and could not make the climb to his camp.
He tried to see the woman who was making her way to his camp, but she was in the lee of the hill and hidden. He continued staring down. His eyes flickered over the rough-hewn cemetery. So many of his people lay suffering in an alien soil. He sighed. He had tried with all his skill to help them. Had led soul after soul towards the silvery shining track snaking up to the skyland, but each had broken away to run wailing back to this island. Now, they tugged at his consciousness, and he let his mind relax. The ship tacking into the bay disappeared from his eyes. Pale, rounded souls squatted about him. They lacked mouths, but still were trying to tell him something. He concentrated. The words were whispers in his mind, garbled and in a language he might once have known, but since had forgotten. He concentrated in an effort to understand. The sea, the ocean heaved and spat at him. Old fears gripped his heart. Tradition made him flee from the ocean, made him believe it would swallow him whole. A huge snake writhed from the depths and turned, its jaws gaping at him. A huge snake that suddenly flashed with all the colours of a rainbow to turn into Dreaming companion. Goanna came up under him and sped away. He sported, diving deeply into the depths, turning and charging to leap high above the surface. Jangamuttuk clung on for dear life feeling the waters grabbing at him. Then he felt his power and relaxed. The waters flowed around him and beside him and in him. Now Goanna and the souls swam west towards the setting sun. He saw the sun writhe into the coils of the great serpent, and eyes reached out to give him an assurance that he was welcome.
The supply ship tacked into the bay. It tried to make its way towards a headland to shelter in the lee. The wind blew from the land and the ship, unable to anchor, ran out to sea. A small dot on the beach moved towards the tail of a thin white snake laying across the grasscovered sand-dunes. Its body twisted into the thick forest which covered the plain, changed colour and continued on as a red serpent with a bloated head which was the wide clearing in which the mission had been erected. There stood a line of wattle and daub huts for his people; a large low brick bungalow for Fada, his wife and two sons; a store with an office from which rations were distributed; and lastly at a short distance from the bungalow, a chapel in which Fada entertained them with incomprehensible sermons which hurt his head when he tried to reason them out. Then at the end of a short track leading inland, that poor patch planted with the corpses of his people seethed with restlessness. He sighed, distressed at the sight.
A cold feeling began at his chest and spread up into his throat. He coughed and spluttered, managed to bring up a great gob of phlegm, then lay back on his blanket. He became a sick old man as his young wife, Ludjee, stepped onto the platform of the camp and stood there getting her breath. She fanned her face with a piece of cloth, put down a basket, untucked the skirts of her shapeless ghost shift from between her legs, then took off the small cask of water she had tied on her back and poured a drink for the old man. Ludjee helped him into a sitting position to take the water, then gently scolded him: ‘You feeling poorly this morning, ain’t you? You an old fella always forgetting yourself and what happens. You become good for nothing.’ She set down the empty pannikin, sighing as she did so. ‘Like most of us just good for nothings these times; but today, most of us are feelin’ a little better. You really some kind of doctor, but you gotta watch out for yourself. Those ceremonies take a lot out of you. You gotta watch out for yourself. You get too sick and we all finished.’
Jangamuttuk, playing his role, weakly muttered: ‘Should’ve kept some of that medicine in that bottle for meself.’
‘You should’ve seen the missus this morning. Hunting high and low for it. She frantic, but she got two more and we need it bad.’
Jangamuttuk protested: ‘No that medicine not the right one. Anyways that Fada, he knew I had that bottle last evening. He must’ve been hidin’ and watchin’ us. Both of ’em’ll keep that medicine to themselves from now on. But never you mind, I find ’nother and better one.’
‘He always watchin’ us,’ Ludjee agreed, then added: ‘But we watchin’ him too. Now, I got you some food. Good stuff, what he eats himself. Took it from right under the nose of that, of that woman of his.’
‘Would like some kangaroo, just a little taste,’ Jangamuttuk whispered wistfully. ‘But most of all, a little bit of possum. Just a little bit. You remember, when we were getting together. You were a wild one then, just got your hair down below and scarcely broken in.’
‘And you were a stodgy one. Wonder how you got your goanna to raise its head,’ Ludjee replied with a laugh.
Jangamuttuk smiled as he answered: ‘My Dreamin’, woman. My Dreamin’.’
‘Those times, they just like a dream,’ the woman whispered. ‘All we have left, dreams of home, that’s all, dreams of home.’
Their own land was not so clogged with trees, with undergrowth, with the thickness of vegetation. Tall trees grew apart, their trunks only coming together in the shadows of the early morning or late afternoon. Grass grew in clumps and the people could walk where they wanted without having their feet torn by bindies. In fact so gentle was the earth to their feet that other communities called them: the people with soft soles.
But all this was long before the coming of the ghosts. They had arrived and everything had changed. The Earth raged with giant fires; kangaroos and wallabies began to disappear, and even the giant animals of the ocean were dragged ashore to be butchered. Their flesh was torn off their bones and flung into giant pots to be rendered down over the raging fires. The smell of boiling flesh rose with the smoke and a haze of death hung over much of their land. Such were the times, and everyone had to adapt to them. The girl Ludjee had been taken in by ghosts and used and abused as everything was used and abused. But then had come Fada with his promises to protect, and things had taken a turn for the better. This was before the time of the stolen children, and where hope bloomed so did marriage. It was only natural that after a grieving Jangamuttuk had seen his first wife safely off along the skyroad; that he felt the need for a woman. He saw young Ludjee who stood in the correct relationship to him. In fact, as men of marriageable age were scarce, her anxious father had settled the matter without asking for the customary presents. However, Jangamuttuk to show his observance of the old ways had scrupulously followed custom.
Ludjee smiled as she remembered the part she found she had to play, namely to enact the role of an innocent young thing towards the mature man who attracted rather than repelled. But it was then custom and Jangamuttuk, ever the conservative, would have thought her ill-bred if she had not gone through with it. So secure in her blooming womanhood was she, that she had taunted him with her ripening breasts and loins. She had enticed and repelled him until the full confidence of her womanhood flowed in her, and she could scoff at the aroused attraction of the person who was to be her man. So it had been and so it might never be again. On the island of exile, men and women mated hurriedly and without thought for the morrow. Why wait and follow custom when one might be dead? She sighed as she thought of Fada and the things she had to do to survive.
But then the memory of that last delicious time on their land with places still free from the influences of the ghosts removed her sadness. One morning, she had enticed (only a backwards glance was necessary now) her future mate after her. She knew where to go. Far inland towards the rugged backbone of their island was the place where, as custom demanded, all brides led their grooms. What happened there was supposed to be hidden, supposed to be part of woman’s magic. Sometimes more than one man followed a woman, and then when a couple returned, no one mentioned the other suitors who were seen no more. Sometimes, even a single suitor disappeared and only the woman returned. Such things happened, and they were accepted because they made the race strong. But this time, only the male Jangamuttuk alone remained in proper relationship to her, and so the marriage was ordained.
In a valley turfed with grass and shaded by evenly spaced trees, Ludjee lured her mate. It was woman’s country, and only his desire would protect him from certain destruction. She reached the
