by Alan Garner
And the hills around. A quietness settled on him. And in the quietness the Hamestan sang. He rose and went.
He felt a rhythm that began to fill him as he listened.
William Buckley left the Hamestan, to the oak. He entered in. He reached for the jackstones down the hollow He took out the shiny pebbles. And now he saw they were not jackstones, but blades of flint. The People had made them: Yambeetch and Warrowil. The People had known the oak. One tree was all, and all the world one Dreaming.
He looked up. Cush, cush. Cush-a-cush.
He put the flints in the medicine bag, and dug with his hands in the leaf mould until he came to the charcoal of the fire. He took the charcoal and rubbed it into his face. Then he tore two branches from the living wood, and Shick-Shack went down from the oak and into the bowl that had been the mere. He kicked off his shoes and felt the land. He stood, holding the branches upright. The mere was waiting. Under the ground he felt the water run.
“– For fear you make the golden bird to weep.”
He put a green branch around each shoulder, his black face, and went to the church, and in by the belfry.
The framing of the tower enclosed him as the oak, and split light, dappled swaddledidaff, through the glass. And one small piece of red, round glass was Neeyangarra rising on his wings of flame.
Shick-Shack entered the nave, and smelt the forest of the church.
Before him, the East Window was filled with churingas and Dreamings, and the coiling length of Binbeal and the interweaving circles of the Three Points of Time. In the biggest churinga was a man in red and white, speaking Wurunjerri-baluk with his fingers and saying: All.
He stood at the dry stone font and gripped the rim of two of the sides. Across were the South door and the window of the Man in the Oak and the Crown of Glory. He looked into the blind eyes of the sleeping god, and saw the face of his nephew, painted in the way of his first Dreaming, above the solemn path of the snake, black on a white headband, its fires marked with a dot in the curve of each bend, and his churinga below.
“Water of life, water of death,
Each has my soul fed.
Sun, river and thunder
Give me new breath.”
He held the crystal in the font, and the mere bubbled up the stone to the rim. He scooped his hand to drink.
He lifted the branches against a pillar. He put the medicine bag on the font and took out balls of clay: white, black, yellow and red. He pulled off his clothes, and, slowly, he painted his body with the clay, using the font to work a paste.
Murrangurk painted his own Dreamings and his People. He tied on his headband and set kowir and plover in his hair, and the feather from an eagle’s wing. He put koim through his nose. And when he had finished, he went and laid the branches on the altar, and turned to face the church.
Mulla-mullung moved him, and he danced the Crow, for his nephew and for the warriors. His feet woke slowly, but he did not stop; and he heard the rug drums and the clapsticks, and the People were singing. He danced faster, and they lifted him and the choir was filled with them.
Then he danced the Morning Star, and left the altar, dancing, and the hollow logs beneath the chancel and the nave boomed as he stamped. He danced the Morning Star. The windows flared hollin, coraminga, cuckoo bread; torumba, nardoo, galligaskins; devilberry, jackanapes, goborro, mulkathandra; vervey, bolwarra, popple, marara; karagata, dargan, Robin-run-in-th’hedge. And the East sent a rainbow to the mere of the font. He danced in the rainbow and about the trees, in the drums and the song, and he danced at the font for the Man in the Oak and the Crown of Glory, but the eyes were blind.
He left the drumming and the song and danced into Silence. The paint and the bright sweat melted to air.
Through the Silence came the voice of Tundun, and he danced, beyond mulla-mullung, he danced the Evening Star. His step was with the voice of Tundun. He danced the Evening Star to bring the warriors home, and made the path of Murrangurk’s five ways. He danced the Evening Star for the blind eyes in the crown; and the eyes of the glass opened, and Nullamboin looked at him.
The church was light and the scent of oak and the scent of bwal. From the South door lay the bush of Beangala to the sea. Tundun and the Silence and the Song were All and One.
Strandloper entered into his bone country. The wave bore his right foot, and the earth his left. He walked with Binbeal, son of Bunjil.
There came an eagle.
Here is the start of the Dream,
and how the sweet sorrow is sung.
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Epub ISBN: 9781448162857
Version 1.0
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First published in 1996
by The Harvill Press, 84 Thornhill Road, London N1 1RD
This paperback edition first published in 1997
7 9 8 6
Copyright ©Alan Garner, 1996
Glyphs drawn from nineteenth-century sources, by Griselda Greaves
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ISBN 9781860461613