Kaya shrugs. “Maybe. It sounds crazy. But then this whole thing is crazy.”
I sit down on the rocky ground next to Kaya. Suddenly I feel like crying.
“I’ve had enough of all this, Kaya. I just wish ... I just want to go home.”
And there’s also what Billy said. That you can’t survive outside your own Dreaming for long. Especially girls. Even if we can find a new crystal to get out of this world, will we—will Kaya—last another month?
“Okay,” Kaya says. “There’s no point sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. If this isn’t our world we’ll just have to find another maala crystal. There must be more somewhere. But we won’t find one just sitting here.”
Kaya gets to her feet. As she does so, she stumbles. She grabs onto the side of the Stone Gate to steady herself. She seems okay, but it’s a worrying sign. I wonder if being shot as she went into the portal has affected her.
We walk down the path—that’s still there—to the clifftop lookout at the top of the Stony Stairway.
What we see confirms our fears. In our world the buildings of Baytown cover all of the flat ground between the Escarpment and the ocean. Now we can see three or four distinct clusters of buildings, like separate villages, with dark patches of forest between them. In the villages, a few house lights twinkle.
“Look over there,” Kaya says. She points further along the clifftop. I look and see a line of what look like wind turbines. They’re tall and slim, each one with three white blades turning gently in the breeze.
This definitely isn’t our Baytown.
“What if each time we go through the portal we’re moving further away from our world?” I say. “What if it never takes us back?”
“Billy says the portal takes you back to your own world.”
“Well, it didn’t this time. Or last time,” I snap.
“I don’t know. But there’s no point giving up, is there?”
I wish I could be more like Kaya. Always determined to stay positive.
“We’ll just have to go down and find out what’s there,” she says. “At least there are people. Maybe they know all about the portal. But it’s probably best not to turn up in the middle of the night. We might scare someone. Not to mention that we’re pretty tired. Let’s get some sleep and we’ll go down in the morning.”
We find a patch of flat ground and lie down. Kaya is soon asleep. Curled up like a baby. I find it harder; it’s not exactly comfortable lying on bare ground and I’m still buzzing from our race to the portal. I look at the stars and listen to the frogs croaking. An owl hoots. Tomorrow we’ll have to take our chances.
***
When I open my eyes it’s dawn and the woods are full of the screeches and chirps of birds. Out beyond the bay the sun is rising over the ocean. I nudge Kaya. “Rise and shine,” I say. “Time to find out what’s down there.” Kaya sits up and rubs sleep from her eyes.
We follow the path down the Stony Stairway to the top of Hillview Street. There’s the road but no houses. There are no people either, so we begin to walk down the hill. Daylight confirms what we saw last night; that Baytown is divided into villages, with a mix of forest and fields between them.
I think I can hear voices in the distance.
We’re almost at the bottom of the hill when we round a corner and see a girl walking towards us. She’s about our age and pretty, with long golden hair. She’s carrying a basket. My first instinct is to hide. I grab Kaya’s hand and, pulling her with me, I dive behind some bushes.
Should we show ourselves?
“What do you think?” I whisper.
Kaya doesn’t answer but, as the girl passes, she steps out onto the road.
“Excuse me ...” Kaya begins. The girl looks surprised, but not scared. I step out of the bushes behind Kaya.
“Oh,” the girl says. She peers at us. “Do I know you? I don’t think so. You’re not locals, are you?”
“No,” says Kaya. “We’re from ...” she trails off. We’ve had this discussion before. We are locals, but not in the way the girl means.
“Please, we need help,” I blurt out.
The girl looks at us calmly, as if people jump out of bushes begging her for help every morning.
“Very mysterious. Are you on the run or something?” She laughs. She doesn’t try to shoot us either, which is good.
“So,” the girl asks, “what terrible crimes have you committed?” She laughs again to let us know she doesn’t really take us for a couple of murderers on the run.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” I insist. “Honestly.”
“It’s a bit complicated,” Kaya says. “But we’re not dangerous or anything.”
The girl smiles. “No, you don’t look dangerous, if you don’t mind me saying so. I’m Beth, by the way.”
“Hi, Beth. I’m Kaya. And this is Jack,” Kaya says. “We need to find someone who knows about the binjin portal.” I can see what Kaya’s doing. Hit her with the truth straight away and see if she knows what we’re talking about. Because it will make life a lot easier if she does. But from her blank expression it’s clear she has no idea what a binjin portal is.
“Why don’t you come home with me,” she says eventually. “We can ask my mum. If anyone knows about this ... erm, portal, or whatever you called it, she will. You’d better not really be criminals, of course.”
“What do you mean?” Kaya asks.
“Mum’s the Baytown police officer. If you are on the run, you might not want to meet her. Come on, then.”
She turns and walks back down the hill. We follow. The road passes small orchards and vegetable gardens. A few goats and kangaroos graze in paddocks. It seems peaceful.
A man approaches. “Hi Beth, hope you left a few mushrooms for me,” he says, nodding towards her basket. He pauses. “Who are your friends?”
“My cousins from Canberra, visiting for a couple of weeks,” Beth says. She gives us a little wink as she says it.
“Okay, see you around.” The man says. He carries on, whistling to himself.
We reach one of the clusters of buildings we saw from the clifftop. The street names are familiar: Alpha Street, Billabong Street, Phillip Street, Brisbane Avenue. My best friend Kyle lives in Billabong Street. And the houses look similar, except there are solar panels on every roof. But the roads themselves have all been replaced by green spaces: vegetable gardens, fruit trees, small parks. There’s a tennis court on Alpha Street and a football pitch on Brisbane Avenue, where the road used to be, with proper goals and everything. Chickens peck away in enclosures, and on Phillip Street three women sit and chat on a bench beneath a mango tree. There are footpaths but no cars. Bicycles lean against the houses.
We come to a sort of housing complex, a circle of small houses around a large central building. There are bushes and lawns and footpaths and more bicycles leaning against walls.
“Here we are,” Beth says. She takes us into one of the houses. Inside it looks kind of Japanese, with little furniture except for a low table. Beth sits on the floor beside the table.
“Take your shoes off and sit down,” she says. “Mum, are you still here?”
A woman’s voice calls out from another room. “Why aren’t you at school, darling? Did you forget something?” A moment later the woman appears in a doorway, holding a toothbrush. She sees us and stops. “Hello. Who do we have here?”
“I don’t know. I found them up on Hillview Street. They say they need help. Say they came through a portal or something”
Kaya tries again. “The binjin portal, the Stone Gate, up on the High Plateau,” she says. But Beth’s mum looks as blank as Beth did.
“Give me a minute, will you?” she says, leaving the room. A few seconds later she returns without her toothbrush. She sits down cross-legged next to Beth and extends a hand. “I’m Barbara Dunning. Beth’s mum. Also Officer Dunning, Baytown police, as Beth may have told you. So ... where have you come from, again? Do you have your papers?
Identity cards?”
“We don’t have any papers, ,” Kaya says. “And I’m afraid you’re going to think we’re crazy when we tell you where we’re from. But I promise you it’s true.”
“I guess you’d better tell us then,” Mrs Dunning says.
So Kaya tells them about the Stone Gate and the binjin business, and our world, and the two other versions of Baytown we’ve visited, and Billy telling us how the portal worked, and how we need to find another maala crystal.
When Kaya finishes, there’s silence. Mrs Dunning strokes her chin. Her expression gives nothing away.
“Well,” she says finally. “I’ve heard some strange stories in my line of work but I must say that is the strangest. You do know wasting police time is an offence, don’t you?”
“Honestly, it’s all true,” I say. “We’re not trying to waste anyone’s time. I promise.”
“But why would they make up such a story?” Beth asks. “And their clothes are odd too. I’ve never seen shoes like that before.”
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “You’ll notice soon enough, in any case. Have you got a mirror?”
The mirror changes things, of course. Mrs Dunning and Beth gape open-mouthed at the nothingness where our reflections should be.
“It’s the same with cameras too, or any other recording device. We won’t show up. It’s like we’re not fully here. Something about us—I don’t know, our spirit or something—stays in our own world,” Kaya explains.
I watch Mrs Dunning and Beth to see how they react.
Beth looks nervous. She’s not smiling any more. She seems spooked.
“Are you ... vampires?” she asks.
Kaya rolls her eyes. “Not vampires again!” she says.
“Vampires are just a fairytale,” I say. “At least, I think they are.”
“And you being from another reality—that’s perfectly normal, is it?” Beth asks.
“Look, we’re not vampires. I promise,” Kaya says. “See, we haven’t got pointy teeth.” She pulls back her top lip to show her teeth. “And vampires can’t come out in daylight, remember.”
Mrs Dunning gets out her phone and takes some pictures of us. She examines the screen.
“You’re right. You don’t show up on the camera.” She scratches his head. “That is weird, I must admit. I’m going to check the police databases. What are your names?”
We tell her and she types our names into his phone. She must be able to access the police files using the phone. I’m curious to see if we show up too—if there are already versions of us in this world.
Mrs Dunning thumbs away on her phone for a while then looks up. “Okay, I’ve searched the missing and wanted persons databases. And the births register and hospital records and school enrolments. You’re not in any of those. But you could be giving us false names. I’ve also searched the recent crimes database. Nobody’s looking for anyone fitting your descriptions.”
She’s got a phone app that takes fingerprints too, and she gets us to press our fingers onto the screen of the phone.
“No matches. Still, we’d only have your fingerprints if you’ve been in trouble with the police before. But this camera business is certainly peculiar.”
Suddenly she gets up and hurries out of the room. She returns a moment later carrying what looks like a laptop computer with four cables attached.
“A cardiac machine. Checks your heart. Police issue.” She makes me take off my T-shirt and fixes the sticky pads on the end of the cables to my bare chest and watches the screen. She looks puzzled. She fiddles with the dials and checks the pads are properly stuck to my chest, then tries again.
“According to this, Jack, you have no heartbeat,” she says. “You’re not alive.”
“If this binjin stuff is Aboriginal business like you say, maybe we should visit Uncle Bob,” Beth says.
“Who’s Uncle Bob?” I ask.
“A Dunjini elder,” Mrs Dunning says. “His full name is Bob Turner. Uncle is just an Aboriginal term of respect. I’ll call to see if he’s home.”
It turns out Uncle Bob is over at Gosport and won’t be back until the afternoon. Mrs Dunning says we both look tired and suggests we have a rest while we wait. She takes two mats and blankets out of a cupboard, pushes the table to one side of the room and spreads the mats out on the floor.
“There you are. We’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”
“Do you think they believe us?” Kaya asks after Mrs Dunning and Beth have left.
I shrug. “I doubt it. Would you? But at least they seem friendly.”
Mrs Dunning is right. We are both tired. The mats are comfortable and I fall asleep almost as soon as I lie down. The next thing I know, Beth is gently shaking my shoulder.
“Time to go,” she says.
Uncle Bob lives a few blocks away, in another circle of houses. We ring and an older man with light brown skin and dark curly hair opens the door.
“Hello Barbara. Hello Beth. What can I do for you?”
“Hi Bob,” Mrs Dunning says. “Our two young friends here, Jack and Kaya, have got a strange story to tell you about a binjin rock. We were wondering if that means anything to you.”
Uncle Bob looks startled. So the binjin rock—the Stone Gate—does mean something to him. I allow myself a mental whoop of joy. Someone here knows about the portal.
“How ... how do you ...?” Uncle Bob splutters. He stands in the doorway and stares at us, then pulls himself together.
“You’d better come in,” he says.
Uncle Bob invites us to sit down at a low table like the one in Beth’s house.
“If I told you Jack and Kaya here had come through the binjin rock from another Dreaming, what would you say?” Mrs Dunning begins.
“I’d be surprised,” Uncle Bob says. “Very surprised. I’ve never heard of anyone coming through that rock.”
“But you have heard of the binjin rock?” I ask anxiously.
“Yes, I know the binjin story, but ... okay, you’d better tell me the whole story.”
We repeat what we told Mrs Dunning and Beth. Then Mrs Dunning takes out her mirror and her camera and she shows Uncle Bob how we don’t show up on either. Mrs Dunning has brought the cardiac machine too, and wires me up again for Uncle Bob’s benefit.
After she’s finished, Uncle Bob sits in silence.
“Well I never,” he says eventually, shaking his head. “Can I see your maala crystal?”
“That’s the problem,” Kaya says. “We’ve lost it. Not lost, exactly. We think the crystal got destroyed when I got shot as we came through the portal. Like an energy overload or something. We’ve got to find another one or we can’t get back. In fact we’re hoping you’ve got one.”
I hold my breath. Please let him have a crystal.
“I’m afraid not,” Uncle Bob says. “To be honest I’ve never even seen one. All I can tell you is that according to the story the crystals come from a place called the Five Termite Sisters.”
“Can you take us there?” I ask. But again Uncle Bob shakes his head.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know where it is. The story says it’s a mountain with five giant rock towers along a long, narrow ridge. That’s as much as I know. It could be anywhere in Australia.”
Uncle Bob must see the disappointment on our faces. “I wish I could be more help,” he says, “but the deep binjin knowledge is long gone. We lost so much of our culture when the Europeans came.”
“But you believe their story?” Mrs Dunning asks. “I mean, it’s pretty incredible.”
Uncle Bob considers. He seems shaken. “Well, to be honest, I always assumed the binjin story was just a fairytale. But Uncle Mick, who passed the knowledge on to me, always insisted it was true. And how would these kids even know about it? Since Uncle Mick died I’m the only person in Baytown who knows about the binjin rock. It’s secret business, you see. Then there’s the camera and the mirror. Binjin are said to be ghost-like spirits.”
>
Mrs Dunning scratches her head again. “So you’re saying... their story could be true?”
Uncle Bob nods slowly. “Yeah, it could be.”
“Wow,” Beth says.
“Do you have any idea how we can find another maala crystal?” Kaya asks again. “Unless we find one, we’ll die here. That’s what Billy told us.”
“I really wish I could help you,” Uncle Bob says again. “A few years ago I looked into the binjin story a bit. I went up to the Stone Gate on the full moon. But of course the portal doesn’t open unless someone’s got a maala crystal nearby. I tried to find out if anyone knew about the binjin rock, like the government or the army. I searched the internet and library records but I couldn’t find anything. It was the same with the Five Termite Sisters mountain. Nothing. It’s probably called something different now, you see. A whitefella name.”
As we walk back, Beth can hardly contain herself. “I can’t believe you’re from another ... reality,” she says. “It’s ... mindblowing.”
I can understand her excitement. I mean, it’s not every day you meet people from another reality. Mrs Dunning seems excited too, in a more restrained way.
I’m not sure what to feel. On the one hand, things could definitely be worse. This version of Baytown is a lot friendlier than the last one. We’ve found somewhere to stay, and people who might just believe our story, and someone who knows about the binjin rock. But things could definitely be better too, because none of that will matter if we can’t find another maala crystal.
Actually, I feel like crying. Why can’t we just be home?
“Don’t give up,” Beth says, sensing our mood. “We’ll find your crystal. We’ll search the internet.”
The different realities in this book are of course imaginary. Maybe I should call them “imaginaries”. Yet each “imaginary” is based on reality. Let me explain.
But first, let me tell you a bit about why I wrote this book.
You see, I think global warming (also known as climate change) will be the most important thing that happens in our (or, at least, your) lifetime. In fact, it might be the most important thing that happens in human history.
So before I thought about Billy and Blaster and maala crystals and binjin stones, I wanted to write a story about global warming. And I didn’t want it to be just another book of dull statistics and abstract ideas. Instead, I wanted to bring it to life; to imagine what global warming might actually be like. Not in hundreds of years, either, but in the near future, in our (or, at least, your) lifetime.