Death is Forever

couldn’t dull. “We’ll be able to find both shade and shelter at the base of Bridget’s Hill.”
    “And water?”
    He didn’t answer. He’d never lied to her. He didn’t plan to start now.
    Erin stared at the rugged thrust of land that was their destination. It looked very far away. She forced herself to walk forward.
    For the first few steps Cole stayed beside her, ready to catch her if she fell. Watching her ragged progress tore at him, but he knew it would be stupid to carry her one step farther than he must, because his own stride was uneven, his own vision uncertain, his own body succumbing to dehydration and savage heat.
    The teasing swirls of rain-scented wind lured Erin forward. Slowly she pressed on toward the hill she’d first seen in photographs that had been taken when Abelard Windsor had still been young enough to believe in a woman’s love.
    Bridget’s Hill seemed to be retreating a step for every one Erin walked.
    “Are they moving it?” she asked finally, her voice raw. “We aren’t getting any closer.”
    “Halfway,” he said. “We’re halfway there. The flat ground and the heat waves fool you.”
    They walked on another half mile, then another. Gradually the ground fell away beneath their feet in a long decline. The hill loomed even larger above the depressed earth, crouching over the land like a demon wrapped in shimmering waves of hot air.
    Erin stumbled over a bit of spinifex. Cole caught her and supported her, drawing one of her arms across his shoulders and anchoring it with one hand while his other arm locked around her waist.
    “Leave me—here,” she said.
    He didn’t bother answering.
    “Damn it— leave me —”
    “Don’t talk,” he said. “Walk.”
    Half carrying Erin, half dragging her, he pulled them toward the dark, ragged limestone formation crouching above the steamy flats. Thunder rumbled directly overhead. Neither of them noticed. Their entire beings were fixed on the darker shadow of land rising above the shimmering flats.
    The closer they came, the more certain Cole was that Erin had been right. It was Bridget’s Hill looming over them.
    She staggered and would have fallen if he hadn’t already been supporting her. He waited, breathing hard. After a minute she straightened and resumed walking, or trying to.
    Two hundred yards from the base of Bridget’s Hill, they stumbled across the remains of a bonfire. The charred ends of branches were partially buried in red sand. The fire had been huge. This was the gathering spot of several groups. Broken beer bottles and crumpled cans of Black Swann ringed the fire. There was no way to know the age of the tracks scattered everywhere, only that the Aborigines had visited this site since the last wet.
    A shaft of lightning arced down to the top of Bridget’s Hill, dimming for an instant even the savage light of the sun. Thunder followed instantly, waking Erin from her exhausted daze. Air twisted and rushed past them as though disturbed by a ghostly force. She shuddered and swallowed dryly.
    “It’s sacred—ground,” she said.
    “Everything is, to them.”
    “Them?”
    She blinked and looked around. For the first time she realized she was standing in the midst of a huge circle of burned wood. There was a ring of packed dirt, then another ring of broken glass and discarded beer cans.
    Slowly Cole and Erin walked away from the bonfire to the blocks of limestone rubble that had collected at the base of Bridget’s Hill. The steeply sloping landform was more mesa than hill, more reef than either, a massive network of compressed, interlocking, water-soluble stone that had been buried in the outwash of a higher, younger Kimberley Plateau. Now the dead sea’s limestone bones were slowly being resurrected by erosion.
    Cole looked at the steep, eroded limestone and knew that only a fey, wild white girl would think of climbing it, and only an equally wild white man would follow her up to take her picture. The ancient limestone had been eroded in unpredictable ways. The top of the formation would be a network of deep cracks and crevices, potholes and solution channels, a tortured landscape where nothing could live but lizards or birds. There was no way of knowing whether Bridget’s Hill was the last remains of a once-huge limestone mass or the tip of a stone iceberg that went deep beneath the dusty lid of soil.
    No matter how carefully he looked, he didn’t see any point along the ruined face of the limestone