Queen of the Dark Things

by C. Robert Cargill

  The mechanics of djang aren’t quite understood, leading to a number of theories of their creation, two of which seem the most likely. One theory argues that great deeds accomplished through the use of dreamstuff—or that had a profound effect on the dreamstuff of an area—leave an imprint on certain objects, a spiritual fingerprint, if you will.

  A dagger is used to sacrifice a virgin before a powerful god, the divinity of that “deity” flowing through the priest. That dagger retains some of the dreamstuff released when the virgin is killed, as it also captures a bit of the essence of the priest delivering a soul. While the portion might be very small, it fundamentally restructures the object and imparts properties that the actor, either consciously or unconsciously, wills it to have. When used by someone who understands how to unlock djang, the dagger above might possess the ability to offer any life snuffed out by it to that god. Or it might stay incredibly sharp, never dulling or rusting. It might also be attracted to the heart of a victim when used in a fight. Or it could serve as a way to communicate with the “deity” to which it was dedicated, no matter where on earth it might be.

  The second theory holds that it is not the act that imprints the dreamstuff upon an object, but rather the belief by others in the power of the object or place. People believing a place to be holy, reweave the nature of that place and make it so. The more people who put their faith in the nature of such a place, the stronger that place’s connection is to those properties. This theory mirrors the creation of supernatural creatures, which makes it more likely, but as the mechanism of accessing the abilities is different, there is still plenty of reason to believe the former might still be correct. Someone simply believing they can access the powers of a thing or a place does not necessarily allow them to do so, which runs counter to the way supernatural creatures function with belief.

  Accessing the djang of a thing takes practice. It usually requires a thorough knowledge of its history, its handlers, and its powers, though some practitioners have mastered the ability to sense and tap into the djang of an object on a purely primal level, able to feel their way through what an object is both capable of and “wants” to do.

  The word djang comes from the Aboriginal people of Australia, who impart the term purely to places or naturally occurring objects, like trees, rocks, billabongs, or mountains. To the Aborigines, a holy place grants those knowledgeable of the location’s history to tap into the energy of the past and use that energy to accomplish similar feats. A rock used as the spot to launch oneself into the sky might become the place Clever Men use to cross over into the land of the dead. A watering hole used to trick another tribe into drowning themselves might become a meditation spot for others to discern how to best outsmart their own enemies. A tree a Clever Man used to travel farther than any Clever Man before him might become a doorway to any other tree in the outback.

  All of this can be accomplished by understanding and tapping into the djang.

  CHAPTER 24

  FISHING

  Mind the trees,” said Mandu, pointing to the canopy above them. “Dangerous things in the dark up there.”

  “Snakes?” asked Colby.

  “Worse. Snakes’ll just eat you. Yara-ma-yha-who will spit you back out. And you don’t want that. They’ll drop right out of the trees.”

  These were the wetlands just south of Arnhem Land; trees were everywhere. There was no avoiding them. Gray trunks like spires, fields of them, growing up and out of the thick morass of brown mud, reaching to the cloud-darkened sky. Mosquitoes as big as a quarter, flies working in mobs, leeches in every puddle.

  Colby looked suspiciously toward the treetops. “What are they? What am I looking for?”

  “Bright red, can’t miss ’em. Just keep your eye out and don’t stand too close to low branches.”

  Colby looked around, horrified. Mandu secretly smiled.

  They came upon a large stone plateau, rising like a giant mushroom out of the sea of mangrove trees, its faces sheer, wider at the top than the middle, reds and browns dripping down the sides, jagged rocks climbing the western face like chiseled stone steps. It was like an abandoned Aztec temple, overgrown and swallowed by time, overlooking a wide billabong. Hammer Rock.

  As they got closer, Colby spied ten-thousand-year-old rock art, ancient but bright, unmolested by time. Reds, ochers, blues, blacks. Smears and stains, depictions of stick men covering it from top to bottom, colors often inverted with negative space, detailing the magic aura of dreamtime with pigments, leaving the stick men colored by the rock, dotted with little dabs of paint.

  The billabong was a dark, murky brown, reeds rising up and out of it, the ripples of fish sweeping bugs off the surface lapping gentle waves along the bank. It was a picturesque place woven wholly of magic, kept out of the hands of anyone who couldn’t appreciate it.

  “Good a place as any,” said Mandu, pulling a hatchet from his dilly bag. “Come here.”

  Colby rushed to his side. “Yeah?”

  “Time you learned how to fish, proper.”

  “I know how to fish,” he said with a sigh.

  “With a hatchet?” asked Mandu, holding up a battered, weathered, sharpened hunk of metal, slightly rusted around the edges.

  Colby’s eyes grew wide. “No!” he said excitedly.

  “Today you will.” He swung the hatchet, peeling a layer of bark off a nearby emu apple tree. Then he did it again. And again, repeating the process until he’d stripped the tree raw, oozing from a dozen wide gashes. “Follow me.”

  He walked Colby to the billabong with an armload of sticky bark, then dropped it in a pile by the bank, sitting down, inviting Colby to do the same. Then he began to pound the bark mercilessly with the blunt end of the hatchet. “That’s an emu apple tree,” he said. “Its sap is found deep inside its bark. You have to pound it free.”

  “What do we need the sap for?”

  “Fishing.”

  “Is it bait?”

  Mandu shook his head. “No, it’s not bait.”

  “What does it do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Why don’t we just make a rod? Or a spear?”

  Mandu smiled as if Colby had walked into his trap. “You white fellas always think about the land as if it is something to fight against. To struggle with. You would rather try to lure in a fish and fight with it. But here is a tree by the water that will do all the work for you. The land isn’t your enemy, Colby. It is your ally. Learn from it. Use it. We have many friends out here in the bush. Start thinking of it that way, and the land will keep you alive. Even when all else is trying to kill you. Now,” he said, filling Colby’s hands with a molasses of chewed-up wood. “Sprinkle this in the water. Enjoy the swim. We’ll be cooking up fish soon enough.”

  “Mandu?” asked Colby, hesitantly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why are we fishing?”

  “Because I’m hungry. And we’re having company. It’s always polite to feed company.”

  Colby felt silly, dog-paddling through the water, tossing clumps of gooey bark into the bottom of the billabong. But within moments the fish started floating to the top. The first were merely disoriented, gasping for air at the waterline, puckered mouths desperate, gills flapping furiously. They ducked and dodged as best they could, wriggling out of Colby’s grip as he tried to catch them barehanded, but he made easy work of them, tossing them to Mandu like footballs.

  The next batch, however, floated up on their sides, some even belly up. Colby scooped them up by the armful, throwing them to shore, each time giving Mandu an inquisitive look, as if to ask, “Do we have enough yet?” before Mandu responded with a stiff arm and stern finger pointing him back into the water.

  “The sap of the emu apple tree absorbs lots of oxygen when it gets wet. Sucks it all up, eh? Soon after, the fish get light-headed and pass out. Either that or they swim to the surface looking for air. They float to the top, we take the fish. Very easy.”

  “Mandu,” asked
Colby, tossing two more fish onshore. “You know a lot about spirits, right?”

  “I get by.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “Why do spirits always keep their promises, even if it means dying?”

  Mandu smiled, nodding knowingly. “Ah, the spirits, they cannot tell you why, can they?”

  Colby shook his head, wading back deep into the billabong.

  “Because they themselves do not understand. Look around you. What do you see?”

  “Trees, mostly. A big rock.”

  “Do you see any laws?”

  “What? No. You can’t see laws.”

  “Nah. Because they don’t really exist, eh? We make them up, convince ourselves they’re real. They’re only enforced when someone believes they should be. Whole world put together by rules other people believe should exist.”

  “What does that have to do with spirits though?”

  “The spirits only exist because we believe they do. We dream them and they become real.”

  “No,” said Colby. “That’s not right. You don’t have to believe in a spirit for it to exist.”

  “Not once it believes in itself. Once it believes in its own existence, it doesn’t need anyone else. But that which is made up of belief is bound by it. Act against the nature that holds you together, violate the things that you believe make you exist, and you are unmade as that belief evaporates.”

  Colby scooped a few more fish off the surface. “So if they believe they have to keep a promise, they have to, or they cease to exist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh!”

  “The power of man over spirits is that he is a physical thing. Only the self and the society around him exist entirely because he believes it does. But when he stops believing in those things, he can just remake them. He doesn’t have to keep his word, doesn’t have to find a loophole to cheat. He just can. Thus man can never be trusted. But if he’s smart, he can always get more out of the spirits than the spirits get out of him.”

  “Is that what a Clever Man does?”

  “That’s exactly what a Clever Man does.”

  “How many fish do we need, Mandu?” he finally asked, exasperated.

  “How many do we have?”

  Colby looked down at his feet. Seven trips he’d made, making a pile tall and deep of wriggling, dying fish. Mandu eyed the pile, shrugging. “A lot,” said Colby, pointing.

  “And how many of those do you reckon you’d have caught with a rod or a spear?”

  Colby scuffed his feet, still staring at the ground, embarrassed by the lesson. “Not that many.”

  “I reckon not. When you’re up against great numbers, never fight them head on. Be clever. Know the land. Know the rules. And rather than struggle with them, get them to do exactly what you want.” He eyed the pile, doing the math in his head. “That oughta do.” Then he reached into his dilly bag and pulled from it his bullroarer, which he whirled about, making a louder, shriller noise than Colby had yet heard from it.

  And then the forest came alive with motion.

  Mimis poured out of every imaginable place. From under rocks, behind trees, out of bushes, beneath roots, out of the water, seemingly out of the sky, dropping from the canopy. They were long and thin, their bodies a series of lines, like dried branches—painted red with white dots, or blue with yellow, black with red, or green with white—stuck together to make the crude shape of a person. Though half as tall as a grown man, not a one could have weighed more than five pounds, each wispy enough that a stiff wind could have snapped it in half. Before long, a throng of painted stick men stood before them, bobbing, chanting, some fifty strong, the tallest no more than three feet high, looking exactly like they did in the rock paintings.

  Mandu let the bullroarer wind down, raising his other hand. “Friends,” he said. “This is Colby. He’s going to be out here with us for a while.”

  The mimis let out shrill twitters and hoots, crying out in languages and dialects Colby couldn’t even fathom. And though he had no idea what any one of them was saying, he got the general idea.

  “Good. Good,” said Mandu. “I want you all to meet him. But first, we eat!”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE RUM THIEF

  Tell me about your dreams,” said Wade, his breath strong with coffee, his hands still red, nicked and sore from the cannery. “Where are you going to go tonight?”

  “You don’t believe my dreams,” said Kaycee. She was tucked in bed, tattered covers up around her neck, her father hovering over her, perching on the edge of the bed.

  “I believe that you believe them.”

  “That doesn’t mean you believe anything.”

  “I believe in you. And I believe in your dreams. So where you going tonight? To see your friend?”

  Kaycee nodded.

  “Are you looking for the bunyip again?”

  Again she nodded. “He’s out there somewhere.”

  “Yes he is. And if anyone can find him, you will.”

  “I wish you could come with me. Then I could show you. I could introduce you to my friend and show you the way the stars look and the way the air dances. There are so many colors, so many more than when we’re awake.”

  “I wish I could go too. But you’re with me, you know. In my dreams.”

  “You dream about me?” she asked, her lips curling into a slight smile, her eyes twinkling a bit.

  Wade leaned in, spoke softly, as if sharing a secret. “All the time. I dream about the cannery too. But I try not to think about those. Your dreams sound much better than those.”

  “Do you dream about Mom?”

  Wade looked down at his daughter, his eyes welling with sadness. He gritted his teeth and fought back the tingles of tears. “Every night.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Kaycee, I—”

  “I tell you about my dreams. But I never get to see her in those. I only know her from the pictures. Please?”

  He paused, weighing the ache of his heart against the thought of disappointing his daughter. Then he nodded, trying to smile. “She was the most beautiful girl in all the world, your mother. Everything you said about the colors and the air and the stars. That’s what she was like. Being with her did that to everything. She was my dreamtime. She was—” He broke off, held back the stutter of a sudden sob. “Hold on, Dad needs a drink.”

  Wade tried to stand up, but Kaycee grabbed him by the cuff of his sleeve, shaking her head. “No. Stay here. Tell me about her.”

  “I’ll be right back. I’m really thirsty.”

  “Dad, no. Stay here.”

  He relaxed, put his meaty hand, abraded with scars, on Kaycee’s thick black hair, stroking it gently. “She had hair like yours. Exactly like yours. Curly. Never wanted to do what she wanted it to in the morning. On days when it was hot and the rains were coming, it would frizz out—and because she was tall and thin, she looked like a woolly tree fern.” Wade boomed out a laugh, trying to mask how hard the words were to get out. “But she was beautiful, even then.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Every day. Even on the hot wet ones when she banged on and on about how her hair was a tangle.”

  “If you had to choose, would you pick—”

  Wade’s eyes went wide and his face went red. The monstrous Wade Looes now hovered, terrifying, over his daughter. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you ask me that!” His sudden anger caught her off guard. She’d never seen him this angry, not when he was stone-cold sober.

  “But if you could—”

  “No! Don’t you ever think about that.”

  “But why did she have to . . . I mean, I never even got to see her.”

  Wade calmed, trying hard not to scare his little girl. “Because sometimes things are like that. Some people are only allowed to have one truly amazing person in their life at a time. If I had both of you, I would have been too blessed for words. That much joy, it makes a
man soft. We’re Looeses. Looeses are hard. Tough. Nothing can stop us. So I had many years with her and now I get many years with you. If I didn’t have you, well . . . I’m not sure even a Looes is tough enough for that.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  Wade stroked his daughter’s cheek, a tear forming defiantly in his eye. “I love you, darlin’. Now get to sleep. Dreamtime’s waitin’.”

  THE PRETTY LITTLE girl in the purple pajamas was racing beneath the stars once again, the moon bright, the land effulgent. She ran past the black stump and knew that she was free. Time bent and the universe bowed and all the world became a dream; there was nothing that was going to stop her from finding bunyip tonight. Not a thing in the world. Not even the murder of crows trailing behind her.

  They’d been following her since just outside her house, a mass of chirping, onyx-black beasts slightly larger than the average crow, their eyes glistening a sickly yellow, their beaks shiny, polished, sharp. Their wings beat loudly behind her, their squawks screaming for her to wait up.

  Then they changed, their feathers molting, their bodies shifting. Black became pure darkness, and their sleek avian features gave way to oblong shadows. They were at once like squashed men, their heads bent in odd directions, and their arms cocked every which way.

  They ran, scurrying, galloping across the land on all fours, barking shrill chirrups into the night. One of them, the fastest among them, trailed very close, so close she could feel its hot breath on her neck.

  “Why are you running so fast?” it asked, galloping up alongside her.

  “I’m hunting bunyip,” said the girl.

  “Why would you be looking for a bunyip?”

  “Because I was told that I would find one.”

  “But they’re very dangerous. You could be eaten.”

  “I won’t be eaten,” she said.