When the Night Comes (8 page)

I pat my stomach. “No, I'm fine,” I tell him.

He looks at me, serious now. “Just say when you want to go back.”

I nod. “Thank you.” Then I ask him about the stones. The hill. I ask if I can go over to see it. If I can go outside.

He narrows his eyes, looks confused. Maybe I have said the name wrong. “Reeve's Hill?”

“I don't have anyone who can take you,” he says, but then he pauses, as if he can see something in me, something in my eyes, urgent. Burning.

“I suppose you can go over if you're careful.”

I smile. “Maybe nice to go outside,” I say.

He nods. Nods again. “Yes,” he says. “All right. Follow the road around, then look for the track. Don't wander off. Melt everywhere right
now. Cracks in the ice, lakes of water under it. Just follow the road and the track until you're on the rocks.”

“Okay,” I say, already standing. Already there in my mind.

“Put your name on the board. Be back in an hour. I don't want to have to come looking for you.”

“Thank you,” I say. I shake his hand, almost run out of the mess. I try not to look at anyone in case they stop me. In case they say, “Sorry, you can't go.” But then I see Ben and he waves. He stands up, holds out a pair of sunglasses.

“Take these,” he says.

I take them.

I move down the tunnel toward the doors, toward the sun. I write my name on the blackboard,
Bo—Nella Dan
, then I put
11:50 AM
under TIME in white chalk. I find a freezer suit, orange and padded, and I struggle to get it on, get zipped up. It's roasting hot inside the suit, but when I open the heavy metal doors, I feel the cold—that bite on my face, slicing into my lungs—and I put my hat on, then Ben's sunglasses, and suddenly the brightness does not hurt my eyes. I can see it all clearly, in full spectrum. All the full-color glory and the insides of me are soaring.

I follow the road, my big boots crunching in the loose frozen dirt. Summer. Minus one degree, but that sun is streaming down, melting everything on the surface, slick and slippery.

The sound of the resupply echoes all around—the truck engines, the cranes, the
beep
,
beep
,
beep
of reversing machines. A hive of engines working around the clock until the resupply is done. But as I move closer to the hill, get farther down the road, the silence starts to win. I can feel it come down over me, over the place, like double glazing. My breath loud, my heart beating in all this cold silence.

The hill of stones is there, ahead. I'm getting closer.

My foot slips out from under me and I land hard. I'm on the ground,
still. Black ice. I didn't see it on the road but I can see it now. I try to feel if anything is wrong, if anything hurts. What would happen if I broke something? How long would I have to wait? How cold would I get? I look up at the blue sky, no clouds now, only slight streaks of translucent gray and pink. I get up slowly and breathe. I'm just winded. I tell myself to walk slower, to be careful.

No need to rush, no need to end your season early and be sent home.
But part of me wants to run, get to the hill as fast as I can. It's as if someone is waiting for me up there, something important that I might miss.

A hill of stones—a hill made of stones.

The road ends.

A line of ice to cross, covered in thick crystals, hard snow that never melts in this cold dryness. I can see footprints, tracks to follow where people have been. The snow is deep and crisp right up to my knees and it's hard to walk. Lines of penguin tracks crisscross the human path, little feet skimming across the top surface of frozen white with ease. Little feet waddling, not plodding. Little feet dancing, not sinking down like my heavy feet.

I plod on, step by step, sinking down. I keep going and when I look up, I can see flashes of white against the sky, against the rocks. Flashes of white, the air alive with them. Tiny pure-white birds, here at the end of the earth. Snow petrels. A nesting ground.

The ice thins. The rocks begin, like a desert, brown and dry. I take my hat off, let my head feel the cold air. I'm hot, but I keep climbing. I can see the nests in the rocks all around. Baby snow petrels somewhere safe inside. Safe and warm somehow. Babies so small, so perfect and white. I'm careful not to get too close, not to disturb them. I keep walking up, away from the nests, and when I reach the top the view hits me with full force. The whole of the rich blue bay, still. Perfect.
Nella Dan
there in her spot, reflecting red off the water. The sky cloudless. Giant
white cliffs running on and on, then out to the horizon, icebergs lined up for all of time, blue and brilliant white taking up the whole scene. Every blue that there is—that exists. One million shades of blue and white. The scale of it all measured against me, one man standing here. Just one man, small and breathless.

I find a big flat rock, sit down with this place humming through me. And they come. Snow petrels swoop down from the sky, arc in circles above my head.

I stay still, let them surround me, and all is silent except for the sound of wings beating against the cold air. Wings of snow-white feathers, these perfect creatures at home here in the strangeness of this place. So white they disappear when they fly over ice, invisible except for their small black eyes looking down, their black beaks pointing.

Papa—I am here.

A story told long ago. But I remember. The feel of my bed, and the smell of the feathers in my pillow. My father's voice, deep and far away, carrying me to a kingdom of ice.

A hill made of stones.

“If you climb it, if you make the journey, you can see far into the distance. You can see the whole of the bay and the icebergs along the horizon. A vast city of icebergs stretching out for as far as you can see.

“Then, if you sit still, if you wait and are patient, the little angels come down from the sky and fly around you. They come so close, their wings almost touch the skin on your face. They come down to say hello.”

“Are they really angels, Papa?”

He touched my head with his warm hand. “Time for sleep,” he said.

I closed my eyes and dreamt of falling snow that turned to pure-white
birds. I watched each snowflake fly away one by one, and I wished I had wings so that I could go with them. I wished that I could follow.

This place, alive and real. Just like he told me. Just like he said.

And I am here.

Papa, I am here.

There in the dark attic room

A beam of light from the air vent projected the sky

I watched, my eyes wide, as a silent movie rolled out across the wall

The clouds morphed and moved like gray smoke, weightless

A perfect orb of light grew bright—burned gold

And I could feel it

It was the sun

Rising—coming now

The night was over

W
e will be happy here,” she said, and I said yes.

A room of my own in the small white cottage on the hill. Closer to the sun—to the light. Up high in West Hobart, looking down on the city. A little stone cottage of our very own, with no lodgers and just us—my brother and me and Mum and our new cat, Molly. A sunroom out the back with a glass wall that let in as much light as there was, and Mum hired a piano. We put it in the sunroom and I could play it after school. There was a new round table and four chairs, a tiny kitchen, a little balcony, stairs that led down to a brick courtyard and a square of lawn with red roses, and I thought,
Yes, we will be happy here
.

We were going to a new school. A school with uniforms, and everything would be different.

“We will be happy here,” she said.

Darlington Cottage.

It cost $53,000, which was almost all the money that Mum got from the settlement. Still, there was some left for a car. A
car
, which was really something after not having one for so long. Part of the school fees came from a scholarship, and the rest was to be found somehow. It would be found.

Moving in.

Mum said it was the first house that had been hers, and that made her
smile very much. My brother and I could feel it—that maybe things
would
be different now.

My room was painted sage green and it had a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. My brother's room was painted blue and he had a bunk bed. He decided to sleep on the top bunk.

And he was going to have a birthday party—his first real one. A birthday party in a house that we owned.

It was our home.

M
um drove us up to the top of the mountain in the new car. Bo was back and he could only just fit in the front seat even though my brother and I were small enough for him to push his seat right back. The car only had two doors. You had to pull the passenger seat forward to get in and out of the back. But we had not had a car the whole time we had lived in Hobart and it was nice to feel the road underneath me and look out of the window. The road took us up slowly in wide circles of green to Fern Tree and then onto a steep rocky road where the trees thinned out until there were just shrubs and huge boulders and the sky, which was clear.

When we got to the top, Mum parked the car and we all got out. Bo stretched his legs. He jumped up and down on the spot and clapped his hands together.

“Cold up here,” he said.

My brother pulled his beanie out of his pocket and put it on. I zipped up my parka and put the hood over my head.

I had only been to the top of the mountain once, with school, and we had walked there from Fern Tree. It was a long walk and it was very cold. We had to huddle away from the wind behind rocks and cook our lunch on Trangia stoves that ran on denatured alcohol. We cooked two-minute noodles and ate them quickly and they were good but everything smelt a bit like metho. After lunch we were warmer and it was easier to walk the rest of the way up.