Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  Deep in the house William raised his head at the sound then resumed staring at his desk where the loose bullets of the Enfield lay in a curve, the tips pointing inward.

  In the deserted camp, Minnie had remained under the browning leaves of the bower with the old aunty who was weak and sick with the power of the butcherbird. She heard Wirritjil’s call and with a start ran hard, the dust flying from her feet in gold bursts in the last light of evening. She saw the crows hovering in the trees and a whistling kite that looked down and spiralled away.

  Under the bower the aunty shook with a sudden cry and the butcherbird rose to follow Minnie, swooping low, black feathers glistening.

  Minnie reached the three women and folded herself around Blackgirl.

  William came around the edge of the veranda with the Enfield in his hands. Minnie looked over her shoulder. She held her fingers close to Blackgirl’s mouth and felt a slight warmness that faded and came again. William lifted the rifle. He pointed it towards the women and squinted along the barrel. He adjusted and aimed.

  Minnie gripped Wirritjil’s arm. ‘’E kill you.’ She motioned Emily and Wirritjil away with a flick of her hand.

  They ran.

  2

  Flight

  William strode past the old woman and child who resembled nothing but a bundle of black sticks and tattered rags on the green lawn. He swung the rifle loosely but his jaw was set and tight.

  Wirritjil and Emily left the home paddock and crossed the creek. Emily stole a look upstream to the wide limbs of the ghost gum that Wirritjil had called mother.

  ‘Joseph.’ The word came as a small cry.

  The double gees jabbed into the soles of her feet, but she hardly noticed. She wanted to think but her mind was a cold heavy darkness.

  Wirritjil heard a bird whistle, low and short. She saw the flittering movements of a bunch of long-tailed finches grouped together on a low branch. Two flew close. Their black-masked eyes glinted in the silvery light of the darkening evening as they took off abruptly through the scrub in the opposite direction to the camp.

  She looked back. William was crossing the creek, water splashing with his stride and his rifle pointed, braced against his shoulder.

  Wirritjil started after the finches, uphill, dodging the waist-high anthills and ducking under the branches of the spindly gums. Emily followed with one arm pressed against her breasts and the other across her lower belly. The dry grass with its sharp edges tore at their ankles.

  On the incline down Emily sank to the ground. Wirritjil knelt and Emily climbed onto her back and they began the run again. Emily fought a desire to stop her and turn back.

  ‘Go to the horse yards,’ she whispered.

  The ground was covered in sharp pebbles; ahead was a stony bluff with a passage that coursed with water in the rainy season. The base was sandy and Wirritjil’s speed quickened. Emily could see William making his way down the slope. She slipped to the ground and slowed to a walk behind Wirritjil.

  They came out to a clear piece of ground, chalky in the early glow of the high moon. Ahead were the holding yards, the horses’ eyes like fireflies in the reflection of the stockmen’s campfire. William appeared at the other end of the gorge. The silhouette of his rifle was sharp.

  Emily turned to see him coming. He was a poet, a dreamer. He loved her. She wanted to call to him, to tell him to put the rifle down, to meet her halfway, one step at a time, and she would listen to his confession and give hers, but her mouth was dry, no words came and she dropped her hands to her side. She could hear her heart. The baby’s heart had been there with hers, beating fast then slow, and how many breaths did he have in this world?

  William advanced into the shadow and she could not see his form anymore. Instead she saw the darkness of Jurulu slumped. They had not closed his eyes. He saw her. He saw her there. He was telling her something, in the sounds of the trees. She remembered. The cicadas were quiet and there was a song. What was that song?

  A stone stung against her chest. Wirritjil was a dark shape low in the scrub, her hand raised, ready to throw another stone. A crack of gunshot, a bullet struck the ground and dirt sprayed against Emily’s legs. She stumbled to the edge of the clearing and Wirritjil pulled her to the cover of the trees. It was a few yards through the scrub to reach the horse yards. At the campfire, two stockmen stood and peered in the direction of the gunshot. William’s figure emerged from the gorge. His stride quickened to a run.

  Emily picked up a stick and climbed between the poles into the yard with the station horses.

  William’s voice came thin across the night air. ‘Get them.’

  A stockman walked towards the yard. Another. Emily hurried between the horses, Wirritjil behind, close as a shadow. Emily reached for a rope coiled on the fence and looped it around the noses of the brumby and a black mare.

  ‘Push me up.’

  Wirritjil squatted and with her shoulder under Emily’s hip heaved her onto the brumby’s back.

  Emily held her hand out. ‘Get up.’

  Using the stick, Emily hit the loose horses with what force she had. The horses bucked and swirled and the stockmen jumped back to the fence. Emily unhitched the gate and moved the brumby back as the horses leapt out. The gate to the wild horses had been wired tight. She trotted along the fence and found a loose wire and worked it free. The mare pranced, tugging at the rope. Wirritjil’s arms were tight around Emily’s waist and her head tucked down against her back. Emily pushed the wire upwards, knocked it away and the top pole fell.

  For a few seconds there was little movement. The stockmen came hazy through the dust lit in flickers of yellow from the light of the campfire. The wild horses circled the yard and shoved against one another, not knowing what to do. The chestnut colt with the mark of lightning on his forehead came snorting out of the darkness. He pranced back to the herd, his head high. He turned and with a call loud into the night he charged the fence and cleared the remaining pole. The others followed in a thunder of hoofs and clouds of dust. The grey stallion screamed and galloped back and forth along the fence of his separate prison.

  The women followed the wild horses staying behind them, cantering slowly until they could not see them anymore. The mare fought against the rope, but soon came to stay close so that it no longer bit into her face. Wirritjil bumped and pulled on Emily’s waist to hold on.

  Long after the last glimmer of the stockyard fire had disappeared they slowed to a walk. Emily found a shadowy outline of the hill in the distance to use as a guide to a waterhole where she thought they could rest and think what to do. She pressed her leg against the brumby’s side, correcting his direction. She felt Wirritjil’s leg tighten against the horse before her own. Emily let her head drop to her chest and let herself remember, remember the child’s face, the arc of his closed eyes, his plump cheeks and lips of a cherub.

  She had nothing left, just thoughts that hurt and hurt.

  The horses picked their way through the prickly mulga and the thin-limbed gums, out to the stony plain where the grasses had been eaten short by the cattle and camels. Emily put her cheek against the brumby’s neck, her arms dropped on either side and she let the rhythm of the horse’s steps calm her.

  Emily opened her eyes to daylight. The small stones on the ground had long shadows and the sun was rising behind her. One end of the rope was circled around her waist and pulled tight to the horse. Wirritjil walked in front. They were well past the waterhole. The trees were sparse and the red soil had a hardened surface, scattered with spinifex bushes with leaves of dried bone like quills. In sudden eddies of wind the bushes freed themselves from the earth and took off like animals, skimming across the land.

  Emily felt the heat. It was late September. The build-up had begun, heralding the coming of scorching swelter that made everyone mad. She closed her eyes against the glaring landscape and took comfort in the steadiness of the brumby’s shoulders. She thought of her sweet pony in England, her father teaching her to rid
e, shouting at her, insisting on a straight seat and a tight rein, and her mother at the window waving goodbye. She was cross with her father’s strictness and her mother always leaving. She had kicked her pony hard and galloped away through to the meadows where the sun’s rays came through the clouds in shafts of gold falling on the meadow where the cows grazed among clumps of yellow tansy and lilac mallow. The pony flew sure-footed to the moor, over the bumps and diggings of badger homes, towards a sky that was heavy with metal clouds and slurries of misting rain.

  She saw him. The thin boy with his catch of rabbits. She slowed. He was dark against the grey sky. The only colour was the crimson splotches on the rabbits’ necks. She rode past him without a word but they both looked back at one another and kept looking even as the distance between them grew far.

  Emily woke with a jolt as Wirritjil stopped the horses. In front of them was a hill covered in orange stone and tufts of stringy hummock grass and spinifex. Three river gums with peeling jigsaw bark guarded a tepid pool, and from that a dry creek bed led to a dark opening in the side of the hill. Emily let herself down from the mare’s back. Her legs were weak and she folded to the ground. The caked soil was hot against her face. Semicircular bites of the horses’ hoofs receded as far as she could see, to where the red land met the great expanse of a blue cloudless sky. She spread her palms flat and muttered to the earth to take her, to burn her to nothing.

  Wirritjil pulled the horses towards the opening. The mare snorted and pulled back hard.

  Wirritjil dropped the rope and picked up a rock. ‘Yikawurrum! ’ She squatted, jumping from one foot to another.

  Emily pulled herself up. She took the rope at the brumby’s nose and led him. He knew this land for he came willingly and even nudged at Emily’s back. The mare glanced at Wirritjil and followed.

  Inside the hill was a labyrinth of streams and caverns that opened in places to the sky. Wirritjil came slowly, scanning the surroundings for suspicious movements, a sudden wind, a change of light on leaves, a bird taking off in sharp flight or a lizard darting with no cause. It must be that Miss didn’t sense the yunguny in the horse, making devil mischief; now it was gone, maybe afraid of the whitefella.

  The caves had been shaped by the Wunggud, the spirits of creation. Wirritjil knew the Walangkernany was there, fat and green-brown with a shimmer of all colours about him, coiled, or stretched along a ledge in the low rippling light, his broad head raised and his gleaming water eyes staring. She thought of how the flying fox flew away from the eagle hawk and hid in this place, and the eagle hawk goes around and around in the sky, looking, looking. There were messages in the waterholes and rocks that the Wunggud made, in the shapes of the land and in the sounds the wind makes when it comes circling.

  Everywhere the rock was smooth, washed by waters on earth as stars were born and died. The floor was black rock and the walls a shiny grey with folds of deep brown. The horses splayed their forelegs on the smooth granite and dipped their noses into the water of a flowing stream. They rolled their lips, snorting at the uncustomary coolness. Wirritjil slipped in front and Emily followed, leading the horses. There were archways into courtyards that were bright and noisy with the chorus of bush birds. Sometimes the stream was shadowed on one side while the other was in the gaze of the sun. Wirritjil stopped at a large opening, circled with a smooth wave-shaped rock the height of two men and with several tall gums and many ferns and grasses, enough room for several families to camp. The area was full of leaves, as though few winds had ever ventured there.

  Emily sat near the water at the entrance, mesmerised by the lights dancing deep in its near stillness and reflecting on the walls of the cavern.

  Wirritjil sat beside her. ‘Walangkernany, he bin here, Gidja country Walangkernany.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Big snake, he bin make everything.’

  Emily closed her eyes. God made everything. No snake. Why was she here with this dirty savage? She tugged the fabric of her nightdress away from her engorged breasts. Wirritjil leant towards her, lifted the cloth and put her mouth over a nipple and sucked. Emily shuddered and pulled back. She would have moved away except the relief was instant. Wirritjil sucked at the second breast then stopped. The milk came freely and dribbled down Emily’s belly. Emily’s teeth were clenched and her lips pressed together tightly. Wirritjil looked at her for a few seconds then rose and walked away.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Emily called after her, but her voice was soft and broken and Wirritjil did not turn back.

  In the courtyard, brown finches with long black tails and bright orange beaks gathered on the tree branches and talked to each other in low tet tet sounds. They settled in a line of six or more, some dozed, others peered down at the white woman.

  Wirritjil returned as darkness came, carrying a smoking stick that was as thick as her wrist. Around her waist hung a bark pouch from a belt of grass twine. She gathered dry twigs and leaves and sorted them, selecting the pieces that would burn best. She held the stick up to catch the slight breeze and when the tip glowed she pushed it into the dry tinder. The fattening moon was gold and high in the sky.

  Outside on the plain there was a low wind. The sand lifted and trickled into the arcs of the horses’ tracks. A white-feathered, red-eyed hawk hovered high in the last hints of the day. His eyes were fixed on a dunnart as it dashed from under the spinifex, chasing a spider whose web-thin legs barely touched the ground. The hawk dropped in a movement precise and silent. His talons gripped the desert mouse. He flapped slow and hard until the wind caught the spread of his wings and he swerved high and fast into the sky. A lone dingo stopped and looked up, sniffed, and continued his lope through the night. He was lean and supple, with a coat of a clean dun colour and eyes that were quick and black.

  When the light from the sun had completely gone the moon became white and sharp. Flames sparked and lit the walls of their enclosure with dancing colours. Wirritjil stood and listened to the night for a moment. She took berries from her pouch and held them out to Emily. Emily shook her head and Wirritjil placed them close to her. She buried a few dirtcovered bulbs at the edge of the fire then turned her attention to the trees, examining each one closely. Wirritjil chose a young woollybutt tree with stringy rough bark on its trunk and slender clean white branches. She pounded a straight branch with a sharp-edged rock at the point where it joined the trunk, stripped the leaves and twigs from it, ground it hard along its length with a rock rough with quartz, whittled a barb at one end with a white stone that had been split to a flint, then hardened the new spear in the fire, let it cool and reheated it. She laid it by her side as she slept near the glow of the coals just before dawn.

  Thirst woke Emily through the night. Her body ached and she shifted her position on the rock, unwilling to crawl away from the water. As the sun rose, Wirritjil unearthed the bulbs that had roasted by the fire. She brushed the dirt away and offered them, small and tattered with peeling layers, to Emily. The skin of her palms was grey and the creases black. Emily shook her head. Wirritjil put the food aside and scraped a hollow in the ground near the fire.

  ‘Miss.’

  Emily gave the dusty hollow next to the ash and coals a cursory glance. ‘Bring me my horse. I will ride back and demand my father be sent a telegraph.’

  Wirritjil stood with one hand on her hip, trying to understand. She gathered grasses and bark pieces and fashioned a mattress close to Emily. Emily put her hands flat on the rock and tried to push herself up. She fell back. She tried a second time and fell again. She crawled onto the makeshift bed. There was nothing she could do but sleep.

  Wirritjil worked on her spear again, grinding, heating and cooling it.

  William sat on the veranda of the homestead, the Enfield rifle resting across his knees. The sky was a steel blue like a razor and the cicadas were the blades of a saw biting and biting forever into unyielding wood. Only a few nymphs now burst through the hardening earth, yet birds of all kind kept coming. Bl
ack birds with grey crowns sat close together on a branch babbling, shrieking and swooping in groups of two or three, yellowthroated miners squinted with beady pecking eyes before taking lazy swipes, and on the edge of the carnage finches with white dotted wings rose in flittering clouds then settled again.

  The station horses trotted with their heads down, strung out along the track that joined the home paddock and the homestead to the horse yards. Red kelpies and blue heelers, some mixed with the colour of the dingo, snapped at the horses’ hoofs, dodging the payback kicks. Trevor and the head stockman, John, ran on foot behind them.

  John was short and wiry. He puffed with the effort of running and cursed the indignity of being out of the saddle. The horses went tamely through the wide gate of the home paddock. A thickset dog with a dirty black and white patched coat scurried back and stood at John’s feet. John readied his whip and a lasso.

  ‘Teach these bastards.’

  ‘They need rest.’

  Trevor walked across the lawn up onto the veranda and stopped a few steps from his brother. William stared straight ahead beyond the lawn and the paddock at the side, to the swirling insects and darting birds in the freckled bush. His hands were tight around the rifle.

  ‘He let me live, yet he let our mother die. He laughed at our father. He chose like he was some sort of god. Took away my name.’

  ‘He’s yer father-in-law.’

  ‘I was Lady Josephina’s whim.’ William spat onto the boards of the veranda. ‘It was fashionable to take pity on poor children likely to die.’

  Trevor looked at the rough boards of the veranda and the darkness below. He thought of the snakes that would surely be there.

  William rose. He was slim but he held himself tall. He was of fine features as much as his brother was of rough features, as though the prolonged illness early in his life had moulded and shaped him to fragile aristocracy.