by Ed Hillyer
He is afraid for her, when he should fear more for himself. Brippoki glances around the margins of the roof, where he squats, unwelcome. The shadows, they gather about him, too.
Today and tomorrow are finished. Taboo and Law broken, he accepts the guilty verdict. As long as little retribution is asked for, he is willing to die.
He is dead already. Time to move on.
The sun will rise again.
Alone walking the streets, Brippoki cuts a solitary figure. Hair shorn close to the scalp, his ceremonial garb starts to flake and fall off. Catching sight of his reflection, he sees that he looks diseased, like a mangy dog. Death in the desert so far from home is an ugly fate indeed.
Stabbing pains – he burns inside. Some agency of evil performs rites of magic on his footprint. Loud songs of vengeance declare their deadly desire: to do him irreparable harm.
He has been marked for death, and worse than death.
Between clouds, horned Mityan emerges. Even as his hopes swell at the sight, Brippoki chokes. The new moon shining before him is swallowed by an all-consuming shadow, and so close! So close to earth! The sky is falling!!
Brippoki runs.
‘Yaal wanning?’ he asks. Where am I going?
All of his short hairs stand on end. The air gathers at his back. His spine and chest crave release from this pressure.
Brippoki sprints full pelt, afraid for so much more than just his life. If an enchantment causes his death, the killer must be found, found and slain, or else Brippoki’s itpitukutya – his immortal Spirit – will never know peace.
He falls sprawling in the muck of the street, immediately rising into a low crouch, eyes and ears alert. He will not go easy, picked off like some useless straggler.
Calling on the Ancestors for strength, Brippoki speeds on. A short dash into regions unfamiliar and he corrects his course, set on his destination. Parramatta!
Gradually the ground falls away, the sweep of ancient hillside traceable in the curve of innumerable cave-like dwellings. Half a league onward, Brippoki comes to high ground above a natural dip he has crossed many times, east to west and back again, on his trips to and from the Guardian – never yet to linger there, nor run it north to south.
In the distance looms the Piebald Giant. He wears a spider’s face.
Standing on the rise, unable either to see it or to smell it, Brippoki hears the rush of water passing down below. Panting, he dangles each exhausted limb in turn, before heading on – into the valley.
Great earthworks piled to either side pen him in, constraining his course. He is confounded by a dizzying dimensional maze. Underfoot, overhead, rail, road, and watercourse meet. Fleet of foot he skips through thick and thin, across black pools, barely disturbing their surface. Through gaping sewer and exposed storm drain, he senses for himself the persistence of lost current. What was once a lively creek runs alongside, much reduced, a vile rivulet. Deep red in colour, it is filled with dung, and guts, and blood, dead cats and dogs and parts of larger animals. Fouled and foetid, the gas arising almost causes him to pass out.
He has stumbled blindly into the valley of shadow – Pindi, the ditch, a massive burial pit – through which runs the river of death.
Pure clear waters, gushing, a hillside of saffron, gardens sweet with herb; he despairs that a place something like home is come to this – leafless trees, warped rocks, a blunt depression where even weeds fail.
In perennial flow from one form into another, Brippoki’s vision of the landscape fractures and endlessly re-forms – silt rearranged by rain and flood, permanent echoes of itself. He often sees more than one shape at any one time, and sometimes, in the dizziness of near-blackout, none at all.
What is desert, saltbush and stone, was once swamp, filled with grass and long rushes, lake and fresh water. One Big Ant-hill Creek – London, before London – is a fine valley. Woods lie to the east, to the west green hills, a low ridge of forest rolling, open country out in front. A gentle incline, lush with grass, is sure sign he approaches water. There, ahead – full and flowing, and broader than expected – winds the river. Clear waters sparkle through the evergreen trees on its banks. Within those flashes of dazzlement Brippoki gains greater insight, fleeting glimpses of his former freedoms and a better life back in the World – the land of his birthright, so long denied him.
This is the Dream of the Clay – what was, what is, and shall be again.
Tide-marsh and inlet, the swamp itself swamped is still there, home to Frog, Bug, and Bird. Hawk, Sparrow, Fox, Owl and Mouse; the earliest settlers remain – still alive in the dead city, as he is.
Every time it rains, a little more soil is returned. Bird flying over shits out a seed. Seed lodges in the brickwork. Green shoots crack the stone paving; roots burst pipes.
All it takes is time.
Quality of light changing, the landscape shifts again. Brippoki shrinks back from the soft margins – mud, cold and grey.
A breath on the back of his neck makes his hackles rise. Whispering in his ear and he turns, wild-eyed. The air is still. He is alone. Penned in between festering timbers and rotten brick, he looks up. All that’s visible is a thin streak of purple – no sky, only a wound in blackness.
Impact.
He comes to, lying half in a puddle of filth. Dragging himself to his feet, rebounding wall to wall, a flinch at every touch, he staggers on.
Termite towers rise to the southeast, many hundred heads high. They are living in this way, piled one on top of another, shitting on each other’s heads. Briefly the apparitions glow in the half-light, and then fade.
A sharp brick escarpment dagger-points in that same direction. Crossing over a borderline only visible on maps, Brippoki passes into the parish of St Sepulchre. From the vale, through the gate of death, into the jaws of death – he emerges into a vast marketplace, a smooth field within the shadow of an ancient city wall.
He is enveloped in a billowing cloud of steam. As it clears, Brippoki turns on the spot, attempting to recover his bearings. An enormous building, red brick and limestone, now fills the space where the field stretched before. A long, white body laid out on the ground, it reminds him of the sailors’ Hospital in Greenwich – a palace. The walls are high, and so long their ends extend almost out of sight. Octagonal pavilion towers stand to each extreme. Warrior-women guard the entrance, and fire-breathing serpents. Beneath the triangular pediment, ornate iron grille-work shows off all the lurid hues of fresh bruising.
Curious, Brippoki moves closer, to peer through the bars of the gate.
The central aisle of a massive arcade extends forward. Flooded with light, the long hall appears hollowed out, eviscerated. Cast-iron roof supports high overhead are long ribs draped in Nottingham lace. Gate open, he walks the Grand Avenue. Long rails run left and right, festooned with meat hooks. A forest of fresh carcasses hangs there, orderly as a plantation. Bare stalls, either side, heave with more of the phantom flesh, torsos and limbs hacked into prime joints and manageable portions. Huge bins brim with hearts, livers, strips of kidney fat, carefully folded. Severed heads are neatly stacked. All of the bright white tiles and gutters have been hosed clean. In the midst of this most polite of slaughterhouses, men whose stark overalls are soaked in drying blood sit down to a hearty meat breakfast.
Stone-cold dread knocks at Brippoki’s liver. Stripped flesh exposes bone, a pointing-bone that curses. The thin finger of a corpse, scraped clean, jerks knucklejoints in balled wax. The murderers mouth with their sticky lips. Chanting, pointing, they rise from their feast table. Brippoki’s soul grows mad with fear.
Slip-sliding on the slick surfaces, his legs collapse in a tangle. Fallen on the floor, thick with blood and sawdust, he cannot at first will his limbs to move, not for the hurt and ache in his head or the energy drained from his body. Inclined to sleep forever, he instead rolls back over onto his feet and forces himself to rise, knowing the alternative.
Being boiled, burnt alive, dragged by the heels be
hind carriages – in the shadow of Old Bailey rise the gallows and the stake.
Sticky with blood, some his own, he daubs the walls as he passes. Back into the open, day for night, Brippoki staggers deeper into this butchers’ quarter.
Dizzy with pain, he lashes out to either side with his waddy. From every cellar and basement comes the chunky sound of cleavers, hatchet blows rained onto chopping blocks – the bellowing, roaring, bleating, squealing of every condemned man and beast. Blood gushing, they gurgle and shudder, not dead – forever dying. The gutters foam red, stench terrifying.
The darkness smiles to see the fatal wounding.
Defenceless out in the open, Brippoki seeks refuge, away from the boiling vats of glue, and the air thick with feathers.
He escapes the jaws of death into a No Man’s Land, the mouth of Hell.
Between Holborn Circus in the north and Ludgate to the south, road, rail and bridge construction runs the gamut.
Plagued by the sweats, he sways at the fringes of great earthworks. Layers of earth, peeled back, reveal the Lowerworld beneath: timber supports, a mess of pipes and shaft holes, seemingly bottomless – a steaming pit that casts a devilish glow. Flexed toes and digging heels struggle for purchase in the turned mud. These tracks he cannot hope to cover.
As the ground grumbles and shakes, the hellish light glares fiercer. Darts of flame sear the blackness. A multitude of carriages follows, each so hot on the heels of the other that they almost touch. Screeching to a stop, the metallic centipede vomits out damned souls, then bores a new tunnel. These shells of men do not linger but march mechanically on, disappearing into the surrounding gloom.
‘I fell down a dreadful steep hill,’ dreams Deadman, ‘and came with great violence against an iron stanchion.’
Brippoki backs off. He rolls in the sand and mud, quite deliberately, letting it stick to the blood and feathers until quite numb.
Deadman, in His sleep, in His dreams, He comes for him.
Scrambling, springing, frantic, Brippoki maintains his course for the river, the piercing Serpent, crooked Serpent. A wild longing has seized him, an unseen power.
Flame lick around the mouth of Ludgate. The air, hot and thick, fills with the drone of angry bees.
Liquid fire flows along the gutters, jumps up all around. It lights up the night, illuminates the bellies of huge birds. As overheated windows pop, a rain of glass shards slashes his skin. He dares not any more look up. Falling beams, explosions; Brippoki hears the whoop and scream of thousands engulfed in maelstrom.
The city, the whole city is afire.
The bells ring backwards, from St Barts the Greater, St Mary’s and St Bride’s…a babel, confusion of voices…
Wall and ditch, fluke change of wind; Brippoki runs for cover. Stumbling, writhing, climbing – what impulse drives him?
Naming is the province of the Ancestors, the binding act bringing them closer. Only Named, may one be Known.
He must discover his True name whilst still Wilyaru, or else stay lost forever.
The Piebald Giant, crowned in black cloud, glowers over all. An inscrutable colossus, stirring, He heaves His head and shoulders free. The entire dead city destroyed, another is rising up through it.
The fronts of the charnelhouses grow dark. Brippoki casts aside the firebrand, a burnt-out stick, reduced to charcoal.
He sees the light. Crackling air and rolling thunder, he alone is darkness in a city turned to light. The clashing of swords, the trampling of hooves, is replaced now by a sound even louder – the rumble and roar of engines, blasts on innumerable horns, and squealing brakes. Chariots rage in the streets, flaming with torches, jostling one another in broad streams – torches, running like lightning. The earth shakes underfoot.
Weaving through this new traffic, Brippoki runs for the river, where gates open and the meat-and moon-palaces dissolve.
Huge angry moon behind him, the waterhole in front, he seeks the snakehead of the Great Serpent Thames to defend him – Parramatta. His shield is of red, his warpaint scarlet.
‘Black friars!’ shouts a warning voice. ‘Blackfriars!’
Meteors run, cross their javelins. Brippoki teeters, poised in that same spot he has ever stood – on the edge of forever, the threshold of an empty page, with anger at his back.
Brippoki turns.
A gigantic black nail fixes him to the spot, and from out of that darkness leers forth a Great Head, shrouded in mist.
It is come – it is there with him, right in front of him.
Blank eyes burn, ablaze with cold fury – inhuman, insane – face, to his face, hideously marked and screaming blood vengeance. The eyes are of haliotis shell, whites gleaming malevolence – nostrils flared, chin jutting, the large wide-open mouth breathing hot fire, devouring.
Deadman reaches for him, closer, clawed hand clasping, bone finger grasping, and with His touch, darkness and death. Brippoki shrivels up like grass.
That roaring sound now deafening, the net pulls taut. Brippoki’s fevered eye takes one last look. The lights of the city quiver on the water, far below.
A burning crown lights up his head.
Panatapia, red hill rising – his chest distends. Silent, from nowhere, an invisible spear released from the pointing-bone comes sliding out his front. He tastes blood, from the heart, in the mouth – he resigns himself, run out.
An instant later, an eternity, the barest perceptible outline shows in the space where he once stood.
Surging currents flush the colour of blood.
Brippoki cannot move. Conscious of what goes on around him, he is being put into a hole in the ground.
He is Kertameru, an infant, placed in a hole his mother has dug for him, in the dirt, where he must remain. The hole is shaped like a basin, at such an angle that he cannot easily crawl out.
‘Sit along this hole,’ she says to him, ‘until I come back for you.’
And secure in this simple impression, he passes out of mind.
Gnowee, the sun, peeks over the horizon, still in search of Her lost son. He sees the light, and whence it flows, and in it, his joy.
Nothing grows here, nothing walks – the empty earth, pitted with hollows, wants for the water of life. And yet the Clay itself is imbued with the essence of all things, every man, every creature, every invention that will ever be. All aspects of life are seeds therein. Hidden just below the surface, they slumber.
Wichety-grub man, Honey-ant man, crying out their names, call on them. Sun, moon, stars come bursting forth, each with the immortal cry, ‘I AM!’
Snake man, Cockatoo man, and in the sky, Southern Cross. As with the bloom after sudden rainfall, the frogs that have buried themselves emerge. The city comes alive in rivers of nectar, clouds of seed, the fish, the insects, the flowers and feasting birds. The landscape is not dead after all, but as the desert truly is – Dreaming.
Honeysuckle man, Bandicoot man, and he, they are lying in the cold embrace of earth. At the last he knows his True name. His golden hair glitters like a spider’s web lit by sunrise. He is ageless, a young man who will never be old.
A dweller in the earth, he stands proud alongside them all, and sings the World into being.
London is covered over within the net of his sacred song.
CHAPTER LXII
Wednesday the 24th of June, 1868
WHO SAW HIM DIE?
‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar.’
~ William Wordsworth,
‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’
‘Larkin,’ the man said, ‘Sarah Larkin. Hello. You were at Went House, although we were never formally introduced. Charles Lawrence.’
He jogged forward down the front steps of the lobby; extending a hand as if to shake hers, before thinking twice. Immediately Lawrence noticed the dark circles under her eyes, suggestive of
late nights, perhaps more. Tall and thin, spare of figure, she was possessed of that sort of beauty not so readily apparent. Rather, it bore study – or else crept up unawares.
‘It is…a pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ he said.
He looked at her slightly askance.
‘We could wish for better circumstances,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t wish to be rude, it’s just…’
‘Of course,’ said Lawrence. ‘Follow me.’
He led her away from the cab-stand, up the steps, through the arched passageway of Guy’s House, and into the hospital.
‘They made contact with me yesterday to tell me he had been found,’ he said.
‘And me,’ said Sarah, ‘this morning.’
The doorbell had rung a number of times, the past few days, but she had never answered.
‘No,’ asserted Lawrence, ‘that was me. I sent for you…sent word to you.’
She turned her head to search his face, searching hers. A thousand questions crowded all at once – yet the most important had been asked.
‘He drifts in and out of consciousness,’ said Lawrence, striding ahead. ‘But a number of times now, he has mentioned you by name.’
He held open a double-door for her, assessing her frankly as she walked through. The object of his attentions swung around to face him too suddenly. They exchanged slight but honest looks.
‘My name?’ said Sarah.
‘“Thara”,’ lisped Lawrence – almost suggestively.
She looked away.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘…that’s it.’
Mild, distracted, she appeared somewhat dismayed at the rush of bodies all around them. They walked together in silence across courtyards between buildings, along corridors that seemed interminable, and with every ward they passed she hesitated, as if half expecting to be directed into it.
‘How did you – ’ she said. ‘I mean how did you know where to…?’