The First Voyage

by Allan Baillie

  And there is nothing I can do. It is like watching the death of Stone.

  But they stop. They look at him; they look at me and they look at the other splashing Yam hunters. They turn to their Elder.

  The Elder looks at the three fallen Crocodile warriors as they try to get up; he moves his eyes towards the swimmers and the distant Yam camp. Maybe he is looking at the rafts. He stares at Eagle Eye for a long time, and then he turns to his warriors and holds his hand up, stopping the spears and his men. Then he turns to Eagle Eye, nods and gives him the river with his open hand. For one long moment, Eagle Eye stands there, and then he moves his head. Very slightly.

  He moves to the river, and he sees that I am still here. ‘What . . .?’ He pushes me. He ploughs past me and the current takes him.

  I am thinking that the Crocodile warriors are running to the dead tree to hurl their spears at us . . .

  I try to get my right arm to work, but it is still trembling in the water. I bring my arm out of the water and see that I am still carrying the Crocodile’s spear. I release it and dive for the bottom of the river. When I surface, I see that the spear has drifted away, and that some of the Crocodiles are watching Eagle Eye and me from the dead tree, but they are doing nothing. The Elder has joined them. He is smiling.

  I swim to the spear and grab it.

  Now I can see the Yam hunters bobbing in the river, and the gatherers hurrying to get to the rafts to fetch them. Old Tortoise is still chopping at a bamboo, and the young hunter is carrying a short one to the last raft in the shallows.

  Burnt Earth is the first hunter to be picked up by the gatherers on a raft as Old Tortoise carries the cut bamboo to the river. And now all the rafts are racing towards the sea, but the hunters are rushing along in the water too and they catch the rafts without any trouble.

  Eagle Eye aims for the last raft. I follow him and wait for him to climb onto the raft. I give him the Crocodiles’ spear and he puts it on the bamboos without saying anything. I pull myself onto the raft. I feel very tired.

  The river carries the rafts into the calm ocean, like a current of air lifting an eagle. There is no movement from the bamboo on the rafts; the only way to tell that the rafts are moving is the shrinking beach, getting smaller and smaller, and more and more distant. On the rafts, almost everybody is standing, looking back at the island.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Brown Moss says.

  ‘Yes,’ Eagle Eye says quietly.

  For a moment, I think they are talking about getting all of the hunters. But it isn’t that, not quite.

  The island is now darkening slowly, and it looks sullen. The camp is now nothing but a scratch on the sand. The mangroves, where once the gatherers laughed. The river, where once the hunters waited. Frog Hill, where Shufflewing and I had the Buffalo Horn . . .

  Waterlily takes three fingers of my hand and holds them. We understand each other. Shufflewing, my pa, his painting in the Rat Cave, Stone, and chasing blue wrens near the Bird Lake . . .

  That is what Brown Moss is talking about.

  Gone.

  A part of me wants to shake off Waterlily’s fingers and grab a branch to frantically paddle back to the Snake River, but the thought dies as the darkness comes. I can see the rolling hills and mountains against a dim sky, but those soon start to fade. Waterlily moves to the edge of the food box in the middle of the raft, curls up and sleeps. Eagle Eye looks at her and smiles weakly. Then he sees the rest of the Yams standing on the rafts, staring at the silent island.

  He calls, ‘We have to do things . . .’

  On our raft, Brown Moss and Moonlight settle down and work on Fast Fish; Old Tortoise secures the palm leaves and the food on the box; Burnt Earth paddles with the branch towards the other rafts; and The Wind and I work under the raft to tie Old Tortoise’s last bamboo. And that is hard. We can’t see much underwater, so we have to feel for the strands as Eagle Eye feeds them to us.

  When we climb back on top, Brown Moss is loosely tying hand palm strands onto the end of some bamboos. She says that they are there for us to hold on to and to shove our legs under when the sea gets rough.

  Rough? What is that? It’s not here.

  The stars come out slowly, catching the rafts on the flat water and our shadows moving on the rafts. Before the total darkness, the paddlers get the rafts together. Eagle Eye can walk over all the five rafts without getting his feet wet, and several hunters hop onto other rafts like seagulls. The Wind and I lean on each other as the moon lifts from the flat water, giving a silver track to the rafts and painting The Wind’s face. Everyone on the five rafts seems to be hushed before the moon. It is incredibly quiet.

  But I can hear Fast Fish gasping, and Brown Moss and Moonlight whispering. Brown Moss beckons to The Wind and the three of them slide Fast Fish into the water.

  He is dead! I think. I feel sick.

  But Moonlight and The Wind are holding him while Brown Moss’s hands work on Fast Fish’s body in the water. He grunts for a moment.

  Moonlight looks at him and then at Brown Moss.

  Brown Moss nods at her. ‘He will be all right,’ she whispers.

  Moonlight says, ‘He had better.’

  They move him back onto the raft. The wound is bleeding, but not much. Moonlight holds the wound edges closed while Brown Moss puts on some billygoat weed, tree orchid and rotting spike rushes from her dillybag, and covers it with a banana leaf.

  ‘All right, rest,’ Eagle Eye says.

  Brown Moss looks up. ‘You’re not paddling now?’

  ‘I don’t think we have any strength left now.’ He points at a winking star. ‘That will get us there, and the river is still pushing us. Just sleep.’

  With that, the hunters and the gatherers on all the rafts slowly sag down on the bamboo. On our raft, Moonlight lays against Fast Fish, taking one of the raft ends, while Old Tortoise and Burnt Earth take the other end. Eagle Eye waits for Brown Moss to settle down – she puts an arm around Waterlily – and wriggles into her, leaving space on the other side of the food box for The Wind and myself. The Wind waits for me to move against the box, and I begin to lower my body down.

  Then I stop. I think, She could roll off the raft. I shake my head at her. ‘You first.’

  She looks at me with surprise but she slips against the box frame and I snuggle up to her. Almost instantly, she begins to softly snore.

  Well, I can’t sleep. I keep thinking that I will roll off the raft if I sleep.

  I push one leg into Brown Moss’s palm strands, and feel the water lapping through the bamboos on my back. I can hear the water moving against the bamboos and I stare at the sky. And that sky is frightening. There are no branches, no trees, no mountains; only the sky, the moon, the stars. The giant moon has now lifted from the ocean, so close I can almost touch its scars. But the stars are even more amazing. They are exploding over me and there is no part of the sky that is not filled by stars. I feel as though I could float out to them and grab at their strands . . .

  * * *

  I wake to the raft rocking gently. The sun is only a lip on the horizon, but it has already painted the sky with orange. There is a light breeze, so light that the sea is still, with nothing but a ripple. Moonlight sits, holding her swollen belly and watching Fast Fish – he is just lying there. And Old Tortoise and Burnt Earth are paddling slowly with those branches from Burnt Earth’s jungle pieces, moving the raft towards the lip on the sun. Brown Moss takes bananas from the food box and passes them around our raft. The Wind scrapes a root for Waterlily next to Eagle Eye who is standing with a spear – my spear.

  The beginning of the first day seems normal.

  ‘There!’ Eagle Eye points the spear to a spot in the green ocean.

  Three rafts are bobbing nearby but the fourth is drifting away.

  ‘Maybe they haven’t woken up,’ Burnt Earth says.

  Eagle Eye waves and shouts. The Wind and Burnt Earth stand up and help with the shouting. The rafts paddle towards Ea
gle Eye.

  Burnt Earth stops shouting. ‘They are paddling now.’

  Eagle Eye looks at him and lowers his arms. ‘Good. Stop paddling. We will wait for them.’ He wobbles the spear then he passes it to me. ‘Yours.’

  I feel the weight of the flint stone of the spearhead, and somehow it’s wrong to balance, but then I look at Eagle Eye and I realise that he needs that spear. He doesn’t have his Buffalo Horn and he needs something now – we need something.

  ‘Um, it is for you,’ I say.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘If you want it.’

  Eagle Eye looks at the spear and then at me, and slowly nods. ‘Thank you, I will have it. The Crocodiles’ spear will remind me why we are crossing this ocean. But you can look after it.’

  I blink at him and grin.

  Eagle Eye puts the spear into my hand and moves towards Fast Fish, who is still. ‘How is he?’

  Moonlight is breaking a root and dripping its liquid above his lips. ‘I think he is better, but I don’t know.’

  Brown Moss dips a shell into the water carrier and drops some water onto Fast Fish’s lips. He licks his lips.

  ‘Hey!’ Eagle Eye smiles.

  Moonlight leans to Fast Fish. ‘Can you hear me? This is Moonlight, Fast Fish . . .’

  But he doesn’t move.

  Moonlight shelters him from the risen sun with a palm leaf, and Brown Moss passes roots around while we wait for the other rafts.

  ‘It’s still there,’ Burnt Earth says.

  ‘What?’ Eagle Eye looks back.

  ‘The island.’

  I can see the top of Sleeping Turtle Mountain, but that is all.

  ‘Don’t even look at it.’ Eagle Eye points towards where the sun had been. ‘That is all we need.’

  The other rafts join us and we all paddle slowly on the ocean.

  I open my eyes on the second morning.

  I can feel the water rising and falling on my spine where the bamboos separate on the raft. There are small ripples near my feet. I lift my head and see that Eagle Eye is gently paddling with a branch towards the pink glow of dawn. There is nothing but his branch twirling and dipping – and an odd sound behind me, like a very small fish that is trying to get away but is too tired and flops. I turn and see what it is.

  There is a vine connected to this raft and another. And another vine connected to that raft and another, and another and another . . . But there is nobody stirring on the other rafts. Eagle Eye is towing all the others across the ocean. The short vines lift from the water as the rafts move, then shiver and fall back with a soft tug. I carefully lift myself up to stand. Eagle Eye feels the shifting bamboos, looks back at me and puts his finger across his mouth. He returns to his paddling.

  My eyes wander. I see Brown Moss tangled up with Eagle Eye’s back, The Wind sprawled at my feet, Waterlily still sleeping with her face twitching a little, Moonlight locked into the palm strand and the legs of Fast Fish, Old Tortoise with a finger placed on the box of food as if the food is holding him on the raft, and Burnt Earth watching me with one eye.

  I lift my eyes and see the shadows on the green ocean and the touch of air. There are patches of light on the water. One small fish leaps a long way away. A single cloud tinted with salmon pink drifts across the sky. And that is it.

  I lick my lips and shuffle my feet around as my eyes stare at the horizon. I guess I am hoping to see something. Finally, I stop where I started.

  ‘Oh,’ I say flatly.

  I had seen that horizon unbroken from the beginning to the end. I saw nothing, nothing at all.

  Eagle Eye looks at me with irritation. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘The Bird Island?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Yam tribe, only twenty-three people on five bamboo rafts, are now terribly alone.

  Eagle Eye pulls himself up, looks around and nods. ‘Good. Now we won’t be worried about that.’ He takes a breath and shouts to the rafts, ‘All right, we have to move! Come on, come on . . .’

  There is stirring on the rafts and a little murmuring. The vines are cast off, and some of the hunters take the branches and paddle while some of the women pick mussels from the store. I reach for one of Eagle Eye’s selected branches, but Burnt Earth grabs it – this branch was broken from a tree and has a wide flat for paddling, which is lovely to paddle with, better than the paddles of leaves. I look for another but Old Tortoise and The Wind have taken the other paddles. Everyone – except for Fast Fish – is awake.

  Eagle Eye smiles at me. ‘Don’t worry, you will be paddling soon enough. Now . . .’

  Then Waterlily wobbles up and stares at the empty ocean. I thought she would be terribly frightened, but she just sits down and gets The Wind’s shell necklace from her dillybag. She washes it carefully and gives it to The Wind. I guess she can leave some of the nightmares back on Bird Island.

  Suddenly a hunter from the middle raft stands up, staggers on the bamboos and topples into the water. He is laughed at loudly until people look at the smug face in the lapping water. Another hunter hurls himself at him and another follows with a shout. I start to jump but I look at Eagle Eye and I hesitate until he waves me in.

  I hit the water, feel the warmth, and then my arm touches a cool current. I head down into the current, and my body shivers – it is a queer feeling, but I have to follow the current down. I see small fishes swaying together, a dark snake and the flash of silver as they shiver away. I see two fat yellow fins swimming very slowly down below – I think for a moment I could race after them, but I know that if I move, they will tear off. I turn my body to see the rafts wafting on the bright water and the dancing legs around them. Finally, I kick myself back up to my raft.

  The Wind frowns at me. ‘What happened? I thought you got lost.’

  ‘It’s great down there.’

  ‘It’s all right here too.’ And she splashes me.

  I see the rafts are almost abandoned by the hunters, and the gatherers and the children are paddling around each other, throwing water and laughing. It is as if the day before hadn’t happened. Except for Waterlily, who is staring at Fast Fish as though he is about to die.

  I am about to splash the back of The Wind, but instead I flick a water drop at Waterlily. ‘Hey, why don’t you come in?’

  The Wind shakes her head but Brown Moss takes her paddle without a word. The Wind looks at Waterlily dangling her legs at the edge of the raft, slips into the water and goes towards her.

  ‘There are fishes down there,’ she says.

  Waterlily pulls her feet from the water.

  ‘They are very small, like your finger . . .’

  ‘And they have turned to silver,’ I say.

  Waterlily doesn’t believe me, but she slithers into the water and she changes when she sees the silver fishes. Waterlily was quick in the jungle, but in the water she is fast, almost as fast as the silver fishes. She races after them but they don’t flee – they dance with her, their silver flashing from the sunbeams in the water. For a moment, it looks as if it is she and Stone, chasing tiny blue wrens at Bird Lake.

  And maybe she thinks that too because she stops and leaves the fish alone. She comes back to us and we swim to the raft where Burnt Earth and Old Tortoise seem to be trying to paddle away from us, but we reach them without any trouble. I spurt an arc of water from my mouth at Burnt Earth, so he splashes me with his paddle. The Wind is laughing, but her laughter dies when she sees Moonlight holding the head of Fast Fish and putting a mussel on his lips. Moonlight looks down at The Wind but her face is flat.

  ‘Nothing?’ The Wind says.

  Moonlight shakes her head.

  The Wind climbs back on the raft and wipes my face with her arm. ‘I can look after him if you want to go into the water.’

  ‘I –’ Moonlight looks at Fast Fish and tired Eagle Eye. He waves her away and she slips into the water.

  I watch her and then frown as if I have forgotten something. Th
en Eagle Eye steps from the raft, swims away and then comes back. He pulls himself up on the raft, stands up and claps his hands. ‘All right, finish. We have to move.’

  Reluctantly the swimmers come back to the rafts and pick up the branches or the morning food.

  Brown Moss offers a mussel to Eagle Eye but he just looks at it and shakes his head.

  ‘I’m too tired to eat. Later.’ He turns to Old Tortoise. ‘I am going to sleep. Just aim at that.’

  He points at the lip of the sun and drops slowly onto the bamboo.

  * * *

  The second day on the raft is very slow. The sun spreads across the ripples as I sip at the first mussel for a long time before eating it. When Brown Moss gives me a second one I guard it in the crook of my legs. That is all our food for a while, so you have to make it last. There is talk between and around the rafts, but that peters out as the sun lifts from the sea. It is too hot to talk.

  Moonlight shelters Fast Fish and Eagle Eye with the palms, and Brown Moss gives out cut roots. I hear the bamboos pulling at the vines as the sea ripples underneath the raft. Eagle Eye begins snoring softly, Brown Moss and Waterlily fall asleep beneath a palm leaf and Moonlight whispers to Fast Fish as though he can hear. The Wind and Burnt Earth have been paddling, but when The Wind passes her paddle to me I am glad to get it. I can feel the water dripping on my hands, and somehow that little bit cools me down. And now I am concentrating on the movement of the raft instead of the emptiness around the raft.

  ‘Ah, power at last!’ I say and grin at Burnt Earth.

  I can feel the anger from The Wind’s eyes on my back. I dip my head as I look back and see all the rafts trailing like ducklings. They leave a flat wash in the water.

  ‘Well nobody has passed us,’ I say.

  ‘They can’t,’ Burnt Earth says. ‘Only Old Tortoise knows where we are going.’

  Old Tortoise snorts. ‘Oh yes?’

  We look at him.

  Old Tortoise shrugs and points at the horizon. ‘That was where the sun was – maybe. Now it’s up there.’ He jerks his thumb up. ‘How do I steer on that?’