Master of the Ghost Dreaming. Mudrooroo

back on his blanket. He became a sick old man as his young wife, Ludjee, stepped onto the platform of the camp and stood there getting her breath. She fanned her face with a piece of cloth, put down a basket, untucked the skirts of her shapeless ghost shift from between her legs, then took off the small cask of water she had tied on her back and poured a drink for the old man. Ludjee helped him into a sitting position to take the water, then gently scolded him: ‘You feeling poorly this morning, ain’t you? You an old fella always forgetting yourself and what happens. You become good for nothing.’ She set down the empty pannikin, sighing as she did so. ‘Like most of us just good for nothings these times; but today, most of us are feelin’ a little better. You really some kind of doctor, but you gotta watch out for yourself. Those ceremonies take a lot out of you. You gotta watch out for yourself. You get too sick and we all finished.’

      Jangamuttuk, playing his role, weakly muttered: ‘Should’ve kept some of that medicine in that bottle for meself.’

      ‘You should’ve seen the missus this morning. Hunting high and low for it. She frantic, but she got two more and we need it bad.’

      Jangamuttuk protested: ‘No that medicine not the right one. Anyways that Fada, he knew I had that bottle last evening. He must’ve been hidin’ and watchin’ us. Both of ’em’ll keep that medicine to themselves from now on. But never you mind, I find ’nother and better one.’

      ‘He always watchin’ us,’ Ludjee agreed, then added: ‘But we watchin’ him too. Now, I got you some food. Good stuff, what he eats himself. Took it from right under the nose of that, of that woman of his.’

      ‘Would like some kangaroo, just a little taste,’ Jangamuttuk whispered wistfully. ‘But most of all, a little bit of possum. Just a little bit. You remember, when we were getting together. You were a wild one then, just got your hair down below and scarcely broken in.’

      ‘And you were a stodgy one. Wonder how you got your goanna to raise its head,’ Ludjee replied with a laugh.

      Jangamuttuk smiled as he answered: ‘My Dreamin’, woman. My Dreamin’.’

      ‘Those times, they just like a dream,’ the woman whispered. ‘All we have left, dreams of home, that’s all, dreams of home.’

      Their own land was not so clogged with trees, with undergrowth, with the thickness of vegetation. Tall trees grew apart, their trunks only coming together in the shadows of the early morning or late afternoon. Grass grew in clumps and the people could walk where they wanted without having their feet torn by bindies. In fact so gentle was the earth to their feet that other communities called them: the people with soft soles.

      But all this was long before the coming of the ghosts. They had arrived and everything had changed. The Earth raged with giant fires; kangaroos and wallabies began to disappear, and even the giant animals of the ocean were dragged ashore to be butchered. Their flesh was torn off their bones and flung into giant pots to be rendered down over the raging fires. The smell of boiling flesh rose with the smoke and a haze of death hung over much of their land. Such were the times, and everyone had to adapt to them. The girl Ludjee had been taken in by ghosts and used and abused as everything was used and abused. But then had come Fada with his promises to protect, and things had taken a turn for the better. This was before the time of the stolen children, and where hope bloomed so did marriage. It was only natural that after a grieving Jangamuttuk had seen his first wife safely off along the skyroad; that he felt the need for a woman. He saw young Ludjee who stood in the correct relationship to him. In fact, as men of marriageable age were scarce, her anxious father had settled the matter without asking for the customary presents. However, Jangamuttuk to show his observance of the old ways had scrupulously followed custom.

      Ludjee smiled as she remembered the part she found she had to play, namely to enact the role of an innocent young thing towards the mature man who attracted rather than repelled. But it was then custom and Jangamuttuk, ever the conservative, would have thought her ill-bred if she had not gone through with it. So secure in her blooming womanhood was she, that she had taunted him with her ripening breasts and loins. She had enticed and repelled him until the full confidence of her womanhood flowed in her, and she could scoff at the aroused attraction of the person who was to be her man. So it had been and so it might never be again. On the island of exile, men and women mated hurriedly and without thought for the morrow. Why wait and follow custom when one might be dead? She sighed as she thought of Fada and the things she had to do to survive.

      But then the memory of that last delicious time on their land with places still free from the influences of the ghosts removed her sadness. One morning, she had enticed (only a backwards glance was necessary now) her future mate after her. She knew where to go. Far inland towards the rugged backbone of their island was the place where, as custom demanded, all brides led their grooms. What happened there was supposed to be hidden, supposed to be part of woman’s magic. Sometimes more than one man followed a woman, and then when a couple returned, no one mentioned the other suitors who were seen no more. Sometimes, even a single suitor disappeared and only the woman returned. Such things happened, and they were accepted because they made the race strong. But this time, only the male Jangamuttuk alone remained in proper relationship to her, and so the marriage was ordained.

      In a valley turfed with grass and shaded by evenly spaced trees, Ludjee lured her mate. It was woman’s country, and only his desire would protect him from certain destruction. She reached the pool which was part of all women’s Dreaming. And Jangamuttuk, a stickler for the rules, had come to stop beside the cool waters. His eyes reflected a rainbow as he watched her. She felt his eyes swarm over her body as she floated upheld by the strength of the dreaming waters. They caressed the deep brownness of her desire, outlined her breasts and made her nipples stand out like dark sweet swollen fruit. Then she felt the gaze withdraw and in her body she felt her soul withdraw a little, as the dreaming waters waited for her lover to return.

      He brought the bodies of four possums which he placed gently down on the bank where lovers had camped as far back as the Dream time when the first female lover had been turned into a pool to eternally receive the downflowing passion of her lover. Jangamuttuk braved the water. Gingerly, he lowered himself and was swept towards the rainbow. She saw how his body glowed as it passed through the rainbow and moreover saw that he could not swim and was in danger of being taken into the depths. She swam to him and towed him into the shallows. Safely in her arms, he could resist her no longer. They merged oblivious of the dreaded present and future which was wrenching them from this past.

      Jangamuttuk chanted out his memory: ‘And after, we roasted those possum over the fire.’

      And Ludjee chanted a reply: ‘And they still are the sweetest, the most tender possums I have ever eaten ...’ Then her voice became as bitter as the salt sea: ‘Now all gone. All spoilt ... All that happiness, all that land, that Dreaming place which held us both.’

      ‘But we still together, Ludjee,’ the old man whispered. ‘We still together. No matter what happened. We still goin’ strong together.’

      Suddenly, he broke into a fit of coughing, and Ludjee made him eat some of the salt pork she had taken from the mission house and the vegetables which she tended in a little garden of her own. It had to remain hidden, for if Fada knew, he would first commend her, but then take all the vegetables for his own table.

      ‘You gotta take things easy, old fella,’ she gently scolded him again as she watched him masticate the pork. ‘Take things easy, else I lose you.’

      ‘No, I ain’t a thing to be lost. When I go I know I go. I am a boss of that world. Time come to go, I know. And not from this island either. Almost got answer I been looking for. It almost come to me now. When I get it, maybe, just maybe, I take this sickness and fling it into Fada. Maybe I just do that.’

      ‘Not Fada, he good man,’ the woman protested. ‘He done his best for us.’

      ‘Maybe his best not good enough. Maybe his value is at an end,’ the old man said, flinging off his assumed weakness.

      Ludjee was alarmed. She knew her husband was capable of hurting Fada and she didn’t want that, though sometimes for all the world,