small planes, and finally a lift from one of Mundarri’s other residents, a woman named Maharia.
Everyone at Mundarri seemed to have chosen odd names for themselves. Janey gathered this was part of the philosophy of the place—that you gave yourself a fresh start with a new and more spiritual name. Alice had become Alanya, although Janey could never think of her by that name. Little Felixx had originally been named Francis James, which his dad had soon shortened to Frankie Jay, she remembered.
Anyway…The Mundarri people had all seemed nice enough. Caring. Very gentle and warm with Felixx, as Janey was learning to call him.
And yet they let my sister die.
Yes, OK, so she was a doctor, trained within what the Mundarri people regarded as the uncompromising scientific straitjacket of Western medicine, but the fact was Alice’s liver had packed up and a ‘cleansing diet’ of carrot juice was just never going to cut it in the healing department.
Alice had needed urgent hospital treatment, and probably a transplant down the track, and the people at Mundarri, out of arrogance or naivety or goodness knows what, hadn’t called an ambulance for her until it had been far too late.
Thinking about it, Janey found she was crying. Anger and grief and doubt all mixed up together.
Had she done the right thing?
Felixx could have stayed at Mundarri. It would have taken some lengthy wrangling with the authorities, but one of the women—Maharia, or who was that other one Felixx had seemed close to? Raina?—could have been named his legal guardian and he would have continued to live in a place that was at least familiar.
A place whose irresponsible, ill-informed healing philosophies had killed his mother.
No, she had done the right thing, taking him away.
But she didn’t know what she was going to do next, because it turned out Felixx had a father living just a few hours from here, and Janey had had no idea. It had been a huge shock to discover Luke Bresciano’s contact details among Alice’s things, and to discover that Crocodile Creek was, by Australian standards, so close.
Beyond the confines of the bus, night had fallen completely now. The sodden blanket of cloud overhead let no moonlight through, and the rain was relentless, noisy and thick and buffeted by wind. There was a cyclone hovering out to sea, apparently, and people were saying it was getting closer and stronger, and might hit the coast. In these conditions, you could easily believe it.
The bus rounded a bend and Felixx slid toward Janey, still fast asleep. She pillowed his head on her shoulder and wondered yet again why he wouldn’t speak.
It wasn’t a defiant silence, she thought. It came from…fear?
Or grief. He’d just lost his mother.
Oh, lord, could she herself possibly give him what he needed? At thirty-four, she’d never had a child. She loved him, but she didn’t know him, because she and Alice had lived so far from each other since he was born, and Alice had made so little effort to keep in touch. ‘I can’t deal with cities any more,’ she’d said. ‘I need the wilderness.’
Luke Bresciano was Felixx’s father. Janey needed to at least consider the possibility that he might want his son, despite everything Alice had said to the contrary. And she had to consider that Luke might be the best person to have him.
Was she doing the right thing?
Felixx felt warm against her side, and it was getting rather steamy in the damp bus. They rounded another bend and the bus skidded suddenly, bringing forth a chorus of alarmed gasps and cries.
‘Sorry, folks,’ the driver called. ‘It’s evil out there.’
How much longer till they reached the coast? They were late, surely. Should have been there by now. Janey had counted on arriving in time to organise motel accommodation for tonight—this whole trip hadn’t even been on her agenda this time yesterday. She couldn’t just show up on Luke Bresciano’s doorstep without warning.
Stay asleep, little man, so at least you’re fresh when we get there…
She put her arm around his little shoulder, thinking that he seemed so small for his age, loved but possibly not as well nourished as he should have been. They were strict vegans at Mundarri, there wasn’t a lot of money on hand for fancy nutritional supplements, and it took a great deal of commitment to provide adequate nutrition for a child’s growing body on that kind of diet.
His clothing, too…There was a hole in his sneaker that someone—Alice?—had tried to disguise with a cheerful picture of an orange clownfish. And there were mosquito bites, fresh ones and old ones, all over his skin. Alice’s rainforest paradise had had its downside.
Where was the best place for this little boy? Should Janey have taken him back to Darwin with her and contacted Luke later on? But she didn’t want Felixx’s future hanging in limbo for months on end.
Her heart hurt again. What was the best thing for this precious waif of a child?
And then, right in the middle of the wash of churning emotion, the bus gave a tremendous, unexpected lurch. There was no more room for thought. A wild lashing of rain and wind slammed into the vehicle’s side and it began to lean and slide. Outside, there came a violent, unearthly roaring sound. The bus driver yelled and swore. Couldn’t he get the steering back under control? Come on…Come on…
Janey tried to keep hold of Felixx with one hand while fending them both off the seat-back in front with the other. The bus slid and heaved. She screamed. Chaos erupted, and then blackness.
‘WHO do we still have left?’ Luke asked wearily, craning his head for a quick look through the half-open door of the back room at the Bellambour Post Office and General Store.
‘Only three,’ Nurse Marcia Flynn promised. ‘Want to see the kid next? He’s ten, he’s doing pretty well, but I think that arm is broken.’
‘Displaced?’
‘Not that I could see. I’m just going on how much it’s hurting him.’
‘Normally, I’d tell the parents to take him into Crocodile Creek and get it X-rayed,’ Luke said. He was an orthopaedic surgeon, he didn’t believe in letting bones heal crooked.
But conditions were far from normal in the wake of Cyclone Willie, as they all knew. Even supposing the ten-year-old’s parents still had an operational vehicle, which some people didn’t, the roads were a mess, and southbound traffic ran in a slow, continuous stream as people evacuated the cyclone-ravaged coast of Far North Queensland. The hospital was running around the clock, as Luke himself had been doing for three days, living on snatched sleep and even sketchier meals.
He’d only made it back to the doctors’ house for the occasional change of underwear. He’d even showered and slept at the hospital, and had attempted to tune out the mess of stories and rumours that swirled in the cyclone’s wake. Out of stubbornness, or something else?
Grace O’Riordan was in the ICU while Harry Blake looked like death warmed up, Georgie Turner had been swept off her feet by that visiting
