Fiction: Turning Points #5

FIVE

By the time she reached the small clearing, she was gasping. It had taken all her energy to make the climb up the path from the river where her mother lay dying. 

That's what it seemed forty minutes ago, her body unmoving under the weight across her chest of the fallen tree. Drenched soil, loose roots and high winds had turned the bush into their enemy, rather than their place of sanctuary. 

~

They had left their car back at the bridge at the start of the walking trail that made its way along the river bank towards the falls. An hour of easy walking the sign said. They'd been making their way beside the roiling water as it found its way around granite boulders, huge fallen trees and occasional sandbaks nestsled into the curves of the stream. Glorious. Energising. Distracting. Almost dream-like.

It has started as drizzle, but the atmosphere quickly morphed into steady, silvery rain. They had quickly pulled on their wet-weather gear and made the decision not to go all the way to the waterfull. The already saturated shallow mountain soil became even more unstable, and the path had become an easy route for the excess water to find its way down the slope. While Bella felt cheated, the movement in her gut even touching anger, she accepted the situation.

She stayed as close beside her mother as she could without impeding her. She had become shockingly thin over the last few months. Soon her disappearing muscles and weakening sinews would no longer be able to support her weight and Bella desparately wanted to visit the falls with her one last time. Unaccountably, she found herself wondering, and not for the first time, what had brought her mother to this calamity.

The tree wasn't big. It fell without a sound. Even the river went silent. 

~

The hut hunkered up against a fall of huge boulders. Low, ancient snow gums stood as gnarled sentinels, their glistening, dripping trunks appearing like a scattering of ancient beings. Twirling leaves twinkled in the wind.

Julia felt her heart thud, saw her hands shake. But she had to get to that building. Despite the cold up there, sweat had pooled at her throat and the small of her back. Her mother lay in the mud and water. She had to find a way to save her. The cattleman's hut would have something she could use. Please, God.

Bella pushed in through the half-open door, the momentum sending her staggering into the centre of a single room. 

They were all there, what was left of her family, as she knew they would be. Her father. Her brother. And an unknown figure leaning against the stone fireplace. 

'Help me. Please, help me,' she screamed through the fog of her panic and exhaustion. 'Mum's back there. She's fallen. There's a tree.' 

No one seemed to be moving. Their faces were all turned to her, staring, eyes wide, unblinking. She felt the edge of fear.

~

'Isabella.' The vice was soft but insistent. 'Isabella. Would you like something to eat?' A woman's voice.

She knew that name. Where had she heard that name before? 

She felt the sound grind its way through her throat and into her mouth. 'Mother?'

'It's me, sweatheart. That's right. It's mum. I'm here.'

Bella felt something brush her arm, and the dry touch of softness on her cheek.

Something flashed, lingered, then faded. A small bottle. A scattering of small, oblong shapes. Glistening trees. Her dead mother.

Bella tried, tried with all her strength, to hold on to the remnants of the image.

It was always, just as her mind reached, that she knew what she had done to herself.