Then the engine rattles back to life and the plane turns and roars back to where it came from, back towards the sun, before circling around once more, but higher now. It soars above Greta and Molly and their eyes turn up to watch it flying towards the two tall red sandstone plateaus.
And Greta and Molly watch the plane fly on its inexplicable course towards red rock and their feet begin to move involuntarily because they are drawn to the image of that silver arrow moving in the sky. But then they stop in their tracks when they see the white mushroom cloud of a parachute with a pilot attached to it falling from the fighter’s cockpit. The aircraft flies on as the parachute spirals down towards the floodplain. Beyond the parachuting pilot, the plane nose-dives in a great arc towards the plateaus and it must be moving at two hundred miles an hour or more when it meets a craggy outcrop of red rock and explodes into a brief ball of flame. Molly looks back to the pilot falling from the sky and her feet want to move faster now. These feet have their own instincts and she follows them.
‘Wait, Molly!’ Greta calls.
‘C’mon, Greta!’ Molly says, sprinting across the floodplain. ‘He wants to meet us.’
‘He’s a Jap, Molly,’ Greta says. ‘He’s our enemy, Molly! Stop!’
‘He’s not our enemy,’ Molly shouts behind her. ‘He’s our gift.’
*
Yukio Miki’s family shortsword tucked into his belt. His brown leather flight boots making circles in the air as the parachute plummets in a spiral to the ground. He can’t see anything on the ground that will help him plan a safe landing. Just long grass. Wetlands. Deep green and black pools of water. Purple flowers. Red flowers. His brown leather boots spin and the world spins with them.
Then he crashes hard and fast into a pool, so hard and fast that his boots touch the marshy bottom. There are reeds and grass spears beneath the surface that he struggles to kick through. He swallows water and pushes his way back up, arms and legs flailing, to the surface, where he assesses the diameter of the small lagoon he has fallen into. One of its banks is only eight or nine metres from him and he attempts to paddle to it, but the billowing canopy of his white silk parachute is sinking into the water and pockets of it are growing heavy and threatening to pull him deep below the surface. His right hand reaches for the chute pack release buckle at his belly, but to open it he must stop the furious dog-paddling that is keeping his head above the water. He voluntarily sinks into the water and with two hands reefs at the buckle, but the heavy weight of the now-sunken chute is pulling on the two metal connectors and jamming them in their sockets. He tugs again but the buckle won’t release, and he reaches momentarily for the Miki family blade in his belt, but he needs more air so he pushes back up to the surface and he sees the blue northern Australian sky above him and he looks for the pool edge and then he sees the girl and the woman.
The girl carries a shovel and she smiles and she has brown hair and she wears a sky-blue dress and black boots. And then the woman appears beside her, panting and gathering her breath. That blonde hair that falls to one side over her face. The way she stands in the green dress. He notices there is pink and blue bruising around one of the blonde woman’s eyes and then those eyes, those perfect green eyes, find Yukio Miki and they reach into him, deep inside him, and he is immediately frozen by that stare. He has never seen a woman who looks like this and something about her has turned his body to lead, to stone, and he can no longer wave his arms and legs about in the water to keep himself afloat because she has frozen him with that face of hers and he gargles on wetlands water as his dumb blank head sinks gradually below the surface again. And Yukio thinks for a moment how strange it is to die like this and to have that vision – that woman with the green eyes – as the last thing his tired eyes will see on earth. But something about it makes him feel better, makes him feel good and ready now for Takamanohara. It was all worth it. The training. The discipline. The punishment. He will go now, content with that final vision. He will sink into the Plain of High Heaven and the last thing he will hear will be the voice of the Australian girl saying in English, ‘Swim, swim.’
His eyes are still open as he sinks down and sunlight breaks through the water and lights the emerald greens in the floodplain pool and he realises that the water is the same colour as the blonde woman’s dress and eyes. And the sinking parachute drags him further and the surface sunlight fades as he descends. It’s nice down here, he realises, if he does not fight against the pull of the chute. He could stay here and find peace in the emerald green.
But then through the last beams of sunlight comes a wooden pole, a shovel handle. And Yukio reaches out instinctively for that lifeline as his body sinks deeper, and at first only three fingers of his left hand can grip its end, but that’s enough to pull it towards him and get four then
