Chapter Six
CHAPTER
6
Phoenix, the handsome black thoroughbred that ran Athena down, stamps an impatient hoof. Using only one hand and balanced on the mounting block, I straighten his rug and smooth the canvas over his rump. I’ve stepped off the block and I’m pulling flaps to his chest when he nudges my hip.
‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ I say, as I thread the strap through the buckle and, using my right hand in the sling, secure it. ‘Done.’
When I saw the visiting orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital, he compared that day’s X-ray of my collarbone with the one taken on the day of my fall, close to a month ago. The bones were knitting in the way that they should, but he was concerned about how much it still hurt when I lifted my arm. He ordered more tests and, after looking at those, he seemed relieved. Me not so much.
In addition to the break in my collarbone, I have three fractures in the head of the humerus at the shoulder joint. The doctor adjusted my sling, telling me gravity and rest would fix the fractures, but the combination of injuries would slow my recovery.
A throaty roar. A motorbike. Even though the Viking said he’d email, I don’t need to turn around to guess who has turned off the road. After shrugging out of his jacket and slinging a bag over his shoulder, he walks towards me. Then he stops dead. I’m too far away to see the crease between his brows, but the stiffness of his stance is a giveaway. Disapproval.
Phoenix, swishing his long black tail to flick at flies, looks up in interest as I go to his hindquarters, reach between his legs to find the dangling strap and clip it to the ring near his tail.
‘Mackenzie.’
When Grandpa doesn’t call me Mary Mackenzie, he calls me Mackenzie. Everyone else in Summerfield calls me Mac. Should I remind the Viking of that? Surely he’s heard it from others.
I look over my shoulder. ‘Hey.’
‘Is that Leo’s horse?’
I didn’t want to put Leo out of business through demanding compensation, and I was concerned about his horse. Leo had paid a fortune for Phoenix, which is why I didn’t trust the trainer not to put him back to work. What if something went wrong on the next shoot? What if someone else got hurt? Phoenix has history. He could be destroyed. Leo didn’t want to hand him over, but in the face of Astrid’s determination that I be compensated, and Leo’s insistence he didn’t have the funds, I took payment in kind. Phoenix will live a less adventurous life with me, but I’ll take care of him. He’ll have a home.
‘He’s not Leo’s any more.’ Lifting Phoenix’s mane, I stroke his neck.
‘Who owns him? Why is he here?’ The Viking’s tan indicates he’s been outside in the past couple of weeks. His eyes are extraordinarily blue.
‘He’s mine. He lives here.’
‘He’s dangerous.’
‘If I ride him on his own, he won’t be tempted to race.’
Clearly wanting to argue, the Viking opens his mouth before shutting it again. And then, ‘This is your land?’
‘My grandfather’s.’ If not for the flood that inundated properties built this side of the river in the early 1900s, the five hectares between the cottage and national park would be more valuable. As it is, the land is zoned flood-prone and can’t be developed—not that Grandpa would do that anyway.
I awkwardly secure Phoenix’s second leg strap. ‘I have to make up Phoenix’s feed.’
As I’m holding a rug and bucket over my arm, I struggle with the gate and the Viking unlatches it. Then he holds out a hand.
‘Give me something.’
‘I can manage.’
As if it’s an effort to walk alongside me without carrying anything himself, the Viking shoves his hands in his front pockets. The side door to the shed is open and he follows me through, standing back as I scoop out chaff. The sun streams in behind him, lightening his hair.
‘Why don’t you call first? Why do you assume I’ll be home?’
He hesitates. ‘You can’t drive.’
‘I have friends who would help.’
‘You stay close to your grandfather.’
When Grandpa and I worked in the shed, we’d open the big double doors to let in the light and use overhead lights and desk lamps when the sun didn’t shine. But even in this dim light, even with my eyes closed, I could find everything I’d ever need. There’s a minute of silence as I shove my hand in the bucket and mix up the feed. I remind myself of the facts. The Viking has objectives and so do I. Unlike the last time he was here, I’m not in pain. Not in too much pain.
Life-sized templates for the swords and knives I made for The Dragon Slayers rise ominously from a crate to the Viking’s right. Saddle trees, all shapes and sizes, hang from hooks and line up on shelves. There are countless tools, a thousand scraps of leather. Shelves and boxes sag with decades of nails and hand tools and gadgets Grandpa and I have ‘kept just in case’. The Viking’s eyes must have adjusted to the half-light because, feet slightly apart and hands behind his back like he’s standing on the bow of his ship, he’s directly in front of what Grandpa called ‘The Gallery’. Pictures I’ve drawn since I could barely write my name are thumbtacked onto the wall to the left of the doors.
I put the bucket down. ‘Are you ready to go?’
He looks back over his shoulder. ‘These are all yours?’
I walk towards him, stop a few metres away. ‘Grandpa took most of them out of the recycling bin.’
‘Do you sell your work?’
The calluses on my hands are mostly from paid work, but some imperfections—thickened skin on my left index finger and at the tip of the middle finger—have nothing to do with leather. The scent of earth and eucalyptus as I sit in the dirt with my sketchbook on my lap. The scratch of my pencils on the paper. The variations in the colours and the structures of the stems and the flowers and the seeds and the roots. When I was little and living with my mother, I’d escape into her garden. Out there, I didn’t want to be tall and beautiful like a princess, I wanted to be small and hard to find like Thumbelina. Mum had a pond and lotus flowers. As I’d sit and draw, I’d imagine myself perched on a leaf. A current would take me to a stream and the stream would lead to the river that would carry me home to Summerfield.
‘Mackenzie?’ I blink back into the present. What did he want again? The sketches.
‘I’ve never sold them. I couldn’t. That’s not why I draw.’
He looks closely at a picture of a sunflower drawn on butcher paper. I couldn’t have known about the Fibonacci sequence when I was in primary school, but the seed’s clockwise and anticlockwise spirals suggest I represented it.
‘Why don’t you use colour?’
A glimmer of memory. I did use colour once. When I spin away, my shoulder pulls. A different kind of pain. I suck in a breath, let it out again. ‘Are you coming?’
He reaches around me for the door handle, but I get there first. Our fingers touch. My body thrums. And then my mind goes blank. As I take a jerky step back, his eyes slip to my shoulder.
‘How are you?’
‘All good.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He’s from another universe. The usual rules don’t apply. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Have you spoken to your mother?’
I stiffen. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘I told Erik Neilson, the producer, about your father’s film. He thought your mother might have access to it. He contacted her.’
‘At your direction? As a way of getting around me?’
‘Erik talked to your mother’s agent.’
I grasp the bucket more firmly. ‘My mother didn’t want anything of my father’s.’
Even in the first of my parents’ custody settlements, there were clauses prohibiting my mother from using my image in any shape or form. The Women’s Weekly . New Idea . Newspapers. Online magazines. Articles in Mode or Harper’s Bazaar or Country Life . Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook. Other clauses permitted private family photographs. Dad must have taken hundreds when I was growing up. Maybe thousands. Mum always asked for copies, but destroyed or deleted the photos that included Dad and Grandpa.
Dad’s photos weren’t cookie-cutter portraits. Moody sepia. Stark black and white. Vivid, flamboyant, vibrant. I’d be climbing over hay bales, peeking through wildflowers, down at the mine with my hair a golden halo. As the custody disputes multiplied, the anger and resentment escalated. Dad continued to work and fight and work and fight to keep a sense of normalcy in my life.
Until he died.
‘She destroyed everything.’ Including me? My chest cramps, my throat locks, my eyes sting. I turn away, blink and blink again.
‘Mackenzie?’
A stiff nod. ‘Did you come here to talk about my mother?’
He mutters something under his breath. ‘I’ll pay for your father’s film.’
‘It has the potential to strengthen the Summerfield submission, so why would I sell it?’
‘We couldn’t work together.’
‘Why not?’
‘You take unacceptable risks.’ He searches my face. ‘You dislike me.’
If I’d snapped my tibia when Athena fell, if I’d been bleeding and then had a heart attack, he would have saved my life. He told Astrid that I should have help and James, in his own way, has been helpful. For Grandpa’s sake and the sake of the submission, I have to get on with the Viking. Yet …
‘Are you always so direct?’
‘I tell the truth.’
‘We’d have a professional relationship.’ Phoenix walks to the fence and pricks his ears, as if waiting for me to continue. ‘I’d behave accordingly.’
After the briefest of hesitations, he takes a step towards me. He lifts a hand. ‘May I?’
I lift my chin. ‘If you must.’
He presses my arm against my midriff. He loosens the strap of the sling. Our bodies are only millimetres apart.
‘Tell me about your arm, your shoulder.’
I’m breathing deeply. So is he. He smells nice. Clean and fresh. When I look up, it’s into his eyes. ‘They picked up three more fractures.’
He unlocks his jaw. ‘You scare me, Mary Mackenzie.’
Dislike. Attraction. My feelings are complex. He’s complex. Does he want to protect me? Should I walk into his arms and put my head against his shoulder? Either of his shoulders, because they’re broad and muscular and strong. Why does my traitorous body like that idea?
For the second time today, I take a giant step back. ‘The documentary. You’re not the only decision maker, are you?’
The pulse at his throat throbs double time. ‘No.’
‘Erik Neilson wouldn’t be asking about film if he weren’t interested in Summerfield. When do I get to meet him?’