At the Cleary place, they took the books from that baking wooden room down to the kitchen, where they laid on the thick wood of the table like things washed up from a shipwreck of Time. Stained, strange, out of place, from a recent history as utterly opaque as the future, they nonetheless sat there in defiant solidity. Flies slowly zigzagged the ceiling above on their own journeys.
One thing seemed certain: Thomas Daniels had been up into the Blue Mountains and found - or taken - this evidence of the Calder expedition. When Brigitte finally broke the hesitation that lay thick in the kitchen air and took up Daniels' notes to skim the later pages, it seemed she (
Mme. d'A.) and Jack (
J.Dgn) had been up there, too. Even Cleary's man Gill had attempted to stop someone completing some dread thing. The only strangeness was that none of those present remembered anything about it.
Cleary suggested that as the afternoon was drawing on without any immediate sign of the searchers, the visitors should probably stay the night to avoid a return in the dark. Maggie offered Brigitte the opportunity to sponge off the worst of the day's heat and grime her own room before preparing it for the lady's use.
Murphy said he'd sound out the hills to see if he could raise news of some friends he thought might be this far northwest, and spent a little time with Cleary discussing the topography. Jack realised Murphy meant this literally when he saw the thing he'd brought back from his horse was a rough-looking but carefully made bullroarer. The man vanished into the scouring brightness of the day outside, but Jack caught the look he threw back to Cleary, one that urged caution around the sergeant.
As host, Cleary had to play a cautious game of hospitality, offering enough distraction and alcohol to keep Wilkins friendly and occupied yet not enough for the redcoat to become unpredictable and possibly violent. Sgt. Wilkins annexed the field journal and wedged himself in the corner chair dragged up alongside the table so that he might park his feet up on the bench. He was not a fast reader, frowned whilst he did so, and dominated the room with his combination of inconvienient location and dubious temper like a barrel of gunpowder propped up on a stool. Cleary eventually suggested Duggan should help Maggie in preparing supper, given the late start.
It was approaching sunset when Murphy stuck his head in to say the searchers were coming in across the far field, and it looked like there was Janey with them. Maggie finished what she was about to dart out and the sergeant slid his boots off the bench, jerking his head to indicate Jack should go out with them when Cleary followed. The flies settled on the ceiling in the gathering gloom.
The worst of the heat was lifting from the land when the riders returned from the bush, the gradually westering sun gaining a shade of rusty gold that made outcroppings glow like embers. Every patch of bare rock they passed gave off heat like oven bricks.
Gill had insisted they rest the horses over the worst of it, then navigated them to a gully where massive bats hung like weird fruit from river gums and a smattering of shade saved their gently cooking backs and horses' feet. The feeling of being watched faded as they came back through more open forest and up onto prickled heath splashed with scattered flannelflowers and and Christmas bells, though a
strange sound cut the air a couple of times through the cicadas' racket with a clear intelligence to its variations, like question and answer.
At last the Cleary homestead was in sight, and as they drew closer they noticed a little group had come out to meet them - Tom Cleary himself, Maggie clutching at her cooking apron in joy to see Janey back, Madame d'Anjou seemingly over visiting from the tavern at Danger Bend...and a redcoat soldier standing square and stark in his colours in the yard, Jack Duggan out resentfully near him.
The sight of the latter on being fully woken by Maggie calling out to them causes Janey to give a wordless yelp and start struggling to be put down, nearly throwing herself off the horse. Henry is suddenly glad he hadn't had that small, soft body against his, since it seems to be only her familiarity and affection for James that keeps her from outright attacking him in her urge to get away.
"Nnn-!"
James, fortunately, is strong enough to gather her up and hold her still a moment as Kaiser pauses in uncertainty, bidding her to look again.
"Janey! Janey girl, it's Jack, you know him...you like Jack, don't you? And see, there's Charlie come to see you now." Janey quiets, looking from Jack to Murphy, who's walking up beside them as they come in and tips his hat to her. James jostles her a little, like a child or a confused dog.
"What's that fuss for?"
Janey lets him draw up to Maggie before insisting on getting down. She only lets Maggie hug her briefly before wiggling away and going over to see if Jack is really frightening or not. She gives him a good half-minute of stare all about, though not meeting his eyes.
"Hair," she decides, and touches that before bolting off to hug Murphy and, before he can really react, skid a wide berth around the soldier to hug Cleary, grinning up at him like she hasn't disrupted an entire day by running near-naked into the wilderness.
"Ho-ome," she says, and clings to him, swaying a bit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:03, Tue 31 Mar 2020.
