NULLAMBOIN SMELT THE wind. He sat by his fire. The wind was blowing dust and leaves. A piece of bark dropped in front of him. He reached with the butt of his spear and pulled the bark over and lifted it, and smelt. He looked at the lines painted on it: the cross of life in the circle of Being of the People; above, the mark of the three toes of the hallowed bird; above, the crooked path of travel, from the holy to the holy. He put the bark into the medicine bag that was slung at his shoulder. Then he took red clay and painted a band of red across his eyes, a band of red across his nose and cheek bones, two lines down the middle of his chest, turning along the bottom ribs, and, outside each of these lines, two shorter ones that did not turn. With his other hand he took white clay, and ran white dots around the lines. On his legs he drew in white the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend. When this was done, he gathered his spears and walked away. His kal followed him.
Nullamboin went to the Place of Growing, beyond the fires. He scooped water out of the Spirit Hole and drank. Then he sat by the Spirit Hole and sang the songs of the Ancestor and of the Dreaming to the son of Bunjil, Binbeal, the Rainbow, who lived in the waters.
Then he sat before the Goomah, the Clashing Rock, and he sang his spirit into the rock until he was safe. Next, he stood and went to the hollow Minggah, and reached inside the tree and lifted out a bag of kowir skin and opened it. In the bag were the churingas of wood that held all his Dreamings. He took the red churinga of the Kal Dreaming, and fixed it in the back of his headband, and danced the life of the Place of Growing into him, and left.
He came to the grave mound. A man lay, gripping the spear that had been put there. Nullamboin sat down and looked to the sky. An eagle soared above the two trees. He waited. The man groaned, and the kal went to him and licked his face; and the man opened his eyes and spoke, then his head dropped forward. The kal whined. Nullamboin crossed the trench and bent to smell the man’s face and breathing. He uncurled the fist that was holding the stone all stuck about with crystal that shone in the light. He took the stone into his medicine bag, and held the man hard by the upper arms for a moment, then turned and walked back to the Place of Growing. His kal lay at the mound.
He pulled the churinga from his headband and laid it in the Minggah, and sat before the Clashing Rock and sang his spirit out to him. He danced the life back into the Place of Growing, then he went to the fires.
Nullamboin sat, and stared far off, his spears beside him, his hands on his thighs, fingers spread.
All the elders looked up.
Woolmurgen came to sit by Nullamboin.
Marrowuk joined them.
Bundurang came; and Mamaluga; Punmuttal; Konkontallin. Derrimut moved towards them, but Nullamboin brought the back of his hand to his face, and swung his arm forward and out to the side, and Derrimut stopped, and went to his fire.
Nullamboin reached into his medicine bag and took out the piece of bark and gave it to the men. They each smelt it in turn, and looked at the lines painted on it: the cross of life in the circle of Being of the People; above, the mark of the three toes of the hallowed bird; above, the crooked path of travel, from the holy to the holy.
“It is a sacred journey of the Kowir Dreaming come to us,” said Mamaluga.
“Death has died into life here at our Place of Growing,” said Woolmurgen.
“And a greater Dreaming has come,” said Punmuttal.
Bundurang nodded and gave the bark to Nullamboin; and Nullamboin put it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“You danced that it would come.”
Nullamboin looked at him.
“No one has danced this before,” said Bundurang.
Nullamboin looked at him. “When the sky falls, the People shall not die in their Dreaming.” He picked up his spears, and the men went with him, carrying theirs. They made towards the Place of Growing.
“There is no harm,” said Nullamboin, and led them straight to the grave mound.
When they saw what was on it, and the hand holding, they sat, and turned their eyes to the side.
“It doesn’t look like him,” said Marrowuk. “Too big.”
“It’s a young man, not mulla-mullung,” said Woolmurgen.
“Why is it that colour?” said Konkontallin. “The dead are white.”
“Never as he was will he return,” said Nullamboin. “He died before his song was sung, before his step in the Dance was ended.”
Nullamboin showed the crystal stone.
“Here is his thundal.”
He put it back in the medicine bag, and stood, and the others joined him, shuffling, uncertain, until Nullamboin painted the red bands across their eyes and cheeks. On their legs he drew in white the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend. Given their strength, the men became still.
“After I had danced, I sang,” said Nullamboin. “I sang him in the Kal Dreaming. And, as I dreamed, I saw him dancing in the Minggah of Tharangalkbek, by the Spirit Hole of Tharangalkbek, and there were many dead people. But the Goomah of Tharangalkbek I could not see clear, for there the Goomah is Women’s Matter. That is strange.
“I sent the Kal Dreaming into his kal, and it took him. And the dead people wrapped him in the net of Death and Life, and washed him in the Spirit Hole, so that he might walk the Hard Darkness, and ride the Bone of the Cloud, to come to us.”
Nullamboin pointed at the sky, and, when they saw the eagle above them, the elders cried out.
“Bunjil!”
“The Father-of-our-Flesh gives his eagle to tell you this,” said Nullamboin. “This man is mulla-mullung. He has forgotten, but he will remember. Do not be afraid. Bunjil gives him his eagle. The strong singer claims his spear. Murrangurk has come.”
“It is as you danced,” said Bundurang. “Kah.”
“Take him,” said Nullamboin. “The net is thin, and must mend with blood, and honey, and bwal, and gunyeru. Take him to the fires.”
The men stamped, and danced, and with their spears they gashed their arms and chests, so that their life flowed for the man before them; and Bundurang, and Marrowuk, and Mamaluga and Konkontallin went to the mound and took him on their shoulders and laid his spear over him, letting their life run along him, so that the net would hold. They danced with him towards the fires, singing his Kal Dreaming, lest he should die again.
The women heard the song, and they sang their grief at his long going from them. They tore their hair to let free their power for him, and ripped their flesh to give him life, putting their firesticks to the blood to make it spirit for him, and, singing, they went out to meet the men and to bring him home.
But Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin stayed by her fire, and mixed water, and honey, and wallundunderren gum with her hands; and when the men came they laid him by her, and she put his head in her lap and let the yellow trickle from her fingers to his lips.
He did not move. She stroked his mouth. His lips opened, and she fed him slowly from her fingers, while the women sang and the men danced, to hold him and make good the net.
The men and women left. Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin took a shell, and with its point and edge she cut the maggots from the sores of his body and burnt them, and cleaned the sores with bwal sap. He cried out, and slept.
The men built a tall fire at either end of the Place of Growing, and when that was done they covered their bodies with kowir fat and rubbed it in. Then they painted each other with white clay: circles around the eyes, for the sacred ground, lines along the brow, down the nose, one down the cheeks, to the chin; lines on the arms, the chest, to the stomach; from the stomach to the legs and feet; so that the spirit would run from the earth to the centre, and from the still centre to the eye, and the eye send it out.
As the night came, they lit the fires, and went to gather branches of green bwal. They tied bwal about their arms and ankles, and Nullamboin put fresh red clay on his headband, and kowir feathers around it, and plover in his hair.
The men passed from the firelight into the dark, and the women carried the man and laid him before them, and sat around the edge of the Place of Growing, their wolard skin cloaks rolled tightly and held across their thighs.
They beat the rolled cloaks, which sounded under their hands in rhythm; and from the darkness the men came stamping into the light, carrying long clubs, and sticks that they beat to answer the women’s drums with the rustling bwal.
They sang, and played and danced on the ground that was hard with the stain of blood and life. Below the ground, the earth boomed in the hollow logs that were buried there. And in the shadow of the flames they sang, and played and danced gunyeru for the man that had come to them, giving his spirit all their spirit, dancing towards him with the bwal branches high, brushing the ground, and back; the clapsticks speaking the voice of air; the drums and the feet speaking the voice of earth, and the power of the ground rising through the limbs, kept at the centre, cast from the eyes.
The man was awake, and watched. Nullamboin left the dance and went to him. The man spoke, but Nullamboin slung a bag of woven hair over the man’s shoulder and under his arm, showed him the crystal stone glinting rainbows of fire so that no one else could see, and put it in the bag and went back to the dance.
Through that night the People held his spirit, until their strength was gone. But the sky paled, and their strength came back to dance for the Morning Star. And, at the frenzy, the men raised their clubs and shouted with one voice. “Mami-ngata!”
Silence. Gunyeru was done.
Nullamboin, sweating, looked at a woman, and she held the man and set her running breast to his mouth. The man fed.