The Australians' Brides

“Does the creek water ever get to the sea?”

“Nope. It drains into Lake Frome, east of here.”

“Which is dry, too, most of the time, right? A salt pan?” She’d been looking at a map and some books with Carly while the boys did schoolwork during the week.

“That’s right. Salt and clay. Flat, as far as the eye can see. I like these mountains better.”

“Well, yeah, because you own these mountains.”

She couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice, and he picked up on it. “You really like that, don’t you?”

Yes.

A lot.

The safety of it.

The strength.

“Almost as much as you do, Callan Woods.”

He didn’t answer, just did that lazy, open grin of his, which she could barely see beneath his brimmed stockman’s hat. Correction—she could see the mouth, but not the eyes. Didn’t matter. She already knew what the eyes looked like. Kept seeing them in her mind when she twisted back the right way in her saddle, bluer than this sky, brighter than sun on water.

It was midmorning when they reached the deep water hole lodged in the mouth of the red rock gorge. Callan and the boys led the horses down to drink, then tethered them in the shade on the creek bank, where they found tufts of coarse grass to chew on.

“Swim first?” he said.

“Is it really safe?”

“If you’re sensible.”

“So you mean it’s not safe?” She imagined crocodiles.

“It’s deep in parts, and it’s cold.”

“But no crocodiles?”

He laughed. “Not a one. But it’s colder than you would think, especially once you go a few feet below the surface. Keep Carly in the shallows. See, it’s like a beach. The sand’s coarser than beach sand but it shelves down nice and easy.”

“Mmm, okay.” She could see for herself the way the water darkened from pale iced tea to syrupy cola. “Why is it that color?” she asked.

“It gets stained from the eucalyptus leaves. In some lights, it looks greener. The boys and I like to jump and dive in a couple of spots off the ledge on the far side, there, but we always check the places out first. I’ve been swimming in this water hole my whole life, but you can get tree branches wedged in the rocks that you can’t see from the surface, and you don’t want to get caught or hit your head.”

“I’ll stick with Carly in the shallows.”

He was right. It was cold. Enough to make her gasp when she stepped into it from the warm sand. And it had a fresh, peaty kind of smell that she liked. Carly splashed and ducked and laughed, while Jac watched the boys and their dad swimming across an expanse of water that looked black from this angle, toward the rock ledge. They trod water back and forth, scoping out the depths for hidden dangers, then having determined that it was safe, no hidden snags, they hauled themselves out onto the rock, climbed to the high point, gave themselves a good long run-up and started to jump.

After fifteen minutes, Carly’s teeth began to chatter. She lay on a towel in the sun for a short while, but soon warmed up again, put a T-shirt over her semidry swimsuit and was ready to make canal systems and miniature gardens in the sand. Lockie had had enough of the water, also. He swam back to the beach to get his towel, but Callan and Josh were still jumping and whooping, their voices echoing off the rock walls of the gorge behind them, the only human sound for miles around.

“Swim over and give it a go,” Callan called out to Jacinda. He stood at the edge of the highest part of the ledge, a good twelve feet above the waterline.

Not in a million years, Jac thought.

“I’m watching Carly,” she called back.

“Lockie’s with her now. She’s dressed. She’ll be fine.”

“No, really …”

“I’m going back to the sand, Dad,” Josh said. He and Callan did one last whooping jump from the ledge together, with legs kicking wildly in the air and arms turning like windmills, then they swam toward the stretch of beach.

“She’ll be fine with the boys,” Callan repeated when he approached Jacinda, as if there’d been no break to the conversation. “She’d have to go in pretty far to get out of her depth here.”

He touched bottom and stood waist-deep, then began to stride toward the beach, the water streaming from his body as he got closer and shallower. He reached Jacinda, his skin glistening and his dark, baggy swim shorts hanging low on his hips. He wasn’t self-conscious about his body, just took it for granted.

Jac didn’t. She saw hard bands and blocks of muscle, a shading from tan to pale halfway down his upper arm, a neat pattern of hair across his chest, and the way the cold and wet made every inch of his skin taut.

Standing calf-deep, he gestured behind him. “See, there’s about six meters of sand all the way along this side, before it starts to shelve down. She’s safe without you. And you’d be safe, too, if you came for a jump off the ledge. It’s so much fun, Jac.”

He used the same tone that some men might reserve for attempting to get a woman into bed, and it was the first time he’d called her Jac, even though she’d asked him to three days ago.

“Mmm …”

That’s not an answer, she realized. I can’t believe I’m even considering this.

“Hey?” he cajoled. “Thinking about it? The rush as you race forward and hit the air? It’s so good. And you have to yell, that’s a requirement. Lockie first did it when he was five. Promise you’ll yell?”

Live a little, said his eyes. There was a contained eagerness coming from him. He was like Carly about to give Mommy a special piece of artwork from preschool. How could you not respond just exactly the way those eyes begged you to?

“Callan, I’m not even promising to—”

“You need a reason to yell in life, sometimes, and this is the best one I know.”

“Yeah?”

I don’t believe this.

I am considering it.

I’m seriously thinking about it.

The yelling idea is incredibly attractive.

Her heart started beating faster. She could smell horse on her body, dust in the air, creek water in Carly’s wet hair. She was eight thousand miles from the place she called home, on six hundred thousand acres of land.

And she was seriously wondering if she might be brave enough to run and jump, while yelling, into a deep, creepy water hole.

Just do it.

“Gotta earn those yabbies.” Callan held out his hand, ready to pull her up. Behind him, Lockie had started putting lumps of meat inside old stocking feet and tying them with string. Under his direction, Josh was searching for good long sticks of eucalyptus to act as fishing poles.

“This is way outside of my comfort zone!” Jacinda warned as Callan’s grip locked with hers.

A moment later, she reached a standing position and they came face-to-face, confronting Jac with something else that was way outside of her comfort zone. His hard, wet body, his slightly quickened breathing, his exhilarated grin. All of it was too close and too real when they stood just inches apart like this.

Feeling it, too, and clearly not liking it, he let her go and told her in an awkward way, “Strip, before you chicken out.”

She was only wearing a T-shirt over her two-piece tank-style animal print swimsuit. She crossed her arms, peeled the T-shirt over her head and dropped it on a patch of dry sand safely distant from the kids’ messy play. She discovered Callan looking over at the kids. His lean, strong neck looked too tight and twisted. It wasn’t a natural angle. He’d been—what?—averting his eyes while she stripped?

In her animal print, she felt like Jane to his Tarzan. But had Tarzan been that much of a gentleman?

“I’m coming as far as the ledge, but I don’t promise to jump,” she said.

His head turned again, back to her, and a frown dropped away, replaced with a twinkle in the depths of those eyes. “We’ll see,” he drawled.

He grabbed her hand and galloped her into the water. Getting deeper in two seconds than she’d gone with Carly in fifteen minutes, she gasped again. He was right, the deeper you went, the colder it got. “Let me go!”

“Swim,” he said, and struck off ahead of her with a powerful stroke.

She followed, terrified. The water felt so different to California pool water or salty ocean. So smooth. Sooo deep. How far down did it go? She had to fight away images of creatures lurking down there.

Before her imagination got out of control, they reached the lower part of the ledge and she hauled herself up onto the warm rock, copying Callan’s fluid movement with a more awkward one of her own. Her body tingled all over and she panted for breath.

“You did great,” he told her. “You’re a good fast swimmer.”

“Only because things were chasing me.”

“Bunyips?”

“Wha-a-at? There is something down there! I knew it! What the heck are bunyips? Oh sheesh, I’ll never get back to the beach, now! I’ll have to go the long way around, over the rocks.”

Which didn’t look easy.

“Don’t panic. Bunyips are mythical. Kind of an Australian version of the Loch Ness monster.”

“You know, Callan, there are people who don’t think the Loch Ness monster is just mythical. I don’t think these things should be dismissed. I’ve read articles about it, and there’s also that in-some-ways-quite-credible urban myth about alligators in the New York—”

He wasn’t listening. He’d somehow gotten hold of her hand again and they were climbing to the higher part of the ledge, over the rough shelves of rock that acted like steps. At the top, he turned away from the water and led her back into the shade of the gorge’s overhanging sides. He had her in a kind of monkey grip now. He was holding her forearm in the circle of his fingers, and she held his forearm the same way. It was so strongly muscled that her fingers went barely halfway around.

“Repeat after me, Jac,” he said. “Bunyips are mythical.”

“Bunyips are mythical. But I have a very powerful imagination, I’m telling you.”

“Okay, louder. Bunyips—are—mythical.”

“Bunyips—are—mythical. And if they’re not, you know how to scare them away, right?”

“Bunyips are mythical. And plus they’re very friendly.”

“Callan …”

“Right, now, let’s go, but this time we’ll yell it. Ready?” He didn’t give her a chance to tell him she wasn’t. Hand in hand, they sprinted forward, with Callan yelling at the top of his lungs. “Bunyips … are …”

Jac joined him on the last word, screaming it, whooping it, as they came to the end of the ledge and hit the air, legs still working wildly, arms flung high but still joined. “Mythical!” The word echoed off the gorge walls, bouncing like a ball, and she heard it come back to them while they were in midflight. Their voices seemed to claim this whole place.

She whooped again.

Felt a surge of utter exhilaration.

Hit the water.

Callan still had her hand. They went down, down into the icy darkness and she kicked frantically to bring herself back up, just as he was doing. She broke the surface gasping and laughing. “Get me out of here! I know there’s a bunyip down there!”

“Wanna do it again?”

“Unnhh,” she whimpered. “Unnhh!”

Do I?

Could I?

“Yes!”

They jumped together four more times, whooping and yelling and laughing, until Lockie complained, “Dad, you’re scaring the yabbies! We haven’t caught a single one.”

“Try for them in that reach of water behind the rocks where it gets muddy,” he called back to his son. “Are we done, Jacinda?”

“I think so,” she said, breathless and starting to shiver.

The contrast between the cold water and the hot sun on the rocks felt wonderful with each jump and climb, but she’d had enough, and Carly must be getting hungry. They were cooking sausages and lamb chops for a midday barbecue, and Callan still had to light the fire. They swam back, side by side, no bunyips in sight, nothing nipping at her toes.

Walking through the shallows, she confessed, “I was so scared, Callan, you have no idea!”

“It’s a healthy kind of scared, though, isn’t it? You push the fear back with yelling, and then you feel great.”

“How would you know? You said you’d been doing it your whole life. You can’t ever have been scared here.”

“I haven’t been scared of here—of the water hole.”

“Or bunyips.”

“Or bunyips.” He paused. “But I’ve been here, scared.” Paused again. “I’ve come here a few times to try and yell it away, and it’s always worked.”

“Scared of what, then, if not the water hole?” She said it before she thought, shouldn’t have needed to ask.

“After Liz died.” His voice went quiet and his body went still, reluctant and stiff. “Scared of—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You don’t need to spell it out. I understand.”

He gave a short nod. “Yeah, there was nothing unique about it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, but she didn’t show that he’d heard.

“I got given some, you know, brochures at the hospital in Port Augusta,” he said. “Information leaflets. About bereavement. And they had lists of things I might be feeling, and I was. Feeling those things. All of them. It’s stupid. I hated having my whole gutful of emotions put onto a bloody list. There were lists of things you could do about the emotions, too. Ways of getting help, ways to help get yourself through it.”

“But those lists didn’t have yelling and jumping into the water hole?”

“Nope.”

And that was good, Jac understood, so Callan had jumped into the water hole a lot.

She felt privileged, sincerely privileged, that he’d wanted to push her to do it, and very glad that she had. She was pretty sure he didn’t offer the same opportunity for terror and yelling to just anyone. She was very sure he was right to think that she needed it.

Bunyips were mythical.

And Kurt’s power games were a long way away.

“Got one! Got one! Got one!” Josh shrieked out.

About twenty seconds later, Carly screamed, “Mommy, I got one, too!”

“Let Lockie put it in the bucket for you, Carlz,” Callan warned her quickly. “It might nip you with its claw if you touch it. Lockie—?”

“I’m helping her, Dad, it’s okay.”

“Let’s get that fire going.”

He grabbed his towel and dried himself with the vigor of a dog shaking its wet coat, then dragged his T-shirt and jeans over his still-damp body, hauled on his sturdy riding boots and went to work unpacking backpacks and saddlebags, while Jac was slower to cover her damp swimsuit with her clothes. She couldn’t help watching Callan as she dressed.

There was a circle of big river stones in the shade near the creek bank. The remnants of charcoal within it, as well as the blackened sides of the stones themselves, told Jac that the circle was another detail to this place that Callan had known his whole life.

“Want to find some bark and sticks?” he said.

She gathered what he’d asked for, while he broke thicker wood into short lengths with a downward jerk of his foot. He had a fire going within minutes, with water heating in a tin pot that he called a billycan. Out here in the middle of the day, the light was so bright you could barely see the flames, but you could feel the heat and the water was soon steaming.

Jac checked on the yabby tally. The kids had twelve in their red plastic bucket, but the yield seemed to be slowing and interest had waned. “The bait meat’s losing its flavor,” Josh said.

“And yabbies aren’t stupid. They’re on to us,” Lockie decided. “Twelve’ll have to be enough.” He stood up, leaving the bucket behind, and wandered in the direction of the horses.

“They’re our appetizer,” Jac said, without thinking.

“We’re going to eat them?” Carly wailed. “We can’t eat them!”

They were kind of cute, in a large, shrimpy sort of way, Jac conceded, with blue and black and green markings that would turn red and pink when they were cooked. Too cute to eat?

“Nah, it’s okay. They won’t know it’s even happening,” Josh told Carly in a matter-of-fact voice.

“How come they won’t know?” she asked.

Over by the fire, Callan called out, “Lockie, can you grab the tea bags while you’re there?” Lockie was still with the horses, looking for something in a saddlebag.

“Dad drops them into the boiling water and they don’t even have time to feel it. If I was a yabby, I’d way, way rather be eaten by a human than anything else.”

“Why, Josh?” Carly asked seriously.

“Because anything else would be eating me alive.”

“Eww! Yeah! Alive! Are you listening, yabbies?” Carly spoke seriously to the scrabbling contents of the red bucket. “We’re nice, kind humans. We’re not going to eat you alive.”

Which seemed to deal with the whole too cute issue, thank goodness.

Ten minutes later, Carly was eating a hot yabby sandwich, with butter, pepper and salt.

Jac ate one, too, and it sure tasted good. “This is one of those moments when I blink and shake my head and can’t believe I’m here,” she told Callan, hard on the heels of the last mouthful, her lips still tasting of butter and salt.

“Yeah?” Callan waved pungent blue smoke away from his face.

He had a blackened and very rickety wire grill balanced on the stones over a heap of coals. It looked as if someone had fashioned it out of old fencing wire, but it held the lamb chops and sausages just fine, and they smelled even better than the yabby sandwich had tasted.

In a little pan, also blackened, he had onions frying in the froth from half a can of beer. The other half of the can he drank in occasional satisfied gulps, while Jacinda sipped on a mug of hot tea.

“I’ve just eaten something that a week ago I’d never even heard of,” she said. “I’ve swum in terrifying water, chock-full of bunyips. I’ve let you tell me about snakes in the house without screaming.”

“I noticed you didn’t scream.” He gave her his usual grin. “I was impressed.”

“Thank you. Meanwhile, there’s a road faintly visible over there that you claim leads eventually to Adelaide, but there hasn’t been a car on it since we got here, what, an hour ago? In fact, have I seen or heard a car since Tuesday? I don’t think so.”

“There have been cars.”

“I haven’t noticed them. I’ve been too busy. It’s incredible here. Carly is—Carly will—I hope Carly never forgets this. It’s going to change who she is.”

And “Carly” is code for “Carly and me.”

It’s going to change who I am, even more, but there are limits to my new yelling-and-jumping-induced bravery, and I’m not prepared to say that out loud.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if it changes the boys, too,” Callan answered.

He flipped a couple of lamb chops with a pair of tarnished tongs, drained the last of the beer and looked at her with those steady blue eyes, and she suspected … decided … hoped … that “the boys” was code, also.

Chapter Six

“Dad?” Through a fog of steam, the bathroom door clicked shut behind the new arrival.

“What’s up, Lockie?”

“Can I talk to you for a sec?” The tone was reluctant, yet confiding.

“Can’t it wait until I’m done in the shower?” Callan had been caught this way by Lockie before.

His evening shower was one of the few intervals in his day that was both relaxing and private, and maybe that was why Lockie came looking for him here. He knew the two of them wouldn’t be disturbed by Josh or Gran or the dogs or, tonight, Carly or her mother.

The shower ran on bore water from deep in the ground, which meant it was as hard as nails but hot and steamy and in plentiful supply. Conserving water was deeply bred into anyone who lived beyond Australia’s coastal fringe, but four minutes of steamy peace per day was, surely, not too much to ask.

Apparently, yes.

“Well, you see, the thing is …” Lockie trailed off. The reluctance had increased.

Callan sighed and surrendered his peace, realizing he wasn’t dealing with a mere request for homework intervention or a new computer game, here. “Go ahead, spit it out.”

“You know when we were at the water hole today?”

“I have a faint memory of something like that, yes, even though it’s been a whole four hours since we left the place.”

Out it came in a sudden rush. “I left my Game Boy behind on a rock.”

“You what?” Callan shut off the water and reached around the edge of the shower curtain for his towel. “You brought your Game Boy down there? Why?”

“In case I got bored.”

“But you didn’t get bored. I didn’t even see you with it.”

“I got it out after we stopped yabbying, but then we had lunch and I forgot about it and I left it and I only remembered it now.”

“Right.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“What do you think we should do about it?” He wrapped the towel around his waist and slid the shower curtain aside, confronting his son.

He was strict about this kind of thing, and Lockie knew it. The boys were good, usually. Callan had trained them that way. They always left a gate the way they found it. They did a job, then put their tools away. They didn’t leave feed bags open to attract vermin, or riding gear lying around to get its leather cracked in the sun.

“I think I should go back first thing in the morning and get it,” Lockie said. “Like, very, very first thing.”

“I think you’re right,” Callan said. “And I think you know I’m not happy about this. How long did you have to save up your pocket money to buy that thing? A year?”

“I’m not happy about it, either.”

It was almost fully dark out, now, and they were just about to eat. Mum had cooked something special, the way she often did on a Saturday or Sunday. Smelled like lasagna and garlic bread, and the kids had already discovered and reported that there would be hot peach cake and ice cream for dessert.

Callan was hungry. He’d been up since five-thirty this morning. He didn’t want to have to stir from the house again tonight.

“Is it going to be safe on a rock all night?” Lockie asked him.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. What do you think?”

“If dew gets in it, or a ’roo knocks it off, or a cow steps on it, it could get destroyed.”

“All those things are possible.”

“So maybe I should go now,” Lockie said.

“No, Lockie.” Callan sighed. He wasn’t going to send a ten-year-old out alone on horseback or a quad bike after dark, on the tail of a long day. “We’ll eat, and then I’ll go.”

“I can come with you.”

“Nope.” Lockie looked yawning and droopy-eyed already. He’d helped with the horses, done various yard chores. He didn’t need to come. “You can watch some TV, then read in bed for a bit and go to sleep.”

“I can pay you my pocket money for the next couple of months, like, for your time.”

Callan laughed. “No, you can just not do it ever again.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He told Mum about the problem as he helped her serve out the meal, which was indeed lasagna, and he felt hungry enough to eat a whole trayful.

“Take Jacinda with you,” she said at once. “You won’t ride, will you? You’ll take the four-wheel-drive?”

“Seems best. Although it’s rough, getting to that spot in a vehicle, especially in the dark.”

“You can walk the last few hundred meters. But you must take Jacinda. Two pairs of eyes. Even if Lockie thinks he can describe to you exactly which rock it’s on.”

Which Lockie couldn’t.

“If Jacinda wants to come,” Callan said.

“Of course I’ll come,” Jac told him.

They’d just eaten Kerry’s fabulous meal, all appetites sharp after the day spent outdoors. She felt deliciously sated, and she felt exhausted. It was very tempting to pick up on the various outs he’d offered her and let him go alone. If she was too tired, if she didn’t think Carly would settle to sleep without her, if a rough ride in a four-wheel-drive held no appeal …