Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The air smelled of faux lemon cleaner and depression. Deft hands spun cans of soup and bags of flour so that their barcodes faced the scanners while the eyes of listless operators remained vaguely fixed on the middle distance. All except two of them...

Kane and Vivien glanced at each other often across the gap between their registers. Sometimes they smiled in response to a song on the radio. Sometimes one would widen their eyes slightly to indicate their frustration or amusement at the customer before them. Sometimes, if there were no customers and all was quiet, they'd tear strips from the receipt roll, make paper aeroplanes and throw them at each other until they received a stern eye from the supervisor.

When the jingle for aeroplane jelly came on for the 15th time that shift, Viv rolled her eyes and faked a faint, which left Kane chuckling under his breath.

"Almost there." He said in amusement.

"Almost isn't a beer in my hand and a band for my ears," Viv replied.

Kane was a solidly built man in his early twenties. His cheeky grin and biting wit got him into as much trouble as it got him out of, which Vivien referred to as 'balance.' She was slightly shorter with a smile less cheeky but a mouth more glib.

"This is insane," Viv complained. "I moved to Tasmania to get away from this sort of rubbish."

"What, summer?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"Exactly."

About an hour later, Viv shoved her work shoes into her locker, and her pale blue blouse into her satchel as she straightened her black singlet with the other hand. Out in the staff room, Kane waited for her and they hurried through the 'servants exit' at the back.

"Why do you always make me run?" Kane whined as they rounded the corner, moving at double time up the ramp to the carpark.

"Because, my dear one, if we don't get our asses out of there fast enough we'll get cornered and asked to cover for some little shit who didn't turn up for their shift," Viv said. "They do not pay me enough for me to put my evening off another four hours after a crappy day making beep. No. The beer is calling and we must follow."

"Alcoholic,” he wheezed.

Viv snorted. "It's not alcoholism if you're Australian. It's just night time."

They made their way to their favourite hang-out, a bar called Irish Murphy's. A swinging sign above the door announced that it was 'the best craic in town.' At 5:30 in the afternoon there were still booths available along the far wall. Viv led Kane over to one. They shoved their bags in against the wall then sat down to wait for the waitress to bring them some menus and take their drinks order.

"Oh sweet, merciful Christ," Kane groaned and Vivien hid her face behind her hand when the opening chords of 'Somebody to Love' sounded. A drunk woman tripped over the mic cord as she tried to get into a position in front of the stand where she could see the words up on the screen.

"Come on, she's having a good time," Viv said, between trying to swallow down her giggles.

Kane shook his head again. "It's painful, she's murdering Queen, she's murdering Karaoke and she's murdering ME!"

"Toughen up you big baby. It'll be your turn in a minute and then you can knock everyone dead. What're you gonna do?" She grinned and Kane locked his lips and made a show of throwing away the imaginary key. "Fine, freak. I will need another beer."

Two beers later, Kane's turn finally came. Vivien was more than a little drunk. She screamed and whistled and stamped her feet when he took the stage until the music started and she quietened right down. Kane had straw blonde hair and blue eyes, but worst of all was the effect his voice had on women. As he began to sing 'Beneath Your Beautiful', the ladies in the bar started to look like they were ready to swarm the stage like Marabunta and eat him alive. Kane smiled politely at them, but when his number was over he ducked hugs, handshakes, digits and indecent proposals to hurry back to the booth.

Kunanyi loomed, ballooning over Viv's head the next afternoon. It bulged out into the sky, and for the first time, Viv felt like it had an ominous aura. The dense trees gave shade all the way up to the organ pipes, and a cool breeze kept her from feeling too sweaty. On her right, the soft stone had worn away in overhangs and shallow caves, some of which were graffitied with tags and crude pictures of dicks. The further up the mountain she got though, the more pristine it felt. Her hangover had kept her in bed until lunchtime and to shake off the heavy lurgy, she’d climbed the mountain from Ferntree to the summit.

At some point the graffiti in the caves changed in character and became harder to see. Some older etching from colonial forebears who had managed to make the climb, and even more occasionally some art which looked distinctly Aboriginal in origin.

There were caves further off the beaten path if one cared to go searching for them, and Viv always held a cheeky little thrill at the idea of possibly discovering something significant.

It was late, and she'd spent far too much time off the marked trails so Viv made the decision, once she'd watched the sun start to set, that she'd leg it back down the road.

She sighed and plonked down at the edge of the bluff so that her feet dangled thousands of feet above the craggy rocks which tumbled off towards the city. Down and to the left were the organ pipes, a massive rock formation that covered almost a quarter of the mountain... She was far enough away from the noise of kids playing, and happy snappers snapping, that the wind across the pipes almost sounded like music.

When it came, the roar made her jump so badly that she lurched forward, tried to turn and slipped over the rough lip of the bluff.

The sight of the beast robbed her of all reason. It towered well over six feet tall and had broad, powerful shoulders. The skin was rough, textured like old clay, but its eyes, though set in a brutish muzzled face, shone with a wrathful intelligence.

She scrambled at the ledge and screamed in terror.

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A huge man with a shield made of white light charged into her line of sight and barged into the creature. They locked together as each forced their weight against the other. She screamed again when a bearded face appeared right in front of her, lost her grip and slid back until she held onto roots and dirt and life by just her hands.

"I've got you." He rumbled, his voice impossibly deep.

He'd skidded on his stomach to grab her and he reached over the edge with one muscular arm and gripped her above the elbow.

"Grab my shoulder." He instructed.

Viv couldn't breathe. She scrabbled madly with her feet but couldn't find purchase for her weight.

"Hey. Hey, look at me." He squeezed her arm hard, painfully hard, but it comforted her to feel the tightness. "I'm not going to let you fall. Grab on, it's OK."

Behind him, the fight had intensified. The huge man with the shield rammed repeatedly into the terrible creature, while a much smaller man with two short swords glowing blue darted around and slashed at its legs.

"Don't look at them, don't even think about them, just look at me." Viv's rescuer said. "Come on, grab my shoulder and I'll pull you up..."

With a trembling hand, Viv let go of the tree root she'd clutched and sunk her fingers hard into his shoulder.

"That's it, now your other hand." He ducked forward a little more and tilted his head to the side. "Throw it around my neck, then I'll roll over and back and you'll get pulled right up."

Letting go of that handful of earth and leaves was the hardest thing Viv had ever done, and when her hand gripped the back of his neck she left deep gouges with her fingernails. He winced but didn't complain as he hauled back and rolled over. This forced her up over the edge and he rolled with her until they were a few feet from the precipice in a tangle of limbs. Viv started to cry.

"It's OK, I've got you. I've got you." His arms moved around her as he sat them up. Behind them the fight raged on. The massive shield bearer kept the beast's attention while the much smaller sword wielder spun and slashed about the back of its legs.

"What... What...?" Viv tried but was unable to go any further.

"They've got it, it won't hurt you." He ducked his head around until he could look her in the eye. "I'm Aidan. Little bit worried about your breathing there, can you take some big slow breaths for me."

"Who..."

He rubbed her back and turned them slightly so that she didn’t see when the small, lightly built man stabbed through the creature's side and spilled its guts in the dirt while the giant with the shield held it steady. "Alright, it's alright."

"Who's this?" Mitch, the smaller man, asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Dunno, she was hanging off the cliff when I got here." Aidan shrugged. "I think she's going to need a ride back."

"Because we're a taxi service?" Mitch quipped as he wiped his sword on the hem of his shirt. The blood on it was thick and black and stank of sewerage.

"Because she's out of it and if we leave her here anything could happen," Aidan said firmly.

"Thank you..." Viv managed at last.

"Oh, hey, you back with me?" Aidan smiled at her, and despite his thick black beard, he seemed boyish and kind.

Viv nodded nervously.

"There you go, she's fine." Mitch grinned. "I mean, she only nearly plummeted to her death."

Viv's face paled and she gagged with one hand over her mouth.

"I would take it as a real kindness if you didn't throw up," Aidan told her. "Seriously, I'm a sympathetic puker, if you go, I'm gonna go... You ever had to wash vomit out of a beard?" He grinned broadly and Viv couldn't help but return the smile weakly. "You think you can stand up?"

"Yeah," She let him help her to her feet and swayed until he put one hand on the small of her back and the other on her shoulder.

"Alright there," He pointed with one hand, "The car isn't far. You live around here?"

"Just Lutana, not far..."

He kept his hand on her back lightly, "great, we're heading down the Brooker anyway, we'll drop you. You have a car or anything?"

"No, no I walked... Well, I bused and then I walked. Climbed. You know." She looked up at him helplessly. "What happened?"

"Something you probably don't want to make a big deal of." He said kindly. "Come on, we'll make sure you get home OK. Don't come up here in the dark for a while alright?"

"Are there more of those things? What was it? I mean... It looked like, I dunno, like a mutated bear or something. We don't have animals like that on the island." She babbled as he gently led her to a plum coloured Toyota Tarago and urged her into the back seat.

"It's not exactly native, no." He clipped in her seat belt when she showed no inclination to do it herself. While the others climbed in around them, Aidan casually checked her over. "Anything hurt?"

"Hmm? No, no I don't think so." She stared at the massive man who climbed into the driver's seat.

"That's Keary and Mitch," Aidan told her.

"Oh," Viv said noncommittally. She looked out the window as the trees flew by and wrapped her arms around herself.

"Are you cold?" Aidan asked. "You could be in shock."

"Or we could just be in Tasmania," Mitch said. “You know what they say, don’t like the weather? Wait 10 minutes.”

Mitch had already discarded his short swords and passed the weapons through the centre to Aidan, who stowed them out of sight. Once that was done, Aidan shrugged out of a leather harness he wore over his shirt. Viv hadn't noticed it before but secured in the harness such that it lay flat against his back was a single sabre with a carved white bone handle.

"Who are you people?" Viv whispered.

"No one special," Aidan said with a quick smile. "Probably best we leave it at that."

"Best for who?" Viv asked.

"Whom." Mitch corrected from the passenger seat with a hint of pompousness.

"Mitch," Aidan said warningly.

The little man fluttered his hands dismissively and leaned back with his eyes closed.

The trip through town was uneventful. Keary drove calmly. Five kilometres under the speed limit at all times. He used his indicators and no one ever looked at the Tarago twice.

"Whereabouts are we going?" He asked without looking around.

"Where do you live, darlin'?" Aidan asked her.

"Viv." She said quietly without looking at him. "My name is Vivien." She blinked a couple of times and looked around. "I live on the Brooker, just pull over at the corner of Risdon road, right before the lights. It's only a minute walk from there."

"OK, You sure?" Aidan pushed gently. "I can walk you to the door if you need me to."

"No, I... It's OK. And it's a bitch to turn a car this size. It's OK, really."

The car pulled to a stop and Aidan opened the sliding side door. Though there was a passenger side door for her, Viv ignored it and clambered out away from the traffic through the side door that Aidan held open.

"You're really not going to tell me what just happened." She said.

"What could I tell you at this point that you'd believe?" He asked.

Viv just stared at him dumbfounded until he reached out and patted her on the shoulder. "You'll almost certainly never see anything like it again, you'll never see us again, and once you've had a stiff drink and a nap you'll be able to convince yourself that none of this really happened." He flashed her a quick smile. "It's better that way."

He glanced back at the car where the others waited for him and sighed then leaned in to whisper in her ear. "If you need us - if you REALLY need us, go to Pillinger... Wait until the sun goes down and light a fire on the shore. Wait until they ask you who you know, and say 'Aidan Kaplan'." He straightened up and started to move away.

On impulse, Viv lurched forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. "You saved my life." She half sobbed, "I wouldn't have been able to pull myself back up... And even if I had..."

Aidan hugged her tight for a moment and even dared a kiss to her hair. "You're going to be just fine, I promise. You'll never need to look at my ugly mug again." When he pulled back he cocked his head to the side. "Remember what I said... Then never use it."

"Until I need you."

"Unless you need me, which you won't."