The Nargun and the Stars

by Patricia Wrightson

  ‘Oh, I see – and then the Nyols said that bit about making thunder and shaking mountains!’

  ‘That’s it, mate.’

  ‘So what are you going to do, Charlie?’

  ‘I’m just going to give it a bit of a test: maybe prove something, maybe not. Night’s when it moves, and I’m not playing about with it in the dark. But most night things really wake up at dusk. If this thing shivered in broad daylight I reckon it might do more than that at dusk; enough for us to see and be sure. So I thought if I took the tractor up at dusk, with Simey to keep his eyes peeled while I’m driving, we might see if the tractor was enough to make it move at night.’

  ‘Suppose it does?’ said Edie.

  ‘Well – I don’t know. We’ve found out a bit more, that’s all. Time enough to start thinking about it then.’

  ‘And you won’t go messing about with it? Or getting off the tractor? And you’ll keep a close eye on Simey?’

  ‘Scout’s honour, old girl, only like Simey says we’ve got to do something. Now I’m going to chop a bit of wood and get the tractor out. Shake it up, Simey, or we’ll be too late.’

  While Charlie chopped, Simon carried wood into the kitchen and managed to squeeze in time for feeding the hens as well. While they worked the colour began to drain out of the world, ebbing west after the sun; hills stood tall and flat against the green glow of the sky. Simon thought of the great stone inside its gully, watching with the empty darkness that might be its eye while daylight drained away like water from a tub. He shivered. To be caught in the dark, rousing the Nargun …

  Charlie had checked the fuel and oil in the tractor, which was standing as usual outside the shed. Now he started it, rousing it into a noisy jabber, and shouted to Simon above the noise, pointing at the draw-bar at the back. Simon understood that he was to stand on that, and climbed on while Edie watched. Some day, he hoped, he would enjoy standing on this bar watching the big wheels turn while Charlie drove. They would be going for wood or something, and he would remember the first time he rode the tractor out to rouse the Nargun.

  The tractor made more noise than he had thought it would, and the draw-bar bounced as if it wanted to shake Simon off. Yet still he wondered if the noise would be enough – and was this the very fastest they could go? Was it fast enough to get away if the big stone came at them like that other time? He would have liked to ask, but he didn’t want to shout questions at Charlie’s slouched back above the noise of the tractor.

  At any rate, they reached the little gully in time: just as dusk was closing in but while it was still light enough to see. Charlie stopped the tractor and turned as far as he could in his seat.

  ‘Are you all right there, mate? Think you can hang on? I’d sooner not put you down anywhere – you might see better, but I’d rather we stuck together.’

  ‘I can hang on all right,’ said Simon, ‘but I can’t see much in front of you. Not for watching if it shivers.’

  ‘We don’t want to see it shiver, we’ve seen that. If that’s the best we can do we’re wasting our time. What we want is a decent sort of movement that you can see.’

  ‘Well if I stand on the far side and look over your shoulder …’

  ‘That’s the ticket. Keep your eyes peeled, and whatever you do don’t fall off. Look out for some sort of movement that looks as if it’s trying to get away from the tractor – but yell if you see anything at all.’

  ‘Won’t you be watching too?’

  ‘Far as I can, but I’ve got to drive. And keep an eye on the sides of the gully so we don’t go too far in and get trapped. Unless that thing’s started moving about already it’s only about ten yards up, near that breakaway. I’m going in now. Ready?’

  For a moment Simon tried to find a reason for not being ready, but there wasn’t one. So he closed his fingers hard, on the back of Charlie’s seat with one hand and on the mudguard with the other, and said, ‘Right!’ He leaned forward to see ahead while Charlie started up again and, revving the motor as much as he could, drove into the gully.

  The sides of the gully began to rise, and Simon looked at them quickly to assure himself that the tractor could still climb out. He found himself going rigid and had to remember to loosen his knees so that he could balance. Charlie’s back looked rigid too, and the way he was crouching forward sent Simon’s eyes searching over his shoulder. Before he was ready he saw the great stone, crouched in its familiar way against fallen earth on the east bank.

  He couldn’t see the muzzle or the dark eye, only the hump of stone in the fading light. It seemed very close, yet Charlie was going even closer. The engine stuttered loudly and Simon held his breath. Had the Nargun pressed deeper into the soil just then?

  They were only ten feet away when the tractor stopped with its engine running; Charlie would go no closer. He revved the engine in short bursts, so that the tractor roared angrily at the monster. Simon was stiff with dread that the thing would move – and then it did. It heaved a little, strongly, as a spiny ant-eater does, and sank itself inches deeper into the bank. Simon’s locked fingers flew open to tap Charlie on the shoulder. Charlie nodded, fumbling with the gears. They backed off and swung wide and away, wheels riding up one bank and down again. Simon’s back tingled from being turned to the Nargun, and he peered over his shoulder in case its shapeless bulk came rolling or lumbering after them.

  They roared out of the gully and the vista of it faded into dusk. They ran on down the slope, and in a minute Charlie stopped the tractor. He swung down and stood looking back, waiting to see if anything emerged from the dusk behind them. Nothing moved.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Charlie with satisfaction. ‘We made it move.’

  Simon breathed for a moment, looking back too. Everything about him felt loose and limp. At last he said, ‘Did that count? Burrowing down like that? Maybe we can only make it burrow into the dirt – we’d never know where it might come up.’

  ‘That was good enough for me. It’ll be up to us to make it move the right way next time. You’ve got to remember that it’s not dark yet and we only used the tractor.’

  ‘It makes more noise than I thought it would.’

  ‘Got a cracked muffler,’ said Charlie smugly. ‘I thought it might come in handy.’

  ‘You could take it right off!’ Simon suggested. ‘Like the bulldozer’s! That’d make it a lot more vicious, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Or we might send you back in there to fetch the ’dozer.’

  ‘That’s no good. Even if you were good enough to drive it along that track, the Nyols would never let you.’

  ‘Well, hang on again. We’ll go home and tell Edie. We’ve got something to think about now.’

  They went roaring on down, the sky darkening over them and the tractor spitting sparks from its cracked exhaust, Simon looking over his shoulder at the black bulk of the mountain. All its features were veiled in dark, so that it was only a shape against the black-pearl, star-pricked glow of the sky. The Nargun would not come after them now, levering at the ground with stumpy limbs; but where in that black bulk of mountain was the bulldozer? If he had X-ray vision and could see inside the mountain, where would he see that other yellow monster? Somewhere up there near the hump, where the outer cave was? No – that was mad – there was all the long passage. He tried to trace it in his mind, looking at the outside of the mountain, and to trace the way the Nyols had brought him from its back. He was still taking backward looks and frowning when Charlie ran the tractor into its usual spot under a tree and stopped it.

  ‘Edie’ll know we’re safe home, anyhow. Better hurry, we could do with a wash before dinner. What are you frowning about? Can’t hear anything, can you?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Simon. ‘Oh. No. You don’t hear the Nargun much till it yells. Charlie, you know when we went up the mountain this morning? Going up the steep bit? I bet you don’t know what we were riding over! I bet we rode right over the bulldozer!’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Charlie. ‘Just
as well Surprise didn’t know.’ ‘But it’s funny, isn’t it? Going up and down over the top of it without knowing.’

  ‘You were all turned around, you can’t help it in caves. It could be anywhere. You don’t want to stand there staring – Edie’s waiting to hear what happened.’

  It had grown so dark that the stars hung close and brilliant. They fumbled through the gate to the back door, and Charlie pulled it open on yellow light, warmth, and Edie’s face turned to them from the stove. Simon had one foot in the door when the night reached out and held them frozen. Sudden and savage came the Nargun’s cry, bellowing down from the mountain, full of all time and the darkness between the stars. It held them at the door while it rang between mountains and died away. Charlie pushed Simon inside and shut the door.

  ‘We made it angry, whispered Simon. He felt like a stone.

  Up in the high gully the Nargun had raised its crooked shape to stand as men do. It had lifted its snout and cried in anger to the stars. The mountain stilled and hushed around it. The treetops were still where the Turongs peered and did not stir. The bushes were still where a bandicoot crouched with its long nose quivering. From small hidden openings in rock the Nyols gazed, stilled by the cry of the stone. ‘Old one …’ they whispered. Only a rabbit, its terror too strong, made a shuddering leap from the bank. The Nargun moved a limb with the pounding speed of its anger. The rabbit did not squeal before it was crushed.

  In this hush the Nargun heard its own cry bellowing around the world and spinning into space. It felt earth shake on its path, its moth-wings falter, and saw the stars shaken like beads on their thread of silence. Since first it oozed from rose-red fire into darkness – since it saw light – in all of endless time – the Nargun had never been beaten as it had tonight in the quiet time of waiting for the stars. Since first it felt the rhythm that was wrong and not the earth’s, never had that rhythm been so close or so defiant. And the anger of the Nargun had shaken the universe.

  It pounded at the ground with hard, angry limbs. It cried again, Ng-a-a! - and stars shook and earth faltered. It climbed its gully and broke through blackberries into the lonely place beyond; and there, in time, the calm voice of silence reached it, and the cold, forever light of the stars. It grew quiet, and felt again the deep slow throb of earth, and it dreamt of fire. simon, said the lichen on its base; but the Nargun did not know.

  The Turongs went leaping from bough to trunk, back to their scrub above the swamp, whispering among leaves. The Nyols rustled like bats inside the mountain and soon were chuckling. The bandicoot dug out a wood-grub. In time even Simon stirred by the fire, and the cane chair broke into tiny crowd-noises.

  ‘Twice,’ he said. ‘We made it angry …’ Yellow flames, darting up the chimney like little clutching hands, were reflected in his eyes.

  ‘We’ve got to do more than make it angry,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ve got to make it go.’ The lines of his face had deepened with useless thinking.

  Charlie and Edie had thought of charges of gelignite set along the top gully and fired in sequence, to chase the Nar-gun off. But this, like any other scheme, would have to be carried out at night in the Nargun’s time for moving.

  ‘Not safe,’ said Charlie. ‘You couldn’t see where the thing was, to set off the right charge. And I don’t like playing with jelly at night.’

  Edie added, ‘If you made a mistake and the thing got blown to bits we’d have half a dozen Narguns instead of one.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ Charlie finished, ‘I couldn’t lay a trail of jelly even one mile outside Wongadilla. No use sending it over the line and waiting for it to come back.’

  They had thought of using fire to coax the old thing away, but had given up that idea more quickly. There was only a chance that the Nargun would respond; and even if it had been a certainty they could hardly burn out miles of country beyond Wongadilla.

  They had thought of chasing it away with the tractor. ‘If that was enough to make it move in half-light,’ said Edie, ‘you might do better at night. And you’d have the headlights to work by.’

  ‘There again,’ argued Charlie, ‘I can’t go after it a hundred miles or so in the tractor … What it needs is some sort of vibration strong enough to shake it up properly, scare it off so it never wants to come back.’

  That was when Simon, who had been staring at the fire all this time and listening to the night instead of to Edie and Charlie, said ‘We made it angry,’ and Charlie said, ‘We’ve got to do more than that.’

  ‘You could take the muffler off the tractor,’ said Simon, because he couldn’t think of anything new and he had already thought of that before the Nargun cried. ‘Then it’d be a really big noise.’ Neither Charlie nor Edie answered, so he looked up from the fire to see if they were silently laughing at him. Edie was only knitting with quick, troubled fingers. Charlie was frowning at Simon as if he were a hole in the air. Simon stared back defiantly.

  What was it you said?’ Charlie demanded, still frowning and staring.

  Simon stammered a bit. ‘Th-the muffler. Off the t-tractor. To make more noise.’

  ‘Not that. Before; earlier. Something about the bulldozer.’

  Simon searched his mind. Muffler – tractor – bulldozer – ‘The muffler’s broken off the bulldozer,’ he offered. ‘The exhaust was rusted through, and the passage is pretty low in some places, so I s’pose -’

  ‘That’s it. That’s more like it. That’d make a powerful vibration.’

  ‘But you can’t get the bulldozer out,’ said Simon.

  ‘I don’t want it out. You mightn’t hear it much in there, but I reckon you’d feel it all right. Specially if you were a Nargun. Did the ’dozer seem to be all right apart from the muffler? Could I start it?’

  ‘No,’ said Simon promptly. ‘I mean there’s nothing wrong with it that I could see, unless it’s out of petrol. But you couldn’t start it. I told you before. The Nyols wouldn’t let you. You don’t know what they’re like. They’re all over you, hundreds off them, like a giant octopus or something.’

  ‘M’p,’ said Charlie, and settled another log on the fire. ‘What made you think the bulldozer was this side of the mountain?’

  ‘Because it is,’ said Simon simply. Under Charlie’s eye he began to justify this. ‘See, we went in from the back of the mountain, and it was a long way, and it bent about a lot but mainly it went up and down. I mean it didn’t curl right round or anything. Mainly we kept going towards the front of the mountain, see? And when we went into the passage I sort of knew we were going the other way – back to the back of the mountain – I thought they were going to leave me stuck where they found me. And when we came out it was facing the way I thought only not as far as I thought. We came out on the side of the mountain. So the passage must have started from pretty close to the front. Like where we ride up.’

  Charlie stared at him for a long time and he stared obstinately back. This went on until Edie said, ‘Does it matter where it is?’

  Charlie came out of the staring, which must really have been deep thinking, and said, ‘Not much. Better if it’s where the boy thinks, though. One thing, anyhow: either that passage is so steep that he couldn’t have climbed out and he’s still inside the mountain, or the bulldozer’s not too deep down.’ He stared at the fire while Edie waited and Simon shifted and the cane chair shrieked in whispers, and at last he began to talk.

  ‘It’s just what we want, really. The bulldozer makes about ten times the noise of the tractor, and a lot more without its muffler. Shut inside the mountain and not too far down, it ought to be enough to shake the ground. Not like an earthquake, but so you’d feel it in your feet. Scare this Nargun into a fit, I reckon, a whole mountain shaking under it. Ought to be enough to make it clear out for good. It’d keep on shaking, you see, not just coming and going like the blasting.’

  ‘Make it come rushing straight down here,’ said Edie grimly. ‘Why should it climb up over a shaking mountain? It’d just rush down this way.’<
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  ‘Maybe,’ said Charlie, and stared at the fire again. After a minute he added, ‘Unless the tractor was cutting it off, driving about with its muffler off and its lights on. That ought to send this Nargun up the gully and down the back of the mountain.’

  Simon was enthralled. This would have been right, he knew. The bulldozer – another monster – dim and secret inside the mountain, unleashing its full roar. The whole mountain shaking: that was a plan big enough for the Nargun, if only it could have been done. He gave a deep sigh. ‘If only those Nyols would clear out! Just for a little while!’

  ‘We’ll sleep on it,’ said Charlie. ‘If it’s still a good scheme in the morning we’ll go and see the Potkoorok again. Maybe it’s no good with Narguns, but at least it ought to know something about Nyols.’

  thirteen

  They all slept, because they were tired out, but Simon’s sleep was haunted by the Nargun’s anger. He thought of Charlie’s plan as soon as he woke, and it still seemed good to him: an immense plan, big enough for a Nargun, if only the Nyols could be got rid of while Charlie started the bulldozer.

  To Charlie a bulldozer was not much more than a very big tractor; by morning the plan seemed uncertain, wild, and – worst of all – outlandish.

  ‘A good thing, then,’ said Edie, at her calmest. ‘Fits the Nargun to a T. Have you thought of anything better?’ And Charlie had to admit that he had not.

  He felt more hopeful soon. At first light, after a quick cup of tea, he and Simon went to the top gully to check on the Nargun’s position for the day. Charlie would do this every morning now, and Simon hurried into two sweaters and two pairs of socks so that he could go too. Only the tops of the western hills were tipped with red-gold sunlight when they reached the gully. The grass was grey with late frost, crunchy to walk on and slippery under the horses’ hoofs. The air stung like cold water.

  They rode up the gully till the sides were becoming too steep for horses to climb. Then they rode out of it, tethered the horses, and worked their way further up on foot, looking down over the banks. They passed the sharp bend and the screen of blackberry before they saw the Nargun. It was leaning back against walls of rock and staring at the sky. It was the first time they had looked at the dark emptiness of its crooked stone face, and they did not look long. They went quickly and quietly back to the horses.