Lost Girls (11 page)

Both her father
and mother loved the early Norse customs. So, on that sad day,
following the way of their warrior ancestors from time immemorial,
they had done their own boat burial. Her father had dug a huge
hole, it had taken him days. Then he had placed his Elle and the
much loved boat together into the ground, so the boat could carry
her into an afterlife where her father had a dream of meeting her
again when he made his own journey. It was what he had promised her
as she lay dying and he had faithfully fulfilled his promise.

The years that
followed had been hard and lonely years for them all; their
mother’s bright smiles and golden hair had lit up all their lives
and her absence was a great hole.

But life had
continued on. They had moved a year later to Stockholm, where her
father had got work in a factory. Elin had moved from the village
school to a big school in the city and got good grades. But all her
friends, family and teachers said that Elin had a restless soul, a
sort of wanderlust, endlessly dreaming of the Viking legends and
how she could in some part recreate them in her life to come. She
had taken her mother’s looks, not in totality, but the golden hair
and the blue eyes were the legacy. Her sister had the rest of her
mother’s face, the chin and nose; Elin’s were stronger, like her
father’s. But Elin was striking in her own way if not a full
classic beauty. And she could sense the power it gave her to make
her way in the world.

She had her
first man when she was fourteen, a teacher in her school. She had
stayed behind after lessons; working away at her desk, she could
feel something inside her drawing her to him. He was married but
young and handsome, and she wanted to know what this boy girl thing
was about. He had come up behind her as she sat at her desk and,
after initially putting his hands on her shoulders, he had fondled
her breasts. She was a willing participant and had encouraged his
advances. They had ended on the carpet in the classroom, with
blinds drawn and doors locked to keep any curious passers-by out.
It happened a few more times before she moved on to other pursuits.
She learned that moving on from people was easy to do, even though
they shared her body none got deep into her soul to the place of
her dreams.

After that she
had experimented with other men and a couple of women, learning how
to pleasure her body and theirs. One of her girlfriends got her a
prescription for the pill which she had then taken religiously as
she did not want any babies spoiling her adventures.

But these
events were only brief encounters, something to meet her physical
needs. Mostly she lived in her mind and dreamed of Viking gods and
goddesses, travelling with them to places where none had ever been
before. She did not know how she would satisfy this wanderlust but
it was there and she would not let it go and settle for an ordinary
life.

At University
she enrolled for History and Archaeology with a focus on Norse
Studies, but also with a strong interest in natural history, the
plants and animals of the Arctic Kingdom. Then, at University, she
began to read about the great whaling adventures of the Nordic and
Icelandic seamen, covering all the world’s oceans to bring their
bounty home. It was not that she wanted to kill whales, but the
sense of adventure and sailing into danger brought passion to her
soul.

Instead she
became captured by a modern variant, the need to protect the
masters of the ocean, those magnificent creatures of the deep from
the new commercial marauders. She realised there was nothing
courageous in the new steel sided ships, with explosive harpoons,
which killed with no risk to the sailors. So different from the way
of her distant ancestors of the longboats, when the contest was
something of bravery and equality; where only the most skilled
hunters succeeded and returned. The seas were a fitting graveyard
for those who failed with brave hearts.

One day, when
her lectures were out, she was wandering aimlessly around the
docks. She saw a Greenpeace ship was here, in Stockholm, taking on
provisions. She struck up a conversation with a crewman on the
gangplank. He told her this boat was seeking to disrupt the
commercial whalers of the modern day, and to protect the world’s
oceans from their depredations. On impulse she enlisted, she was
already a competent sailor of small boats, it was an ongoing
pleasure she had shared with her father in his later years. Her
only regret was the leaving of her father, for whom she kept alive
her mother’s image, but she would live on in his memory as a Viking
queen of old.

Now she was a
deckhand, unpaid but fed, out for fame and glory as they ran their
campaign to harass and disrupt the whalers of the world. It began
in the Arctic and moved on to the north Pacific, focusing on the
Japanese Scientific Kill. Then it moved to the Antarctic, a place
she fell in love with from her first glimpse of the ice covered
Antarctic Peninsula, teeming with its penguins and seals, and
countless flocks of birds, with its backdrop of ice in all its
myriad colour tones.

Most of these
boats took on provisions or were based out of Australia or New
Zealand and soon she came to regard these places as a second home.
It was on one of these stopovers, when she had three weeks in Port
Melbourne with nothing in particular to do, that she decided to go
and see the inside of what she had been told was a vast empty
continent. The night train was leaving soon for Adelaide. She
bought a ticket on impulse, the way she had made most decisions in
her life

Her plan was to
go the whole way across to Perth, then explore around there. She
had heard that Albany, to the south, was a famous whaling town. She
put a post card in the mail to her father, telling of her plans,
while waiting for the train to depart at Southern Cross
Station.

In Adelaide she
spent a day walking around the town. While it was a nice quaint
city with spacious parklands and attractive old buildings it did
not really excite her. She wanted to see the outback, the real
place out beyond wherever civilisation ended. She found out there
were tours running to the heart of the inland, places with names
like Marree, Coober Pedy and Lake Eyre, largest salt lake in the
world. This seemed a more interesting plan. She decided she was
happy to make her own way without all the tour things added on. A
coach was leaving for Coober Pedy at half past seven tonight, due
in just after six the next morning. That was good; she could sleep
on the bus at no cost and her funds were limited.

Next morning,
in the early dawn, she collected her backpack from the bus and
walked up town in Coober Pedy. She was ravenous and decided to
treat herself to a big plate of cooked breakfast before she checked
out the town. Walking along the main street she found an early
opening cafe.

It had one
other guest who was starting a big plate of bacon, eggs and
sausages, with a couple tomatoes and mushrooms on the side. The
food smelt and looked delicious.

She sat down at
the table next to his. When the waiter came she pointed to this
man’s plate and said, in her best and politest Swedish English, “I
would like one meal just like that plate, if you please. I am not
sure what you call it.”

The man eating
looked up and fixed her with a weather beaten smile. “Oh you just
call it ‘The Works’. Bacon, Egg and Sausage with the works, but
most locals just call it ‘The Works’. I promise it is as good as it
looks.”

He talked to
her with a distant smile, his eyes crinkled up around the edges. He
was looking both at her and way past her, but with a burning
intensity for both her and the other place. She felt something grab
in the pit of her stomach that she had never felt before.

It was not
mainly sexual through there was that mixed in, it was a primal
attraction, an almost mindless fatal attraction, as in the movie.
It spoke of danger.

She had lost
count of the number of men she had shared her body with over the
years. If she felt in the mood and they felt in the mood it was
something she did when the moment was there. She liked the feeling
of a man thrusting with abandon, body out of control, as she clawed
at his back, and sometime bit him, as she thrust back. No doubt she
would do it with this man. She knew already this part would happen
between them. It would be good and wild, the way she liked it.

But it was
more, something much sharper; it was the element of buried danger
that excited her. Taking up with this man would be going past
life’s safe places. She gone past life’s safe places in her travels
and the physical ordeals she had put herself through. But she had
never done it with a man.

It was almost
predatory, both of them as looking at the other like two predators
eying off the other to feast on, the female spider and her mate,
except in this case the mate was her equal or more in threat. Her
sixth sense told her this man was dangerous, seriously dangerous,
though not in a callous way. But he was disregardful of danger to
him and to others and of the consequences which may follow his
actions. She had heard of bored sailors playing Russian roulette
with a loaded pistol. It was somehow akin to that. They would take
the shot; some would survive and some not. She now grasped that in
doing this death dance with others lay the supreme thrill; a place
she had eternally searched for in a tame world.

All this passed
through Elin’s mind in a fraction of a second as she appraised her
co-diner.

Breaking from
his intense gaze she held out her hand, cool and polite. “I am
Elin, how are you?”

He responded
with a firm and callused hand. “Name is Mark, Mark B for short. I
am what folks round here call a local to the Outback, that is
anywhere out the back of Australia.”

“I am from
Sweden, though I think of myself as more of a Norse Viking warrior
from an earlier time, as my father was always telling me stories of
our Viking ancestor heroes,” she said.

Mark gestured,
“Why don’t you join me, be my Viking Goddess?”

She moved her
chair to his table.

They ate with
muted conversation. It was what came after that mattered for them
both. He shared his food with her as she waited for hers. In return
she shared her food with him. Their hands and knees brushed in
passing. She felt a thrill and she knew he felt it too.

When they had
both finished he said. “My truck is out the back. I have worked
here in a mine digging for opal for a month but this morning I am
up early to travel. Tonight I will be 900 kilometres north of here,
up in western Queensland at a place called Birdsville. To get there
I must go round Lake Eyre, a huge salt lake then cross a big desert
full of stones. Will you come with me? I sense that you, like me,
are an adventurer who takes life as it comes.”

She said, “I
have been waiting to make this journey for a long time. Yes, I will
come.”

They set off
driving into the early sun. It was February so, even though the
early morning was still cool, there was intense heat in the sun. It
was mid morning when they came to William Creek. There was not much
there, just a roadhouse hotel and some old railway relics. By now
the heat was baking, the thermometer on the hotel verandah read 38
degrees. Mark told Elin it would get a lot hotter yet, probably
reaching around 47 by three o’clock.

Rather than
pushing hard to cover the miles he had originally planned he said
to Elin, “Now I have a visitor I am happy to only go part way
today. There are a few places I would like to show you along the
way.”

Elin nodded, “I
am your willing guest, take me where and when you will, Mr Outback
Man.”

They both had a
beer and then a second one before Mark indicated it was time to
head on. He said they were heading for Coward Springs, an oasis in
the desert, where the old cameleers used to stop on their trips
following the mound springs. Here they would have a swim in the
oasis springs to refresh themselves before going on the Marree.

It was much
hotter by the time they came their oasis, the cabin thermometer
read 43 degrees as they pulled up at the campground, a few old
buildings scattered under pepper trees. Date palms, images wavering
-in heat rising across open ground, marked the watering place.

Mark paid the
feel to swim and bought them both an ice cream which melted almost
faster than they could eat them. They walked across to the pool and
the surrounding shade. They were the only people outside in the
ferocious heat. By the time they had walked the hundred yards every
pore in Elin body was dried out and blasted with the warm air.

She went to
jump in but Mark put his arm on hers to hold her back. “First I
want you to experience something that few people have the patience
to try,” he said.

He sat on the
edge and she sat down next to him. He said, “Feel the heat as it
blasts into your body, that fifty degree hot wind that feels like
being inside a fan forced oven.”

She put her
mind into that place where it was only her body absorbing the heat.
She pulled her hair free and tipped her head back, pushing her body
out like a sunbather revelling in the sun.

Mark nodded his
approval. “That is it, drink it in, feel it heat and dry you to
your core. Now do as I do”

He slowly
lowered his feet into the water, an inch at a time.

She mirrored
his action. The feeling was indescribably delicious. The water was
cool and refreshing, but it was the contrast that struck her most.
As her feet went deeper she felt wonderfully refreshed and cool.
They both sat there, side by side for several minutes, revelling in
the pleasure: the cool water, so delicious and cooling them from
below counter posed against the blasting hot air above.