4

Do not think the ghost storyteller is blind to Hilda’s distress. She feels it deeply, but that is another story, and it is Bonny’s story she promised to tell now as best she can. Hilda, the ghost storyteller has seen, has started a journal. The ghost storyteller is pleased. She goes on, whispering the story into the wind in the hope it will be heard by all who stop to listen.

Bonny stands tall and straight, as if feeling the power of the land rising through his legs and spine and all the way to the crown of his head. He looks to the eastern sky and speaks aloud, telling Beeral for the first time how far he plans to travel. It is not like any journey a Badtjala person has ever taken. Dorondera lets go of her uncle’s hand and holds the brown linen folds of her dress out wide.

Blinding rays of sunlight pierce Bonny’s eyes, enough to stop the young man in his tracks. Beeral, it seems to me, sends messages, too, to Can-o-bie and the other spirits asking that they try to stop the group.

‘Remind them of what they are leaving,’ I understand Beeral to say.

The spirits make the sunrise all the more beautiful and throw beams of light onto the forests of K’gari, bathing them in glorious gold. They paint the clouds pink and orange, and send fish flying from the water in a memorable display of the riches of the sea. A magnificent pelican soars overhead, which is surely Beeral’s way of making those he believes have lost their way look up at the sky where birds, the sun, stars and the moon might lead them home. When all of that fails to entice the three to stay, Can-o-bie starts up a great wind.

Bonny says to Beeral, ‘I am doing this for you and for my nephew and for all of our people. Let me go.’

Dorondera, her skirts ballooning now in the wind so that she seems several times her normal size, laughs along with her young cousins at the spectacle she has become. A wave fans up the beach and fills her shoes with water.