The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 26

Chapter 23

Christmas morning dawned clear and hot. The storm system was long gone and the northerly wind whipped everything into choking dust again. We were feeding out massive amounts of hay because all the grass had turned to short dry stubble. Despite the sweltering heat we kept up the ridiculous traditions of a snowy Christmas by preparing a huge roast complete with baked potatoes and mulled wine. The woolly stockings hanging from the wood heater and the fake snow sprayed on all the windows were totally out of sync with the scorched landscape, but for us the decorations just meant Christmas, not winter.

We had always celebrated Christmas by having lunch with Noah’s family, so after we finished all our morning chores we packed up all the presents, the food and one rambunctious joey, and headed over to the Ashbrees’s farm.

Nicole greeted us at the gate wearing shorts, thongs and a Santa hat and beard. She trotted and bounced her way around the garden trying to catch hold of their dog, Blue. The kelpie was doing a good job of evading her so she could check out the interesting looking creature in the pillowcase I was holding. Kelpies just can’t be caught unless they want to be. I couldn’t wait until the pups we’d ordered were ready to be picked up. Our last two dogs had run away. Bungee had been about to turn four when he disappeared—he was a ripper little dog—and Gerdie was only eight months old when she went out for a walk with Harry one day and didn’t come home. We’d never had much luck with them.

Liam’s sharp whistle called Blue away, and she obediently skipped over to sit at his feet. I handed the joey over to Nicole, who went all gooey and suddenly looked like the thirteen-year-old girl she was instead of the stoic tomboy she always tried to be.

Noah came out of the house and caught me in a massive hug.

‘Merry Christmas, Lainie.’ He held on to me for a second longer than was normal. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to him since the fire and I wondered what his mum had put him through. Surely she’d understood why he’d left home to protect Eden? Knowing her though, she’d still probably told him off for putting himself in danger.

‘Merry Christmas, Noah. How’s Tess?’ I asked, extricating myself from his embrace and pulling out an armload of platters from Bane’s shabby old sedan. All morning I had sternly disciplined myself to try to come to terms with having Tessa around. If Noah really liked her then I would support them both and try to behave like the grown up I wasn’t.

‘Ask her yourself—she came for lunch.’ Had he figured out the connection between them? He had certainly figured out what Bane’s problem was before I had. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to put two and two together.

Caleb came out to help unload the car. ‘This your car, Ben?’

‘Yeah. It used to be Mum’s.’

‘It’s not a ute.’

‘Nope.’

‘Where do you put your stuff?’

‘Inside. Where it doesn’t get covered in road dust,’ he replied, lifting his chin slightly.

‘How much can it tow?’ Caleb teased.

‘No towbar, but there’s room inside for passengers. See? Actual seats. With seatbelts. So Lainie doesn’t have to get bumped around in the tray.’ He pulled out four bottles of soft drink from the backseat.

‘Personally, I’ve never needed room for more than one girl before,’ Caleb responded, his mouth twitching with suppressed amusement.

Aunt Lily stomped on his foot as she walked past him with a giant Pavlova dessert. ‘Leave him alone, Caleb,’ she scolded.

We all followed her meekly into the house.

‘Hi, Lainie. Merry Christmas,’ Tessa greeted as I entered the kitchen. Her pretty face looked thin and pale, but her smile was relaxed. At least she didn’t have that pinched jealous look anymore. As soon as I found a bit of room on the table to put the platters down, I gave her a polite hug.

‘Merry Christmas, Tessa. How did you go with your ATAR score?’

‘Not great. I don’t think I managed to get quite enough for what I wanted. I was hoping to do a nursing course next year, but it’ll be touch and go as to whether I’ve done enough to get in.’

Nursing. Perfect. She would be a great healer. I wondered if she would be able to heal me, and Bane heal Noah. It would be an interesting experiment.

‘How about you? How did you go?’

Noah handed us both a glass of sparkling pink wine. ‘She could probably get into Cambridge on her score, the nerd.’

I peered at the drink, certain that something so pink and bubbly couldn’t possibly be tasty. I took a sip and tried hard not to think about what Cambridge might have been like. All vaulted ceilings and stone buildings that smelled like wood polish and Skirlie mash for dinner. Tessa’s face began to darken in a familiar way.

‘He’s exaggerating, Tess,’ I said quickly. ‘Noah did almost as well. Besides, I haven’t even decided on a course yet. I’ll probably …’ But there was no point in finishing my sentence because Tessa was no longer listening. Bane had just walked in and she actually stepped backwards in surprise—or possibly that was just the self-preservation reflex that came from being at school with him for so many years.

‘Bane?’ she croaked.

‘Hi, Tessa. Merry Christmas,’ he said, avoiding eye contact by busying himself with finding space in the fridge for the drinks.

‘Uh, hi.’ She turned back to me with eyebrows that were clearly asking, ‘Why is he here?’

Another sip of the pink stuff didn’t win me over to it. ‘Bane’s working for us on the farm,’ I explained.

Tessa just looked from Bane back to me, then at Bane again, and I didn’t need any insightful visions to know what she was thinking.

‘And I haven’t even set anything on fire,’ Bane mumbled to the milk.

‘Yet,’ I mumbled back.

‘What would be the point?’ he muttered, making Noah crack up silently from behind where Tessa was standing.

When Bane shut the fridge and turned around, Tessa took a step closer to Noah. I tried not to smile as I realised she still saw him as a bit of a threat. Now that I knew what I was looking for, Tessa’s possessive behaviour really was quite protective as well. Bane turned to leave but I grabbed his hand. She would have to get used to him at some point and it wouldn’t hurt for her to think we were together. I hoped it might make her less defensive toward me, but all it did was make her blink at us in a sort of confused stupor so I let go again. I couldn’t exactly blame her. I didn’t believe it either.

As we continued to chat about our plans for next year I found myself getting distracted as I saw Noah’s parents outside, his dad’s arms around his wife, both laughing as they watched the twins wrestle on the lawn. They looked so happy and relaxed. How had they felt about being forced together by some supernatural compulsion? They didn’t look like it bothered them one bit, but maybe it had been different in their generation. Regardless, they seemed to have embraced the situation in a way that made me feel a little wistful, and I wondered once again about my own parents. I shook my head to dispel my overactive imagination before anyone noticed the tears that welled in my eyes. It was Christmas Day, and not a time for dwelling on my dubious past and even more uncertain future.

Lunch was long and gluttonous and choc-a-block full of honeyed carrots, dumplings and inappropriate winter puddings. Afterwards we sat down to exchange presents on the front lawn in the shade of a huge hollowed out rivergum that had been there for centuries. Its bark was peeling like a Scottish tourist and a column of sugar ants were doing parade drills along its lowest branch. I wondered how many Cherubim it had known. Just how many of us were there? Aunt Lily had been confident that Noah’s siblings were not Cherub-kind. They didn’t know anything about it. Even just imagining talking to any of them about Eden produced a queasy sense of guilt at the base of my sternum that seemed to support that assumption. I was itching to talk to Noah’s mum, though.

Stretching out on the tartan picnic rug, I started chucking gumnuts at the back of Noah’s head, just to see if Tessa would notice. She did—when I missed and hit her by accident—so I sat up and concentrated on what I was supposed to be doing instead. I hadn’t been very inventive when it came to presents. I’d bought Aunt Lily her favourite perfume and Bane and Noah the latest video games: a soccer one for Noah and an army-themed one for Bane. Like the slacker I was, I’d left Aunt Lily to buy all the rest, and in return, I got pampered very unfairly. Noah had bought me the latest book in a series I had been waiting on—for which I mouthed a silent thank you to my aunt who had clearly been the one to suggest it to him. She, in turn, had given me two tickets to see a band that I liked in Melbourne. My wrestling hug very nearly bowled her over as I showed her just how much I appreciated her subtle message. She was telling me how confident she was that I would still be able to travel, and have a more or less normal life. I was not trapped. Of course, the twins saw it as a slightly different subtle message, and Caleb asked me in an overly innocent voice who I was going to take with me. I told him it depended on who sucked up to me the best and then asked Liam if he wouldn’t mind fetching me a glass of water.

While Nicole distracted everyone by starting up her ‘new-hand-me-down’ dirt bike, and getting told off by her mum for filling the air with exhaust fumes, Bane quietly handed me a small jewellery box tied with a ribbon. That was a bad sign. Liam frowned when he saw it but Caleb beamed at me with a smug ‘I told you so’ expression as I tentatively opened the box. There was a delicate golden bracelet inside, pretty but without too much bling. It had a plate with an inscription, ‘Shalom’. I had never heard the word before and I wondered if it was in the language I had used to call the storm, but Bane wouldn’t have had a chance to have had the engraving done since then—it had to have been done earlier. He clasped it around my wrist.

Caleb gave his brother a nudge. ‘Well that’s going straight to the pool room.’ Liam laughed.

‘It means “peace” in Hebrew,’ Bane explained, watching me carefully to gauge my reaction. It was a pretty gift, and I had long since become immune to Caleb’s teasing so I hugged Bane in authentic appreciation. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mrs Ashbree grinning at us.

We survived our traditional Christmas cricket game in the shallow part of the river without anyone biting the hostess’ son, and rewarded the winner with the bone from the roast. While Blue skulked off to bury his prize, and the others were trying out the new games in the lounge room, I came out to the veranda to sip mulled wine with Noah’s mum and Aunt Lily. The currawongs were shouting their lonely cries to each other as the wind began to settle for the evening and the bush started to wake from its somnolence. Usually around this time we would all be taking bets on who would nod off to sleep first, Harry or Noah’s dad. I missed Harry.

‘So how are you feeling about the other day, Lainie?’ Mrs Ashbree asked, fiddling with her silver bangle. ‘Noah tried to tell me what you both did, but it’s hard for me to get my head around. You called the storm?’

Rats. I’d been hoping she would be able to shed some light on what had happened. Still, Harry had been rather vague about what powers we had, too. I wondered if they really had any idea just how much we were actually capable of.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, Mrs Ashbree. I just sort of knew what to do. I certainly couldn’t do it again. Unless Eden was under threat, I suppose.’

‘Please, Lainie, I think it’s high time you started calling me Sarah. And yes, I agree. Cherubic powers only manifest when they’re needed. Until now, none of us have come across anything so extreme. Only visions and feelings. We might have spent the rest of our lives not even experiencing anything unusual if there hadn’t been a fire.’ She sounded resentful, and Aunt Lily shifted uncomfortably, perhaps trying to come to terms with how potentially dangerous this was all becoming.

‘I dunno about that,’ I said. ‘Harry told me Kolsom’s activities triggered some things. At least in me.’

‘True, but your gifts have always been there—latent or dormant maybe. When he was little, Noah occasionally mentioned that he had daydreams of people, out in the state park. And he could always find you without any problems.’

It was true. Hide and Seek was not a game we’d ever bothered playing because we always just found each other straight away. I’d never thought about it that much and had assumed that we simply knew each other too well, but now I realised that my instinctive hunches about where Noah was at any given time were probably not that normal after all. And I had known when he’d been lost in the bush on his dirt bike all those years ago.

A triumphant shout echoed out from the living room where Tessa had apparently slaughtered Bane’s avatar in a PlayStation bloodbath. I could see her wiggling around doing a little victory dance. I felt a bit wistful that I was missing out, but the questions that had been rolling around my skull had already been waiting too long for answers.

‘Have our families always been around to guard this area? Even before we became sheep farmers?’ I knew my family had Indigenous blood in its history but Noah’s family were all blond and fair with those startling green eyes. I was fishing for information shamelessly.

‘What?’ asked Aunt Lily, chuckling. ‘You don’t think being a shepherd is an appropriate job for a biblical character?’ She winked at Noah’s mum.

As I choked in response to being referred to as a biblical character, Sarah kindly answered my question with a little more reverence.

‘Our families have lived here for a very, very long time,’ she explained, understanding what it was I really wanted to know. ‘Apparently we take on the physical characteristics required to blend in to whatever people expect to see.’

That fit with what Harry had said about us having human bodies in order to pass unnoticed, but it led me to another thought. ‘Does it keep happening? Changing our appearance to blend in?’

‘Quite possibly. I’ve always had my suspicions about your height. I think Noah just expected you to keep growing as much as he did, so you did. Why, has anything happened to you recently?’ she inquired, peering at my face.

‘No, not that I’ve noticed,’ I said, leaning back self-consciously. ‘I was just a bit worried that I might wake up one morning to find myself with sparkly skin or something. I don’t suppose this job happens to come with some sort of an instruction manual? Are you sure there isn’t some huge dusty tome hidden away in the attic somewhere? Or maybe my parents left me a mysterious package only to be opened on my seventeenth birthday that you forgot about?’

Sarah slid a napkin and a pen over to me. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘Write down something about Eden. Perhaps something that you might like your own kids to know.’

I cringed at the thought that in her mind she already had me settled down with kids, but tried to do as she suggested. It would have been nice to find the cave without having to nearly drown. Maybe a map could have been handy. The pen froze at the end of my fingers. Something deep in my chest began to tremble as the guilty feeling rose up, swamping any desire I had to draw or write anything at all. I dropped the pen, feeling sick to the stomach. I couldn’t even write the word ‘Eden’. No wonder I’d had so much trouble with that English essay.

‘I see.’ So that was why there was so little information to go on; we couldn’t speak openly to anyone that wasn’t a Cherub or bodyguard, and evidently couldn’t write anything down either. Personally, I was having enough trouble even talking around the edges of it while Aunt Lily was sitting with us. I wanted to ask more direct questions about Eden itself, but I couldn’t even frame them in my mind without feeling like I was trying to murder someone. I could hardly blame Aunt Lily for wanting to hang around, though. I knew how concerned she was for me.

‘Aunt Lily, how is it that you know anything at all about Eden if we can’t even talk about it? Are you one of us too?’ I had been wondering whether she really had been Harry’s bodyguard, as ridiculous as that seemed, but she shook her head.

‘As I mentioned the other day, getting information is almost impossible for me. I only know as much as I do because my brother became bonded to Annie and got caught up in something supernatural, and then I ended up raising you,’ she explained. ‘I actually know very little. Harry wasn’t one to talk much at the best of times—he never said anything he didn’t have to. Everything I know I’ve pieced together from things I’ve seen myself. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.’

Sarah laid her hand on my arm. ‘And I’m afraid I’ve never really been very involved. As you said before, things only happen as needed. With Harry around, I … wasn’t needed.’ She suddenly looked a little lost, almost regretful. Perhaps she was quietly jealous of what Noah and I had achieved.

My next question was a bit of an awkward one, but I bravely ploughed ahead. ‘Speaking of not being needed, do you happen to know if there’s a way to break this bond I have with Bane? I can take care of myself, and—’

Suddenly there was mulled wine everywhere, and Noah’s mum was standing up. She’d dropped her mug from shaking hands.

‘Don’t ever say such a thing! Don’t you dare!’

Perhaps storming away in anger was a natural female Cherub trait, because she did it even better than I ever had.

My aunt and I sat in silence for a long time after that, both of us wishing that Harry would just come home.