Sam and his family dancing for the fighter pilot who rests with his eyelids closed on a rectangular stack of branches, while four men carefully wrap his body in sheets of paperbark. A dance for the dead. A dance that lasts for hours, a farewell that lasts so long that Molly whispers to Sam on the outskirts of the ceremonial circle that Yukio Miki probably wouldn’t mind if all the boys wanted to stop and have a drink of water.
‘These boys can go for days, Mol’,’ Sam says. ‘Can you feel it, Mol’?’
‘Feel what?’
‘Ol’ mate,’ Sam smiles, nodding at Yukio’s body. ‘He’s going back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Back to where it all began, Mol’.’ And Sam looks to the sky and Molly follows his eyes up to it. Sam’s dancing friends in the ceremonial circle look to the sky too and spread their arms wide.
‘He’s going back to get amongst it again, Mol’,’ Sam says.
‘To get amongst what?’ Molly asks.
‘Everything, Molly!’ Sam says, with the confident smile of a matinee idol by way of Mataranka. ‘Everything!’
*
They stay for seven days. Molly and Greta share a hut and sleep side by side on soft beds of stuffed paperbark tied up with reeds. Young women in the camp bring them bowls of plums and tomatoes and plates of fresh fish and crocodile and scrubfowl cooked so well on a coal fire that Molly says she never wants to go back to Darwin.
Molly tells Sam she needs to speak with Longcoat Bob. Sam says Longcoat Bob wants to talk to Molly, but Longcoat Bob is not around. Sam says Molly Hook must be patient. Sam says Molly Hook must slow down. Sam says she runs so fast towards all the answers that she runs right past every one of them.
Sam says Molly must think on her friend Yukio. He says she must be there now for her friend Greta, who keeps weeping for the stranger from Japan.
Molly and Greta wake in their sleep. In the darkness with their eyes closed but their minds open, they try to make sense of their journey into the deep country.
‘You awake?’ Molly asks in the darkness.
‘I am now.’
‘I can’t sleep.’
Greta says nothing.
‘I keep thinking about Yukio.’
More silence from Greta.
‘Keep thinking about his family. They’ll never get to know how he died. Maybe I could go to Japan and tell them about what he done. I could tell them how he saved your life.’
But Greta remains silent and Molly knows she’s saying nothing because she’s crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Molly.
‘Sorry for what?’
‘I keep talkin’ about him.’
‘I reckon he’s worth talkin’ about, Mol’.’
Molly turns to her side and rests her head on her palm and a propped-up elbow.
‘Why did you come with me, Greta?’
Greta thinks on this for a moment.
‘I like gold as much as anyone,’ she says.
‘Then why didn’t you take any from that cave?’
There’s a long silence in the hut. Greta says nothing.
‘I reckon just one of those nuggets would have set you up good,’ Molly says. ‘And what do you have now? Nuthin’.’
More silence.
Greta adopts her thickest Australian public bar accent. ‘Not a brass raaaazzooo,’ she says.
Molly chuckles. Then more silence. Then more fear. More loneliness. More confusion. More gravedigger girl. ‘I sure made a mess of things, didn’t I, Greta?’
Greta turns on her side to face Molly, even if she can’t see her face in the darkness.
‘You didn’t make the mess, kid,’ Greta says. ‘You just dived right into it.’
‘I sure did, didn’t I?’
Molly allows herself another chuckle. Greta laughs with her. And their chuckles turn into belly laughs and it feels good to laugh because it all feels so much like a dream and a nightmare that they survived, and laughter might be the only thing they have left in their pockets between them.
‘Don’t worry about me, kid,’ Greta says, turning onto her back again to return to sleep. ‘I’ve had worse things than nuthin’.’
*
On the third day, the female elders in the camp visit the hut and they bring with them the baby who fell from the sky. They place him in Greta’s arms and she weeps when she holds him. But they are good tears and the elders weep with her because they know the child for what he is. A gift. A gift they thought they had lost. Then he was found by the beautiful actress in the emerald dress, who they are sure does not belong in the deep country. The female elders have spoken at length on this conundrum and they have settled on the notion that the actress must belong in the wild because she survived it, she made it this far and she made it with a miracle in her arms. And she was so reluctant to part with that miracle, even though she knew she had to, that the female elders were left in no doubt that the woman in the emerald dress was as radiant on the inside as she was on the outside.
Sam visits the hut to say there is a sacred cave deep in the scrub where he and his friends will carry the body of Yukio Miki. Inside that sacred cave, Yukio’s body will slowly disintegrate and when it does his friends will respectfully gather his bones and place them inside a large and sacred hollow log where they will be left alone out of respect by both human and animal.
But Molly asks if she can bury Yukio Miki the only way she knows how. With a shovel and a pair of boots. So Sam and a friend carry
