‘Greta . . . wait,’ Yukio says.
But the actress does not stop. She only runs. Startled by the movement, the baby cries loudly and Greta tries to calm him as she moves. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, in a soft and tender voice. ‘We’re going to find Molly. We’re going to find Molly.’
She turns left and right and left again. ‘Moll-yyyyy!’ she calls.
She rushes on through the maze. Her left shoulder catches on the edge of a stone pillar, tearing a hole in the sleeve of her emerald dress that is now so worn and so journeyed that it has turned a light grey from kicked-up dust and brown from the ground dirt it collected in successive nights of rough and fitful sleeps beneath stars.
Yukio runs behind her, loyally following her crooked path. ‘Greta . . . wait,’ he shouts.
‘Come on, Yukio,’ Greta calls back without stopping or turning around. ‘Come on. She’s close.’
The pilot who fell from the sky watches the actress who has woken from her long sleep so renewed, so purposeful, so driven. He watches her legs moving, her shoes stepping between clumps of spear grass and stepping around jagged boulder heads that have fallen from pillars. He watches her dart left and right again and he watches her stop abruptly in a ball of dust kicked up by her skidding shoes. He hears her inhale sharply and he comes to her side and looks at her face. White. Ghost-white. Horrified. Her full lips trembling. And he follows her gaze down a straight, narrow alley and he discovers that the subject of her gaze is a tall, thin man with a black moustache in a wide-brimmed black hat. And there is time enough in this moment for Yukio to see that the tall man has his left forearm around Molly Hook’s mouth and there is time enough for Yukio to see the look upon the man’s face and there is time enough to know that look is one of strange satisfaction and there is time enough to see the tall man’s right arm pointing a revolver straight at Greta Maze.
Molly flails her legs and pulls hard at her uncle’s left arm and manages to shift it enough to squeeze two words out into the still air. ‘Run, Greta!’
But Greta is frozen in this moment. She’s frozen in the memory of his fists. She’s frozen in the muscle memory of the journey she made to this wild land from Sydney. She’s frozen in the fact she was too young to care for the baby who was taken away from her and how those midwives and those hospital doctors took away more than her baby that day. They took away value and pride and purpose and they took away the notion that anyone in this world should care about Greta Baumgarten, not even herself. And so she tried to become someone else. Maybe, she thought, someone might care for Greta Maze instead. The showgirl. The public bar temptress. The punching bag. The actress.
‘Run, Greta!’ Molly calls.
But, standing beside the actress in the emerald dress, Yukio knows that all the time inside the moment is up.
It’s just another journey in the Top End. Much shorter from start to finish than Molly Hook’s long walk into the deep country. Yukio turns and twists his body to stand in front of Greta and the baby in her arms. A hammer drops. A firing pin strikes the primer of a bullet. Yukio staring into the actress’s eyes. Primer ignites propellant. Bang.
Yukio’s arms around the actress. The propellant pushes the bullet core so fast through the air that it can’t be seen. Only the end of the journey can be seen. A bullet driving through the back of a pilot’s white T-shirt.
‘Nooooooooo!’ Greta wails.
Inside that pilot’s shirt is a man Greta barely knows. A stranger who fell from the sky. Embracing her. Shielding her. Arms wrapped so tight around the actress. His cheek against hers. And he doesn’t want to pull away because he is warm here and he is home here and he wants to stay here. But pull away he does. Blood spilling from his lips. ‘Run!’ he says.
And the actress obeys and she grips the baby to her chest and rushes through a break in a nearby wall as a second bullet cracks the sandstone mere inches above her head.
And Yukio Miki falls hard into the dust.
*
Molly watches the sky. Keep your eyes on the sky, Molly. Keep your eyes on the sky. The sky grows darker. On earth, the mad howling laughter of Aubrey Hook echoes across the sandstone maze.
‘Where are you going to run to, Greta?’ he calls, dragging the dead weight of Molly beside him in a headlock.
Molly kicks hard at his shins. ‘Lemme go!’ she screams. And her fingernails dig into Aubrey’s forearms, but it only makes him laugh louder.
That deranged howling. That terrible reminder of Hollow Wood. Molly bites his hand and Aubrey loses patience and throws the gravedigger girl with force against a sandstone pillar and she falls hard to the earth. As she sits up, he places the revolver’s barrel end hard against the top of her skull. Molly closes her eyes and tucks her head into her chest.
‘Please, Greta,’ Aubrey calls. ‘Show yourself, woman. I’m not angry at youuuuuuuu. I’m angry at young Molly here. Come out now and Molly might just make it out of this alive.’
Molly moves her head away from the gun barrel and screams as loud as she can, ‘Keep runnin’, Greta. Don’t worry about me.’ And she looks up at Aubrey looking down at her. ‘I’m not scared of monsters.’
Molly sees him smile a wide look of satisfaction and over his shoulder she sees a way out of this. A fork of lightning, cutlery dropped from a mansion in the sky. A sky gift for the gravedigger girl.
*
Deep inside the maze of stone pillars, Greta scurries breathlessly along alleyways, turning and turning. The baby wails in fright
