Rogue Intensities by Angela Rockel

Author:Angela Rockel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UWA Publishing

JUNE

Under foot

Cadmus settled in Ogygian Thebes, and there he killed the Aonian dragon, guardian of the spring of Ares. Athene tore away the teeth from the dragon’s jaws and bestowed them as a gift upon Cadmus and Aeetes. And Cadmus sowed his half on the Aonian plain and founded an earthborn clan of warriors, of all whom were left from the spear when Ares did the reaping.

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica III, 1179–8742

I thought the eagles had gone, as if, recruiting them as images of my fear for my friend’s safety, I’d conjured them away – you bright-eyed riders overhead, pass on. They were here, winding their triple gyre high and low over the valley, and then the air was empty. And two wedge-tailed eagle bodies were found, dumped under a piece of plastic beside a road a few kilometres away (I thought it must be them, surely – their territories are huge), with the bodies of a sparrowhawk, a brown falcon, five Tasmanian devils – one a female with young in her pouch. Someone had baited a carcass and waited to see what would come.

I searched for the eagles each day. One night I dreamed I saw three, then four, then more each time I looked, until there were seventeen weaving a cat’s cradle of flight in the gulf over the river. A couple of days later as I crossed the high paddock beside the house I heard ravens call the eagle-warning – aaaouurrr? aouuaaaarrr? – and over the trees appeared the upward-curving wingtips of one, two, three – four wedgetails. Has the young one found a mate? Is the new bird a widow or orphan of the two that were killed?

Most days I walk south–north and back again along the road that passes our gate, following the ridge that forms one side of the river valley. Usually the dog comes with me; she trots ahead to check the wallaby/quoll/devil/cat/bandicoot/dog/narkie/ horse-and-rider scents, and to seize fallen pine cones as part of a throw-and-chase game. Her paws print the fine brown dolerite gravel used to maintain the road, but under that in places, the hard, knapped-stone surface of an old macadamised wagon-way can be seen.

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