The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Sticky everlasting

Meaning: My love will not leave you

Xerochrysum viscosum | New South Wales and Victoria

These paper-like flowers display hues of lemon, gold, and splotchy orange to fiery bronze. They can be easily cut, dried, and preserved while retaining their stunning colours.

A month after Alice discovered the library, she was playing in her room when she heard her mother’s voice calling. ‘We need to do some weeding, Bun.’

It was a tranquil afternoon. The garden was thick with orange butterflies. Her mother smiled up at her from under the brim of her floppy hat. It was the same smile she used to greet her father when he came home: Everything’s okay, everything’s all right, everything’s fine. Alice smiled back even though she noticed her mother wincing, clutching her ribs when she reached for a weed.

Things hadn’t been right since the library. Alice couldn’t sit for days after her father took to her with his belt. He snapped her library card in two and confiscated the book, but not before Alice read it in one sitting. She absorbed the stories of selkies and their magical skins into her blood like they were sugar on her tongue. Her bruises healed and her father only punished her once; Alice’s mother continued to bear his rage. A few times Alice had been woken in the night by rough noises in her parents’ bedroom. The ugly sounds paralysed her. On those nights, she stayed in bed with her hands over her ears, willing herself to escape into her dreams, mostly of running with her mother to the sea, where they’d shed their skins before diving in. Bobbing together in the ocean, they’d only look back once before turning to the deep. On shore their pelts would turn to pressed flowers, scattered among shells and seaweed.

‘Here, Alice.’ Her mother handed her another tuft of weeds, wincing again. Alice’s skin burned from her want to rid the garden of every weed, forever, so her mother could just spend her days talking to her flowers in her secret language and filling her pockets with their blooms.

‘What about this one, Mama? Is this a weed?’ Her mother didn’t answer. She was as flighty as the butterflies, her eyes darting constantly to the driveway, checking for the telltale dirt clouds.

Eventually, they appeared.

He swung out of the driver’s seat in full swagger, holding his Akubra upside down behind his back. Alice’s mother stood to greet him with dirt on her knees and a bunch of dandelions clenched in her fist. Their roots trembled as he leaned in to kiss her. Alice glanced away. Her father in a good mood had the same air about him as a rain shower falling from a sunny sky – you could never quite believe the sight. When Alice met his eye, he smiled.

‘We’ve all had a tough time since you ran away, haven’t we, Bunny,’ her father said, crouching while keeping his upside-down hat out of her view. ‘But I think you’ve learned your lesson about leaving the property.’

Alice’s stomach lurched.

‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said softly, ‘and I think we should get your library card back.’ She looked at him uneasily. ‘I’m willing to go to the library and pick your books out for you, if you’re willing to promise to follow our rules. And to help you keep that promise, I thought you might like some extra company at home.’ Alice’s father wasn’t looking at Alice while he spoke – his eyes were searching her mother’s face instead. She stood still and unblinking, her face stretched in a smile. Alice’s father turned to Alice, offering her his hat. Alice took it from him and lowered it into her lap.

Curled inside was a ball of black-and-white fluff. She gasped. Although the pup’s eyes were barely open, they were the same slate blue as the winter sea. He sat up and gave a sharp yap, nipping Alice’s nose. She squealed in delight; he was her first friend. The puppy licked her face.

‘What will you call him, Bun?’ her father asked, rocking back on his heels to stand. Alice couldn’t read his face.

‘Tobias,’ she decided. ‘But I’ll call him Toby.’

Her father laughed easily. ‘Toby it is,’ he said.

‘Wanna hold him, Mama?’ Alice asked. Her mother nodded and reached for Toby.

‘Oh, he’s so young,’ she exclaimed, unable to hide the surprise in her voice. ‘Where did you get him, Clem? Are you sure he’s old enough to be weaned?’

Her father’s eyes flashed. His face darkened. ‘Of course he’s old enough,’ he said through clenched teeth, grabbing Toby by the scruff of the neck. He tossed the whimpering pup to Alice.

Later, she cowered outside among her mother’s ferns, snuggling the puppy against her heart, trying not to listen to the sounds coming from inside the house. Toby lapped at her chin where her tears gathered, while the wind blew through the sweet-scented sugar cane and out to sea.

The tides of her father’s moods turned, as did the seasons. After her father burst Toby’s ear drums, Alice busied herself teaching him sign language. She turned eight, advanced to Grade Three in home schooling, and read her pile of library books two weeks before they were due back. Her mother spent more and more time in the garden, mumbling to herself among her flowers.

One late winter’s day a set of squalls blew in from the sea, so ferocious Alice wondered if they’d blow the house down like something from a fable. She and Toby watched from the front step as Clem dragged his windsurfer out of the garage and into the yard.

‘It’s a forty-knot northwesterly, Bunny,’ he said, hurrying to load his gear into the back of his truck. ‘This is rare.’ He brushed the cobwebs off the windsurfer sail. Alice nodded, rubbing Toby’s ears. She knew it was; she’d only seen her father ready himself to ride the wind across the sea a handful of times. She’d never been allowed to go with him. He started the engine.

‘C’mon then, Bunny. Reckon I need a good luck charm on today’s voyage. Hurry up,’ he called, leaning out of the driver’s window. Although the wild look in his eye made her uneasy, the disbelieving joy of being invited threw Alice into action. She ran into her bedroom to change into her togs and bolted past her mother, calling goodbye, Toby close behind. With a roaring rev of the engine, her father spun out of the driveway towards the bay.

Down at the beach, Alice’s father strapped himself into his harness and dragged the board to the water’s edge. Alice stood by. When her father called her she followed the deep groove the fin of his board had cut in the sand, all the way to the sea. He pushed his board into the waves, steadying the sail against the wind. The veins in his forearms popped from the effort. Alice stood thigh-high in the salt water, uncertain of what to expect. Her father readied himself to leap on the board then turned to her, his brows raised and his smile reckless. Alice’s heartbeat knocked in her ears. He nodded his head towards the board. Toby paced on the shore, barking incessantly. She raised her arm and held her flat palm up to speak to him: Be calm. Her father had never asked her along before. She didn’t dare refuse the invitation.

As she sprang through the sea towards her father, her mother’s voice reached her. Alice turned to see her standing on top of the dunes, calling her name and waving her arms frantically, gripping Alice’s fluorescent-orange life vest in one hand. Her calls rose from measured to alarmed. Toby raced away from the shore to meet her. In the water, Alice’s father swatted her mother’s worry away like it was an insect buzzing around his face.

‘You don’t need a life vest. Not when you’re eight. I was king of my kingdom when I was eight.’ He nodded at her. ‘Hop on, Bunting.’

Alice beamed. His attention was hypnotic.

He lifted her onto his board, his hands firm and strong under her armpits, and positioned her at the front, where she leant into the wind. He lay belly down and paddled the two of them through the water. Silver fish darted through the shallows. The wind was strong and sea salt stung Alice’s eyes. She turned back once to see her mother on shore, dwarfed by the expanse of sea between them.

Out in the turquoise depths her father leapt from his belly to his feet, and slid his toes into the straps. Alice clutched the edges, her palms scraping on the board grip. Her father heaved the sail upright, using his legs to keep his balance. Sinew and muscle rippled beneath the skin of his calves.

‘Sit between my feet,’ he instructed. She inched along the board towards him. ‘Hold on,’ he said. She wrapped her arms around his legs.

For a moment, there was a lull; the world was still and aquamarine. Then, whoosh, the wind filled the sail and salt water sprayed Alice’s face. The sea sparkled. They sailed through the waves, zigzagging across the bay. Alice leant her head back and closed her eyes; the sun warm on her skin, the sea spray tickling her face, the wind running its fingers through her long hair.

‘Alice, look,’ her father called. A pod of dolphins arced alongside them. Alice cried out in delight, remembering her selkie book. ‘Stand up so you can see them better,’ he said. Holding on to his legs, Alice wobbled as she stood, mesmerised by the beauty of the dolphins. They glided through the water, peaceful and free. She tentatively let go of her father and used her own weight to balance. Holding her arms out wide, she moved her waist in circles and rolled her wrists, mimicking the dolphins. Her father howled joyously into the wind. Seeing true happiness in his face made Alice light-headed.

Out beyond the bay they flew, into the channel where a tourist boat was circling back towards the town harbour. A camera flash bulb popped in their direction. Her father waved.

‘Do the hula again for them,’ Alice’s father encouraged her. ‘They’re watching us, Alice. Do it. Now.’

Alice didn’t understand what hula meant; was it her dolphin dance? The urgency in his voice also confused her. She glanced at the front of the board and back up at him. This moment of hesitation was her mistake; she caught the shadow as it crossed his face. Scrambling to the board’s tip she tried to make up the time she’d lost and stood on shaky legs, looping her waist and rolling her wrists. It was too late. The boat turned away from them; the camera flashes glinted off the water in the opposite direction. Alice smiled hopefully. Her knees trembled. She snuck a look at her father. His jaw was set.

When he flipped the sail around and they changed direction, Alice almost lost her balance. The sun was garish and sharp, biting at her skin. She crouched on the board and clung to its sides. Her mother’s voice carried on the wind, calling them relentlessly as they crossed the channel back towards the bay. The waves rolled deep and dark green. Her father said nothing. She sidled towards him. As she nestled herself between his feet again and clung to his calves, she felt a muscle twitch under his skin. She looked up but his face was blank. Alice bit back on tears. She’d ruined it. She tightened her grip on his legs.

‘Sorry, Papa,’ she said in a small voice.

The pressure on her back was firm and quick. She pitched forward into the cold sea, crying out as she was engulfed by waves. Spluttering to the surface, she shrieked and coughed, trying to hack up the burning sensation of salt water in her lungs. Kicking hard, she held her arms up the way her mother taught her to do if she ever got caught in a rip. Not too far away, her father coasted on the board, staring at her, his face as white as the caps on the waves. Alice kicked to tread water. With a quick flick her father spun the sail again. He’s coming back. Alice whimpered, relieved. But as his sail caught the wind and he sailed away from her, she stopped kicking in disbelief. She started to sink. When the water covered her nose, Alice flailed her arms and kicked hard, fighting her way upwards through the waves.

Tossed up and down at the whim of the current, Alice glimpsed her mother over the waves. She’d flung herself into the ocean and was swimming hard. The sight of Agnes gave Alice a surge of strength. She kicked and paddled until she felt the slightest shift in the temperature of the water and knew she was approaching the shallows. Her mother reached her in a flurry of splashing and clung to her like Alice herself was a life vest. When they could both touch sand, sure and solid beneath their feet, Alice stood and vomited bile, her retching a croaking, empty sound. Her arms and legs gave out. She gasped for breath. Her mother’s eyes were as dull as a piece of sea glass. She carried Alice to shore and wrapped her in the dress she’d discarded before leaping into the waves. She rocked them both back and forth until Alice stopped crying. Hoarse from barking, Toby whined while he licked Alice’s face. She patted him weakly. When she started to shiver Alice’s mother picked her up and carried her home. She didn’t say a thing.

As they left the beach Alice looked back at the frenzy of her mother’s footprints on the shore. Far out on the sea her father’s sail cut brightly through the waves.

No one talked about what happened that day. Afterwards, whenever he was home from the cane fields, Clem avoided the house. Instead he did what he would always do to relieve his guilt: retreated to his shed. At meals, he was distant and chillingly polite. Being around him was like being outside without shelter during stormy weather, always watching the sky. Alice spent a few sweaty-palmed weeks hoping she, Toby and her mother might run away to the places in her mother’s stories, where snow covered the earth like white sugar and ancient, sparkling cities were built on water. But as weeks turned into months and summer started to soften its edges into autumn, there were no more outbursts. Her father’s tides were peaceful. He made her a writing desk. Alice began to wonder if maybe he’d left the stormy parts of himself out in the deep that day when she’d seen the ocean turn dark green.

One clear morning at breakfast, Alice’s father announced that he had to travel south to the city to buy a new tractor on the coming weekend. He would miss Alice’s ninth birthday. It was unavoidable. Alice’s mother nodded and stood to clear the table. Alice swung her legs back and forth under her seat, hiding her face behind her hair as she digested the news. She, her mother, and Toby would have a whole weekend together. Alone. In peace. It was the best birthday gift she could have hoped for.

The morning he left, they waved him off together. Even Toby sat still until the dust clouds that trailed after him billowed and vanished. Alice’s mother gazed at the empty driveway.

‘Well,’ she said, reaching for Alice’s hand. ‘This weekend is all yours, Bun. What would you like to do?’

‘Everything!’ Alice grinned.

They started with music. Her mother tugged down old records and Alice closed her eyes and swayed as she listened.

‘If you could have anything at all, what would you have for lunch?’ her mother asked.

Alice dragged a kitchen chair to the counter to stand at the same height as her mother and helped to make Anzac biscuits, crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle from too much golden syrup, the way she liked them best. Alice ate more than half the batter raw, sharing wooden spoonfuls with Toby.

As their biscuits were baking, Alice sat at her mother’s feet while Agnes brushed her hair. The slow rhythm of the brush on Alice’s scalp sounded like wings in flight. After her mother counted one hundred strokes, she leant forward and whispered a question into Alice’s ear. Alice nodded excitedly in response. Her mother left the room and came back a few moments later. Told Alice to close her eyes. Alice grinned, relishing the feeling of her mother’s fingers weaving through her hair. When she was done, her mother led Alice through the house.

‘Okay, Bun. Open,’ she said with a smile in her voice.

Alice waited until she couldn’t bear the anticipation for a second longer. When she opened her eyes, she gasped at her reflection in the mirror. A crown of flame-orange beach hibiscus was entwined around her head. She didn’t recognise herself.

‘Happy birthday, Bunny.’ Her mother’s voice wavered. Alice took her hand. As they stood together in front of the mirror, fat drops of rain started to fall hard and fast on the roof. Her mother got up and went to the window.

‘What is it, Mama?’

Agnes sniffled, and wiped her eyes. ‘Come with me, Bun,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

They waited at the back door until the storm clouds passed. The sky was violet and the light was silver. Alice followed her mother into the garden that was glossy with rain. They came to a bush her mother had planted recently. When Alice last took notice, it was just a tumble of bright green leaves. Now, after the rain, the bush was thick with fragrant white flowers. She studied them in bewilderment.

‘Thought you might like these,’ her mother said.

‘Is it magic?’ Alice reached out to touch one of the petals.

‘The best kind.’ Her mother nodded. ‘Flower magic.’

Alice bent down to get as close as she could. ‘What are they, Mama?’

‘Storm lilies. Just like the night you were born. They only flower after a good downpour.’ Alice leant down and studied them closely. Their petals were flung open, leaving their centres fully exposed.

‘They can’t exist without rain?’ Alice asked, straightening up. Her mother considered her for a moment before nodding.

‘When I was in your father’s truck the night you were born, they were growing wild by the road. I remember seeing them bloom in the storm.’ She looked away but Alice saw her mother’s eyes fill.

‘Alice,’ her mother began. ‘I planted the storm lilies here for a reason.’

Alice nodded.

‘Storm lilies are a sign of expectation. Of the goodness that can come from hardship.’ Her mother rested her hand on her stomach.

Alice nodded, still unaware.

‘Bun, I’m going to have another baby. You’re going to have a brother or a sister to play with and look after.’ Her mother snapped a storm lily from its stem and tucked it into the tail of Alice’s braid. Alice looked down at its quivering heart, open and vulnerable.

‘Isn’t that good news?’ her mother asked. Alice could see the storm lilies reflected in her mother’s eyes. ‘Alice?’

She hid her face in her mother’s neck and squeezed her eyes shut, inhaling the scent of her mother’s skin, trying not to cry. Knowing there was a kind of magic that could make flowers and babies bloom after storms filled Alice with dread: more precious things in her world her father could harm.

Overnight the weather swung about and blew in another storm. Alice and Toby woke the next morning to torrential rain sobbing at the windows and battering the front door. Alice yawned, wandering through the house, dreaming of pancakes. She tried not to count the hours left before her father would be home later in the day. But the kitchen was dark. Alice fumbled for the light switch, confused. She flicked it on. The kitchen was empty and cold. She ran to her parents’ room and waited for her eyes to readjust to the darkness. When she understood her mother was gone, Alice ran outside, calling for her. She was soaked in seconds. Toby barked. Through the downpour, Alice caught a glimpse of her mother’s cotton dress, disappearing through the saltbushes in the front yard, headed towards the sea.

By the time Alice reached the ocean her mother had already shed her clothes on the sand. Although the rain hadn’t let up and visibility was poor, Alice managed to spot her mother in the water. She’d swum so far out she was no more than a pale dot on the waves, dipping, arcing, thrashing her way through the water as if she had a fight to win. After a long time, she bodysurfed into the shallows and screamed violently at the sea as it spat her onto the shore.

Alice wrapped her mother’s clothes like a pelt around her shoulders, calling her mother’s name until her voice was weak. Agnes didn’t seem to hear her. She rose from the sand, naked, haggard and out of breath. The sight of her nakedness silenced Alice. The rain beat down on them. Toby cried, pacing back and forth. Alice couldn’t take her eyes off her mother’s body. Her pregnant belly was bigger than Alice realised. Framing it were bruises, blooming along her mother’s collarbone, down her arms, over her ribs, around her hips, and inside her thighs, like sea lichen smothering rock. All this time that Alice thought there’d been no storms, she had been gravely mistaken.

‘Mama.’ Alice started to cry. She tried wiping the tears and rain from her face. It was no use. Her teeth chattered from fear and emotion. ‘I was worried you weren’t coming back.’

Alice’s mother seemed to look right through her. Her eyes were big and dark, clumps of her eyelashes stuck together. She stayed that way, staring, for a long time. Finally, she blinked, and spoke.

‘I know you were worried. I’m sorry.’ She gently unwrapped her clothes from Alice’s shoulders and pulled them onto her wet skin. ‘C’mon, Bun,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home.’ Agnes took Alice’s hand and together they walked back up the sand in the rain. No matter how hard she shook, Alice made sure not to let go.

A few weeks later, just before the afternoon when she read about the phoenix bird, Alice and her mother were out in the garden among green pea and pumpkin seedlings. Curls of black smoke rose on the horizon.

‘Don’t worry, Bun,’ her mother said, raking new dirt for the veggie patch. ‘It’s a controlled burn at one of the farms.’

‘Controlled burn?’

‘People all over the world use fire to garden,’ her mother explained. Alice sat on her heels where she’d been tugging weeds from the freshly turned dirt and considered what her mother had said, incredulous. ‘Truly.’ Her mother nodded, leaning on her rake. ‘They burn back plants and trees to make way for things to grow. Controlled fires reduce the risk of wildfire too.’

Alice wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘So a little fire can stop a bigger one?’ she asked, thinking of the library book on her desk about spells that turned frogs into princes, girls into birds, and lions into lambs. ‘Like a spell?’

Her mother nestled seedlings into the rows of fresh earth. ‘Yes, I suppose it’s just like that, a spell of sorts to transform one thing into another. Some flowers and seeds even need fire to split open and grow: orchids and desert oaks, those kinds of things.’ She dusted her hands and pushed her hair off her forehead. ‘You clever girl,’ she said. For once her smile reached her eyes. After a moment Alice’s mother returned to her seedlings.

Alice went back to her work too, but all the while, out of the corner of her eye, watched her mother, backlit by afternoon sun, willing new things to grow from nothing. When her mother looked around the property and her face fell at the sight of the shed, Alice understood with swift clarity: she had to find the right spell, the right fire in the right season, to transform her father from one thing into another.