In trees above the Turongs dived and howled to each other. They had seen the defeat of the tractor and heard the battle in the mountain, and they quivered with curiosity. They scuttled like spiders in branches and peered slyly from leaves and learnt nothing. By threes and fours and dozens the Nyols crept into the mountain and were silent.
They were silent with awe, for they found a mystery. Clustered like bats on ledges and galleries they looked down and wondered. The great serpent had gone; the flood had gone, and all the caverns were dry and dusty as before. Crystal columns and frozen cascades sparkled through the dust. Pools were in their basins undisturbed, and dripping water rang its silver gongs. Only in the great cavern was there a change – and there -
There had been a great fire. Some mighty blaze had leapt from side to side, from high to low. The floor and roof were scorched and blackened; lizards and pale creeping things were dead in great numbers, and a strange and heavy smell hung in the cavern. Perhaps the Rainbow Snake had called the sun itself into the mountain? The rocks were still warm from fire; and to keep the mystery from men the passage had been closed with massive rocks.
But there was something else that made the Nyols stare and whisper. Their great machine, as yellow as the sun, had fallen from its high place, smashed and blackened in the fire. Why was this? The Nyols stared and whispered from above, and dared not come down.
And while they crowded on high ledges talking in soft rumbles, there came a sound: the slow, heavy grating of rock upon rock. The Nyols fell silent and stayed as still as stones. The sound in the mountain went on. They heard it pass from corridor to cavern, and by and by they crept and sprang like shadows in search of it.
They found the Nargun crawling down a corridor, turning its weathered snout from side to side in a blind search for light. It raised its crooked shape on stumpy limbs to look up at them, clustered on the walls above with their eyes shining darkly like very distant stars. They stirred and muttered, for now they thought they had found out the mystery.
This ancient stone creature, their dreaming, had come to them in the dark of the mountain. The Rainbow Snake had ruled that they should not keep their yellow machine; it was destroyed so that they might have the Nargun. They did not dare, yet, to come down from their high places; but when the monster lurched slowly on its way they rustled after it along the walls like bats, and sometimes they crooned to it softly without words. They did not understand that it was searching, searching through all the caverns and corridors for a way out to the wind, and to brighter, colder stars.
‘Will it get out again?’ Simon asked the Potkoorok. It had been into the mountain by its secret road to peep.
‘There is no road for the Nargun,’ it said.
‘Will it ever?’
‘How long is ever? When the mountain crumbles; when a cave opens; when a man or a river breaks down the rock; is that ever?’
Simon shivered, thinking about it. ‘It is ever,’ he said at last. ‘But not now.’
‘Not now.’
‘Poor thing …’ He sat up suddenly, and a dragonfly hovering by his head like a tiny helicopter darted backwards and away. ‘What about the bit that broke off and ran away? How long will it take to grow up?’
The Potkoorok, having finished its own apple, snatched Simon’s and beamed with pride. Simon didn’t notice. ‘How long?’ he demanded.
‘How long will the Boy be stupid?’ the creature said pettishly; for a trick can hardly be called successful if the victim doesn’t notice it. ‘Does stone grow? When the wind rubs over it and the rain beats at it and the frost squeezes it, does a stone grow bigger? The small Nargun will grow smaller. Watch your toes, Frog Boy, or one day they may be bitten.’ It crunched Simon’s apple and rolled its golden eyes at him sideways. ‘When the big Nargun lay on the mountain, it too was squeezed by the frost. Rain and snow and sun it loved, and it opened its arms to the wind; it grew smaller day by day. The caves are still; no wind moves there, and nothing falls but dust. You have preserved your enemy.’
‘Only now it can’t get out,’ retorted Simon. ‘Anyhow, a lot you care as long as you can boast about your marvellous trick.’
At this the Potkoorok flapped its webbed hands with glee and chuckled till it fell backwards on the bank kicking its feet. Since it had been doing this at intervals all the afternoon and the sun was now behind the ridge, and since the apples were finished, Simon walked off and left it there.
All day the ancient Nargun had crawled and lurched through the mountain, searching for a way out. All day the Nyols followed it in wonder; and when it rested in a pool so that it might feel the water, they ventured lower down the walls and crooned to it shyly.
‘Old one …’ ‘Brother Stone …’ ‘You stay …’
They could not have helped it if they would, for now the rocks in the passage were jammed under the weight of the mountain and there was no way out for the Nargun. Nyols might come and go by their own roads; but earth, that was its substance, had taken back the Nargun.
It came out of the pool and lurched on its slow way, and the Nyols tracked it from above. It came again to the fire-blackened cavern where it had battled and silenced the great machine. Foot by foot it dragged itself to the twisted ruin, and there it leaned. Little by little the Nyols drew near, crooning happily.
‘Brother …’ ‘Old one …’
They brought broken crystal, fretted like the columns it had known before, and laid the pieces near it.
‘We find you, we serve you …’
Small hands gathered dust and poured it gently over the monster, anointing it.
‘You stay …’
They brought it small dead lizards, and their eyes flickered in the cavern like the first stars.
The Nargun never moved. In this place of nothing – no light, no wind, no heat, no cold, no sound – it waited. It felt the old, slow pulse, deep and enduring, and remembered the earth swinging on its moth-flight round the sun. Its dark, vacant eyes waited: for the mountain to crumble; for a river to break through; for time to wear away.
simon, it said. But the lichen had withered, and the name was only a whisper in the dark.
First published 1973 by Hutchinson Group (Australia) Pty Ltd
This edition published 2008 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
www.uqp.com.au
© Patricia Wrightson
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
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Cataloguing in Publication Data
National Library of Australia
Wrightson, Patricia
The Nargun and The Stars
For primary school age.
I. Title.
A823.3
ISBN 9780702236839 (pbk)
ISBN 9780702258206 (pdf)
ISBN 9780702258213 (epub)
ISBN 9780702258220 (kindle)
The Nargun and the Stars Page 14
