like it in the early days. I tell you kid, there’s never a time you wish more that you were hallucinating than when you’re hip-deep in a spring thaw river, freezing your ass off and trying to work out how to decapitate a hydra.’
Aaron stared. ‘What’s a hydra?’
‘Thing like a snake with way too many heads,’ Steve sounded disgruntled at the memory. ‘Plus it transpires cutting ‘em off is a stupid idea. Little bastard grows heads back and then some. Pays to read your classic mythology before stepping into that river.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, Anna sang down some fire on that slithery sum’bitch. I used a scythe we’d found on the farm the river ran through, sang it sharp enough to cut silk, and while I mowed, she scorched the stumps with a sweet tune in good ol’ E Major.’
Steve grinned at Aaron’s rapt attention. ‘I could sing you a little rain, if you need more convincing. Not here, though.’
‘Down by the Yarra?’ said Aaron, lifting his chin in the general southerly direction.
‘Alrighty.’ Leaving Aaron to pay for the coffee, Steve rose and headed towards the wide river he’d sensed before he saw.
‘Cheap bastard,’ complained Aaron as he caught up, his guitar case heavy in one hand.
‘Ain’t a lot of cash in saving the world.’
‘You’re doing a shit job of selling this gig.’
‘I can’t get you into it by lying about riches you won’t make.’
‘No, really, shut up. I’m losing interest.’
They came to the bridge spanning the river then followed the steps down to the riverbank.
‘I’ll keep it low,’ Steve said. ‘No sense bringing on a whole storm, and I haven’t got my guitar. Unless I can use yours?’
Aaron made a show of considering it, then handed over his beloved Fender Kingman acoustic. He’d brought it along after the rest of the gear had been loaded in the van because it had felt like the right thing to do. He hadn’t questioned the odd impulse. ‘Should I go back for the amp?’
‘Hell, no. Like I said, we don’t want a big sound. That’d bring a torrent down.’
‘You’re certain this’ll work.’
‘So’re you,’ grinned Steve. ‘Hoping, anyhow.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘You’re still here, ain’t ya? Now sit and hush.’ Steve sat cross-legged on the bank and arranged the guitar on his thigh. He began to pluck out the melody, senses reaching into the instrument. There. A trace of that raw magic talent embedded in the frame, the strings and the hollows of it. Softly, coaxing a gentle rise of power from the instrument, Steve began to sing.
Listen to the ocean
Surrender water to the sky
Listen to the streams
Soak the clay and earth nearby
Watching, listening, thinking that it was such a simple tune for something that was meant to be magic, Aaron suddenly fancied that he could – that he really could – hear something. Water. Moving. Small and slick. Not the slap of the Yarra on the banks: something other.
The lullabies of lakes
Evaporating droplets with a sigh
All these drips and beads and mists
Spinning invisibly by
The drops were not quite invisible. Aaron could see, though he couldn’t understand how, a haze in front of his eyes, in which he could see individual droplets. Reverse teardrops, heading… up.
Rain come down
Then, in the clear, blue, cloudless sky, he felt but did not see the mist of droplets coalesce, combine, condense…
Rain come down
And there, in their own little patch of dirt by the Yarra, it rained: proper rain on two square metres of land; a fine shower but heavy enough to leave spatters on his shirt. Water gathered in his hair and trickled down his face.
Steve repeated the refrain ‘rain come down’ in ever-decreasing volume, until he reached the final stanza.
Then go back to your seas
And river beds and banks and quays
Waiting for the cycle to repeat
Flow and ripple and fall again.
Their little burst of rainfall pattered into silence.
‘I skipped some stuff, but you gotta do the last verse, or it keeps on raining for hours,’ Steve said quietly. ‘Days, sometimes. Found that out the hard way.’ He seemed amused by the memory.
Aaron’s rain-damp face was tilted up to the bright sun in that clear sky.
‘That was amazing.’
‘Want to meet the rest of the band?’
‘Hell, yes.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Barmah Caravan Park, Victoria, Australia, 1993
A brief panic followed the realisation that four-year-old Aaron had wandered away from where his father and uncles were fishing.
Ern ran along the river bank, threading through the stands of skinny eucalypts that marched down the flat ground and into the tributary running off the Murray River, calling for his son. The opposite side of the river, the New South Wales side, was too high for an adult to climb, let alone a small child. His little fellah must be on this side somewhere.
‘Aaron! Aaron, call out to Daddy!’
Ahead he caught a glimpse of his mother-in-law’s white hair and a bright red shirt. ‘Mum! Have you seen Aaron? He wandered off!’
Susanna raised her hand and calmly waved. Reassured, Ern’s startled heart slowed along with his feet. She put her finger to her lips as he approached, and pointed. Aaron squatted on his haunches by the river, giggling and rocking rhythmically from side to side. He was singing to himself.
Hello sky, hello cloud
Hello land, hello water
Hello fly, hello bird
Hello snake, hello fish
Hello tree, hello flower
As he sang, the tiny boy dabbled his fingers in the muddy brown water, leaving in it shiny trails of light from his fingertips.
‘Have
