by Peter Docker
‘You right?’
I check myself. I feel weak and tingly all over. Like I might faint.
I nod. I’m good.
Back under the skin of the water she goes.
I take a breath and follow her. She plays the white cord through her fingers as she follows the rocky passageway. The walls start to close in on us now, as it gets tighter and tighter. I bump my head on the rock for the umpteenth time. I swear, even under the water, and a mass of bubbles escapes my unruly mouth. My eyes are blurring out a bit from having them open too much in this cold water. She doesn’t look back but seems to speed up. I drag myself along behind her.
There is a big light ahead of us. I kick out my feet behind me. There are fingers of sunlight dancing along the bottom of a shallow pool just ahead. I kick for it and burst into the filtered sunlight.
I come up just behind her. It is so bright that I squeeze my eyes shut. I can hear her breathing evenly in front of me, even as I am blindly sucking and gasping. We’re in a pool, still underground, with this beautiful shaft of sunlight coursing down from above. I pull myself out and lie wheezing on the rock. Above me, bathed in the golden light, are Mularabone and Young James.
‘Love ya traditional dress, bruz,’ says Mularabone.
I remember my nakedness and her presence. The blood rushes to my face. Young James has a blanket that he drapes over me. I’m shivering now, my whole body shaking.
I can smell the paste that they’ve daubed themselves with for UVP. It’s a secret herbal handed-down recipe, which gives the wearer one hundred per cent UVP and a strong odour. Uncle Birra-ga says totemic ancestors who could see the coming danger from the sun, as the global industrialisation changed the atmosphere, gave the recipe in dreams to the mob a hundred or so years ago. I remember the first time I ever saw Mularabone, how shocked I was to see his bare skin during the day. He looked free, whilst I was confined and constricted and afraid to burn.
‘I – I just strip down to fighting rig, brother. Ya wanna go a couple of rounds?’
I try to stand but can’t. I crumple back down from my parody of a fighting stance. They laugh at my weak attempt at humour. They bend and help me up. They steer me tenderly up the slope to a set of well-worn steps.
At the top there are two small tents. I’m ushered into one. It has silver plastic lining. There is a Countryman in there in a sealed-up suit. He turns a strong hose on me.
Oh, fuck. Not the hose.
I try to scream. To struggle. Strong hands wrapped in plastic hold me firm. A heavy brush scrubs my flesh with some kind of pink foam. I fall to my knees. I’m sobbing now. The water cannon is relentless. The scrubbing is horrendous against my flesh, which has been denied sunlight and clean air and sustenance for so long. If they rub me any harder, my flesh will come away like a pot-cooked roast, leaving only my gleaming bones. Through my sobs I think I hear something. It’s at the periphery of my comprehension like the tiny misty droplets that spray from the nozzle of the hose and aren’t caught up in the main jet. Even if they still floated onto my flesh, I would never feel them next to the colossal rage of the main jet of water. It is a sweet sound above the throb of the water pump. I focus in on it, cutting out that scrubbing and the terrific thrust of the water pounding me.
It is her. It must be her. She has only ever spoken a handful of words to me but I know that it is her voice lifted in song. She is singing a lullaby. I can hear in her voice that she is also being hosed and scrubbed. The power of her lullaby obliterates the sensation of the jet of water for me, and caresses my face like a soft rain. I allow the drops/notes to fall on my open face. Some drops/notes run down my skin. Some drops/notes hit me like I am a puddle, going into me, and sending out concentric waves across my surface. I lick my lips to taste the sweet free water.
Ghost of History: The Empire Has Not Forgotten Us
The water pouring off the canvas is loud and insistent, as if it is flowing right through my soul. I’m standing in the entrance to my tent, my head bowed, looking out. The rain beats down. It has poured all night, since Fremantle and I left the Birdiya’s fire to come back here to sleep. The old man with the prominent bump on his forehead and his son with the bright eyes like to sing and dance every night. Fremantle calls it the old man’s court, and compares it to King George’s. The old man is the Birdiya, or Law boss, for all the lands south of the Darbal Yaragan down to the island of Meandip, known as Beeliar. Fremantle says the old man has more land than his brother, Lord Cottesloe. Fremantle calls the old man ‘Beeliar’, as in the Duke of Beeliar, which seems to please the Birdiya. The fireside court can be a raucous affair, Beeliar and Bright Eyes, his son, being men of relentless energy.
Straight across from me is Fremantle’s tent and the flaps are pulled back. Inside there is a group of Countrymen. They’ve got a fire going inside and, oblivious to the smoke, they crowd around the flames singing a morning song. Fremantle is nowhere to be seen. The sun is just up, although completely obscured by the heavy clouds crowding in on the land. I sit on the edge of my makeshift cot and pull on my boots. It’s cold. The wind tears at the heavy canvas. I shrug on my woollen coat, jam my hat down onto my head and step out. My face is itchy from the remnants of the ochre applied last night and I rub my features with both hands. In another tent I see a couple of marines sitting with some Countrymen. They’ve also lit a fire and I can smell the fish cooking through the rain. This looks nothing like a Royal Marine encampment. Smells nothing like it.
I step out and on a whim head up to the high ground of Manjaree. The limestone cliffs jut out into wardan, the ocean, with the river mouth just to the north. Even before I get there I see Fremantle standing alone. The wind buffets him and the rain lashes his person but he stands as steady as a mighty jarrah tree. He has his glass up to his eye. I pick my way carefully up the sandstone ridge until I’m standing next to him, following his gaze out across the wild ocean. After a long time he lowers the glass.
‘The Empire has not forgotten us,’ he says, without taking his eyes from the raging sea, and passes the glass to me.
I raise the glass to my eye and make out the Parmelia standing off the coast of the island of Wadjemup several leagues directly west of our position. I lower the glass.
‘Captain Dance’s Sulphur can’t be far behind,’ I say.
‘And on board, Captain Irwin, and the 63rd Regiment.’
‘The bloodsuckers,’ I hear myself say.
‘You know the 63rd?’
‘Apparently.’
Fremantle grunts. The swells crash into the beach down below the headland. The spray arcs up into the air to join with the rain flinging itself against us on the shoreline. The long arm of the Empire is reaching out to us.
‘We have two days,’ I say, sensing his dark mood.
‘He’ll make a run in today.’
‘It’s too dangerous with such a sea.’
‘Have you ever met Captain Stirling?’
‘Captain Luscombe is the commander.’
Fremantle grunts again. We both knew this moment was coming. Time has stood still for us since we arrived here. We don’t yet have the language to describe what has happened to us. To accept what has happened to us. What is happening. We’ve had six weeks of hunting, fishing, dancing, singing and dreaming here with the Countrymen. With the Country.
‘Where did this weather come from?’ I ask.
‘The senior men have gone to the other place for ceremony,’ says Fremantle, and his phrasing causes me to look at him. I look at him, trying to read his thoughts in the cold rain. I hand the glass back to him. He raises it to his eye.
‘Ready the cutter and gig, Mister Conway.’
‘Sir.’
‘He is coming.’
And as we watch, the Parmelia weighs anchor and begins turning towards the run down to the safe waters of the sound. Even from this distance, we can see the ship struggling with the howling southerly and the monstrous swell.
‘Perhaps it is his fate neve
r to make landfall, sir.’
Fremantle turns to look at me as if I have spoken a profanity.
‘Clearly, you have not met Captain Stirling.’
I can’t meet his gaze. I have not met Captain Stirling. But I know him. I know him as Fremantle knows him – with horses, sabres, pistols and clubs.
The wind and swell appear to pick up. We struggle to stay upright as the rain pelts us. Fremantle watches through his glass. We only have a few minutes to wait before the Parmelia is clearly in trouble with the big sea. The front sail is torn away by a sudden gust and for a moment the vessel flounders. Then she is turning away to the north, and heading back to her anchorage off Wadjemup. We see the rest of the sail coming off.
‘Will you be taking the cutter and gig, sir?’
‘No, Mister Conway. You shall have that privilege.’
I look out to where I can just make out the Parmelia each time a major swell dips. I haven’t been out in a sea like this since we rounded the Horn.
‘You shall inform Captain Stirling that if he does not have the patience to wait for conditions to become amenable, then he will surely be lost with all hands.’
‘Shall I use that tone, sir?’
Fremantle claps me on the shoulder, and dazzles me with his smile.
‘You may take whatever tone you wish, Mister Conway. As long as Captain Luscombe and Captain Stirling accept the folly of attempting to enter the sound in such seas and winds.’
‘I’m sure they’ve learned a valuable lesson today, sir.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Are you going to find the Birdiya?’
‘I am returning to my ship. I am still an officer in the King’s navy.’
Fifteen: What You Bring
We’re sitting between two fires, my brother and me. I’m chewing a johnnycake made by Aunty Ouraka. Mularabone eats too, stuffing the seed cake into his smile. Uncle Birra-ga sits just beyond Young James. The young woman from the cave is here too, sitting with Aunty. Her hands rest in her lap. Every time I look up, her eyes are down.
I’m hungry.
I am trying to decipher the images in my head. I remember swimming. Swimming through an underground river. I blink my eyes repeatedly, and suddenly I’m not so sure.
I really need this food but my throat is tight with emotion, so I have to chew the seed cake finely. It’s a good chew. The little muscles at the corner of my jaw and those at my temple are burning. Doggedly I chew on. As soon as I get to wondering what Mularabone is smiling at, I realise it is my chewing that is causing him mirth. He starts mimicking me, much to the delight of the rest of the mob. They all start doing it. So I exaggerate even more, my cow’s cud rising and falling in a substantially embellished circular motion. Little bits of cake fly out of my mouth and into the fire. The tiny cake particles burn up like meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere. This sets everyone off into a fresh round of laughing. The laughter is like another bigger, warmer fire engulfing all of us. The coldness of that underground chamber and that swim is finally beginning to seep out of my bones, sweating out like a bad inverted fever, and I start to feel warm and alive again. I can feel my mind, coming home to roost like a wayward homing pigeon. I take a final bite of Aunty’s seed cake and get into the last chew-down.
They laugh. I chew. I laugh. I swallow with a flourish. Everyone cheers. I laugh.
Then the laugh is stuck on something, a fishing line caught on seaweed, and won’t come up.
‘I thought...’ I start to say to Mularabone.
His hand on my forearm checks my thought.
I look up at him with my eyes even though my head will not do as it is told.
‘You’re right, brother,’ he says.
I look into the reflection of myself in the fire. I am starting to melt. ‘I thought...’ I begin again and can’t finish again. My head is down.
‘Brother. You didn’t give us away. We knew you’d come. With troopers. We shoulda bin stay underground. But Uncle wanted to come up.’
We look over the fire at Uncle, who smiles back in response. ‘I wanted to see you, Nephew.’
I break into open weeping and my tears fall straight onto Country, here between the fires. I can’t stop weeping. Weeping for what has been lost. For what has been saved. For my own weakness. For what I know is coming in my dream country. For it is already past. And I will feel the responsibility as surely as that old Royal Navy captain. I must. I weep for the families. My tears soak the Country. They go in, and go down deep.
Uncle rocks back and forth and claps boomerangs together as he sings. The others drift away from the fires until it is just the Old Man and I.
‘Planting tears,’ says Birra-ga. ‘Again.’
I look up to see him watching me closely. I smile.
‘This is good. Connects you.’
Uncle Birra-ga reaches out and touches the jagged scar on the side of my head. He nods as though he can see the broken bottle going into my flesh. ‘Them old spirits recognise what you bring to the table,’ he says.
‘Water Board was trying to turn me.’
‘Into what?’
‘One of them.’
‘You are one of them.’
I smile, and almost laugh. ‘Tried to get intel from me.’
‘You don’t know anything.’
This time I do laugh. ‘Uncle, I don’t know how...?’
‘The dreams? Sometimes it is sleep. Sometimes it is a change of pressure in the brain between sleeping and waking. Sometimes it is the story chasing you down from the other place.’
‘Uncle, I want to help you but...’
His laughter is sudden and loud. His hand touches me on the upper arm. ‘Your dreams are not for me. For you. Your people. We need to meet in the middle. We walk out from our camp. You from yours.’ He laughs again. ‘Help me?’
Sixteen: Nayia-Nayia
We walk below the level of the ridgeline. An old habit for us. The sounds and smells of the desert morning are drifting to us from every direction. The earth is cool beneath our bare feet. We breathe out, the scrub breathes in.
The sun is fully over the horizon now, even though the ghost-ball of the new moon can still be made out in the sky of the opposite horizon. They balance us out, these two unearthly orbs that hang over us like promises of things to come. A promise of nights. Of days. Although for us and them right now there is only today. Today is every day that has ever been and every day that ever will be. Today is the day. That old fulla Sun accelerates as he comes up out of the earth, and then punches up a gear and backs off the juice to cruise up to midday sky. He does it same way every day.
Mularabone and I stop and sit. Neither of us has spoken yet. Mularabone rolls two thinnies and holds one out to me. I hesitate.
‘Swore I’d give em up.’
‘In jail?’
‘When I was swimming through that tunnel and couldn’t breathe.’
‘That was just cause you were following Nayia.’
‘What?’
‘Nothin.’
‘What is her name?’
‘Nayia. Nayia-Nayia.’
‘Nayia-Nayia,’ I test her name on my lips. I give him a question look.
‘Angel. Angel from Above. Nayia.’
I smile. Mularabone looks away.
‘Angel?’ I say.
‘We got angels, too, bruz.’
‘What’s all the secret for?’
‘Nothin. You want ngumari, or not?’ he says, indicating the thin cigarette in his fingers.
I hesitate, the smile perched on my face like a half-told joke – waiting for the punch line.
‘You might as well,’ Mularabone adds, holding out the ngumari again.
I give him a careful look. He is suddenly hard to read. Maybe I was enjoying his discomfort too much. I don’t know why he’s been holding back. Is Nayia married, or promised, not straight, or first-cousin taboo for Mularabone, and therefore me? I don’t want to admit to thinking about her so much after the first
meeting in Uncle Birra-ga’s cavern-camp.
I take the proffered thinnie from Mularabone and we both light up.
There are two bush doves dancing around in the shade of the bush in the gully at our feet. At first I think they’re fighting as they throw their little bodies into the grapple, turn over and over, and then spring back to their feet, throwing up little kicks of morning dust. Then I see the little fulla fan out his tail and go into his strut. He is good. His timing is excellent. Maybe she’s been put slightly off-guard from the play wrestle and ready to be dazzled by his splendour. He struts up and down; four paces west, six back east in a figure-eight movement. And she likes him, we can see that. Her little eyes twinkle as she drinks in that fanned-out soft chocolate and white tail. Maybe the colours excite her too. Then off they fly without warning, at exactly the same moment – them both feeling the crescendo of the dance and the energy between them.
‘Country looks different,’ I say.
‘You bin away two months.’
I smoke. Two months?
‘Time flies when you’re havin fun,’ I say through a stream of smoke.
I feel the side of my head. Aunty Ouraka has packed bush medicine into the wound and it feels better already. Lost its nasty sting. It’s gonna leave a big scar, though. Mularabone sees me touching the old wound.
‘You no longer beautiful, bro,’ he says.
‘I was never beautiful, bro.’
We smile. We smoke.
‘Nayia is beautiful,’ I hear my voice say.
‘Yes. Nayia is beautiful,’ Mularabone agrees with a sigh.
‘What you sighin for?’
He doesn’t answer me.
‘She bin in my dreams,’ I say.
Mularabone expels smoke carefully. He nods.
‘You know something that I don’t, bro. About Nayia.’
‘It’s nothing, coorda. Just protocol.’
‘What, to keep us apart?’
‘I don’t make the rules, bro.’
‘Is it cause I’m white?’
‘You’re not white, coorda. I told ya, don’t think about it.’
I drag on my thinnie.