Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  On the morning of the second day they reached a gorge, a deep green pool with steep sides of rock banded in different hues of orange and brown and shaped on each side like a great wave where a mighty tumult in ancient times had pushed the earth up suddenly, folding it on itself. The water had found a chink and pushed its way in, hollowing it out, polishing the lower parts of the rock face. One side was cut where a band of rock had separated, creating a ledge, and behind it was a vertical crack, an opening.

  Wirritjil pulled herself onto the ledge. She lay on her belly on the rock and reached down to Emily, hooking her arms under Emily’s shoulders. She let the raft float away and when Emily was safely on the rock she eased herself back, lying flat, catching her breath.

  Emily stood unsteadily. ‘Where are we?’

  Wirritjil motioned behind her. The crack was narrow and dark with a trickle of water flowing from its base. They had to turn sideways to squeeze in. Wirritjil went first. Emily slumped, sandwiched by the sides of the rock. Wirritjil slipped her hand around Emily’s waist helping her into the crevice to where it widened. The sides were slippery and smooth. Wirritjil knew the water coursed through here in unstoppable strength when the rains came good and strong. The tunnel inclined upwards and Wirritjil felt her way, easing Emily onto her back.

  Emily tried to help and adjusted her weight, bracing against the rock to stop from slipping back. At times she went limp and covered her face as if to make everything disappear and Wirritjil could hear the quick breaths as she tried not to sob.

  They emerged from the tunnel; above was a sheer cliff of stone.

  ‘Is this the way to Fitzroy Crossing, Wirritjil?’

  Wirritjil nodded. She walked along the bottom of the cliff until she came to a narrow gully overgrown with ferns that covered a thin stream and a small pond at the base. She paused. She was so tired. It was two nights since she had slept. She dare not slow down. Sweat dribbled down her face and from her chest to her belly, and from her shoulders to her arms. Among the ferns three small birds with bright green backs and purple chests flitted in quick abrupt movements. They sang a ssitt ssitt.

  Wirritjil smiled and straightened her back. ‘Sister,’ she said to Emily.

  They climbed the gully. Emily fought to climb by herself and grabbed at ferns that gave way as she pulled and she tumbled. Wirritjil clambered down to help her but Emily insisted on trying again. At the top they emerged onto barren rock.

  Wirritjil followed the trickle of water between two large rocks. The short passage opened to a long pool surrounded by palms and large paperbark trees. Purple-flowered vines trailed through the trees to the ground and across a small beach of clean pink sand. White and blue lilies faced the light of the sun filtering through the trees. Pieces of dead undergrowth were caught high in the palms or twisted among the new growth on the ground as though a tornado had passed through not so long ago. A waterfall tumbled several yards in a glimmering film over rounded rocks and vertical drops to the pool that was grassy green and clear. A black stain across the full width of the rock showed that the water flowed wide and strong at times.

  Tiny lime-coloured finches, red-faced and flecked with stars, greeted the women, singing sitss ssitts sitta. Parrots with scarlet epaulets regarded the newcomers from the branches of the paperbarks.

  Wirritjil sank to the ground. She searched the foliage of the trees and heard them before she saw them, the screech of the lorikeet, her jaarinel, the wirrilijkel. They came from the tops of the palm trees towards her in a flash of flight with their green wings, chests of red and yellow, and head feathers the blue of early evening.

  They chattered loudly and flew fast across the water, their colours wild and blurring with the sparkle of the waterfall.

  And then it rained.

  Trevor reached the river first. He took a deep breath at the water stretched before him and the beauty of the setting sun, its low rays coming gold through the trees and layering the water into shades of emerald. Large gum trees and graceful drooping paperbarks hung over banks laced with clumps of pandanus palms. The red-winged parrots swept across the water at the men’s arrival and spread through the trees on the opposite bank as if staking their territory.

  Nunnawarra listened to the parrots, seeking clues in their chatter and listening for other disturbances in the trees. He walked along the sandy bank of the eastern shore examining the prints of the insects and lizards, and stopped at the hoof marks.

  In the first light of morning the men turned downstream and followed the tracks that meandered alongside the river until they reached Wirritjil and Emily’s last camp.

  The tracker stood in the sandy enclave. Tracks were all around.

  ‘Horses go.’

  Nunnawarra walked over to the river. He touched the indents in the sand, the side of the sole, the push down of the big toe, some prints with the shallow pits of all toes. The white woman places her left heel gently or hops and here she crawls.

  The tracks disappeared into the water. Nunnawarra paced carefully along the bank. The tracks did not come out again, not on this bank. He waded into the water, watching the shadows from the trees and listening for the animals. The red parrots called out but not as loud as they should be. He knew that others had come through recently.

  Nunnawarra looked for clues, any clues. He waded into the water and where the pool ended against another sandbank he could see where they had come out. The black woman’s steps were deep in the soft, wet sand, scuffing the edges as she lifted her feet with effort. She was carrying a load. He wondered why she was showing him so clearly. They were strong footsteps, not hurt, not injured. She should be walking close to the banks and the pandanus where the thin streams across the sand would wipe away her prints.

  Nunnawarra swam back to the white men, rolling over, floating belly-up considering the trees and the curves of the river in this country he hardly knew and wondering what relation the Gidja woman would be to him, whether she had a promised man and whether she might run away with him if they caught up. He liked her footsteps; she was a strong woman. She was tricking, he knew that. He liked a mischievous woman. He was suddenly worried for this strong woman. John might kill her.

  ‘Womans thatta way.’ He pointed downstream. ‘Blackfella him carry whitefella.’

  Trevor took the horse blanket, the ropes and the billy out of the tree. Nunnawarra watched where Trevor put down the goods. He spied the roughed sand and the strands of hair across the rock. Trevor glanced at him. Nunnawarra turned away.

  ‘They are double tricking again,’ said John. ‘Bet they’re heading upstream.’

  Through the crackling fire Trevor studied Nunnawarra as he sat with his legs crossed and his knees almost touching the ground, sipping tea from a rusty tin mug. After the first few days the tracker had rarely worn his cotton shirt with the metal buttons, and the crisscross of heaped scars from a longago ritual were there for all to see. Trevor imagined him as a boy, standing quietly, welcoming the cut of the sharp stone, being honoured by it.

  ‘Nunnawarra, some blackfella was murdered at Cicada Springs. What does his blackfella family do?’

  Nunnawarra didn’t answer.

  ‘Tell police?’

  The tracker shook his head. ‘Law. Blackfella law.’

  ‘What’s Blackfella law?’

  John laughed and threw his tea to the side. He put his hands on his lap as though he was about to leap up in a dance. Nunnawarra’s face was impassive, but Trevor saw the scorn, so slight.

  ‘Law man say.’ Nunnawarra looked directly at Trevor.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Spear, mebbe rain come him not stop, dis one—’ he pointed to his stomach ‘—gone.’

  John jumped up and pantomimed a spear thrower.

  ‘They spear ’em and just let ’em die slowly. They curse ’em first and sometimes the person just runs away and dies, ’cos he thinks he is gonna die.’ He stopped his demonstration. ‘What yer thinkin’?’

  Trevor watched as Nu
nnawarra kept his eyes down, drinking his tea slowly.

  ‘What their way is.’

  ‘They spear us whitefellas without thinkin’, without worryin’ about the Lord and all.’

  In the morning Trevor rose to the smell of tobacco. John sat with his back against a tree, blowing smoke rings. His rifle and dog were by his side.

  ‘He’s gone, that Nunna fella. He took the rope, blanket, billy and most of our tea and sugar.’ John flicked his cigarette into the bush. ‘We should catch that bloody bastard and hang him.’

  Trevor rolled his swag.

  John jumped to his feet with his rifle in his hands. ‘He went that way. You don’t have to be a bloody tracker to see that. Let’s get him. He lied to us.’

  ‘He did his job. Got us this far, found water.’

  ‘What are you? A nigger lover?’

  Trevor stood up. He looked at the sky. Thunder rumbled. ‘I like being alive.’

  He held out his palm and caught the first drops and tasted their sweetness. The rain tinkled on the water lightly at first then heavy like an army of small drums.

  John cocked his rifle and checked the bullets. He lined up a small stone, squinting along the barrel of his rifle. ‘Ain’t no bloody tracks now.’

  He moved the point of the barrel across the sand and watched as the drops of rain made the grains of sand roll and the furrow he made disappeared. ‘Ain’t no tracks.’

  He lifted the rifle up, narrowed his eyes and looked straight at Trevor. ‘Pity Trevor Bayliss done got shot by his black tracker, eh?’

  He leant the butt of the rifle against his hip and raised the barrel so that it pointed at Trevor. The muddied black and white dog stood close by his leg. The rain came in sheets. Streams formed in the sand heading towards the river. Trevor did not move. ‘Drop that rifle.’

  John lifted the rifle higher and braced it against his shoulder. His hand slid to the trigger. ‘Nigger lover. You want us to die.’

  Trevor kept his eyes fixed on John. ‘I want us to live.’

  ‘Coulda fooled me.’

  Trevor’s hair was flat on his skull and in strands across his face. ‘Both of us.’ He took a step closer to John.

  John moved back, jabbing the rifle towards Trevor.

  Trevor’s voice was soft. ‘Johnno.’

  John let the rifle slump then slide so the barrel pointed to the ground. He stood with his head down.

  Trevor blinked and wiped the rain from his eyes. ‘We head to the Crossing and wait.’

  John nodded and picked up his sodden swag.

  7

  Walangkernany

  Wirritjil stood and raised her face to the sky. She felt the drops, cool and fat on her face, and then it came like a curtain from the rolling metal clouds. Her body relaxed and her fingers stretched long and loose. Emily closed her eyes and let the coolness embrace her body.

  Wirritjil had to sleep and she knew where to camp, a big paperbark, mernda, back from the pool where the rainforest turned into wide grassy land of the savannah. The tree was on high ground and the branches came low and gave cover. She curled to sleep on a clear patch of earth.

  Emily sat by her and watched through the leaves as the rain eased. Spinifex pigeons come close, and further away the cooing of the peaceful and bar-shouldered doves.The words she had heard Wirritjil use came to her. ‘I know you, marrawaype, and your cousins, kurlaraim and kurlurtukpu.’ She murmured to them, ‘Kur-lut-urrr-u-kjil, kur-lur-tuk-tuktuk.’

  They bobbed their heads at her and placed their feet stiffly, coming a little closer. The wirrilijkel swirled by in a chatter of blue, green and red, swooping around the tree and back to the pool.

  The clouds cleared and the sun came in sharp rays through the wisps of mist, making the raindrops sparkle on the grasses and in the trees.

  Wirritjil crawled from under the paperbark just after sunset and sat in the grass facing west, murmuring a song to the thin slip of the new moon as it set then she slept again until morning.

  Wirritjil made Emily wait to approach the pool until she had thrown several stones in the water, calling out to let the Walangkernany know they were there. Emily made a place near the water where the rough roots of the pandanus twisted across the sand and into the water. She rested her foot on one of the roots and her back against a pillow of sand and watched the silver flash of the fish and the slippery serpentine eels in the dancing lights that changed from green to blue and back again as night came and she stayed there day after day not wanting to move. She watched in a detached way, not thinking of the wonder of the colours; its worth was simply to fill her mind and let nothing else in, and even the waterfall’s glitter of blue diamonds in the morning and gold in the evening could not dispel the grey numbness that cloaked her.

  At the camp Wirritjil burnt the grass and beat it to the red soil. She hunted for good cooking and grinding stones. A stone with a dip placed in the centre of the fire could heat a little water. She scraped bark and took the hard leaves from a scraggly lawuny tree, mashed them and added them to the water. She let it sit while she found a big strong bloodwood, a long way from the camp, and rolled the sticky sap that oozed in places between the hard bark into a ball and carried it on the end of a string. She washed Emily’s foot with the pepperminty lawuny concoction, and plastered the dry wound with warmed sap from the bloodwood. After that she concentrated on finding utensils. She found the small nuts with long wings like insects from the jarlarluny tree, and followed their trail to the tree that was leafless but strong after the dry season. She notched an oblong through the white-yellow bark at a kneelike bend in the trunk, lifting it a little each day, and it came away on the fourth, a deep clean laanturrji.

  ‘Dis labi.’ She showed Emily a small shallow dish she had carved from wood.

  Emily tried to examine it but couldn’t focus.

  Wirritjil showed Emily how to cook yams in the labi and how to carry water in the laanturrji with spinifex grass at the ends and floating on top so that it didn’t spill.

  Emily dropped the laanturrji with the water and spinifex and stared at Wirritjil with glazed eyes.

  The Aboriginal woman disappeared into the bush and came back with a thin green branch of wattle, stripped of leaves and whippy in her hands. She jumped towards Emily and brought it down hard on Emily’s back. Emily buckled.

  ‘Amee,’ said Wirritjil and held the laanturrji towards her.

  Emily felt a slip of anger in her chest but it faded quickly. ‘I am sorry I spilt the water, kurrngam. I am sorry.’

  She followed Wirritjil to the fire and they heated rocks to put in the labi to roast yams and seeds.

  Wirritjil made a new spear. She took resin from spinifex, heated it and mixed it with hair and used it to fix a sharp flint on the end. Emily twirled a lock of hair to a thick string and cut it with one of Wirritjil’s flints. Wirritjil added it into the warm resin and wrapped the resin around the join. ‘Karlumpuny.’

  ‘Isn’t that a man’s spear?’

  Wirritjil held up the drover’s shirt. ‘Me bin man.’

  Emily shook her head. There seemed to be few hard rules for Gidja people.

  Emily tried to hide, to crawl back into her cloak of sorrow, but Wirritjil would not let her be, threatening her with the wattle stick. It was that and hunger, for Wirritjil now refused to share food.

  Emily was hungry. She was envious of Wirritjil’s collections of resin, bones and bark, and her food. She tried to snatch at the nuts and dried goanna meat but Wirritjil’s hand came down like a knife. She remembered William’s slingshot and how they used it to shoot at birds from his bedroom window until once he hit a pigeon and it dropped to the ground, its wing broken and its feathers all awry. She had thrown the slingshot away and in tears buried the pigeon under a little cross pinned with autumn leaves. Now, she was hungry almost all the time and roast pigeon seemed like it would be a good meal.

  She begged some resin from Wirritjil and used her hair to strengthen it. She stole the sinews and te
ndons that Wirritjil had saved from the goanna of her last meal. She knew to soften the resin and tendon with heat. It cooled to a springy cord and she tied it to a forked piece of strong wood. Soon she had a slingshot.

  She waited just inside the shade of the mernda tree for the kulurtuk pigeon. He was used to her and it was a simple shot from close range. It stunned him and she hit him hard, cooked him quickly singeing the feathers away, and ate him, saying thank you with every second breath.

  She made a slingshot for Wirritjil and felt a shot of pride when Wirritjil grinned. They hunted the doves and spinifex pigeons, and the kelinykelim, the pink and grey galahs, and roasted them on sticks. Wirritjil caught a file snake with her feet from between the roots of the pandanus. She slipped its head into her mouth and cracked its skull with her teeth. They chopped it up and grilled it in pieces and ate it with hard damper made from the smashed kernels of wild maize.

  Wirritjil stayed away from the pool and came only to fish or put her hands deep in the water near the edge to get the lily bulbs and stems. The water now enticed Emily with its dancing lights and coolness, the silky feel over her body was soothing and every day she went further and deeper. She practised moving her legs like the tail of a fish or kicking, making a splash, as she had seen Wirritjil sometimes do. She smoothed the water away from her, stretching big arcs with her arms. She dared herself to open her eyes underwater to see greens and blues and shimmering shafts of filtered sunlight. Soon she ventured to where her feet couldn’t touch the ground.

  ‘Why don’t you swim?’ Emily asked Wirritjil.

  Wirritjil was wet from reaching in at the edge of the pool. Her arms were full of long green lily stems and their grey bulbous roots.