danger he and Starbeauty were worried about for the future. People were good to the Earth now, but they weren’t good to each other, and it wasn’t enough to value only one kind of connection.
All life matters, or none does
. And if preventing that terrible future of Neville and the hill of death depended on me making connections … I grinned, immensely cheered. That was something I knew how to do; it was as natural to me as breathing.

Ember cleared her throat. “I thought we should talk. About what I did before. The Accords and everything.”

We hadn’t discussed this since she returned. We didn’t need to, except she obviously didn’t realise that. “I already forgave you, Em. And the only reason you’re having trouble accepting it is that you don’t believe you deserve to be forgiven.”

She bowed her head. “I don’t.”

Yeah, I’d figured that was how she felt. “You know, there’s so much hate in this world.” I nodded down at Nicky. “Those people in Vale City hated him for being different. Terence hates people with abilities. I hated Citizens after Cassie died.”

“This isn’t about that–”

“Yes, it is!”
I’m not on the side of hate. And you shouldn’t be either
. “Ember, what I’m trying to say is, I have hated, and you have hated. But sooner or later someone has to stop the hating or it goes on forever. And I think the only way we’re ever going to be able to truly let go of it, is if we start with the hate we have for ourselves.”

“Oh, Ash. I don’t even know how to begin to do that.”

“It’s easy. You just have to remember something that Georgie once told us. Love is the only thing more powerful than hate.”

Ember stared at me for a moment, then smiled. I smiled back. I knew she hadn’t fully understood what I’d said, but I didn’t try to explain it further. She’d get it eventually, and my own journey to forgiveness had shown me that it took more than words to show the way.

Some truths cannot be told. Only discovered.

We sat there in comfortable silence, watching the light fade from the sky. After a while, music drifted through the forest.

“You know,” I said, “I think it’s possible Georgie forgot she was supposed to tell us when the party was starting.”

Ember giggled. “I think so too. Let’s go, Ash.”

The two of us wandered through the Firstwood, heading to the clearing we used for summer camp with Nicky at our heels. As we neared it I stopped, taking in the scene before me.

There was a fire burning in the centre of the clearing, and solar lamps hanging in the trees above. The glow of the flames and the lamps turned the grey bark of the sheltering tuarts to a soft, magic silver, and the entire Tribe seemed to be enclosed within that light. Mai and Jin were hovering over the fire, roasting vegetable skewers. Micah and Keiko and Andreas stood at the edge of the clearing, playing their flutes, while Trix sang in a high, clear soprano. Some people were dancing, while the rest gathered in small clusters, eating and laughing and talking. That included Georgie and Daniel, who were sitting side by side, sharing a plate of food. And Connor lounging on a fallen log at the edge of the treeline.
My Tribe
.

Jules came running up to Ember as we approached, lifting her up and twirling her in the air. He was having a good day. He set her down, and she twined her arms around his neck to pull him into a deep, passionate kiss.

I looked away, smiling, and walked on. Nicky padded ahead to stake out the food with the other Tribe dogs, and Georgie bounced over to me.

“You were supposed to tell us when the party was starting,” I reminded her.

“You and Em were talking!” She waved her hand at the clearing. “Do you like it, Ash?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“You have to remember it,” she told me, sounding almost stern. “What this looks like. How it feels, to have all of us here together.”

Was she worried I was going to run off to the wolves again? I was long past that, but maybe she didn’t realise it.

“I will–”

“I mean it, Ash!”

I patted her arm. “I won’t forget, I promise you I won’t. Don’t worry, Georgie. I know how much I need the Tribe.”

She reached out to take my hand, clasping my fingers lightly before letting me go. “We need you more, Ash.”

Then she trotted back to Daniel, and I made my way over to Connor.

I’d been avoiding having a particular conversation with him since we returned from the centre, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I dropped to sit on the log beside him, wondering how to begin.

He did it for me. “You want to ask if I’m going after Talbot, now we’re not in immediate danger. And you’re afraid of my answer.”

That was pretty much a perfect summary of what I felt. “I understand if you have to go. But I can’t come with you. Not with Terence and Neville out there somewhere. I’ve got to stay with the Tribe.”

“I dedicated most of my life to finding a way to kill him,” he said, “before I met you.”

“I know.”

He drew me to him. I leaned into his body, but only lightly in case I had to let him go, and he added, “Except that was my father’s choice. That revenge.”

My pulse quickened in hope. “Does that mean …”

“I’m staying, Ashala.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to stay for me.”

“I’m not. If anything, it’s because of my mother.” He sighed, resting his cheek against the top of my head. “You shared my memories of my father. But you never knew my mother. She was everything he wasn’t. Strong, without being cruel. Quick to laugh, and slow to anger. In love with the beauty of the world and with being alive in it.”

I snuggled closer. “I think I would have liked her.”

“She would have liked you. And when you made me part of the Tribe, you showed me that I didn’t have to follow my father’s path. That I could make a different choice.” He reached out to tip up my chin. In the soft light, his face was a marvel of sculpted perfection; an unearthly beauty made real by the smile at the corner of his mouth and the warmth in his eyes. “And I choose to be my mother’s son.”

He leaned in to kiss me; a slow sweet kiss that sent molten heat flowing through my veins. When it ended I whispered against his lips, “Connor. Let’s dance.”

We ran out to spin among the rest of the dancers and became part of the night, the two of us moving in rhythm with each other and the Tribe and the turning stars above. For a second, the silver glow of the tuarts seemed to twist and elongate into shining lines that flowed between us all, and extended outwards to the animals and the trees and the earth.
I see the connections, Grandpa. I do
.

The wind grew stronger, swirling sparks of fire and the scent of eucalyptus through the clearing. I gave myself up to the music and the laughter and the dancing; to these people, and this moment.

We are the Tribe, and we are here.

Where do you get your ideas?

This is a question that writers get asked all the time, and more often than not, the answer I give is “everywhere!” Writers, at least in my experience, run short on time, money and energy; never on ideas. This is perhaps especially so for me when I am writing The Tribe series. I feel as though it is a story I discover more than one I create; it is as if the characters take me on their own journeys, which I interpret through the lens of my understandings and experiences. But there has been so much interest in the parts of Ashala’s story which are drawn from my cultural background that I thought it was worth saying something about the source of those aspects of the novels.

Aboriginal people of Australia have the oldest continuous living culture on earth. We are not a single homogenous group; we are many nations, and we hail from diverse homelands. Some of us are rangeland people; some forest and some desert; some river and some saltwater. We call our homelands our Countries. The Country of my people, the Palyku people, is dry, inland Country – but in case you are thinking of unending sand dunes, that’s not what it looks like. Palyku Country is a place of sharp contrasts and bright colours – red earth, yellow spinifex grass bleached white, purple hills, green gum trees and blue sky.

The world that Ashala occupies is not Australia, of course. There is no Australia, in Ashala’s time, and no anywhere-else-that-exists-now either. The earth has torn itself apart; the tectonic plates have shifted; and a single, entirely new continent is the only piece of land remaining on the planet. But every landscape I describe in The Tribe series is inspired by one of the many biodiverse regions of Australia. So there really
are
towering tuarts; they grow in the Country of the Nyoongah people, in the south-west of Western Australia, and are one of the rarest ecosystems on earth.

In Ashala’s world, where people no longer distinguish between themselves on the basis of race, the word “Aboriginal” would have no meaning. But she carries that ancient bloodline, and has the same deep connection to the Firstwood that present day Aboriginal people have to their Countries. For me, one of the most profound moments in
The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf
is when Ashala is being taken to the machine for the final time, thinking she is about to die, and the wind brings her the scent of eucalyptus from the faraway Firstwood. She has, or so she believes, no hope of escape; but she is not alone.

I am sometimes asked what advice I would give to anyone who wants to be a writer, and one of the things I tell people is to aspire to greatness; never model yourself on the mediocre. For me, the best storytellers I know are Aboriginal Elders. So in writing about the Tribe, I thought about the way the Elders draw you into a tale that is always more than it first appears. I thought, too, about the generations of Palyku women who had gone before me, who had walked red earth and told the ancient tales of my people beneath the glittering stars of a desert night. Great storytellers, one and all. Their tales are like gifts that can continually be unwrapped, so filled with layers of meaning that you never reach the end of the wisdom the story holds or the comfort that it brings. And I tried to honour that tradition by writing a tale that was, first and foremost, a riveting tale – as their stories always are – but that asked bigger questions about what has been, what is, and what will be.

My great-grandmother once described Australia as a place where everything lives and nothing dies. She was talking about a way of understanding the world as a web of living, inter-connected beings; where everything is born from, and eventually goes back to, the greater pattern of life itself. The oldest of our stories tell us that our Countries began with the creative Ancestors, in what is often called “the Dreaming”. These Ancestors came in many shapes – magpie and kangaroo; butterfly and serpent; sun and moon – and through their songs, dances and travels, the world was made.