Dragon's Pupils - The Sword Guest (part 1) Read online

tell me any details; she had to rush home.’

  Henry was going to say something but stopped. He was staring through the sliding glass door. ‘Mice!’ They both ran towards the door. In amazement, they watched the mice, dozen of them, scurry across the yard and disappear in a hole under the fence.

  ‘Wow! Boy! I’ve never seen so many mice at once,’ exclaimed Henry.

  It was even more astonishing to Liz that their cat simply sat and watched the mice walking under her nose. ‘What’s wrong with Molly? She’s just sitting there and watching.’

  ‘Maybe she’s become a vegetarian,’ joked Henry.

  Liz laughed, and was about to reply when she heard screaming. She dashed to the front door, and burst out, Henry hot on her heels.

  ’Go away, go away, go away!’ Sue’s hands covered her eyes; her feet in elegant pastel joggers stamped, and her voice rose higher with every word. At her feet a group of mice scurried around her and across the driveway. Henry laughed.

  ‘Stop it, Henry.’ Liz put an arm around Sue’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, just some harmless mice. They’re gone now.’

  ‘Ooh, I hate mice! Are you sure they’re all gone?’ Sue peeped through her fingers and put her hands down, looking around as if she feared a mouse ambush.

  ‘Come inside. Would you like a glass of water?’ No sooner were they inside than Sue started screaming again. This time Liz was inclined to join her.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? It’s just a cockroach.’ Henry got a handful of paper towels from the kitchen, and picked up the huge cockroach; at least four inches long, and threw it into the garden, where it scurried under a bush. ‘All done.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to wash your hands?’

  ‘Later. What’s up?’

  Sue took a deep breath. ‘Fred just found out that the mining company is going to open the mine this afternoon.’

  ‘What do you mean, open the mine?’

  ‘They’re going to blow up Wave Rock.’

  ‘What?’ Liz and Henry shouted at the same time.

  ‘Yes. So Fred and other EPP (Environmental Protection Party) members are going out there to protest, and they’ll be here to pick us up at quarter to nine.’

  ‘That’s right now.’ Henry stared at his watch. ‘Right, let’s go.’

  ‘But we haven’t told Mum and Dad,’ said Liz.

  ‘How do we do that? They don’t even have a mobile phone. Just write them a note. They always agree with us,’ replied Henry.

  Liz scribbled a note while he grabbed water bottles and a pack. ‘Are you going in those clothes, Sue?’

  Sue looked down at her miniskirt and cute little top. ‘They’re the latest fashion.’

  ‘Grab a pair of old jeans from my room. You can’t go to a protest like that.’ Liz saw Sue about to argue, and added, ‘They might get dusty.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Sue disappeared, and returned in an old pair of jeans and a baggy T-shirt. A toot came from the road.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Henry burst out of the door, the girls close behind. Liz looked at Sue, who was tying her hair back. Once she decided to do something, she didn’t do it half-heartedly. It was one of the things Liz liked about her.

  Liz grinned. ‘Let’s have an adventure.’

  2

  Wave Rock

  The Four-Wheel-Drive-tourist bus was full of members of EPP. Liz was impressed that Fred had been able to hire the bus and gather so many people in such a short time. He was so efficient. Henry and Sue found seats together at the back, and the only place left was right next to Fred himself, who was driving. Liz slid into it, feeling shy. Fred smiled at her and she felt herself blushing. She was glad when he turned away again and concentrated on the road. Sue and Henry talked and giggled in the back seats, but everyone else was quiet for most of the long drive. Liz was glad she didn’t have to make conversation, because every time she was near Fred, her tongue tied up in knots, or said the most stupid things that made her groan inside. He’s just Sue’s big brother, she told herself, but it made no difference.

  Her hands were in the wrong place. She crossed her arms; it seemed an aggressive gesture. She moved her hands beside her hips, but felt very silly. Her face burned. She was sure Fred was laughing at her.

  Pretending to look at something on the far side of the road, Liz glanced at Fred. His handsome face looked very serious, his eyes focusing on the road. He might not have noticed what she was doing after all. Liz felt a bit easier and sat up, but at the same time, she felt quite disappointed. Whenever Fred looked at her, he was always serious. She had heard people say that Fred could become the youngest senator in Australian history, and that he might become Australian president—assuming Australia would be a republic one day. No wonder he had a sort of business-like manner. Liz couldn’t blame him; and besides, the only things she could ever talk to him about without embarrassing herself were environmental activities, like tree planting, or cleaning rubbish along the coast. He looked at her seriously then, and spoke to her seriously.

  Liz wished that he would look at her in a different way, even in the way he looked at his sister. Sometimes, Liz felt jealous of Sue, who was able to laugh and joke with Fred. Sometimes they even wrestled together. Liz sighed.

  The strange morning fog lifted as they drove south. They moved through the forested hills to York, and slid through the quiet Saturday streets. As the bus slowed coming to a STOP sign, Liz noticed a turtle near the lamp-post. Its head slowly stretched out of its shell, and it started crawling across the road. Cars roared forward, only centimetres away. The poor turtle contracted its head and legs back to its shell.

  ‘Let me help it,’ said Liz.

  ‘Liz, I understand your feeling towards the turtle,’ Fred smiled at her. ‘I feel the same. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to help it; trust me, it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Look! More!’ Without meaning to, she pulled the lever that opened the door and jumped out. There were loads of them. She picked up two and carried them across the street to the grassy bank leading to the river. Behind her she heard footsteps as other EPP members climbed out and helped other turtles across. In a few minutes the work was done; everyone piled back into the bus and it drove off. Fred gave her a measured nod.

  ‘You were right, Liz. Sometimes I forget that small things are important too.’ Liz looked at her hands, folded comfortably in her lap, and settled contentedly in her seat.

  A few kilometres later they passed a huge red kangaroo, dead at the side of the road. Then another, and another. The protesters, who had begun to talk a bit after the turtle incident, fell silent as they passed body after body.

  ‘I didn’t know so many cars used this road,’ said Liz in a small voice.

  ‘They don’t, usually,’ said Fred. ‘Or so many kangaroos, either.’ He slowed down a bit. ‘If a roo jumps out, all you can do is run straight into it. Otherwise you can skid and kill people.’

  ‘Are people more important than kangaroos?’ Liz asked. Fred smiled at her, but didn’t answer; he was slowing and turning off onto a forest track. As the bus made the turn, Liz saw police cars and flashing lights in the distance.

  The road was unsealed, just wide enough for the bus to drive on, and rough. Liz clung to her seat as they bumped and tilted along the narrow road. Now she understood why Fred was using a four-wheel drive bus.

  They jolted along for almost an hour, and Liz felt her insides would never untangle. Just as she decided they would never reach Wave Rock, the forest fell away and, as suddenly as scenes changed in the movies, vast red desert dotted with low shrubby bushes appeared. The bus turned, driving along the edge of red gum forest.

  A group of kangaroos burst out of the forest in front of them. Fred braked sharply. Something thudded against the bumper. Fred stopped and climbed out; from his expression, Liz guessed that no kangaroo had been killed. Then, as he climbed back into the driver’s seat, hundreds of kangaroos bounded out of the forest into the red desert. Emus, the f
astest running birds on earth, sprinted among them, and on the red sandy ground geckos, goannas, and blue tongue lizards crawled; black-headed pythons, tiger snakes, and dugites zigzagged; wombats, quokkas, wallabies, bush rats, echidnas, bandicoots, made a moving carpet rolling out across the vast red sand. Above, rainbow lorikeets, white cockatoos, crimson rosellas, tawny frogmouth owls, wedge-tailed eagles, and thousands of other birds darkened the bright sky and made thunder with their wings.

  The bus became dark. All Liz could hear were grunts and scrapes and flapping and panting.

  Twenty minutes later, the animals were gone as if they had never existed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Sue, who had crept forward and had an arm over her brother’s shoulder as she stared at the dust cloud the animals had raised.

  ‘It must be an earthquake coming. I read about it somewhere; whenever a disaster’s going to happen, animals escape like this. They have an instinct for sensing danger beforehand, and humans don’t,’ said Henry.

  ‘But Western Australia’s never had an earthquake,’ said Liz.

  ‘Then it must be a volcano eruption, except we don’t have any. No, I’ve got it—t has to be a bushfire,’ stated Henry.

  ‘Bushfires happen here all the time, but when did you see animals behaving like this?’ said Liz.

  ‘It must be a massive bushfire,’ replied Henry.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, we have to do what we have to do.’ Fred started the bus again, and everyone breathed the fresh moving air with relief.

  Approaching Wave Rock, Liz wondered whether she would dare to fight the police if they tried to arrest her. Her stomach sank when she imagined being dragged into a police car. She imagined her parents watching her being arrested on television, and wished she had been able to speak to them before she came. They would worry.

  ‘Here we are,’ Fred said, and the bus stopped with a jerk, pulling her out of her thoughts. She glanced around.

  They were not the first to arrive. A small group of protesters had already chained themselves together and was chanting and waving placards.

  ‘Animal rights party,’ Fred told her, waving at the woman who seemed to be in charge. ‘This way, everyone, and bring the chains.’ He led the EPP group forward, and they joined themselves to the chained group. A television helicopter hovered overhead, and then came down to land in a storm of dust. When Liz could see again, another group had arrived.

  ‘Look,’ she said to Henry, who was chained next to her. ‘That’s Professor Smith.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Sue, on her other side.

  ‘Professor Smith. I met him at an environmental rally once; he’s a specialist in ancient religions and stuff. And that old man, next to him, isn’t that Mr. Dingo? The one who came to our school and talked to us about Aboriginal spirituality?’

  ‘So it is,’ said Henry. ‘Wonder what they’re doing here?’

  ‘Well, this is a sacred Aboriginal site, so perhaps they’re protesting too,’ said Sue. She flipped her hair. ‘Do you think we’ll be on television, because my hair’s a mess?’

  But before the cameras could roll, a group of soldiers arrived, and things got hectic. Bolt-cutters appeared, and the line of protesters rolled and wriggled to make things difficult. Liz was vaguely aware of more people arriving, and scuffling and cursing as soldiers tried to clear people out and cordon off the area. The bolt-cutters came nearer and nearer; Henry had been cut free, and was being hauled to the back of an army truck. Liz twisted and heaved, trying to stop the soldier getting a grip on the chain, but she too was cut away and dragged to the truck. She had dust in her eyes. She heard Henry’s angry voice yell, ‘Take your hands off me’, and turned around, seeing two soldiers pinning Henry in the red dust.

  ‘Let him go!’ Liz forgot her fear about fighting with police,