4

Orange blobs of light spluttered in a dotted circle, tendrils of smoke lifted from the forest floor to mix together in a blueish haze of eucalyptus-scented dawn mist. Embers burst upward in mini explosions of heat and light dancing with the night before dropping down to extinguish on the dusty ground. Occasionally one landed on a stray piece of summer-dried grass and sizzle into life. Tiny spot fires were stomped out, their remains ground into the cleared earth even as a low voice beckoned the flames skyward in spirit if not in all their deadly glory.

Lael had released Malaik’s body from its crude prison and dragged it through the house, out the back door, and deep into the forest that encroached on the unfenced backyard.

She’d climbed as high as she could in the hilly bushland, bent over nearly double to balance the weight of her friend with the slope of the hill, until the rainforest thinned and the cloudless sky was visible through the canopy of half-stripped eucalypts, tree ferns and giant flame lilies. Lael thought it a strange mix, like a twisted memory of what rainforests were meant to be like. At the top of the hill was a broad stand of Christmas bush, their bright red flowers black without the sun to light their flames. She found Malaik’s circle here, in the middle, marked out with bushrock in the centre one flat, fire-darkened rock. She dropped to one knee and carefully laid out the body beside it, shifting it a little so Malaik took up the centre place then lifting it to rest on his chest.

Lael paused to catch her breath. Her friend was not heavy, even in death, but the walk had been long and grief-ridden. Long life did not make death any easier. A well of black despair stirred deep inside her and she choked back a broken sob. Long life made death harder, grief more painful. Lael pulled away from the body and walked back into the trees. She needed to fashion a broom to clear the ground of the highly flammable debris that covered it and collect leaves to light Malaik’s way from this existence to the next. Lael was sweating hard by the time the circle had been prepared and dawn wasn’t too far off. She had to hurry before the sun arrived and the secret pathways vanished with the night.

Squatting to light each bunch of leaves with a match, Lael started a verse that hadn’t passed her lips in many years; an Alffür chant to the dead. ‘Fire of the heart, water of life, air of the senses, earth of the bone …’

With the last pile lit, she gathered the bushrocks and used them to build