‘Sure, why not. I thought you liked the Bible references.’
You shrug, but my eyes are still on the gun. You’re a good shot. I remember when you took down roos with only one pull of the trigger. You could take me down if I started to run, if I raced off in the car. Perhaps you’ve realised that it won’t work to return to Perth with me, and that you must kill me, leave me here, then pretend you were never here in the first place. If someone found me here, with a gun beside me, it would no doubt be seen as suicide. Poor innocent Gemma couldn’t cope after all.
I snatch the bag from you. ‘Fine, but I’m carrying it.’
‘Jeez, Gem,’ you say, studying my face. ‘Relax already. You’ve been asking for some decent food for long enough. I can shoot something.’
‘Why don’t you just take the car and go?’ I say, sharper than I mean to.
‘I will.’
But your eyes drift away from mine. This hesitation of yours is different. You don’t want to go. Not yet. You want to stay.
‘Well, then,’ I say, ‘swim with me. It’s hot enough.’
As we walk to the Separates, f lies swarm around us, desperate for the moisture from our sweat. It might be our hottest day here. If we don’t kill each other today, this place will cook us. I look up, expecting clouds—a storm building from all this pressure—but the sky is clear.
‘Death trap,’ you say, glancing up too.
As we trudge through the heat, heads down, you tell me that the tracks on the sand are from thorny devils and long-tailed rats.
‘Are you lying?’ I say.
‘Does it matter?’
We step between the boulders on our familiar pathway, you slightly ahead. In the small clearing, halfway to the pool, you pause. Tentatively, you brush aside a thatch of acacia and look down a narrow passageway between the rocks that I haven’t noticed before.
‘Still here,’ you murmur. ‘Want to see?’
Before I answer, you pull me in. It’s cooler, quieter, and it’s not long before the passageway opens out into another small clearing. A dead-end. You stop, drop my hand, and face me. It wouldn’t take much for either of us to grab the gun right now and shoot, but you turn, your eyes fixed on the rocks all around us. I follow your gaze and see the markings on their surface,faint red and white circles, animal tracks, dogs running, human bodies and other wisp-faint images I don’t know how to name, images far older than your art.
‘Keep looking,’ you whisper.
You crouch down, your face near two lithe figures swaying across the rock under an overhang. I can make out a man and a woman. They look almost joyful. The images are simple, elegant, and I wonder why you never showed them to me before.
‘What’s it all mean?’
You shrug. ‘It’s what happened before.’
I crouch beside you. Some of the markings are so faint you have to show them to me twice. You get down onto your belly and, when I lie down too, I find what looks like an old sailing ship, its sails out.
‘From when Australia got colonised?’ I say, hardly believing it. ‘It can’t be that old.’
You murmur a laugh. ‘This art is ancient. That’s one of the newer bits.’
‘But how did anyone see a ship out here? How did they know?’
‘Stories.’
I lean back onto my elbows and look at it all again. The art is beautiful and complicated, but so faint. So many secrets held by these rocks.
You sit cross-legged, still. After a while, you take the hats from the bag, throw me one and pull the other one over your head.
‘I didn’t forget you,’ you say quietly. ‘I just didn’t want to remember. Just so you know.’
Now, maybe I understand why you took me here today. These rocks don’t forget what’s gone before, either; there’s a whole history stored in their bedrock, waiting to be seen.
‘Seeing you was seeing all that again.’