The kitchen was indeed empty, cold. Why would she care if everyone ate late? Taking a pad of paper down from a shelf she scrawled a note; it was a good opportunity to ensure the kitchen knew their place, knew that her orders were to be followed. She would also make sure they knew she was displeased in the morning.
She stormed from the kitchen into the deep silence just before dawn.
Maybe the concerns the others were having stemmed from what happened before and after the Natives’ time in the mission. Some would say it was not right to take the Native children from their homes, from their families. Sister Bagra had to admit, she had some doubt about that herself – every creature from the lowest animal is happier among its own kind. If you take a puppy from its mother, the mother will wail, mourn. It should not be surprising that the Natives do too.
However, giving these children religion, teaching them to read and write a language far superior to the jabber they talked before, justified rounding them up, keeping them at the mission, imprisoning them, some would say. Those critics were morons. Surely the end justified the means; it really was best for these children that they be educated, that they be raised by civilised people. They were primitives really, living in squalor, living in dirt, living dull, short, pointless lives.
What concerned her, if anything did, was the children being taken or sent, after the mission school, to lives of drudgery as domestic servants, or as low-class farmhands. Surely the school was capable of elevating them further than that: maybe to priests and monks; maybe to menial, but independent, labour of some kind. It would be interesting, she thought, to see how far they are capable of being educated.
She was tempted – it was so tempting – to separate a child from the mob, and give that child a further education, maybe an education as good as the children get back home, see how far it could go. Besides the benefit to the Native, it would be an advantage to have a Native priest, a Native teacher to take the teaching to the others. She had been tempted to try that with Jacky, when he had been a child. That would have been a disaster given his current rebellion. Again, not for the first time, she gave up on the idea. The Natives were too rebellious.
She arrived at the punishment cells, the ‘boob’. Silent, as they should be, she was almost glad, almost smiled. The children in there were asleep or were learning the value of silence. She knew they would rebel again, but at least for now they were being silent.
There had been a few children, a special few, who had shown a bit more potential than the others. There had even been star pupils who were almost civilised, almost equal to a Settler child in their knowledge and perceptions, their understanding of the Settlers’ world. It was unfortunate, therefore, that those who did best were also those who had been taken from their Native lives, from their parents, at a younger age. The younger the better.
It was such a pity that babies, when they were taken, created so much work for the missionaries. Raising babies was hard but it was worth it. They were much easier to teach, and less rebellious having never been brought up with the Native way. Children raised from infancy made much better servants, they spoke the language better, could read and write better and followed orders better. And they knew their place.
With these thoughts in mind she visited the nursery, just another shed of local wood with a tin roof. There were rows of simple cots and a couple of larger beds where the Native girls, who were learning to be nursemaids by looking after the babies, were sleeping. Every cot was full, with only one baby in each, of course. Babies are too precious a commodity, too hard to replace, to shove them together in a pile.
They were silent, as they tended to only be when asleep, and she was glad of that. The baby of the Native was even uglier than babies usually are, and more ugly even than older Natives. Bagra, despite her duties, hated babies. If they were wailing, when she was so on edge, she might do something that would reflect badly on the mission if anyone found out.
It is so important not to be found out.
Children, but normally not babies, had gone ‘missing’ before, though not often because she had lost her temper. Most of the deaths in the mission had been acceptable: starvation, disease, disease caused by starvation, accidents, all were acceptable causes of fatalities and could be reported acceptably. The Natives were always sickly and weak anyway, so it was expected that several would die every year, even every week.
It was death through violence that was harder to clear up. The Department for the Protection of Natives tended to want to investigate and there was no way Bagra could tolerate such an investigation, such an invasion. It was lucky that nobody really knew how many Natives there were, and how many there were on the mission. Files are flexible, pages can disappear; and normally their mission file was the only proof that a Native existed.
Who, after all, would bother to record the existence of a Native who was of no use to anyone and certain to die soon. What a waste of paper.
Lucky also, that Natives had such a deplorable tendency to escape, or at least attempt to escape. Many had escaped over the years, disappearing into the Native population outside of the towns, in the forest, in the deep desert. Some had not been found for years, lost for a long time before returning to continue their education, some surprised to be ejected from the mission for being too old. Others had not returned at all. She did not like to admit it but some were better off absconded – better for her, anyway – they were so disruptive. Others were better off reported as ‘absconded’ – better for her, anyway – than reported as dead.
The department would look for any Natives reported as absconded, she knew they would never find them. At least it would give them something to do other than bother her.
Chapter 6
We must continue to attempt to educate these savages. We must try although they will never truly be our equals. They will never be ready to take places among us as citizens. However, if trained and educated they can maybe, one day, find a place among us, as labourers and as servants. It is unlikely they will survive the situation in which they find themselves, a situation of our doing. Frankly I am surprised they survived even before our arrival. If they survive we must find a place for them in our society. We must find for them a place befitting their limited capacities.
– Sister Bagra
Rohan was not having a good day, consequently neither were the young men helping him on the search. Again and again they had lost the tracks; it was impossible to be certain whether it was the skill of their quarry or the lack of skill from Mick that was the problem. Too many times they had been forced to backtrack in the excruciating dry heat, trying to find the tracks that had disappeared so suddenly it appeared the Native had learnt to fly.
As expected they had run out of water; there were no police or trooper outposts on their trail to resupply them. They rode into a homestead through the choking dust, finding neat buildings and watered gardens in an otherwise parched land. The gardens, wasteful of water as they must have been, were a welcome relief to the posse; the ponds, a disgusting indulgence with a desert all around, were delightful.
Amazingly, given the fish ponds and the lushly watered gardens, there was no water to spare for the bedraggled posse. Appeals to the Settlers’ better natures, informing them that giving visitors water was simple hospitality, were met with blank stares; maybe they had no better natures. Even informing them that without the presence of troopers their homestead would be overrun by Natives did not have the desired effect, or any effect at all.
In the end Rohan drew his gun and threatened the Settlers with summary arrest, shocking his deputies as much as he scared the Settlers. The Settlers stared at him with seething defiance as they handed over the water then politely informed Sergeant Rohan that his superiors would hear of this harassment.
Rohan’s laugh had nothing in common with an expression of humour; it was disdainful and cold. ‘I bet,’ he said, pointing to shapes of carved w
ood decorated with mud and pokerwork designs, ‘those Native artefacts have never been declared.’ They were worthless – junk – but the Settlers had them on display like they were treasures. ‘That cute little servant of yours, I bet she’s undeclared too.’ His foul mood got incrementally fouler with every word until his voice was dripping with it.
‘Let me guess, there are more Native servants . . . maybe a cook, maybe someone to collect the wood. I bet the Department of Natives has no idea you have such servants. I can always tell them.’
It was his opinion that prevention of artefact theft was not and should never be part of his duties; he already had enough, far too much, to do. Who cares if a few Native treasures adorned the local houses, who cares how they were acquired – only seemingly the anthropologists and the Department for the Protection of Natives. The department, from whom he occasionally took orders, were the only people who believed it was his duty to police the trade in stolen Native ‘treasures’. He did not care if they had undeclared servants. His threat was idle and empty, but the Settlers didn’t need to know that.
He and his men left the homestead without food, but at least carrying the water they needed to survive a little longer, and the growing conviction that it might not have been worth the trouble. In fact the entire, almost certainly futile, search for an absconded Native was quite pointless. Who truly cared if one servant took off, went wherever it is Natives go? Well, frankly only the department cared, apart from the Native’s master. If not for the fact that some escaped Natives boasted to their friends that the Settlers can be defied, there would be no need to recapture them.
There were already way too many Natives around anyway; if you lost one you could just get another.
He knew he was at the edge of losing the last of his control when he drew his weapon on Mick, who had again lost the track. Staring at the boy down the sights of his gun, listening to the startled gasps of the other young men, staring deeply into those terrified eyes, so much like his own, he pulled himself together.
The young men had learnt not to complain about the weather, being thirsty, being hungry, being tired, being lost. Rohan would not have noticed if they did; he had long ago stopped listening to them anyway. As a party, keeping pace, they kept relentlessly, stoically on their way, lost or not.
It was close to night, time to look for a camp. Mick, looked up from Jacky’s tracks as they disappeared again, fired from the saddle, killing one of the strange Native animals. Rohan was impressed; if it was not luck, such skill would be valuable if they found that Native. Tonight at least they would not have to dip into their dwindling food supplies; this gave Rohan some slight cause for relief.
He did not relish another night under the alien trees, the twisted limbs, the hanging bark, the wrong colour; their waxy grey-green leaves too hard, almost glassy. That afternoon they became unwelcoming, threatening, every growing shadow under their misshapen branches was a potential hiding place for a dangerous Native.
As the sun set upon them, darkness descending like doom, the young men rolling out their bedrolls at the foot of a strange tree, he was consumed with the desire to go home. Not the remote town where he worked, from whence he had been sent on this ludicrous search; that would never be his home. Nor did he want to return to the capital city of this colony, where he had been born, where he always had felt like an uprooted tree planted on alien soil. No, the home he longed for was the land where his parents had been born, the land always in the heart of his people, the land where the trees looked like the trees in books, the homeland he had never seen.
Oh how he hated this place, and the damned, stinking Natives. Oh how he hated his parents for moving here, to this ‘land of opportunity’, although he could never tell them how he felt. He hated everyone and everything except the precious homeland he had never seen and would likely never get to see. All his money, what little wages he got, had been saved to buy passage back there, and it was still not enough. Maybe it would never be enough. He shuddered at the thought he could be stuck.
Dinner was a disappointment; sure, the meat was fresh but it was tough and tasted like all the other Native meats – quite unappetising, only to be relished by the desperate. Good thing they were desperate then. It was an unpleasant meal even if he ignored the fact that out there in the bush there was nothing that even resembled fresh fruit. All they had was hardtack to the side of their plates, dipped in their dwindling water to soften. The boys were too scared, too threatened by Rohan’s temperament, to complain. There was silence as one by one they tried to ignore the alien noises and finally fell asleep.
Chapter 7
I have walked my feet ragged to try to get home
I have fought my heart broken to try to get home
You took me from home you took me from me
Because all that I am, I am in my country
– ‘Home’, Anonymous
Jacky was hiding under the long, scratchy, overhanging needles of a grasstree while he studied the activities of the group of Settlers, troopers and Native slaves before him. Not that it mattered in the slightest what they were doing; all that mattered was that they were in his way. Unless they moved soon he would have to find a way around them. If only they would stay put – stay in the camp they had established for utterly mysterious reasons of their own – he would find it easy to beat a path around them and back to the road.
Unfortunately, the Troopers demonstrated no desire to stay in their camp. Patrols were being sent out in every direction except towards Jacky. He assumed they were not bothering him because that was the way back to what they called ‘civilisation’. Nothing bad could be expected to come from that direction. Those patrols, mounted and on foot, spreading everywhere as if they owned the place, were going to be a problem. He could not move while they were out and about.
So Jacky lay on his belly under the grasstree, one of many. Between the rough trunks of the tiny thicket was a tinier clearing, carpeted with their brittle, golden needles that cracked and crackled quietly whenever he moved. There is a smell to grasstrees, a resinous smell; oily yet comforting, it embraced him. Praying nobody would find him there Jacky wriggled down into the litter and dozed. It was hot in the middle of the day – a sweaty fly-infested heat. Surely only the mad and desperate would be out in it.
Lying there he dozed, dozing he fell asleep. Sleeping he dreamed of heat, of hunger.
They were only children, yet they were already enslaved. It was not called that, never called that, rather it was called ‘education’ or ‘training’. Why not call it slavery, though, when the nuns, the teachers never worked, never raised a hand except to point or to punish? All the work in the mission was done by children. How better, the nuns believed, to train someone as a useful servant than to have them working from a young age, the younger the better.
Jacky and the other children were collecting firewood, or at least that was what they had been told to do. No nuns would be out there in the bush, not in that heat, so the children were under the lax supervision of the gardener, who was dozing fitfully under a tree. Paid only room and board, as much a slave as the children, he had little or no reason to do a good job as long as he was not caught. It was too hot to work, too hot to talk, that was his excuse for lying there, yet the younger children, virtually unsupervised for a change, ran and screamed like children.
Streaming with sweat, the older children – teenagers all, Jacky among them – worked as hard, as fast as they could. If they did not have firewood to show for the time spent out there, all the children would suffer equally. They did not want the younger children to be punished so they collected far more than their share. Stomachs groaning with pain and emptiness they piled the wood into wheelbarrows to be taken back to the mission.
It had been a long time since breakfast – a bowl of thin porridge, a cup of weak tea – and working hard they were all hungry. The older children were not much bigger than the yo
unger children. They were all thin having clearly not been fed enough for most of their lives.
‘Lookit,’ one of the teenagers shouted. Jacky turned to look and all the boys and girls ran, almost as one. It was a lizard – a goanna – longer than the children were tall. Six feet from nose to tail at least, patterns of white on the black making it almost invisible in the dappled light until it ran. Grabbing sticks, grabbing the smaller logs from their woodpiles they chased the lizard to a tree, where it dug sharp curved claws into the narrow trunk and climbed.
‘Jacky,’ an older boy said, ‘you’re a good climber, you go.’ One of the teens started a chant, ‘Jacky, Jacky, Jacky . . .’ and all joined in.
Resigned, carried to the tree by the chanting, Jacky scaled the rough bark upwards, the lizard climbed away from him, until it reached a fork in the trunk and went no further. Jacky, sweating even more from the heat and the exertion, climbed to the goanna, grabbed it by the whipping tip of its tail and pulled it off the fork.
It was running almost before it reached the ground but the children were pursuing just as quickly, swinging at it with whatever lengths of wood they were carrying, diving for it with grasping hands. In breathless silence, with disturbing, almost frightening determination far different to the joyful running just minutes before, they caught and killed the animal as Jacky slid carefully to the ground. Calling over the littler kids and motioning them to silence the children moved further from the mission compound.
There was an older child. Jacky in his memories, the Jacky of the dream, had no clue what her name was; maybe he hadn’t known back then. She had been in the bush most of her life, had arrived at the mission already a teenager. Her family had long avoided discovery by the Settlers, until the expansion of the settlements surrounded and trapped them. Older than most of the other children and more self-reliant, she was their natural leader. She led them to a hidden dell and got a small fire lit with her supply of stolen matches.
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