The lead crocodile inflates its body. A warning sign: go back where you came from.
‘This is Longcoat Bob doing this,’ Molly says. ‘He sent these fellers to scare us. He doesn’t want us comin’ any further.’
‘Mol’, I’m afraid you’re talkin’ bullshit now, kid,’ Greta says. ‘Let’s go back.’
‘I’m not talkin’ bullshit,’ Molly says. ‘Didn’t you wonder why all them water buffalo were charging at us like that? Bob sent them for us, too.’
‘They were scared of something and they were running from it,’ Greta says. ‘That’s the natural response, you see, Molly, when you’re scared of something, like, oh, I don’t know, say, seeing three adult crocodiles halfway up black-arse Candlelight fucking Creek! Let’s go now, Molly.’
‘I’m not going back,’ Molly says. ‘That’s what Longcoat Bob wants. He wants us to scramble at the first sniff of trouble. Nup. Not me. Sorry, Bob.’
The crocodiles swim closer, their slender bodies snaking stealthily through the water. Molly grips Bert the shovel. Then she talks to the crocodiles. ‘My name’s Molly Hook and this is Greta Maze,’ she says. The three crocodiles pause in the water, all eyes on the humans. ‘Greta’s a gifted actress who’s gonna make it to Hollywood one day. I’m just a girl from Darwin and I’ve come up here lookin’ for Longcoat Bob.’ Molly waits for a response from the crocodiles but they say nothing. ‘The Japs bombed Darwin all to hell.’ She breathes deep, thinks of something else to say. ‘They blew my dad to bits. I found him in a tree. That bomb must have lifted him right up off the ground.’
Greta moves closer to Molly now. She rests a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
‘My dad was all right. He had his problems but he still loved me. He did.’ And Molly wants to cry in front of these crocodiles. And maybe this is what people mean when they talk about crocodile tears: what you shed when you talk to crocodiles about your dead dad. Cry, Molly, cry. They’ll let you pass if you cry for them. Cry, Molly, cry. But she can’t. And she tilts her head up to find the sky but there’s no sky to be seen this far up Candlelight Creek.
‘So I’m gonna go ask Longcoat Bob if he could stop all the bad things that keep happenin’ to me,’ Molly says. ‘And if you fellers could just sit right there and let us pass we’ll walk on up this creek and we’ll thank you for your grace.’
Molly waits for a response. The crocodiles lie still and Molly nods her head confidently. She fixes the strap on her duffel bag, pulls it tight over her shoulder. She grips Bert the shovel in both hands like a spear and she walks on along the creek edge.
‘Follow me, now,’ Molly whispers to Greta under her breath. Greta watches Molly walk innocently, almost casually, past the crocodiles and she follows hurriedly in her footsteps. Her eyes can’t help but turn to the trio of toothy creatures, who remain deathly still as their eyes – three sets of cold and ghostly and milky eyes with dark coin-slot pupils – follow every last movement of the actress’s clumsy course across the slippery ancient rocks that line their creek home.
Greta moves so fast that she eventually overtakes Molly. ‘Faster,’ Greta says. ‘Faster.’
*
Forty more minutes of walking and the creek bends away to the right and Greta can see a patch of grey light at the end of the tunnel. ‘C’mon,’ she says. ‘We’re almost out.’
She hurries along the creek bank, her movements more assured now. Greta in a summer satin dress, emerald-coloured, which shimmers when it finally finds the light of a clearing that extends from the end of the suffocating tunnel to a vast freshwater floodplain covered in pink and red lotus lily flowers that stand tall out of submerged rootstocks connected to smooth, green, rounded leaves so wide and flat they look to Molly like circular steps she could walk on to make her way across the deepest wetland pools.
‘Look at this place!’ Greta screams. The actress starts to run and she breathes the wetland air deep into her lungs and she raises her arms to the sun. To her left is a billabong of vivid water lilies like something from her wildest twilight dreams, perfect suns of gold rising from the centre of each purple flower. To her right is a field of white snowflake lilies, their showy flowers like ostrich feathers made of the desiccated coconut flakes in which she rolls her freshly iced lamingtons on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
‘What is this place?’ Greta hollers back to Molly.
And Molly screams back to the actress in delight, ‘It’s Australia.’
They walk on for a few miles, their shoes sloshing through thick green grass that grows from water that in places reaches up to Molly’s kneecaps. It is at least cooling. Greta cups three handfuls and splashes them across her face. At a small buildup of water in a circle of spear grass, Molly kneels down with her grandfather’s prospector’s pan and washes away the hard cemetery earth that masks the mysterious etchings on its battered underside.
Greta stands at Molly’s shoulder, drinking from the water bag. Molly studies the pan. It’s smaller than she remembers it being. She runs her fingers over the etched words her grandfather wrote to himself and maybe, just maybe, to his daughter and his daughter’s daughter.
The longer I stand, the shorter I grow
And the water runs to the silver road
Molly’s dirt-caked forefinger traces the carefully drawn line that meanders down the circular base, taking occasional lefts and rights, to a second set of words.
West where the yellow fork man leads
East in the dark when the wood bleeds
The line is like a road and the sets of words are like rest stops along that road.
‘This pan was a gift to me when I was seven years old,’ Molly says. ‘My mum called it a sky gift. She said
