“Yes, my daughter.”
“I'll smile mother, but it definitely won't be for him. It will be for you, and the healing that we practise. I think he's ugly.
Look at him. Long and skinny, hardly any hair on him. The hair on his head is straight as a length of sinew, and as thin; and his skin is so smooth. It's as smooth as a girl's, and he's black; as black as midnight on a moonless night.”
“He's just a boy. I'd say he is a couple of summers older than you.”
“Me? I'm ten summers old, and he's a lot bigger than me. Only a couple of summers older?”
“Does it matter, Imagen? ... You don't like him, so that will make nursing him so much the easier, your feelings won't be involved, and if we continue talking, our patient might die before we can get him to the river.”
They carried him on a makeshift stretcher, the girl Imagen walking at his side wiping his face and trying hard to ignore the boy and the strange feelings he stirred within her. For the rest of the day and through the night they sat by the river. When the fires raged within, they immersed him in the cooling waters; when his body needed heat, they covered him with the skins of their bedding. As the morning star rose he slept in peace on the sand, his fever broken. Beside him, Imagen too had succumbed to sleep.
The light was growing stronger with each passing moment. Suddenly Imagen sensed movement. She watched as the boy stirred, opened his eyes and looked about. She saw fear spring into his eyes as his gaze fell upon her. Panic grabbed at her; and then she remembered her mother's words. She beamed her most beautiful smile, daring him to reject it, to reject her. He lay watching her. She smiled until her face began to ache.
“Qua,” he muttered.
“Qua?”
“Qua,” he repeated, motioning to his mouth and opening it.
“Oh, you want water.” She fetched a small bowl of water
and knelt beside him. He raised his head and she tried to give him the water, but his strength gave out and his head fell back in the sand, the water spilling down over his face. He turned his head towards her, said something totally unintelligible and smiled in turn.
“I don't know what you just said, you ugly boy.” Imagen responded, “I hope you're not trying to get manly with me.”
He nodded at her, smiling even more.
“I suppose I will have to support your ugly face if I'm to get some water into you ... I just hope I don't drown you.”
She knelt directly behind him, supporting his head in her lap, his shoulders raised by her knees. The effort drained him and as she reached for the bowl she saw the steady silent stream of tears flowing out of the corners of his eyes.
“Don't cry, boy.”
He did not understand her words, but he was comforted. He tried to help her when next she offered him the water.
“Come on, boy. Open your mouth.” She made to raise his head and his mouth opened. She hurried to pour in the water, he coughed and spluttered.
“What are you trying to do, you stupid girl? Drown me? Slow down.”
Not understanding his words, she acknowledged his rebuke and gently, slowly, lowered the water to his lips. He sipped and sipped, and when at last the container was empty, he closed his eyes and slept. She stayed in the same position, her legs cramping.
The mother found them so, the boy sound asleep with his head in the girl's lap. Slowly, carefully, she extricated Imagen, then built a fire to heat the broth she had prepared for the boy's awakening. She had mixed into it pain relieving medicinal plants to help dissipate the clotted blood that caused his
wound to swell. She massaged her daughter's legs back to usefulness, and when all was done, she woke the boy.
Alarm showed briefly in his eyes, as he turned to study the face of the older woman. She held his gaze steadily, with no sign of malice. Did he see pity there? A smile appeared and reassurance blossomed in him like a flower; he was safe. He lay back and relaxed, looked to the young one again, and smiled.
The mother supported his head, and fed him the broth. He slurped greedily and when he had taken his fill he lapsed into sleep again.
Of the boy's companions there had been no further sign but the Lowlanders knew they weren't very far away. As night closed around them, their senses prickled alarmingly when the aura of the men of the Tall Trees radiated into their midst. They kept close to their campfires, their weapons never too far away.
After the second such night the tribe decided to move away from the source of imminent danger. The healer woman was told of the decision. She realised the danger she had placed the tribe in. She had done all she could for the boy, she had broken his fever, straightened and splinted his leg, and eased his pain. Silently she took one last look at him and moved the water vessel closer. Imagen lingered a little longer, then set out with her mother, following the path of the tribe.
Two wandering days along the banks of Oobagooma, the threat now non-existent, Imagen disappeared. It was easy to find her tracks; she had turned and walked back to the boy she had left lying in the sand in the shade of the big Cudgibutt trees. The mother and Nwunta made ready to go after the girl. Laden down with all their belongings, they trudged back the way they had come. By late afternoon the following day, they too arrived back at the camp. They found Imagen lying
in the shallows with the boy, sponging him with cooling water.
“Imagen! What are you doing?”
“Oh Mother, he is bad, he has fever again. And as for danger, there is none. They have left.”
“How do you know?”
“I watched.”
“You watched them go?”
“I watched everything. I saw what they did to this boy. They are cruel and evil.”
“Explain yourself, girl.”
“The other night ... I heard his voice. He spoke to me in his language and I understood his words. He was lonely and frightened, afraid of what his people would do to him when they finally found him. He didn't know they were close by. He asked me to come to him, to save him. He wants to live, mother. He doesn't want to die.”
“And his people? What of them? They were here I can see their tracks everywhere.”
“Oh, they were here all right. They hid until all of us had gone, and then they came for him. They knew where he was all the time. They were waiting for us to go.”
“And you saw them?”
“As I came along the river bank, I heard this weird chanting. I crept as close as I could, then climbed up that big old Cudgibutt over there and watched it all. There was this crazy man all dressed up, with feathers in his hair and wrapped around his arms and his legs. He kept yabbering and cubba cubba'd around the boy, waving his arms and stamping his feet. Then he went into the trees while the other men took the splint off his leg. When the crazy man came back, he poured water over the boy to wake him, then made him swallow something. Then he began his crazy dancing again,
shaking his arms and head and yelling to the trees. Then he must have told two men to lift the boy to his feet, and then let him go. He screamed. And he collapsed.” Tears slid out of the corners of her eyes, and she hurriedly brushed them away.
“Go on, Imagen.”
“Then they dragged him to the edge of the water. It was like he was already dead. This old man knelt beside him and talked to him obviously urging him to get up and walk. When the boy did nothing, he got his spear, and he put the spear-tip to the base of the boy's throat and said something to him. I knew then they were going to kill him.”
“Why didn't they?”
“I screamed ... And I fell out of the tree.”
“Mother of the Spirits protect us!”
“I came crashing down and bounced out into the water.” Imagen rubbed her back. “It knocked the wind out of me, but I still had my senses, so I swam underwater to the far bank and looked back through the leaves of that weeping tree.”
“What happened then?”
“They were looking all around, into the trees, and a couple were pointing to where I must have hit the waterâI can remember my scream echoing, and ringing through the trees. I must have shocked them. Then the crazy man yabbered something, and they grabbed their weapons and ran for the trees. When they reached them, they just vanished...”
“How long ago?”
“A long time, Mother. They won't be back.”
“You seem so sure, Imagen.”
“They have nothing to come back for.”
“Why did you come back, Imagen?”
“Because he called me. I couldn't leave him, knowing that we had left him to his death. He might be an ugly boy, mother, but there's something about him that I like.”
Nwunta listened to her sister's story in silence. Now she said: “My little sister has lived more of life in two days than I have in sixteen summers.”
“Well, daughter. For good or for bad, we are here. First, we have to straighten his leg again.”
“How long are we going to camp here?”
“For as long as it takes to get his leg bound again. We don't have enough medicine with us, but there is plenty that we can gather once we catch up with the rest of the tribe. We will have to make a good stretcher to carry him on.”
“Thank you, Mother, and you too Nwunta.”
“I don't think you really know what you have done, Imagen. You are now responsible for this boy's life. You have taken on a great responsibility.”
“I know, Mother. I understand what you are saying.”
“From this moment on, you will have to look after him, bathe him, fetch his water, find food. You must teach him to speak our language, everything that is needed for him to survive. We will help as best we can, but you cannot expect too much help from us. Nwunta is a woman now and soon to take a husband. Believe me, Imagen, it would be better if we fixed his leg, made him comfortable, gave him food, and left him to his fate.”
“You would do that? Then you would be no better than his own people. No, Mother, I came to his call. I will look after him.”
Together they worked at the healing. Nwunta collected and shaved and shaped the springy wood from the weeping tree. Then she cut into strips an old kangaroo skin, and soaked it in hot water. They worked quietly and quickly. One held the leg up, another held the splints in place, and the mother bound the wet strips of skin to the smoothed pieces of wood. As the strips dried, they shrank, tightening the splints firmly
in place. So it would remain until the bones had knit and the boy could put weight upon his foot. When all was done, they rested. Imagen sat beside the boy, sponging him down, cooling the fire that again raged within. Once they were rested, they set to and made a stretcher, firm, light and strong. The sun was low in the sky as they finished. The Mother looked into the darkening gloom, and turned her eyes towards the tall trees. There was nothing there. They would take a chance and make a fire. Tomorrow they would begin their journey and rejoin the tribe.
By the time the tribe had returned to the place of the Tall Trees the following year, the boy was walking again. His leg had set straight; but when the cold winds blew the leg ached. He was still very much a stranger within the tribe, mostly keeping to himself and very aware of his debt to the healer woman's family. Daily he became more a member of that family. They called him Ngala.
Imagen still had to do his foraging for him; she would walk with him, showing him where to find tubers, which seeds were good and which were tasteless, which berries were edible, which used for medication, and which were poisonous. Sometimes she pointed to a distant shrub and told him that she would meet him there, then went off to be with her friends and the women of the tribe. Though she knew that he was still dependent on her, she needed to show him that she wasn't there to be at his beck and call. After all, she wasn't married to him.
On long treks, as his leg grew in strength, Imagen began to load him down with things she felt he could carry. Without a word, he accepted the humiliation that she was handing him. It would have been unacceptable in his own tribe to have
even considered that a man would carry any of the cast-off belongings that a woman didn't feel up to carrying. The man was the hunter, the provider of meat. He needed to be free of such obligations, ready at any instant to take the initiative, for no one could tell when game might appear. If he resented the task he didn't show it either to Imagen or any child or adult who passed him by and saw his struggling efforts.
The healer woman had become a mother to him, and he called her just that.
Nwunta had married Gullia, a young man of another tribe from along the coast. Gullia had seen the sadness in Nwunta's eyes as she prepared to say farewell to her own family and he had decided he would like to see other lands and know a little more about his wife's family and tribe before settling down with a family of his own. Sometimes Nwunta and Gullia walked with the boy, but often they were off in hidden places, learning the intimacy of each other.
At nights, when the family gathered together to cook a meal, talk and be together for protection, comfort and companionship, the boy learned to speak their tongue and got to know their culture and taboos. In turn, he answered their questions about his own country, his life, his people. He became good friends with Gullia, and listened avidly as Gullia described his tribe's way of fishing and hunting on the ocean. He learned a little about the moods of the sea and longed to hear the pounding of the surf on the beaches, to feel the cascading wall of water as a wave broke overhead.
In the years that followed he was hunted and played at war games like every other young male. He had grown taller, and had begun to fill out. He now stood a good head over his childhood companions, and was as tall as most of the men of
the tribe. Soon he would be by far the tallest member of the tribe.
Now as the tribe approached the Tall Trees of their wintering quarters, strange feelings awakened within him. Emptiness sucked at his heart and he began to feel the familiarity of the trees, mountains and streams. As much as he loved his foster family, and had been a part of them for four good summers, his ancient ties were calling him, pulling him back to the land of his birth. His gaze scanned the lowlands and returned to settle on the tall trees. Every day the pull came stronger. He knew it was time to return home.