Walking to the Stars (15 page)

The bush ended, and the boulders became larger, and the sky had the first silver of dawn, when the weirdness began.

"Kutter Kich,” Talgerit whispered in Samuel's ear. “It's a Wagyl place."

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There were advantages to having Talgerit squashed into the front of the van with them, Nick decided. Samuel was pressed against Nick, jostling his arm when he had to swing the steering wheel hard to swerve around a pothole or a goanna, legs spread with the gear shift stick between them, convenient for Nick to rest his hand on Samuel's thigh when they were on a decent bit of road.

Talgerit was scanning the countryside, eyes constantly on the move, singing to himself quietly enough that Nick couldn't hear him unless they were on a smooth bit of road.

This was Talgerit's birthplace, Nick knew that. Talgerit had left the area, Quairading, Pantapin and Badjaling, when he was a child, fleeing the radioactive clouds blown inland from Perth, heading south with his mob. Coming back, seeing the hills and trees of his own Dreaming, must be an intense experience for Talgerit.

Talgerit's song, crooning in the van cabin, made Nick wonder what it would be like to return to Perth. He'd been back, of course, as part of the military response to the bombings, taking care of evacuees, but he could remember very little of that time apart from the patients he'd treated.

People lived here, farming the land, running sheep and wheat, and exactly how settled the land was became obvious when the road into Quairading was barricaded and a man in khaki uniform held up the hand that wasn't holding an HK MP5, indicating for them to stop.

Samuel tensed up beside Nick, digging his fingers into Nick's thigh. “Oh fuck,” he whispered.

"Talgerit,” Nick said, taking the van down through the gears quickly, bring it to a halt.

"Got it, Dr. Nick,” Talgerit said, and he opened the van door and hopped out and walked up to the man who was approaching them.

Nick couldn't read Talgerit's lips, but he knew what he'd be saying. The remote military outposts tried not to tangle with the Feathermen, because there were plenty of things out there that couldn't be shot at successfully. Like boyee. Last thing a military installation wanted was for a Featherman to send a boyee in; heavy earth-moving equipment was scarce and so hard to explain in triplicate.

Talgerit strolled back to the van, wide grin on his face. When he'd slammed the door shut and the man in khaki was moving the barrier, Nick said, “What did you threaten him with?"

"Bad things,” Talgerit said. “I said I'd make him smell if he didn't let us through. Reckon young man like him'd be shagging a girl for sure, eh?"

"For sure,” Nick said as they rolled through the checkpoint, and he could see the reflection of the man sniffing himself surreptitiously in the rear view mirror. “Can't go shagging if he smells bad."

"Will there be many road blocks?” Samuel asked worriedly. “I don't have refugee papers or anything."

"Dunno,” Talgerit said. “Won't be any at Walwalinj, there's too much Dreaming there, they'd go mad."

Two hours later, when the farmlands had been replaced by bush again, Talgerit pointed at the hill ahead of them. “There, go there, Dr. Nick. That's Walwalinj."

The track ended at the base of the hill, and Nick parked the van. He climbed out and put the damper down on the gas unit, while Talgerit's dog pissed its way around the van tires.

"What's that sound?” Samuel asked, coming around the back of the van, too.

Nick lifted his head and listened to the faint keening as the wind whistled through the gum trees. “Is that the wind, Talgerit?” Nick asked.

"That's Walwalinj,” Talgerit said. “The hill that cries. You're going to be Noongar now, if you can hear Walwalinj."

They followed Talgerit through the scrub, past the red bull ant mounds, Talgerit moving faster and faster, following his dog up the hill, up ahead of them, so that Nick was running, Samuel out of breath behind him, crashing through the bush.

Nick lost sight of Talgerit halfway up the hill, bounding between the boulders, and Samuel wasn't keeping up, so Nick let Talgerit go and waited for Samuel to catch up.

They climbed the hill more slowly, finding what had previously been a firebreak instead of following Talgerit's manic dash through the bush.

They found a crushed shed, near the top of the hill, a relay station of some sort Nick guessed, and Samuel paused beside the wreckage.

"What happened?” he asked, and Nick shook his head.

The shed had very obviously been destroyed rather than just left to fall down, and it was a puzzle since all the rest of the buildings they'd seen as they had driven through Quairading were dilapidated, not broken.

"Talgerit might know."

Talgerit was on the brow of the hill, standing on the very pinnacle, looking out toward the coast, eyes shaded against the afternoon sunshine.

The twisted wreckage of a relay tower lay at the top of the hill, again very obviously crushed and mangled, and Talgerit turned and nodded to them.

"This is where my mob come from,” he said, deep pride in his voice. “My land."

"What happened to the tower?” Nick asked. “Do you know?"

Talgerit jumped down from the boulder he was on and clambered over to the broken tower. He ran his hands over the metal structure, climbed around it a little, and lifted something up into the air triumphantly.

"Look, eh?” he called out, then he jumped down off the girders and walked back to Nick and Samuel.

He had something in his hand, a piece of translucent glass, perhaps, that shimmered and shone in the sunlight.

When he handed it to Nick, it was too light to be glass, and too rough, and its surface shone like oil on water.

Nick handed it to Samuel and asked Talgerit, “What is it?"

"Wagyl,” Talgerit said reverently. “Scale of the Wagyl. Wagyl didn't like the metal things on the hill, so it broke them."

The scale in Samuel's hands was the size of a dinner plate, and Samuel went visibly pale under his dark skin.

Talgerit took the scale back and rubbed it against his torn T-shirt to polish it. “The Wagyl is big,” he said, with admirable understatement. “Listen, Walwalinj isn't crying anymore."

The keening had gone, leaving just the wind whistling in the gum trees and hakeas.

"Why has it stopped?” Samuel asked, looking around them, at the clouds scudding across the high blue sky.

"We came back,” Talgerit said. “Let's make camp."

A trickle of water came out from underneath boulders on the other side of the hill from the van, filling a small waterhole, and Talgerit cleared away the dead undergrowth near the boulders and built two small fires while Nick collected the leaves from the balgas near the camp and spread them thickly on the ground.

"Good camp,” Talgerit said, and he gave the Wagyl scale to Nick to hold. “Hold this, Dr. Nick, and I'll get dinner."

Talgerit's idea of hunting was simple and effective: he gathered up small round rocks, sat motionless on a boulder in the dusk, and tossed the rocks at the rabbits that inevitably came out to graze.

Once a rabbit was stunned or injured, he snapped its neck and handed it to Nick to be skinned and gutted, and went to sit on a different boulder to catch another rabbit.

Nick had done a surgical rotation in the army; skinning a rabbit took a couple of seconds, three quick cuts with his pocket knife and a flick to take the skin off, then a twist and a shake to vent the guts.

What Samuel thought of this, Nick wasn't sure. Samuel sat between the fire, Wagyl scale cradled in his lap, a distant look on his face.

When Talgerit came back with the third rabbit, he took the Wagyl scale back and sat down in the dirt and began to sing, while Nick propped the three carcasses over the coals.

It took a while for rabbit to cook, and the sun set completely, leaving stars and a sliver of moon, and Talgerit's voice rose, telling the story of this place and how the people came back.

Samuel gasped, and Nick looked up, reaching for his pocketknife reflexively, and took his hand out of his pocket when he saw the child standing at the edge of the firelight.

The child was naked, and obviously Noongar, black as the night itself apart from his eyes and his teeth. He stood there silently, not making any move toward the fire.

Talgerit held out his hand, and a sphere of light formed on his palm, and he released it to float off into the night. The child laughed, a sudden bright sound, and Nick realised that the child was Talgerit, too, from another time, from Talgerit's own Dreaming perhaps.

The child was gone just as quickly, leaving just the night and Talgerit's song.

Talgerit's voice faded away, and he looked at Nick and Samuel, and his eyes were huge. “You saw him, unna?” he asked uncertainly.

"We saw,” Nick said.

"That was you, wasn't it?” Samuel asked, sounding just as uncertain.

"Kind of,” Talgerit said. “I didn't ever see people here, a long time ago. I must be still here then. I like that."

He looked at the fires, folding his lip over in thought, rubbing at the Wagyl scale contemplatively. “We'll stay here tomorrow,” he said. “There's something I need to do."

Talgerit was an almost invisible figure, sitting motionlessly on a boulder, his back to the fires, looking out at the bush. Nick piled wood on the fires and pulled a blanket over Samuel and lay down beside him on the balga leaves.

"What about the small people?” Samuel asked, and Nick pulled him closer.

"Talgerit will keep watch. Think he's doing some magic tonight, and tomorrow, something to do with his child-self coming to the fire tonight."

The ground was hard, and gravel dug into Nick's back despite the mattress of leaves, but Samuel's head on his shoulder was comforting. The stars were bright and sudden in the night sky, and the moon was low, hovering over the treetops. It would have been cold if not for the two fires.

Nick could feel magic in the ground and trees, making his scars ache a little, and he could see why Talgerit thought that whiteman wouldn't come to this area. Spirits lived here, old and deep, stirring beneath the earth, making the hill sing for the people that had gone away.

They ate cold rabbit for breakfast, and the sky was overcast, low clouds that spat rain. Samuel bathed quickly in the pool and put his clothes back on over his damp skin.

Talgerit had gone, sometime before Samuel woke, leaving behind his clothes, and a puddle of white paste on a boulder, beside a pile of split stones, but Nick didn't seem worried. “Clever man business,” Nick had said, and he'd gone to brush his teeth in the pool.

They sat there, leaning back against one of the boulders, in their waterproof jackets. The morning passed slowly, the rain clouds thinned, and birds began to sing from the tall trees around the base of the hill.

Nick named them, one by one.

The maniacal laughter was a kookaburra. The harsh cries were ravens. Black cockatoos flew overhead, eerie cries that left Samuel feeling even more unsettled. Magpie larks sang, rising warble, and honeyeaters tweeted, settling in the bushes around the camp, little brown birds that peered at Samuel and Nick with curiosity.

When the rain stopped, armies of ants came out, huge ants, little ants with white wings that buzzed around the clearing, all scurrying around industriously. Other insects came out, too, big flies that bit, and the persistent smaller flies that crawled all over Samuel's face and drove him mad.

Nick didn't seem to mind the flies, or even notice them, he just flapped his hand in front of his face regularly.

Samuel went to sleep. He hadn't slept well the night before, or the night before that, and what had originally seemed like a frustrating waste of a day when they could have been travelling to Perth was a needed break.

He curled up beside Nick, head on Nick's thigh, closed his eyes and went to sleep gradually, Nick's hand stroking his shoulder regularly.

"Wake up,” Nick said, shaking Samuel's shoulder gently, and Samuel struggled blearily upright.

Talgerit dumped the carcass of a huge bird, an emu, that was the word for it, in the clearing. He was naked and streaked with smears of white, intermixed with the brown marks of blood, and he looked as old as Ed, with forever wrapped around his shoulders.

"Can we help?” Nick asked, kneeling beside the emu carcass and looking at the bird.

Stretched out on the ground, it was taller than a man, with legs that made up half of its height. Most of the other half was neck, and the feathers were mottled brown and white, plumed extravaganzas on a particularly unappealing looking bird.

"Gotta pluck the feathers,” Talgerit said. “Make the fires up first, then we can eat the meat, too, later."

"Can you pluck a chicken?” Nick asked Samuel, looking over his shoulder.

"I've never tried,” Samuel said. “Is it hard?"

"Samuel can get wood for the fires, eh?” Talgerit said. “Emu feathers are bastards."

Samuel found plenty of branches on the ground, under the trees at the foot of the hill, old dead branches that snapped easily when Samuel jumped on them, splintering open to show thousands of little ants with white wings scurrying around inside the wood. Samuel broke up some branches and dragged them back to the camp, then piled up twigs on the ashes of the previous night's fires and blew on them.

He felt an intense satisfaction at seeing the tiny flames crackle up as the twigs caught fire.

Nick and Talgerit sat on either side of the emu, tugging at the feathers, yanking each one out and putting it on Talgerit's abandoned T-shirt, until they'd built a pile of feathers and the emu was denuded.

It looked even more ridiculous without its feathers, not much bigger than a chicken really, certainly not as big as a turkey, and Nick used his pocketknife to gut the bird.

Talgerit's dog, which had been absent since they arrived, appeared immediately in the clearing, and Talgerit tossed it the guts, the head and neck, and the bottom half of the legs.

"Rest is for us,” Talgerit said, and he balanced the tops of the legs across the fire. Nick hacked the carcass into sections, and Talgerit buried them amongst the ashes.