Something In The Water
by Mark Peters
Act Six - Tony's Reaction Scene
For a long moment after Aunty Pearl finished speaking, no one moved.
The breeze had returned, soft and uncertain, stirring the hem of her cotton dress. Somewhere down near the jetty a child laughed, then was quickly hushed. The world, which had seemed to hold its breath, began again.
Tony realised he had been sitting very still.
His hands were clasped loosely between his knees. He had not noticed when he had leaned forward during the telling, but his back now ached faintly. He straightened slowly, conscious of the weight of what he had just heard.
He looked past Aunty Pearl, past the elders standing like quiet sentinels, towards the water glinting between the huts. The river mouth lay just beyond, calm and deceptively ordinary.
A lake was born.
He had spent his teen years swimming there. He had fished there with his adopted family, Luke and Matt. He had walked its banks with Aaron, laughing at nothing in particular, sunlight breaking in silver shards across the surface.
And all this time . . .
He swallowed.
It was absurd, he told himself – a story, a beautiful one, shaped by generations of telling. And yet the absurdity did not take hold. Instead, something else did.
Recognition.
Not of scales and serpents and carved earth – but of exile. Of standing before the spears. Of loving and being told that love was wrong.
He had never been banished from Thompsonville. Not in the way Marwingee and Woorabull had been banished from their fires. When he had left it had been on his own terms, for his own journey. But there had been times when he had felt it, the rejection; moments when he had felt the shift in a room, the hesitation in a handshake, the way certain conversations dried up when he entered the room.
He had learned to write through those moments. He had built a life anyway. But it was always there in the back of his mind.
He glanced at Jack.
The young man stood a little apart now, gaze lowered, as though he too were still walking beside the river in that first dawn light. There was no triumph in his expression. No smugness at having shared something secret.
Only steadiness.
Tony turned back to Aunty Pearl.
'Thank you,' he said quietly.
The words felt insufficient. Paper-thin against the weight of what she had given him.
She studied him for a long moment, eyes narrowed not in suspicion now, but in assessment.
'You felt it,' she said.
It was not a question.
Tony hesitated, then nodded once. 'Yes.'
The old woman inclined her head, satisfied.
'Good. Most don't.'
One of the elders shifted his weight, clearing his throat softly, as though signalling that the telling was done. The spell, if that was what it had been, loosened.
Tony let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
'Is it . . . is it alright,' he began carefully, 'if I carry that story with me?'
Aunty Pearl's mouth curved slightly.
'You already are.'
He felt that land somewhere deep in his chest.
'But carrying isn't the same as telling,' she added. 'Some stories aren't for books.'
The reminder was gentle. Firm.
'But the message of the story . . . maybe that can be for the books.'
Tony nodded again. 'I understand.'
And he did. For once, he did not feel the familiar itch to shape what he had heard into paragraphs and plot. The story did not belong to him. It belonged to the river, to the lake, to the people standing before him.
To Woorabull, still weeping in the mountains.
He rose slowly to his feet.
'Thank you for trusting me with it.'
Aunty Pearl's gaze softened, just slightly.
'Trust is earned, writer-man,' she said. 'You've taken the first step. Don't make it the last.'
A faint ripple of amusement moved through the elders.
Tony smiled – not the polished smile he wore at book launches, but something smaller, more private.
'I won't.'
As he turned towards the path that led back down the hill, the wind lifted again, brushing across his face, carrying the scent of salt and warm earth.
For the first time in his life, the river below did not feel like water. It felt like memory.
And a short time later, as he walked beside Jack towards the waiting boat, Tony knew that whatever else he might write in the years ahead, he would never again look at Thompsonville; at its lake, its harbour, its people, in quite the same way.
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