by Barbara Wood
"Beth," she said, "it's exactly as my grandfather described it in his notes, fifty-two years ago! They meet like this once every five years: they renew friendships, exchange stories, strengthen clan ties—"
"Look at Coonawarra!" Beth said, pointing to the end of the trail at the bottom of the cliff, where a large group had gathered. "That must be the man she's been talking about, the one she wants to marry. And look at Yolgerup! Is that his mother he's embracing?"
But Joanna didn't respond. She was staring at the huge mountain that dominated the plain.
For as far as she could see, the desert stretched flat all the way to the horizon. But rising abruptly out of it, large and square, was an enormous red mountain. As Joanna felt the hot wind blow against her face, while Yolgerup's people continued to hurry past her and down to the plain below, she felt herself becoming curiously detached. The mountain shimmered in the heat; it seemed to move, to breathe. She felt as if some sort of power were reaching out to her, pulling her toward it.
Beth took the compass out of her pocket. "Look at this needle spin, Mother!" she said, "Could that mountain be causing it? Could the mountain be magnetized somehow?"
Joanna couldn't take her eyes from the mass in front of her. Waves of heat seemed to radiate from the hot red walls; pools of silver appeared at the base, trembled in the sunlight and then disappeared, only to reappear somewhere else. Joanna thought she heard a hum emanating from the mountain like the drone of a million bees.
Naliandrah came and stood at her side. She pointed and said, "Karra Karra."
"Why didn't you tell me we were coming here?" Joanna said. "You've known all along that I was searching for Karra Karra."
"I could not bring you, Jahna. You had to bring yourself. You follow your own songline, no one else can follow it for you."
"Did you know my grandfather then? Were you here when Djoogal was chief?"
"It was long ago, Jahna. I was not here, I was in Christian mission school."
"But do you know about the ceremony that used to take place inside that mountain? I believe my grandmother might have taken part in it."
"Only those who go in know about the secret of the mountain, Jahna. I did not go in. By the time I was old enough, the power of Karra Karra had been stolen."
Stolen by my grandfather, Joanna thought.
"Mother," Beth said, "if that's Karra Karra, then what are we going to do now?"
As Joanna stared at the shimmering mountain, she was filled with awe and a sense of mystery. It was composed of rock, but it had a presence, a spirit. And she thought of what had haunted her mother and visited her in dreams; the unspeakable event that Emily had witnessed and that had caused her to be sent away from her parents; the poison-song; the answers to the mystery of the Rainbow Serpent and the wild dogs; and finally, the "other legacy" that had been awaiting Lady Emily's return—all of these things were here, in this mountain.
Joanna thought of the years she had spent searching for this place, the miles she had covered; she could hardly believe she had found it. But now that she had, a sudden sense of urgency gripped her. She wouldn't wait another day, another hour. "I'm going to go into the mountain, Beth," Joanna said.
Beth stared at her mother. "But Mother, is it safe?" she said.
"Beth, darling," Joanna said. "It's something I must do. But I'll be all right. According to my grandfather, women have been holding rituals inside that mountain for centuries. How dangerous can it be?"
"Then I want to go with you."
"No Beth, you stay with Naliandrah." She turned to the old woman. "Can you show me how to get inside? My grandfather described a cave at the base of the mountain."
"I show you," Naliandrah said. "But, remember, Jahna. Rainbow Serpent still lives in that mountain."
THIRTY-ONE
T
HAT'S ODD," FRANK SAID, AS HE TAPPED HIS FINGER ON THE glass of his compass. "It won't hold steady. Damn needle keeps switching back to south. Have a look at yours, Hugh."
They were sitting around a campfire on a night that marked four weeks since their departure from Kalagandra. Hugh's party had been late getting to Western Australia because of storms in the Bight; the captain of the boat had had constantly to take shelter in coves and bays along the southern Australian coast. And then, once they had reached Kalagandra, they had had difficulty finding men willing to go into the desert to search for a lost woman when there was gold to be found right there. But finally, nearly three months after leaving Merinda, they had the men, camels and supplies, and on the first day of November they had struck off into the unknown.
And now, twenty-eight days later, they estimated that they should be near the place of the flash flood. Hugh and Frank had visited Eric Graham at St. Alban's Infirmary, where Sister Veronica was taking care of him. "We got lost somehow," Graham had said. "The compasses went crazy. And then we got caught by a flash flood. If it weren't for those gold prospectors who found me, I'd have perished like the others."
Hugh took out his compass and looked at it. "Yes," he said to Frank, "there's something wrong with mine, too. And this is just about where Eric said it would happen."
Graham had been able to sketch a crude map of their trek into the wilderness. His notebook had been lost in the flood, but he had been able to locate certain landmarks along the way. Hugh brought the map out now and studied it by the light of the campfire.
"All right," he said. "Eric said they kept to an easterly direction for as long as they could, traveling at an approximate rate of twenty-five miles a day. After four weeks, he said they were about here, where he has drawn a spine of craggy hills. We passed those three days ago, so we must be very near where the flash flood hit."
Frank looked at the map, which ended at that point. "Where do we go from here?" he said.
"This is where we use the skills of Ezekiel and the two trackers," Hugh said, as he rolled up the map and slipped it into his saddlebag. "Tomorrow we'll search the area for signs of Joanna's original camp. If she and Beth—or anyone—survived, they might have been able to salvage supplies from the flood and set up a new camp near here and wait for rescue. They would know better than to go wandering off."
"But what if they were forced to wander off?" Frank said. "I mean, we haven't found any water near here. They might have had to go in search of it."
"Even so, they couldn't have gone far on foot. The first water they came to, they would have stayed with it. There would have been no reason to move on."
Hugh regarded his friend across the flickering flames. "What is it, Frank?" he said. "There's something on your mind."
"I'm only thinking, Hugh, that, knowing Joanna, she might have decided to keep on looking for Karra Karra. Having come this far, she might not just sit and wait to be rescued."
Hugh took a drink from his mug. "Yes," he said, "that had occurred to me, too."
He looked at Sarah, whose red-brown eyes were staring into the fire. She continued to maintain that Joanna and Beth were still alive, her certainty growing the farther east the expedition went.
"Well," Frank said as he pocketed his compass, "at least we have the sun and the stars to guide us. No overcast sky, thank God."
The rescue expedition consisted of ten members: Hugh and Frank and three Merinda station hands, who had traveled from Melbourne to Perth by ship, along with Sarah and old Ezekiel. Constable Ralph Carruthers had volunteered to join the search party at Kalagandra, along with two black trackers named Jacky-Jacky and Tom. They were equipped with fifteen camels, food and water to last for months, medical supplies, compasses, tents and tools, rifles and ammunition.
"Which way do we go tomorrow, Mr. Westbrook?" Constable Carruthers asked. He regarded the journey as an adventure, with endless days of riding in the sun, and nights spent around the campfire. Carruthers was young and unmarried; it had been the lure of adventure that had made him join the frontier police force in the first place. And when he had heard Commissioner Fox talking about this rescue expedit
ion, he had jumped at the chance to join it.
"We'll continue eastward, Mr. Carruthers," Hugh said, as he looked at the black night that encircled them. He wondered if Joanna had indeed come this way, if she was in fact somewhere nearby. He looked up at the white, round moon and wondered if Joanna was looking up at that moment, and seeing the same moon. He thought of their many nights together, their private hours of passion and love; he thought of their laughter and joys and all the things they shared and had created together. He prayed that Joanna and Beth were alive; he refused to believe they were not. And he was determined to find them—he was not leaving this wilderness until he did.
"I wonder where Ezekiel's gone to," Frank said.
Hugh looked at his old friend and tried to calculate how many years they had known each other. He recalled the rather bombastic young owner of Lismore and the Melbourne Times, who had befriended him when the other graziers had allowed a green Queenslander to struggle on his own. Hugh suddenly found himself remembering events and conversations from years ago, long forgotten: a graziers' show and Ian Hamilton speaking to him for the first time; a barn dance and Frank saying, "Watch out, Hugh, I think my sister Pauline has her eye on you." It was strange, Hugh thought now, what stars and desert silence did to one's memory.
"He said he was going to scout around, see if he could find traces of a camp. When it comes to seeing in the dark, Ezekiel has the eyes of a cat."
"Well then," Frank said, standing up and rubbing his backside. "I'm going to turn in." Although he had lost weight since leaving Kalagandra, he still had not toughened up sufficiently for such a journey. He now cursed his sedentary life and wished he had heeded Ivy's advice to become more active. Frank was almost fifty, and tonight he felt every year of it. As he made his way to the tent he shared with Hugh, he made a silent promise that, when he returned, he would take up riding and shooting and boating, and even that new outrageous sport, tennis.
Carruthers, too, decided to go to bed, announcing his eagerness to be up early and ready for another long ride. The Aboriginal trackers and the three men from Merinda retired to their bedrolls beside the tethered camels, leaving Hugh and Sarah alone at the campfire.
They sat in silence for a while, watching the tea steaming in the billycan. They looked up at the stars every now and then, as if to make sure they were still there.
Hugh had sensed a change in Sarah over the past weeks. The sun had darkened her skin, the heat had given her a glow. But it was more than that, he thought. She had grown quiet, and more introspective. He thought about how every night, when she thought the others were asleep, she would steal out of camp and go into the desert. Sometimes she was gone for only an hour; at other times she wouldn't return until dawn.
"I think we should turn in," Hugh said. "Tomorrow we start traveling without the aid of a map, and without properly working compasses."
"I'm going to sit up for a little while longer. Good night, Hugh."
She went back to gazing into the glowing embers and thinking about Philip, the way he had kissed her good-by at the harbor, not caring that people stared. These past four weeks in the wilderness had given her time and silence in which to think, in which to examine herself. She thought of Joanna, who had chosen to seek out her own destiny. Joanna had not sat passively waiting for life to happen; she had fixed upon her goal and gone after it, creating her own story rather than having it created for her.
That is how it must be for me, Sarah thought. I must decide what I want, and follow my songline until I have achieved it. But how? Philip is what I want, he is all I want. But so many laws and taboos stand in our way.
When she decided that everyone was asleep, she walked as far away from the encampment as she could, still keeping it in view but making sure that she would not be seen. She came to a place where she stopped and looked up at the stars. She felt the Ancestors all around her. She felt the movements of spirits that had passed this way before her, either as creation-beings or as real people: the young Makepeaces, searching for Eden; Joanna's mother, Emily, and the Aboriginal girl, Reenadeena, escaping from danger. Sarah knew that the passions and dreams of everyone who had ever come this way existed here still. They whispered around Sarah, like tiny fish schooling around a larger one. She felt breaths upon her body; she heard murmurs and heart-flutters. And she thought: I will add my own passion to this place.
She closed her eyes and tried to send her spirit out through the night, imagining that Philip, over a thousand miles away, was waiting to receive it. She felt him reach out and embrace her, she felt the hardness and heat of his body, the pressure of his mouth on hers. She ached for the feel of him, for his presence.
And then another vision flashed into her mind: the looks on the faces of the people at the harbor. A white man kissing an Aboriginal woman in public. And—if they had known—a married man at that.
Oh Philip, she thought. What are we going to do?
She heard footsteps in the darkness. Turning, she saw Ezekiel making his way toward her across the sand. He sat down and turned his face to the stars. "This where we belong," he said softly. "This blackfella country. You and I, we Aborigine."
Sarah waited. After a moment, Ezekiel held out his hand, palm up. She looked and saw that he held a blue earring.
"That's Joanna's!" she said. "Where did you find it?"
"That tree, over there. She mark the place, she leave sign. She goes that way," he said, and pointed eastward. "That is where the missus is."
"You mean she left a trail?"
"She creates songline."
"Ezekiel, this is wonderful! We must tell Hugh!"
But he stayed her with his hand, saying, "I don't go. You find her now."
"What do you mean, Ezekiel?"
"My name is Geerydjine," he said. "Whitefella take my name away from me long ago. They call me Ezekiel. But I am Geerydjine. Today, we pass the Dreaming Site of the Emu Ancestor. I will go back there, and I will stay there. I go back to my ancestors now." He paused, and she saw dampness in his eyes. Then he embraced her. She felt his coarse beard against her face; she was startled to feel frail bones and melted flesh. She had always thought of Ezekiel as being strong and robust; now, he was a tired old man, longing for rest.
She watched him walk away, and eventually he blended into the night. Sarah did not try to stop him, she knew that he was following the custom of his people, seeking to die in privacy and dignity, and in his own time.
She looked at the earring he had given her, and she thought of the songline that Joanna had created. She heard Ezekiel saying, "We are Aborigine."
And then suddenly Sarah saw her way as clearly as if a path had been etched in the moonlit sand. It was a path that cut through Aboriginal land, through white man's land, straight to Philip. And at its end she saw herself, running into the arms of the man she loved, kissing him openly because there was nothing to be ashamed of, that they were breaking no laws, because she was Aborigine, as Ezekiel/Geerydjine had said. And according to her people's laws, she could declare a man to be her husband, and he could have more than one wife.
Anxious now to resume their search so that they could return as soon as possible to Merinda, Sarah paused to say a silent farewell to Geerydjine, then she hurried back to the camp to tell Hugh the news—that they were going to find Joanna.
As Joanna stepped from sunlight into the darkness of the cave, making sure the leather satchel was secured to the waistband of her skirt, she paused and held her torch aloft. The mountain hummed all around her. She felt its energy; it was almost as if she were entering a living thing. From the entrance, stretching into the formidable darkness, was a beaten path, worn down, she surmised, by generations of mothers and daughters. As daylight gradually receded behind her and she delivered herself into the heart of the great, throbbing mountain, Joanna wondered what she would find at the end of this path.
Outside, Beth was waiting anxiously at the cave's entrance, listening to her mother's fading footsteps. She looked
at the massive gathering of Aborigines on the plain below, she smelled the smoke from their many campfires, she heard chanting and drums. As the last of her mother's footsteps died in the darkness of the cave, Beth felt herself become afraid. She no longer had the comforting presence of her mother; she was all alone with many hundreds of Aborigines. She stood up and began to pace. She looked at the sun, climbing slowly to its zenith, and she wondered how long her mother would be inside the mountain.
Her nervousness grew. At one of the campfires, men were dancing an enactment of a kangaroo hunt. Their naked bodies were painted; they carried spears and boomerangs; they yelped and shouted fiercely.
Beth stared at the entrance to the cave. Sunlight illuminated the beginning of a path that descended into darkness. She looked back at the noisy, smoky plain, and then, without another thought, slipped inside the mountain.
Joanna lost track of time as she followed dark, twisting passages. The flame from her torch cast eerie, dancing shadows on the walls. She saw varicolored striations in the rock, ribbons of bright green running through red and orange and brown. She felt the hairs on her neck prickle, not from fear, but from the power of the mountain, perhaps its magnetism, as Beth had suggested, or possibly from something else. She wondered if a mountain could have a pulse and energy, like a person.
The path narrowed; the walls were so close that they scraped her shoulders; the ceiling was so low that she had to stoop to go through. Down and down she went, deeper into the heart of the earth. She came to passages that were so small she wondered if she dared even try to go through.
Time stretched; the darkness grew darker. She could feel the weight of the massive mountain all around her. She heard her own breath, and it sounded too loud. She thought that if she were to stop, she would hear her pulse thunder and echo off the subterranean walls.