Tarrapaldi

by Wayne T Mathews

  Tarrapaldi

  Wayne T Mathews

  Copyright © 2019 Wayne T Mathews.

  Cover Illustration by Windel Eborlas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Balboa Press

  A Division of Hay House

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.balboapress.com.au

  1 (877) 407-4847

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-1718-4 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-1719-1 (e)

  Balboa Press rev. date: 04/29/2019

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  1818

  Thirty miles North West of Sydney,

  Australia.

  Near the mouth of the Hawkesbury River.

  Chapter One

  “My God!” Nathaniel leapt to his feet and backed away from the naked Aborigine who had woken him with a prod from the blunt end of the spears held in her left hand.

  She was an inch over six feet tall. Standing on one long, athletic leg, the other cocked, with the instep of the foot resting on the standing leg’s knee. Balance maintained by leaning on a single spear held in the right hand. Genitals fully exposed below a slim waist. Her nipples puckered on heavy, unsupported breasts that sagged slightly on her chest. Crowned by a mane of dark-brown, wavy hair that framed a strong, cherubic face over broad shoulders.

  Her head tilted slightly. An eyebrow raised and her lips smiled, though they didn’t open.

  “If I’d meant to harm you, you’d already be hurting.” Her words rang crystal clear in his brain.

  “Who are you?” he asked, the cords in his neck standing out while he crouched, ready to flee or fight.

  When upright, he stood just under six feet tall, his chest deep and his shoulders broad. Blue eyes blazed from a suntanned face under the straw blond hair he had pulled back severely, and fastened in a ponytail tied up with a leather thong. The symmetry of his features marred by the slightly raised, straight scar-line running along the top of his right cheekbone.

  “Don’t speak to me,” her words rang in his brain again. “Think what it is you want me to know. It’s too hard to understand you when you jibber.”

  Her lips hadn’t moved, but the message was clear. He spun to the left, then right, trying to find the source of the voice.

  “It’s all right, there’s nobody else here. Just you and me.” His attention snapped back to her, then flicked to his gun resting against the log he’d sat on the night before. “Don’t try it.” The words rang again. “You’d never make it. I could spear you before you were halfway there, but I don’t want to if I can avoid it.”

  Who was she, and how could he get out of this situation?

  “She, is Tarrapaldi.” Her head rocked back, her lips parted and laughter bubbled from deep within her. “And you won’t get out of this until I say you can. What are you called?”

  With a conscious effort, he looked at her and thought, “I’m Nathaniel Johnson. How is this possible? How can you read my thoughts? What devilry is this?”

  “It’s not devilry, Nathaniel Johnson. You have the gift to be able to communicate with others who also have the gift, without making a sound.”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want you, or anybody else, to be able to hear my thoughts.”

  “Too late, Nathaniel Johnson. It’s already happened.”

  “Why? What do you want from me?”

  “That’s going to depend on what you’re looking for, Nathaniel Johnson. Why are you searching the people’s campsites?”

  “I’m looking for the mounds of oyster shells you people left behind,” he said in his mind, horrified that no sound was needed to communicate with her. “If I can find enough, I’ll burn it to make lime, and then take it to Sydney Cove and sell it.”

  “Sell it? What is ‘sell it’?”

  “Sell it. — You know. — Give it to someone who will give me money for it.”

  “Ah. — You’ll barter it for money. What will you do with this money? Can you eat it?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He laughed, relaxing a little, now that her immodest stance hadn’t altered, and he didn’t feel quite as threatened. “You can’t eat money. You use it to buy what you want. You know; food, clothes, powder, shot. Anything. If you’ve got money, you can buy, or barter if you like, anything you want.”

  “I’m not the one being stupid, white man.” She put her foot down to the ground and pointed her spear at him. “It wasn’t me who let a person walk into my camp while I traveled to the Dreamtime. If you need food and clothing, why don’t you just go and find it?”

  “I can’t.” His fright at the sight of the lethal spear pointed at him, made him forget to only think the words. “I have to buy the things I need from the men who make them. And they buy the things from me that I make,” Nathaniel said.

  “Balyarta ngennah,” she snapped, before taking a deep breath and transmitting again. “Stop it. Your jibber is impossible to understand. Just think what you want me to know. Don’t confuse me with your sounds. Now, why can’t you find, or make, what you want yourself?”

  “I don’t know how. I don’t have the tools or the materials,” he said in his mind, relieved that she hadn’t speared him yet, but still very aware that she stood between him and his weapon. “Look, if you’re not going to spear me, can I please go and drain myself? I’ll piss in my pants if you make another sudden movement like that.”

  “Go.” She laughed, throwing her head back and displaying a mouth full of strong white teeth, while waving the single spear toward the trees that surrounded the clearing. “I’ll start the fire while you’re gone. But do come back. It’s not my intention to steal your possessions. I don’t want them.”

  From behind a tree, Nathaniel looked around it while hosing the base. The woman had put her spears beside his gun and gathered up dry grass and leaves, which she put on the fire. After poking the embers around with a small stick, she knelt down with her back to him, and blew on them, coaxing flames from the embers, adding small amounts of wood until the fire burned well with no smoke.

  Shaking the last drops loose before fastening his trousers, Nathaniel moved as quietly as he could toward the weapons.

  “There’s no need
for you to hunt.” The thought startled him before his hand closed on the gun. “I’ve brought eggs with me that I gathered from a nest on the river’s bank this morning while you were sleeping,” she said.

  “That may well be, my little lovely,” he transmitted when he snatched up the weapon and moved between her and her spears, “but I’ve the gun now and the shoes on the other foot.” But to his dismay, when he lowered the gun to cover her, he saw water run from the end of its barrel.

  With a throaty chuckle, she rolled into a backward somersault and struck out with her leg, sweeping his legs out from under him. In continuous motion, she sprang to her weapons, whirled, and pressed a spear to the base of his throat.

  “It’s very stupid to threaten someone with a weapon that won’t work, Nathaniel Johnson. I’ve been watching you for two days. And I saw yesterday, that your weapon wouldn’t work after you dropped it in the water,” she said. “It’s a truly magic weapon. But the trouble you have to go to to make it work, makes me wonder whether it’s worth the effort. But come.” She took the spear away from his throat. Reaching to pick up the gun, she placed both weapons where they had been. “We don’t need to fight. Show me the brew I saw you cook in the blackened container.”

  Nathaniel slowly rose and moved over to his provisions. From a sack, he took out his cooking pot, and filled it from a water bottle before hanging it over the flames on a green stick.

  “Why have you been watching me?” he asked in his mind, while remembering all too clearly, how he’d tripped the day before as he crossed the shallows in an attempt to get a better shot at a wallaby. His gun had gone under, and it had taken a lot of time before he managed to draw the shot and damp powder, dry the barrel and reload. Of course, the wallaby had been long gone by the time he was ready, and it would have been a hungry night for him, had it not been for the oysters that grew in the mangroves.

  “I need your help, Nathaniel Johnson.” His head snapped up at this. She was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, her legs folded beside her with one hand on the ground to support herself. “My people are dying,” she said. “A traveler came to our camp and told us about the white men who had arrived on floating islands, and how those islands were tied to clouds. We knew about them of course. They came at the time of my mother’s birth, but we didn’t know about the sickness they’d given the traveler. After he left, my people broke out in pimples that blistered and scabbed, and then they died.”

  “Jesus wept!” Nathaniel leapt back from the fire, “Smallpox! — Are you poxed?”

  “I don’t understand,” she transmitted without moving.

  “Do you have any of the sores on you?”

  “Not any more. I had some on my legs here.” She pointed to the back of her calf muscle. “But they went away and left these scars.”

  “Stand up and let me see.”

  Frowning, she stood and submitted to his inspection.

  “They’re not small pox scars. I don’t know what they are, but you’ve not got the disease.” He carefully examined her all over. “You’re probably safe from it now, you know. Once you’ve been exposed to it, if it doesn’t kill you, it will probably never harm you again,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked while lowering herself to the ground.

  “Damned if I know.” He went again to his supplies sack, and bringing out tea, sugar and a tin mug, prepared the brew she’d asked for.

  She sipped the strong brew. “Where do you find these herbs?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “You don’t. They’re brought in by ships, that’s the floating islands you mentioned, and then we buy them with money.”

  “I see. — Why are you here by yourself? All the other white men I’ve seen along the river, are in groups of at least two or three. You are the first one I’ve seen by himself.”

  “I don’t belong to the same tribe as the other men,” he began in his mind, and went on to run through his memories of America where he’d been born.

  His parents had been loyal royalists who had stayed in America for business reasons, he’d thought. But when he was fifteen, his father died, and his mother uprooted him from the country he loved and took him back to England with her. While studying to be a lawyer, he learned that his parents had been spies for the crown. Devastated by his discovery, he’d tried to make up for their treachery.

  During the war of 1812, The English impressed, a polite word for enslaved, every American sailor they could get their hands on, and forced the sailors to serve on English ships. Nathaniel used his position of privilege to help them escape. But he’d been caught and tried for treason. A charge punishable by hanging in most cases.

  But the death penalty hadn’t been applied to Nathaniel. His parents had had many important friends in both America and England. Benjamin Franklin had agreed to be his godfather, and in England, Nathaniel’s mother had pleaded for leniency with a friend of his father’s, George, the Prince Regent of Great Britain and Ireland.

  Nathaniel had just turned 22 when instead of hanging him, the English sentenced him to transportation to the penal colonies of Australia, for life.

  It’d been five years since he’d arrived in Sydney Town. Lice infested, with a pair of pants, a shirt, and a leg iron his only possessions. He’d worked hard though, avoiding the grog that held down most of the other convicts. And he’d saved his pennies. The authorities had noticed his industriousness and, despite their contempt for him and what he’d done, they’d paroled him with a ticket of leave only a month before.

  He’d built his boat himself, on the banks of Port Jackson, not trusting any of the English to be his partner or friend. Then using all of his savings, he’d bought his gun and supplies, before setting out to find the piles of oyster shells he’d heard were scattered around the lower reaches of the river the English called the Hawkesbury.

  “So that’s how I’ve come to be here by myself.” Nathaniel finished up. “Now how about you? There’re other natives along the river. Why haven’t you joined up with them?”

  “They’re Guringai people.” Her face twisted in an expression of distaste. “Disease ridden fools who think it’s important to knock out a tooth. — Stupid fools. — They don’t even know how to listen to what people think,” Tarrapaldi said. “I’m from the Dharug people and my family were all Koradjis, medicine people. But it didn’t help us when the traveler brought the sickness. We’d never seen anything like it before and didn’t know how to treat it.”

  Nathaniel was amazed how easy it was to follow her thoughts. She went on to reveal that her father, Tunggaree, who was the head Koradji of the clan, had gone walkabout in his mind, to Bullima, the sky camp of the spirits. While there, he asked for advice and guidance, and when he came back, he’d taken her aside and passed on what he’d learned.

  He’d gone into great detail about the dreaming. He’d told her of the people’s coming death. And that she’d be one of the few left to carry on. He’d told her to travel to the border country of the Guringai and the Dharugs. She would find a white man there who wasn’t of the same tribe as all the others. And she was to bring him up country to the sacred site. Tunggaree would talk to the man, and if he was the one the spirits had told him about, then the man would be initiated into the tribe. Tarrapaldi was to marry the man and learn to live as a white, and bring her children up the same way.

  “Are you that man, Nathaniel Johnson?”

  “How the hell should I know?” he said before remembering she didn’t understand his words. “How should I know?” he thought, “I’m only trying to find a way to live in this God forsaken place.”

  “Is that what you think this land is? Forsaken by God?” The look on her face was one of shock.

  “Of course it’s God forsaken,” Nathaniel said. “Everything is a wilderness. There’s a snake under every rock. Lizards as big as a yard or more. And you natives are nothing but savages. Not wearin
g clothes. No sense of modesty, or morality, whatsoever.”

  “I don’t understand, Nathaniel Johnson. Do you wear those ‘clothes’ because you’re ashamed? — And you don’t know us very well if you think we’re savages without morals.”

  “What else would I think? You’ve come into my camp as naked as the day you were born. What if I’d jumped up and had my way with you?”

  “Oh, come now.” Her laughter rippled through the air. “You were far more interested in pissing, than squirting me with life. And anyway, before you could ever spear me with your third leg, you’d have to get out of your clothes.”

  “That wouldn’t take any time.”

  “Show me,” she said with a straight face.

  “What? You want me to undress here in front of you? That’s disgusting!”

  “Why?” Tarrapaldi asked. “You’re the one who is wearing clothes that stink to the high heavens. It’s you who hasn’t cleaned yourself after fertilizing the earth. I even had to cover your dung for you after you left it lying on the ground.”

  “You watched me while I went to the toilet? This is too much.”

  “Why? I told you, I’ve been watching you for days. Why are you so ashamed?”

  “I’m not ashamed,” he ranted in his mind. “I’m disgusted you’d follow, and spy on me like that. Have you no decency?”

  “Stop it.” The words shouted in his mind, and she leapt to her feet, stamping her foot. “I’m here to meet you. To help you look for what you want. And you insist on insulting me. Come.” She took up her spears. “Come with me to the river. You will wash the filth from your body and those ridiculous clothes you wear. Then I’ll tell you about this land you call God forsaken.”

  With her spear prodding him every time she came within reach, he was driven to the water’s edge.

  “Please, don’t make me do this. The crocodiles will get me.”

  “Stop being stupid, Nathaniel Johnson. There aren’t any crocodiles in this river. Now take off those clothes and smear yourself with the mud. All over. From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, you smelly man.”