Master of the Ghost Dreaming. Mudrooroo

I go there always find it too cold. Foggy, boggy – all of those things. It far from here. So far that only clever man, mapan, can go there. Anyway, they must’ve had a fight, somethin’ like that and had to flee. Came over this way. Sailed by my country, then came back and took it, just like that. No shame; but they don’t think like us. Different skin and different way. They almost finished us off there. But us, the ones who were left, they put us on one of their big whatchamecallits – ships and brought us here. They try to make us like they are. Keep us here until we are all like them.

      ‘The huts that we must live in are built of sods and clay,

      With dampened straw for bedding and we must not say nay.

      Our cots are fenced by mist, we slumber when we may,

      And I wake a broken-hearted man and sing this my lay.

      ‘Well, when I first saw ’em, didn’t know what it was.’ He stopped and snapped his fingers in six directions, then went on: ‘Talk about ’em, think about ’em and next thing you know they flockin’ all about you, wantin’ to learn your secrets. Well, this is one of ’em. Keep it in mind; that snappin’ of the fingers. It keeps all the devils away. Ship – you know, I thought it was a log of wood. Big log of a tree with boughs poking up floating in the sea. Funny leaves like clouds. Caught the wind and moved it along. Lit’le ignorant fella then, not been through manhood ceremony. An’ then, you know, there came this thunder sound. Not lightning though, just great big sound. Louder than the crack a bough makes as the wind hits him and snaps him clean off. Then lots of smoke. Lots and lots of smoke and I knew that it was ghost sound, ’cause Lightning man, he belongs to us, brother to our Dreaming. He would’ve come and showed himself , reassured me, that lit’le kid. But he didn’t, and that sound and that smoke made me a bit strange, lit’le bit funny in the head, sorta changed it around so that I saw more things than was good for a lit’le kid. An’ when I got back to the camp, the ol’ fella knew right away that I had been gifted, that I had received my callin’, my Dreamin’, that Ghost Dreamin’ which is so powerful when you use it right. Anyway, we better hush now, for I see a woman comin’. None of this woman’s business, though maybe that Ludjee has received the Ghost Dreamin’ too. Maybe, for she knows them ghosts deep down and through and through. Listen to this song verse, you two, then hide yourselves.

      ‘There was a girl from Dublin Town, Rosanna was her name

      For fourteen years transported for aplaying of the game.

      Our master bought her freedom and kept her in his hand,

      But she suffered deep deeper down in this dismal land.’

      The two novices, all big brown eyes and scrawny near adolescent bodies, did not acknowledge Jangamuttuk’s comments. They were forced into silence by their coming ordeal. Now they had to keep quiet and think over and over what the master was saying. They had been chosen by him to carry on the culture and they had to learn. What with the exile of their people, few of the adult men bothered to take care of the kids. Many had languished and died. They might have too, except for the mapan selecting them and keeping them strong for the ceremony. They were not to go near the mission until they became men.

      Jangamuttuk still believed that the old ways could be saved from the hands of the ghosts. Most of his people on being exiled had fallen into despair, their minds fixed on their faraway homelands; but while they pined, he roamed the island seeking for the net of power that kept the entire Earth together. There were few places of strong power. Only a few ancient nodes that flickered in his awareness. These he accepted as the footprints of his Dreaming ancestors who had passed through the island. Many places along the coast and beaches he found overprinted with the recent remains of the ghosts. Here a broken bottle, there a rusted hoop, a shattered barrel, pits filled with the skeletons of butchered animals. To protect himself as he wandered, he sang out verses from his Ghost Dreaming cycle which seemed to fit the topography of the island. Now all had been arranged in a song cycle which he would pass on to the novices. It would have to do until the old ancestors revealed to him a new song series.

      One place which still retained traces of power was high on the hill overlooking the bay where the ghosts had deposited them, and where Fada had ordered them to stay. Stone tools and chips were cemented into the stone floor of the deep rock shelter and impressed in the back wall, and now part of the surface of the stone were the painted imprints of ancient hands. Jangamuttuk felt the power of his ancestors residing there. He chanted softly to the nascent power, feeling it stir, but it had been so long ago that it might no longer quicken.

      The shelter itself was the very end of a narrow cleft cut into the broken edge of the hill slope. He made it a shrine and himself the Keeper of the Shrine. He made his camp at the mouth of the cleft. This formed a natural camp site. Long ago, a huge round boulder, a ball of the wind giants, had been tossed down to cover the top of the mouth of the cleft. It hung over the very edge and appeared ready to complete its journey down to the coastal plain. Jangamuttuk knew that only the power of the ancestors held it there. He sang softly of their action. In the Dreamtime, they had set up a camp for him, then entered the cleft to leave their essence there.

      Now Jangamuttuk looked down the cleft towards the shrine and caught the inquisitive faces of the two novices peering out at him. Gruffly, he ordered them right back to the shrine. He followed this with an abrupt movement of his hand which left no room for argument. He expected instant obedience from the novices, but also some spark of fire. What use were yes-men to him and to their community? They were in seclusion and not allowed to be seen by any but initiated men. He stared down at the forested coastal plain. From this height, he could see the square ceremonial ground of the night before and nearby the double circles of the traditional ceremonial ground. He had tried to hide this as best as he could but from above it stood out. Still, it might not matter. Fada was the only threat to their secrecy, and he was as old as he was, and could not make the climb to his camp.

      He tried to see the woman who was making her way to his camp, but she was in the lee of the hill and hidden. He continued staring down. His eyes flickered over the rough-hewn cemetery. So many of his people lay suffering in an alien soil. He sighed. He had tried with all his skill to help them. Had led soul after soul towards the silvery shining track snaking up to the skyland, but each had broken away to run wailing back to this island. Now, they tugged at his consciousness, and he let his mind relax. The ship tacking into the bay disappeared from his eyes. Pale, rounded souls squatted about him. They lacked mouths, but still were trying to tell him something. He concentrated. The words were whispers in his mind, garbled and in a language he might once have known, but since had forgotten. He concentrated in an effort to understand. The sea, the ocean heaved and spat at him. Old fears gripped his heart. Tradition made him flee from the ocean, made him believe it would swallow him whole. A huge snake writhed from the depths and turned, its jaws gaping at him. A huge snake that suddenly flashed with all the colours of a rainbow to turn into Dreaming companion. Goanna came up under him and sped away. He sported, diving deeply into the depths, turning and charging to leap high above the surface. Jangamuttuk clung on for dear life feeling the waters grabbing at him. Then he felt his power and relaxed. The waters flowed around him and beside him and in him. Now Goanna and the souls swam west towards the setting sun. He saw the sun writhe into the coils of the great serpent, and eyes reached out to give him an assurance that he was welcome.

      The supply ship tacked into the bay. It tried to make its way towards a headland to shelter in the lee. The wind blew from the land and the ship, unable to anchor, ran out to sea. A small dot on the beach moved towards the tail of a thin white snake laying across the grasscovered sand-dunes. Its body twisted into the thick forest which covered the plain, changed colour and continued on as a red serpent with a bloated head which was the wide clearing in which the mission had been erected. There stood a line of wattle and daub huts for his people; a large low brick bungalow for Fada, his wife and two sons; a store with an office from which rations were distributed; and lastly at a short distance from the bungalow, a chapel in which Fada entertained them with incomprehensible sermons which hurt his head when he tried to reason them out. Then at the end of a short track leading inland, that poor patch planted with the corpses of his people seethed with restlessness. He sighed, distressed at the sight.

      A cold