by Laney Cairo
Nick couldn't read Talgerit's lips, but he knew what he'd be saying. The remote military outposts tried not to tangle with the Feathermen, because there were plenty of things out there that couldn't be shot at successfully. Like boyee. Last thing a military installation wanted was for a Featherman to send a boyee in; heavy earth-moving equipment was scarce and so hard to explain in triplicate.
Talgerit strolled back to the van, wide grin on his face. When he'd slammed the door shut and the man in khaki was moving the barrier, Nick said, “What did you threaten him with?"
"Bad things,” Talgerit said. “I said I'd make him smell if he didn't let us through. Reckon young man like him'd be shagging a girl for sure, eh?"
"For sure,” Nick said as they rolled through the checkpoint, and he could see the reflection of the man sniffing himself surreptitiously in the rear view mirror. “Can't go shagging if he smells bad."
"Will there be many road blocks?” Samuel asked worriedly. “I don't have refugee papers or anything."
"Dunno,” Talgerit said. “Won't be any at Walwalinj, there's too much Dreaming there, they'd go mad."
Two hours later, when the farmlands had been replaced by bush again, Talgerit pointed at the hill ahead of them. “There, go there, Dr. Nick. That's Walwalinj."
The track ended at the base of the hill, and Nick parked the van. He climbed out and put the damper down on the gas unit, while Talgerit's dog pissed its way around the van tires.
"What's that sound?” Samuel asked, coming around the back of the van, too.
Nick lifted his head and listened to the faint keening as the wind whistled through the gum trees. “Is that the wind, Talgerit?” Nick asked.
"That's Walwalinj,” Talgerit said. “The hill that cries. You're going to be Noongar now, if you can hear Walwalinj."
They followed Talgerit through the scrub, past the red bull ant mounds, Talgerit moving faster and faster, following his dog up the hill, up ahead of them, so that Nick was running, Samuel out of breath behind him, crashing through the bush.
Nick lost sight of Talgerit halfway up the hill, bounding between the boulders, and Samuel wasn't keeping up, so Nick let Talgerit go and waited for Samuel to catch up.
They climbed the hill more slowly, finding what had previously been a firebreak instead of following Talgerit's manic dash through the bush.
They found a crushed shed, near the top of the hill, a relay station of some sort Nick guessed, and Samuel paused beside the wreckage.
"What happened?” he asked, and Nick shook his head.
The shed had very obviously been destroyed rather than just left to fall down, and it was a puzzle since all the rest of the buildings they'd seen as they had driven through Quairading were dilapidated, not broken.
"Talgerit might know."
Talgerit was on the brow of the hill, standing on the very pinnacle, looking out toward the coast, eyes shaded against the afternoon sunshine.
The twisted wreckage of a relay tower lay at the top of the hill, again very obviously crushed and mangled, and Talgerit turned and nodded to them.
"This is where my mob come from,” he said, deep pride in his voice. “My land."
"What happened to the tower?” Nick asked. “Do you know?"
Talgerit jumped down from the boulder he was on and clambered over to the broken tower. He ran his hands over the metal structure, climbed around it a little, and lifted something up into the air triumphantly.
"Look, eh?” he called out, then he jumped down off the girders and walked back to Nick and Samuel.
He had something in his hand, a piece of translucent glass, perhaps, that shimmered and shone in the sunlight.
When he handed it to Nick, it was too light to be glass, and too rough, and its surface shone like oil on water.
Nick handed it to Samuel and asked Talgerit, “What is it?"
"Wagyl,” Talgerit said reverently. “Scale of the Wagyl. Wagyl didn't like the metal things on the hill, so it broke them."
The scale in Samuel's hands was the size of a dinner plate, and Samuel went visibly pale under his dark skin.
Talgerit took the scale back and rubbed it against his torn T-shirt to polish it. “The Wagyl is big,” he said, with admirable understatement. “Listen, Walwalinj isn't crying anymore."
The keening had gone, leaving just the wind whistling in the gum trees and hakeas.
"Why has it stopped?” Samuel asked, looking around them, at the clouds scudding across the high blue sky.
"We came back,” Talgerit said. “Let's make camp."
A trickle of water came out from underneath boulders on the other side of the hill from the van, filling a small waterhole, and Talgerit cleared away the dead undergrowth near the boulders and built two small fires while Nick collected the leaves from the balgas near the camp and spread them thickly on the ground.
"Good camp,” Talgerit said, and he gave the Wagyl scale to Nick to hold. “Hold this, Dr. Nick, and I'll get dinner."
Talgerit's idea of hunting was simple and effective: he gathered up small round rocks, sat motionless on a boulder in the dusk, and tossed the rocks at the rabbits that inevitably came out to graze.
Once a rabbit was stunned or injured, he snapped its neck and handed it to Nick to be skinned and gutted, and went to sit on a different boulder to catch another rabbit.
Nick had done a surgical rotation in the army; skinning a rabbit took a couple of seconds, three quick cuts with his pocket knife and a flick to take the skin off, then a twist and a shake to vent the guts.
What Samuel thought of this, Nick wasn't sure. Samuel sat between the fire, Wagyl scale cradled in his lap, a distant look on his face.
When Talgerit came back with the third rabbit, he took the Wagyl scale back and sat down in the dirt and began to sing, while Nick propped the three carcasses over the coals.
It took a while for rabbit to cook, and the sun set completely, leaving stars and a sliver of moon, and Talgerit's voice rose, telling the story of this place and how the people came back.
Samuel gasped, and Nick looked up, reaching for his pocketknife reflexively, and took his hand out of his pocket when he saw the child standing at the edge of the firelight.
The child was naked, and obviously Noongar, black as the night itself apart from his eyes and his teeth. He stood there silently, not making any move toward the fire.
Talgerit held out his hand, and a sphere of light formed on his palm, and he released it to float off into the night. The child laughed, a sudden bright sound, and Nick realised that the child was Talgerit, too, from another time, from Talgerit's own Dreaming perhaps.
The child was gone just as quickly, leaving just the night and Talgerit's song.
Talgerit's voice faded away, and he looked at Nick and Samuel, and his eyes were huge. “You saw him, unna?” he asked uncertainly.
"We saw,” Nick said.
"That was you, wasn't it?” Samuel asked, sounding just as uncertain.
"Kind of,” Talgerit said. “I didn't ever see people here, a long time ago. I must be still here then. I like that."
He looked at the fires, folding his lip over in thought, rubbing at the Wagyl scale contemplatively. “We'll stay here tomorrow,” he said. “There's something I need to do."
Talgerit was an almost invisible figure, sitting motionlessly on a boulder, his back to the fires, looking out at the bush. Nick piled wood on the fires and pulled a blanket over Samuel and lay down beside him on the balga leaves.
"What about the small people?” Samuel asked, and Nick pulled him closer.
"Talgerit will keep watch. Think he's doing some magic tonight, and tomorrow, something to do with his child-self coming to the fire tonight."
The ground was hard, and gravel dug into Nick's back despite the mattress of leaves, but Samuel's head on his shoulder was comforting. The stars were bright and sudden in the night sky, and the moon was low, hovering over the treetops. It would have been cold if not for the two fires
.
Nick could feel magic in the ground and trees, making his scars ache a little, and he could see why Talgerit thought that whiteman wouldn't come to this area. Spirits lived here, old and deep, stirring beneath the earth, making the hill sing for the people that had gone away.
* * * *
They ate cold rabbit for breakfast, and the sky was overcast, low clouds that spat rain. Samuel bathed quickly in the pool and put his clothes back on over his damp skin.
Talgerit had gone, sometime before Samuel woke, leaving behind his clothes, and a puddle of white paste on a boulder, beside a pile of split stones, but Nick didn't seem worried. “Clever man business,” Nick had said, and he'd gone to brush his teeth in the pool.
They sat there, leaning back against one of the boulders, in their waterproof jackets. The morning passed slowly, the rain clouds thinned, and birds began to sing from the tall trees around the base of the hill.
Nick named them, one by one.
The maniacal laughter was a kookaburra. The harsh cries were ravens. Black cockatoos flew overhead, eerie cries that left Samuel feeling even more unsettled. Magpie larks sang, rising warble, and honeyeaters tweeted, settling in the bushes around the camp, little brown birds that peered at Samuel and Nick with curiosity.
When the rain stopped, armies of ants came out, huge ants, little ants with white wings that buzzed around the clearing, all scurrying around industriously. Other insects came out, too, big flies that bit, and the persistent smaller flies that crawled all over Samuel's face and drove him mad.
Nick didn't seem to mind the flies, or even notice them, he just flapped his hand in front of his face regularly.
Samuel went to sleep. He hadn't slept well the night before, or the night before that, and what had originally seemed like a frustrating waste of a day when they could have been travelling to Perth was a needed break.
He curled up beside Nick, head on Nick's thigh, closed his eyes and went to sleep gradually, Nick's hand stroking his shoulder regularly.
"Wake up,” Nick said, shaking Samuel's shoulder gently, and Samuel struggled blearily upright.
Talgerit dumped the carcass of a huge bird, an emu, that was the word for it, in the clearing. He was naked and streaked with smears of white, intermixed with the brown marks of blood, and he looked as old as Ed, with forever wrapped around his shoulders.
"Can we help?” Nick asked, kneeling beside the emu carcass and looking at the bird.
Stretched out on the ground, it was taller than a man, with legs that made up half of its height. Most of the other half was neck, and the feathers were mottled brown and white, plumed extravaganzas on a particularly unappealing looking bird.
"Gotta pluck the feathers,” Talgerit said. “Make the fires up first, then we can eat the meat, too, later."
"Can you pluck a chicken?” Nick asked Samuel, looking over his shoulder.
"I've never tried,” Samuel said. “Is it hard?"
"Samuel can get wood for the fires, eh?” Talgerit said. “Emu feathers are bastards."
Samuel found plenty of branches on the ground, under the trees at the foot of the hill, old dead branches that snapped easily when Samuel jumped on them, splintering open to show thousands of little ants with white wings scurrying around inside the wood. Samuel broke up some branches and dragged them back to the camp, then piled up twigs on the ashes of the previous night's fires and blew on them.
He felt an intense satisfaction at seeing the tiny flames crackle up as the twigs caught fire.
Nick and Talgerit sat on either side of the emu, tugging at the feathers, yanking each one out and putting it on Talgerit's abandoned T-shirt, until they'd built a pile of feathers and the emu was denuded.
It looked even more ridiculous without its feathers, not much bigger than a chicken really, certainly not as big as a turkey, and Nick used his pocketknife to gut the bird.
Talgerit's dog, which had been absent since they arrived, appeared immediately in the clearing, and Talgerit tossed it the guts, the head and neck, and the bottom half of the legs.
"Rest is for us,” Talgerit said, and he balanced the tops of the legs across the fire. Nick hacked the carcass into sections, and Talgerit buried them amongst the ashes.
Emu was tough and tasteless, Samuel decided, really not worth the eating, unless you happened to be hungry, and he hadn't done anything that day to make himself hungry.
Talgerit ate Samuel's share.
After dinner, when the sun had set, Talgerit put thick pieces of branches on the fires and took his ragged clothes off again.
This time, after he'd sung and shuffled his way around the clearing, he sat down beside the pile of feathers, with pieces of grass beside him, and began to wind and bind and twist the feathers, tongue protruding from his mouth in his effort.
It wasn't until he'd nearly finished the first one that Samuel realised what the shape he was weaving was; he was making baskets of grass and feathers for his feet. Somehow, Samuel had always thought that a Featherman would put feathers on his arms, the same as the Inca priests had done, but of course that was his own cultural assumption. There was no reason why Noongar Feathermen would do the same, no reason why they wouldn't make feather shoes for themselves instead of capes.
Talgerit went off that night, wearing his feather shoes and nothing else.
* * * *
The van didn't start easily the next day, even with coals from the fires, and Nick said, “Have we taken the van as far as we can?"
Talgerit shook his head. “Not time to leave it yet, we can drive a bit further, to the place where the Wagyl came down the hill, that way.” He pointed to the west, and Nick could see the darker green of taller trees that marked a waterway.
"Is that the Avon River?” Nick asked Talgerit.
"Dunno,” Talgerit said.
"I've got maps,” Samuel said, and he took his bag out of the back of the van and rifled through it. “Here,” he said, holding a map out to Nick.
Nick spread the map out on the dirt beside the van and the three of them knelt down around it.
"Kutter Kich,” Nick said, pointing at Wave Rock on the map. “Quairading. There's the road we drove down, through Balkuling and Kauring.” He tapped the map. “This is where we are, I think, Mt. Stirling."
A river snaked across the map close to Mt. Stirling; the Avon river, which became the Swan River.
Samuel tracked his finger across the map. “And there's Perth."
"Long way to go yet,” Talgerit said.
Even once they got the van started, it didn't run well, sputtering and complaining, but they coaxed it down toward what had previously been York, but was now a blackened collection of stumps and charred bricks.
The bridge had burned, too, leaving only twisted metal pylons in the riverbed, and Nick parked the van beside the road and turned the motor off.
"Going to swim and walk now,” Talgerit said.
Samuel took his bag, with his maps and papers in it, as well as the half bag of flour. Nick took his medical bag. Talgerit tied a strand of material torn off his T-shirt between his feather boots and slung them around his neck, despite the smell they were beginning to give off from the bits of emu still clinging to the ends of the feathers.
They crossed the shallow river, where the bridge had been, wading between the pylons. The town was ruined, the bush beginning to reclaim the land, the trees encroaching amongst the foundations of the houses, and Talgerit said, “Dead people are here."
He led them out of the town site quickly, almost running, and headed inland, away from the river and the ruins. The other side of the river valley was a large hill, outside of the town, and even Talgerit slowed down going up the slope, scrambling up the hillside.
At the top, they turned around and looked down over the valley and the river, and even in the midday sun the place looked haunted.
There wasn't any question of which way to go, a peeling and faded road sign made that clear, when they found the remains of a
bitumen road on the other side of the hill. Perth, 102 kms it said, and the arrow pointed west.
"Toward the sea,” Talgerit said.
They walked, following the road, broad bitumen expanse, designed to carry trucks and buses, now slowly being taken over by the bottlebrushes and gum trees, but it felt like they were walking between tall trees, and even in the sunshine it was cool and shady.
Soon, the shapes of the trees were visible, looming over them, casting a deep shade, and the ground smelt of wet soil, not bitumen.
Samuel stopped, gripping Nick's arm, and he sounded panicked when he said, “Nick! Talgerit! What's happening?!"
"Dead trees,” Talgerit said. “There used to be a forest here, and the land remembers."
A phantom kangaroo hopped past them, appearing from nowhere, and disappearing just as rapidly, and Nick said, “Seems the land remembers other things, too."
Talgerit's dog yipped, up ahead of them, and Talgerit said, “C'mon."
Every step forward, the remembered forest became more and more real, and Nick wound his hand securely around Samuel's wrist and hung on tight. If the stories, and songs, were true, the land remembered lots of things, more than just trees and kangaroos.
They kept on walking, focussing on the faded painted lines on the bitumen, trying to ignore the phantoms around them, Talgerit pausing occasionally, with his dog, to wait for Nick and Samuel to catch up.
It was hard work, as hard as walking through real forest, and Nick found himself inordinately proud of how long Samuel kept going, eyes down on the road, ignoring his surroundings. For someone who was terrified of devils and small people, he did remarkably well.
The sun set, up ahead, and Talgerit kept them walking until it was so completely dark that it was impossible to find the lines on the road.
"We need water,” Nick said. “And to sleep, Talgerit."
A sphere of light formed on Talgerit's hand, lighting his face, then slowly their surroundings, and Talgerit did not look pleased. “Bad place to stop,” he said.
"Are there any good places here?” Nick asked rhetorically, and Talgerit shook his head.
This was the bad lands, the place that no one went voluntarily, there were no good places and Nick knew it.