She stares into the fire and the fire plays the flickering film reel of her life and how she left Sydney on a train as a young woman with a bag of clothes and then the train of her life ran off the tracks and careened into the arms of Aubrey Hook, and those arms of Aubrey Hook are whaling her now. Fists against the bones in her head. And she closes her eyes to sleep because sleep is the only thing that will stop those fists from flailing. But when she closes her eyes she sees something worse. A sterile white hospital room and a baby in her arms and the baby wailing. ‘Ssshhhhh,’ Greta whispers. ‘Ssssshhhh.’ But the baby’s wailing only grows louder. And Greta cries now, too. Greta Baumgarten in her mind and Greta Maze on a cold hard bed of sandstone. Both those women crying.
‘Tori no hoshi,’ Yukio says softly into the night air. Greta opens her eyes to see Yukio with his right arm pointing to the night sky. ‘Tori no hoshi,’ he says. And he smiles.
The bird star story. The story of the brightest star he sees shining up there far beyond the canyon walls. That’s a good story to tell by a fire like this one. The nighthawk star story. The ugly nighthawk who felt ugly on the inside because all the other birds in the forest said he was ugly on the outside. They said his feathers had no colour, only the reddish-brown colours of dirt and clay. The crimson finch he saw today. That bird reminded Yukio of the nighthawk. The other birds said the nighthawk’s beak was flat and useless and pointed out that his mouth was so wide it stretched from one ear to the other. And the nighthawk was so saddened by his ugliness he decided to leave the forest, but when he left he was still sad and he thought the only thing that could take his sadness away was to leave the earth altogether, and so he flew high into the blue sky, so high that his beak bumped into the sun. And the nighthawk told the sun he was fixing to die. And the bird asked, ‘Sun, will you take me with you when you fall into the night? I’ll be glad to die in your fire. And my ugly body will give out one single flash of light as it burns and that light will be beautiful.’
‘I cannot take you with me,’ the sun said. ‘I belong to the day, my friend, and you belong to the night. You need to fly on, nighthawk, fly on to the stars, who belong to the night like you.’
And the bird flew on, flapping its tiring wings, up, up, up into the night sky until it ran into three young night stars who were talking among themselves.
‘Excuse me,’ said the bird. ‘I’m wondering if you could take me with you when you leave before daylight.’ But the three young stars laughed at the bird and said they would never welcome such an ugly colourless creature into their star sky. The nighthawk wept but it flew on, higher into the night sky, so high that it was soon soaring above every star.
The nighthawk looked down upon the stars now instead of looking up at them, and it felt proud to have soared so high – surely higher than any other forest bird had ever flown. But then the nighthawk’s wings stopped flapping because it was exhausted by its journey from the forest to the stars, and its eyes closed and the bird fell asleep, just as its tired wings made their final flaps. The bird died in that moment, but it did not fall from the sky for it was then reborn. Transformed.
That night back on earth and deep in the forest, the pretty birds who had laughed and joked about the ugly nighthawk were stunned to see a new star in the night sky. It sat higher and burned more brightly than any other star and inside it twinkled every colour of the spectrum. It was the prettiest thing the forest birds had ever seen.
‘Tori no hoshi,’ Yukio says to the night sky.
‘The stars?’ Greta nods.
‘Tori no hoshi,’ the pilot says, nodding.
Greta watches the pilot lie flat on his back, his eyes fixed on the stars in the night sky. The pinholes of light are losing the war between the stardust and the darkness, but the stardust won’t give up the fight.
‘The stars,’ Yukio whispers. And his heavy eyes close to darkness.
*
Molly wakes with a hand on her face.
‘Sssshhhh,’ whispers Greta. The actress stands silently, a forefinger to her lips.
Molly rubs her eyes. Embers in the fading fire. She can see her duffel bag hanging over Greta’s shoulder.
Molly stands silently. Greta takes several light-footed steps in her saddle shoes across the flat rock to where Yukio sleeps on his side, close to the edge of the fire, arms across his chest, hugging his body tight. The handgun rests behind his back on the rock. His family sword rests by the handgun.
Then the pilot shifts his position, turns hard to his other side, back to the handgun, and then his head shakes rapidly in his sleep.
Greta stands still, watching him.
Molly freezes.
‘Ssshhh,’ Greta whispers again, her eyes fixed on the pilot who appears to be struggling with the dreams inside his head.
Then a sharp and aching ‘Ugghh’ emerges from his lips and seems to hurt him. He jolts in his sleep. He shudders in his sleep. Then he turns back to the fire, eyes shut. ‘Ugggghhh,’ he groans again and that sound seems to come from deep within his corned-beef gut. It’s a rumble, a pain rattle, the echo of a thousand sorrows, and it makes Molly move closer to the pilot. She sees that his whole body is shaking now.
‘What’s wrong
