The great bird has a fanned and wedged tail almost two feet across – so wide and balanced Greta could serve scones on it with mini bowls of jam and cream – and a hooked grey beak appropriately shaped like Death’s scythe. But the raptor is burdened. It moves slow through the sky with laboured flaps of its wings because somewhere along its endless hunt for easy prey – a moving and pitiless ground feast of rabbits and brown hares and foxes and koalas and wombats and small wallabies – its long black talons have hooked a strange treasure more cumbersome than even this raptor’s normally impressive endurance and leg strength can accommodate: a howling human infant nestled in a baby sling made of bush string, paperbark and cane strips, which now hangs from the eagle’s vice-grip talons by its woven cane and paperbark carry strap. Greta hears that cry again, splitting the air and splitting her heart.
Two other, smaller birds shoot down from high above towards the eagle and its plunder. They look like brown hawks, and Greta now realises that the eagle is waging a mid-air fight to keep hold of its treasure. One brave hawk flaps a wing across the eyes of the eagle, which then slows, and this slowing of momentum seems to add to the weight of the cargo and the eagle must work hard now to start the motor of its wings again and find enough energy to make it to the top of the waterfall. Then the second hawk attacks the eagle from the side with a surprise flurry of wings and raised legs and talons, and the mighty eagle is forced to defend itself. It releases its prized and howling plunder and raises its own spent legs and talons up to the spirited hawk, driving hard with a flap of its wide wings to force the hawk back so it can fly freely out of the gorge.
Molly Hook sucks air deep into her lungs as she watches the baby sling with the baby inside it falling towards the black pool. But Greta Maze, the toast of Palmerston, is already swimming across the water as the baby lands hard.
‘Greta!’ Molly calls.
The actress’s arms turning like windmills through the water; calves and thighs thrashing through the glassy pool, her saddle shoes still tied to her feet. Her head is down in the water and she takes no breaths because she doesn’t want to lose any speed. A single word crosses her busy mind while her head is under the water: freshies. But she powers on and when she raises her head she sees the baby in the sling bobbing momentarily on the surface, but then the water fills the sling and sucks the baby under. Greta takes a deep breath and dives deep and hard. Molly and Yukio watch her disappear.
‘Greta!’ Molly screams.
No movement for a long moment. Just the crashing of the waterfall.
And then she reappears, the actress, one arm stroking across the water and the baby inside the sling held up to her chest. Her usually bouncy blonde curls sopped across her ears, concentration and determination and fire across her face.
Molly breathes with relief and she knows now just how much she cares for this woman in the water. A good one, she tells herself. The real good one. She would cry for her if she could, but instead she drops the empty can of soup on the ground, picks up Bert the shovel and her duffel bag, dives into the black water and follows the actress to the other side of the falls.
Yukio, the pilot who fell from the sky, stares at these strange creatures in the water and wonders what kind of place he fell into here in this continent south of everything, a place where birds drop children from the sky and angels with blonde curls dive into crocodile-infested waters to save them. But this is not a time for thinking, he tells himself. This is a time for action. For doing – doing what the actress did.
He’s not a natural swimmer. He was never the kind to dive into blind bodies of water. But this place south of everything is transformative. People can change here, he tells himself. And he feels himself turning. Turning, turning, turning by the water’s edge. And he dives into the water and dog-paddles awkwardly across the pool, panting with every movement and struggling to keep his heavy war boots moving. The raging waterfall thunders down to his right and he fights to stay away from the suck of the plunging water. Near the far edge of the pool his boots find purchase on moss and mud and his arms reach for a fern that he then uses to pull himself onto a thin ledge of sandstone. He stands up out of the water, puts his hands on his kneecaps to catch his breath and then staggers over to the women.
Molly huddles against Greta’s left shoulder and Yukio now stands at her right shoulder and the three wanderers catch their breath as they gaze into the eyes of the newest member of their travelling party: a baby boy in Greta’s arms, his big brown eyes staring back at the woman who holds him so carefully, so naturally.
‘Ssssshhhh,’ Greta says. ‘Ssshhhhh.’
And the boy does not cry.
THE FOURTH SKY GIFT
EVERYTHING WE NEED
Cold in here. Dank and earthy and smelling of bat shit. This is the dark cave Greta spoke of. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said. ‘You don’t realise it, but you’re actually standing inside a large stone cave in total darkness.’ This is what Molly’s cave looked like in her mind. This was the place before the sad place she saw beyond her bedroom door. Outside that bedroom in her mind was a hallway and at the end of that hallway was a bedroom
