*
At lunchtime Molly looks into the duffel bag for something to eat. One can left in the bag, a tin of her father’s oxtail soup. The trio sit together by the edge of the black pool. Molly makes a hole in the soup can with her paring knife and the three travellers take sips of the soup, which is lukewarm from the heat of the day. Greta nearly vomits her first taste back up, but then she squeezes three more mouthfuls down out of necessity.
As she savours her mouthful of soup, Molly looks up and is struck by a peculiar cave in the cliff face behind the waterfall. She notices a series of boulders, fallen and crumbled into place over millennia, which form a rough climbing route up to the cave entrance, and she studies the curious shape of the cave’s black void.
Greta washes her hands in the plunge pool. ‘So where do we go now?’ she asks. ‘We’ve run out of track.’
Molly is still looking at the cave veiled by the rushing water.
‘Where were you born, Greta?’
‘What’s that got to do with where we’re heading?’
‘Just tell me where you were born?’
‘Leipzig,’ Greta says.
‘Where’s that?’
‘About a hundred miles south-west of Berlin,’ she says. ‘My family came to Sydney when I was two years old.’
Molly gulps another mouthful of oxtail soup. She sits higher up than the others, on a smooth black boulder, while Yukio sits crossed-legged on the grass and Greta lies next to him with her head resting on a grey rock slab half-buried in dirt.
‘You were born in Germany,’ Molly says. She nods at Yukio. ‘He was born in Japan and I was born in Darwin. But I reckon we all came from the same place.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘My grandfather’s directions,’ she says. ‘The place beyond your place of birth.’
She nods to the cave behind the waterfall. ‘What does that cave look like to you?’
Greta studies the peculiar shape of the cave. Like a pumpkin seed, like an oyster, she tells herself, like the fresh mussels they sell by the waterfront on Sunday mornings. Then she sees it. ‘Well, ain’t that just like a bloke,’ she says. ‘Sitting in God’s country surrounded by a thousand natural miracles and all he sees is a lady’s pigeonhole.’
Yukio follows the gazes of the women but struggles to see what they see.
‘Pigeon . . . hole?’ he ponders.
Molly howls with laughter.
Greta smiles, points at the cave beyond the waterfall. ‘The shape of the cave,’ she says.
Yukio squints.
‘The nick in the notch, the naughty,’ Greta laughs. ‘The ol’ rest and be thankful.’
Molly slaps her thighs and Yukio laughs with her, still not following.
‘Yer periwinkle?’ Molly giggles, hands over her mouth.
Greta rattles off names now, not even laughing, just stewing on the minds of all the men she’s danced with and worked around since the age of twenty-two. She adopts the voice of a drunken red-dirt cattleman. ‘Yer ninepence, yer nursery, yer Itching Jenny, yer Irish fortune,’ she says, picking up small rocks from the ground beside her and tossing them into the deep black waterhole. ‘Tulip, pokehole, spout, twotch, twitchet, knish, naf, naggie and feckin’ nettle bed.’ She pauses to think on something for a moment and she returns to her natural voice. She sees all their faces and all their fingers. ‘Cunts,’ she says.
Rusting wheels suddenly turn into motion in Yukio’s mind. ‘Ohhhhhh!’ he gasps, pointing at the cave, wide-eyed and embarrassed.
And Molly howls so hard she falls backwards off her sitting rock.
Yukio’s laughter then echoes across the waterfall chamber and his joy is a welcome infection for Greta, who lets her pursed, puffy lips slowly break into a smile.
Molly stands up now, collecting herself, and nods her head at the cave. ‘All the stories I ever heard in town about my grandfather’s long walk,’ Molly says, ‘he never said exactly where he went. But he spoke about what it was like. He said he went into magic places with Longcoat Bob.’ She looks around her setting. ‘This feels pretty magic to me, this place. He said he walked through places with Longcoat Bob and he came out the other side into places that felt like different worlds. Different dimensions, even.’
Molly takes a deep breath. ‘Yep, this is the way,’ she says. ‘We gotta swim over to the other side of the waterhole. We gotta go through that cave up there.’
‘What about the crocodiles?’ Greta asks.
‘I think we’ll be all right,’ Molly replies.
‘You gonna talk to them again?’ Greta says, drily. ‘Ask them for permission to cross?’
Molly smiles. ‘Nah, them crocs will come ’ere every now and then but I reckon they won’t want to hang around too long because of that noisy waterfall.’
‘Crocodiles,’ Yukio says, airing his concern.
‘Yeah, but just freshies this far inland, Yukio,’ Molly says.
Greta places a calming hand on Yukio’s thigh. ‘Don’t worry, the freshies only grow to nine feet,’ she says.
But Yukio doesn’t hear that line because he’s distracted by something moving low in the sky over Greta’s shoulder.
Then Greta hears it too, something familiar, something impossible. It’s the sound of a baby crying, loud enough to be heard above the noise of the waterfall. She follows Yukio’s gaze and turns around to see a dark, black-brown wedge-tailed eagle cutting from east to west across the wide black pool. So big and majestic and powerful is the creature that Greta flinches when she sees it. An adult female with a wingspan that must be more than eight feet across; a flying motion of such grand design and power that as the wings cut the air they make a noise
