Page 124 of The Island
Regardless, it was time to take the fight to the enemy.
36
She was composed. Calm. As calm as the sea, the grass, these old trees. She floated in the nowness of everything.
She scanned the hill and the heathland with Jacko’s binoculars.
It was dark. Almost nothing stirred. Not a rabbit, not a wombat, not a sleepy koala. Just the shape of the yellow-white spinifex grass swaying in the breeze. She looked toward the mainland and the outskirts of the city. The sun had set long ago. The lights no longer held much interest for her. She watched dispassionately as a large passenger jet took a big turn over Mornington Peninsula and vectored north toward the airport.
There were other starlit vapor trails above heading away from Melbourne to Sydney or Perth.
That was another universe, that world of airplanes and cars and malls and police officers.
Thunder rumbled from the west.
Heather fixed the rifle on her back and the full canteen and machete at her belt.
She strode across the wasteland.
Under the Milky Way. Under the Southern Cross.
She had food and water in her belly.
A storm was coming.
She was the storm.
The O’Neills lived in a land without a Dreaming.
They didn’t even know their own island.
Yes, Tom had killed that poor woman.
Yes, she had lied and tried to cover it up.
But that was only trespass upon trespass.
The original trespass was against the people who had lived here for a thousand generations.
She walked.
And as she walked, she played music in her head. All her mom’s old albums: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks.
The wind picked up.
The temperature fell.
She was close now.
The farm was lit up by spotlights and house lights. She heard music. Were they celebrating? They were certainly winning the war of attrition. Did they know about Jacko yet?
She lay down in the grass and took out the binoculars. She scanned the farm for the dogs and found them chained near the porch. Three of them together, gnawing at their dinner.
She put down the binocs and checked the wind.
The wind was blowing from the west, from the sea.
Good.
