Raelene stared down at the plastic bowl and thought of prisons. Prisoners had to scrape out their bowls and take their turn washing dishes, condemned to make do with lukewarm water and cheap detergent. Probably they were punished when the dishes were not clean enough, even though they had done their best. At least she was not punished; Mike did not pay attention to the crockery. He didn’t pay attention to much besides TV, beer and his truck. She picked up another plate and ran the grey water over it. A thin film of grease remained, so she sloshed it again. The last squeeze of detergent made it through the remaining dishes and even got the worst off the saucepan.

Detergent thought Raelene. Another item on the shopping list. Another mite out of the meagre amount Mike gave her for the house. She tipped up the bowl to empty it and the rim cracked under her hand. Such a small thing, but there went another dollar. Raelene squinched her eyes tight to head off a tear. She was not a child, to cry over a cracked piece of plastic, was she? Except that it was just too much. The grimy water, the thin rag, the worn spot in the old lino under foot that caught her heel, the two slices of plastic bread holding limp cheese that would be her lunch. The barren yard, where the earth was sucked dry by the giant eucalyptus in one corner. The shoddily-built house that was cold in winter and hot in summer, made barely habitable by the ancient air-conditioner that wheezed out stale air in fitful gusts. In high school Raelene had read of how fresh bread and honey tasted so good. So simple a thing, and yet it had not come her way.

She turned the cracked bowl upside down and lent there, staring out the window. Why was she here? Where could she go? She had little money, few skills and only the vaguest ideas about life outside this town. There was a city a three-hour bus ride away, but she did not know anyone there. She had a notion that bad things happen to young women who arrive in the big city alone and friendless. No, she could not just drift out of town with no goal and no means. Her mother had said this was their country. “We are Wiradjuri people; we belong to this land,” she had said. If Raelene belonged to this land she was surely not a treasured possession.

Her mother and aunties had fought long and hard for recognition and a degree of respect for her people. Raelene shared their feelings, but the fight had moved on, to the halls of state parliament and the corridors of Canberra. That was not Raelene’s world. Wiradjuri country was wide, yet Raelene felt at home here, along the river, not in the baked plains to the south or the scrub country up north. Her mother had never expressed the least disappointment in her daughter, but Raelene often felt a vague disappointment in herself. This was her country, but what was she to do with it? Or it with her? It was not like she had any say in what happened to it.

What did it mean, to belong to the land? In the old days, you could go walkabout, and the land would tell you stories. Every hill, every creek, the old trees, the river-crossings, each had their tale, maybe a different tale each time you came to them, and you could follow the song-lines. The land would tell you where you belonged, where to go, what the times were for feast or moving on or staying. Could she do that? Just walk out and walk on? Across fenced land, across land cleared for sheep, grazed down to the bare dirt, across land where all the old trees had gone, taken for timber or felled and left to the termites? Some few stories she knew from her mother and aunties, many more she did not. Raelene loved the land, but it did not speak to her as it had spoken to her parents or their parents.

Drift. The word pulled on a web of associations. She had drifted through school, drifted into Mike’s bed, drifted into this house and her part-time job at the local grocery store. Drifted into this home-bound existence when the store closed. Perhaps a child would have anchored her (although, to what?). There had been a brief flush of .. hope? anticipation? fear? Some nameless combination of feelings. It had not lasted, flushed away before she could be certain. It was not like she and Mike were making a concerted effort in that direction. He was not much interested in her these days. Sometimes she wondered if he was with someone else; other times she was sure of it. What would making a fuss get her? Out on the street with ten dollars.

She could hardly blame Mike, Raelene reflected glumly. She was barely interested in herself. She shifted irritably and the heel of her slipper snagged on the worn patch. The irritation was displaced by a grey despondency. Head down, she crossed to the door and shuffled down the corridor towards the tiny bedroom. And shuffled, and shuffled. Puzzled, she looked up. The corridor was not the same. The floor was still unvarnished boards, but the walls were a bare white, un-grimed. She turned back towards the door to the kitchen. It was not there; instead the same corridor stretched away. She walked back that way, hand outstretched to the front. It had to be an illusion, and she did not want to find the door with her face. After thirty steps her hand had found nothing. She bent to feel the boards. Plain wood. Slightly ridged along the grain, close-fitted. Definitely not the bare dirt or harsh grass of the yard. Raelene straightened, listened. There was no sound other than the hiss of her own breath. No rattle of leaves, no hum of tyres from the road. She examined the corridor, to find bare walls, swivelled to look the other way. The same source-less illumination, the same walls, but along a way a pattern of shadows on the walls. It was at least a difference, so she walked back that way, counting steps.

Thirty – she was back in the house. Fifty – she was in the middle of the road. One hundred – she was in the paddock opposite, dry grass and sheep-shit underfoot. Raelene giggled. She had passed without effort through four walls and a barbed-wire fence. The shadows resolved into doors, spaced alternately on each side of the corridor. She came to the first: a plain door with four panels in a frame and a knob of bronzed metal. The next was the same, only the knob was orange glass. The third had a knob of dark iron, the fourth shining brass, the fifth some stripy wood. She walked on a way, then back. Endless doors, each with a different handle. Well, she had to pick one, she supposed. It was that or walk this hall until she died of thirst.

The wooden handle seemed friendliest. It was a polyhedron, very precisely shaped, clear varnish over a timber where thin black stripes ran through a pale surround. She reached out and wrapped her hand around it. It was solid, firm in its socket, unlike those in Mike’s house. A twist, a push, and the door swung back a little. The wall beyond was the very lightest shade of green, like the new leaves on the gum trees. She opened the door all the way, to see another corridor, also lined with doors. Yet more choices, Raelene thought. A choice of choices was better than none, she supposed. The handles on these doors were all wooden, from the close-grained black of ebony through the deep red shine of cedar to the bone-white of old pine. She wandered along until a handle of the speckled orange-red of river gum caught her eye. The trees grew along the the river just outside the town. At times drought reduced the flow to a trickle, or a flood sent brown water swirling up almost to the top of the bridge timbers. When she was a child she had loved to jump from the over-hanging trees into the deep pools. This was another jump.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

She opened the door to see a passage lined with rough timber winding away. The floor was hard-packed dirt, even and unworn, cool through the thin soles of her slippers. She padded on down the tunnel, around several turns. It began to rise, and she noticed roots poking through the joints of the timbers. So at least it was going somewhere, not just being an endless row of doors. It rose more steeply, turned and ended in a stair of rough rocks piled between two larger slabs of stone. She could smell green plants, and hear bird-song. As she climbed the stair towards the sunlight above she felt a ripple in the air behind. She climbed faster, until she was standing in a cleft giving on to a forested hillside. When she looked behind the stair had vanished. There was only the narrowing gap between the rocks and a mess of dry leaves. Raelene shrugged. It was one more crazy thing to add to the pile.

Her exit looked out on to sloping ground studded with mature trees. Raelene took time to scan the area. Nothing threatened; birds warbled above and a small animal rustled through the brush along the gully below. The air was warm and a little humid, the trees unfamiliar. Wherever she was, it was nowhere near home. That had dry baking heat or dry cold and little in between, trees wide-spaced across the pastures. This was a settled kind of humidity, a kind the plants were used to, and a true forest, almost a jungle. Maybe it was in Queensland? A door from Pallama to Queensland would be cool, so long as she could go back.

A rumble from her midsection reminded Raelene she was hungry. There was nothing to do about that, as there was not even a cheese sandwich in sight. There would be water at the bottom of the slope, so she set off that way, head moving from side to side as she walked. At home there were only snakes to worry about and they were shy creatures, no threat unless surprised. Here, there might be anything. Raelene tried to recall what sort of wildlife lived in forests like this, mentally flicking through nature shows half attended to. Bears perhaps? Tigers were very rare, weren’t they, what with poaching? No tigers in Queensland, but there were those big birds with helmets and long claws. Cassowaries, that was them.

The gully below was covered in a tangle of foliage, some spiky. Raelene was not minded to push through it and kept to the clearer ground above, letting the slope dictate her direction. A wandering course brought her to the bottom of the valley, where there was indeed a small river. A rock outcrop allowed convenient access to the bank, but Raelene took her time before stepping down to the water. If nature documentaries were to be believed, predators lay in wait at places like this. Also, there might be crocodiles. The air was still, light flashed off the wrinkles in the water, a circle dappled the surface where a fish came up for a fly. When she was assured nothing was lurking Raelene stepped down to the water and scooped up a handful. It was probably teeming with unhealthy bugs, but it quenched her thirst. In fact it tasted better than what came from the tap at home. She drank until she was full, standing up to look around between handfuls. Some fell down her front, sticking the cheap synthetic to her chest. She didn’t care. It cooled her and this was not a wet tee-shirt competition. Or if it was, the judges were absent.

She climbed back away from the river and considered her options. She had seen no sign of human presence. She had not the skills of her great-grandparents, to know what was food and what was not, how to catch animals and what plants were nutritious. They had ranged throughout the land and never gone hungry. This country would be as strange to them as it was to her, but they would have made do. She looked around until she found a fallen branch that might make a spear, if she had a way to put a point on it. Maybe she could grind it on a rock? Later. For now she would head downstream. If there were people here, that was where they would be. If a wild animal turned up, at least she could poke it.

Several hours later Raelene was not so sure. Her arms, face and ankles were covered in insect bites, a thorn bush had added scratches to the bites, her slippers were falling apart, she was hungrier than ever and the light was fading. She had seen lots of birds, some small climbing animals and a weird tentacled thing dangling from a branch. She did not fancy sleeping in the open, and started looking for possible refuges against the night. She might be safe in a tree if she could find some place she would not fall out of. Or there might be a small cave or a hollow thicket. If this was adventure, thought Raelene, it sucked. Where was the handsome knight? Where the cheerful fire and invitation to dinner? Where the helpful talking animals? Where the bushes laden with succulent berries? She might genuinely die here, from hunger if nothing else.

No caves offered, but she did find a hollow in a large tree, big enough to curl up in, high enough that (she hoped) nothing too dangerous could reach her. She scraped out a mix of rotten wood and creepy-crawlies and settled in for the night. Her stomach was no longer growling but aching, she was not warm and there was a knot poking into her back. And her feet were sore. Her bed at home, lumpy mattress and scratchy sheets and thin blanket and all, was infinitely better than this. She should have picked another door, and she alternated a fitful doze with imagining what some a better choice might have led to. At one point she started awake at the sound of something heavy moving close by. It stopped near her tree, and Raelene crammed her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out. Her senses strained, ears open to the huff of air through nostrils, nose alert to a sweet musky odour. The soft thud of feet on the leaf-litter resumed, fading away. It was some time before she fell back into her doze.

Dawn was noisy with birds and a repeated thin screech that sounded like a small pig being strangled. When Raelene hauled her stiff limbs out of her hollow the dew was wet on every leaf and the forest dripped like her hair after a shower. Raelene tilted her head to catch a few drops in her mouth, scrambled down her tree and staggered off. A tiny stream gave her a drink, she looked askance at some vivid orange berries and decided not to try, climbed a small rise and lost a slipper sliding down the hillside beyond. The other was a flap of sole holding on by a few threads, so she kicked it away, stepped on a thorny twig, swore loudly, hopped a dozen steps on and found a path.

Definitely a path – a thin ribbon of beaten soil curving between the trees, encroaching foliage pushed back. There were no tracks she could see, not of hooves or paws or shoes. Again Raelene felt the lack of her heritage. Her ancestors would have known at a glance what had passed this way; if human, their age and sex and possibly their names and what they had eaten the night before. All she saw was a few scuffs in the dirt. Which way? The land trended downhill to the left, so she went that way. She did not think she had the strength to haul herself up another hill. She limped along, one hand to her stomach and the other clutching her not-quite-spear. It was now more a prop than a weapon.

An hour later she was still staggering on, mostly because she could not think of anything else to do. If she sat down she might stay down, and that was no better. So when she round a large tree and saw a man standing there she was too dull with fatigue and hunger to be surprised. The first thing that occurred to her was that this man was not a Queenslander. For one thing, he had a spear – a true spear, Raelene noted, with a proper steel head and a polished shaft, not just a stick – and said something not English. She shook her head as the sounds made no sense to her. He tried again, in some different language, and then a third. She shrugged and held out her hands, palms up. The man laughed, and Raelene screamed as she was grabbed from behind. She kicked back weakly and tried to twist away. The grasp on her arms tightened painfully and she went limp. The first man came forward, looked her up and down, shook his head at her bedraggled condition, produced a length of rope and tied her hands. She was released, fell forwards and was dragged up and led off like a stray dog.