Authors: Traci Harding
‘Oh.’ Zoe ran around to the passenger door, climbed in and closed the door. ‘Thanks so much, guys.’ She looked from Kyron to Kyle. ‘This is the best gift I’ve ever been given.’ Zoe hugged Kyle and kissed his cheek. ‘I knew you weren’t lying.’
‘Who’d want to seem this weird on purpose?’ Kyle got the car moving.
‘I love it that you’re weird.’ Zoe rested her head on his shoulder, taking advantage of this short time alone — well, sort of alone.
‘That’s what I love most about you too,’ Kyle managed to say without his voice wavering under the stress; speaking of love was still shaky ground for him.
Still, it was enough to make Zoe feel wonderfully secure about where she stood with Kyle. The misconception of the Matong Bargi — that Zoe was Kyle’s wife — was playing on her mind. This mysterious woman seemed to know so much, so was this more like a prophecy? Zoe was dying to know.
They brought the cars to a stop at a thick patch of forest, not far from Turrammelin mountain. This forest did not appear to be a natural formation, because concentric rings of different trees had been planted in such a fashion as to make the interior impenetrable.
‘This is Matong Bargi’s place?’ Zoe walked around the perimeter with Kyle.
‘She grew every tree herself,’ Tim told them, rather proud of the old woman’s achievement.
‘And this is not Nivok land?’ Zoe noticed how close they were to the mountain.
‘It will be once Bargi passes on,’ Tim corrected her, a little mournfully. ‘This place was granted to Arika by the Nivoks for as long as she lives, then the land reverts to the original owner … well, you now,’ Tim realised.
Zoe then noticed a small stream trickling through a gully that extended from the mountain. ‘The front door?’ she guessed.
‘The only door,’ Tim confirmed as he, Rex and Kimba moved ahead. ‘Wait here, we’ll announce you.’
‘So kind,’ replied Zoe regally.
Kyle was happy enough to wait around. He’d brought his boomerang along and the flat land only thinly dotted by trees between here and the thicker forests on the mountain proved the perfect place to have a play.
The first thing he wanted to try was to make the boomerang return to him. ‘I have a theory about this boomerang, Ron,’ Kyle said in an aside to his guardian when the yowie sat in the shade of the trees to watch and see what Kyle had remembered.
Really?
‘Yep. I believe that it has otherworldly properties and is enchanted to respond directly to the will of the wielder.’ Kyle had walked out onto the plain a little way and he looked back to see what his guardian had to say about it.
Well, that’s a good theory,
Kyron replied, as if none the wiser.
‘Twelve metres diameter, return,’ said Kyle, flinging the weapon off in such a way as to encourage its spinning. It completed a perfect circle and returned to Kyle’s grasp.
‘Yeah!’ Zoe applauded, taking a seat beside Kyron.
‘I knew it!’ Kyle was disappointed. ‘It’s not that I’m so talented … I have a weapon that can’t miss.’
‘But you cast the boomerang differently that time from how you cast it last night,’ Zoe pointed out. ‘Surely that denotes a certain amount of expertise.’
‘I taught him that,’ Kyron boasted proudly. ‘He was quite the prodigy too. He nearly wiped out the entire feral cat population around his orphanage. That is, until his carers deemed Kyle’s obsession with killing wild cats to be unnatural. They threatened to take the boomerang away and that’s when Kyle locked it up and threw away the key.’
Kyle was entranced by the recollection that had been locked away with the weapon; he knew Kyron spoke the truth. ‘I was a lovely child.’ He grinned at Zoe and let the horrible memory go, for he could finally admit that he might have been a bit of a worry as a youngster. ‘But I have control now,’ he stated. As Kyron and Zoe both nodded to agree with him, Kyle spied Rex and Kimba returning. Kimba was looking at him very differently now, as if she was in silent awe of him.
‘Bargi will see you now. Just follow the stream to its end,’ Rex directed, forcing a smile of reassurance.
Rex, too, seemed to treat him with a certain respect, which Kyle had not been expecting, and it made him wonder what his great-grandmother was telling everyone about him. Kyle was used to being a closet psychic cum psycho, not a Messiah.
Zoe caught the change in mood also. As they walked into the forest, branches and foliage arching over the stream, it felt as if they were entering another world, somewhere she’d visited in fairytales, or in a dream.
‘It doesn’t seem quite real, does it?’ Kyle caught a glimpse of the wee bear-like beast that had once played guardian to the
Book of Dreams
. Then Kyle was seeing the creatures from his past everywhere, whipping in and out of the undergrowth that had almost overgrown the tiny stream. ‘Book?’ Kyle recognised the ambience of the place, and picked up his pace, eager to discover if his hunch was right.
‘Who
is
Book?’ Zoe begged to know.
‘I think we’re just about to find out.’
The tunnel of trees ended in a large clearing filled with native flowers and obviously it provided a home for the local fauna. By the pool at the end of the stream stood a very large spindly gum tree and seated inside the hollow at the tree’s base was an old, withered woman. A gap in the canopy allowed soft, filtered sunlight to penetrate and dance upon the ground where the aging woman resided. Her skin was as wrinkled as the tree bark, her hair grey and wiry. Her eyes were closed and she made no movement; Kyle feared he’d come too late.
Welcome, Matong Bakkare. You have been a long time in coming.
Zoe and Kyle both stopped in their tracks when they heard the female voice in their minds. The old woman had not moved her mouth — she still had the appearance of a wax cast. They looked at Tim, seated near her, for an explanation.
My physical senses left me years ago … I have remained of this world only to attend to the business of this meeting.
‘How have you remained here?’ Kyle voiced his curiosity as he took hold of Zoe’s hand and led her to a seat before his great-grandmother.
By the grace of the Great Spirit I have been sustained in order that I could convey my story to you.
Kyle was still frowning. ‘You can’t just live on air, though?’
Can I not?
She sounded surprised that he would think so.
During your experience of detachment from the physical realm, did you hunger or thirst or feel any physical discomfort?
Zoe looked at Kyle, confused by the question. Did Matong Bargi refer to his Near Death Experience? Kyle was grinning broadly.
‘You are Book,’ he concluded surely.
‘What?’ Zoe muttered under her breath, completely perplexed.
I am the
Book of Dreams, Arika granted,
the story of dreams lost and dreams found.
The telepathic voice of the old woman changed into that of the distinguished male voice that Kyle had come to associate with the book.
Your next questions will be, why a book; why disguise my true heritage, sex and colour behind the guise of a white man?
This is exactly what was running through Kyle’s mind. ‘Well, why?’
Would you have listened to the tuition of an old coloured woman? No, I think not. I think the mentality bred into you would have made you argue every step of the way and we never would have made it past the foreword.
Kyle was a little ashamed to concede this was quite true.
If I had come to you in the form of a bullroarer you wouldn’t have known what to do with me. You probably would have mistaken me for a piece of jewellery and hung me around your neck!
‘Ah … what’s a bullroarer?’ Kyle knew he was just proving the old woman’s point, and Tim had a quiet chuckle.
‘It’s a divining tool,’ Tim advised his boy.
‘Oh.’ Kyle had figured it was something like that. ‘You understand the ways of the world very well, Matong Bargi.’
‘Bargi understands the ways of many worlds,’ said Tim, rising to take his leave.
‘Aren’t you staying for the story?’ Kyle asked, surprised.
‘You forget … I was made privy to the book’s secrets long ago.’ Tim smiled and looking at Arika, he clasped both hands to his stomach. ‘
An ungune
,’ he said to her, throwing his arms wide, then resuming his retreat.
‘Should I go?’ Zoe wondered if she was intruding.
Please stay. What I have to say involves you too. Although I should warn you that my tale is sad and terrible, so if you feel compelled to depart at any time, please feel free.
‘I’m sorry, Matong Bargi. I know you are anxious to tell your tale,’ Kyle worried that his childish curiosity was delaying her, ‘but, I still don’t understand how —’
How I could take the form of a book to convey my knowledge and guidance to you?
‘If you’re implying what I think you’re implying,’ Zoe attempted to help out, ‘that’s shape-shifting coupled with bilocation — which is a highly skilled psychic practice, but not entirely unheard of.’ She had read of spiritual masters and psychics who had been accredited with such gifts, but Zoe had never met anyone so adept herself.
‘It’s unheard of by me.’ Kyle admitted to being none the wiser.
It’s just creation … it happens every day.
The old woman employed her aged female voice for thought projection once more and her tone was one of amusement.
Focused will creates the forms of this world and the reality we experience in it, with a lot of help from our elemental friends, of course!
The creatures from the book’s cover emerged from tree and shrub, puddle and stone, to gather around Arika, but the creatures of the otherworld were very respectful of the old woman’s person.
Zoe’s gasp drew Kyle’s attention her way. ‘You see them?’ he asked hopefully.
Zoe nodded, her eyes fixed on the source of her wonder. ‘And Arika is —’ Zoe lost her voice in amazement.
Kyle looked back to his great-grandmother, who was growing younger by the second. When she had regressed in years to her prime, her eyelids parted and she looked at Kyle.
‘We are all just thought forms pulling matter unto ourselves to form a body to inhabit,’ she said, ‘and if you understand this, metamorphosis is possible.’
The young woman focused on a patch of ground in front of her and chanted.
‘Warrawee, bimble thambaroo
,’
Come here, earth spirits,
‘
yappulum nganauwe peggeralin,’
enter my dreaming,
‘warrina yetni tumpinyeri.
’
give it life.
The
Book of Dreams
began to materialise as the forest’s otherworldly inhabitants, quite literally, threw themselves into the Matong Bargi’s creation. When the book contained numerous entities and was completely solid of substance, Arika clasped both hands to her stomach and said:
‘An ungune.’
Thank you.
She threw her hands away from her stomach before lifting the book. ‘I appear youthful to you now because that is what I will you to perceive. My physical body has not changed, only your perception of the illusion of form that I am presenting.’ She handed the book to Kyle.
‘It seems I still have much to learn.’ Kyle conceded as he took possession of the familiar item. The book was solid and just as he remembered it.
‘You never had a problem, Kyle.’ Arika smiled, ‘You have been given a gift and should learn to use it.’
‘Why me?’ Kyle asked the question that had plagued him most of his life.
‘Because the night your weapon,’ Arika pointed to the boomerang Kyle had laid down on the ground beside him, ‘was fed to the flame in offering, you were the one amidst those gathered who the Great Spirit chose to bless with the gift that might save the land which once belonged to our people. I know this, because Baiame assigned the banished guardian of the mountain the task of guiding his chosen warrior towards this destiny. Turramulli found himself hindered by your despair, and as I had a vested interest in your development I agreed to aid the creature that had been the beginning of my woes. By so doing, I began to heal the wound that this land and I have shared for over half a century. I brought forth my
Book of Dreams
, devised decades before to open the eyes of a non-believer —’
‘Tim,’ Kyle granted.
‘And a most worthy recipient of sacred knowledge he has proven to be,’ she assured Kyle. ‘He never stopped agonising over your separation and it was only when I assured him you would return to the mountain of your own accord that Tim refrained from retrieving you too soon.’
Kyle felt the old resentments rising in him, but rather than fly into a fit of rage to protest at how hard done by he had been, Kyle allowed his tears to flow. ‘It was tough, Bargi,’ he told her, although he was sure she knew all that he’d endured.
‘Now you are tough,’ she stated proudly, ‘and you have as much of my wisdom as your psyche can stand. You are healthy, strong, extremely psychic and
in love
.’ She motioned to Zoe, who had placed an arm around Kyle as soon as his tears had started to flow.
‘I don’t feel very tough.’ He brushed away the tears, but Arika reached out and stayed his hand.
‘It is tough to release the past and forgive, for then you have no one to blame for your failures.’ Arika’s glance touched briefly on Kyron, for the creature appeared to be experiencing the emotional turmoil of his charge. ‘By taking responsibility for our own actions, thoughts and aspirations, we find the courage to believe in our own ability to create a better life, for ourself and for others.’