Page 9 of Lyrebird

‘Who are you?’ Joe shouts, half hidden by a tree. The fear is obvious in his voice. ‘What are you doing on my land?’

She panics again, backing away through the trees.

Solomon watches them all. Bo is filming on her phone, Rachel pointing the camera at her, Joe a fierce face on him.

Solomon is exhausted, he needs to eat.

‘Stop!’ he yells and everybody goes silent. ‘You’re frightening her. Everybody step away. Let her go.’

She stares at him.

‘You’re free to go.’

She keeps looking at him. Those green eyes on him.

‘I don’t think she understands,’ Bo says, still filming.

‘Of course she understands,’ Solomon snaps.

‘I don’t think she can speak … words. What’s your name?’ Bo asks.

The young woman ignores the question and continues to look at Solomon.

‘Her name is Laura,’ he says.

Mossie suddenly comes racing from the direction of the bat house, towards the forest, he’s barking manically, protecting his land from the intruder. But instead of stopping by Joe he continues into the forest and heads straight for Laura.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, call him off her, Joe,’ Solomon says fearfully, afraid he’ll take a chunk out of her.

But Mossie stops right at her feet, circles her excitedly, jumping up and down for her attention, licking her hand.

She rubs him – clearly the two of them are no strangers – as she nervously keeps her eye on everyone around her. She holds her hand out to Solomon and he looks at her, confused, thinking she wants to hold his hand. He reaches out his hand and then she smiles and looks down at the basket.

‘The basket, Sol,’ Bo says.

Embarrassed, he hands it to her.

Laura sets off with Mossie in tow, trying to avoid everyone. She is tentative at first. As she passes Bo, she growls, a perfect imitation of a dog growl so real it sounds like a recording, or as though it has come from Mossie. Laura examines Joe carefully and as soon as she’s clear of them she runs up through the forest, past the bat house in the direction of the cottage.

‘Did you get that?’ Bo asks Rachel.

‘Yep,’ she removes the camera from her shoulder, and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. ‘I got the blonde woman barking at you.’

‘Where did she go?’ Solomon asks.

‘There’s a cottage around the back of the bat house,’ Rachel explains. Bo is too busy reviewing her video footage to see if she captured the moment.

‘Do you know her?’ Solomon asks Joe, completely confused as to what happened but feeling the adrenaline running through his body and a light tremble within him.

‘She’s trespassing on private property,’ he huffs, the anger steaming off him.

‘Do you think Tom knew about her?’ Bo asks.

That question stumps him. His face goes from certainty, to confusion, to anger, betrayal, to disbelief once again. Then he’s sad. If his brother did know about this young woman living in the cottage on their land, then he was keeping it from him. The brothers with no secrets from each other, it turns out, had one very big one.

4

‘There’s only one way of finding the answers,’ Bo says, rolling up the sleeves of her black blouse to reveal her bronzed skin, as the sun continues to beat down overhead. ‘We have to talk to the girl.’