One.
The sun rose over the edge of the land and painted the
treetops with golden light, drawing back the darkness and enlarging the circle
of their vision with every passing moment.
Then a small breeze swept the morning mist off the
mountain’s slope and Renee turned her face to the warmth of the sunrise and
felt it wash over her.
Through the binoculars Stefan studied the nearby trees.
The woods were thick and lush with green spring growth.
“Do you see anything?” Renee asked in a whisper.
Stefan shook his head without lowering the glasses. He
shifted his weight slightly, taking the strain off his haunches.
“What if they don’t come?”
“They will,” Stefan whispered. “They will.”
He flexed the cramping muscles in his legs and beside
him Renee came up onto her knees in silent expectation. Stefan put a hand on
her arm.
“Quiet!” he breathed.
With exaggerated care Stefan traversed the binoculars
from left to right and then suddenly froze. Renee felt the light touch of his
hand on her arm, but there was excitement and tension now in the way his
fingers gripped into her.
“Two!” Stefan breathed triumphantly. “Male and female.”
He handed the glasses to Renee and pointed to a nearby
tree. “Where that big gnarled branch forks off from the trunk,” he whispered.
Renee put the binoculars to her eyes and made a slight
adjustment to the focus. She saw the two birds, perched on a leafy twig. They
were small birds, grey and white, with flashes of yellow on their crown and
wings, and black patches on their cheeks and throats.
“The female is the duller colored one,” Stefan said.
Renee felt Stefan moving against her and she glanced at
him. He had the birds in his sights, adjusting the long barrel… and then he
fired – thumbing the button on the camera as it clicked and whirred off a dozen
shots.
Stefan rolled onto his back and scrolled through the
images in the big camera’s viewfinder. “Got them,” he said. He bounced to his
feet and dusted the dirt from his jeans. “We can go now.”
He reached a hand out to Renee.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“Yes. We can go on,” he pointed up towards the
mountain’s crest.
“We laid in the dark for thirty minutes… so you could
spend one second taking photos?”
“Yes.”
“Of birds?”
“Renee,” Stefan sighed. “They’re not just birds. They’re
Golden-winger Warblers, and they’re rare for these parts – especially in
woodland as dense as this.”
Renee shook her head. She brushed dirt and leaves off
her clothes. Stefan was already ten paces ahead of her and she ran a few steps
up the slope to catch up to him.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this, Stefan?” she asked.
“Why are we walking up this hill?”
Stefan stopped and turned to Renee patiently. “Because I
want to show you something,” he said. “And it’s not a hill – it’s a mountain.”
He turned and pointed up the slope. “This walking trail
was once twenty feet wide,” he kicked at the dirt under his feet. “See how the
saplings and the bushes give way to denser, older trees on either side?”
Renee nodded.
“That’s because this whole mountain was once used for
logging,” Stefan said. “Trees were felled and dragged down the mountain to
where our housing estate now stands. That whole area used to be a logging mill
and timber yard. Oxen and horses were used to drag the logs down into the
valley – and then it was transported to Bishop’s Bridge.”
“Fascinating,” Renee said dryly.
Stefan made a face. “Understanding history is important,
Renee. Knowing our history means we can avoid the mistakes of our past.”
Renee brushed loose tendrils of hair from her face. “But
do I have to climb the mountain to
learn about its history?”
Stefan laughed. “We’re not climbing the mountain,” he
said. “What I want to show you is just a few hundred paces further up this rise.”
Stefan turned and walked on. The trail was narrow and
winding, climbing higher and higher up the slope. Renee trudged on behind him
losing a little distance as Stefan’s long strides carried him swiftly over the
broken ground.
Suddenly the trail veered away towards the edge of the
slope and Renee quickened her pace to where Stefan waited for her under a grove
of low scrubby trees.
“It’s through here,” he said and then went on.
Renee stepped through a curtain of overhanging foliage
and onto a rocky plateau baked warm by the sun; a ledge that hung out over the
land far below.
Here the ground was flat and hard. Renee propped herself
against a huge rounded boulder. Stefan was standing near the edge with his back
to her, hands thrust into his pockets.
Renee stepped up behind him – and the view took her
breath away. Stefan lifted the camera from where it hung round his chest and
took a photo.
The ledge was a huge natural shelf; a rock platform that
jutted far out beyond the face of the mountain, giving a panoramic view back
down into the valley, and then all the way to the blue-misted horizon. Renee
gasped.
“Drakesburg,” Stefan pointed at a distant glitter of sunlit
rooftops. “And that’s the interstate.”
The air was clean and fresh and clear. Renee picked out
the road to Bishop’s Bridge, snaking like a dark grey ribbon through the
rolling wooded hills to the north.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Stefan said, and
his voice sounded small and haunted. “I used to come here to talk to God,” he
said. “I would sit here for hours, asking Him why? Why Tiffany? Why us? It’s a
special place for me.”
Renee said nothing. She turned slowly to look up at him.
He was staring out over a landscape that rose and fell like the swells of the
sea: a tree-covered undulating vista – but all he saw was memories and ghosts.
“I thought He would hear me from up here,” Stefan said.
“It was as close to Heaven as I could get.”
Renee stood silently by his side and her hand felt
tentatively for his and found it. She could sense the sorrow and despair in his
voice, not raw and open like a fresh wound, but as a scar that would be with
him forever. She locked her fingers into his and they said nothing for a long
time, absorbing the beauty of the scenery and recognizing the silence of the
moment.
“It’s called Picnic Rock,” Stefan said at last. “Once
upon a time the loggers used to bring their families up here on Sundays.” He
pointed back to a tree they had passed. “See.”
Renee went to the tree and ran her hands over the
roughened trunk. It was a giant redwood tree, and its girth was wider than the
span of her outstretched arms. Carved into the tree were people’s initials.
There were hundreds of them from the height of her knees to well above her
head. She ran her hand over the carvings. Most of them were old, like worn
lettering carved into ancient headstones. Others were newer, deeper, fresher.
“After Tiffany died I came here a lot,” Stefan said. He
still hadn’t turned from the edge of the plateau. It was as if he was talking to
the clouds. “I came here to cry, and to shout – and to heal.”
Finally he turned. Renee was standing subdued. “And now
I’ve come here to share this place with you.”
A sun-warmed breeze came writhing through the valley
like a warm breath. Stefan looked up at the sky. The wind fluttered his shirt
against his chest and rustled through the trees.
Renee came to him then with tears in her eyes. The wind
caught her hair and it streamed across her face in a flickering tangle. He
reached out for her and she clung to him, small and warm against his hard body,
feeling the muscled resilience of him, and he could taste the saltiness of her
tears on his lips.
“Thank you,” she said softly, and her voice was thick
with emotion and understanding. Now, at last, she felt she truly knew her man.
Now she felt there was nothing more between them. “You are like this mountain
to me,” Renee said. “You’re unbreakable, you protect me and shelter me… and
you’re rugged and rough around the edges,” her arms went around his neck and
she pulled his face down to hers. “And I love you, Stefan. I love you with all
my heart.”
