by Alan Garner
She’ll do.
He held the bark compass, gripped the mug, and pushed himself to his knees. He crawled to a tree, and hugged his body upright against the trunk. He inched until his back was against the tree, and he opened the flap on his ducks. He held the mug low. When it was full, he drank without pause. The taste was salt and sweet, and it was hot, but he made it cold tea, and kept it down. His tongue moved.
“Now then,” said William. “Now then.”
Kiminary. Keemo. Kiminary. “Keemo.” Kiminary. Kiltikary. “Kiminary.” Keemo. “String.” Stram. Pammadilly. Lamma. Pamma. “Rat. Tag.” Ring. Dong. Bomminanny. “Keemo.”
He paused at each word, each word one step. The ground was lifting into woodland. His feet told him. A range of hills that were forest. He heard a far sound of roaring in his head. It seemed to be in front of him, with wisps and fast moving lumps of blue cloud that dodged here and there, jumping from behind the forest.
The sun went down red, not purple.
Lamma. Pamma. Rat. Tag.
But the dark did not come. The glow of sunset became brighter, and the sound in front of him louder. He stopped. The sky was flickering. And the whole of the tops of the hills at one instant rose as another hill, of flame. Globes of fire spun across trees, leaping gaps, and the trees exploded. The fire flowed down the hill, into a valley, showing up a nearer ridge that he had not seen. Then that ridge flared, and the fireballs danced and flew. He could hear them now, and not in his head.
William drank as he watched.
The flames were coming towards him, but moving across. If he could have run, it would not have been fast enough. The wind and the wood kindled at a speed that a horse might not outstrip. There was no choice against the flames. They were the life, and behind them, where they had been, was the night.
The wind veered, and the flames turned and sped past and to the back of him. It veered again, and encircled him. The grass and the trees marched towards him, and the fireballs danced in the tops on every side.
He coughed in the smoke. It was heavy with the smell of the church and the bee. William dug down through the dry litter to the sand until he had a hole big enough to take the mug. He wrapped the swaddledidaff in the compass, put them in the mug and buried the mug, bottom up, in the sand. He put a stone on top to mark the place, then stood to meet the fire.
Ye are the salt of the earth – daft sod. Salt.
He dragged off his shirt.
Neither do men light a candle – well, some bugger has.
He unfastened his ducks and peeled them off.
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil – Yay. And empty barrels make most noise.
The grass rushed at him. He beat at it with both hands. It paused; came on. He beat again. But his ducks and his shirt were so worn and thin that their weight was not enough, just more food for the fire, which jumped for his hands. He let go, and the cloth was gone.
Only the speed of the burning saved him, and he danced, stamped and leapt. There was one bright flash that seared. His hair and beard crumbled.
The fireballs came from all sides and met, and their heat lifted them above William, sucking the breath from him, and above the trees into one thunder and bowled across the sky to the next stand.
He knelt. The ash was hot, no more. He moved the stone, dug into the sand and took the mug. Inside, the compass and the swaddledidaff were unharmed.
He watched the fires move all night, until they were far off, and in the dawn he saw.
The world had changed. All around him, and away, the ground was white ash, the trees black sticks, bark charred, some smoking, some still burning. Up and down the hills there was nothing else but stick, ash, smoke, with no marks for distance or to hide the view.
William straightened the compass, grasped it with the mug in one hand, the swaddledidaff in the other, and set off.
The dust rose from his dragging feet and covered him, and each time he stumbled, charcoal made Shick-Shack again, but there were no leaves to hold against the sun.
In the dry valleys the world was walled with spikes. On the hill tops the land was wherever he looked: burnt, white, black; every tree was every tree, and there were so many: more than he could ever have thought of, under a blaze of sky that made each trunk clear and one. The land and the trees the same. Without the compass he would have been lost.
He drank the thickening liquid, and walked on.
Something moved in front of him on the ground. It was black, heaving, and changing shape. It cried out in a harsh voice. As he came near, it broke into tatters that fled in all directions and settled as crows on the trees. The noise died, and they sat, the black on the black, and watched him.
There was still something, but smaller, on the ground. William stood over it and looked.
What it had been, or what it was, he could not tell. Bones were white, and flesh, burnt and raw, with scorched fur and blistered skin stuck to them, but no shape was left, except for a toe, an eye pecked open, an ear. The guts trailed. Ants were over all.
He went to the food, not caring how he trod. His feet now were beyond the grip of their jaws. He chose a lump, a limb, something, and threw it clear. The birds watched.
He kicked it in the dust until it was free enough for him to hold and bang it on a rock to rid it of the ants. He squatted, holding with both hands, and tore, chewed, gnawed. The crows flew down to eat again. He ran at them, growling, and snatched another piece. He settled beyond where the ants swarmed; then back and to, back and to, he battled with the birds, until even they could find no more to pick and gulp. They went their ways, leaving the marrow.
It was the last. By the next day he was meeting just empty bones, ash covered in the wind.
The dust was in his mouth. There was no dew. He had to drink. He strained, but could not, trying until the muscles were dead. He threw the mug from him, and followed N.
What’s that you said, young Eggy Mo? You want me for to finish the story? Then I’d best do it, or we shan’t be friends, shall we? But let me ask you summat first. Where’s Man in the Moon? Eh? Tell me that. He’s not there, is he? Look. You show me. It’s a rough auction, this, isn’t it? Sun backards, moon wrong road round. And no Man. Well. Shall I tell you? There is! There is that, and all! Oh, yes. He’s there, right enough! Now you do as I say. Bend over. Go on. Bend over. Right? Now look between your legs. Same as me. There. You’ve got it. Now look ye. He’s there, isn’t he? He’s beggaring upside down! You’d not seen? Well I did! Close on a twelvemonth since. Whatever next, eh? I shouldn’t wonder.
Now where were we? Sit thi down on that tree yonder. Tek thi bacca. Stick thi nose up chimney. Oh, yes. Henny-Penny. Going to tell king as sky’s a-falling. That’s it.
So they goes along and they goes along and they goes along, when who should they meet but Foxy-Woxy. Oh, I was forgetting. They’d met Turkey-Lurkey, too, but we needn’t do that bit. Where are you going, Henny-Penny, Cocky-Locky, Ducky-Daddles and Turkey-Lurkey? says Foxy-Woxy. We’re going to tell king the sky’s a-falling.
William felt in the dark under the tree until he found a sharp stone. He broke it.
Oh, I’ll come with you, says Foxy-Woxy. Snap! Hrumph! he goes. So Henny-Penny never did tell king as sky was a-falling.
And so the bridge bended. And so my tale’s ended. Now, Eggy Mo, I shall have to cut thee. And he moved his arm for a vein and dragged the stone deep into him.
William sucked the blood, and sucked and licked till the flow clotted.
He could not stand. He had fallen off the trunk and lay in the ash. He held the swaddledidaff and the compass. The sun was high. He tried to move, but could not, and lay stretched out on his stomach. His arm hurt.
Het. I did me best.
He heard a yelp. He lifted his head, and saw a yellow dog standing in front of him among the trees, watching him.
Now then, Gyp.
When it knew that it had been seen, the dog turned and trotted away. William did not move. The dog stopp
ed and looked back at him.
Gyp.
The dog whined.
It’s no use.
The dog yelped again.
Gyp.
William forced himself onto his elbows.
The dog trotted off.
Wait on. Wait on.
But the dog did not stop. William pulled himself after it. In the heat, the further the dog went, the bigger it grew. William drew his knees under him, his fists closed about swaddledidaff and compass, and followed.
No dog could be so big. And now he could see the black and white hill through it. The dog filled the land and the air.
Gyp.
It was so great that he could see and not see. It did not fill the land and the air. The land and the air were it.
William reached a tree, and he stopped because his shoulder hit the trunk. It was an old tree, and above him flames still came out of the knot holes of a dead branch. He passed on; and his eye caught something above him on the other side of the trunk. It was a fresh green shoot sprouting through the blackened bark.
It were a big tree be the side o’ a river. Half on it were afire, from root to top, and t’other half were green leaf all o’er. He wept. There were no tears in him to flow, but what shook him was joy.
Kil. Ki. Mo. Ti. Kar. Ki. Mo. String. Stram. Pam. Dil. Lam. Pam. Rat. Tag. Ring. Dong. Bom. Nan. Ki. Mo.
Behind him, the ash was stained as he crawled down the hill from the tree. His sight was going, but he would not stop.
He put his hand on grass: grass: alive. The dust ended in a clean line He could see a bush straight ahead, a few yards away, and on it red berries.
Kil ki mo ti kar ki mo. He was there. The berries hung above him. Whether they were poison he did not think. He reached, but he could not touch them. They glistened.
He felt among the grass. He put the compass in his other hand, crawled beneath the branches until he could grasp the stem, and shook it. He shook it with all his little strength. He heard dropping in the grass. He let go of the trunk and swept his hand around. His fingers touched a smoothness and picked it up and held it close to his face. Red. A berry. He put it in his mouth; and bit.
Under the skin, the flesh was soft. The taste was like nothing ever: new, yet a memory; a dream woken.
He found more berries, ate them, without shaking the stem again. He had no need. All to be done now was to go.
He raised his head. His sight had cleared. He was beside a dry river, two tall trees together on the other side. He looked up. A bird was above him, spread on the sky.
He hauled himself to the river and slid head first down. He crossed the bed, taking no care of the stones and the tangled branches. He climbed the bank with the last force of his mind; and then before him were only the trees, and beyond and between them a low hillock, and, upright on the hillock, a dead sapling.
Yon’s a right stick for to take a man home.
He crawled past the trees and onto the hillock. At the top, he grabbed the sapling with one hand. The big bird hovered.
Oss off. I’m none of your baggin.
He pulled, but he was too weak even to lift to his knees, and he swung round, hanging from his arm. The compass fell, and the wind caught it.
He was facing the two trees. On the side of each, opposite the hillock, a slice of bark had been cut away, and deep in the wood were the patterns on the timbers of the barn, the shapes of Mutlow: lines, curved and crooked; dots, spots and twisted circles; but not shimmering; all still, weathered, real.
Bloody no. I said. Bloody no.
Darkness rolled upwards across his eyes.
Lu lay, lu lay, lu lara lay; bayu, bayu, lu lara lay; hush-a-bye, lu lay. And the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe, with loss of Eden. Man of leaf and golden hood. We mun wake him if we could.
There was wet on his face.
Cush, cush. Cush-a-cush. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
He opened his eyes. A dog stood over him. Someone was sitting on the ground before the hillock, a big willow leaf in his hair, made of red wood.
William spoke.
“Are we at China, then?”
IV
MURRANGURK
Fro spot my spyryt Þer sprang in space;
My body on balke Þer bod. In sweuen
My goste is gon in Godez grace,
In auenture Þer meruaylez meuen
“Pearl”
lines 61/5
19
NULLAMBOIN SMELT THE wind. He sat by his fire. The wind was blowing dust and leaves. A piece of bark dropped in front of him. He reached with the butt of his spear and pulled the bark over and lifted it, and smelt. He looked at the lines painted on it: the cross of life in the circle of Being of the People; above, the mark of the three toes of the hallowed bird; above, the crooked path of travel, from the holy to the holy. He put the bark into the medicine bag that was slung at his shoulder. Then he took red clay and painted a band of red across his eyes, a band of red across his nose and cheek bones, two lines down the middle of his chest, turning along the bottom ribs, and, outside each of these lines, two shorter ones that did not turn. With his other hand he took white clay, and ran white dots around the lines. On his legs he drew in white the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend. When this was done, he gathered his spears and walked away. His kal followed him.
Nullamboin went to the Place of Growing, beyond the fires. He scooped water out of the Spirit Hole and drank. Then he sat by the Spirit Hole and sang the songs of the Ancestor and of the Dreaming to the son of Bunjil, Binbeal, the Rainbow, who lived in the waters.
Then he sat before the Goomah, the Clashing Rock, and he sang his spirit into the rock until he was safe. Next, he stood and went to the hollow Minggah, and reached inside the tree and lifted out a bag of kowir skin and opened it. In the bag were the churingas of wood that held all his Dreamings. He took the red churinga of the Kal Dreaming, and fixed it in the back of his headband, and danced the life of the Place of Growing into him, and left.
He came to the grave mound. A man lay, gripping the spear that had been put there. Nullamboin sat down and looked to the sky. An eagle soared above the two trees. He waited. The man groaned, and the kal went to him and licked his face; and the man opened his eyes and spoke, then his head dropped forward. The kal whined. Nullamboin crossed the trench and bent to smell the man’s face and breathing. He uncurled the fist that was holding the stone all stuck about with crystal that shone in the light. He took the stone into his medicine bag, and held the man hard by the upper arms for a moment, then turned and walked back to the Place of Growing. His kal lay at the mound.
He pulled the churinga from his headband and laid it in the Minggah, and sat before the Clashing Rock and sang his spirit out to him. He danced the life back into the Place of Growing, then he went to the fires.
Nullamboin sat, and stared far off, his spears beside him, his hands on his thighs, fingers spread.
All the elders looked up.
Woolmurgen came to sit by Nullamboin.
Marrowuk joined them.
Bundurang came; and Mamaluga; Punmuttal; Konkontallin. Derrimut moved towards them, but Nullamboin brought the back of his hand to his face, and swung his arm forward and out to the side, and Derrimut stopped, and went to his fire.
Nullamboin reached into his medicine bag and took out the piece of bark and gave it to the men. They each smelt it in turn, and looked at the lines painted on it: the cross of life in the circle of Being of the People; above, the mark of the three toes of the hallowed bird; above, the crooked path of travel, from the holy to the holy.
“It is a sacred journey of the Kowir Dreaming come to us,” said Mamaluga.
“Death has died into life here at our Place of Growing,” said Woolmurgen.
“And a greater Dreaming has come,” said Punmuttal.
Bundurang nodded and gave the
bark to Nullamboin; and Nullamboin put it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“You danced that it would come.”
Nullamboin looked at him.
“No one has danced this before,” said Bundurang.
Nullamboin looked at him. “When the sky falls, the People shall not die in their Dreaming.” He picked up his spears, and the men went with him, carrying theirs. They made towards the Place of Growing.
“There is no harm,” said Nullamboin, and led them straight to the grave mound.
When they saw what was on it, and the hand holding, they sat, and turned their eyes to the side.
“It doesn’t look like him,” said Marrowuk. “Too big.”
“It’s a young man, not mulla-mullung,” said Woolmurgen.
“Why is it that colour?” said Konkontallin. “The dead are white.”
“Never as he was will he return,” said Nullamboin. “He died before his song was sung, before his step in the Dance was ended.”
Nullamboin showed the crystal stone.
“Here is his thundal.”
He put it back in the medicine bag, and stood, and the others joined him, shuffling, uncertain, until Nullamboin painted the red bands across their eyes and cheeks. On their legs he drew in white the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend. Given their strength, the men became still.
“After I had danced, I sang,” said Nullamboin. “I sang him in the Kal Dreaming. And, as I dreamed, I saw him dancing in the Minggah of Tharangalkbek, by the Spirit Hole of Tharangalkbek, and there were many dead people. But the Goomah of Tharangalkbek I could not see clear, for there the Goomah is Women’s Matter. That is strange.
“I sent the Kal Dreaming into his kal, and it took him. And the dead people wrapped him in the net of Death and Life, and washed him in the Spirit Hole, so that he might walk the Hard Darkness, and ride the Bone of the Cloud, to come to us.”
Nullamboin pointed at the sky, and, when they saw the eagle above them, the elders cried out.
“Bunjil!”