prologue

 

 

 

Deep in the temperate rainforests of Victoria's rugged hinterland, where crisp white peaks decorated the tips of the numerous mountains surrounding the area, in a ravine known to only a handful of locals, sat an elderly lady beside a babbling brook.

With only starlight penetrating the chilly darkness, Hilda Haggerty hummed softly as she held out her hand with a morsel to tempt the local fauna out of hiding. For nigh on eighty years, Hilda had maintained the annual ritual, travelling the length of her cleared property within the hidden ravine, to sit upon the stump at midnight on the eve of the winter solstice to await her guest.

From the time of her fifth birthday, introduced to her inaugural pilgrimage to the stump by her blessed father, Hilda had followed the routine set out by Jason Haggerty eighty times since. It was to mark her passage on earth, the day she entered the world. It was also the day she lost her mother. Ten years later, on the same date, she lost her beloved father in a logging accident.

Tragedy and birth, joy and heartache: two faces of the same coin flipped into the air on any given day to randomly reveal which face will decree another chapter in a person's life. Though the date held sad memories for Hilda of the loving father she lost and the mother she never knew, it also foretold of a special event that she shared with no other living soul after her father, one that brought immense joy to the old woman.

Her exhalations formed small clouds of vapour in the still night air. The temperature was below freezing, as expected for that time of year in the Victorian forest of towering mountain ash, some trees taller than seventy metres. A thick fog had yet to emerge above the frigid soil, where it stayed until well past midday during the depths of winter. Snow would descend on the slopes of her mountain, only a few hundred metres higher than her clearing in the deep ravine, immersed in shadow for much of the winter cycle.

By re-enacting the annual ritual, Hilda held to the promise she made to her father eighty years ago on the first night he carried her down the slope from their cottage to the stump by the creek. He placed the young, tired girl on the stump, wrapped in many blankets to protect her from the biting cold and rising damp. Without speaking a word, Jason made sure his daughter remained absolutely still and silent as the grave.

There they waited for the miracle that occurred each year at the same time, when humankind would commune with nature, when the Haggerty family of two repaid a debt they owed and paid homage to the creatures of the forest that blessed them with their trust. Her father explained to the young Hilda that no other human contact of the kind had ever been recorded in Australia's history. He invoked a pact of complete secrecy about their assignation upon the impressionable young girl, a pact that Hilda swore to uphold until her dying day and beyond.

She was the last Haggerty. The secret would perish upon her deathbed unless something miraculous occurred in the time she had remaining to her. Hilda doubted her old body was capable of reproducing and so held little hope of passing her secret on to her offspring, just as the recipient of the midnight tryst had done with hers. She couldn't determine exactly how many generations she had celebrated the ritual with over the ensuing years. Her old eyes had developed cataracts some time ago, ensuring that she could no longer distinguish individual markings as she once did.

Like the fogs that rolled in over the clearing each night, the mists had invaded her eyesight long ago, leaving her nothing but blurry white and indistinct shapes to witness on the eve of the anniversary. Hilda now saw only ghosts haunting her vision, spectral apparitions swimming before her day or night, wafting in and out of view, retreating to the periphery whenever she attempted to focus on an image.

Her other senses had taken up the mantle of responsibility to guide Hilda through her daily chores; senses sharpened to perfection over time; senses that transcended the norm, heightened and honed to a razor edge by necessity. She had acute hearing, exceptional olfactory perception, and an intuitive perspicacity that came from living alone for a lifetime. The gradual loss of her vision had not impaired the redoubtable Hilda Haggerty. It had enhanced her in many ways, beyond the belief of most, unacceptable to others and downright spooky to the rest.

Alone, in the dark, unafraid and highly attuned to her surroundings, Hilda waited patiently on her stump beside the permanent creek, listening to the gentle splash as the crystal-clear waters washed against the many stones and boulders in its downward path. Much had occurred in the clearing of late and Hilda held fears that her guest might not appear, might no longer be able to appear. She felt intensely sad about that possibility. It would not be worthwhile continuing if she could no longer experience the event that had been such a large part of her existence.

All that she did, everything she accomplished each year, was designed to follow through with the promise made to her father: to continue the ritual he began in his youth, before she was born, before he met her mother. Her entire philosophy of life revolved around the anniversary of her birth, to continue the crucial act of reunification with nature.

Succumbing to lethargy and her aging anatomy, Hilda's eyes blinked in an attempt to remain awake. Gradually her eyelids descended as gravity and age took their toll. Unable to remain awake for the first time since being introduced to the sacred tryst, Hilda nodded off, releasing the morsel she held in her hand to tempt the creature from its forest refuge. It rolled from her wrinkled and liver-spotted hand onto the frosty grass at her feet. From there it continued for a metre down the slope before coming to rest against the base of another small tree stump.

Staring up blankly from its final resting place, the gelatinous globe remained until it was finally found and consumed by the secretive recipient hours later.