Nathaniel nodded.
“Good. Now slowly and calmly, walk over there and get the guns away. Then bring the Corporal over here to the cart. We’ll put these manacles on his ankles and he can ride with me to Tunggaree’s,” Tarrapaldi said.
“Mister,” Nathaniel said when he’d taken the rifles from the corporal’s shoulder and placed them out of reach. “You don’t know how lucky you are. If I had my way, I’d shoot you right now. But these ladies have said they’ll skewer me if I hurt you. I’m going to put my foot on yours, and then pull the spear out before I take you over to the cart. If you show any sign of pain, I’ll have a second or so to drive this spear into your guts before I get hit with one,” Nathaniel said. “So for both our sakes, try to be brave, and show no pain.”
“Then do your best not to give any, Bucko. Make the pull clean,” the corporal said.
Nodding, Nathaniel gently placed his foot over the corporals, took a firm grip on the stone spearhead, and snatched it clear. The corporal groaned, but didn’t move.
“Are you all right?” Nathaniel asked, stepping back and throwing down the spear.
“Give me a second,” the corporal said, his face pale. “I’m trying not to spew.”
“Come on, Mate,” Nathaniel said, stepping up and putting his arm around the corporal. “You’ve done bloody well. Let me help you to the cart and I’ll get this boot off, and have a look at the damage.”
“Thanks,” the corporal said, then looking at Muchuka still poised to launch her spear. “God, she’s beautiful.”
“Are you crazy?” Nathaniel said. “She just nailed your foot to the ground, with a throw that landed exactly where she was told to put it.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t dangerous.”
Nathaniel shook his head in amazement. Looking across the creek, he noticed for the first time how much the girl looked like Tarrapaldi, though not quite as tall. Her breasts were as large as Tarrapaldi’s, but still had the firmness of fruit that wasn’t quite ripe. Muchuka was a younger product from the same mold.
With the corporal leaning on him and limping, Nathaniel led him to the cart, and helped him onto the flat-bed. After removing the corporal’s boot and cleaning the wound, Nathaniel was about to secure the corporal’s ankles with the manacles when Tarrapaldi stopped him.
“Muchuka. We’ll ride the cart,” Tarrapaldi said in the language neither man could understand. “You ride the horse and take us to Father as quickly as you can, without hurting us though.”
“Will you be safe back there with those two studs?” Muchuka asked with a grin.
“Nathaniel is mine, girl. The one you speared is yours if you can tame him. His name is John Newman.”
Muchuka smiled and walked across the creek. The corporal watched her every move. With a chuckle, she put her foot on the shaft running from the cart to the horse’s collar, her genitals flashed into view and disappeared when she swung her other leg over the horse’s back.
“Nathaniel,” Tarrapaldi said. “Ask John Newman if he wants to come with us or be left here.”
“We can’t leave him, Tarrapaldi. We may as well shoot him. It’d be a quicker death for him.”
“Just ask him which he’d prefer, Nathaniel.”
“You’re being given a choice, John. You can come with us. Or you can go free. Which do you want to do?” Nathaniel asked.
“I’ll die if you leave me out here with my foot in this condition,” the corporal said without taking his gaze off the girl smiling at him from the horse’s back. “I’ll come with you.”
“Will you give us your parole, or do we need to chain your ankles?”
“You have my word, Nathaniel Johnson,” the Corporal said turning away from the girl and looking into Nathaniel’s eyes. “I will not try to escape until my foot is healed.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Come on, Bucko. There’s only one American traitor on the convict rolls in Sydney. I’ve known all along that you gave us a false name. What I don’t know,” the corporal said looking back at Muchuka, “is who she is.”
The sisters laughed when Nathaniel told them what the corporal had said.
After several hours, they came to a campsite against the steep rock cliffs. A stream bubbled by and the men recognized many types of fruit trees growing around the area, but not in any sort of pattern that would allow the area to be called an orchard.
An old naked black man met them as they arrived. Six foot three tall, he was standing as Tarrapaldi had the first time Nathaniel had seen her. One leg supported his weight, while the instep of the other foot rested against the knee of the leg he was standing on. He held an eight-foot long spear in one hand, its stone tip pointing at the sky while he used the shaft to maintain his balance.
Despite his age and frail look, the man had an aura of confidence and inner strength that required no ornaments or badges of office to confirm. Both white men recognized they were in the presence of immense power. When he spoke, they did not understand the words, but the sincerity in his voice was unmistakable.
“Welcome home, Tarrapaldi,” Tunggaree said. “The one with white hair is the one chosen by Baiame. Why have you brought the other?”
“The Goobahs were following us here, Father. While turning them back, I was wounded. Nathaniel, the chosen one, and I used him to get me here in time for you to save my shoulder.”
“Let me see the wound,” Tunggaree said laying his spear on the ground before rising to tower over his daughter. Gently, he removed the crude bandage. Tapping her flesh around the wound, he lent down to sniff it, before looking at Nathaniel. “Can the one with dark hair hear my thoughts, Tarrapaldi?”
“No, Father. But I think he can be taught,” Muchuka blurted out.
Tunggaree looked at his younger daughter with a smile before turning back to Nathaniel. “Thank you for coming to help us, Nathaniel. My name is Tunggaree. These girls and I are all that remain of our family here on Earth. The dark haired one. He’s not a friend of yours?”
“Not bloody likely. The bastard is one of the King’s men. He’ll take us all back to be hung if he has the chance.”
“To be hung?” Tunggaree asked. “This is the Goobah’s practice of putting a rope around a person’s neck, and choking them to death? Why would he want to do this to us?”
“Tarrapaldi didn’t obey an officer. And then she shot his hat off his head and nearly skewered one of his men with her spear.”
“I see,” Tunggaree looked at the corporal. “What is his name, Nathaniel?”
“His name is John Newman. His Christian name is John.”
“Ah, he is a follower of the teachings of the Koradji, Jesus Christ?”
“You know about Jesus?” Nathaniel looked stunned.
“I have heard of him. He was a great healer. Baiame sent him to lead people back to the laws of God. Do you believe and follow the laws, Nathaniel?”
“I believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Nathaniel studied Tunggaree. “But I don’t believe in any heathen God by the name of Baiame.”
Tunggaree chuckled, “There is only one God, Nathaniel. It doesn’t matter what name you knew him by before. To the people he has sent to care for this land.” Tunggaree swept his arm to indicate all they could see. “He is known as Baiame. If you truly believe the teachings of your Koradji, Jesus, then you will have no doubts about what you are about to see.” Tunggaree placed one hand over the entrance wound on the back of Tarrapaldi’s shoulder, and the other over the gaping exit wound above her breast.
Seconds later, he removed his hands and Tarrapaldi’s shoulder was healed.
Tunggaree took Nathaniel’s wrist and placed some slivers of bone and lead in his now outstretched palm. “She is your woman, Nathaniel. Treat her well and she will bring you more joy than you’ve ever known.”
Looking away from Tarrapaldi’s shoulder, Nathaniel tried to jerk away and get rid of the blood-smeared slivers he saw in his hand, but Tunggaree’s grip was too strong.
“Do not be afraid, Nathaniel.” Tarrapaldi smiled at him. “My father has given you a part of my body. While ever you keep it, I am yours.”
Chapter Seven
“Damn it, Tarrapaldi. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I don’t want you like that. All I want is to make enough money to be able to buy myself a passage on a ship back to the United States.”
“Then I’ll help you. How long will it take us to go walkabout to the United States?”
“It’s not a matter of going walkabout, Woman. When I go to the States, I won’t be coming back.”
“We will if our children are here with Tunggaree.”
“Will you stop using the term, ‘we’. I’m not taking you to the States with me.”
“Then you’re not going.” In the silence that followed, Tarrapaldi continued constructing the gunyah she was working on.
“I see,” Nathaniel finally said. “You’re telling me I’ve gone from being a prisoner of the English, to a prisoner of a bloody Boong, are you?”
Tarrapaldi went rigid. Folding her arms under her breasts, she turned to face him. “Do you know what the word ‘boong’ means?”
“It’s the Australian word for Nigger.”
“I don’t know what the word ‘Nigger’ means, Nathaniel Johnson. But, to the people of this area, ‘boong’ is the word for anus.
“Nathaniel Johnson, you are not my prisoner, you are my man. But you will not be a man to anyone, if you ever call me a bloody Boong again.”
“Am I interrupting anything?” Tunggaree asked, walking into the campsite Tarrapaldi was preparing.
“You know damn well you are,” she said.
“Yes, well perhaps you’ll calm down if I take Nathaniel away for awhile. We’ve come too far to have you remove the main reason we’ve brought him here.” Tunggaree took hold of Nathaniel’s elbow and steered him away. Once clear of the irate young woman, Tunggaree released his grip. “Do not think anything. Just follow me.” Then he set off in a loping run that ate up the distance along the bank of the creek.
Nathaniel was gasping for air and staggering when Tunggaree slowed up and finally stopped beside a deep, clear pool dominated on the other side by what had been a single, huge rock, before it had cracked and weathered.
The tall blackman’s chest was heaving, but his hands were steady when he carefully placed his spears under a rock outcrop.
“Put your weapon there with my spears, Nathaniel. Your coverings too. We’re going for a swim and you won’t need them.”
With his belongings placed under the outcrop, Nathaniel walked naked to stand beside Tunggaree.
“Why haven’t you been circumcised?” Tunggaree asked.
“If God meant us to be circumcised, he’d have done it himself,” Nathaniel replied.
Tunggaree smiled, “A popular argument by the mothers of little boys. But they don’t understand the reasons Baiame gave us a foreskin.”
Before Nathaniel could respond, Tunggaree turned and dived onto the water. His feet were waggling before he landed flat, and immediately, he began powering across the surface at an incredible speed. His head held high, his feet waggling in the water behind him caused a continual splashing turbulence while with his arms, he appeared to be crawling across the surface. Tunggaree reached the other side of the pool within seconds and came to a halt. Turning in the water, he looked back while gently using his arms and legs, in frog like strokes, to maintain his position in the water.
“Can you swim, Nathaniel?”
“Not like that, I can’t.” Nathaniel jumped into the pool feet first. When his head bobbed back to the surface, he struck out using his arms and legs like a dog to paddle towards Tunggaree.
Tunggaree watched Nathaniel swim and gently turned when Nathaniel began circling him. “You’re working too hard. You cannot beat the water into submission. You must caress it. Open your arms and legs out, and think like a frog. Let yourself float in the water like a frog. Put your face in the water, open your eyes and breathe out slowly through your nose. Only lift your head out of the water when you need to take in a new breath.”
For the next half hour, Tunggaree taught Nathaniel how to glide through the water by opening his legs as he pushed both arms forward, and then closing his legs as he drew both arms back in an arc like oars. When Nathaniel had learned to propel himself around the surface like this, Tunggaree then taught him to dive under the surface like a duck. And to swim along the bottom of the pool with his eyes open.
“You learn quickly, Nathaniel. What I’m going to show you now, requires a great deal of trust. I’m going to dive down and enter a tunnel through the rocks over there. I want you to follow me. It gets dark in the tunnel, but if you keep your eyes open and stay close to my feet, we’ll come out in an underground pool were we’ll have air.”
Duck diving, Nathaniel followed Tunggaree into and through the tunnel. His lungs were nearly bursting when they surfaced in the almost complete darkness of the underground pool.
Tunggaree gently swam to the edge of the pool. Lifting himself out of the water with his arms, he turned to sit on the pool’s edge with his feet in the water.
“Is this one of the special places Tarrapaldi told me about when we were down on the river?” Nathaniel asked while lifting himself to sit beside Tunggaree.
“No place is as special as this, Nathaniel. For you are sitting in the doorway to what we call ‘Bullima’, the sky camp of the spirits that are Baiame, the one God of all that is.
“From here we can leave our bodies and travel through the gaps in the rock above us. By following the light, we can find our way to Bullima. In Bullima, we find the truth and meaning for what is happening here in the land Baiame has sent us to care for,” Tunggaree said.
“Will you take me to this heaven of yours?” Nathaniel asked.
“In time I will, Nathaniel. But first, we must talk. Baiame has told me to bring you here and explain your reason for being.”
For the next hour, Tunggaree told his version of the beginning of man. How Baiame created man and allowed man to live in the land. But some of man’s sons had sinned, and they’d been sent away.
The sinners had been sent to a land where the sun hardly shone, and over the generations, their children’s skins had gone from a healthy brown to a sickly white. The white devils, or ‘Goobahs’ as Tunggaree called them, were strong though. And over the years, they’d flourished in the cold land of little sun. They’d become immune to many of the sicknesses Baiame sent among them, and they’d learned to use tools to overcome the cold and hunger they had been cursed with.
When the Goobahs first arrived in the land of the Dharugs, being pulled by clouds tied to their floating islands, the people, or Kooris, had thought Baiame had given them permission to return. So the Kooris had welcomed them as long lost cousins returning to share the bounty of the land.
By the time the Kooris realized the Goobahs weren’t interested in sharing, it was too late. The Goobahs had given out coverings used to stay warm while sleeping. The coverings had been infected with sicknesses the Kooris had no immunity to, and they’d died by the thousands.
Those who didn’t die from the sicknesses were hunted down. The men and boys were killed. The women and little girls were taken and forced to work in the camps of the Goobahs.
The strong ones escaped and crossed the mountains to join the people who lived far away from the sea. But the weak ones preferred to stay. Spreading their legs for the Goobahs in exchange for the liquid fire that helped them forget the values they’d been taught by Baiame.
Tunggaree had watched this happening from a distance. Thinking the mix of blood would be a good thing for both groups. But the men mounting the Koori
women were little more than animals. Kept in chains and beaten senseless by the leaders of the Goobahs. The children produced by these couplings were often worse than useless, rarely amounting to more than sneaky thieves living on the edge of the Goobah’s society.
When Tunggaree took his observations to Baiame and asked for guidance, Baiame told him to send Tarrapaldi down river to find a Goobah of higher quality. To mate Tarrapaldi with this Goobah, and train the children of their mating carefully. When the children of this mating were old enough, they would have Goobah mates selected for them. Over the generations, their skin would become lighter. And the Goobahs wouldn’t know the Koradjies still walked among them.
This breeding and training would have to be done carefully though. And in great secrecy. Because if the Goobahs ever suspected, they’d kill the children.
Chapter Eight
“Governor Macquarie has declined to give you an interview, Lieutenant Caruthers,” Major Morris said, looking down his long nose at the younger man waiting in his office. “He is less than impressed with your report. In reading between the lines, he has assessed that you have caused one of our most industrious convicts to run. And in chasing the man, you have lost one of our most promising NCOs, and seriously damaged yourself and two other troopers.”
“Good grief, Sir,” Caruthers said, “the slut shot the hat off my head. What was I supposed to do?”
“Your job, would have helped,” the paunchy major said between clenched teeth. His jowls wobbled when he hit his desk top with the ball of his fist. “Had you continued the chase at the time, you would have, in all probability, caught them on the river. Instead, you allowed the men to spend the night swilling grog.”
“That isn’t fair, Sir,” Caruthers said. “I had no way of controlling the sweep when he took a spear in the crotch. The oars were broken. There was no way they could have kept up the chase at that time.”
“Very little in life is fair, Caruthers. It isn’t fair that Harrington is out in Bathurst trying to control the squatters,” the major said, “while you’re here on the coast harassing a man trying to get us cedar. But I’m going to jolly well do something about that.
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