MURRANGURK DANCED THE Morning Star.
“Why do you dance?” said Nullamboin. “Have you not heard me?”
“Why do you ask?” said Murrangurk. “‘The grass of your head is white.’”
Nullamboin laughed. “But yours is the whiter.”
They sat by the fire.
“My song was poor last night.”
“New songs must be sung until they are smooth,” said Murrangurk.
“And it is hard for a man to sing when his balls are not loose.”
“Kah,” said Nullamboin.
“But you did sing strong when you sang me. Now it is my singing.”
“There is a dream that I have not told you,” said Nullamboin. “It was the dream before I sang, so long ago. You dance in a forest of brown wood. Your step is with the voice of Tundun. You dance into silence. The silence and the song are all and one. What does it mean?”
“It sings true,” said Murrangurk. “It is the dream of a warrior.”
“We are warriors,” said Nullamboin. “I tell you this. The dead men kill us, take our bodies, take the land. Now they would take the sacred; but we fight. They will build fires in the place beyond Kooraioo. They will be big fires that will not move. And they build them so that more and more and more of their animals can come; and they ask me the name of the place beyond Kooraioo, so that the people with broken spirit who serve them will know where to come. We cannot save the place beyond Kooraioo, but we can send its name into the Dreaming. ‘What name, old man,’ say the dead men, ‘is it called, so that the people may know it?’ I think swift. ‘Its name,’ I say to them, ‘is Pissflaps.’ ‘Pissflaps,’ say the dead men. ‘It will be a mighty fire for ever.’”
Nullamboin and Murrangurk cried with laughter.
“Oh, uncle, you sing strong! Dead men cannot win!”
They stood. Murrangurk looked into Nullamboin. Nullamboin welcomed him.
Owd Cob and Young Cob
And Young Cob’s son;
Young Cob’s Owd Cob
When Owd Cob’s done.
Nullamboin knew.
Now I must sing, said Murrangurk. They grasped the shoulders and spoke into the eyes. Dance well. They shall not take the Dreaming.
Murrangurk turned, and walked away, and did not look back.
“Pissflaps!” shouted Nullamboin.
“Pissflaps, uncle!”
He went to his fire and held Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin’s hands, and held them. The bones were quiet, the bones of a bird.
They sat, and remembered.
Go now, she said. We are one Dreaming.
We are one Dreaming.
He left, and did not look back.
Murrangurk went to the grave with the two trees. The bark had covered the edges of the spirit lines cut into the wood, but he read their ways.
At the Place of Growing, he 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 and the feather of an eagle’s wing, painted his headband yellow, and across it, in red, the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend, and set the feathers there. He put a koim bone through his nose in place of a reed, and tied bwal about his arms and around his ankles. Then he sat in turn before the Clashing Rock and before the Tree, and sang them into him. He faced the Spirit Hole.
First he danced the Kal, and then the Crow. He danced the Kowir. He danced Thuroongarong. Then he danced the Eagle. And then he sang again.
He sang his Dreaming, and he sang the songs of Neeyangarra, to the clap of wangim, he sang all the songs of Neeyangarra, which had never been sung; and he sang the feathers of the Eagle onto his arms. He sang the solemn way of the Snake, and then he sang the Rainbow.
The waters of the Spirit Hole bubbled, and Murrangurk sang harder and clapped faster, until he sang songs he did not know that came to him from the waters; and out of the Spirit Hole was the plumed head of Binbeal, the Rainbow, and it lifted into the sky, drawing the body upwards, and arched over and down upon Murrangurk, who rose on his eagle feathers to meet him; and Binbeal opened his mouth and swallowed.
Murrangurk flew into the throat. It was not dark, but full of yellow stars, the Five Points of Time, and their lines made the five sides of the comb of Thuroongarong at the heart; and light, and all around him the veins were the pattern of his spirit upon the trees, and they began to turn about him, and to change.
They straightened into lines that were the net of the burying of the head, the track of Death and Life, and then they moved and were the four-pointed heads of the children of Binbeal who had carried Murrangurk inside the Tree. The heads joined, to four-sided Dreamings, and, in the middle of each, though still a net, were the flowers of coraminga, and torumba; nardoo, goborro, mulkathandra, bolwarra; mara, karagata, dargan and other flowers that he knew but could not name.
Bees fed from the flowers, and took their sweetness to everlasting life, and their wings were the voice of Tundun.
Murrangurk flew the gullet of Binbeal, and the lines of Dreaming were the joined combs of Thuroongarong, and then on to the Six Points of Time, joined as combs; and bees fed.
The flowers and the wings faded, but the voice remained. Murrangurk was carried through the turning rainbow. Ahead of him the way led into the paths of a churinga of crystal; and he traced its paths, and each path brought him knowledge, to the great spiral at its centre. He was carried round and in, until, at the end, was the circle of Being, and into this he sank, and through it, to the Ninth Point of Time, beyond where there is no other known among the People.
He was in the sky, under the stars, and before him, on a block of crystal, Bunjil sat, his white beard flowing over him, and, on each shoulder, a thundal went up to the sky, and Murrangurk could not see their end.
Grandfather, said Murrangurk. I have come to take the Dreaming to where it may be safe and not die.
I know why you have come, said Bunjil. You shall take the Dreaming, and the Dreaming of All. But first you shall take a new name; for your song is almost sung, but your next Dreaming is new. Your Dreaming is ever to walk the boundaries, to be the master of them, and to guide the Dreaming in all Time. For that you must have a new name that none may speak. And it is this.
Bunjil gave Murrangurk a name beyond thought.
Yes, Grandfather.
The Dreaming shall not die, and it shall not be disgraced, said Bunjil. I take it from what is Now; and those who live there only will not know it and will think it dead. And you shall take it to where your step in the Dance began, and there you shall leave the Dreaming. For it is yours to take, but not to sing. That is your way. The Dreaming will wait until another singer comes, because of you, and he will travel as you have travelled, but he will sing in another Time.
And you, who have travelled far, shall travel further, to the churinga of your new Dreaming, your new Time, your new Song.
If that is my way, that is my way, said Murrangurk.
It was not by chance that you were sung, for chance is but a little dream, said Bunjil. We are the bees of the invisible. We gather the honey of the invisible and store it in the great, yellow hive of the visible, for everlasting life.
Take the Dreaming.
Bunjil held out to Murrangurk a crystal.
It is the Murrawun, the father of spearthrowers!
And it is the Dreaming, said Bunjil.
Murrangurk reached out and took the crystal; and fell into light.
He was beside the Spirit Hole. The feathers of his arms lay around him. He held a bag of wolard skin. He opened it, and saw what was inside.
It was a wooden spearthrower, with its peg fixed in gum. Around the neck of the handle was bound string of wolard hair. And all was painted red, with three bands of white above, and three below, the neck and four above the peg. It was a spearthrower of reckoning, used by the featherfoot men alone.
Murrangurk laughed with Bunjil, and their laughter filled Earth and Time. “Oh, Pissflaps!”