Strandloper

by Alan Garner

  Brairnumin felt them with his feet.

  We are in the axe country, he said.

  Do not touch them with your hand, said Murrangurk.

  They ate the food that had been given to them at the fires, but they took nothing from the forest that could be eaten.

  They came to black cliffs, and walked along the sides and up into them by cracks.

  Stop, said Murrangurk.

  He tapped the shield with the spear: four and two. He waited.

  Sit.

  They sat, and did not speak; and the mountain looked at them through gaps in the cloud that the wind blew, and it was big over them and they were cold.

  Murrangurk lowered his head, and made Brairnumin do the same.

  The light was fading, and darkness came out of Bomjinna.

  Above them, far above them, they heard the tap of a spear: four and two. Brairnumin and Murrangurk stood, and climbed.

  There are fires, said Brairnumin. All the People are waiting, and the rain is on their shelters.

  Brairnumin and Murrangurk reached the top of the crack. In front of them the rock was flat, and on it were fires inside the openings of the shelters. A man wearing a cloak of wolard came to meet them and took them to a shelter where there were two elders, one the age of Murrangurk, the other wrinkled and with hair all white. This man smoothed the ground with his hand, and said, “I am glad to see you, Murrangurk, but you must be gentle and hurt no one and speak straight.”

  The other man repeated the words just as the old man had said them, but he was standing.

  Murrangurk sat on the cleared ground, and put Brairnumin beside him. Every man of the camp was painted white.

  “I am glad to see you, Billi-billeri,” he said. “And I have brought you a wolard rug, and would talk of the wolard and the kowir bags that I also bring.”

  “I know why you would talk,” said Billi-billeri, “and this is Bungerim of the Wurunjerri-baluk of Jara-wait who gives my word.”

  And Bungerim spoke again everything that Billi-billeri had spoken.

  “You have come to talk stone of Bomjinna for axes,” said Billi-billeri, “as our People have many times talked. But so have the Mogullumbitch and the Ballung-Karar before you. The Boi-berrit have come, and the Kurnung-willam and the Kurung-jang-baluk and the Bunurong, the Baluk-willam, and the Waring-illam. The Nirabaluk, the Jajaurung, the Thagunworung and the Buthera-baluk, they have come. Even the Echuca have crossed the mountain and come; and the Meymet; and the Brabralung, they have all come. We cannot talk so much stone. We can talk no more. We cannot talk with you.”

  Billi-billeri gave the wolard and the kowir skins to Bungerim, who put them down in front of Murrangurk.

  Murrangurk dropped his head and wept.

  “Billi-billeri,” he said. “The mulla-mullung have dreamed that the poles of bwal are rotting, and, if the Old Man does not have more stone, the sky will fall.”

  “That dream we have had,” said Billi-billeri.

  And he sang.

  “In the Beginning, when the waters parted, and the Ancestors Dreamed all that is, and woke the life that slept, the sky lay on the earth, and the sun could not move, until the Magpie lifted the sky with a stick.”

  “A stick!” said the People.

  “And when the Dreaming was done, and each Ancestor made of himself churinga, our Ancestor, Bomjinna, who Dreamed all the land of the Wurunjerri-baluk, the Kurnaje-berring, the Boi-berrit, said, ‘I shall be a mountain.’”

  “A mountain!”

  “‘And I shall sleep.’”

  “Sleep!”

  “‘But, before my sleeping, I shall shit a great shit.’”

  “A great shit!”

  “‘And, though you may not wake me, you may take my shit as stone for axes.’”

  “Axes!”

  “‘They will be black and strong with the power of my shit and my Dreaming.’”

  “Dreaming!”

  “‘And, in my sleep, I shall also shit, and this, too, you may take for axes. But, if you eat into me, you will kill my Dreaming, and I shall shit no more.’”

  “No more!”

  “‘And the Wurunjerri-baluk, the Kurnaje-berring, the Boi-berrit, too, they will have no Dreaming, and they will die.’”

  “Will die!”

  “Then Bomjinna became a mountain, and since then he sleeps.”

  “He sleeps!”

  Billi-billeri ended his song. And Murrangurk wept again.

  “If at once all the world comes for axes,” said Billi-billeri, “they will eat until Bomjinna is no more, and the Wurunjerri-baluk, the Kurnaje-berring, the Boi-berrit are no more, and the land will die in its Dreaming. What will it matter, then, if the sky should fall? Answer my dream.”

  “I cannot answer,” said Murrangurk.

  “But be cheerful!” said Billi-billeri. “You come as wordholders of peace and as guests. We shall dance and sleep, and, with the Morning Star, you shall go back with gifts of spears, and you shall be free of this land, to take roots, and berries and all that you may hunt, till you come to your own land again.”

  So fires were lit for dancing, and the Kurnaje-berring sang and danced, and the best food was given to Murrangurk and Brairnumin, in honour. Then they slept; and, with the Morning Star, Murrangurk set off down the mountain, Brairnumin carrying the rug and the bags of wolard skin and kowir. And Bomjinna was quiet in his Dreaming.

  Murrangurk looked at Brairnumin’s footprints.

  What weight is in your bag?

  Brairnumin did not answer.

  Murrangurk opened the kowir bag. Inside were lumps of black stone.

  I could not let the sky fall, uncle.

  You have stolen the honour of the Beingalite and the trust of the Kurnaje-berring. Thief.

  Murrangurk kicked Brairnumin, turned him and drove him back up the mountain, beating him with spears and shield, until they came to the fires again. The crowd that met them parted, and they passed through to where Billi-billeri still sat in his shelter. Murrangurk threw the young man to the ground, and set the kowir bag before Billi-billeri. He took out the stones softly and placed them before him.

  Murrangurk went to where Brairnumin lay and thrust his spear through the young man’s thigh.

  “Forgive the shame, Billi-billeri, that we have brought upon you. Take this blood guilt.”

  “If you had come, and we had talked stone and not agreed,” said Billi-billeri, “it would be blood guilt enough. But it was not so. For while I sang to you of Bomjinna, the young man stole against our Dreaming.”

  “I am his uncle,” said Murrangurk. “I led him to be made a man, and am leading him through the ways of his Dreaming.”

  “Then you have seen that his Dreaming is small, and its ways few,” said Billi-billeri. “His step in the Dance is over. All this you have seen.”

  “How shall I fill the circle of his Dance?” said Murrangurk. “His father and his mother were killed as I was killed. No one knows the place where his spirit first spoke in the womb, or where the birth blood was buried. Where shall his bones sing?”

  “His step is finished,” said Billi-billeri. “He has no song. Nothing of him may return to the circle of Being. It is done.”

  “No,” said Murrangurk. “There is a mist; but the Dance is not ended, and a song will be sung.”

  Hold me, uncle, said Brairnumin. With my eyes I see. There is no mist. Hold me, uncle. I am your way. When you next look into me, you will remember. Dance then for me the step that now I may not. But hold me, uncle.

  Brairnumin stood, and put his arms out behind him for Murrangurk to take. He bowed his head, and, with the blow of a konnung club, Bungerim smashed his skull.

  Murrangurk caught the body as it fell, and cradled it.

  “Take him to Morriock,” said Billi-billeri. “Let there be no blood between us.”

  Murrangurk put the body over his shoulder, gave back the spears of the Kurnaje-berring, lifted the wordholder’s spear, and went down from
Bomjinna.

  25

  HE SAW THE smoke of the fires, and the smoke of the fires far to the side, long before the round peak of Morriock, covered with the red bones of Neeyangarra, appeared.

  Murrangurk walked across the brown grass down towards Moodiwarri Full of Eels, but he did not go to there. He went to the path of fires, from which came the wailing of the women, and sat for the waters to rise. He put down the shield, the spear and the bags, and slid the body from his shoulder onto the grass. He pressed his hands in the liquid of the flesh, and rubbed the grease on his own skin. Then he painted himself red, and made white circles about his eyes.

  Nullamboin came along the path to meet him, wearing the same paint, with kowir and plover in his hair; and Murrangurk stood, lifted the body and set it in Nullamboin’s outstretched arms. Nullamboin carried the body to the grave, where more fires burned and men waited. The keening women were further back, swinging firesticks to sear themselves.

  Nullamboin opened a net of wolard hair and thrust the head into it, and tied the fists together with another. Two men slit the side with flint, rolled the body in a wolard cloak and put it in a tube of marung bark and laid it in the grave, lined with marung. The People were silent. Murrangurk took the wangim from the kowir bag and set them in the grave. Then the men threw in branches of marung, and on top of them marung logs; and Nullamboin spoke. But the silence was still on Murrangurk, and he did not hear. The men built up the grave with slow care, and the women moved round it in dance and song, but still Murrangurk heard nothing. As the mound began to rise, he left and went to sit where he had first come.

  Nullamboin sat by him, and waited.

  “Who put the spear through the thigh of a wordholder?”

  “I put the spear through him,” said Murrangurk, “because he was thief to the Kurnaje-berring and took their stone. It was Billi-billeri who killed.”

  “Why did Billi-billeri kill a wordholder?”

  “There is no blood between us,” said Murrangurk.

  “How can there not be blood for murder of the sacred?”

  “So many wordholders of stone have come,” said Murrangurk, “that no more can be talked, for Bomjinna would be eaten, and the Dreaming of the Kurnaje-berring would die.”

  “It is finished,” said Nullamboin. “The sky will fall.”

  “It is not finished,” said Murrangurk. “A thing happened. My nephew died a warrior, and the ways of his Dreaming were short. Yet I have led him through his Dreaming, and his ways were not short. I saw them, uncle. And he, too, saw them, with his eyes, and he spoke true to me, but I cannot tell his meaning.”

  “The sky will fall, but his ways are not short,” said Nullamboin. “Kah!”

  “For seven days I have walked,” said Murrangurk, “and no answer has come to me.”

  “Your head is a cloud of grief,” said Nullamboin. “Go up onto Morriock to the bones of Neeyangarra, and hear them. And gather coraminga and torumba; nardoo, goborro, mulkathandra, bolwarra; mara, karagata, dargan. And when you have gathered them, and heard the Ancestor, wait.”

  Nullamboin stood and went to the fires of Moodiwarri Full of Eels.

  When Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin saw that the men had ended their speaking, she brought the kidney fat of the young man, on a leaf, and Murrangurk took it and ate it and put black paint about his mouth, in honour of his nephew who had died a warrior.

  “Come now and rest,” she said. “It is finished.”

  “It is not finished,” said Murrangurk. “I must go alone.”

  He climbed the slope, between the rocks and trees.

  In the Beginning, when the waters parted and the Ancestors Dreamed all that is, and woke the life that slept, the sky lay on the earth, and the sun could not move, until the Magpie lifted the sky with a stick.

  And when the Dreaming was done, and each Ancestor made of himself churinga, Bunjil had strong poles of bwal set around the sky; and he put the Old Man to look after them and keep them firm, so that the sky should not fall.

  Then Bunjil trod upon the whirlwind and rode beyond the Hard Darkness, and he sits in Tharangalkbek to look upon the living and to guide the dead.

  The Ancestor Neeyangarra, father of eagles, had the world of songs, and he taught his songs to the eagles that are the flesh of all mulla-mullung; but he did not teach all his songs to every son, nor did every son teach all his songs to every mulla-mullung, nor did every mulla-mullung teach all his songs to the People.

  When he had shaped the land and the rivers and the lakes, Neeyangarra made Morriock for his seat, and he listened to the songs; and they woke the cry of everlasting life within him, and he went up as a fire of flame, and his hollow bones covered Morriock, that the wind might blow and the songs be true.

  And from the ashes of his feathers grew the marung tree of everlasting life, in the turn of its Dreaming. Its seeds were small, but had the wings of their father and his songs gave them wisdom, and they became Thuroongarong, the bee. And when Bunjil saw this, he gave the bee the voice of Tundun, his own son of everlasting life, and taught the bee to take sweetness from the flowers and make the honey of everlasting life for all the People.

  And so the red bones of fire lay between the marung trees, and Murrangurk sat on the hill top and wept that now the sky should fall.

  He lay at night and looked up at the stars, and thought which was the fire of his nephew on that journey to Tharangalkbek. Then he closed his eyes, and listened to the songs of the wind in the stone, and he slept.

  The next day he gathered the branches and the leaves as Nullamboin had told, and then he waited.

  The water on Morriock was small, and he had no food, but the bees fetched honey to his lips. He looked until he found a white feather of Coonardoo, and, when the bee fed him, he held it gently and stuck the feather on its back and let it go. He followed the white feather of Coonardoo among the trees and over the rocks, until the bee came to its nest. He pulled the feather away, and watched the bees dance.

  Murrangurk learned the dance with the sound of the voice of Tundun from their wings. The bees taught him Thuroongarong, and each day he went to the nest and shared the dance of his new flesh.

  So he danced, and at night he listened to Neeyangarra’s songs, and hunted the fire among the shining bees, whose dance was the turn of marung into the dawn and the Morning Star. Calm came to his grief.

  At the height of the day, he saw men on the grass below Morriock.

  He went back to his sleeping place, and painted his body red, and yellow, and put four curved lines of white across his chest to show the combs of his Bee flesh. He took kowir and plover from his medicine bag, and the feather of an eagle’s wing, and fixed them in his headband. He put a koim bone through his nose, and tied bwal about his arms and around his ankles. The black ring at his mouth he left, to remember his nephew and his death for the sky.

  Now his spirit was ready. To this he had been born. There was no more that he could do.

  Every elder had come, and they sat until the waters had risen, then went to Murrangurk.

  Nullamboin gave him a bag of wolard skin, and said, “Here are the ways of your Dreaming. It was for this I sang, and for this I danced.”

  Murrangurk took the bag and walked. The elders followed in a line.

  At the top of Morriock grew a marung tree, and about it bees flew. Murrangurk and the elders sat. They did not speak. They turned their minds towards the tree.

  Murrangurk opened the bag, and took out the churingas of his Dreaming. He held each one, and traced the song that was carved into it, from the beginning to the ending. The tips of the churinga were bare, and sacred to the Dream, for its song to grow from the silence that went before, and to make the silence of the greater Dream to come.

  All day they sat. And when the light went and the bees flew to their nest, Wolmutang, Tarrupitch, Burkamuk and Karrin stood at the four points of the sky and swung churingas about their heads on ropes, so that the voice of Tundun would not fade. But th
e rest kept their thoughts upon the tree, and Murrangurk traced his songs again, to hold pure his spirit; and when he had finished he took the coraminga, the torumba, the nardoo, gobboro, mulkathandra, bolwarra, mara, karagata and the dargan that he had gathered, and, within a shelter of spearthrowers, blew a fire heap from them.

  Then he waited, putting his thought to the tree.

  A wind came, and the branches moved. It was a small wind, but the branches swept forward, and the trunk bent. It bent over and down, until it touched the ground, and it dipped its head in the glowing.

  Then the marung of everlasting life sprang upright in one blaze, and was a bird of flame, an eagle that climbed into the air, and his feathers were churingas of fire, and each churinga a burning song.

  Neeyangarra grew and spread his wings until the sky was covered; and he stooped to where Murrangurk sat.

  Murrangurk lifted to meet him; and, as he came nearer, the eagle shrank, until he was a star, and the star went into Murrangurk at his mouth, and he felt the churingas of flame. There was tearing of beak and claw, his bones were the red rocks and his head a world of song.

  26

  “HENNY-PENNY!”

  He sat upright, out of sleep.

  “Tongue of my heart, what is it?” said Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin, holding him.

  “What?”

  “You spoke.”

  “What did I say?”

  “They were words of sound, without meaning.”

  Murrangurk scooped water and drank, then put red on his headband, painted the red lines across his eyes, and nose and cheek bones, the two lines down the middle of his chest, turning along the bottom ribs, the shorter lines that did not turn, and put white dots around them. He drew the solemn path of the snake upon his arms and legs, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend.

  Nullamboin watched from his shelter.

  There is a cloud on the sea from Narrm, said Murrangurk. It is at Beangala.

  Sing strong, said Nullamboin.

  Murrangurk gathered all his weapons: his shield, the spearthrower, his war spears, wangim and barngeet.