Burnt Land by Tua Harno

Author:Tua Harno [Harno, Tua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503943995
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2017-03-06T18:30:00+00:00

Sanna started off, following Ralda’s footprints like a trail. Ralda’s walking stick left regular tiny impressions next to her footprints, like needle pricks.

Sanna asked about the animals she saw.

“That bird is a babbler, there are different varieties.”

“That creature is a thorny devil. It drinks with its feet, as if roots grew from its heels.”

“Those lizards are goannas.”

At night they saw the enormous yellow eyes of an owl, its wings like sails in the air.

Sanna thought about simple things: Where would they stop next, what would they eat, how much water was left? She felt her feet: Were they swelling, was it time to tape her blisters? One step, another, the next. That’s what trekking was, counting steps, and losing those calculations to the wind. Sanna never made it past a hundred, and then she had to start over again. It seemed like an eternity since they had left the Great Northern Highway and headed southeast. The repetitiveness of the days made it difficult to tell them apart. Ralda told Sanna she was not permitted to keep a log.

“Don’t try to interpret what’s happening, don’t chop it up into sentences you can understand. The whole is so big that your thoughts will distort it, make it too small.”

One step, another, a third. I knew this would be hard, Sanna thought, staring at the toes of her hiking boots. They were scuffed by rocks and looked like a wildcat had clawed at the leather. She remembered having been sad when she’d left Broome, but she no longer identified that sorrow as her own. It had been replaced by a numbing clarity. She could see clearly in all directions but could only move along the route Ralda had chosen. Her sole responsibility was to follow Ralda. Without her, Sanna wouldn’t last a single day in this heat.

She felt the trek digging into her skin, drying out her eyes, sanding down her joints, chapping her lips to scabs. Sanna pictured the desert seeping through her belly to her womb, how her child now carried the desert wind, its sounds and silence.

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