by Barbara Wood
"Mrs. Westbrook?" Mr. Talbot said. "Do you wish to buy the book?"
"Yes," she said, handing it to him and reaching into her purse. As she did so, she placed her other hand on her abdomen, and thought of the new life there. She was going to have a child. Her joy was immense, but it was shadowed by the fear of her mother's legacy.
A year and a half had passed since the Estella had been becalmed, and then had sailed into the port of Melbourne. Joanna and Hugh had been married for a year, and Merinda was prospering, yet she was as intent as ever upon solving the mystery of her family's past, of finding the land that had been deeded to her grandparents. But so far she hadn't been able to learn much: People had responded to the inquiries Frank Downs ran in the Times, but always there was a problem—the dates were wrong, descriptions of the Makepeaces were inaccurate, and there were suspicious offers, the information being for sale. No communication had come from the Shorthand Society in London, so that Joanna doubted they would be able to help her. A visit to Farrell and Sons, cartographers, in Melbourne had shed no new light on the landmarks mentioned in the deed; and the government land survey offices to which she had written had all responded the same way: They needed more information.
But Joanna knew she had to persist, especially now that she was going to have a baby.
And perhaps her diligence was beginning to be rewarded at last. She drove the wagon as quickly as she could, anxious to get home to Hugh, the newly purchased book tucked in her shopping basket along with Merinda's mail—which finally included a letter from Patrick Lathrop in San Francisco. Joanna wished she could make the horse go faster, that she could reach Hugh faster. It was now painful for her to be away from him, she felt such a deep sense of connection when they were together. She was anxious to show him the letter from Lathrop, and the promise that it seemed to hold, that her search might soon be over. "I believe you knew my grandfather," she had written to Lathrop in letters sent over a period of months. She had not lost hope that he might still be alive, that one of her letters would reach him. And certainly the letters had never been returned. And here, after so long, was a response from him.
She steered the wagon into the yard, and looked anxiously around. Adam was where she had left him that morning, helping Matthew in the stable. Adam was six now, and anxious to be part of everything that went on around the station. Seeing no sign of Hugh or Sarah, Joanna went into the cabin.
A series of unexpected turns over the past year had delayed the building of the new house by the river, and so they still lived in the log cabin in the homeyard, but rooms had been added to make it more comfortable; the inside walls were plastered; there was more furniture. Joanna was eager to move her family away from the dirt and flies and odors of the sheep yard, down to where the air was clear and fresh and healthful. And that move was coming soon. Hugh had made an inspection of his ten thousand sheep and declared that, come November, they should have their best wool clip and lanolin production ever. And then they would start to build their fine new house.
Joanna set her basket down and lifted out the book she had just bought. It was subtitled: "The True and Detailed Account of a White Man's Sojourn Among the Savages of Australia." She trembled to think of what it might contain. Perhaps there was a mention of the red mountain in her mother's dreams, or possibly a description of the worship of the Rainbow Serpent, or even an explanation of poison-songs, and why they were sung. Because Joanna had come to believe that one of her grandparents, or both of them, might have done something taboo and been punished for it.
Tucking Lathrop's letter into her pocket, she went outside to find Adam, and then to look for Hugh.
The man looked up and saw the girl standing there, half in shadow, half in sunlight, brown and still and silent like the trees around her.
"Hello," he said, smiling, but Sarah simply stared at him.
He stood up and brushed off his knees. "This is a beautiful place," he said. "Do you live here?"
Sarah continued to stare.
"Did you plant this garden?" he asked.
Amid the native plants that grew along the billabong—the creeping buttercups and bluebells, the mock-olive bushes and tree ferns—Joanna and Sarah had planted exotic plants such as dill, cayenne and rosemary, which Joanna had told Sarah possessed healing properties. She also grew rare ginger, farther along the river, where a modest waterfall in the embrace of sunbaked boulders created the necessary humidity. The ginger was a short distance away from the ruins, but Sarah now realized she could smell the heady fragrance of its late-blooming blossoms.
She noticed that the man wore a beautiful bracelet worked in heavy silver and inlaid with turquoise; she had never seen a man wear jewelry before.
He squatted down and inspected a plant. "Goldenseal," he murmured. "The Indians in America use it to cure stomach ailments." He looked over the garden. "This looks like a healing garden. Are you a medicine woman?"
Sarah's eyes flickered over his head, and he looked back and saw the homestead through the trees. "The owner of this garden lives there?" He smiled. "At least I know you understand what I'm saying. My name is Philip McNeal," he said. He held out his hand, but Sarah remained frozen.
He took in the deeply set eyes, the reddish-brown hair hanging long and silky, the bare feet and the dress that had clearly once belonged to someone else but which had been altered to fit her. She didn't seem to be afraid of him, or shy, but there was something distrustful, wary, about the way she stood there. A wild girl, he thought, whom someone was perhaps trying to tame.
When he took a step toward the moss-covered wall, Sarah stiffened.
"You don't want me there, do you?" he said. "This is a sacred place, isn't it? I know a little about that. I'm a great respecter of sacred places."
He saw that although her look remained wary, it held a spark of interest. "You remind me of a young woman I once knew," he said. "She was a Navaho, an American Indian. I was injured and she took care of me. Her name was Pollen on the Wind. I've been trying to read the marks on these stones. Do you know what they mean? Pollen on the Wind lived near a canyon where there are ruins like these. They were said to have been inhabited by a race called the Anasazi, which is a Navaho word meaning 'ancient alien ones.' They left markings similar to these."
He moved his arm and noticed that her eyes followed his wrist.
"I see you like my bracelet," he said. He took it off and showed it to Sarah. "It's Indian. Go ahead," he said. "Take a closer look."
Sarah suddenly stepped back. "Tjuringa," she said.
"So," he said with a smile. "You can talk. I don't know what a ... tjuringa is. This is just something I wear to remind me of someone special. It tells a story—see? There's a rainbow at the top, and a snake at the bottom. The snake was Pollen's personal totem."
Sarah stared at it, her eyes wide.
"Tell me about this place," he said. "I really would like to know."
Sarah looked away, across the river, at tawny plains glowing in late summer light.
"I'm asking you things I'm not supposed to, aren't I?" McNeal said, putting the bracelet back on his wrist. "Pollen was a little like that. Her people had been fighting the white soldiers for many years, until they were finally forced to take a long walk across the desert and live in a place that was not their ancestral land. Pollen didn't trust me at first, but later she did. My government thought that her people should learn to live in proper houses. I'm an architect. That was what I was supposed to do for Pollen's people—show them how to build white men's houses."
Sarah kept her eyes on the man. She realized that he was beautiful, despite the slightly crooked nose which she decided must have been broken once. There was a softly nasal quality to his voice, and he spoke of things she had never heard a white man speak of before—totems and clans, sacred places and rainbow serpents.
"Sarah," she said softly.
His eyebrows rose. "Is that your name? Sarah? It's a very pretty name. If you live here, then I know we'll
become friends. I've been hired to build a house here."
A look of uncertainty crossed her face, but before he could say anything, there was the sound of footsteps approaching, and, turning, he saw a young woman coming toward him, leading a small boy by the hand.
"Hello," she said. "You must be Mr. McNeal. How do you do? I am Joanna Westbrook." They shook hands, and McNeal realized Hugh Westbrook's wife was younger than he had expected, a few years younger than himself in fact, and very pretty. Her eyes, he saw, were the color of amber, and her rich brown hair was swept up from a slender neck, revealing a pair of bright blue earrings. She wore a pale green dress with a brooch at her throat.
"I see you've already met Sarah," Joanna said.
"Yes," McNeal said. "She seems not to want me to be here."
"This place is special to her people, Mr. McNeal. Sarah lives with us, at the homestead."
"Sarah's my friend," Adam said, and McNeal laughed and smiled at the boy. "Lucky you," he said.
"This is Adam," Joanna said, and Adam stared at McNeal. "Why do you have long hair?" he asked.
McNeal laughed and said, "I learned to wear my hair this way when I lived with some native people in America. I learned a lot of things from them." He glanced at Sarah. "Why are these ruins sacred to Sarah, Mrs. Westbrook?" he asked.
"The Aborigines believe that the Kangaroo Ancestress came through here in the Dreamtime, and that she sang this place into existence. Her spirit is here still. No one but a member of the Kangaroo Clan can walk here."
"These are a very spiritual people," McNeal said, looking at the silent girl.
He glanced around at the heavy old gum trees reflected on the shimmering surface of the pond. "Your husband told me he wanted me to build your house here. What would happen if I did?"
"What do you mean?"
"Would it cause problems? I mean, do the Aborigines put up a fight when their sacred sites are disturbed?"
Joanna recalled again what Farrell, the cartographer, had told her: "The name of Karra Karra could have been changed years ago. Today it could be Johnson's Creek or New Dover. You could pass right through it and never know it was the place you were looking for."
"They did resist, I'm told, years ago," she said. "But they were no match for European guns and horses."
McNeal said, "There are wars going on now where I come from, too. Tribes such as the Sioux, the Navaho, and the Apache are fighting white soldiers for the right to hold onto their land. They are terrible, bloody battles, with heavy losses on both sides."
"Yes," Joanna said. "We have heard about them."
McNeal looked at Sarah, and then said to Joanna, "What would the Aborigines believe would happen if we built a house here?"
"Since apparently this site lies along a songline, the Aborigines believe that to change the songlines is to change Creation, because to desecrate a sacred spot is taboo. It is to uncreate the world."
"To uncreate the world," Philip McNeal said, thinking of the day he had said good-by to Pollen and her people, knowing even then that he would never see her or her world again.
"Does this river ever flood, Mrs. Westbrook?" he asked, looking around to see if there might be an alternative building site.
"I don't know, we'll have to ask Mr. Westbrook. I came to Australia only a year and a half ago."
"May I ask what brought you here?" he asked, wondering about the relationship between this poised young woman, the boy, and the half-wild Aboriginal girl.
"My mother died two years ago," Joanna said. "In India. She died of a spiritual affliction." Joanna paused, thinking of the poison-song. "She believed that that affliction somehow was mine as well. I came here to find out, and to heal myself."
"Is that why you have created this healing garden?"
"These herbs heal the body, Mr. McNeal. The healing I seek is more complicated, I'm afraid. Partly, it has to do with a place."
"A place?"
"It's a place called Karra Karra—or at least I think so. My mother believed it was a place that held a key to things. But I haven't found it yet."
"Is it a sacred site?"
"I'm not sure. Possibly."
"Why is it so hard to find?"
Joanna thought of the gentleman she had met in Melbourne last year, a scholar from England who had spent five years studying the Aborigines. "If Karra Karra is the name of a sacred site," he had told her, "then you might never find it. I've learned that to speak of a sacred site to a white man is taboo. You might in fact meet an Aborigine who knows the whereabouts of Karra Karra, but he won't tell you."
Philip McNeal now said, "Maybe Karra Karra isn't a real place at all, Mrs. Westbrook. Maybe it's a state of mind. Or a philosophy."
"What's that?" Adam said, pointing to the silver-and-turquoise bracelet.
"Adam," Joanna said.
"I don't mind. Here, Adam," McNeal said, handing him the bracelet.
Through the trees Joanna saw Ezekiel standing on the other side of the river. She had gotten used to his appearing suddenly near here, to stand for a while and stare, and then to disappear just as suddenly. He had not spoken to her since the day by the river, when he had walked up, carrying a boomerang. But she knew from Sarah that the old man was no longer so opposed to Joanna's being at Merinda. Joanna sometimes had the strange feeling, when he was watching her, that he was guarding her.
"There is the gentleman you should ask about Aboriginal culture, Mr. McNeal," Joanna said, and the architect looked over at the old Aborigine, standing like a statue on the river bank. Then he said, "Maybe Sarah can explain these things to me. The people I lived with, the Indian tribes in America, centered their lives on songs. They would sing a song that went on for hours, or even days. Their songs were everything to them—their history, their art, their religion. The Song of the Coyote is actually made up of over three hundred songs."
"What's a coyote?" Adam asked.
"A native wild dog of America. Smaller than your dingoes."
Joanna felt a sudden chill. One morning the previous week, when she had been down here working in her garden, she had looked up to see a dingo moving through the trees. It had stopped and looked at her, then moved away, but what had startled her, and what she remembered most vividly now, was the terror she had felt upon seeing the dog. She had realized with a shock that she had inherited her mother's excessive fear of dogs.
"What brought you to Australia originally, Mr. McNeal?" she said.
"I suppose you might say I'm looking for something, too. I went to a college in the East in America, where I thought I would learn everything there was to know, but I came out realizing that I didn't know much of anything that was very useful. My father died in the war, at a place called Manassas, and my mother was never able to accept it. I wanted to know why things like war happen. I wanted to know why the world was the way it was. I traveled around America looking for answers, and I stayed for a while with the native people. And then I left and came here."
He glanced toward Sarah, who was inspecting the bracelet with Adam, then he said, "I'm afraid we have a problem, Mrs. Westbrook. I've spent the morning looking over your land here by the river, and where these ruins are is the best site for your house. Clearly the people who lived here long ago knew that, too. The ground is too sandy and marshy everywhere else, and there is danger of the river flooding. You and your husband might be forced into making a choice—build here, or up there where you are, at the homestead."
Hugh had news for Joanna, and he had ridden home fast. But as he dismounted, he heard someone call his name. Squinting in the glare of the March sunshine, he saw a familiar figure riding up. It was Jacko, the man who owned a 7,000-acre run to the northeast of Merinda.
"Can I have a word with you, Hugh?" he said.
Hugh was hot and tired, and anxious to see Joanna. "What is it, Jacko?" he said.
Jacko swung to the ground, a portly man who sweated in the heat of late summer, and said, "It's about the maid, Hugh. I came over to ask if
you would give the job to my Peony."
"Maid?"
"I was in town this morning, and I heard from Poll Gramercy that your wife is going to be hiring a maid to help around the house, now that she's going to have a baby."
Hugh stared at the man.
"Peony's a good girl, Hugh," Jacko said. "She mightn't be bright, but she's honest and she's quiet. And well, she's eighteen years old now, and I don't reckon any man is going to want to marry her. The missus and I worry about Peony's future. What do you say, Hugh?"
Hugh barely heard what Jacko said. His mind was racing back over recent days, recalling Joanna's morning indispositions, a special look that he would catch on her face, and her exceptionally cheerful mood as she left for Cameron Town.
He brought himself back to Jacko. "You said you heard this from Poll Gramercy?" The Widow Gramercy was the local midwife.
"I hope you don't mind my coming to you like this, Hugh. I knew that once the word was out you'd have an army of girls begging for the job. And my Peony, well, she's—"
Jacko's voice faded as Hugh stared at the cabin. So Joanna had paid a visit to the midwife.
"Will you think about it, Hugh?"
He looked at Jacko. Everyone in the district knew about poor Peony Jackson, about how while Jacko's wife had been plowing a field she had gone into labor two months before she was due. She had been all alone, with no way to send for help, and it had taken her almost a day and a night to deliver the baby on her own, it being her first baby and Sal being only seventeen. Everyone had declared that the baby couldn't possibly survive, but it did. And Peony had grown up to be a nice girl, quiet and obedient, except that she was a little simpleminded.
"I'll talk to my wife about it, Jacko," Hugh said, "but I suspect Peony can have the job. Now, if you don't mind—" Hugh started to walk away.
But the man remained where he was, shooing a fly away from his face. "I was wondering, Hugh," he said after a moment, "if you had heard about the trouble I'm having."
