Missing in never never l.., p.51
Missing in Never Never Land, page 51
As they sat there in a loose circle, talking, Charlie came over, asked Beck to put out her open hand. Into it he placed a flat round item which rested neatly in the palm of her hand. It was cool and heavy and felt like a stone.
She asked, “What is it?”
“What you think,” said Charlie.
She closed her hand over it and closed her eyes. It was clearly a stone and yet it was more, it seemed to be imbued with something, a presence. Keeping her mind clear she tried to focus on this presence and slowly it sharpened into something more distinct, an ancient presence of places such are rivers, deep water. She could not see its shape, just a sense of being inside and looking out into a watery world.
Sandy came over, by herself and took Beck’s hand. Now it was like there was a link formed between their minds, Sandy could see and feel what she felt and she could see and feel what Sandy felt.
She asked Sandy, curiously, “Why is this, what it this thing that makes us connected, I can sense its presence but I cannot see its shape. I only know it is a creature of the water, a giant fish or turtle perhaps.”
Then it came to her, as if an insight from inside Sandy’s mind. “I know, it is a stone which belongs to a crocodile, infused with a crocodile’s spirit. It sits inside a crocodile. It allows one to look out, as if with the eyes of a crocodile.”
Sandy nodded, “I suppose you could call it a crocodile spirit stone. It is a stone taken from the stomach of a crocodile where it sat for many years, becoming infused with its presence. A part of it lingers still. Only some can see and feel it, most cannot. Susan could, I can, you can. I guess that makes us all crocodile sisters.
When Susan sat in jail, in her moments of terror and she thought the bad crocodile spirit of Mark would overwhelm her, she would hold this stone, keep it touching her skin. And when she did, the crocodile spirit within this stone would free her from other outside spirits trying to invade her mind. She must have let some parts of them in on that fateful first day there.
But as the madness seized her, she did not want to hold this anymore. Then I feared that other spirits, bad spirits of crocodiles at that waterhole, would overwhelm her, draw her to them and consume her.
Now I hope and pray she has escaped their hold. But that thing you saw on the video, Alan told me of that. It means that part of a bad crocodile spirit lurks somewhere deep inside her and still has the power to tear at her soul. So we have to help her be safe in whatever way we can.
It may be something you can do to help her in return for what you have done. I have seen your secret in your mind and know it too. I am not one to judge, none of us are. But should she have need of us, then we are her kin. We will help her in the way sisters do. Anne is her best friend and that is a powerful bond. But only you and I share her spirit sisterhood.
Chapter 35 - Northern Seas
Vic was pleased with the positive change in Jane as the family settled into the routines of the Scottish hill farm. She seemed to pick up where she had left off her life as a 12 year old girl when last she remembered being here.
She had even taken to using her original names of Emily and Susan again some of the time. These were what her grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins called her without thinking, mostly Em, or Emily, the name of her later childhood, but sometimes Susan, her small girl name and the name which connected her to the memories to the past.
She told Vic, one day, that, now that she had his surname of Campbell as her married name and she was getting used to the names of Susan and Emily again, she did not mind him using these names for her too if he wanted. He found that all three names were now connected in his brain and he could use them all and move between them without effort, though more and more she became Susan again to him in his mind.
One day Jane asked Vic if he thought she should change her name back. He said he did not mind if she added back the old names but he did not want her to lose the name he had rediscovered her under. There was a sweet and innocent part of her that was still Jane to him.
So now while her aunt and parents mostly called her Emily and her grandparents mostly called her Susan, he called her all three as the mood took him, sometimes all together, Susan-Emily-Jane. They were all parts of one fused person and he loved them equally. Their children of course just called her Mummy so it did not matter to them.
Vic could sense this place, with its quiet and peaceful routines, was good for healing her spirit and mind. He was pleased it was so.
There was also an endless flow of people wanting to meet the children, cousins, friends of cousins, village neighbors.
Tom and Elinor said they could stay for the first two weeks. The children were rarely out of their grandparents’ sight and sometimes would make their own visits to Great Gran and Great Pa and tell them their stories of the day.
Vic worked alongside the farm manager most days to have an outlet for all his energy. He found he needed to spend most of his time outdoors or he would feel a restlessness grow inside him like a caged animal.
Jane seemed content to spend hours inside with her grandparents, parents, aunts and cousins chatting and drinking cups of tea. He loved her dearly and he found satisfaction in the stability she seemed to have gained. But sometimes he wished she had a bit of the fire that burned inside the old Susan, the ferocity and anger as well as the gentle softness. But he knew that trying to bring that person back was fraught with danger and he did not want to risk opening up any cracks to her missing years.
Still it was as if what she was now was a sweet twelve year old in an adult’s body, without the edginess of maturity. Her boundaries were very contained things and she seemed to live contentedly within them. Part of him, deep down, ached to have a bit more of the old Susan back.
So he put in hard physical days outside and loved the bare open Scottish hillsides even though a spring day here rarely reached the temperature of an Alice Springs winter day.
The day before Tom and Elinor were due to leave Tom brought out two rifles and suggested Vic walk out with him to try and bag a deer. He said that once he would have loved to do this with Susan but now she seemed to have lost her desire for the outdoor life. There was a wistfulness in Tom’s voice as he said these words.
Vic looked at him sharply.
Tom returned his look. “Yes I know,” he said, “we should just be happy to have our daughter back. Truly I am so grateful, and to you for your part. But yet I miss the fire she used to have. She does not argue with me anymore or challenge anything I say. She does not burst with the uncontained energy of before. I would not lose what we have for all the tea in China, but a part of me aches to have my little fiery Susan back.”
Vic nodded, “Me too, sometimes I cannot bear to sit around the house any more. I am a person used to doing physical things. I suppose we could go off and travel, but I do not want to break up her pleasure in rebuilding her family and memories. But yet I find I want more, to work hard in something that pushes me to the limits. The farm work is good, but easy on my mind.”
Tom said, “Yes I know. I have been thinking about it. You are not the sort of bloke to sit around twiddling your thumbs. I hear tell you’re a helicopter pilot, a damn good one at that, so your friends say. Are you still up for that?”
Vic nodded, not seeing where a job like that would come from over here.
Tom continued, “Well I know a good few people in the North Sea oil industry business, they have oil rigs, lots of them, off the coast not too far east of here, out in the North Sea. They use helicopters to ferry people and goods out and back. They use ships too, but often a helicopter is the best, it gets in and out quickly with the bad weather out there.
“So I could ask around with some of the oil company bosses I know, see if there are any jobs supplying the rigs, even maintenance might be the go. I am not sure what you would need to do to get a ticket to fly one, but I heard tell you are also a qualified aircraft mechanic. So it got me to thinking that even that would be something to get you out of here, and once you get a foot in the door there you never know.
“Anyway I will inquire if you like. After that it will be up to you to impress them. Not that I expect you to have too much trouble if you can fly like you can box. Working a machine amongst the trees chasing cattle is probably a bigger test than doing a ferry run to an oil rig.”
Vic said, “Thanks Tom, I would love if you’d ask. I think I will need to do something soon or I will go mad and I don’t want to tear Susan away from here, she seems so happy back with her family again.”
Tom nodded and the talking was done. They walked miles up and over the heather. Late in the day they got their deer, two fine heads and headed back home, struggling under the weight of the meat
Next day, true to his word, Tom made some calls and a visit to the helicopter base was arranged. The day after Vic was on his way, driving to Aberdeen, two hours east where he was to meet the head pilot.
His name was Jim; he was standing in the hangar as they stripped down a big jet turbine machine. He began asking Vic odd questions as they watched the work. He quizzed Vic on his maintenance skills and the need to see his ticket for this. Then he asked about the machines he had flown, expecting from the story that had come down from the big boss that Vic had only flown the little stuff, light and maneuverable, but not really the type for this work.
Vic told him he had endorsements for most of the main types, having done a lot of work for the mining companies with the heavy lift machines used to bring machinery and spare parts in and out of the remote NT and Kimberly mines.
The work on the machine was finishing now, so Jim said to the head mechanic, “Well roll her out, I want to give it a test flight, just to be sure, before you sign her off.”
“Aye, aye sir,” the mechanic replied.
Vic stepped back, expecting that his meeting was done for now and he would hear more later. Instead Jim turned to him and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Do I need to invite you to come too? I imagine you want to get the feel of your bum in the seat of a metal bird again, back in the air.”
Vic grinned and nodded. Soon he found himself strapped in the copilot seat while Jim took the command seat. The sound of the turbines spinning up was sweet music in Vic’s ears, then they were up and away. The ground fell away and they climbed steadily heading out into a grey eastern sky over an even greyer and lumpy ocean. They leveled at 1000 feet heading due east at about 150 knots.
Jim turned to Vic and said, “Over to you sonny boy, Vic. Put this old girl through her paces and show us what she can do.”
Vic realized Jim had taken his hands off the controls and now it was up to him. He had never flown this exact type before but it was pretty similar to some other big birds he had worked, so he took the stick in hand and steadily pushed her into a slow bank, then pulled back to feel how she responded to a climb. She was slow and heavy and the engine revs began to dip. So he piled on the power. Now she was responding as the turbines roared up the range.
Vic felt fully alive for the first time in ages. He looked across at Jim with elation. Do you mind if I work her through the paces a bit more?
Jim nodded, “Disappointed if you don’t.”
So Vic focused all his attention on getting to be as one with this huge bird, dialing up the power to feel the limit of her climb, then a gentle bank which he tightened sharply, the a dive and flare to pull her up down above the waves. He kept her straight and steady, just above wave skipping height as he pushed her forward, steadily increasing the speed, until she was roaring through the spume, skimming above wave tops at over 100 knots. Then gradually he brought her back to the original height, straight and level, almost exactly as she had been ten minutes earlier when he first began.
He turned to Jim and said, “Well I am a bit rusty yet and she is a wee bit different from others I have used but I feel I am starting to get her to sing like a bird for me.”
Jim looked at him and nodded, “For someone who has not flown in six months and with a new machine type in a different place I think you have pretty much nailed it. I would have been hard pressed to do it any better and I have over 1000 hours on type. We had better go and see my form filling secretary to work out all the dozens of forms and papers we need to get you on the books.”
It took a month until Vic was fully legal and able to fly on his own. In the meantime he shared copilot and mechanic duties, going home twice a week for a day and night with his beloved Susan Jane. The rest of the time he was a North Sea pilot. Jim seemed to have taken a special liking to Vic and was always looking for opportunity to give him good jobs and opportunities.
Summer passed with mostly good weather. Now each week Vic typically flew 3 days doing ferry trips out to the rigs and spent two days at base, checking his machine and arranging trips or doing various training and certification courses. Most weeks he had two days off at home, sometimes days together and sometimes single days.
Susan was always glad to see Vic and their days and nights together were a delight. But with all her family around her need and dependence on Vic was much reduced.
Susan’s pregnancy was how beginning to show. In his nights with her Vic took great delight in placing his hand on her belly, feeling tiny movements. It still blew his mind that he had created this new life inside her body.
It was a two to three hour drive from the highland farm to Aberdeen so when at work Vic stopped over in a small pub in the centre of town near the oil rig helicopter base. He gradually got to know both other pilots and crew who flew and maintained the machines along with others from the town, particularly the fishermen who crewed the trawlers based here.
They would tell tall tales of winter trips, huge seas and wild weather. Several had lost mates in storms in that unforgiving place out over the horizon, called the North Sea.
One of the things Vic had undertaken in his work was emergency rescue training. That way when ships got into trouble in the bad weather, a not infrequent event for the many sailing boats and fishing trawlers which plied the North Sea, he could respond if he was closest to hand. He had been assigned a crew for major search and rescue events of two others, a trained observer who also served as winch operator and a rescue man, Reg, who would strap himself to a line on the winch and go down when required.
The three of them did a weekly training run, him holding a hover with the winch team practicing a retrieval. They were getting pretty slick in this operation and could scramble and be in the air in less than five minutes. However, as Jim, old and experienced rescue pilot, told them, it was one thing to do practice drills in good weather. It was entirely different to do it for real in a howling gale.
In the autumn the first of the winter storms came. This first storm was only a moderate event with force five to six gale winds. So Vic continued his ferry operations, but got his first taste of bad weather flying in this part of the world. He marveled as the sea transformed from a one to two meter rolling swell to a five meter broken lumpy ocean, whipped into whitecaps. His skill was tested holding a flat hover over the rig with a 40 knot nor-wester. But the big heavy machine rode the buffeting well and his hands were now tuned to the slightest wind changes.
He found he could hold it steady better than most. He enjoyed the challenge of the wild weather, it was a test for his skill and he rose to the test, improving with this real life practice. Soon the weather settled again to a glorious late autumn and he enjoyed his drives to and from the highlands, watching the low slanting sun carved through a glowing sky adding to the brilliant colours of the falling leaves along the roadsides.
One day in early November, as he was driving back to Aberdeen and the weather was at its brilliant best, he heard a news flash; sudden intensification of a low pressure system in the mid-north Atlantic. It was located southwest of Iceland with a bearing for the north of Scotland and Ireland. The bad weather was set to intensify over the next twenty four hours. A Force 8 wind event was predicted. They would not fly past Force 7 except for major emergencies so he thought he might end up sitting in base. But they needed to be ready to mobilize for emergencies. At the base there was frantic activity, seeking to jam several ferry trips in today, so as to get machinery and people on and off the rigs before the weather turned bad. Vic flew four trips out and back, mostly carrying people to get the non-essentials workers off the rigs, doing crew changes wherever possible before several days when they may not be able to fly.
The next day the weather was bad, even in the shelter of the port; gusting winds, driving rain and endless grey skies. There were no flights as, even though the weather was just within allowed flight limits, it was deemed unnecessary as the essential work was done the day before.
So mostly they sat around the base and listened to the radio, doing minor maintenance but staying on high alert lest a call out came. In the fading light of the four o’clock news a new alert came out predicting a major intensification of the system later tonight to a Force Eight or even Nine event. Shortly after this a Mayday call came from a small fishing trawler in trouble in the North Sea about 100 miles northeast of Aberdeen. Vic was listed as the first responder so he called the crew and they rolled the machine out of the hangar. He warmed up the engines while they waited to see who would be given the task, whether a boat nearby could respond or whether a helicopter would be called in. This was a call that the full time helicopter rescue base would normally respond to and he was waiting as a backup.
There was a static of chatter across the airwaves, saying the nearest ship able to respond was 1-2 hours sailing time away and with heavy seas it may take longer. The regular helicopter rescue machine was already out, having just done another job. It needed to return to base to take on fuel before it could get out that far. It was an estimated 45 minutes flying time for Vic, however the weather was deteriorating and it was a marginal call whether it was still safe to fly. In the meantime one of the crew was on the phone back into town to see if he could get better information about the fishing trawler, as it was Aberdeen based. It turned out that several of the trawler’s crew were locals, well known in the town.
