The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  He swooped in lower, his nonbody dipping and lifting, laughing in spirit if nothing else. The ground reached and pulled him into an embrace that left him in the shape of a gecko, a gecko crawling forward through an enormous world of rocks and blades of grass. He felt less joy, now, dwarfed to insignificance, the stomping dark feet of children making the ground shake around him. He darted through the brush and an ocean bay opened up beneath his vantage point: a bay of shimmering blue, a wooden ship sailing into it with great white sails made in England, white men come to claim and steal land—

  Abruptly Myell lost the shape of a gecko. He was a man now, an Aboriginal standing on the shore with the men of his tribe, their fists wrapped around spears that were no match for pistols. He was decorated with feathers and sticks in his thick hair, and his skin was painted with ocher. Sweat itched between his shoulder blades. The English ship was drawing closer. The world was about to change forever.

  But before the ship reached shore, the great Rainbow Serpent curled down from the sky and dropped a stone egg. From the egg emerged the Nogomain and their shaman, Garanwa, who bade the People to journey to the stars.

  To this land, where the People would be safe.

  “But what do I have to do with any of this?” Myell asked, with a mouth that had no lips, no voice.

  The Serpent swallowed him whole.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Night on the island of women. Myell felt drunk again, though he hadn’t had any wine. Torchlight streaked across his vision like the burning trails of comets. He was a planet spinning its way through a void, but the void was full of palm trees and beautiful women, and dirt between his toes, and children singing.

  “I’m going to be sick,” he said to Ishikawa.

  She pulled him to a fine wooden chair carved from a tree trunk. “Sit down.”

  The party swirled on without him. Flower petals drifted down from above, soft like rain. Myell caught some and crushed them against his face, thinking of Jodenny’s perfume. The archway of Painted Child had been decorated with garlands and wreaths. The darkness inside soothed him, steadied his vision.

  “You want me to go through there,” he said.

  “It’s what you were born to do,” Ishikawa said.

  He leaned back in the chair—the throne—and let his head loll. The women’s music was bright and fast, no more didgeridoos here. In harmony they sang words he didn’t know. The little boys of the village banged on drums made of skin and wood. Whenever Myell closed his eyes he saw white trees and red landscapes and Jodenny, calling to him.

  “My wife,” he said.

  “Lieutenant Scott understands duty,” Ishikawa said. “She of all people would want you to do what’s right.”

  He corrected her. “Lieutenant Commander Scott.”

  Ishikawa’s hand pressed against his. “You’ll have the power of the entire network in your hands. Your control, your will. Otherwise the power of the First Egg will fall to the Roon.”

  The Roon. The Bunyips, with their white feather cloaks and silver helmets and clawed hands. Fantastical and strange. Surely creatures from a dream, or a nightmare.

  Ishikawa’s voice was close to his ear. “You’re always going to do the right thing, Chief. It’s just the way you are. So you might as well walk into that Egg and face what needs to be done. Stop the Roon.”

  Damn her for making sense.

  Myell stood up, straightened the red skirt tied around his waist, and stepped toward the Painted Child. If he could dive off a cliff, he could do this. Embrace his destiny, whatever it was. Be their Jungali, at least until they realized that they had the wrong man. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been mistaken for someone better than he was, but maybe it would be the last.

  The music stopped and the drums fell silent.

  He kept walking, aware of Ishikawa trailing a respectful distance. He almost asked her to accompany him but that would be selfish, unfair. He had no idea what lay ahead. Some paths could only be walked alone.

  Myell saw Yambli watching him, her eyes bright. Beside the old woman, Silrys stood with a frown. She didn’t believe in him at all, which was strangely comforting.

  I don’t believe in me either, he wanted to say. But I’ll try.

  A small boy stepped in front of Myell to give him a bouquet of flowers. Feeling absurdly like a bride, Myell took the flowers and patted the boy on the head. Jodenny had carried flowers during their wedding. The ceremony had been short and efficient, both of them still recuperating from injuries, well aware of the risk of fraternization charges and retaliation, but worth the danger. If anyone had ever told him he’d marry an officer, he would have laughed at the idea.

  The flowers in his hand were red, not white. Tropical and wild, not carefully cultivated and cut from a ship’s hydroponics bed. They smelled like wild honey, and the dirt on their roots, and the fresh green of their stalks.

  The Painted Child called to him, beckoned.

  Jungali. Save us all.

  “Chief?” Ishikawa asked.

  The words came out on their own, unbidden. “I can’t.”

  Panic crossed her face. “Of course you can.”

  “I can’t leave her.” His head felt clearer, his knees steadier. He hadn’t realized how hard they were trembling. Myell clutched the flowers closer to his chest and gave Ishikawa a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s selfish and wrong, but I made a promise. I’m going home to my wife.”

  He walked off into the jungle, taking the red bouquet with him.

  * * *

  Myell walked through the jungle toward the moon. When he found a clearing he slept with his arms pillowed beneath his head, and when he woke the sun was up and Silrys was sitting next to him.

  “You’re a surprise,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”

  She had water and fruit for him, and he was famished enough to accept both. As he chewed he said, “You’re not here to persuade me to go through the Child Sphere. You don’t think I’m the guy for the job anyway.”

  She said, “All my life, I’ve been taught the importance of finding the man named Jungali. Garanwa commanded it, and he’s our god.”

  “Jungali has to be a man?” Myell asked. “Kind of sexist, isn’t that?”

  Her gaze narrowed. “The Nogomain picked. We didn’t.”

  “This Garanwa. What’s he like?”

  “He was a boy, once. Now he’s something else.”

  The fruit, some kind of mango, left Myell’s fingers sticky. He wiped them on his skirt. “So you send women out to go looking for Jungali. Ever go yourself?”

  Silrys’s gaze was on the trees. “For fifteen years I lived on Mary River, waiting for a sign that didn’t come.”

  “That’s the thing about signs,” Myell said, not unkindly. “Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. Some of your people think I’m destined to join the Nogomain. The villagers back on land thought I was the reincarnation of their Lightning God. Did you know there’s one of those—what do you call them?—Roon among them?”

  Silrys’s face creased with a frown. “Yes. It’s been trapped there for several months, as have all who’ve tried to use the Eggs. It calls itself a god. It studies the People, learns their habits.”

  “You think it’s dangerous. The whole species.”

  “Garanwa fears nothing, but he fears them,” Silrys said, in a hushed voice. “He tells us little about them other than that they are interlopers. That they don’t worship the Wondjina. But they mean to cause great destruction.”

  Myell pushed down the lump of shame in his chest. “I’m not your man.”

  Silrys said, “You bear the name. The Rainbow Serpent has curled around your legs. Garanwa allows you, and only you, to use the Eggs. I’ve been stubborn and wrong in my disbelief.”

  “I have to go.” Myell stood up and, after a moment’s reflection, picked up the wilted red bouquet from the ground. “Thank everyone for their hospitality, okay? I’m sorry if I disappoin
ted. But one man, against an entire alien species? It was never going to work in the first place.”

  He started through the jungle toward the beach. The path was worn well enough for him to follow, but the foliage was thicker than he remembered, the going a little tougher. He wiped sweat from his face—damn, but the day was hot—and tried not to cut his bare feet on anything sharp. He fought his way past low-hanging branches and stepped over vines and decided that what he really needed was a vacation in a city somewhere, concrete and glass and every imaginable amenity.

  The aroma of salt and seaweed grew stronger on the breeze, but when he stumbled clear of the forest Myell saw a wide stretch of sand instead of the rocky beach he remembered. The ocean was a bright, glinting carpet of blue and green. He hated it.

  Yambli was waiting for him, standing thin and fragile in the sea grass. Ishikawa was with her.

  “Chief,” Yambli said, and held out a hand.

  “Ma’am.” Myell was wary of touching her, but he and Ishikawa helped her to sit on a long, salt-crusted piece of driftwood.

  Yambli wagged her fingers at Ishikawa. “Leave us. The chief and I must speak alone.”

  “But, Grandmother—”

  “Go,” Yambli insisted.

  Ishikawa retreated to the trees, her arms folded in worry.

  Myell squatted down low to be at Yambli’s eye level. “I can’t stay here. I have to go back to my wife. And to my friends, trapped in the network.”

  “Who can stop Jungali?” she asked, with affection. But her head was cocked, as if she was listening to something just out of his hearing range. A song from the sea, maybe, or somewhere beyond it.

  “Why does Garanwa need someone to help him against the Roon?”

  “He is the last remaining Nogomain,” she whispered. He strained forward to hear her more clearly. Yambli said, “Only one, the boy named Burringurrah, and like me he is very old.”

  Ocean waves pounded ashore and drained away, an inexorable pattern.

  “I can’t help,” Myell said. “I’m sorry.”

  He tried to pull away, but Yambli’s hand closed on his fingers with a crushing grip.

  “There’s only the one,” she said fiercely, her rheumy eyes locked on him. “Only the boy. The Roon would steal the First Egg and try to destroy the Rainbow Serpent himself. Will you stand with them or against them? Will you be the inheritor? Take the helm, or let the boat go unruddered?”

  She released her grip and covered her face, sobbing dryly.

  * * *

  On Yambli’s orders, the women brought Myell a canoe. Long and low, it had an elaborately carved bow shaped like a bird’s head. Well made. Solidly built. It would fetch a good price back on Fortune, maybe at a boat show or Aboriginal corroboree. The paddles were sturdy, and he’d paddled before on lakes and in rivers, so he didn’t think it would be too hard to paddle on open sea.

  The ocean, as always, would be a problem. He was trying hard not to think about that.

  They were gone now, Yambli and her followers, leaving him to the sea and sky. Silrys had given him some tips on how to navigate the waves and currents. His plan was to aim for the coast and pray for the best. He didn’t have a life preserver, a kit for patching holes, or weapons for defending himself against sharks. He was probably doomed.

  “Or am I?” he asked the crocodile that had been sitting in the surf eyeing him for the last fifteen minutes.

  The crocodile opened her jaw and then snapped it closed again. Myell thought the creature was Free-not-chained, though he couldn’t be sure.

  He said, “Destiny, here I come.”

  Waves broke on the beach, lapping at the edge of the canoe. Myell peeked at the roiling, wild, and unfriendly ocean, his nemesis. He wasn’t hyperventilating yet, but he could feel his breaths beginning to shorten, his palms growing cold and wet, and soon he would vomit, and then his heart would explode from anxiety.

  “Hey,” Ishikawa said, from farther up the sand.

  Myell shielded his eyes against the sun. “Come to tell me how I’m destined to join the Nogomain or ruin the Rainbow Serpent’s plan for all mankind?”

  “Something like that.” Ishikawa approached, her skirt flapping in the breeze. “I wanted to give you a gift. A belated wedding gift, as it were.”

  The knife was small but sharp, with a fine wooden handle inlaid with seashells. “Thanks. I’m sure Commander Scott will like it.”

  “This one’s from Yambli. She says you lost your last one.”

  He accepted the gift of a small, woven dilly bag. Inside it were small wooden carvings of a crocodile and a gecko. The totems made him blink several times. The wood was golden and lustrous, warm to his fingers.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Can I order you to come with me, to return to your duties?”

  “I serve the Nogomain before anyone else.” Ishikawa leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself, Sergeant.”

  “Chief,” he said.

  She grinned and retreated, and he was alone again.

  Before he could think of a dozen different reasons to delay, he pushed the canoe into the water and jumped in. He banged his shin on the side so hard that little drops of blood welled up on the skin like sweat. The canoe rocked, the paddle nearly slipped from his grip, and the waves push-pulled, push-pulled him toward the beach and back again. Free-not-chained slid off the sand and disappeared into the surf, abandoning him to his fate.

  Myell thought maybe he wouldn’t be so nervous if he could see bottom, but the land beneath the water quickly dropped off, leaving him with only sunlit blue and the deeper depths of green, and fish darting under the canoe’s bow. Silrys had advised him to circle west around the island and stick close to shore. He alternated paddling to port and starboard, trying to find a rhythm for it, failing miserably. The waves kept him off balance and the breeze buffeted him from all sides.

  This is not the ocean, he told himself. Just a really huge lake.

  A river with no banks, perhaps.

  The largest bathtub ever. It needed only a rubber duck or two.

  He steadfastly tried not to look any farther out into the water than he had to, afraid that he might see shark fins or whale humps or something else intent on devouring him. The island fell away on his right. Ishikawa, Silrys, and Yambli were standing at the edge of a sandy point, watching him. Ishikawa and Silrys raised hands in farewell. Yambli clutched her staff and tipped her face to the sky.

  He waved, just once, and kept paddling.

  More small islands appeared, a string of them, and in the hazy distance were the cliffs that he and the Bunyip had plunged from. He kept the islands to his right and continued paddling. Waves kept trying to sweep him to shore, currents under the canoe tried to pull him out to sea, and the canoe’s bow kept swinging left. Paddling at sea was ridiculously harder than paddling on a still lake.

  He was lonely for the sound of another human, any human. The wind, the smash of waves against the hull, and the birds’ irritating squawking were all eating at his brain. One of Myell’s old friends back on the Aral Sea had been in a rock band, but none of the lyrics came when he tried to remember them.

  Terror was edging up on him again, the ocean everywhere, the water and the waves and darkness pressing in. He sucked in deep breaths, tried to keep paddling, and pretended that Jodenny was in the bow.

  “Well, Yambli did say you were a conjurer,” Jodenny said, her long, pretty hair fluttering in the wind. She was wearing white shorts and a blue bikini top. Her skin was pink from the sun. “You can conjure up me or anyone else you need to talk to.”

  Myell replied, “She asked if I were the inheritor, not conjurer. And something about a helm. Besides, I don’t need to talk. I need to be distracted.”

  “Distraction’s not what you need at all. You need to stay focused.”

  “I’d prefer a beer.”

  Jodenny smiled. “Not in this neighborhood, partner.”

  Something white glided through the wav
es to his left, too quickly gone to identify. Myell started paddling faster, though already his arms and shoulders were beginning to ache.

  He said, “Wish I were home with you.”

  “What makes you think I’m pining away at home, waiting for my man to return from sea?” Jodenny leaned back, basking in the sun. “Would you have stayed home, if our positions were reversed?”

  The shark fin reappeared, closer to the canoe. Myell tried to judge the distance to the nearest island.

  “I can’t save you and everyone else, too,” he said.

  She smiled ruefully. “Save yourself first. You’re the one with a shark off your bow.”

  He was trying not to think of that. He had the knife that Ishikawa had given him, and the paddle. If the canoe sank under the shark’s jaws or weight, he’d likely be injured in the process. More sharks would come at the scent of blood. As a preemptive strike he could maybe bash the animal’s head in with the paddle, but he had no idea how hard a shark’s skull might be.

  “Ideas?” he asked tensely.

  Jodenny peered over the bow. “Let sleeping sharks lie.”

  Myell kept paddling. The shark circled, came back, glided closer. The far cliffs were like a mirage, dancing at the edge of his vision and never drawing nearer. He fell into a quick, rhythmic stroke, but paddling against the currents was exhausting.

  “I’m thinking of the mountains for our honeymoon,” Jodenny said. “Mountains and snow—”

  Then she was gone, bikini and all, and the shark bumped the canoe with its snout.

  “Shit, shit.” With the paddle in one hand, Myell yanked out the knife. If he could stab it in an eye, or some part of its neck—

  The shark rammed the canoe, sending him hurtling over the side.

  He surfaced quickly, choking on vile-tasting seawater, the knife in hand. The canoe was floating nearby, capsized but not sinking. Not yet. The shark glided by. Long, lethal, playing with him. Toying with dinner before eating it.

  Myell could swim, seawater be damned, but he had no place to swim to, except the overturned canoe. He treaded water carefully, slowly, his legs terribly exposed. The shark could easily rip one off as an appetizer. He was sure he’d lost control of his bladder. Was urine a repellent? He told himself he wasn’t going to die, here in the ocean, without ever saying goodbye to Jodenny.