You fling yourself into his arms, and his hug is so tight that it compresses all the breath out of you. It feels so good to be squeezed by your da – so secure that there’s nothing to do but surrender to his bigness and strength. It’s like being a child again.
He lets you go, and air rushes back into your lungs. He shakes Lachlan’s hand heartily, and says: ‘Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. This means the world to me.’
‘To both of us,’ you add.
‘Oh, when I saw you in that house in Bothwell, I thought my heart was going to burst,’ Da says, cupping your chin in his hands. ‘I’ve been searching for you ever since I came to Van Diemen’s Land – and now look at you, you’re as beautiful as your mother was when I first met her.’
Da pauses, and wipes away a tear. You stare at each other’s faces in mesmerised silence. You feel like you’re in a wonderful dream that you don’t want to wake from. Your da takes you by the shoulder and guides you through the trees.
‘We’ve got so many stories to share,’ he says huskily. ‘But come, make yourself comfortable and meet the rest of the Shadow Gang, now they’re not busy robbing Mr Tilsome’s house!’
Da leads you behind the tree, to a campsite with a fire, with six men sitting around it.
To continue with the story, go to scene 36.
Da sits you down by the fire and introduces you to the bushranging gang. They seem delighted to learn that you are their captain’s long-lost daughter.
‘This boy here is Jimmy McMahon,’ says Da, gesturing. The bushranger sitting nearest you tugs down his red handkerchief to reveal a boyish face barely old enough for shaving, framed by a shock of raven-black hair. ‘Jimmy’s a wiry little runt, but he can run like the wind. We call him Dash.
‘This here’s Stephen Everett, or Wombat, as he’s known. What he doesn’t know about survival in the bush isn’t worth knowing. We owe our escape from Macquarie Harbour to him – and of course to Lewis “One-Shot” Fletcher here, who needs only one shot to kill an animal from any distance. He’s a finer marksman than any soldier in the King’s service.
‘John Williams here – Inky is his nickname – is a mighty clever forger, of bank notes, certificates and the like. He also has a great mind for strategy; he’s smarter than a fox, and more wily to boot.
‘Now who’ve I missed? Oh, Samuel and Sean O’Grady, brothers and Irish nationalists like myself. Sam has a talent for fixing and making things – boots, saddles, traps and the like – so we call him Useful. As for his brother here, old one-eye …’
Da nods to a bushranger seated across the fire from you, Sean, who looks just like his brother, Sam, except that he wears a patch over one eye. He was the one, you remember, who threatened to feed Mr Tilsome’s guts to the dogs.
‘They call me Useless,’ Sean interjects, and all the men start chuckling. ‘I lost my eye when another prisoner in Macquarie Harbour attacked me with a burning stick. It’s true I’m not much help practically, but—’
‘But we keep him round because he sings like an angel,’ interrupts Inky. ‘Go on, Useless, show the lass what you can do.’
Sean closes his one eye and begins to sing. In that moment, even the earth stops spinning, and the rocks stop growing moss: the whole universe pauses to listen. How can a one-eyed bushranger have a voice so pure? How can a man who’s travelled through Hell sing like Heaven?
When he stops, the only sounds are the occasional pop of the campfire and a snuffle from your da as he wipes away a tear.
‘Now you see,’ says Da after he’s collected himself, ‘there’d be no point in fighting to be free if we didn’t have Useless here to remind us what freedom sounds like.’
‘So …’ muses Wombat, who is stout and bristly like his name. ‘What can you do, girl?’
There is an expectant pause round the campfire. Da is waiting to hear from you too – he wants you to stand up for yourself.
You think back over the journey you’ve been on: you’ve been reunited with Da; you saved Sarah from the prison; you made friends with Waylitja; you helped a foal to be born in a storm; you crossed the world; you survived Newgate Prison and stood up to Nell; you lived by your wits on the streets of London when it seemed not a soul in the world cared whether you lived or died; and the whole adventure began when you calmed a panicked horse. Or perhaps the adventure began before then – perhaps it began when you were only a small child, and your da taught you the meaning of freedom.
‘What can I do?’ you ask. ‘I can protect my friends, and keep my promises to them. I can survive when the sky is black and my family is dead and lost to me. I can cross the world on a prison ship. I can find new life where death and violence abound. I decide how I live. My choices are my freedom.’
Suddenly, you know what the lady who gave you the bracelet meant. When she gave you the bracelet, she gave you options. It was up to you to decide what to do with it: she was giving you freedom. Freedom to choose. That’s what the bracelet means.
You take a knife and run it through the stitches on your petticoat. You remember making these stitches two years ago; they have not been broken, and neither has your promise to keep it safe.
When you understand its meaning, you’ll know it’s time to pass it on.
The seven gemstones of your bracelet tumble into your palm. After all this time in your hem, the links
