Trackless: A Journey That Follows No Trails

By M.A Hill

TRACKLESS: A JOURNEY THAT FOLLOWS NO TRAILS by MA Hill tells of the power of dreams and destiny.

Is what we want what we need? Can we choose our path in life?
Set in Australia between the 1950's and 80's this book evokes a poetic vision of the vast distances of the land and the dissolving polarities between the truth of reality and the mystery of illusion. Magic and myth interweave in this novel of betrayal and deceit.

This is the story of Aidan Randell, who abandons his career as an architect in a quest for art and freedom. When he meets gifted musician, Gwenyth Chamberlain, the ramparts of the safe world she has constructed fracture into chaos.
Is it fate, foretold by Viking Ru nestones cast by the strange dancer, Dolfine? Random chance? Or the inevitable consequences of cause and effect of action and reaction?
Are they driven by profound love and devotion, or lust and desperation?
Is the treasure a priceless antique violin, or just a wooden box with strings a worthless fake?
From the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, to beach shacks and remote desert camps from sailing super-yachts and driving 4WD on outback tracks they journey into the wilderness of the soul and discover bedrock.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493135677

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Copyright © 2014 by M.A. Hill.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2014903991

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4931-3569-1

                            Softcover                          978-1-4931-3568-4

                            eBook                               978-1-4931-3567-7

Ozbookz, PO Box 450, South Fremantle

Western Australia, 2014

Ozartworks.com 20170.png Ozbookz.com image005.jpg

Author photograph by Jeremy Dixon

Cover illustration from a painting ‘Outback Roads #7’,

and Runic Illustrations by Annie Otness

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/21/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

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CONTENTS

Author’s note

A story of

DESIRE, 23%20tyr.jpg

26%20wyrd.jpg DESTINY, and

DISCOVERY 5%20ehwaz.jpg

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Jane Laws for her support, encouragement, and eagle eye for detail, and Lynn Lord for her input and suggestions, and to others for reading the manuscript.

Appreciation to my husband Ole for making my space and providing his insight when I needed it.

Thanks to all those people in my life who have given me so much and expected so little, and for the universe for providing the necessities for this story to be told.

DEDICATION

This story is for my family and for all families whose legacies are wonderful and terrible:

For brave and brilliant people and silent generations:

For my poor mother who would not have seen herself in this book:

To my dear father who is not in this book, and my caring brothers who survived with me, and for our children and their children:

To fellow wayfarers—may they find peace, love, joy and adventure in life, as I have.

1%20algiz.jpg

The rune of bright Odin, the all-father, and also the rune of dark Loki, his shade. The mouth that speaks all knowledge of the gods and the three worlds.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Viking runes depicted here are original images based on various sources, and the interpretations are my own, derived in part from the sources listed in the bibliography. Prehistoric runic inscriptions on stone and wood are preserved throughout Scandinavia and Northern Europe, retaining their power and mystery.

The Aboriginal references are used respectfully in a general sense and, in this novel, are my own interpretations. My fictional character believes she is of Aboriginal descent but has no cultural or family links to any Aboriginal people.

Trackless

Far from the ocean’s fluid embrace

The silhouette of a distant mountain

Is a violin recumbent

Between deep desert sunset skies

Bedecked with a silver waning moon

And crossed by Acrux low to the south and west,

A painter’s hand has illuminated

The vast inland of Outback desert

Red and harsh.

Marred by a signature

Carved on the barren earth

Trackless scripts a boundary fence

Between the dreams of night and day.

1

Haste ye to the wedding

3%20beorc.jpg

The quest of passage from death to rebirth

When Aidan looked back on the journey, it was as though there was some warp in his life for those days in the desert. The time compressed and expanded; the distances stretched and shrunk. The horizons distant, then abruptly compressed to a metre or two of dirt beneath his feet.

It had been a long journey, and most of it had flashed by unnoticed as his inner demons devoured his mind, as the wheels chewed up the road hour by hour. The desert road across the Nullarbor Plains was all new to him. He had not driven across before but only flown over the continent—the dry eternal plain far below him, below the clouds, a dull tawny brown with the faint streaks of roads, fences, and a smattering of the shadows of thin trees.

He had avoided roadhouses, caravan parks, towns, and all other humans. Stopping only to pick up fuel and fresh food and, on the first night, to sleep, he had pressed on westwards, leaving the great cities of the eastern seaboard behind him.

Leaving it all behind him.

After the first few hours of elation, the wild sense of freedom had vaporised, leaving a still cold hollow inside him, an empty, draughty space that the beauty of the country through which he drove could not warm or fill.

He had stopped for a dingo’s lunch of a piss and a look-around on the banks of the mighty Murray-Darling River and indifferently surveyed its wide muddy waters. It was added to his list of ‘spend some time here another time’. Ceduna, Eucla, the barren Flinders Ranges to the north, and the empty, frightening deserts that went on and on and on into the centre and then out again, he turned his back upon. At this time, on the Nullarbor track, he had been glad to have a destination, a goal to draw him on, for the feeling of driving on the edge of such an enormity of distance made him vertiginous. The road went on and on, straight as a line ruled across the vast continent.

It was not until he passed Eucla on the remote southern coast, the border between South Australia and the Great Western Third, and turned north by west into the desert to head for Kalgoorlie via Norseman that a sense of arrival overcame the need to flee. He began to see the country around him.

Two days without sleep in the slow vehicle had brought him to the end of the edge of the remote emptiness of the huge dry central desert plain.

Curiously, from that emptiness, a quiet, impersonal, soothing calm seeped in. The far horizons, totally flat, the consistent lack of form or colour in the landscape, and the lack of input into his writhing brain brought about a sense of solidity in the centre point of his frail soul.

He ceased to drive himself onwards without rest. His progress slowed.

He would stop and stare out from the shelter of the cab of his vehicle at the surrounding land.

Not yet, it was not yet time to make it his, to render his vision of the empty desert of his country onto canvas with colour, paint, and line. It was at least time for him to be in it, in the centre of a sea of light and shadow, and allow it to permeate his vision and let the stark pureness of it wash him clean, sterile.

He would sit and watch the day pass into night, unmoving. His eyes fixed on the cloud shadows as they drifted across the plain, the clouds as they wandered, forming and un-forming in the skies that changed their hue from red to blue, to red to black of night.

He lost count of the days that he hung static in the desert. Finally, he woke one morning, slumped over the steering wheel, and realised that he had driven off the road over the soft edges, skidded on the gutter, and come to a sudden stop against the trunk of a strong, old banksia tree.

Getting out, he looked around with fresh eyes. It took him minutes to realise that the stink was that of his own body and the foul taste was in his own mouth.

He stripped down, amazed at the state of his clothes and appalled at the smell. He lit a small fire by the side of the truck, and he used it to burn his clothes and heat a few litres of water for a good, warm, soapy wash.

He had the scissors in his hand to trim his hair, and then, he put them away. It felt good—the length of his hair on his neck and the stiff, protective bush of hair on his face. This was how he was meant to be. A man had hair on his face and on his body and on his head. He need no longer womanise himself with bare cheeks or mutilate the natural flow of his hair.

The grey suits he had given away with the old life, and now his transformation into himself could proceed here in the desert. With no model but himself, he could allow himself to be.

Taking out his cell phone, he discovered that the day was Tuesday and that he still had far to go. He ate, opening a tin of rice dessert, sweet and milky. He calculated. He set the food down and whistled aloud. He had been wandering for three weeks and could not remember in that time seeing another living thing.

Not one person, not a camel, a kangaroo, an emu, a sheep, wombat, lizard, or snake. Not even a bird. Not even a bush fly.

He looked down at his bare feet and noticed that the soil around him was bare, sandy.

Not even an ant.

He threw back his head, and a strange sound came out of him, from his mouth.

He slapped his thigh. He laughed and then laughed again. Slapping his thighs, he began a strange hump-backed hopping dance, interspersed with yells, yodels, whoops, and roaring noises.

‘Hot damn!’ He raised both his fists to the skies, now clouding over without any sign of rain.

He heard then the first sound for many days.

The distant, gloomy, miserable cark! of a raven, and another cark!—closer.

There was a crinkle in the roof of his universe as the two birds took flight, and he watched them rising, circling, and then heading away west.

The air felt sweet and fresh on his bare skin. He took a deep breath, then turned back to his vehicle. The tank was empty, and it took time to refuel from the jerrycans of spare fuel on the roof rack and even longer to bleed the engine to start it.

He left the engine going, idling, while he dressed in clean jeans and shirt and socks and good boots. He even put on a jumper. The air was chill. Winter was coming, and the nights were always cold in the desert.

He backed the complaining vehicle out over the ruts and turned west, following where the crows had gone. West by north, on the highway to Norseman.

Kalgoorlie could wait, he decided, for another time.

He still could find time if he pressed on to take the southern route to Esperance, Albany, and drive through the great ancient forests of the Timber Country, Pemberton, Manjimup—just dots on the road map. He could visit the great trees on his way to Perth for the wedding.

Over 2,000 kilometres away in a great house overlooking the city and the Swan River estuary, the wedding preparations were well in hand.

The father and his two daughters had been totally devoted to this event for over a year since the engagement of Aimee, the youngest, had been announced. It was the merging of two old families—old money, land, livestock, minerals. Whatever the west could yield, they had taken it as by right. Brian Kelly did what he wished, with whom he wished, and raised his daughters to be good and not too clever. Their roots were in the early days of the colony, before the convict era, back in 1828 when younger sons with money and no future in the old country left home and took their fortunes in the great South Land.

However, Gwenyth, his stepdaughter and the oldest, was still unmarried. He would have to make some arrangements for her eventually, but meanwhile she still was useful. The best that could be said for this quiet, distant, miserable streak of a girl. Dark and dismal, he thought of her.

Gwenyth did not allow herself to think about the great social event. She had not been in the press photos and refused to be a bridesmaid when she was asked.

It was just a formality and no one expected her to participate.

Jack, Brian Kelly’s only and favoured son, was musical. Although athletic and studious, he would play the organ, so Gwenyth could favour the party with renditions on the violin.

It would be beautiful. It was organised.

Aidan was not the only guest travelling to the wedding. The diaspora of Kellys and Mulcahys was global, and flights and bookings had been organised by Brian’s secretary. The great historic Esplanade Hotel on the riverfront was booked for accommodation, and the premier chef dedicated to preparing the wedding breakfast to the most exquisite standards.

Gwenyth was unmoved by it all. Or appeared so. If her morning skies were more grey and her days more shadowed, she ignored it. She kept to her schedule, did not allow her mind to stray.

If there was one thing that gave her happiness, it was that Jack would be there. She had been forbidden to contact him now that he was out of her care and in boarding school, but her young life had been dedicated to the boy, and he was all that she loved in the world.

*     *     *

Aidan was driving, but his mind was far away, and missing the turn-off, he did not realise for almost an hour that it had gone away behind him.

He nearly stopped his new off-road four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser and pulled over then and there but decided instead to carry on until he could find a truck bay or an overnight camping spot at the roadside to spend the night. He had tried to turn back, but as soon as he faced towards the dark sky to the east, he became oppressed, almost nauseous, and overpoweringly exhausted to head back towards Sydney and all that he had left behind.

Around the roadway stretched the undulating, desolate lands. Sparse, twisted mallee, banksia, and hakea trees were scattered on the land, their trunks dark scribbles and the greyish foliage spattered thinly, too low to break the distant sharp, clear line of the horizon. The underscrub consisted of low thickets of wodjil, with grey-leaved grevilleas, broom honey myrtle, and yellow-flowering puffs of acacia. Clouds were scattered like grazing sheep on the pure china-shining blue above. And he smiled in anticipation, for the golden time would come in an hour or two, and regardless, he would stop, get out, maybe take the camera to capture it, or just watch and enjoy the changing light.

He drove on for another hour. The vehicle was neither fast nor comfortable, and on the bitumen highway, it was out of its element as it was designed to take him off the road, into the scrub, and away where he could be with his land.

Excitement had been building in him today. But it was a thin, sour thing and had no warmth, no blaze to it. But it was there, and it filled the empty cold space that he had been skirting around, watching within himself for nearly a year now.

It was coming, though.

The power was regenerating, and he was glad of this thin, nasty excitement, this nervous, twitchy feeling, like quick glances behind at the shadow that followed him.

He longed for a smoke but would not stop, not until he found a place to stop for the night—a safe, kind, empty place, with a screen of bush for his campfire— where he could lay his strung-out body on the cold earth, wrapped in the swag, on the groundsheet, on the earth, to stare into the darkness, unsleeping, glad to be awake in the darkness in the night, listening to the night sounds, waiting peacefully, watching patiently for the first predawn lifting on the horizon, the dead chill of the early hours, and the anticipation of the glorious luxury of the fiery dawn skies.

He decided to count his blessings. Betsy, his mother had been a great blessing counter, although now that he had committed the unforgivable, her stoic habitual pride had collapsed before him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Jesus H. Christ, Mum! It’s hard enough to tell you now.’

‘But why did you marry her if you were that way?’

‘I’m not that way, Mum.’

‘But you just told me—’

He interrupted, ‘You didn’t listen, Mum. You didn’t listen.’

‘I know what I heard, Aidan. I know what you said to me. It’s a good thing your father isn’t alive to hear it.’

His control evaporated in the heat of his blood. He heard it singing in his ears, high and thin. ‘You mean it’s a good thing he isn’t around to hear it.’

‘I told you he is dead.’

‘Well, he was alive last time I saw him, so if he’s dead, how come he writes to me?’

‘He what!’

‘Writes to me, Mum,’ he went on cruelly, glaring at her pale face. ‘Every year, on my birthday, he sends me a card.’

‘He never does.’

‘Yes, so he does.’

‘Why are you telling me this now? Why do you have to tell me these things now?’ The woman sat down. Her body had thickened as maturity had overtaken her. And now that she was running into old age, she had stiffened. But now, Betsy had collapsed as though the power that held her spine straight had melted and run out of her, like the blood that had left her face pale.

‘At least I never lied to you, did I, Mum?’

She fixed her eyes on his. ‘No.’

‘Would you rather that I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s your way, though, isn’t it?’

‘Sometimes the time for the truth is not right, love. Sometimes we can’t take the truth. I never lied to hurt you, I lied to make it easier for you . . . ‘

‘How could telling me that my father had died make it easier for me?’

‘Would you rather have lived the life of a bastard? The son of a man who had never cared enough for you or your mother, to hang around long enough to meet you, even?’

‘I don’t know why he left, Mum.’

‘Wouldn’t you have blamed me? Maybe blamed yourself?’

Aidan looked down at the floor. ‘Maybe.’

‘Well, it was my fault.’

He felt an awful anguish rise in his heart. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Mum.’

‘No. It’s true. Since this is a day to be truthful, you might as well have it.’

‘That’s fair.’ His voice was matter-of-fact.

‘We only ever did it once.’

He looked away, embarrassed. ‘Er, Mum.’

‘You’ve told me about your sex life.’ She used the words precisely, as though trying them for the first time. ‘Sex life,’ she repeated. ‘Just because I’m your mother doesn’t mean I’m not a human.’

‘No.’ He could not say more and lacked the courage to face her down and stop this flow of unwelcome information.

‘So. As I said, only once. He wanted more, of course, but I felt so guilty, for even that once, that I wouldn’t again. And then, I’m the unluckiest woman in the world. I got pregnant after just that one time. Well, I couldn’t tell him, could I? And then, he got fed up with me, and off he went. And that was it.’

‘But you and he got married. He said so.’

‘He said so, I said so. I never said we didn’t marry, son. I only said we only did it once.’

‘My god.’

‘He couldn’t help himself. I understand that. I couldn’t help myself either. We were all stupid in those days. I had the religion before we met, and I’d wanted to be a nun . . . ‘

‘Mum!’ he interrupted, ‘you’re not even a Catholic.’

‘Well, I know. But I wanted it, anyway. I wanted the long black gown and the white edging and the big cross hanging on my chest. Just sitting in a cold place, in a dark place in a little room of my own, without the kids and the cousins and everyone yelling at me all the time. I never wanted to have a kid, I never wanted it. I’d been with Mother for the last two, and even the one—the very last one that killed her—and I couldn’t help it, or her, but after she died I got stuck with the rest of them. I wanted to be a nun.’

He was silent. He reached across and took her hand, but she pulled away without acknowledging him.

She went on speaking, ignoring him, looking at the wall. ‘Even though I knew it was the faith that killed her, all those babies. I knew it was her faith, and I even could understand that Dad gave up on her because he couldn’t help her and he couldn’t help himself.’

‘Mum.’ His voice came out rough and grating.

‘And I understood why he married again—the nurse, a young girl, not much more older than me. I understood, but I couldn’t stand any more of it, not any more. When she started to have babies too, well, I ran away and left them all to it.’

‘You worked for my dad, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, in his office. I answered the phone and learnt to type his letters, and I kept his cash books.’

‘He told me you were the prettiest thing he ever saw.’

She faced him, aware of his presence again. ‘He said that? When did he say that?’

‘Last time I saw him. When I was in Mooloolaba last year.’

‘Is that where he is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he ask after me? Did you talk about me?’

‘He’s remarried, he has another wife and a son, my other brother, Vere’

She gave a short exclamation, like a cross between a laugh and a sob. ‘I understand. He couldn’t help himself.’

‘For God’s sake, Mum, stop saying that. You make me sick saying that "he couldn’t help himself.’’’

‘It’s the truth. It’s what I’ve learnt. We’re all just victims of ourselves. When we do these destructive things, we just destroy ourselves. We can’t help it.’

‘I’m not destroying myself.’

‘You’re running out on your wife and your daughter.’

‘I just told you, Mum. She’s not my child.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

‘True.’ He gave a horrible laugh. ‘How true.’

‘And now you’re running away like a lost soul.’

‘I’m taking my freedom.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘More than anything.’

His mother looked thoughtfully out the window, at the garden she had made, the trees she had planted, the grass that she had nurtured through the hot dry summers, the flowers that she had groomed and conversed with, and the quiet street beyond. On the other side of the street was the forest—her own private park—and in it lived the creatures that she called to her and fed. The big-beaked kookaburras that came in the afternoon and the quiet shadows of the kangaroos that came to the bowl of scraps she put out at night and the blue-tongued lizard that fancied itself hidden by the brick retaining wall—which he had built her clumsily one school holiday when he was twelve—that came to drink the milk she put out for it in the early morning.

‘I can understand that,’ she said. ‘But not how you’re doing it.’

‘I’m just leaving, that’s all.’

‘You’ve chucked in your job, Aidan. I can’t understand it.’ She began to cry. ‘I can’t.’ She sobbed. ‘It’s the most awful thing, Aidan. After all these years, after all your study, and with your talent, you’ve just chucked it all away.’

‘I’ve sold out to my partner, Mum. I can always go back to it.’

‘Could you?’

‘If I had to,’ he acknowledged grimly.

‘That’s what I mean. You always wanted to be an architect. That’s all you ever wanted, ever. You’ve worked and worked and worked. You’ve made a name for yourself. You’ve worked and worked, seven days a week, at all hours. I was glad when you married because I knew you were lonely . . . ‘

‘You told me you couldn’t stand Nancy’ he interrupted. ‘You called her the cold bitch. So come on, don’t give me that.’

‘Well, I knew she was a cold bitch,’ his mother admitted, frowning. ‘But I thought you wanted her.’

‘Did you!’ He grinned suddenly.

‘But I did think she’d behave herself. She was so glad to be married to such a successful man—a famous man. I never thought she’d go off and do it with someone else.’

‘Nor did I. And I’m hardly famous, Mum, but I did make a good living from it.’

‘And now you’re going to be a painter.’

‘Yes.’

‘You sound like your mind is made up.’

‘It is.’

‘I don’t