Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  High in the blue expanse of the sky a single bird circled until it became just a speck. It flew into the silver that surrounded the white disc of the sun and Emily could see it no more. She closed her eyes, let her body slump and thoughts flood into her mind.

  I can remember now, what I made into a blur, what I tried to tell the priest. Yes, I can think of it in every detail. The wind was against my face, so cool, so free. I was galloping, galloping across the plain on the black mare and there was just the blue sky and the red earth, the mare’s feet striking the ground like drumbeats. I thought we could go on forever. It was the cattle that made me slow down, four cows and two nearly grown calves, lost and thirsty. I pushed them around the hills to where water might be, I needed help and he came, the Aboriginal stockman on the wild little brumby. I had seen him ride, working with the cattle, watched his walk, slow and easy, and seen him lower his head when the stockmen laughed at him. I waved to him, beckoned to him.

  Emily opened her eyes. She thought of him riding to her, the relaxed canter in the gold and hazy sun of the late afternoon. He stopped more than a few yards away, took off his hat and said, ‘Missus, seen that dust you been makin’ a long way back.’

  Emily smiled. A leaf floated in the current catching on a stone for a few seconds and she reached to free it, to let it travel.

  He waited for me to tell him what to do, but I was lost and followed the slight flick of his finger, the inclination of his head, where he would glance. The bright evening star was already in the sky when we reached Baldman Spring and it was shining in the water too. We ate dried beef and flour cakes he had and then Jawandi made a shelter for me with the saddles and blankets. He slept on the ground between the spinifex hummocks far from the fire. The stars came out of the sky like a storm and there was a cold wind.

  Emily sat up, cupped water in her hand and wet her lips. She murmured, ‘It was the wrong time of year for a cold wind.’

  I took him a blanket. He woke and sat cross-legged. The light from the stars was like frost on his face. How still we sat, side by side. The moon was low, a thin crescent shining blue, it seemed a doorway to a mystical place. He put the blanket back around me. I wanted to say something but I knew he was listening to the night. After a while I could hear a noise like ‘wuk, wuk’. He told me it was a frog and its name was ‘wukiny’. That made me laugh and he laughed too.

  I heard the gliding whisper of a bird’s wings, so close, a kite. It stayed circling and then it flew across the moon. Jurulu called to it, spoke to it in its own language. There are many languages. He said you can understand them, all of them, you just have to listen. We didn’t say anything for a long time, just listening and listening.

  I touched his shoulder, then his neck, his face, his lips. He smiled and all of the sky was deep in his eyes. The blanket was dusty but our bodies were warm and the moon sat on the horizon for a long time as if it were holding the night still. He was gone before dawn. The stockmen came in the pale light. Their firesticks had burnt down to nothing.

  I told them I was alright and I was alone. They said William was very worried. He would beat me, if I was not a lady. There was always a guard after that—William, Trevor or that stockman John, all of them silent, surly. I went down to the yards when I could to watch the stockmen work. I saw Jurulu, always in the distance, but I felt close and whenever there was a whistling kite, he would look up and I would too. I’d dream our spirits were together, carried by the kite, and that made me feel good.

  ‘It is a madness of loneliness. A sinful madness.’

  Emily stood and drew her foot through the water watching the ripple fan out. She felt the pain of her bruises. The skin on her arms was tight in places with blisters and she could see new blisters. Her legs were raw with the riding and the barb lodged in her foot stabbed whenever she put weight on it. She knew she could not go on without rest.

  She climbed back slowly and from the edge of the bush watched the Aboriginal woman gathering armfuls of spinifex, walking through the water pushing the long spiky grass from side to side.

  Emily circled the pool, keeping back from it, watching Wirritjil.

  At the other end, near a thicket of pandanus plants and reeds, Wirritjil peered into the deep water, threw her spear and dived to retrieve a plump fish with dark fins and black eyes. With a wide sweep of her arm she gathered the spinifex and threw it to shore. Several small silver fish flickered among the fibres.

  Wirritjil disappeared into the bush. Emily walked quickly to sit in a shaded spot on the edge of the pool. Wirritjil came back with a bundle of small sticks. On a sandy rock several yards from the water she made a pit in a loose fibrous stick and a sharp point on a hard twig, laid the pitted stick across dry grass and twirled the sharp point into it, tossing sticks aside and sharpening another as the points wore. It took many attempts to get a spark. Finally a small flame ignited and the grass crackled. She searched the slope downwards for dried branches of the kunjiny tree with its coin-like grey leaves. The wood burnt a clean flame, the smoke rising thin then disappearing to nothing.

  Emily stood. All of the sky was in the water, the burning sun, a wisp of a cloud and the green tips of trees and the bushes on the edges.

  ‘Are you going to hurt me?’ she called out.

  Wirritjil was throwing fish on the fire.

  ‘Gooniyandi country,’ said Wirritjil and waved her hand in a circle.

  ‘Do you want to kill me because of what I have done?’

  ‘Gooniyandi Walangkernany,’ smiled Wirritjil, ‘’e good.’

  Emily looked around and moved quickly from the pool.

  ‘That snake?’

  ‘’E alright,’ Wirritjil said.

  Emily moistened her lips.

  ‘I trust you are cooking for both of us?’ She didn’t wait for an answer and added, ‘You look silly with that clay in your hair.’

  Emily felt hungry for the first time since before the birth and came within a few feet of the fire. Wirritjil took a fish from the coals using thick leaves gathered from the trees in the gullies and handed it to her. Emily sat on the sand and ate. The flesh was sweet. She felt its warmth flow through her.

  ‘This fish was swimming right here. Now it is part of me. Maybe I am part of what it was.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I can’t swim.’

  ‘Jampinparuny, he father.’ Wirritjil held out a piece of the dark fish and nodded to the small silvery fish on the rock. ‘Thirntil, he aunty.’

  ‘You eat your father and aunty?’

  Wirritjil grinned. ‘’Im good tucker.’

  At the end of the pool the black mare limped down to the water. One hind pastern was swollen. The horse was quiet as Wirritjil examined her, black fingers circling the lower leg. Emily thought of Jurulu’s hands doing the same, his back straight and his shirt wet with sweat from riding.

  Wirritjil pulled a spinifex spike from the mare’s leg and the horse trotted away, snorting at the pain. She picked two branches from the shrub of long grey leaves with yellow blossoms and spread them to bake in the sun. ‘Miss,’ she said and sucked on the bottom of the tube-shaped flower. She handed a flower to Emily. Emily refused and looked away.

  Wirritjil worked steadily. She reshaped her short spear, her hong, heating it, pounding and straightening it as it cooled. She worked hard on the tip, nursing it in the fire, removing it before it darkened and polishing it to a sharp point with bark.

  Emily watched her movements, unhurried and almost languid, it was as if she was in a continuous dance, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, flowing through the day. Even her string belt—full of new things, like the collection of a curious child, useful-shaped twigs, rocks, a clean lizard skin, her flint and pieces of tough grass—seemed part of the dance.

  Emily reminded herself that Wirritjil was a servant. She pleaded for her strength to return and her mind to clear so that she could think of what to do and how she must force the black girl to do what she demanded.

  She must erase Jurulu from h
er thoughts, not think of the still baby or that she was so alone in this wild country. She played tricks with her mind, convincing herself she was home, naming every meadow flower she knew and remembering the blossom as if it were fresh and fragrant in front of her: the ragwort plants, plump with yellow flowers that made the cows sick but that the old women of the village would collect to make medicine; the happy parades of buttercups in the meadows; the carpets of bluebells between the forest oaks; and the vines of purple nightshade tangled in the green of the hedges or scattered in the hedgerow alongside the sprays of Queen Anne’s lace.

  In her uneasy sleep, a boy who was sometimes a young William or a grown Joseph would come through the meadow and she would play with him. Sometimes she would hear Jurulu’s song and she tried to hear it properly, to catch it, wrap herself in it, but it would fade away into silence.

  The moon rose with the sun still in the sky. Wirritjil collected the partly dried leaves and burnt them to a white ash on a bare rock. She mixed water with the ash and put the paste on the cuts on her head and on the mare’s wound, then wrapped the mare’s leg in bark and tied it with grass string. She squatted by Emily’s sore foot with the paste in her hand but Emily pulled away.

  Before sunrise Wirritjil caked her body in mud and left to hunt. She came back to camp with a prize, a small wallaby, the cut of her spear in its back. She put leaves over it.

  ‘Mantha,’ she said to Emily as she sprinkled it with water.

  She sat by it for a while then broke its legs with a quick movement of her hands, singed its fur in the fire and placed it in a hole with coals and hot rocks.

  Wirritjil did not rest and made frequent trips to a large rock that overlooked the plain they had crossed. She gathered the yellow flowers and compressed them into packets, ground the cooked fish and put it into tubes of paperbark. She cut her hair against the rock with the flint, using it to make string, mixing the strands with wattle-gum resin and fibres from the pandanus roots. She teased the knuckle bones of the wallaby from the fire and carved hooks for fishing.

  They ate as the sun set and the moon rose; fat, shimmering and orange. Wirritjil’s teeth were white and strong and tore easily at the wallaby flesh. One tooth on the upper side was missing. Emily knew Wirritjil was one of old man Charcoal’s wives. There were stories that Charcoal was a magic man and he had taken her tooth to make a spell. Emily thought him ugly and bony and that Wirritjil must yearn for a young man.

  ‘That man Charcoal, why is he allowed to have so many wives?’

  Wirritjil studied Emily’s face for clues as to what she was saying.

  Emily tried again. ‘Charcoal, one wife . . .’ She paused, thinking of the few words of Gidja she knew. She held her fingers up. ‘One ngulngal, two ngulngal, three ngulngal.’

  Wirritjil grinned. ‘He maban.’

  ‘Maban? What is that? A man should have only one wife. It is in the Bible. Well, so Kathryn tells me.’

  Wirritjil’s face was blank but smiling.

  Emily frowned. ‘You go walkabout with Charcoal?’

  Wirritjil raised her palm upwards. It was a signal that she didn’t understand.

  ‘Charcoal and you—walk long over the land?’

  ‘Saltwater country, desert country, datta way too.’ Wirritjil waved her hand northwards. She pointed to the full moon. ‘Dis one, karnkiny, ’e fat man.’

  ‘It is called the moon. Moon.’

  ‘Them all campfires.’ Wirritjil waved her hand at the stars in the sky.

  ‘Campfires?’

  ‘Our people there.’

  ‘Stars. They are called stars.’

  The light of the coals shone in Wirritjil’s black eyes. Emily thought of William’s angry eyes.

  ‘He won’t forgive me,’ Emily said in a low voice. Wirritjil lowered her head at the change in tone.

  ‘You have done nothing wrong, you could go back, go back to Charcoal.’

  ‘Dey kill me, mebbe Juwurru, mebbe sister, father . . .’

  ‘Take me back. I will hide you.’

  Emily stood up. She winced and rested her foot on its heel.

  ‘The murders. Who will they blame?’

  She walked down to the water.

  ‘I know you know who killed Joseph,’ she called back to Wirritjil. ‘The baby and—’ she paused again for her throat was tight ‘—and the baby’s father.’

  Wirritjil said nothing. The nightjars were awake and their calls came from the rock face with a chirr chirr mixed with the high trill of their young. Wirritjil pulled herself closer to the fire. A nightjar flew above her and its feathers were the colour of ochre in the light of the flames.

  ‘William,’ Emily said, and dipped her finger in the water, making the reflection of the moon quiver. ‘He must be afraid we will tell. What if we say we won’t tell? No, he will never trust me.’ Emily watched the drops fall from the tips of her fingers. ‘We must get to where we can be safe, then sort everything out. The police—yes, we can go to the police.’

  Wirritjil stood up.‘Policem, takem baby, jilikum.’ She held her hands to her face as if to hide.

  ‘Police are good men.’ Emily splashed the water and the moon wobbled into a thousand pieces. ‘Believe me, Wirritjil, they are good men.’

  Wirritjil threw sand on the fire and from her sentry rock watched for movement or smoke in the country below.

  Emily sat by the pool. She rested her feet in the water and her head in her arms like a lost child.

  The Aboriginal tracker did not go into the cave system. Instead he headed over the top of the hill. The men walked between the boulders, skirting the sudden drops into small bush cathedrals. The tracker stopped at a fall of boulders and looked closely at the ground, the way the stones had recently moved. He felt the coolness before he saw the opening. He knew before he examined the stones and the soil that this was where the two women had travelled. He was sure but he waited until he had something he could show the two white men. This is the way the rock has turned, the brush in the dirt. Yes, this mark is the edge of a horseshoe, a Cicada Springs horseshoe.

  Even then the shorter man laughed at him.

  Emily crept to where Wirritjil slept high on the rock. The moon was setting, pulling its milk shadows back from the land as the sun rose, lighting the earth with colours of ochre and pindan red. Emily closed her eyes and the sun was orange against her eyelids.

  Wirritjil woke with a start and was suddenly rigid. Four horses approached below. So close. A flock of corellas swept in front of the riders, their new-day shadows long across the land. A black man dismounted and looked at the ground. He pointed downstream, away from them, northwards along the path of the decoy.

  Wirritjil gathered her food packages and tied them to her belt. Emily tried to cover the fireplace but Wirritjil knew it was impossible to hide their camp from the black tracker. She chose a few strong tubular reeds, added them to her belt and slapped sandy mud and crushed eucalypt leaves over herself and Emily.

  The mare and the brumby stopped frequently, taking time to place their feet in the steep falls of stones and the knotted roots of low trees. As they approached the fork in the creek both horses held their heads high, sniffing the air. Wirritjil could smell sweat, horses and a stink of old beef. They heard voices. Emily’s hands tightened on the rope and she did not know what to do. She lay low along the brumby’s back and her body trembled with a rushing chill. Wirritjil led the horses a short distance away behind an outcrop of rocks and slipped back to a bush thick with matted leaves and thorns. The men had dismounted. There were three, standing below in the creek bed where the two streams joined. One took his hat off. Wirritjil recognised Trevor, his red hair shining in the sun like there were flames on his head. The tracker pointed upstream and they mounted.

  They came close. Three men, four horses, one dog. The dog came first, sniffing at the ground before shooting ahead and chasing a small lizard, then the two whitefellas and the black man behind. The men sat straight, peering forwards. Wirri
tjil sank closer to the ground. They came too close. She shivered as she smelt the rum from the breath of the shorter man. The black tracker peered into the foliage of the thorny bush. She recognised his markings. He was from Jaru people. Close country. Their eyes met. He held her gaze for a few seconds then turned away.

  Wirritjil waited, ready to run hard if he alerted his bosses. When she could no longer see them she ran to Emily.

  ‘Jaru fella mebbe tell ’em whitefellas.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Emily struggled to take a breath.

  Wirritjil hurried the horses down to the lower fork of the creek. Emily’s foot jolted her unless she walked on her heel. She kept her knees bent to give her speed, lurching from side to side as she tried to keep her balance. They mounted and cantered along the dry creek bed until it snaked upwards and they left it. They passed through a small gorge and out into the plain again. The mare began to limp and Wirritjil dismounted. Emily could not ward off the giddiness that came and went like the horses’ footsteps. She wanted to go back to the rock pool. The sun was so hot.

  Trevor kicked at the ashes and watched the fish scales flash in the sun. He knelt down and dug in the sand and found the still-warm coals of the buried fire. He stood and peered around as though the women might be standing close, maybe at the fringe of the bush. At the pool he washed his face with water that was cool from the night. It ran down his back, trickling cold against the sweat at the base of his spine.

  John held a broken wallaby foot in front of his dog who stood on his haunches with his front paws raised, saliva dripping from his lips, his eyes fixed on the bone with its thin strips of brown flesh and shrivelled paw. John threw the wallaby foot and the dog jumped high to catch it. John scowled, picked up a rock and skidded it hard across the surface of the pool.