by Barbara Wood
She went deeper. Her ears popped. The air changed and became heavy. Her torch sputtered and flickered and she feared that it would go out. Without the torch, she knew, she would find a darkness that was as final as blindness.
She heard a sound, stopped and listened, straining to make it out. It was a soft, rhythmic tap-tapping sound.
Her eyes widened in the darkness. The light from her torch cast a glow only a foot or two in front of her. Every step she took felt as if she were about to step through solid, black rock. But the path continued, down, deeper.
Joanna paused now and then to listen. The tap-tapping stayed with her, and at times it seemed louder, at other times, fainter.
Strange paintings began to appear on the walls. Joanna examined them by torchlight. As the flame danced and flickered, so the figures on the walls seemed to dance and flicker. She stared at images of men and women and animals and mythical beasts that had existed thousands of years ago. She followed the path and the paintings stayed with her, growing larger and more numerous. They seemed to tell a story, but she couldn't unravel its meaning. Joanna felt the electricity of the creation-mountain, she stared at the ancient paintings, and she walked deeper, farther into the earth.
All of a sudden, a great cavern opened up before her. Joanna drew in her breath. Massive stalactites descended from the ceiling to meet enormous stalagmites rising up out of the floor. Joanna wondered if this was the place to which her grandmother had been brought, where mothers and daughters had conducted their secret rites. The tapping was loud now, and Joanna realized that it was water dripping. She saw a large pool, black and inky, moving in a strange kind of tide. The cavern was as large as a cathedral she had once visited in London. Sounds had echoed in that place as they did here, and the Gothic masonry, Joanna thought, had resembled the belly of this fantastic mountain.
Her eye fell upon something. She bent close to look, and saw the bones of small animals, dried-up fruit skins, seeds and nutshells scattered all around. Was this the dwelling of a spirit-power?
She continued, wondering if the inhabitant of this sepulchral place was watching her. She stepped carefully onto a ledge around the black lake, wondering if something monstrous dwelt beneath the water's surface. The ledge narrowed; she clung to the wall as she made her way slowly along. But the walls and ledge were slippery. She reached for a handhold; her footing gave way. She slipped, caught herself in time, but the torch fell from her hand and tumbled into the inky water.
Joanna stared in horror as the flame went out. And in the next instant, her breath was taken away—the cave was filled suddenly with a pale green luminescence. It came from the walls, from the limestone formations, from the vaulted ceiling far above her—an eerie green glow that cast the cave in further mystery, but which was enough for Joanna to see her way by. She continued along the ledge, and when she came to the other side of the lake, she saw an opening in the far wall, through which the path continued.
She hesitated. The opening yawned on an even deeper blackness than that which she had already passed through, and the path, she saw, continued in a deep, downward descent. She thought of the lost torch. She thought of daylight far behind her, where Beth was waiting. And then she felt the compelling magic of the mountain.
She went in.
Beth crept slowly along the dark passage, feeling her way along the walls, cautiously putting one foot in front of the other. She had no idea that darkness could be so absolute.
Even on moonless nights at Merinda, when the stars were hidden behind clouds, the darkness was never as deep, as formidable as this. She knew that she was only minutes behind her mother, but she realized that, going at such a slow pace, she might not catch up with her.
As Beth made her way through the blackness, she stretched her eyes wide, as if doing so would help her to see. She prayed that she would see a glimmer of torchlight up ahead.
At one point she stopped and looked back. The same inky depths had swallowed up the cave entrance; the sunlight was gone. Her mouth was dry. Very slowly, one step at a time, she made her way along the path, dreading what her hand might suddenly touch, imagining great yawning pits suddenly opening in front of her.
But Beth told herself that her mother had not been afraid to come into the mountain; she reminded herself that her grandmother had come this same way, and had come out again. She kept the thought in her head that generations of women had followed this same path, and had survived. And she knew it couldn't go on forever.
"Mother!" she called. "Mother, are you there?"
But the only reply was her own voice, calling "Mother" over and over as echoes rained down upon her.
"Mother!" she called again, and swallowed back her fear.
Joanna was relieved to discover, moments after going through the opening on the far side of the subterranean lake, that the same green luminescence was here, too. She saw that she had entered a large tunnel, and there were paintings and carvings on the walls. But these drawings, she realized, were not like those she had seen earlier, where men were depicted hunting animals or fighting wars. These pictures, which looked far older than the others, were all of women—crudely drawn figures depicting pregnancy and childbirth, the cycles of life. The air smelled strange; Joanna tried to identify the odors, but she could only think of blood and dust. She continued along the tunnel, passing scene after scene showing women with large breasts and bellies, and babies in wombs, and people traveling, walking along a line that was made up of the familiar swirls and dots and circles Joanna had come to recognize as typical of Aboriginal art. She was reading the records of ancient songlines, she realized, painted long ago by women no longer remembered. And she wondered if they had been created in some distant, forgotten matriarchal age.
She continued to go down, deeper into the womb of the mountain. More odors assailed her—clay and mold, a fleshy, mushroomlike scent, and something stickysweet. The green luminosity swam around her like a tropical sea; strangely, she thought she smelled salt water, and the pungency of the ocean.
And then suddenly the tunnel ended and Joanna found herself standing at the edge of an enormous grotto-like cavern, green and glowing and damp.
She stopped and stared. She saw it up ahead—that which had brought her, after so many years and over so many miles, to this place at last.
"Mother!" Beth cried out. "Where are you?"
She tried not to panic. She tried to stay calm. But the darkness was terrifying; it had gone on too long. What if she had taken a wrong turn? What if she was miles away from her mother, what if she was lost forever in this terrible mountain, because she hadn't had the patience or the courage to stay put at the cave's entrance?
Her hands moved over the damp walls; her feet slipped on the slimy path. Blind, she struggled to stay upright. As she held back her sobs, she promised God that, if she was given a second chance, she would never disobey her mother again.
And then suddenly, like an answer to her desperate prayer, she saw light up ahead. Except that it wasn't really light, she realized, as she emerged from the narrow tunnel into a large cavern that contained a black, underground lake. The whole inside of the mountain glowed an astonishing green, and Beth stared at it, forgetting for a moment her fear.
She saw the narrow ledge that skirted the lake. And on the other side, she saw yet another opening, where the path continued.
Feeling a little more confident, now that she could see, and thinking that this was most likely the way her mother had come, that her mother was in fact probably just up ahead, she struck off along the narrow ledge and began to make her way carefully around the formidable black lake.
Joanna had experienced an instant of fear when she first saw the Rainbow Serpent. But as she stared at the beautiful, massive rainbow-colored body, as her eyes focused upon the thousands of details that made up the serpent, and the mystical symbols and images that surrounded it, she saw the breasts and realized that the serpent was female.
She could only guess how
many years ago, or even centuries ago, this serpent had been made, or how many hands had helped in its exquisite creation. As she slowly approached it, she realized as she drew near the painting that it was many feet high and so long that she couldn't see where it finished. Joanna marveled at the skill and artistry that had gone into this extraordinary wall painting—at how each scale on the giant creature's body was perfectly drawn and filled in with color; at the way it seemed to glisten and vibrate with life; at the intricate arching and curling of its great length as it wound from one end of the cavern to the other. Generations must have created this, she thought.
As she stared at the wall-serpent, she began to see something beneath the layers of paint—striations in the rock itself, geological layers that swept across the wall in red, orange, brown and green ribbons. And the more she looked at it, the more she realized that the serpent had been there long before any paint had been applied to the wall.
She looked around the grotto, at the high, vaulted ceilings and limestone formations, the primitive drawings on the walls, the soft, halo-like lighting, and she thought: This is like a church.
A stream flowed through the cavern. Joanna saw drinking vessels scattered over the rocky floor—gourds and coconut shells, cups made of bark and clay, hollowed-out stones—all painted with the same mystical symbols that surrounded the Rainbow Serpent, symbols relating to life and birth: feminine symbols, Joanna thought. Here was where the women had held their secret rituals for countless centuries. Here, where this water came up from the center, the womb, of the earth— here, where life began.
She reached for an earthenware cup, and dipped it into the water that ran like crystal. She raised it to her lips, and drank.
As Beth stared at the fantastic wall drawings in the green-lit tunnel, she realized that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She could have sworn she saw some of the figures move. She walked faster, frightened by the illusions, afraid that she might grow dizzy and faint.
When she saw the end of the tunnel, and that it opened into yet another lighted cavern, she ran toward it. She entered the grotto and stopped. Her eyes were filled with the astonishing green light. The air around her felt electrified, as if she stood in the center of a lightning storm. Her senses were sharpened, heightened. She saw the Rainbow Serpent. And then she saw Joanna, standing beside a stream.
"Mother?" Beth said.
Joanna turned around. "Beth!" she said. "What are you doing here?"
"I got frightened, waiting for you. I'm thirsty."
Joanna took Beth's hand and brought her to the edge of the stream. She dipped the earthenware cup into the crystalline water, and handed it to her daughter. Beth drank, and found that the water tasted as it had looked: transparent and pure.
"What is this place, Mother?" she asked.
"This is where generations of women came to celebrate creation, and the re-creation of life."
"What sort of ritual did they perform in here?" Beth asked.
"I don't know," Joanna said. "Maybe it was a passing on of secret knowledge and wisdom. Your grandmother was here ... many years ago. Perhaps what she witnessed was a passing on of songlines from mothers to daughters."
Beth looked at her in confusion. "But I thought a songline was a road."
"We are the songline, Beth—mothers and daughters. And I wonder if this is the other legacy my mother spoke of—perhaps she had been told that she would come back here someday with her own mother, and experience the beauty of this place. But she never did. She died, never knowing."
Beth felt the mysterious power of the mountain all around her. "What do you suppose mothers said to their daughters here?" she asked.
Joanna looked at Beth and thought: You were the daughter I wanted. You are my joy. You are you, so perfectly yourself, and yet you are also a part of me. I will teach you our songline; I will teach you to listen to the music within yourself, the music of your own intuition. And then she thought: Maybe that was what the Aboriginal women had said, in this same grotto, to their daughters, thousands of years ago. Maybe it was as simple as that.
Beth looked up at the Rainbow Serpent and said, "Is this the serpent that my grandmother saw in her dreams?"
"Yes, I believe it is. Look closely, Beth, and you can see the natural layers in the rock beneath the paint. Do you see how they form the body of a giant serpent? I think that long ago, in the distant past, people must have come upon this place, and when they saw what they thought was a serpent captured in stone, they began to revere it. Over the centuries they embellished it, painted it, made it more beautiful."
"Mother!" Beth said, pointing. "Look at the serpent's eye!"
Joanna stared at the rearing head of the Rainbow Serpent. It was painted in profile, so only one eye showed. But the eye was nothing but a hole in the wall, and it looked as if something had been chipped out with a knife.
"The opal!" Beth said. "That must be where the opal came from!"
Joanna opened the satchel and brought out the gemstone. It felt warm in her hand, and it flashed sharply red and green. She looked up at the wall painting. The hole where the eye should have been was the same size and shape as the opal. "Beth," she said, "this must be the crime my grandfather committed! He must have crept into the cave when no one was looking, and stolen the eye of the Rainbow Serpent."
"And look over there!" Beth said, her voice echoing high in the vaulted ceiling.
Joanna looked to where she was pointing, and saw small skeletons scattered around the floor of the cave—the skeletons of dogs.
She looked at the serpent again, and saw something she had not noticed before: crude drawings etched into the rock at the base of the painting. Figures representing dogs.
"My God," she said at last. "Naliandrah was right. Do you remember, Beth, when she told me at the corroboree that the answers were within me? Of course! I understand now. I've known the answers all along, but I just hadn't put them together."
"What do you mean?" Beth said.
"These dogs," Joanna said, indicating the wall figures and the scattered bones, "must have been the guardians of the Rainbow Serpent. And when someone committed a crime against the serpent—as my grandfather had done—then the punishment came from the dogs. Do you remember when Naliandrah was telling us the story of Makpeej? She said the Rainbow Serpent swallowed him whole. Beth, it wasn't the serpent itself that swallowed him, it was the dogs ..." Joanna closed her eyes for a moment, realizing the enormity of what she had just said. That must have been the tribe's punishment on John Makepeace: They set wild dogs on him. And the three-and-a-half-year-old Emily must have witnessed it.
"I understand it all now," Joanna said, trying to imagine what must have taken place near here over fifty years ago—the young Englishmen unable to resist the temptation of taking the opal, the clan finding out, the dogs ... And what became of Naomi? Had she been part of the terrible punishment, too?
"The opal belongs here," Joanna said. "We must put it back." And in restoring it, she thought, the curse on my family will end.
Joanna handed the satchel to Beth, then stepped over the narrow stream and reached up to replace the opal. As Joanna turned the stone around, trying to make it fit, Beth looked at the satchel and its contents. She saw the corner of the deed; she pulled it all the way out and read the faded words in the eerie light of the cave. When she came to the passage that read, "Two days' ride from ... and twenty miles from Bo—Creek," she suddenly remembered the signpost she had seen near Sister Veronica's infirmary. Bustard Creek, 20m. south. And Durrakai.
"Mother!" Beth said suddenly. "I think I know where the land is—the land in the deed! It's where the nuns live, it's their hospital! I'm sure of it!"
Joanna gave Beth a startled look. Then she said, "If that is the land in the deed, then that must be where my grandparents had planned to build their farm. We found it, and we didn't even know it."
"What will we do with the land, Mother?"
Joanna thought of Sister Veronica, and
how she had taken care of little Emily Makepeace in those first early days when the child had come out of the desert. If the deed was still good, and the land could be claimed, Joanna knew what she was going to do.
When the gemstone was in place, flashing red-and-green fire, Beth said, "Do you suppose, Mother, that now that the eye is restored to the serpent, the Aborigines will use this mountain again? Will they perform their ceremonies in here the way they once did?"
"I don't know, Beth. Perhaps not. The cycle was interrupted, and now many years have passed, so much has happened since the last celebrant came through here. Not even Naliandrah knows exactly what kind of ritual was performed in these caves. Maybe it is lost forever, and you and I are the last ones to stand in the presence of the Rainbow Serpent."
Beth thought for a moment. Then she said, "Was there ever really a curse on our family, do you suppose?"
"In a way, I think there was. Certainly my mother believed in it, and so in a way she made it real, if only in her mind. But it is finished now. It's over, and we are free." Joanna thought of Hugh, and how much she needed him. "We can go home now," she said.
After taking one final look at the magnificent Rainbow Serpent, they returned to the path and began the upward ascent toward the light.
FROM
THE DIVINING
A NOVEL BY BARBARA WOOD
NOW AVAILABLE
1
S
HE CAME SEEKING ANSWERS.
Nineteen-year-old Ulrika had awoken that morning with the feeling that something was wrong. The feeling had grown while she had bathed and dressed, and her slaves had bound up her hair and tied sandals to her feet, and brought her a breakfast of wheat porridge and goat's milk. When the inexplicable uneasiness did not go away, she decided to visit the Street of Fortune-Tellers, where seers and mystics, astrologers and soothsayers promised solutions to life's mysteries.
