nature – Chris Collins

Imbolc

My body has fallen back in with its Northern rhythms. There was Imbolc, brief reprise of snowdrop and crocus, brave buds peeping early, but now winter storms have come again. I sit in a turret, with half a panopticon of vista to watch the winds whip bare birch and oak, the hazel’s pale catkins turning yellowish to play dead. Rain is driven in visible sheets before the woodlands and the brook below rages, plunging its steel grey waters.

This reminds me of other turrets; writing in a Goulburn neo-gothic villa, and precarious above the sea at Eden with the writhing jacaranda. But we do things more quietly here in England. There is no wide ocean passage or endless limestone plain. Just ivy choked trees like a mockery of eucalypt regrowth, the green field, the brook, the rain – persistent, but somewhat tamed. Wind howls in cracks in the windows between the ladybird infestations I’m newly discovering. Magpies gather in nursery rhyme prophecies on the grass below. I read them.

Yesterday, I walked along the canal. Stamped mud up my long brown skirt, drenched it in the rain then it was blown dry again by the end of the walk.

If this is all sounding like a typical bucolic idyll where Chris hedge witches about or tramps the fields to the farm shop like Tess of the feckin’ d’Urbervilles, let me disabuse you.

I have moved to Birmingham.

Without is no wilderness, or whatever passes for it in England. I can see the tower blocks from my windows, and the copse runs to the grey tarmac web of roads soon enough. But undeniably, our new apartment is nice. It has two bedrooms. It has a balcony. It will have birds – although not cockies. It is indeed in a warm, south-facing turret with a marvellous panorama. It is by a large playing field, a raging torrent of a brook, the Stratford and Avon canal and is bordered by strips of woodland. So I get all that ruralish bliss, but because it’s just down the road from King’s Heath high street, the buses also come every four minutes. Winner winner.

Since arriving back in England, I calculate I have slept in about eight different beds. We finally have our own little place, and it’s not even shit, and I’m relieved. Today I have spent the afternoon scrubbing skirting boards and dusting venetian blinds while listening to an abridged audiobook about ‘wintering.’ It’s very Chris. This clever writer even managed to hit upon a whole lot of the insightful comments I already made about winter in my last blog. I tell you, it’s a crime I don’t have my own radio 4 podcast yet. But this writer certainly focused on all the good stuff about using winter to rest and rethink. Wallow, I say. Embracing sadness, stillness, quiet. So I meditated very profoundly on these deep thoughts while balanced on the windowsill until I opened the window to let out a mysterious ladybird and a whole fucken swarm of flies collapsed onto me.

So that was stillness, repose, and very nearly me, right out the window. Seemingly ladybirds are sort of nesting in the window frame. The bit where you open it, on the side there, don’t look too closely, it’s probably where the spiders lurk, although I’ve never worked out how they don’t get squished. But in the case of my windows, there’s an intimidating number of ladybirds crawling over each other, potentially preyed upon by the swarm of flies that also seem to inhabit the area. Perhaps it’s not so bleak. Perhaps they all live in the window frame in some sort of symbiotic harmony, like an epiphyte or something; but I tell you what, they’re not bloody living in harmony there anymore because I poked them all away with a pen lid.

That shall need further Dealing With.

Goodness, this wind has got rather more intense; as has the rain. I shall be able to see a soggy Gentleman walk up the path from here soon enough. Poor man. Have a care also for the poor spider in the left-most window; she has spun her web outside and is being rudely buffeted, but she is an English spider so I don’t need to move out and leave her the keys – she won’t be trying to kill me in my sleep.

Other things I have been doing in my two days At Home is traipse to Lidl and back (it’s like Aldi, chaps – and we even have Aldi in the UK too) to restock cupboards. I thought regretfully of all my nuts and seeds and stacks of food organised serenely in Jen’s Northbourne cupboard, but of course, I’m just glad it didn’t go to waste. Meanwhile, I rebuild my spice collection starting with C and working up.

I have seen most friends since getting back. And shout out to those dear bosom friends of the soul – who keep me in their hearts while I slip away for three years and welcome me home again as if I’d never left. After my mother’s arms and her insatiable pouring of wine, nothing made me feel more at home than reuniting with people who let me just guiltlessly pick up where I left off – who clearly didn’t begrudge my absence but were just happy for my return and the time I’d had. As I get older, I hit happy milestones of having known some friends longer than I haven’t, and there is much to be said for having friends that have seen you grow from idealistic student to embittered teacher and still like you anyway. I am aware I’m pulling a bit of a Victor Frankenstein, here, lamenting that old friends of youth are the only true ones, and new friends are never as good, while he dies by the new friend who rescued him from the ice. Poor Walton. I shall do no such thing – and I hope my Australian friends will stay close as I work to keep the Australian version of me true and open.

Which I suppose brings me to my new job and how my friends are helping me in to that. Having applied to a swathe of jobs, I’ve accidently got one that isn’t teaching. This has been an intense mind shift. Instead of marking mocks and guiding young people towards my leftist agenda through peace, love and literature an’ all that, I’ll be doing a junior admin role with the Open University. Working from home, in my little turret here. Seven and a half hours a day.

The same day I was offered this job, I was also offered an interview for a teaching role with a TLR in a school out past Wolverhampton. I sat down to prepare my interview lesson, I spent two and a half hours in Birmingham library stimulatingly researching the poem to teach, the method I would use, the resources, and realised I had completed only the first fifteen minutes of the lesson. I didn’t sleep for two nights, felt sick on the day of the interview and needed to poo five times before leaving. And that is how I feel for the whole first year in a new school. I am such a fuck up. But I really don’t miss that. The feeling that even after hours of planning one lesson, doing it completely differently might turn out to be more effective. You just don’t know. And there isn’t the time to plan lessons to that extent. And I don’t know what it was, but while I was sat in the inevitable breaktime come-and-bog-at-the-new-teachers session I felt … some of the toxicity of teaching again. The comparing of yourself, the trying to outdo each other, the show-offyness. But that’s all neither here nor there – I didn’t get the job, so junior admin role it is. It’s not a pay cut; right now, I’m on nothing, so it’s a definite pay rise.

I have gone through several waves of emotion on all this. First, I thought of all my marvellously clever friends who are role models and leaders, like Brooke and Claire in Australia, and Jenny in London and worried they might not want to be my friends anymore because I’m not in their league as a junior earner and lowly admin. Then I realised that was not only foolish pride, but also quite insulting to their integrity and decency. Then I felt like I was betraying my beautiful teacher friends like Corinne, Spellman, Emma-wife and Grace by abandoning them. ‘Confessing’ to Corinne made me feel better. Going back to my old school, where my old role doesn’t seem to be … thriving, made me feel worse – I should be sorting this out. Sitting with Emma on the floor of her spare room while she looked like she was about to pass out with exhaustion made me…think again. I love working with young people and sharing literature. But that seems to be less and less what teaching is allowed to be.

Part of me is a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t get a role of equivalent responsibility outside of my sector. Lots of people manage it. I expected a drop in pay, but not quite this much. Hearing other people talk about the things they’re doing at work that sound so important and exciting make me feel a bit ashamed of myself. But I don’t start till Monday, so who knows, my job could be that too.

Ultimately, I come back to Imbolc. The cold part of early spring, where things begin to grow from tiny, vulnerable shoots that may either die or thrive. Yup, I’ve picked a bit of a nervy time to change from a stable, well-paid career to a very junior one. Australia – I’m sure you’ve heard about fuel price increases which are global, but the UK is facing a major cost of living crisis this spring. Whoops. But I am also hoping this job in an excellent organisation will lead to more challenging things. I know there are excellent opportunities in the OU; I applied for them and didn’t get interviews. I’ll apply again.

And there will be growth in other ways. It’s morning now and I have re-established The Routine, even though I lamentably don’t have Hanna anymore to keep me accountable. I was up at six, did a HIIT, washed and was writing this by half past seven. I mean very much to keep up writing and the successes I’ve had in Australia. I will be planning it in and using the extra brain-space and weekends (where I’m too poor to go away) to finish novels and try to develop as a writer. I needs must first buy myself some sort of floppy sleeved linen shirt a la The Death of Chatterton, now that I am going to be a poor, struggling artist. Really lean in to that, you know? But all my life I’ve not had to think much about what happens next, because the term drives you forwards and tells you what to do. Now I must decide. I’ve realised in the last few years how damn lazy I’ve always been, how I actually find it a bit of a struggle to push myself to do things I don’t have to do. I was a bare minimum kid who was lucky enough to be reasonably smart. This will be real growth, real change. It will be hard.

It’s a beautiful morning. Storm Eunice is on its way. Things are lovely, then hard – there is no linear trajectory, just cycles. I will be soothed by sunshine and blackbirds and feel strong and happy and capable. Later, even though I know it’s coming, I won’t be able to stop myself being anxious or overwhelmed or deflated when things are difficult, despite logically knowing it’ll be alright. But I know I’ll survive it.

Growing hurts. This is the lesson of wintering. Poke green fingers through the earth and frost will bite them. But snowdrops grow anyway. So you must poke, try, make, and when it hurts, it’s a reminder you’re growing.

Forest to Reef

Cape Tribulation is sold short by its name. Maybe it’s the getting there; it must be the getting there. You cross the Daintree River on a charming little ferry – it’s seriously croc infested (the river, not the ferry) – then wend along a narrow, windy road. High rainforested hills sweep up to your left, the coral sea glitters out to your right. It is, apart from perhaps that veranda at Red Mill House, the most enchanting place. This cape exemplifies the Australian specialisation of beautifully sweeping curves, and honest-to-goodness palm trees on sand so white it hurt. Then the blue, blue, blue.

We spent an unforgivably luxurious afternoon paddling (on the safe side of a sandbar, in water an inch deep), practising handstands (I don’t know why this has become a beach tradition of ours) and I read while the Gentleman built a little fort with a good coaching house on its little road. It was just extraordinary; you must ask him about it. A rhythmic knocking above our heads caught our attention and we turned to see another black butcherbird butchering a coconut. It fell down and cracked. We actually picked it up and drank the water that trickled out of it, like a pair of goddamn children-of-nature. Freakin’ idyllic. Then we strolled along the Dubuji track – a boardwalk through the mangroves which was also captivating. We had been assured by a girl at the servo next door that we might meet a cassowary. I’m not sure I want to meet a cassowary, I said. Oh, they’re ok; they’re pretty curious, she said, they can come right up to you. I’m not sure I want them to come right up to me, I said, they can bloody kill you with one knife edged foot. In fact, if I see one, I want a clear space in the other direction and nothing stopping me from keeping it in clear view. What I don’t want, is to be trapped on a narrow boardwalk surrounded by snake-infested swamps. But she assured us it was fine, and, not knowing if this was again the risk tolerance, safety reality, or actual bloody ruthlessness of northerners, we shrugged and went.

A word on mangroves. They are hauntingly lovely places. I don’t know why haunting, I’m trying to resist an inevitably gothic comparison, and in their deep, moist shade there is something gothic, something shadowed and mysterious. But not threatening. I don’t know, maybe meeting Kuku Yalanji people, reading about Aboriginal culture and meeting lots of people talking about their culture means that a person never again can approach the spaces of Australia with the attitude of Joan Lindsay in Picnic at Hanging Rock or… or bloody Lawrence. It is vast, but it is not an unknown place of terror to be conquered. It is deeply, deeply known, and deeply loved by people who have known and loved it for thousands of years; who will share that knowing and love. It’s something I can feel. Ok, chaps, fade back in, I’m finished, either way, the mangroves gave me that tingly feeling of excitement that forest river pools give me when the words of Jenny Greenteeth songs slip into my head.

Right, and THEN we shot down to another campsite that had freakin’ fresh stone-baked pizza, so we smashed two of them like a pair of hungry bastards, crushed a couple of beers and watched the moon rise over the sea. JESUS, I shouldn’t be allowed such loveliness. Then back at our tiny little cabin at Safari Lodge (this place, despite being waist deep in rainforest, does an awesome almond flat white, breakfast fritters and noodle salads), we sat outside in the dark watching little marsupials nip in and out of the bushes.

After visiting ice cream making fruit orchards and tea plantations, and getting MANGED (eaten by insects, as the Gentleman calls it), we regretfully left the rainforest. Yeah, I was pretty gutted. I could have stayed there another full week listening to the lolla-palooo calls of wompoo fruit-doves and the oli-oli-oli calls of the olive-backed orioles, the ever-present peaceful dove, and the sound of the sea. And the drive was the last chance to listen to Murder Ballads all the way through, so, heart break all round.

I have never been snorkelling before.

As a child, watching The Little Mermaid like all children do, except, apparently, the Gentleman, I thought being able to breathe underwater and chill with fishies would be just awesome. The sort of thing ya couldn’t drag me away from.

Turns out, it’s a lot harder than I thought.

At the age of 15, I discovered that getting out of a wetsuit is one of the hardest things a human can do in their life. Twenty-two years later, I bloody stand by that. On board Coral Sea Dreaming, I dragged the horrific latex thing off one shoulder, and it took me a bit too long to realise that in the struggle I’d whapped a bap out, which was, unbeknown to me, enjoying the sea breeze completely unencumbered by my bikini. Of course, I did what any dignified adult woman would do, which was exclaim loudly in horror, oh shit, look! I’ve pulled my boob out…

Christ, Chris.

But I’ve noticed that in the telling of my adventures to chums, that snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef – a lifetime ambition for any human that has ever seen Finding Nemo – consistently comes last. This is not just because it was the last thing we did. I’ve been pondering. I think because it is so otherworldly, so unlike any thing I have ever done before, that I don’t know how to explain it. I haven’ learned how to tell it. There is no point in a human’s life when you are lying flat, facing down, and watching things move ten feet below you. Floating face down and looking, seeing, is not something humans are built for. It’s completely unique.

And a bit fucken scary.

First you put your big old goggles on, and there’s a bit that goes over your nose. This, as we know, is to close off that orifice so you only breathe through the tube you put in your mouth. Of course the minute I put the goggles on, I tried and failed to breathe through my nose, which made me panic, then putting something huge in my mouth was pretty uncomfortable. Oy, stop it. Then when you’ve figured out a few breaths, you do what you are taught from birth never to do, which is put your face straight down into the water; and breathe in.

Bleaurgh. So I got the hang of that a bit, even graduated away from the pool noodle, but I managed to keep sucking in sea water, so I’d panic and surface again, and stare out over miles and miles of open, wide sea and feel lonely and scared with the waves breaking over me and my toe rubbing roughly against the flippers as I tried to stay upright. The impossibly tanned, impossibly beautiful young people on the boat were very kind about my ineptness and the lovely long-haired young man told me to pout more, as if for insta; that stops the water coming in, he said. Millennials and their adaptivity.

Eventually I calmed down a bit and got to stare at some fishes. We saw a beautiful little turtle, frowning in that wise and thoughtful way that they do. Not towards us, like in the picture above. In fact, he took one look at us and swiveled round right back where he came from. Gracefully. But disdainfully. Huge coral plants had tiny little fishes darted around out of time with the current and tides. We rounded over big bommies (like under water mountains or something) and swam right into huge shoals of fish of every colour. Some had hilarious bulbous heads, like really big foreheads or frowns. Others were gracefully tiny, all blue with yellow tails. The implausible parrotfish were shimmery purple and green. A little whitetip reef shark shimmied its way below me as I stared down.

As we got more used to it, I suggested we just sort of hang out in one place and watch. And that was wonderful. We lay spread-eagled on the surface, breathing carefully, and feeling ourselves being gently buffeted by the current, left-right-right; left-right-right; left-right-right. With all the fish that were doing it too. Left-right-right. Left-right-right. For days afterwards when I closed my eyes, there was that gentle surrender of left-right-right, with an imprinted halo of cold around my head where it peeped above the water, the weightless feeling and the fish left-right-right-ing with me.

One thing you don’t expect is how soooooore your foreheads get from the goggles pressing deeply into your brow, and your teeth ache like hell for hours afterwards from clamping down on your snorkel tube for dear life.

But the whole affair was delicious, hours of cruising across the sea and bouncing on the purple-blue with the green rainforest mountains behind us; lolling in hammocks reading books while a whole freakin’ pod of dolphins followed the boat, writing, making new friends, squealing over a minke whale that came to explore what this funny, big, whale-like thing was that ejected these funny little spiders. Oddly, the gender balance was completely the opposite from the Kimberley trip, and it created a different tone. I took my customary role as group gob-shite, and a wonderful woman, Margaret, who was #vanlife-ing her way around Australia (because she was wanted at home, not needed – isn’t that beautiful? Life goal) gently teased the only men into submission and quiet.

We all drank a lot of beer, ate tacos and watched the full moon rise over the sea. And I fell asleep trying to think of ways to describe the gentle, endless left-right-right as the waves gently tapped the boat in an eternal game of It.

Gift of the Gibb – Pt 1

‘So this is it, guys! Jump in.’

In, he said. Well, I didn’t quite know what ‘in’ was. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, and I was cold and needed a wee. I was aware that there was water of an uncertain depth ahead and while I’d like to use the old metaphor of ‘inky black;’ maybe chuck in a ‘gurgling’ to describe it, I’d be lying because I couldn’t see a bloody thing. The light of my feeble headtorch patchily revealed that the valiant Damo – our guide, had stripped down to his shorts and boots and was rubbing his hands together between hunched shoulders. Then that image was gone pretty quick, lost to the gulping blackness. Apart from the wobbling, unenthusiastic glow of his headtorch ebbing away, I could see nothing else.

I stood on the sand, with the Gentleman nudging me; go on, Chris. But why the fuck, I thought, am I in a pitch-dark cave at 6am about to swim in a flood-swollen, frozen creek infested with goddamn crocodiles?

Well, I didn’t want to be left in the dark on me own for a croc to find, so in you go, – and I did that thing I do when getting in water (only recently discovered, as entering the inclement waters of the Irish, Atlantic and North Seas is not something in which sensible Brits indulge), which, it turns out, is hyperventilate the words ‘shit! fuck! fuck! Ok, I’m in, I’m in, shit! fuck’ and there you are, aloft, kick, swim! Hope your boots don’t weight you down, don’t think about the crocs and get to the other side.

This was the first major spot on our tour of the Kimberley; heading from Broome to Darwin: Tunnel Creek. Despite arriving at the stretching crags of a 350million-year-old coral reef at dawn, swimming that cold creek wasn’t even the first impressive thing I’d done that day. No. That was to meaningfully pick up the shovel and disappear off into the bush. But I’d been keen on getting to Tunnel Creek – I’d been lent a book by my shanty man Bruce about the Bunuba people’s resistance to encroaching and violent pastoralists in the 1880s, led by the heroic Jandamara who evaded capture for years by hiding in these caves. I dunno if he had to deal with crocs. And they were certainly there; as we followed the creek’s strips and pools, careful not to stumble and reach out for the wrong half naked person in the dark; little red eyes at the edges of the caves where they cringed, spread like butter against the walls. Bloody hell. And then walk towards the light, and relief dripped off me, along with the water, as daylight emerged at the other end of the tunnel, festooned with trees, littered with heron and loud with peace. Until Damo pointed out the long, deep imprint of an enormous reptilian tail in the sand, heading from whence we’d come.

‘Right guys, back through the creek again, then!’

FUCK’s sake.

On our way back, we encountered three noisy lads on giant, unicorn inflatables with tinnies. Now we’ve read a lot about crocs, or ‘croncs’ as the Gentleman has affected to call them. Salties can live in fresh or salt water and have a gland that removes the salt. They can come up to 100km upriver. They like to eat small calves, or wallabies, or wallaby sized humans like children and Chrissies. They can lean back on their tail as if it was a fifth leg, just like kangaroos, so pealing you off the roof of your ute isn’t much of an issue. They can even, apparently, climb up waterfalls. Jesus. We have agreed that, along with its weather, you don’t fuck with Australian wildlife. The hippy mantra ‘they’re more scared of you than you are of them,’ rather underestimates the boofhead courage of your average 5 metre fucking salty. But here’s an observation from The Brit Abroad, West Australians and Northern Territorians certainly have an impressive risk tolerance. Or commendable courage. Or they’re just fucken nuts. I pondered the gleeful shouts of those floating blokes the next day while drinking a cup of tea by the bank of the incomparable Manning Creek at 7am, breath caught by the misty golden beauty of the morning. Little fish swam right up to the edge where I sat, then spun round to rub their backs on the sand and flash their silver bellies to the sky. I sipped me tea and watched a white egret on the rock in the middle of the river, patient and still, next to an equally motionless penguin. … … … Why the hell is there a penguin in the Kimberley. I shaded my eyes from the sun, and it shifted, revealing the long neck of a white bellied cormorant. Righto. Animals are secretive and deceitful in this country. Remember that, Chris. What else do you need to remember? Shit. Eyes widening, I hastily interrogated the sand. I couldn’t see any croc tracks, but I took the opportune moment to get the hell away from the river’s edge.

Into the Red Centre

I have recently read the most fascinating book called Songlines: The Promise and the Power. It’s by Margo Neale and Lynn Kelly and was published by the National Museum of Australia as part of a series of books about first nation knowledge. The main point of its discussions about archives and Western vs Indigenous knowledge is the stuff that many teachers; mainly primary, have also said for years. To whit: you can remember all kinds of shit if you tie it to a landscape, or if you make up a story about it, or you associate it with a character or you draw a symbol or picture or do a dance or song. This is how Australia’s Indigenous people have recorded knowledge about everything in their country and everything that has happened for 65,000 years. It’s just mind boggling. It made me feel like I wanted to jump straight back in the classroom to try it out.

Don’t worry, it passed.

But linking these things is so powerful. And before reading that book, the effect of it became clear when we drove to Uluru with Nick Cave. The music was all wrong. We had hooked the words of those songs and the emotional feelings about them onto the rust reds of Gunderbooka, the sparkling Brewarrina fish traps, the flower laden spaces of Mungo and the dreamy greys of Grenfell as we chased Spring east and met it for a glass of wine in an Orange vineyard. So, although we shouted Do you love me?? on the long red drive from Alice Springs to Uluru, we felt misplaced, shifted over left. Huh. Something felt missing and the memory of the Red Centre is somehow less….red, than red right handed Gunderbooka. That’s the importance of getting the right music for your road trip; to help you with memory.

Anyway, we flew up to Alice Springs. Hired a car, drove into town between two large mountain ridges which had a lovely dreaming story about caterpillar ancestors crossing the river, and on to exploring.

Even in November (think early May, northern hemisphere), Alice was Hot as Shit. Over 40 degrees but I’ve got all the new-place-excitement going on, so I marched us around until we were both miserable. We visited the Botanic Gardens. They were red earthed with little paths around low eucalypts, desert oaks and wattle with other trees and bushes that probably flower spectacularly… some other time and tried to retain some of the things we learned. There are honey grevilleas and desert roses. Couldn’t point one out if I fell over one. The whole set of gardens was set up by a woman at the start of the 20thC. Couldn’t tell you her name or where she was from. It was very hot, you see, and the black and white photograph of this woman stood in front of the tent she was living in on what would one day become the botanic gardens, wearing far too many layers was beginning to distress me, so we headed back to the hotel to find something to eat.

And here’s my take home about Alice – I had to confront my own unconscious bias as it hopped merrily out of my unconscious and sauntered casually in a flat cap and tweed jacket into my full consciousness. I have never seen so many obviously Aboriginal people. And I didn’t know what to do. They were sitting around, like, on a patch of grass under a tree, on a patch of grass in the town centre (pointedly not on a bench) sometimes on street corners like they were waiting for something (those chaps were – a bus came). While this is all relaxed and what-the-hell-is-your-problem-then, despite all my woke reading about First Nation Knowledge and Pascoe and Maddock, my English brain was just seeing people sat on the floor and wondering if they needed anything, like money or food; are they down on their luck. So for god’s sake don’t be dark skinned and plonk down on the ground, or I’ll clearly think you must be homeless. -_- So I had to confront that in me. I need to do a little work on myself. The next day it continued – we found a positively Canberran café for breakfast; hessian mat rugs, bright cushions, old wooden crates for tables, Bowie on the radio, flat whites and noble food with unknown ingredients served with eggs. And everyone in it was white, and everyone walking past it wasn’t. There seemed to be an unspoken exclusion. Maybe it’s the other way around, maybe Aboriginal people don’t dig flat whites or hipster cafes, and maybe sweeping generalisations about the preferences of the entire Aboriginal community is totally unhelpful. I felt uncomfortable about being implicitly separate and didn’t know how to bridge the gap without other-ising; like I’m touristing black people just heading out to buy the paper by engaging them in unwanted conversation. I wrote some poems about this sensation, if I can find somewhere to publish them, I’ll share them. But like all processes of art, it helped me to craft exactly how I felt and be honest what my goddam problem was. And if anyone has anything to offer on helping me work this one out; that’d be awesome, please jump in and leave a comment.

That was Alice. Conflicting. We drove the five hours to Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park on the land of the Anangu people. The week before, as a Brit, I had no idea what Kata-Tjuta was, beyond a word I kept not quite catching that other people said when they told me about their trip. Right, so prepare to be educated: just across from the Big Fucken Rock that is Uluru, there is a whole other bunch of Big Fucken Rocks called Kata-Tjuta. And they are awesome. I believe the two are physically connected under all that earth or something which is amazing because they are both two different kinds of rock. I’ll let you google geology in your own time. We approached Uluru over an open, clear plain so wide it curved, with Uluru itself a hovering rose petal pink in the distance. It was beautiful. We detoured and went to the many headed Kata Tjuta and admired this, then drove up to Uluru itself and looped it in the car. We got out for the Mala walk and learned about the ancestral Mala people who did ceremony there but did not listen to warnings about another group coming to attack them and some of the men are still trapped in the cave. It was more complicated than that. Then we headed to the sunset viewing area to watch Uluru turn red and gold over the dusk, while Kata Tjuta’s many heads floated like grey clouds behind the desert oaks on the opposite horizon. It clicked a memory in my brain from Norse mythology about Odin making the clouds by spreading out the brains of the frost giant Ymir in the sky. This linking of brains, clouds and ‘many heads’ compounded into the wisdom and timeless knowledge of Country and was all very profound and beautiful in my head. Wrote a poem about it. Turns out it didn’t make sense to anyone that wasn’t me.

So look, to break it down. The next morning, we went to Kata Tjuta to see the sun rise beside a silhouette of Uluru and slowly blush the many headed rocks pink and red and gold. We watched the black line of night on the ground stride towards us and retreat as shade under desert oaks, then did the Valley of the Winds walk. This is mind blowing. It’s a 7km loop that actually goes between all the rocks and through different landscapes and forest and my favourite bit was when we arrived at the top of a rock where the valley spilled down before us like a green tongue, the morning sun (it was about 7.15 and already pushing 30 degrees) had beautifully lined up right in the middle of a frame of sharp, rust red walls of other rocks. And flowing out of those beautiful plum pudding stones (red AF) was life, life, life. Spinifex, grasses, soft spires of pink mulla mulla, spikey leaved yellow flowered mulga, deep pink Sturt’s desert rose, waves of zebra finches, yellow throated minor birds and wagtails, cool shade and moisture, dripping and cascading down the sides of the rock. Glorious.

Uluru was the next day. We hired bikes at about 7.30 in the morning from a cheerful bloke into birding from Darwin and cycled 15km. This is a great thing to do in hot weather. You’re going quickly, you get a breeze and because you go fast it’s genuinely child-like fun. We buzzed on past some very, very red shouldered chaps trudging by on the 10km base walk. They looked pretty miserable. Bet they were Brits. So, yeah, nah, biking is the way to go. And it is GREAT! Let’s start with the rock. So it’s big and red, yeah. But you have to go right up to it and look up, take in that sharp, sharp line that seems to slice up your retina and just watch that deep red against bluer than blue. The line seems to glow. And if the sun is behind the rock, this is glorious, the whole sky is golden, and the rock is dark and cool. Then look down. Look at how it just hits the ground and stops – bam, like a high-rise building. Not like the gradual sloping foothills of home where whole towns are part of the lower mountain. Walking among the curves and ridges, it felt like a beautiful big red city sometimes. The colour is beautiful. We arrived and cycled in the shade for a long while and you can really take your time learning the shapes – the bit the Gentleman and I called the wale mouth, the gorge, the bit that looks like lungs, the bit that looks like teeth. Every bit has an indigenous story that teaches about its shape and role and also about social behaviour and morality. Like, don’t steal someone else’s emu or they’ll smoke your ass out and kill you. Fun fact – there are bits of Uluru you can’t photograph or even get within a kilometre of because they are for sacred initiations and ceremonies of the Anangu people. So the bike ride detours a fair bit in places.

Near the end of our ride, we stopped at the Kantju gorge again to prostrate ourselves on a bench and rest. This is a sacred place where there is always water. The rock above is stained silver where streams pour off the top in storms and there is a small pool below, surrounded by trees and breezes. Apparently, emu would come and drink from this pool and the Mala people would wait quietly and kill the last emu as they were leaving. This stopped the rest of the emu becoming afraid of the place so there was always emu to take what you needed. Silly emu. ‘Ohh, you seen Dave-o?’ ‘yeah, nah, mate.’ ‘What a dickhead, he’s always getting lost. Let’s go for a drink; Steve, bring up the rear. … Hey, where’s Steve?’ There is a special feeling in that place. The sun doesn’t burn there, you are protected by the shady red wall, the trees whisper and birth birds. The whole rock just seems to be teeming with life. If anyone has ever told you ‘yeah, it’s all so empty and dead out there that these funny fellas saw this rock and were like, wow, a thing! Let’s worship it,’ that’s bullshit. There’s plenty to worship because life is there, like an oasis, sheltering in the arms and shoulders of stone.

We got back to our hotel room at about 10 in the morning with headaches and napped for the rest of the day because it was Hot as Shit. There are good things about visiting Uluru-Kata Tjuta in the off-season; summer. There are very few people. Apparently, it’s really hard to cycle the base most of the time because you can barely move for thousands and thousands of people. That staggered me. What I want from nature and beautiful geological monoliths is peace and reflection, not running commentaries. And the reason that you get such blessed peace in the summer is because it’s too hot to do anything after 9am and the flies are shocking. But it is cheaper, so suck it up. Get up at 4.30, watch the sunrise, do your activity for the day, go back to sleep, eat lunch and sit in the pool, have another nap and go watch the sunset. Pretty restful. Then have dinner and once again notice that everyone on the resort is white and everyone working there is not and go back to feeling uncomfortable.

One thing that also seemed totally out of place was rocking up for the sunset and my eye being caught by two girls in dresses so ill-advisedly white they seemed to verily attract the red dust. I went back to gazing at the rock as we looked for a parking spot and heard the Gentleman wince. Apparently the two girls in beautiful white dresses had strung up some fairy lights round a honey grevillea and were posing for Insta pics. I’m glad I didn’t see it. I’d have hollered something rude out the window. I really hate vain posing at the best of times, it’s so shallow and false and today’s culture of turning yourself into a marketable brand is just fucken weird, but using a place of spirituality and power as a painted backdrop for it is just disrespectful.

But Uluru is amazing. See it and respect it.

An Ironic Homage to J A Baker, from Canberra

18^th September

Up early but headed out late, after the commuter lull. The morning was white and limpid, flushed blue at the edges of the wide sky. The light green of new trees glows even when there is no sun upon it and makes the stomach curve upward, glad. Plover thrum on the lake like engines turning over in tense indecision and rosellas smear their beaded blood red on the branches. I creep by, trying to sidle up close enough to see them without frightening them away in ghastly animal misinterpretation. But they can read no benign intentions in our looming forms. Even the magpie that learns to recognise the human that scatters it seeds and swoops to collect them, will eat as if in spite of us. No terror outweighs the of the death scent of man.

The strange metal poles of parliament squat beyond the lake like a deformed giant spider. I think of the tercel then, where it eats its prey somewhere there, manipulated by man to scare away magpies and ducks and keep the seat of order and coal policy clean of bird shit. What its golden eyes see of the territory from the gold zenith higher than the geometrically incorporated hills – thousands of feet higher in the stillness of air above undulations of clouds and wind stratospheres. I fling myself up with the peregrine then, where the human taint is bleached out by the burning purity of nuclear white light.

Down to the lake and dawn floats on the tides. This place is wide and exposed, with its lake, rivers and tree shrouded hills in silver mist trembling away into the hot heart of the centre. An incomparable wideness that lifts off the top of the head then slams it down again with the weight of space. The lake throws the violent blue of the sky up and swells the chest and arms until the land is the sky and everything is birds flying on it, our atoms scattered on the wind of so much room. On the edge of the lake I find the first kill. A grey pigeon at the side of the manicured path on a dark smear of blood; a mess of white and grey feathers haloed around. It has a perfect hole in its stomach cavity, a gaping cave. The scolding pee-wees wing clear of its omen. I look up to the flag of parliament again, my eyes sewed to the sky like buttons straining against the bulging desire to see the peregrine. He did not come.

Tenacious Tasmania

One hideously early morning in July we left our fair territory to explore Tasmania. I had been looking forward to it. To my Australian friends (and several of my English ones over the phone), I’ve been moaning a lot about the Australian winter. Fie, woman! I hear you say! Winter days drenched in glorious sunshine, frequently topping 15 degrees? Even the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ubiquitously ‘BOM’ on everyone’s phone, which sounds less authoritative) recommends UV protection for an hour a day in the middle of winter. So what the feck is my problem? And what has that got to do with Tasmania?

We’ve all heard of the phenomenon ‘hygge’ that Ikea’s made a whole bloody industry out of (stick this post into a word doc – you’ll see the Danish word is so much an accepted commercial part of our language it doesn’t even come up as a spelling mistake). The Dutch have a word for it too; ‘gezellig,’ (now Microsoft doesn’t like that one) and these words evoke a very specific kind of notion to their native speakers of blankets, fires, hot chocolate, books, safety, friendship, and smiles. And before the British lament their anaemically deficient vocabulary, the English language has a word for it too: cosy.

I’ve always been fascinated untranslateables, ever since I travelled Europe, and my aunt bought a book about them called ‘In Other Words…’ (which I can’t find; which one of you bastards has it…). I can identify no Italian word that conveys the ‘cosy’ sentiment. But I bet in the rough and aggressive half French sounds of the Piedmontese dialect just south of the Alps, they got a word for it. Any country that habitually buries itself under winter’s grey blanket for a solid sixth months has this need for coziness. It contrasts necessarily to the misery of winter; you need first to battle through rain driven horizontal by 50k/h winds to reach a place of safety where you will curl with relief into a large chair, huddle a blanket over you, drink tea, read books, encourage anyone foolish enough to get up to light some candles and bring more tea, and be happy. The sort of thing where if a beam of sunlight peeps into the red-bathed warmth, you almost regret it. Go away, you think, you’re interrupting the cosy.

People who have winter in their souls wallow in it. It’s the best thing about winter. Admittedly, there are the virtuous days where silver morning frost trembles under a weak yellow sun and you tramp through the forest and see deer capering in the shadows. But then you deem yourself sufficiently exercised and thankfully head home, fully justified to sit about on your arse for the rest of the week. Winter is rest. You can’t be out and about doing things all the time, you hibernate, you don’t feel like exploring and adventuring, and you stay cozy and sit it out, spending more time with friends over pub lunches by roaring fires and congratulate yourself for having achieved even that. And of course, in the middle of it all, piercing the misery, are the winter celebrations (Christmas), where boaters give each other a log from their own store on Christmas Eve, people get together to eat and drink, you’re justified starting on the old bucks fizz at 10am, beautiful decorations cheer us up and we are cosy together while the wind shouts outside.

So how does this all work for a nation that mostly isn’t troubled by winter and even those few states that are don’t have the month-long celebration to welcome them in from the hungry teeth of frost?

Well, they mostly just screw their eyes up tight and wait for it to be over.

So I was looking forward to truly wallowing in winter in ‘deepest darkest Tassie’ as it has been described to me. I was going to dance Morris at the Huon Valley Midwinter Festival and I was going to drink and be merry.

So it rained a lot. That’s ok, gives you an excuse to retire to the pub. But the only time one transfers from cosy to bleak is when you can’t actually get out of the rain, as was rather the case here, which is not what I meant about wallowing in winter at all. The accumulated sides practised the processional dance on a dangerously slight incline behind the shed where we stashed all our stuff at the festival, and several of us took a tumble. Throughout the weekend, there was much falling over in the mud for Morris dancers but all the jigging about does keep you warm.

The festival was really beautiful. Willie Smith’s Cider began four generations ago in the Huon Valley in Tasmania by Willie Smith (whose parents had arrived here at the expense of her Majesty) when he planted the first tree in 1888. Back then, the Huon Valley exported apples all over the empire and was known as The Apple Isle (did you know that? I didn’t know that), and they got creative when markets changed (that’s free trade) and went to making organic cider. Our friends told us something about Granny Smith of this family being the woman who grew the titular apple…we could find no evidence of this on google, but the cider was delicious. I’m not a huge cider drinker, but I loved every drop. The Huon Valley itself is beautiful; sweeping tall hills, forests, mountains and eye achingly green; and the festival site was the best place to enjoy it. Morris dancers, and Morris groupies (!) were provided FREE accommodation for the duration of the festival in a nice little hotel, free buses took us to the grounds and back, and we got magical red wrist bands that meant you could drink as MUCH CIDER AS YOU WANT FOR FREE. This was a staggering boon, and, I hoped, sufficient compensation for Yates enduring a whole weekend of Morris. There were about four tented stages, a feasting tent with splendid food options from curry to fish, cosy little bars and it was all brilliantly decorated. Apples were the main adornment, and I shudder for the people who must have contracted apple-based fatigue from threading hundreds of apples onto single wires that were then hung as beautiful baubles absolutely everywhere. There were little fires around and a dirty great bonfire in the middle. It did rain and it was cold, and there was little getting out of it, but it did not dampen my revels as I capered and fucked up dance after dance (never mind – it’s only Cotswolds), glugged cider and swanned around in an apple haze. The wassailing ceremony is apparently the biggest in the world, and all 50 or so of us processed to the apple trees (4 sort of separated ceremonial little ones at the top of a slope, almost like a stage) carrying torches or eucalyptus branches and sang and shouted to welcome the spirits and scare away evil and I loved every minute of it.

Yates’ experience was, er, somewhat different. He spent much of the day shivering over a book, waiting for bands to start (there were awkwardly long gaps between acts and he even caught himself saying ‘thank goodness for the Morris really…) and the free booze didn’t warm him up as much as the dancing did me. Still. We watched a great act – Ruben Reeves, check him out – and he did a public duty of warming up 100 people in the middle of winter by getting them to do first a circle pit, then a dance off, and we rocked the hell out until the tent was filled with people stripped to their waists with the little pile of jumpers and coats that we all remember from our club days piled up in front of the stage. Awesome.

After the joys of the festival, we packed our mud sodden bells and hankies away and looked forward to a few days of holiday to really soak up the cosy. Away from tents, and closer to solid buildings that serve beverages. I had this conviction that the place we had booked on Bruny Island (beautiful place off the coast just south east of Hobart) had a log burner and I was excited to cuddle up by it. I do miss my old log burner on the boat. We went to Bonorong wildlife sanctuary, laughed at kookaburras, cuddled Kangaroos and stroked wombats and koala bears. Total win. Then we sped off to the Island of Bruny!

It seemed odd to me that after getting off the mainland to explore a small island, we then left that island to explore another, yet smaller island. I had a sort of Russian doll effect – like how many small islands do I have to visit before I find the final one? Anyway, this place is foodie heaven. They got an oyster place called ‘Get Shucked’ (or as I kept calling it in my infinite coolness, ‘what the shuck?’), they got a place really dedicated to whey….and make beer and cheese, they got a honey place, they got vineyards. I was excited. See previous post for my Australian food adventures which had eventually led me to this heady place.

Yates wasn’t as excited as me about oysters (I again refer you to his wry comments on the matter of molluscs recorded in the previous post), certainly not a whole dozen of them, but one set of the 12 was lightly battered and deep fried and what the hell’s not to like about that? I slurped down a couple with great delight, then seized another that was cooked with a little chorizo and a wonderful broth which I slung down my neck – imagine my horror when I discovered it was bloody hot, of course, wasn’t it. The plain, raw ones with lemon were me fav though. Then we hopped back in the car and wheel spun out of there down the (only) road about a k or 2 and got to the beer place where we tasted a cheese so marvellously soft it was making a run for the door, and I generously had a beer flight of 4 so driver Yates could enjoy a sip of each while I tidied the rest. I am all selfless kindness! Then we drove on to the southern half of the island which is separated from the north by a long thin and typically Australian named ‘neck.’ This was epic – sea on both sides of you, Tasmania to the north west and Fuck All till Antartica to the south east. Apparently there is a fairy penguin rookery on said neck as well (this in fact, is not true, they don’t exist) and we sat on a viewing platform as the sun set and we watched the moon rise silvery gold and full over the waves and gild them in glowing pearls and it was beautiful beautiful and I wept and we sat there for an hour and not one fucking penguin did we see. Please see above well researched fact in parenthesis. So stiff and cold with icy bums and dead legs, we tottered back to the car and headed for our little hotel.

Sadly, all the misguided conviction in the world won’t magic up a woodburner if there simply isn’t one. So wallowing in cosy winter was actually sitting in a large, soulless, breeze block draughty bar with a fire that was going out being scowled at by the two staff on duty until we got the hint and pissed off. We did not write them a good review.

But Bruny Island is ubiquitously beautiful: forested in deep green eucalyptus, edged with glorious wild and ravaged beaches that were so shallow, waves crashed up them for miles in white froth, and the gorgeous curve of Adventure bay that poured rainbows off the crests of waves fringed with foreign trees, trod by plover and fairy wrens with wallabies lurking nearby in unspoilt beauty brought home to me more than ever that I Am On The Other Side Of The World.

Then Yates made me get in the car and drive back to Hobart.

Hobart is not as beautiful as Bruny Island. It’s not as beautiful as Canberra for that matter. Not a lot of trees or parks. Certainly no cycle paths, and there is a madness of 4 lanes per narrow road. The good gentleman described it as ‘like a shitty regional English town.’ I mean no disrespect to our dear Hobartians. The harbour was splendid, there were lovely old buildings and lovely old (but still draughty) pubs with fires. We spent a hell of a long time in the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery and I got all enraged about Aboriginal murder and dispossession (endlessly) and then we visited the Penitentiary museum and I got equally enraged about the depraved treatment and enslavement of convicts. God. I’m tired of my soap box when there is so much cruelty that continues in the world. But fucken….whipping people to death or at least until their skin rots and maggots wriggle in their very backs and they vomit at their own smell, and the Black Line where indigenous tribes were routinely wiped out…genocide and cruelty is our history in this country. And we disengage and think oh well people are all dicks and hide in the forest, but climate change is coming for those too and they’ll all burn because of the aforementioned assessment about people. Australians proud of their white heritage, that through immeasurable fortitude and endurance survived the sheer miserable cruelty inflicted upon them through the horrors of greed that turn humans into slaves must, surely must agree that greed is the enemy, greed is cruel and never, never seek to visit that on others and become the thing that is despised. Go in love my friends. Always find out first what we like about each other, before you find out things you disagree with. Because then, ah-ha, we can’t be lazy, we’re stuck, we already like each other and are forced to take a more nuanced approach to untangling and hearing each other’s stories.

After all that education about the misery of what one human can do to another and reflecting that world wars never ended it either, we had to cheer ourselves up with whiskey. Lark Distillery on the harbour front, while not having a fire, was lavishly wood panelled and had real green chesterfields so we curled up and drank whiskey and brooded on the evil of man until we were drunk enough to giggle like a pair of dickheads over other things, then Pia from Sydney’s Black Joak Morris joined us and we drank and drank and gassed away about travelling, Italians, food, Morris bitching and whatever else we could stuff into the evening.

The Tassie trip ended in the dreary rain and I have left out the caprices of MONA gallery, dinners with Morris dancers, wines on Bruny and a hundred other little things. But we’ll go back (in the summer next time) when there will be more to tell; meanwhile I will sit with tea watching clouds rampage across the sky over black mountain, huddle a blanket to me, and write!

Sensitivity Scorned

A light is a sign. It should be watched, listened to. Don’t hide it under a bushel.

Throughout our times, and those before, we have been given many signs. A leveret killed by a fox and its corpse smeared along the path. The way crows gather in huge black clouds. Owls hawking eagles. All these auspices we read in the sky and earth. We have learned to look for these signs, to watch the colour of sunset and the movement – skittish – of early blackbirds. To count the families of magpies and interpret them. We know how long to season oak, harden beech, mix nettle and primrose to heal our people. Some say we look into the seeds of time to see which will grow and which will not. Well, we are the sign readers. You ignore us at your peril.

With this meticulous looking and listening, I learned to love every contoured, coloured space of my country.

When I was a young girl, my mother taught me how to read the signs. The first spring we sat together under the ash; the air was sweet and soft as cowslips and Queen Anne’s lace made us a bright cushion. She taught me the repeated call of the song thrush and to learn the difference in its numbered refrains. She showed me the badger sets – to read their moods from their discarded hairs, and to hear of things to come in their snuffling; and in the call of owls, the movement of bats; the way moonlight falls in the secret places of deer.

One day, when I was a young woman, I plaited blossom in my hair and danced between the apple trees to wed a sweet boy. That night, before we bed, I slipped out in the full moonlight and buried a hard, dry pea in the earth where two paths crossed. I sprinkled spring water over it, whispered; and listened. A stillness. Then three screams of the owl. The earth rose gently and shifted, and a shoot broke through. Satisfied, I went back to my lavender scattered linen and my sweet Hrafn. I was pregnant by the end of the week.

A time I had with that first carrying, as summer passed and winter thickened. I read omens in my aching breasts and sickness. My hair grew thick and long while the pain in my swelling hips interrupted my sleep. The baby growing in me never seemed still. It writhed before rain when I read the skies to see the rain coming, it flopped over before high winds. One night, I awoke to a painless dampness; blood streaked the sheets, and I roused my husband with shrieking afraid we had lost our child. There had been no signs. My mother was sent for and we three cleaned the linen and washed me amid our tears. Two hours later, I felt it move again, a vigorous kicking. But our relief was broken when the neighbours thundered at the door, screaming that a fire had broken out in the dry lightning storm and the barn was aflame. In the last two hours it had taken hold and the village lost four new born calves. Hrafn ran off to help save the rest while my mother and I looked at each other in the fire’s distant red glow. We read the sign; clear as morning.

That this child would not need to learn how to read them.

* * * *

When my daughter was born, she slithered into the world with her eyes wide open. Her left eye wandered outwards, unfocused. The right was sharp and piercing; it fixed me with her first look as I took her to the breast. We named her Arndis and my mother mopped the child’s skin with fennel and cinnamon water and blessed her with ashes. All the while, that unfocused left eye stayed open and rolled. I watched it that night, the second day, and the third. It never focused. But after watching and reading, I knew; I could see it; I knew that eye could see beyond the signs I could ever read.

* * * *

When she is five, I take my daughter to the flower meadow. I teach her the names of flowers, which tree bark heals, the mood of the weather in a bird’s cry. I teach her in the May morning to read the signs and she forgets nothing. She looks off into the distance and her wandering eye, blank behind the black pupil stares away left.

‘Mother,’ she beams at me. ‘Harvest will be rich this year.’

I smile at her childish tones. But I’m proud.

‘You read the signs well, little bird.’

But now she fixes me a serious look and her left eye droops more. I am suffocated by a sudden heavy gloom.

‘Store it mother,’ she pleads. ‘And next harvest, and the one after that, and the next. Eke it out. Plait more straw for trading when it runs low.’

‘What, child?’ I whisper.

‘Famine mother,’ she answers. ‘In four years.’ And she lays her light curled head on my lap and weeps.

This I could not read. But she could see it.

* * * *

Arndis turned nine with the last of the lambing. And she was right. That summer was cold and damp, the valley crops were water-logged and most failed. Harvest time came, and despite our season’s customs to bless the land and call for plenty, we had little fresh gathered at the thanking festival. Yet we were thankful. Our people have long trusted their sign readers, and when I had called for prudence with our surplus, it had been stored and extra planted in the good years. We would survive. My child was hailed as our greatest sign reader yet and those who came out of the forest and down from the foothills in need gave her thanks. We fed them, cared for them in sickness, and weathered the famine through the hunger months, until the first shoots of spring cabbage swelled for picking. In May, we drank our ale, gorged our bellies full for the first time in months and crowned Arndis as the May queen with flowers. We danced amid the apple blossom to give thanks in the warm sun that Beltane: famine was over at last.

* * * *

My child grew and we watched her with love and fascination. We had no more children, but my sisters did, and my daughter led her little cousins by the hand to the ash tree in the wildflowered meadow to teach them how to read the signs. She knew her gift, but kept her instructions temperate and careful. All our people in the valley and the hills and woods loved her; our sacred light.

One morning, when she was fourteen, she awoke me early with her face creased in pain. As I rose to comfort her, I saw the skin beneath her ribs flushed blue with bruising that flowered there. I held her shaking shoulders as she cried in the grey dawn light.

‘What happened, my dove?’

‘There is something in the bed, mother, that hurts me. Like fingers piercing me, bone-like, evil; I’ve not slept all night but rolled on bones.’

Of course we searched the bed. We pulled the blankets off to inspect the sheet. Finding nothing, we lifted the mattress, the bed itself. Still bewildered, I begged her to lie upon the bed again to try and show us where it dug the most; and her cries of pain were the wails of a lost child and it broke my heart so that I ripped the mattress to shreds for hurting her. Despairing, in a pile of feathers and straw we sat staring at the floor wondering what could have broken so violently the sleep of my child.

‘Mother, that crack on the ground,’ Arndis started to her feet. ‘It was never there before. When I kept my corn dolls under the bed for sweet dreams, it was never there before.’

I dug with my hands. I followed the crease, digging through the earthen floor. I called to my husband for the spade, we dug together an appalling hole in the floor of the room while Arndis leaned over, scooping earth away and pleading that we persevere, it was near, nearer, close now.

Two and a half metres down, my daughter triumphantly pulled out a shrivelled, mouldering pea.

‘It wasn’t that?’ Hrafn exclaimed in surprise. She looked at him, tears in her eyes.

‘Damn you, look at her back!’ I roared at him. ‘It did that! It’s a sign!’

Our child kneeled back on her heels, staring at the pea in her nightgown lap.

‘What do you see, love?’ Hrafn asked. She looked up at us again, frightened.

‘Call everyone,’ she murmured. ‘Everyone. It is a sign, and we can’t prevent this on our own.’

We called our people together in the long barn we used daily in winter with its central fire and ale store. I had seen my people dance at Thanking Festival in this hall, and on Wassail, and the Solstice tree clash in the flickering gold of the fire, vibrating the ceiling beams with their songs. This morning was tense. The elderly settled nearest the fire, folding their grandchildren in their laps and others squeezed around them knocking snow off their boots from their journeys down from the hill homes in a sombre hush. We sign readers stood at the front, my daughter ahead. My mother, her silver hair a cloak down her back, spoke first.

‘You know the power of my grandchild.’ She paused to look at the stern faces ahead that twitched in nods. ‘She has proven it in her birth, her visions and her warnings. She has kept us safe, ensured our prosperity.’ Murmurs of assent through the fire smoke. ‘She warns us now.’ Here she turned to my daughter. ‘Speak child. Tell them.’

Arndis stood forward. From behind I could only see her long hair, darkened to a light brown from its childish gold. Her shoulders were thin; she was always a small girl. But her back which faced me was firm, her voice when she spoke, though low, never wavered and I bit my lip to crush the emotion threatening to dismay me as I looked at her. My child. So young still, and holding the thick weight of our future in her thin arms that should hold the flowers and herbs I want to scatter over her beautiful head in blessing.

‘There will be pestilence,’ she said. ‘It is even now festering in the ground, coursing under the rabbit warrens of our land and souring the soil. Crops will die, but this is not like our last famine. It will cause disease in our people, poison our rivers and streams and all, from the smallest field poppy to the greatest boar in the forest, all will die.’

I watched the faces of our people as the cold, bony fingers of fear clutched their hearts and stopped their breathing. Silence followed.

‘Can it be stopped?’ a man called from the crowd.

Arndis sought him with her eyes. ‘Yes. It is the war our King is fighting on his further borderlands. The dead, the starvation and the rot have infected those lands deep beneath the fields. The blood of injustice corrupts it all. It is spreading fast. If I can gain an interview with him and put forth my application for peace, we could arrest the chaos and pour balm on the land; heal it.’

My mother twisted to her granddaughter, her steel hair falling over her shoulder. Her voice hissed. ‘You will make this journey?’

‘It’s my duty, grandmother. I must.’

I did not see how my mother swallowed hard, her eyes wild and her hands before her face. I saw nothing but my own child’s head as I screamed my protests and clutched those thin shoulders tight to me.

* * * *

I watched my daughter climb into her saddle. She had to jump a little to make the distance to the stirrup because she is still so young, and she scrambled and shuffled awkwardly, and I cried then for how will she convince a king if she can barely reach her own reins? I pinned mistletoe to her reins for luck, and seeing her cloak was fastened, I stood back, to let her urge the horse on. My husband urged his on after, his face grim but his heart soothed to go with his daughter. My own heart was cracking. I saw the fear through her brave smile and I could not speak, but squeezed her calf muscle as she moved off. A five-day journey across the mountain pass and down the planes through the late winter snow.

I was restless all week. I read the winds, the way the wolves came closer at night, clung with famine. I watched twelve crows descend in a ring and squawk, fighting over a dead vole. Another snow fall mixed with the mud stained melt and the paths between our village homes became a stiff quagmire to snap an ankle on. A grey fog descended, hiding the valley, hiding the peaks and the trees and hung there for three days. The wolves howled through. None of these signs were auspicious. The week stretched into another and a third, then one morning as I went to the wood pile, two magpies bickered on the nearest branch of the willow row. The sky had cleared and I knew my daughter was coming home.

Two more days I waited at the meadow edge to look out for her. At last, as the sun turned the late afternoon sky purple and gold I saw two figures on horseback. Hitching my skirts under my arm like a wash bundle, I raced through the muddy snow towards them.

* * * *

It had not gone well. By the fire, with my mother, my pale daughter told us of her petition. How the king had laughed and put my husband in chains, and forced him to watch the derision of his child. How the duke had demanded she prove her power, and took her to a room with seven beds, each piled with twenty mattresses, and bade her lay down on each one to find the old pea placed under one of them. How the prince had leered as she lay, stony faced on each bed. Here she paused. We winced. Hrafn continued that they were lucky they were not whipped for the king takes not his foreign policy from peasants, and they were sent away. We stared into the fire silently. We passed the hot ale around.

‘What now?’ I asked.

‘Blessings,’ my mother suggested. I looked at my daughter as she nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the fire.

‘Be frugal with what we take from the land,’ she said. ‘Give back a morsel of all we take. Then when we have nothing, we’ll have a fat stag at the door. Be vigilant with our rivers, let not our waste escape in so our fish are killed. Keep clean. And dance and sing because we’ll need our spirits. We must love our land and each other to balance the hate of the king.’

* * * *

We watched the deer that rutting. We left offerings. We blessed the spring when it came, cautiously, and saw the birth of our lambs, of fallow deer, of pheasants. We lived carefully, with a new look between each other, of a shared unspoken thing.

And then winter. I watched the sun swell the thick, blood red of the Ragnarok stories, the poisoned red light that drives men mad. We drew in our breath, tensed. The earth was the steel death of winter and it dragged on past Imbolc and on towards Beltane, still with the low blood sun over short days. We continued our offerings. We tended the few weak lambs that crept, mewling, into life. There was only brown dead grass for them to eat in this eternal winter where the green fingers of spring had failed to stretch out from underground. Would we just die with our land? And then the falcons began circling high above the mountain and I read the horses beneath on the mountain pass. They showed me the death might be a different kind as the king’s soldiers approached our village.

Disease had spread in the city and Famine clawed at the keep’s walls. The prince had died. The king had realised the power of my daughter and in his anger and shame, he called us witches who had cursed his kingdom. He had ordered our capture and the soldiers had come for us.

The sign readers stepped forward. We were bound in chains and thrust into the cart that would bear us away. The light was hidden from our people.

* * * *

A light is a sign. Arndis made a light. The hardest thing for me was to trust what she saw; trust what I had never seen. Our arrival to the keep was a humiliation we had never known. The city’s populace, scabbed with festering sores, stained black and red with plague had turned out to jeer at the witches. They threw what rotten vegetables were left in that starving place into my mother’s face and I cringed to see her strong back sag, her silver hair smeared with filth. Hate is a weapon and they hated us. And watching them mock my child, and cow my proud mother, I hated them too. But Arndis leaned forward, trying to clasp hands of the mob and press remedies in their fists. We have healed plague in our home, and as they threw cabbages and shit, the shit of their animals at her, she still spoke calmly: yarrow infusion for the fever and vomiting; garlic and wild thyme against infection. Even chained to a dungeon pillar later, I felt relief that we were shielded from the vicious hate that had been whipped up in these people.

We waited there three days. My mother and we three daughters watched the star and moon patterns through the small grating that served for a window and tried to balance the good and evil we saw there. But Arndis looked at nothing, only leaned back against her pillar and idly fondled the fetters. Then on the third evening, we were visited by the Duke. When he swept into the room, I watched my daughter flinch and shrink back into the shadows. The Duke of the bedchamber and one hundred and forty mattresses to lay my child upon. My mother and sisters and I stepped forwards, our shoulders a wide wall in front of Arndis as he leered.

My mother lifted her chin. ‘Well?’

‘You will be executed at dawn,’ the duke said, an ugly scorn cutting his nose and mouth.

‘So now you have a notion of the importance of symbols and offerings?’ my mother laughed bitterly.

The duke leaned in to her, his face close enough for me to spit at. ‘You will be burned,’ he smiled. ‘That should cleanse the evil.’

‘And the war?’ asked one of my sisters. ‘If that continues, burning us will not make a difference.’

‘It will comfort the city and the king to watch you writhe and die,’ the duke snapped, turning to her. We stood in our walled line, our faces stone, staring forwards with our chins up and our shoulders touching. We must not break. My mother inclined her head slightly in assent.

‘Good luck with it,’ I said. ‘You know as well as we, that we are all lost. Our deaths will be more painless than yours.’ I felt my daughter move behind me, my child of sixteen with a life stolen from her and my rage flickered and flamed. And in my rage, I read what I saw, and the vision was comforting. ‘You will suffer a death of fire, sir,’ I cursed. ‘It will consume you as you stand and catch your hair and your fine robe so you will be a living pillar of flame. Your skin will crisp and crackle like a Yule hog and your last moments will be anguish and horror. You will fall to your skinless knees and beg for water to quench it, but your voice will be lost in choking smoke, and all will flee from you. I curse you, sir.’

He hit me then. But we were a stone wall and I did not even reel back but was motionless standing masonry. Blood came from my eyebrow and I smiled. He looked at us in confusion and mounting horror while he nursed his useless fist, then swept from the room.

That night, we slept little. I held Arndis to me as my mother clutched her daughters round her. We sang to spur our defiance and watched the moon, swollen and silver. We wrung love from the last hours together and tried to rejoice through our strained wakefulness, that we were together at least. Three generations of sign readers. A pattern. A sign in itself.

And then the last sign came. Just as night was almost at odds with morning, a noise from the window roused us. A magpie had landed there and strutted back and forth in its tailored waistcoat and frock coat. We watched it, a comforting life in monochrome. Then it was joined by another. Then another and another. We read aghast, the swelling visitation until the seventh arrived. It held a piece of sweet-pea in its beak – the pink and purple of late June. We stared at each other. Arndis spoke.

‘Can’t you see it now mother, when it is so near?’

I looked at her. Those thin shoulders, her long hair; her heart that loved so blithely. My heart broke again. I saw her, our light, and I saw now what the signs said. My mother saw it, and my sisters and my nieces as we stared, dismayed at Arndis, with the eye that never met ours, but saw further.

‘When I shout run,’ she whispered, ‘do not hesitate.’

* * * *

The rest is a series of dark pictures. We were pulled out at dawn; subjected to more jeering. We cried now and the king and duke laughed, thinking to have broken our spirits at last. But the cramping, biting, wrenching loss was not for our own lives, but my child’s, who knew, all along, what her fate was.

We were bound to stakes and hefted onto pyres. The man in the black mask with his burning brand stood by, waiting. My breath caught and my heart fluttered like a wren and the damp on my hands and under my arms made my bonds slip. The king was speaking but I heard nothing through the black wall of noise, the black buzz of ‘witches!’ and cheering as the executioner held up his brand and walked towards my child. Only a child. And such fear of a child. She twisted her head towards me and smiled, the most beatific smile I’d ever seen her beam. It was serene, it was joyful, and it smeared through my tears into something misty and permanent. I could see her mouth the words ‘now, mother!’ like a triumphant shout, as if she was starting a race, and the pyre was lit and the faggots caught and a light, a white shimmering light erupted; burst like a waterfall and fanned out in a summer heat we had not felt for ten months.

Our bonds singed first, and we slipped into the kindling. We waded through it, and gathering wrists of sister, mother and child and ran through the crowd, ran through the gates as soldiers bolted past us to bring pails to the explosion. We ran out of that cursed place as it was engulfed in the flaming inferno of my child; burning duke, king and pauper; melting metal, boiling lead, scorching septic earth and slaughtering the pestilence, war and corruption that infected the land.

A light is a sign. Her light could not be hidden.

* * * *

In lands far from ours, a burning cleanses. It opens space for light, it nurtures the soil; enriches it. The trees grow stronger and the regrowth is thicker; birds return. My daughter’s fire did this for our land. We made the journey back through forest and mountain pass, filled half with joy and half with despair, while the iridescent blue of kingfishers darted past us in forest streams and magpies called to each other. As we reached the willows at the edge of our home, we saw the purple and gold of crocuses had broken through the earth. Spring had come. Our land lived again.

* * * *

I am much older now, but I am a great favourite with my sisters’ grandchildren. My hair is a steel cloak down my back and my husband’s is a long white cape. I keep a small shrivelled pea on my hearth to show these babies and tell them about our greatest sign reader, as I teach them to read the meaning of magpies, what will come from the colour of sunsets and how to make a decoction from oak bark. And the light is returned to our people.

Sensitivity

‘There’s quite a lot of blood on this one,’ Tessa muttered into the steaming sink.

‘What?’ Myrtle looked over, elbowing her damp hair away from her eyes. ‘Another miscarriage?’ The grey haired woman looked up from the mangle.

‘Bring it over.’

Tessa pulled the sopping sheet out of the tub and twisted it fiercely to ring out the excess water. Holding it away from herself and leaning back, she carried it over to the mangle.

The older woman absently drew her finger in a crest behind her ear, clearing away strands of hair she’d never realised had thinned. She gripped the folds of the sheet in both hands, holding flat a portion of the stain. Her green eyes stared, narrowing as she considered it.

‘No, the stain is too dark and it’s too near the top of the sheet.’ She pulled another handful of the linen up into view. ‘And here’s the menses, further down.’ Her eyes locked Tessa’s as she handed the sheet back and they remained this way for a moment. Myrtle had also stopped and all three women looked at each other over the blood smeared sheet with set mouths and jaws flinching.

‘Just clean it,’ the older woman directed.

Tessa took it back and scrubbed it viciously in the thickening silence. Turning her face, but not her eyes, she spat over her shoulder. Her mouth grimaced.

‘It’s nearly every week now you know.’

Myrtle also looked up again and slapped her brush against the tub’s side. ‘And it’s just a mindless–’

‘Clean it.’

Tessa scrubbed bitterly and the stain began to diminish. As if all the misery and ugliness in the world could be cleaned away just like a stain on a sheet. With just a little effort and pain, as her knuckles hit the side of the tub in the fierceness of her scrubbing. Myrtle’s face also twisted as she wrung sheets until her hands hurt. Over it all; the faint creaking of the mangle as the older woman turned the handle. Rotated it rhythmically to impose order on a wrinkled sheet and a rumpled world; to smooth out and remove her sorrows and those of that woman upstairs, shivering alone on her tower bed.

All three minds wandered through different passageways to that same woman. Tessa thought of the ceremony, Myrtle of the girl’s arrival, drenched from a violent storm; the older woman the first miscarriage. All thought of the desire in the Prince’s cruel eyes and the delicacy of the pale girl.

Ripe for violence.

Myrtle cleared her throat. ‘It’s been over a year since she came now.’

‘No,’ Tessa corrected, ‘It was just such bad weather that week. She arrived at the start of August. It’s only spring now.’

‘Oh yes,’ Myrtle looked up to search for the memory and nodded. ‘August rain can be as bad as November; the clouds drop and you wouldn’t know the difference.’ Her eyes glazed again. ‘She was so straight-backed, wasn’t she? You could tell she was beautiful even though her hair was plastered to her face and her cloak soaked with mud nearly to the elbow. And she didn’t cringe in her wet things as she moved, she was…’ Myrtle searched the high ceiling to her right again for the word. ‘Proud. In the way she walked I mean.’ Tessa grunted her assent.

‘And she spoke nice. Quietly, but assured. Kind. They should have worked it out from that.’

‘But there has to be the Test,’ the old woman spat.

Oh of course. There must be the Test. Tension bubbling and steaming on the borders for months, allies desperately yet fruitlessly searched for and always the anxiety for an heir, an heir. Three years hunting for a suitable alliance while skirmishes broke out and trade lines were blocked, until the kingdom was all but cut off and the Queen despairing while her son rode out to find soldiers at the borders and satisfaction for his lust on the peasant girls the other side. And this bedraggled woman, claiming to be a Princess from another Kingdom who only asked for a night’s board with her pledge of great royal future recompense for the kindness, was promising. She was already at a disadvantage; alone, in flight, in need. She could be compelled. Then alliance, an heir, stability. But to be sure. So the Queen made assurance double sure and with a painted smile, led the girl after dinner to her bedchamber heaped with mattresses. Twenty stacked to the ceiling; the Princess lay there like a fresco painter for the worst night’s sleep of her life.

‘Just a little pea under all those mattresses,’ the old woman murmured.

‘Just a little prick,’ Tessa sneered.

‘Oh Tess, honestly.’

Tessa defended her crassness. ‘She looked worse the next morning than the night before! Haggard. Her eyes were hunted and black. And how she struggled down the stairs. She’d asked for help the night before. I know it is just a pea, but they knew what they were doing, how could they hurt someone so defenceless?’

‘Oh the elite are a cold lot I’d say,’ Myrtle suggested. ‘And it’s a Princess’s duty to be sensitive, to endure for her Kingdom. I suppose once she’d proven her worth, she knew they needed her and she owed them, so she had to stay. But look, when did you see her? I only heard about it from Mary because her Stephen was serving at breakfast.’

‘Because I changed the damn bed,’ Tessa retorted. ‘Eliza couldn’t manage it on her own, there was so much linen. So they sent me up. As I left with me arms full of bedding, she was still making her way down. Her face was contorted with pain, she was biting her lip to stop from whimpering. And the Prince was there, with the Queen, at the bottom of the stairs. Watching intently to see if she had Passed. He had both hands in his pockets and that little smirk and he watched her all the way down. Every step. She was obviously in agony and he never said a word nor moved to help. Nor the Queen.’

‘Breeding,’ Myrtle sneered. Tessa snorted.

‘Well you can keep it.’

With the Test passed the kingdom was saved. The prince took her as his bride and they had a real princess at last, from a powerful dynasty; a union, an alliance. They were married three weeks later at the start of September. Every servant was ordered to wash and turn out to throw the pink and blue flowers. There was substantial largesse in the celebration. A feast was put on for the servants too, a fiddler was brought from the next valley, and there was dancing. Myrtle remembered the fiddler very well.

But not so well as they all remembered the couple walking out of the palace courtyard after the ceremony. The Prince in his finery, his black hair curling just a little above his collar. His overwhelming exotic scent of bergamot masking the sweat of the warm day as he walked amid the flowered arches through the double line of his cheering subjects. Hope for the kingdom! His long, straight nose curled his upper lip as he smiled right and left right over his bride’s head and the desire was savage in his eyes. It chilled the women as he passed them. And his bride, squinting in the bright sunlight, looked down, still obviously suffering; chewing her lip as she controlled her pain in her slow walk half a pace behind the groom. Holding her grace, hiding her limp. And spreading upwards from the low cut of her bodice, staining her pearl white skin; the blue and black blush that in three weeks, had not faded.

Autumn. There were subsidies for trade, the economy improved. The women felt it in the price of flour and fish. More ribbon at market. More pennies to buy it. There were reinforcements at the border, and a peace of a kind had been sustained through to winter. Strong and stable. But still no heir.

That first infliction, the black flush after the storm-soaked August night, was only the start. Conceiving the heir was next. Uncharitable gossip ripped through the servants’ hall about the Princess walking awkwardly, sitting gingerly. Then a breakthrough, whispers of a pregnancy at the start of Advent. A God given Christmas gift for the Kingdom! Then at the end of January the washerwomen found the bright red political disaster smeared all over the bedsheets and a cloud fell over the palace. The older woman washed that sheet herself, taking her time reverently, learning every spot and matching it to her memory, never mixing the splashes from her own eyes with the soap from the tub. Washerwomen; cleaning to purify the ugliness from the world. Then a storm shook the Kingdom one night in February. Without was all thunder and the screaming wind, beating the rain relentlessly against the fortress walls, and within the Prince was beating the Princess against the walls in his fury. Still no heir, no heir. How could peace last without one?

Three servants attended the Princess that night to bathe her skin and press it softly with witch hazel. But skin is not like the sheets the washerwomen took, and while blood can be rinsed away, the blue blush cannot. The Prince was subdued in the days after this and the Princess kept to her chamber. The moon waxed and then when the washerwomen cleaned the menses off the sheets, blood from a battered face began appearing regularly.

‘It’s done,’ Tessa said at last. She threw an end to Myrtle and they began twisting from both ends to ring out the water.

‘It’s all we can do,’ the older woman sighed.

‘It’s like we’re hiding it.’

‘It’s all we can do.’

‘Can’t she ask for help?’ Myrtle blurted. ‘Powerful family like hers, I’m sure they’d not like this happening to one of their line.’

‘I suppose it’s probably shame,’ the older woman answered.

‘You had none,’ Tessa reminded.

‘Well,’ the older woman’s eyes darkened. ‘Maybe she has no one to ask. Perhaps it’s different asking a neighbour as opposed to a far-off Lord who’s married you off.’

‘Our little coup de grace was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ Tessa snickered.

‘Yes…’ the older woman admitted, allowing herself a half smile. ‘After twenty five years, another day drinking the rent and he never knew what hit him.’

‘Tessa’s poker did, I recall,’ Myrtle grinned. ‘And off away he went at last! A well-co-ordinated operation, ladies.’

‘Well, enough was enough, wasn’t it,’ the older woman leaned back from her waist to stretch out her shoulders. ‘I make enough from the wash and it’s peaceful enough indoors now. It’s different for you and your men these days. You can build something. And your sons will be better. And your daughters will never have seen that sort of thing.’ She finished her stretch and held out her arms. ‘That’s fine girls, bring it here now. It’s the last one, then we’re done and tomorrow is Sunday.’

‘You seeing your fiddler tomorrow Myrtle?’ Tessa asked with a devilish glint.

‘Stop calling him that, his name’s David.’

‘He’s good though, isn’t he? At fiddling?’

‘Stop it. Honestly Tessa, you’ve got no poetry in you. We’ll walk up the crag to the tarn. He said he’ll bring his violin. You know, when he plays, it’s like being on the crags with the heather, it’s lovely.’

‘Yep, soaring up there, penetrating those clouds, all very…’

‘That’s enough girls, pack it in and go home,’ the older woman interrupted as she emptied the tubs. The women splashed cold water on their faces to cool themselves, then dried off their arms and folded the last sheet. Myrtle opened the door into the bright early May sunshine.

‘How did your apple wine come out in the end?’ she asked, turning hopefully to the older woman, who smiled knowingly.

‘Well, I suppose it needs a test!’ She stretched her arm through Myrtle’s to support herself and reached for the other girl. ‘You too Tess, come round to mine first and try it. If it’s any good, I’ll pack you both off with a jug. I’m sure you’d like some for your little outing tomorrow Myrtle, in case of a picnic, and Tess, I’m sure you and your husband aren’t averse to a weekend tipple.’

The women walked home in the sunshine.

Wassail

Gathering time. Bless the year time. Shiver together to remember we’re still alive and console ourselves against the snow. Fight time. You can’t have one without the other. We fight against winter to bless the trees and the year turning so heat comes back to us.

This year it is my turn to Give. I dance the wassail every year in the dark amid the fires with the others, but this year is different. We drew lots, so it is my turn to give blood. I am afraid, but I saw Stefan give last year; a boy who lives nearer the forest and it was mother the year before. It is right that I give. The big orchard is tended by us. And it will be Hazel’s turn one day too, and I will show her how.

She watches me as I tie plaits and ribbons in my hair. She has brought me apple twig, leafless in midwinter and she has pinned it to my belt. She helps me with my decorations of ribbons, bells and feathers. She has begun dancing too and I sit her on the low stool now by the hearth to braid her hair and fix the pheasant feathers in. We must dress and disguise ourselves. I have explained this to Hazel on our long walks across fallow fields in a grey and brown country to collect feathers and berries. We must wear the pheasant and kite feather so the birds bless us. We protect them too, with our wassail, to bring back the sun and give them food with our trees. We must wear some of the rowan, the blackthorn and snowberry to symbolise eternal life, how even in death, earth sustains its creatures. She nods gravely and picks the berries from the hedgerows and we bring them home together, dry them hung up over the hearth and decorate them with ribbons.

As we sit together by the fire during Yule, tying ribbons and eating toasted walnuts I tell her about the importance of ribbons. The bright colours awaken the spring spirits, fill their minds with colour so they remember what they must do when the sun brings longer days, so they can turn the world back to its purples, yellows, reds and greens. I tell her why we must wassail our trees, to drive out the demons from the roots, and terrify her sleep with stories of rotten apples and starvation. I make her squeal with tales of evil spirits that lie resting in the white flesh of a russet or cox and when it is bitten, fly into the minds of little girls and turn them blind and steal their minds. She shrieks and giggles but she knows these things are true and half knows the horror and disaster that comes when the dancers do not gather for the wassail.

I am feathered, furred and skirted. I am ribboned red for Braeburn and Hazel is Egremont green. I hand her the sticks for clashing. Our father is heating the ale at the stove, spiced and appled, and smiles at us. I know he is proud that we carry on these ways. That we dance to save our apples and we will tend them all our lives as will our children and theirs. He is proud that his daughter will give tonight, and when I drew my lot, I did not flinch, or look at him, but clenched my fist and nodded. I knew he watched. He hands us a cup of ale each, to warm us through before our journey tonight. Mother is outside, lighting the sticks and lanterns. Her ribbons are pippin yellow red and father’s are the brown of russets. I will lead them through the village to collect the dancers, then begins our trail round the acres of our homes in the ice wind we call Njordr to bless the trees of all our people. Then I will give my sacrifice and we will sing and dance and drink to scare the devils, wake the spirits and make the giving take.

I give the first shout and step out, banging willow, and my namesake ash. My bells clang in the stillness of the frosty night, as if crystals of frost could have voice and fall against each other. I take the firebrand from my mother. I am ready.

We begin our loop of the village. I lead this year, begin the song to sing each house that beckons them each out of doors. We stand before the black face of a cottage and shout, bang our ash and willow and demand them out. Then the eyes of the house blink open as my fellow youth who have been waiting ready, come out and join the song. They raise their willow and light it from mine. They hand us ale to sip, as is custom, then we all go on together, building the noise and flames into flickering towers piled up in the black sky. Cold night. Beautiful. But unfeeling and unloving, so we must put our warmth in.

We reach the highest point of the orchard. The trees’ bare fingers clutch at the wind and all is jumping shadows with our flames. We start here. First we sing, then my blood and hair are mixed with the ale and we all drink, then we sprinkle it on the roots of the trees here, and all the trees of our home. It is more than ritual. It is arduous, methodical, thorough and long. I sing my last song as one who is separate from these trees, then I will become part of them, mixed in forever, immortal in them, like all of us here.

Stefan steps forward. As giver last year, he must take this year. He hands me the knife, a mistletoe handle, carved with an apple. First one of my thin ribboned braids is severed from the feather mixed masses and dropped in the cup. My breath quickens now, shallow. I can feel Hazel shaking behind me and see the faces of my parents set and harden. Stefan takes the knife back. I pull my sleeve away from my left arm. He does the same. I see the scar on his arm yet his ordeal is still not over as he must hold my arm still, be deaf to my cry and spill my blood.

I am afraid now.

But I am afraid of more than pain. I am afraid that if I do not give, the blackbird I have not heard sing for dark months will not come back, nor the swallow; the sun that smiles on bare arms and an eased body soothed from shivering will remain forever hunched and covered. I am afraid the evil will come back into the world, as it did before, as we have all been told since we could speak, and before, and that Hazel will run out and stop the giving in her childish fear and in the end we will all die of the evil.

My mother told me these tales on winter nights as she dressed me in my first ribbons and I asked why I had to go out into the cold. I was appeased with the fun of shouting and singing and hot ale and dancing with the village. But I asked again when I was older. I tell Hazel now as the sun goes blood red and fat and the nights stretch eternally over us.

That years ago, men came. They built a stone building that was cold and cut us off from our fields and trees. They tried to make us go in and speak to a brutal statue of a dead bloody man, instead of to the spirits and the trees and air. They told us to stop dancing and singing but speak to their statue.

Some did.

The wassailing was left off. Then the canker crept into the trees. A little boy, fed an apple for his midday meal, cut in little pieces by his father while bringing the corn in, died. We saw the trees were bleeding. A red sap leaked out of them and their leaves withered, and the big orchard had to be felled to stop it spreading. After that orchardist hanged himself off one of his own trees, we cut him down, mixed his blood with the earth and danced the wassail. Mournfully; to wail our sadness as many of us had died and summer had not come. Then the beat of our drums and sticks warmed us, and we took heart, and we struck the stone building down and used its stones to make a new circle to the winter sun. And we danced the wassail every year until the apples came back, and the sun warmed us again and now every year on this night, the blood of a willing giver is mixed in with the roots so we never lose another drop unwillingly.

I look at Hazel hard. She takes a deep breath and screws her eyes up. While I stare at her light brown hair in the curling red of the fire, Stefan seizes my arm and slices clean. I cry out but clench the fist which he holds over the three handled wassail cup. I hold a handle of it and my blood drips quickly in. My tears fall silently, but I can’t stop my shoulders from shaking and I feel dizzy. Stefan looks from the cup to me and sees me swaying then looks frantically at my mother who nods.

It is enough.

I hold the cup to me and he raises up my bleeding arm and swiftly bandages it tight. I hold it up in the air while he kisses my forehead roughly, then with his arm high about my shoulder and neck he cheers and we all cheer, and I drink the ale and my blood. He sips next, then I pass the cup to Hazel, who drinks, then passes it round her people. We sprinkle bloody ale on the tree roots systematically, then warm ourselves with a song and a stamp and dance to our drums. I cry-sing and Stefan keeps hold of my waist until I am strong again. My mother kisses me and then father leads the dance away through the trees again, brandishing the smoky, eye-watering torches to banish the demons as his ribbons flail out behind him, and our passage round the village’s trees begins again until every apple tree has been blessed and exorcised.

We danced long into the night at the ale house. The fires burned all night, we drank and we sang. I spun Hazel round until our red and green skirts merged to an Elstar apple blur. She is growing strong and brave and has learnt all the medicinal uses for Pendragons this year. And Stefan and I stood outside when the wind dropped under the naked arms of our trees and felt blessed to be part of them.

Halgrim and Binky and the Kangaroo

Halgrim lit his pipe and leaned back against the 1975 penguin edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. He inhaled deeply; blew a few smoke rings, just for amusement, then exhaled the rest of the fumes in a contented sigh.

Binky coughed pointedly.

‘Sorry old man,’ Halgrim apologised, snatching off his hat and using it to waft vigorously in front of Binky’s nose, catching him occasionally with the tail of it until Binky eventually sneezed. He shot Halgrim a baleful look.

Halgrim was unaware. He leaned back at his ease again and cleared his throat. Binky winced in spite of himself. A Reflective Monologue was coming.

‘Well Binky,’ Halgrim began. ‘It’s the calm before the storm. Inventories are done, and triple checked. Books all dusted. Boxes ready.’

Binky busied himself with grooming his lower abdomen in a stance that was befitting his view of Halgrim’s rather pompous soliloquies.

‘Then we’re all boxed up for the big journey! Australia Binky!’ Halgrim leaned over to dig Binky gleefully in the ribs, but on account of Binky’s grooming position, found only ear and treacherous space behind it and nearly toppled over. Halgrim swiftly recovered his flow.

‘New climate! New landscape! New friends to be made and new enemies to vanquish! My research tells me the spiders there don’t respond to polite encouragement to weave their webs elsewhere but are as likely to steal half the library and run off with books tucked up under their arms!’

Binky looked up from his grooming. Legs.

‘By Odin, we’ll vanquish them. Hmm, I’ll have to test the humidity control there too. We don’t want pages getting damp. And see about light. Hopefully we can keep the books away from a window, so the covers don’t bleach. That Australian sun is pretty fierce.’

Binky could sense Halgrim was running out of steam. And imagination. Always so when he got onto the dry subject of paperback maintenance. He sat up and twitched his nose. It conveyed:

I’d like to see a Kangaroo.

* * * *

Within a month, and after learning a great many new colourful Antipodean fauna-related swearwords from the book-owners as they manhandled their one piece of furniture, 2 bikes and 33 boxes into the new apartment, Binky and Halgrim had arrived. The new home was bigger and more open than the last, but Halgrim consoled his agoraphobia with counting the reunited extended book collection. This took him a considerable while as he padded his bare feed up and down the wood shelves with his bobble hat bouncing softly on his lower back, bathed in the sharp, clear Australian light from the large windows with the view of the gum tree forested hills beyond. Binky hopped along behind him, keeping vigilant watch for spiders.

‘This light Binky, this sharp, clear light; it’s so unfeeling, it’s so foreign, so alien, Binky. It’s cold at the same time as hot, it wants to thin the blood and impose itself.’

Binky thought this was a bit much.

To cheer him up, he handed Halgrim his sunglasses, assaulted his Scandinavian skin with factor fifty, then rubbed his paws together gleefully with a twitch of the nose.

How about that Kangaroo?

So they shimmied out onto the balcony and hopped down onto the street.

* * * *

‘By Hel and Balder it’s freakin’ hot!!!!’ Halgrim screamed, hoping about in his bare, hairy feet on the tarmac. ‘It’s hotter than Macondo! Oh Loki, what will we do?’

The mention of Macondo reminded Binky of something crucial and he acted fast. Grabbing Halgrim by the hairy wrist he steered him into the nearest bar. Fifteen degrees air conditioning wrapped its cold arms around them both. Halgrim closed his eyes and squatted down as close to the AC unit as possible until an icicle formed at the end of his nose. A little smile grew on his troll lips.

‘That’s better Binky,’ Halgrim sighed. ‘Well, what’s the plan? How do we find our Kangaroo?’

Binky’s eyes examined the view from the window and plotted a route bouncing from bar to bar for two Ks in a linear trajectory until the city dribbled away and the bush took over.

‘Great plan Binky!’ Halgrim smiled. ‘Right, mines a VB!’

Halgrim and Binky made good progress bar hopping through town and became quite raucous. They sampled many local drinks and entered into enthusiastic discussions with the locals, with whom they were very popular. Halgrim entertained them with stories about road trips in Texas, morris and wassail traditions, the effect of heat on the people of Macondo (the locals loved that one), when Halgrim remembered what they were supposed to be doing.

‘Hey fellas!’ he began. ‘How can we find a Kangaroo around here?’

There followed a cacophony of sound and gabbling of strange unfamiliar names, carelessly pronounced. Jerabomberra. Tidbinbilla. Namadgi. Places to find kangaroos; recommendations for generally a good time; and Australian wildlife bingo overwhelmed troll and rabbit. Finally, with adequate instruction, Binky and Halgrim made their way out into the cooling evening.

After walking into the crepuscular air, and hours into the moonlight, they could hear the great rolling sound of the Pacific, thundering its oily waves in the distance. Quite some distance, but trolls and rabbits are famous for their hearing. They rounded a corner and then encountered a huge spider eating a lizard. Halgrim recoiled in terror and leapt on Binky’s back, who went quite green – quite a thing for a rabbit. The spider realised she was being watched and slid her eight eyes over to lock with theirs as she carried on meditatively masticating.

‘mmh mmmgh, mm mh mmgmh?’

‘P – pardon?’ quailed Halgrim. Binky desperately tried to decide rapidly and furtively which eye to look at, wondering which would cause least offence and ruefully remembering faint hopes of ‘vanquishing.’ The spider swallowed. They assumed.

‘I said: g’day, how y’gahin?’

‘Er, well,’ Halgrim replied, marshalling his manners, ‘thank you, and you?’

‘Ah, smashing!’ The spider shuffled a little to the left of the half-eaten lizard. ‘Ya just caught me at me supper there. Can I offer you fellas ehny?’

‘No!’ Halgrim and Binky asserted in unison.

‘No worries,’ the spider assured. ‘So whattaya up to?’

‘Um,’ Halgrim stuttered, thoroughly perturbed by the concept of a conversational spider, ‘well we’re looking for a kangaroo.’

‘Ah well mate,’ she said, ‘too easy! Keep goin’ this way a while, following the sound of the laughing kookaburra – yeah, you’ll know it.’ She could see Halgrim’s expression clouding and looking hesitant. ‘Look, It’s the only thing round here freakin’ laughing in this heat. Follow the sound until you meet Kyle, he’s a rosella; red, blue and green, so he sticks out pretty well. So he tells me this bloke has been staring at him pretty regulah, muttering about Kangaroos, so I reckon that guy’ll take ya to a big one.’

Binky blinked at this incongruous information. He looked at Halgrim, who was also blinking.

‘Right, well that’s…really accommodating, thank you so much!’

‘Hey, no worries!’ said the spider, turning back to her half-chewed lizard and winking at them with about three of the eight eyes. ‘Mind how ya go right?’

So Halgrim and Binky followed the sound of the Kookaburra through the bush.

‘I say, Binky,’ Halgrim couldn’t contain his thoughts any longer. ‘Remarkably articulate, the arachnids in this country!’

Binky twitched his nose to indicate that such big bodies must house big personalities.

‘Loki yes, they are big buggers aren’t they.’

Binky wondered if spiders who weren’t mid-supper; in fact – hungry – were quite so congenial. Or perhaps would even consider a rabbit as an amuse-bouche. He opened his pace.

They followed the laugh of the kookaburra until at last they saw it perched on a branch above them. Below and ahead was a brightly coloured bird facing them. It was stretching its wings out and flapping them slightly, and seemingly peering over its left shoulder behind it. And there, through the trees, muttering to himself was a small, dark man.

‘You know Binky, it’s funny; someone one told me that there are no birds in Australia.’

Binky shot Halgrim a look that clearly retorted: what class of imbecile told you that?

‘G’day fellas!’ Kyle the rosella welcomed them brightly.

‘Evening,’ returned Halgrim.

‘Will ya check out this crazy bloke here? Coupla times a week he comes out here and watches me at me evening ablutions.’ Kyle flicked and preened a few more feathers neatly into place. The small dark man in his collar and jacket leaned forward.

Binky winced. This chap was as inadequately dressed for the heat as some of those chaps in Macondo; a tested sign of madness.

‘Go on fellas,’ urged Kyle. ‘Talk to him. Maybe you can find out why he keeps watching me at me personal time.’

Binky and Halgrim nodded and approached the Small Dark Man. He wore a crisp collar – high – and a brown jacket buttoned up. His white cuffs extended neatly beyond his jacket sleeves and his boots were clean and smart. He wore a beard that succeeded in growing itself into a fine point, navigating and accumulating its way neatly downwards, and his hair was flame red. As a result; in the recent heat; he was a little less ‘dark’ than he hoped in his description. He appeared to be muttering as they approached; Binky heard fast and furtive expressions including; ‘it eyes me – wants me to follow it – can’t believe a real live being here – here in the desolate bush with huge hunking Nothing always lurking behind you – the void that horrifies man – the void…’

‘What’s he on about, Binky?’ Halgrim frowned as they approached.

‘I dunno mate,’ called Kyle from behind. ‘But when he arrives, at first he’s all stomping around until he sees me – scares the shit outta the snakes – seems angry from the get-go. Maybe he’s had an argument with his wife.’

Binky was perplexed. He gave Halgrim the worried grimace that indicated that this may be a man with Opinions, of which they had met several before, but this one seemed unlikely to give you a good night out first before launching into it all.

‘Hullo old chap?’ attempted Halgrim. The small dark man, utterly oblivious to the two behind him, started violently, then stared piercingly at them with black eyes. It seemed to be his way of regaining composure. His mouth began working again with the muttering in an English accent with a hint of Nottinghamshire: ‘the men of this place – so coarse – but free – God’s own country – I knew the bush was waiting, watching – these irresponsible classes – democrats – but irresponsible – the proletariat in charge…’

‘Excuse me?’ Halgrim frowned. The little man seemed to come to himself a bit. With an expression both of indifferent disdain and also keen interest that warned Binky of a fatally contrary character, he invited them both home to meet his wife.

* * * *

Home was a squat white-washed bungalow with a corrugated iron roof that both the Europeans seemed to inexplicably hate. When Halgrim and Binky made complimentary expressions, the woman muttered something about candlesticks and Indian sarongs – ‘taste;’ bid them admire the dahlias and brought in tea. The small man launched into a history of his leaving Europe which was moribund and dead, interspersed with such dubious comments about Jewish bankers and the necessity for rule and the class system that left Binky painfully longing for an inoffensive Halgrim soliloquy on proper hard-back preservation, and thoroughly repentent of his earlier attitude.

This went on. The dark man had opinions on Australians. Vacant people, irresponsible people, he said, free, raw and loose, but no inner life. No individual soul. Halgrim attempted to counter this; he’d found them very congenial, he said, very kind. Oh yes, the dark man continued, of course they are, but they have no depth. Halgrim conceded he had only spent an afternoon with a bunch of chaps which is perhaps not enough time to assess and interpret the psychology of an entire nation; but when the little man sagely declared his experience extended as impressively long as a week, Halgrim retracted this concession at once.

And on. The small dark man had opinions on miners and their clothing. He had extraordinary opinions on male friendship. It seemed to involve a lot of clasping. He had opinions on masculinity and what a Man was. He had opinions on politics, socialism, order, power. Suburbia, common people. Women.

Here we go, Binky thought, rolling his eyes. Go on – I bet you’ve got opinions on how women ought to have orgasms. And indeed he did: if she moves, she’s a lesbian, the clitoris doesn’t get a look in and if she climaxes before you, it doesn’t count. Binky sighed a rabbit sigh. He was tired of all this and hopped out onto the veranda to survey the bush and perhaps spot a kangaroo, leaving Halgrim to argue, or at least insist that no one ought to argue about a thing of which they could know nothing.

‘Man to man, here Halgrim, you’re a worthy opponent in argument,’ the small man continued. ‘We could be Mates. A manliness, a power struggling between us. I find you immutable. There is something dark and strong in your soul; a power in your loins.’ Halgrim hastily checked the fastening of his red dungarees.

‘I am very well read, I must admit,’ Halgrim said. ‘Of course, it’s obligatory as a book guardian. Reading makes you very open minded to people and their thoughts.’

‘Yes!’ the small dark man leaned forward eagerly – Halgrim flinched in case a Clasping was coming – ‘which is why you need to listen to more of mine!’

‘Actually,’ interposed Halgrim firmly, ‘we are engaged. My war bunny and I are looking for a kangaroo.’

Abruptly, the small man stood up. He began pacing the room vigorously, a frown creasing his brow.

‘I was afraid of this,’ he said darkly. ‘I can introduce you to the kangaroo. But should I? I am not committed myself yet. Am I done with Man yet, or must I have one last fight, and struggle with them? Is my destiny with Man, or am I finished with them? Is there really only one kind of power, the unsayable, dark God of the loins…’ Here the small man’s wife rummaged in a drawer and brought out some cigarettes. Then, seemingly having heard all this before, went out onto the veranda to smoke with Binky.

‘Well, never-mind all that loin stuff,’ Halgrim interjected impatiently. ‘If you know a Kangaroo, then let’s go right now. I promised my war bunny a kangaroo, and by Loki, he’ll have one.’ They immediately set out.

* * * *

They arrived in the centre of town. It was dark and there was a considerable commotion outside one of the public buildings; a crowd outside of it. As their journey had become more and more urban, the spirits of the War Bunny; more and more forlorn. Back to town; there must be some mistake. There could be no kangaroo here. But as the shimmering lights of bars whizzed by, rapidly departed were alternative hopes of sacking this off and going for a drink.

They were ushered into the building where chairs had been set out facing a stage with a lectern. Halgrim flinched, but sighed with relief when the small dark man sat down next to him. A speaker came out and took position on the little raised dais and began. He was a tall man, with a long and lean face; rather like a kangaroo, with a portly, marsupial pouch-like belly. His shoulders drooped and he stooped his body shyly, but there was a kindness in his spectacled eyes and a set firmness about his mouth. Binky, aware of the impact of this sort of narrative description, sighed another rabbit sigh and steeled himself.

‘Men,’ began the kangaroo man. Binky, a rabbit, found this regressive. He looked around him. It occurred to him for the first time how singularly similar this group of people were. All men. All white. No women. No rabbits. He’d read about aboriginals; black skinned and decorated with white paint and bright bandannas the reds, browns and tans of this country. He wondered where they were.

‘Men!’ reiterated the kangaroo man. ‘The time is for Love! A real mate-love between people! And for love to flourish, we must have Order, to remove physical misery as far as possible. And that you can only do by exerting strong, just POWER from above. I don’t believe in education. In ninety per cent of people it is useless. But I do want that ninety per cent to have full, substantial lives: as even slaves (another despairing sigh here from Binky who then looked imploringly at Halgrim) had under certain masters…’

Halgrim took a deep breath. He fished about in a deep and hidden pocket for his bottle of Aquavit which he kept about him for emergencies of patience. He took a quick gulp, then grabbed the small man by the elbow and Binky by the ears and ran out of the lecture hall.

The small man was furious. He stormed. Grimly and silently, but he had a talent for it. He did some hard staring and thinking at Halgrim, then turned away, thinking more silent (thankfully) lengthy thoughts, then turned back to Halgrim.

‘Forgive me,’ began Halgrim. ‘But that man was just spouting right wing fascism. It’s all dressed up as a benign, god-like love, but you can’t just say ‘oh mine’s the best way, so for your own sakes, you’ve got to do it,’ because that is fascism. I’m an educated troll, I won’t be duped. And more to the point, IT’S NOT A BLOODY KANGAROO!!’

The small dark man’s face contorted with mysterious rage. Loin-rage, probably.

‘Still the fighter,’ he jeered to Halgrim. ‘Well, let’s fight it out. One of us will be master. I can’t say I don’t admire your life force, because I do, but we must fight it.’

‘You want to wrestle?’ Halgrim asked, amazed.

‘Naked,’ answered the small dark man. ‘One of us must be vanquished!’

Now Halgrim had always been a peaceful troll. He was not violent by nature (this is, in fact, a common misconception about trolls), always fighting with the pen or with words – the proper weapons of the book troll. But the disappointment Binky had suffered on this wild kangaroo chase, the piffle he’d listened to for four solid hours, the insult done to reading and intellect, and humanity. The trigger of the word ‘vanquish.’ Halgrim knew his destiny. He once more reached for the Aquavit, kept handy for emergencies of strength (for he was but a small troll), and drank lustily.

‘You want to wrestle naked?’ Halgrim confirmed, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. He returned the bottle to its mysterious pocket.

‘Fuck it. Alright.’

* * * *

Back at the small, dark man’s bush bungalow, Binky Prepared the Room. The door was locked. Furniture was pushed back against the walls and troll and man undressed. The small, dark man’s body was white and thin, but with a core of strength or some such thing. Halgrim’s was what you’d expect from a troll. Corpulent in places and very hairy.

Binky looked seriously from man to troll. Then with a small bow of the ears, the signal was given and the fighters connected.

They grappled severely for some time, the only sound was grunts and slaps as the bodies writhed; trying to get a hand hold on each other. At times it seemed the small, dark man had the upper hand, size helped; but it’s certainly not everything as he reached for Halgrim who suddenly was never there and always out of reach; his small hairy feet whipping away, his head always an inch or two away from where was lunged at. The small man’s fury darkened. ‘You will submit!’ he roared.

Halgrim suddenly contorted like a brown snake and pinned the man to the floor. Both wide feet were firmly planted on the biceps of the man who could no more shake off those sturdy feet than he could bend his legs right forward to whip Halgrim backwards. The book troll stood firm, seething and let out his own troll roar with all the force of an Icelandic revenge saga.

‘You’re a pompous arse!’ he shouted in the man’s face. ‘You’re the son of a bloody miner; how dare you give it all this ‘responsible classes’ nonsense?! And have you ever even met a bloody woman or are they just things in your mind you make up?! So you found your mother overbearing even though you admired her; you’re not the first; have a bloody conversation with her and talk it out!! I mean, haven’t you ever heard of Freud? And if you’re in love with men, can’t you just tell them and have a meaningful conversation about it instead of having to fight them?!’

Here, Binky clapped his ears fervently. He abhorred toxic masculinity.

‘So bloody well stay there,’ Halgrim continued to roar, ‘until you have worked some of this nonsense out for yourself!’

Halgrim redressed in his uniform with as much dignity as he could muster. Binky stayed staring down at the cowering small dark man to make sure he did not move. His eyes conveyed his contempt for the man. Kangaroo fucker, they seemed to say. Troll and rabbit turned their backs on him and the buxom, intelligent woman who was his wife came in from the veranda. She eyed her husband upon the floor with an arched eyebrow, and wordlessly lit another cigarette. After puffing three times deliberately while staring down at the whimpering man, she went back out onto the veranda.

Halgrim the book troll and his war bunny Binky went out into the Australian night.

* * * *

As the two figures strolled around the bush, it was nearly dawn. They admired the huge fruit bats returning to their trees to sleep for the day. They tried to enjoy themselves, after the horrors of the night.

‘I am sorry old rabbit,’ said Halgrim, sadly. ‘Quite a fiasco wasn’t it?’

Binky sighed a rabbit sigh.

‘But there is always another day Binky, don’t lose heart!’ Halgrim persevered with cheering his war bunny up. Binky’s expression intimated that he bet Kangaroos don’t even bloody exist anyway.

‘Daaaw now!’ comforted Halgrim. ‘We’ll find one!’ Then as the sky’s grey turned whiter, they heard the first call of the kookaburra.

‘Hey fellas!’ it laughed. ‘Howdya get on with ya kangaroo?’

‘Yes, not so well,’ Halgrim replied sullenly. ‘I’m glad it amuses you.’

‘Aw mate, look, this isn’t personal,’ the kookaburra continued to chuckle, ‘it’s just how I talk right? So no kangaroo? But there are heaps around here. Wait a minute.’

The kookaburra flew off and there was a great cackling in the air. Binky’s eyes conveyed mirthless fatigue.

And then strode forth from the bush a tall man, straight, with black skin and hair woollier than Halgrim’s. His skin was painted with geometric white patterns and he had a tasselled red cloak and intricate spear. Binky looked up at him in wonder. Halgrim approached.

There are over six hundred indigenous languages in Australia. By the time Halgrim had got to thirty-seven, Binky needed the loo, so hopped off for five minutes. On his discreet return, Halgrim appeared to have had the necessary breakthrough. Man and troll talked earnestly for some time. When they began chuckling, Binky rather feared they had got off topic. Halgrim was holding his hands out as if indicating the size of something. The warrior laughed again. It seems humanity has some beautiful things in common across the world and some words transcend translation. Binky smiled a rabbit smile.

The warrior beckoned to them and indicated for silence. Another gesture that is universal. He led them a few meters forward into the bush, then held back the hanging leaves of a large eucalyptus and all three stepped out into a clearing.

As they stared, the grey shadows of trees seemed to move in the dawn grey. Then a flush of gold as the sun threw its first liquid light over the top of Namadgi peak and the trees turned their heads. There were hundreds of kangaroos. A large grey picked up its long back legs from its sideways, prone position, and hopped towards them. Its ears were long, its face lean and serious and its leg muscles rose all the way to its small, elegant elbows.

Halgrim and Binky stepped forward, and troll, rabbit and kangaroo shook paws in the Eucalyptus scented dawn.