‘The yellow machine will follow where the water runs after the storm. The yellow machine is too much trouble.’
It turned its head on its squat neck, looking at the boy from one old eye and then the other. While the boy still stood unable to move, the round green body of the Potkoorok slipped back into the water.
It had gone. Simon still couldn’t move. He had not expected anything so froglike or so human. He had not expected the swamp-creature at all – not standing there in broad daylight, only as a green shadow turning in the water. And he had never even thought of it speaking. He listened again to the gurgling voice and heard the words. They didn’t make sense, and yet there was a feeling of solemn importance about them.
A hill caught him in its slanting shadow, and the swamp darkened. Simon saw that it was time to go. The wind had fallen and Pet had eaten all the grass within reach. He managed to climb into her saddle from the log while clutching the reins, having no thought to spare for being nervous. He forgot his stick, but it didn’t matter. Pet was going home; sometimes she even broke into a rough trot.
‘After what storm?’ said Simon.
There was no sign of any storm; just the dry, clear stillness after wind and the loud bleatings of sheep. The swamp-creature was tricking him again – it must think he was stupid to go on falling for its tricks every time. But – seeing it -! He felt alive with the excitement of seeing it.
Then he saw the sheep. Their bleating was so loud that at last he noticed it and looked. A mob of them was just crossing the creek at the mouth of the gully; Charlie had brought them in from that other paddock. He was coming behind them slowly on Surprise, and here and there darted the dogs. Simon watched them trail slowly out of sight behind the home ridge. By the time he reached the house he was surprised to find Charlie already there, unsaddling. When he saw Simon’s face he grinned in a satisfied way.
‘Came home for a cup and left the dogs to carry on,’ he said. ‘You’ll see them if you look down on the flat.’
Simon went across to the fence and looked down. The sheep were a grey-white moving stream at the foot of the wooded ridge and the dogs were working hard around the edge of it, turning the sheep up the ridge towards Wongadilla’s half of the forest. Charlie came and watched too, full of pride in his dogs. When the sheep began to straggle upward he whistled. The dogs left them and came like arrows, racing up the steep home ridge with little yelps.
Simon took his lunch things into the kitchen.
‘There you are,’ said Edie. ‘You could do with a cup, then. How was the swamp?’
‘The grader killed a frog,’ said Simon. It was all he could tell about the swamp that Edie might understand.
‘It did?’ said Edie. ‘We’ll be having a storm, then.’
‘A storm?’ Simon was staring.
‘It’s just an old saying. If you kill a frog it’ll call up a storm.’ ‘Whose old saying?’ Simon demanded.
‘Well … I suppose it was the Aborigines. You’d better ask Charlie.’
‘We can’t have a storm after all that wind,’ said Simon crossly, and stalked outside to do his share of holding things and passing things.
Charlie showed him how to let Pet go and feed her with chaff. The sky was a pale clear blue with a shine to it like the chime of a bell. The tops of eastern hills still wore sunlight, and the air had the sharp bite of late winter.
‘Did you bring the sheep back in case of a storm?’ asked Simon.
‘Eh?’ said Charlie. ‘Storm? We won’t get a storm after that wind. Now the fence is fixed it’s time this paddock had a bit of use, that’s all.’ He shook his head a little and Simon had an annoyed feeling that he was laughing inside, silently. ‘Sheep have to get used to storms,’ he said.
The sky was sugared with stars when Simon went to bed. He woke to wildness and pounding and blue-and-white flashes. The storm had come. He woke sitting up in protest – he had never heard rain pounding on an iron roof before. The sound almost drowned the angrier noise of thunder. Hard gusts of wind pushed in through the windows and out again like a fist. Sheet lightning sketched the room in strong, clear lines: the curtains flying at the window, the opening door, and Edie’s face appearing there.
‘All right, Simey? Just a bit of a storm, it won’t last. I’ll shut your window.’ She came across and closed it. ‘A bit of a surprise, this, eh? You’ll see the river up in the morning.’
In an old grey gown and with her hair tousled Edie looked somehow like a very young child. He didn’t mind much when she gave his blankets a tug and patted them quickly to see if they were wet. Then she went away on her round of the windows.
Simon lay listening to the thunder and the hammers of the rain. They had their storm, then, the swamp-thing and the frog, and it sounded as if the water would flow all right. Would the yellow machine follow? He heard the veranda door close as Edie went back to bed. He couldn’t possibly go to sleep. The pine-tree whined and whimpered. The smack of wind made the house tremble, and after every lightning-flash the picture of his room stayed photographed on his eyes in the darkness. Water-sounds were small and clear under the larger noises: the quick beat of drips on to the ground, the rippling of water along the roof-gutters, the glass-bell notes of water spilling from gutters into tanks. He could even hear it hissing on hot coals in the fireplace.
He sat up again. If he could hear that, then the rain must be stopping. He couldn’t have heard it ten minutes ago. He eased the window up again and put his head out.
Black shapes of trees sprang up and vanished. Thunder scolded. The rain was quite light when you heard it on the grass instead of on the roof. There were stars again, wide fields of them between black flying clouds. It was still windy up there, but down here there were only gusts to shake splattering showers out of the trees … There was moonlight! The air was so clear that wetness had a cold white shine from the moonlight … There were black shadows flying, bigger than birds …
The black shadows were leaping from tree to tree, from high to low. Arms and legs were spread, straggling beards floated. They called to each other in high, wild voices above and around the house. Excitement ran prickling along Simon’s veins. He tumbled silently out of bed, rolled up his pyjama-legs, pulled on shorts and a raincoat and tennis shoes, climbed out of the window, and closed it down except for a space where he could fit his fingers. He was outside in the wet moonlight with black shadows leaping and calling overhead.
He went quietly towards the shed, and when he was nearer that than the house spoke softly to the dogs. Just as well he had been helping Charlie feed them; they only whimpered a bit when he told them to be quiet, and then he was past.
His shoes were wet and clammy-cold already. The rain had stopped, but the trees shook down drops that rattled on his raincoat and freckled his face with cold. The storm flashed and rumbled farther away, but here were only the calls of the flitting shadows and the water-noises – the cluck and chinkle of the creek down there in the gully; the louder rush and babble of the river; the quiet mutter of water running over the ground and sopping into his shoes, and somewhere the singing of water over high rocks.
Simon went running through the wet, shining white world, up the ridge past the head of the gully and then west to the swamp – seeing brambles and rocks and logs just in time to jump over them or swerve aside – somehow never falling – lifted and hurried along by the wet magic night. He went running right into the swamp before he heard another sound than water-noises, and then he stopped, up to his ankles in the swamp. The song of frogs went creaking and hiccuping up to the moon, and beyond the swamp was a clank and rattle of metal.
The road came out of a blackness of trees, water running down in a sheet because the mountain poured it off too fast for the gutters to carry it away. Into the moonlight came the grader as if the water carried it, clanking along slow and majestic like a lanky skeleton ship. But all round it there was a flurry of shadows, calling and crying as they had in the trees. Wispy arms waved, stic
k-like knees bent, shadowy beards tossed. They crowded the cabin and rode on the blade and clustered along its sides, the Turongs carrying the grader.
The boy stared, breathing hard. When the grader reached the turn it left the road and came on down to the swamp, slow and majestic like a battleship, but clanking as it was carried along by the crowd of dancing shadows. More of them came down from the trees, calling in windy voices. The grader reached the deep end of the swamp, and there the Potkoorok was waiting.
Into the shallows while frogs were shrieking; on while the wheels sank deeper and the blade dipped under. A lurch, a slow roll, a sinking down of the cabin roof; dark water heaving under the moon – and the grader was gone. The Turongs rustled and stamped and jigged, the Potkoorok leapt and chuckled. The boy ran away, slopping through the swamp while the frogs shrieked.
He wanted to yell with delight or terror. He wanted to dance with the stamping, jigging, hopping crowd – if only he hadn’t dreaded that they might come near. There was nothing to do but run. He splashed through runnels and stumbled over bushes while the cries died away behind. The wet magic night no longer held him up, and once he fell over. That made him realise that the moon was now hidden and he was running in the dark. A few last rags of cloud had blown across just as he left the swamp.
He would have to stop being stupid. He stood still and listened to the watery night. He remembered he should be walking across a gradual slope with a steep rise on the right and the ridge running down to the left. The easier slope of the ridge should guide him to the house, even if the moon didn’t come out again soon – and it would, of course. It wasn’t even dark, now that he looked, except for the close-looming blackness of the mountain. In the grey light of stars and cloudy moon he could see darker shapes ahead.
He squelched on. A faint grey shine was the wet wood of a fallen branch; he walked carefully around it. There was a tree close by in the blackness of the hillside. He felt its closeness, and found it by putting out a hand and touching wet bark. Branches stirred, and drops pelted on his raincoat. The darkness and the slow groping made him colder.
Something moved; he felt it close to him. Invisible against the mountain something big and solid moved a little. Simon stood still and listened: no snort from Pet, no breathing, no twitch of ear or tail. He listened as he had not known he could, listened with every inch of his skin: he heard nothing. No pumping heart, no quietly streaming blood. Only the unhearable sound of earth taking a weight, only the universe shifting to balance a small movement. He wanted to put out a hand to discover what moved close by – but the dark places in his mind told his hand to be still, as they told his heart to beat quietly.
The moon’s edge lifted from the cloud; there was soft polished light, and he saw a crooked shape. About a yard away – leaning forward – a hard, craggy, blunt-muzzled head and the smallest, most secret movement of a limb. Something without heart or blood, the living earth in a squat and solid shape, reached very secretly, a very little, for Simon.
He wasted no energy to yell or gasp. His stretched nerves twanged, he shot ten feet in one leap and kept on running. Away behind him something cried out savagely in anger – Nga-a-a! The wild, fierce cry laid its echo like a trail along the mountain. The dogs barked for a moment and were silent. Simon raced in among them and crouched there, and the dogs whimpered, and he whimpered with them. They listened together, and peered into the moonlight. Silence. Nothing moved on the ridge.
After a time Simon whispered shaky words of comfort to the dogs and forced himself to go the little way to the house. He raised the window and climbed in, pulled off his wet shoes and dropped them outside and shut the window. He tore off coat and shorts and plunged into bed.
The cooling hot-water bag felt scorching, he was so cold. He tried not to shake the bed by shivering. It was very quiet; no sound at all except the creek and the river. Moonlight lay gently on his red felt mat, and only the pine-tree whispered against the stars.
It was the moon coming out like that, he decided. He was excited by those crazy, wonderful, weird creatures at the swamp; and then groping through the dark, and the moon coming out, and an owl or something screeching. He had seen some rock and imagined the horror. And thinking this he fell into exhausted sleep.
He didn’t hear the sound that woke Charlie and brought him to the window: the shrill, terrified bleating of a sheep.
five
Simon woke early and suddenly, remembering his nightmare as he woke. The whole night might almost have been a dream, storm and all. It was a bright, fresh morning, the creek and the river making hardly more noise than usual by now. There were only frail wisps of vapour rising from fence-posts and logs to prove there had been a storm; and Simon’s wet raincoat under the bed, and his soggy tennis shoes outside the window.
He dressed, wondering if anything at all had really happened at the swamp in the night, or if he had imagined that wild and wonderful scene as well as the other. He wished, with a rush of loneliness and longing, that he could talk to someone about it and ask if he were going mad. Not Charlie or Edie, of course; he still couldn’t even say ‘Charlie’ or ‘Edie’, and wondered hopelessly if he ever would. He was sure that at his first word about the swamp-creature and the stick-like shadows Edie would want to tuck him up with a hot-water bottle. Charlie would say, in that serious way that meant Charlie was laughing inside, that there were a lot of shadows about in the moonlight … And so there were …
He went to the kitchen, where Charlie and Edie had just finished breakfast and were talking seriously.
‘… didn’t like the sound of it,’ Charlie was saying. ‘Have to have a look around today -’ He broke off as Simon appeared in the doorway and gave him one of those quick, direct looks. Edie got up to break an egg into the pan.
‘There you are, then,’ said Charlie in pleased surprise. ‘Turning into a cocky, eh? Pull up a chair, mate. You’re a useful bloke to have around, predicting storms out of the blue. Better than the weather-man.’
‘Did you get back to sleep?’ asked Edie, spooning melted butter over the egg.
‘Old sheep didn’t disturb you?’ added Charlie.
Simon was considering this question, which he didn’t understand, when the dogs began to bark and yell. The next minute a voice called from the back door.
‘Anyone home?’
Charlie swivelled his chair round to go to the door. It opened, and there stood a thin, stooped man with a long face and a bristly chin. Simon gripped the edge of the table – it was the driver of the grader.
‘Morning, mate,’ said Charlie formally. ‘What can I do for you?’
The driver looked all around the kitchen, nodded to Simon, looked round the kitchen again, and at last said, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have seen a grader about, would you?’
Charlie answered gravely, ‘Can’t say we have.’
‘You didn’t happen to hear anything like a grader going by? Say, between four last night and seven this morning?’ Charlie and Edie shook their heads. Edie spooned more butter over Simon’s egg. Charlie said, with polite concern, ‘What, lost a grader, have you?’ The kitchen was full of their silent, impish laughter. Simon almost heard it. He too was full of silent laughter, for it seemed that he wasn’t mad after all. The grader was gone; the shadows that glided from tree to tree and danced by the swamp were real.
The grader-man too could hear the silent laughter and had been expecting it. He looked at the floor, at the table, at the ceiling, at the window, anywhere except at Charlie. ‘Could’ve sworn I left the brake on,’ he confessed.
‘You could do with a cup,’ said Charlie, reaching for the teapot. ‘Pull up a chair … Milk and sugar if you want it … Where did you leave her?’
‘Half a mile up from the turn by your swamp.’
‘You never left her in the gully mouth?’
The driver shuffled his feet. ‘It was dry as chips after the wind. I’m certain I left the brake on.’ He took a deep draught of tea and made anot
her confession. ‘They’ll be fit to be tied when they find out. There’ll be a fine old fuss.’
‘We’ll have to find her, then,’ said Charlie kindly. ‘No tracks, of course?’
The driver shook his head. ‘All washed out.’
‘The wash should be as good as tracks. We’ll get going as soon as you’ve had your tea – I’ve got a bit extra to do today myself. Coming, young feller?’
‘He’ll want his breakfast first,’ said Edie firmly. ‘He’ll catch you up.’
The driver finished his tea and followed Charlie outside, complaining as he went about the unfairness of things. ‘The brake was on and the blade was down, only they won’t believe me. There’d be no moving her – short of a flood -’
‘A man can’t expect a storm out of a clear sky,’ Charlie consoled him, shutting the door.
While he ate his breakfast Simon heard the station-wagon drive out of the shed and away down the ridge. ‘We can saddle Pet,’ Edie told him. ‘You can get there nearly as soon, across the paddock.’
He was feeling alive with the joy of knowing that his stick-shadows were real. ‘On Pet?’ he said cheekily.
Edie’s withered-petal face grew warm with delight. ‘If you’re in a hurry you can walk,’ she said, dropping bread into the toaster.
He did walk, on the plea of getting a ride in the station-wagon later. ‘Can – can I have an apple?’ he managed to ask at the last minute.
The Nargun and the Stars Page 4
