HE SAW THE smoke of the fires, and the smoke of the fires far to the side, long before the round peak of Morriock, covered with the red bones of Neeyangarra, appeared.
Murrangurk walked across the brown grass down towards Moodiwarri Full of Eels, but he did not go to there. He went to the path of fires, from which came the wailing of the women, and sat for the waters to rise. He put down the shield, the spear and the bags, and slid the body from his shoulder onto the grass. He pressed his hands in the liquid of the flesh, and rubbed the grease on his own skin. Then he painted himself red, and made white circles about his eyes.
Nullamboin came along the path to meet him, wearing the same paint, with kowir and plover in his hair; and Murrangurk stood, lifted the body and set it in Nullamboin’s outstretched arms. Nullamboin carried the body to the grave, where more fires burned and men waited. The keening women were further back, swinging firesticks to sear themselves.
Nullamboin opened a net of wolard hair and thrust the head into it, and tied the fists together with another. Two men slit the side with flint, rolled the body in a wolard cloak and put it in a tube of marung bark and laid it in the grave, lined with marung. The People were silent. Murrangurk took the wangim from the kowir bag and set them in the grave. Then the men threw in branches of marung, and on top of them marung logs; and Nullamboin spoke. But the silence was still on Murrangurk, and he did not hear. The men built up the grave with slow care, and the women moved round it in dance and song, but still Murrangurk heard nothing. As the mound began to rise, he left and went to sit where he had first come.
Nullamboin sat by him, and waited.
“Who put the spear through the thigh of a wordholder?”
“I put the spear through him,” said Murrangurk, “because he was thief to the Kurnaje-berring and took their stone. It was Billi-billeri who killed.”
“Why did Billi-billeri kill a wordholder?”
“There is no blood between us,” said Murrangurk.
“How can there not be blood for murder of the sacred?”
“So many wordholders of stone have come,” said Murrangurk, “that no more can be talked, for Bomjinna would be eaten, and the Dreaming of the Kurnaje-berring would die.”
“It is finished,” said Nullamboin. “The sky will fall.”
“It is not finished,” said Murrangurk. “A thing happened. My nephew died a warrior, and the ways of his Dreaming were short. Yet I have led him through his Dreaming, and his ways were not short. I saw them, uncle. And he, too, saw them, with his eyes, and he spoke true to me, but I cannot tell his meaning.”
“The sky will fall, but his ways are not short,” said Nullamboin. “Kah!”
“For seven days I have walked,” said Murrangurk, “and no answer has come to me.”
“Your head is a cloud of grief,” said Nullamboin. “Go up onto Morriock to the bones of Neeyangarra, and hear them. And gather coraminga and torumba; nardoo, goborro, mulkathandra, bolwarra; mara, karagata, dargan. And when you have gathered them, and heard the Ancestor, wait.”
Nullamboin stood and went to the fires of Moodiwarri Full of Eels.
When Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin saw that the men had ended their speaking, she brought the kidney fat of the young man, on a leaf, and Murrangurk took it and ate it and put black paint about his mouth, in honour of his nephew who had died a warrior.
“Come now and rest,” she said. “It is finished.”
“It is not finished,” said Murrangurk. “I must go alone.”
He climbed the slope, between the rocks and trees.
In the Beginning, when the waters parted and the Ancestors Dreamed all that is, and woke the life that slept, the sky lay on the earth, and the sun could not move, until the Magpie lifted the sky with a stick.
And when the Dreaming was done, and each Ancestor made of himself churinga, Bunjil had strong poles of bwal set around the sky; and he put the Old Man to look after them and keep them firm, so that the sky should not fall.
Then Bunjil trod upon the whirlwind and rode beyond the Hard Darkness, and he sits in Tharangalkbek to look upon the living and to guide the dead.
The Ancestor Neeyangarra, father of eagles, had the world of songs, and he taught his songs to the eagles that are the flesh of all mulla-mullung; but he did not teach all his songs to every son, nor did every son teach all his songs to every mulla-mullung, nor did every mulla-mullung teach all his songs to the People.
When he had shaped the land and the rivers and the lakes, Neeyangarra made Morriock for his seat, and he listened to the songs; and they woke the cry of everlasting life within him, and he went up as a fire of flame, and his hollow bones covered Morriock, that the wind might blow and the songs be true.
And from the ashes of his feathers grew the marung tree of everlasting life, in the turn of its Dreaming. Its seeds were small, but had the wings of their father and his songs gave them wisdom, and they became Thuroongarong, the bee. And when Bunjil saw this, he gave the bee the voice of Tundun, his own son of everlasting life, and taught the bee to take sweetness from the flowers and make the honey of everlasting life for all the People.
And so the red bones of fire lay between the marung trees, and Murrangurk sat on the hill top and wept that now the sky should fall.
He lay at night and looked up at the stars, and thought which was the fire of his nephew on that journey to Tharangalkbek. Then he closed his eyes, and listened to the songs of the wind in the stone, and he slept.
The next day he gathered the branches and the leaves as Nullamboin had told, and then he waited.
The water on Morriock was small, and he had no food, but the bees fetched honey to his lips. He looked until he found a white feather of Coonardoo, and, when the bee fed him, he held it gently and stuck the feather on its back and let it go. He followed the white feather of Coonardoo among the trees and over the rocks, until the bee came to its nest. He pulled the feather away, and watched the bees dance.
Murrangurk learned the dance with the sound of the voice of Tundun from their wings. The bees taught him Thuroongarong, and each day he went to the nest and shared the dance of his new flesh.
So he danced, and at night he listened to Neeyangarra’s songs, and hunted the fire among the shining bees, whose dance was the turn of marung into the dawn and the Morning Star. Calm came to his grief.
At the height of the day, he saw men on the grass below Morriock.
He went back to his sleeping place, and painted his body red, and yellow, and put four curved lines of white across his chest to show the combs of his Bee flesh. He took kowir and plover from his medicine bag, and the feather of an eagle’s wing, and fixed them in his headband. He put a koim bone through his nose, and tied bwal about his arms and around his ankles. The black ring at his mouth he left, to remember his nephew and his death for the sky.
Now his spirit was ready. To this he had been born. There was no more that he could do.
Every elder had come, and they sat until the waters had risen, then went to Murrangurk.
Nullamboin gave him a bag of wolard skin, and said, “Here are the ways of your Dreaming. It was for this I sang, and for this I danced.”
Murrangurk took the bag and walked. The elders followed in a line.
At the top of Morriock grew a marung tree, and about it bees flew. Murrangurk and the elders sat. They did not speak. They turned their minds towards the tree.
Murrangurk opened the bag, and took out the churingas of his Dreaming. He held each one, and traced the song that was carved into it, from the beginning to the ending. The tips of the churinga were bare, and sacred to the Dream, for its song to grow from the silence that went before, and to make the silence of the greater Dream to come.
All day they sat. And when the light went and the bees flew to their nest, Wolmutang, Tarrupitch, Burkamuk and Karrin stood at the four points of the sky and swung churingas about their heads on ropes, so that the voice of Tundun would not fade. But the rest kept their thoughts upon the tree, and Murrangurk traced his songs again, to hold pure his spirit; and when he had finished he took the coraminga, the torumba, the nardoo, gobboro, mulkathandra, bolwarra, mara, karagata and the dargan that he had gathered, and, within a shelter of spearthrowers, blew a fire heap from them.
Then he waited, putting his thought to the tree.
A wind came, and the branches moved. It was a small wind, but the branches swept forward, and the trunk bent. It bent over and down, until it touched the ground, and it dipped its head in the glowing.
Then the marung of everlasting life sprang upright in one blaze, and was a bird of flame, an eagle that climbed into the air, and his feathers were churingas of fire, and each churinga a burning song.
Neeyangarra grew and spread his wings until the sky was covered; and he stooped to where Murrangurk sat.
Murrangurk lifted to meet him; and, as he came nearer, the eagle shrank, until he was a star, and the star went into Murrangurk at his mouth, and he felt the churingas of flame. There was tearing of beak and claw, his bones were the red rocks and his head a world of song.