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02. SICK ANIMALS
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, my family loved late Summer nights. My mother and father would hold our hands — my sister and I — and walk us out into the paddocks. The animals were tucked away in the shed behind the homestead and our bellies were full of dinner, chores finished and the sky dark above us.
On good days they would bring a jug of lukewarm mint tea — the leaves picked from the bed of weeds by our front door — and pour us a cup each. Then, my mother would sit us down, point up at the sky, show us the constellations. In the dark, the sky seemed swollen with life, full and bright. It felt like there was a bowl of light sealing us in, separating us and the stars.
"My family," I remember her telling us, "has been passing on the stories of the stars for generations. The Bear, the Dragon, the Great Bird. All there, waiting for us."
My sister wrinkled her nose. "Waiting for us to...what, Ma?" She asked, ever the older, sceptical sister.
"To go back, of course."
We had all laughed.
Now, I still look up at the sky. Sometimes, I like to trick myself into believing that, if I stand with my neck bent back as far as it can go until I am stiff as a board all over, that the darkness will swallow me whole. This is when I am at peace—when I am looking at the stars.
The memories I have that remain in focus through years of repetition are about the sky.
I am in the fields with Ada, and we are laughing—she is taller and stronger and older than me, but when we are together she is a girl again—and spinning each other around, hand in hand. When we land in a heap, there it is—light blue and cloudless, the sun perched in some far-off corner of the sky.
I am fifteen years old in an arena made of mountains and plains, walking for three days to the freshwater source I have been tracking across the valley. A rock snags my toe, and I tumble to the ground, heart racing. There is no strength left in my bones, and my throat is dry, tongue heavy with thirst, something dug deep into my ribs. I roll over onto my back and it is there again, a drink of water—the late afternoon sky, stained pink and red.
