A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  Jason moved back again. The dancing women paid him no more attention, concentrating as they wove their own pattern of movement in the warm night air. A renewed rumble of voices flowered in the darkness, greeting another phase of the men’s dance. Over the naked black shoulders, the attentive heads, he saw the movements, more frenzied now. A sigh from the crowd. A series of cries. The whirling wooden instruments droned. Jason turned and stepped beyond the circle of firelight, beyond the watchers, into darkness.

  After the firelight and whirling movement, it was hard to work out where he was. He stood still, waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark. Shadowy trees hunched, their scrawl of branches obscuring the stars. Ahead of him the grass glowed with a pearly light, swaying softly in the breeze. At his back the noise of the dance accentuated the stillness that surrounded him. There were branch shelters similar to the one in which he had regained consciousness. Two or three dogs prowled the shadows, snouts questing suspiciously after him as he walked through the darkness.

  He could see nowhere where two men might be imprisoned.

  Could they be dead, after all? He could not understand why he remembered so little of what had happened. A fight would explain the deaths but neither his own survival nor his inability to remember.

  He came to a patch of darkness more profound than anything that had gone before. Behind him the distant firelight varnished the underside of the leaves with orange. The whirling wooden instruments growled like bees, shrieked like banshees. The cries of dancers and audience came distantly to his ears. Ahead was silence. The ground opened at his feet. The sides of a gully plunged steeply into blackness.

  Jason hesitated. He could escape, if that was what he wanted, and keep walking through the night. He doubted that the blacks would notice his absence or bother to follow him if they did. They had brought him in, fed and watered him, given him shelter, yet apart from Mura, the giggling children, the oblique, laughing glances of the dancing women, they had ignored him. Many things—imprisonment, death—might have happened to him but had not. The blacks remained a mystery.

  What if he did walk on and leave this place? He had seen enough to know that he would never survive to find his way to a settled area. His only hope would be to find more natives along the way but there was no reason to suppose they would be any better than the ones here. They might very well be worse. The blacks had no need for bars or walls. He was imprisoned as securely as one could be, a captive of the empty landscape, of distance, of a lack of water and of food.

  Jason hesitated, on the edge of turning back, yet did not. He had come out here to find his brother. He would not give up yet.

  He placed one foot on the steep slope of the gully, then another. Little by little he scrambled down it, slipping and sliding until he came into the trees. He looked about him, recognising the place even in the darkness. It was where they had first met the warriors.

  He went on. The darkness swallowed him up.

  FIVE

  All Mura’s life there had been rumours. White birds had been seen moving swiftly across the sea where nothing like them had been seen before. Word had come from other clans, which had in turn received the news from clans still further away, of white strangers in the land.

  One day one of the strangers had come among them. Mura had been very small yet he remembered the occasion clearly. In the depths of winter had come a great storm that raged upon the sea for days and cast up quantities of wood and dead birds along the coast. Out of the storm, a man. They brought him into their midst and examined him with eyes at once curious and afraid. He was alone. It would be easy to kill him. There were those who said they should, remembering the stories they had heard of these strangers. There were others, more merciful or perhaps more cautious, who said they should not.

  In the meantime, they studied him.

  He was tall and powerfully made, covered in hair. He was frightened of them, cowering and smiling placatingly when anyone tried to speak to him. His only speech was a jumble of sound. No-one could make sense of it. Some questioned that he was a man at all but when they took away his clothes—how he had fought!—they found he was indeed made as other men.

  The clan lost its fear of him. They permitted him to stay among them, a member of the clan yet not a member, uninitiated and therefore always less than a man, but in time even this distinction blurred. They called him Karinja, after the place where they had found him. Slowly he picked up the language. Always he spoke it badly, like a handful of broken stones in his mouth, but in time they grew used to that, too.

  Now these new strangers had come, also. Nantariltarra, most important of the Council and leader of the group that had encountered the strangers in the gully near the cliffs, had ordered that the young one be kept separate from the others, allowed to wander freely among the members of the clan, eat their food, mix with them. And be watched, always. Nantariltarra said that if they understood the strangers they could perhaps in time come to overpower and kill them or, better, make them like themselves, another clan within the land, to find their own place as in the distant past others had found theirs.

  Responsibility for observing him had been given to Mura.

  ‘Because you are also young,’ Nantariltarra said. ‘Make him trust you. Be friends with him. We want him to become one of us so we can learn from him.’

  It had proved easier than Mura had expected. The stranger had already begun to communicate with him, something that old one, the white man they called Karinja, had never done. This one called himself Jay-e-son, not afraid that by revealing his name he was also exposing the secret source of his power. Greatly daring, Mura had told the stranger his own name, too, although not of course his secret name, known and spoken only in the clan’s greatest mysteries.

  This was what Nantariltarra had hoped for. Mura had looked forward to telling him how well he had performed his duties; he knew how delighted Nantariltarra would be.

  And now, as the Emu dance neared its conclusion—the dancers strutting, arms bent to imitate the bent necks of the birds, the hunters creeping up on them, spears pointing death—Mura realised that Jay-e-son had gone.

  Mura would be blamed. He knew he must go after him at once and bring him back. In daylight this would have been easy enough but at night, away from the protective shield of firelight … His heart sank. At night the world became the house of the spirits that wandered free. Yet Jay-e-son had gone out there. Perhaps he had some magic to protect him, the magic that Nantariltarra was so anxious to learn. Perhaps it would be powerful enough to protect Mura, too, if he followed him.

  He went out apprehensively, eyes slanting at the darkness. The outline of a tree. Grass silvery in the starlight. Dust still warm beneath his feet. The voice of the breeze. Everywhere shadows. Everywhere the invisible eyes of the spirits watching him.

  His own eyes grew used to the darkness. When he looked back he could still see the firelight, hear the sounds of the dancers, but Mura himself was one with the dark.

  Fallen branches crackled beneath Jason’s feet, loose earth slid. He was surrounded by an earthquake of noise. His headache was worse, he had given up hope of remembering what had happened, he had no idea where he was going or why.

  … The crest of the gully had been spiked with spears, the lean figures of the blacks, bodies daubed with white, faces staring down at them … Lew Bone, cursing beneath his breath, trying to run. The boy …

  Memory tugged, swirled, vanished. What boy? He could not remember.

  I remember shouting out, he thought. Lew Bone said something, I think it was him. We are dead, something like that. Then the black men came running down the side of the gully. They ran as easily as on level ground, although the sides of the gully were so steep we could hardly walk at all without slipping. We had fallen a lot, I remember.

  The black men were naked apart from a string about their waists with a tassel of fur or grass—one Jason remembered had a sea-shell—covering their private parts. They carried long t
hin spears. Some had boomerangs as well but all had the spears and long wooden shields covered in a pattern of lines. The spears did not taper to simple points but had carved teeth-like serrations along one side.

  Lew Bone had tried clumsily to escape, slipping and falling down the steep walls of the gully. Panic in his voice as he yelled.

  ‘Let’s get out of here before we’re all killed.’

  Jason and his brother—recognising the futility of flight, realising that to show fear was the worst thing they could do—had stood where they were while the black warriors surrounded them, menacing faces, waving spears, gesticulating hands.

  Jason recalled thinking, So this is the end of it, then, the end of everything, and then …

  Jason explored his aching head with cautious fingers. There was a lump above one ear. Must have knocked me out, I suppose. But remembered nothing.

  The floor of the gully levelled out as he reached the bottom. It was darker here, the leaves of the trees quenching the starlight. He could barely see to put one foot in front of the other. He groped with extended leg, extended hand. Away to his right he could hear the distant susurration of the sea, the soft rumble of gravel stirred by the waves along the beach. He must be very close to the cliff here.

  A wooden structure loomed out of the darkness: a scaffold fifteen feet high supporting a wooden platform. Jason could see no way up the scaffolding, had no way of knowing what—if anything—was on top, yet stared at it apprehensively. The mysterious structure made the hair crinkle on his arms. A scarf of mist wrapped itself about the wooden uprights, about him. He could taste the moisture, a hint in it of salt and decay. The area smelt dankly of earth and putrefaction. Giving the structure a wide berth, Jason almost walked into another one.

  What are these things?

  Panic was shredding his mind. He wanted to run, to plunge helter-skelter through the darkness, to escape from where he was, from the sudden dread that assailed him. He could not. It was too dark to run, too many obstacles to make flight possible. Who knew what he might run into next?

  He had never been one for ghosts but had never before been in such a place, either. Sweat ran cold over his back as he stared about him. Nothing moved. The only sounds he could hear were the trees creaking in the breeze, the distant sibilance of the breaking waves: peaceful noises that helped to restore his calmness. He took a series of deep breaths. Nothing moved. Nothing happened. He walked cautiously on.

  He passed three more of the strange structures, climbed a slope and came out at last on a stretch of ground devoid of trees. The cliff ran a few yards to his right. On the edge of the cliff was another structure—ten feet square, perhaps—of branches laced together by vines. It looked like a cage. Inside the cage …

  ‘Who is it?’

  The voice was stark with terror but Jason recognised it. Lew Bone. He had found the missing men.

  Mura drew a wide circle through the bush, walking swiftly now, still frightened but forcing himself to ignore his fear. Not for anyone, neither Jay-e-son nor Nantariltarra nor the dreamtime spirits themselves, would he venture through the Place of the Dead, the smoked bodies placed on high wooden platforms to protect them from wild animals. The Council attended ceremonies here but only in daylight. Mura had never heard of anyone coming by darkness to the Place of the Dead.

  ‘We thought you was dead …’ Tom, eyes staring, hands gripping the bars of the cage.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Lew said, impatient as ever. ‘Get us outa here, boy, we’ll be off.’

  A third figure swayed in the shadows behind the other two.

  Jason eyed him uneasily. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Don’ take no notice of ’im,’ Lew said. ‘Ain’t right in the ’ead, see?’

  The stranger was tall, gaunt, wasted shoulders that had once been full of power, wondering eyes deep-set above a dark thicket of beard that covered most of his chest. He stank like a corpse and was completely naked. It was strange how he seemed so much more naked than the blacks whom Jason had just left.

  ‘Why did they put you in here?’ Jason asked Tom.

  Lew interrupted before Tom could answer. ‘Never mind any o’ that. Git us out, that’s the first thing.’

  Jason hesitated. ‘But what’ll we do?’

  ‘Do?’ Derision in Lew’s voice. ‘Take off, o’ course. What else?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tom fawned eagerly. ‘Get us out and we’ll be on our way. Like we was before, remember?’

  Jason remembered only too well. The thirst, the despair, the certainty that without aid they would soon be dead. He would not go through that again for a thousand pounds.

  ‘You’ll never make it,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll … all … die,’ the naked stranger said, voice creaking like a worn hinge.

  Jason stared open-mouthed, as astonished as though a tree had addressed them.

  ‘Keep your damn mouth shut!’ As always, Lew’s immediate reaction was violent. ‘Nobody asked your opinion.’

  A high, keening sound. It took a moment to realise the man was laughing. ‘All … dead,’ he said again.

  Lew raised a sledge-hammer fist. ‘Shut the hell up! He’s barmy,’ he said to the others, disgust in his voice.

  ‘’Ere forever, maties,’ the man said, crooning to himself, idiot smile on his lips. ‘Jes like me. ’Ere forever.’

  Jason looked at him. He was grinning and chortling to himself. Slobber ran down the heavy beard and gleamed in the starlight. As Lew had said, he didn’t seem right in the head. Would that happen to him, too, if he stayed here? NO. He was strong. He would never allow such a thing to happen to him.

  ‘Git on with it!’ Lew snarled out of the darkness.

  Jason hesitated: but why had he come, if not to release them? He inspected the cage. As he had thought, the bars were branches, secured by vines. He tested them, teeth clenched, arms straining, but could not shift them.

  ‘Strong as rope,’ he panted.

  ‘Cut ’em, then!’

  ‘Can’t. They took my knife.’

  The vines were lashed so tight he did not see how he could possibly undo them. One section formed a trap door, secured by a double thickness of vines fastened around two adjoining bars, the knots out of reach of the men inside the cage. Jason wrestled with them.

  ‘For God’s sake git on with it!’ Lew’s paw tried to cuff Jason through the bars.

  Jason stepped out of range. ‘You want me to get you out or not?’

  ‘Leave ’im be, Lew,’ Tom whined. ‘’E’s doin’ ’is best.’

  ‘God help us if ’e ever does ’is worst, then.’

  Jason’s fingers discovered a knot drawn less tightly than the rest. He worked it to and fro until one end fell loose. Quickly he unravelled it and turned to the next one.

  A burst of jumbled sound came from the old sailor. It sounded like words but was certainly not English. Jason looked up, frowning. The man was clinging to the bars, arm outstretched, finger pointed, eyes fixed on the darkness. Cold shivers prickling his spine, Jason turned and looked where the man was staring.

  A dark figure stood watching them from the edge of the trees.

  SIX

  Jason’s heart leapt painfully in his chest; then the figure moved and he saw that it was Mura.

  Thank God, he thought, but his relief was short-lived. Mura stalked across the clearing towards him. He stopped two yards from Jason and pointed furiously at the cage.

  ‘Madlanna!’ he said. ‘Madlanna! Wakkinna!’

  Jason did not understand the words but the meaning was plain. The next thing they’ll be putting me in the cage, too, he thought. If they don’t decide to kill me first.

  ‘Wakkinna!’ Mura repeated, scowling ferociously.

  From the shadowy cage the old man said, ‘’E says you ain’t got no right to try and get us out of ’ere.’

  ‘These are my friends,’ Jason said, eyes fixed on Mura’s face. ‘One of them is my brother.’ Over his shoulder he said, ‘
Ask him why they put you in the cage.’

  ‘They does what they likes.’ The old man’s voice was nervous. ‘You don’ ever ask ’em why. ‘Alf the time I doubt they knows why themselves.’

  ‘Ask him.’

  The man said something. Even to Jason’s ear, unfamiliar with the language, it sounded wrong, entirely different from the easy fluidity of Mura’s speech.

  He’s been here for years and still can’t speak the language properly, he thought. I’d have done better than that.

  Mura spoke again.

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He says we got to stay ’ere until the others agree to let us out. That’s what the Council decided.’

  ‘You’re bigger’n ’e is.’ Lew Bone’s voice hissed behind his shoulder. ‘’Ow’s ’e goin’ to stop you, eh? ‘E gives any trouble, tap ’im on the jaw. That’ll shut ’im up.’

  Jason ignored the remark. No way was he going to hit the black youth; it would be asking for trouble. At the same time he didn’t want Mura getting the idea that he would always do what he was told.

  ‘He is my brother,’ he repeated firmly. He mimed the cage door being open, the prisoners coming out. ‘I want him out of there.’ Even though Mura did not understand the words he hoped his tone and gestures would convey his meaning clearly enough.

  Mura shook his head angrily.

  He’s scared, Jason thought. If I take no notice of him he knows he’ll have to try and stop me.

  ‘Tell him you promise not to escape if he agrees to let you out.’

  ‘Not escape?’ Lew Bone echoed indignantly. ‘I ain’t agreein’ to nuthin like that!’

  ‘Then you can stay in the cage,’ Jason said but Mura would not agree, in any case.

  ‘He got to speak to the others,’ the old man explained. ‘’E can’ do nuthin. It’s the Council what decides.’

  ‘Then tell him I’ll go back with him and speak to the Council myself.’