The Dreaming 1.12


By Asynca

Thanks to my fabulous Wurundjeri colleague who didn't want to be identified for reading over this to make sure it's culturally sensitive.

Thanks to Omnipatent for reading over it to make sure it makes sense.


We really had to hand it to Macca. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd taught him his degree, but whatever it was must have included several classes on how to manage large crowds of activists.

Instead of letting drunk people wander around in the dark hundreds of kilometres away from the closest police station, he'd organised entertainment. On one side of the blockade near the media vans a group of Aboriginal men were stripping down to loin clothes and painting each other with white stripes. Sam and I stood and watched them with interest for a few minutes.

While they were getting ready, a crowd was forming around them and us and it made me nervous. I couldn't very well go hide in my tent, though, because I wanted desperately to learn more about the local culture and spirituality. I was sure if I better understood their beliefs it would go some distance toward explaining what Sam and I were experiencing.

As I was examining all the different faces in the crowd, many of them smiled at me. Well, that was better than staring and whispering, I thought. I smiled back. Among the people gathering around the performers, there was a notable absence of the children; I supposed they were all in bed. I wondered if Blanket was somewhere sleeping peacefully in Sam's grey singlet. It was a sweet mental image.

Sam leaned over to me and whispered, "Do you think they'd mind if I filmed them?"

I shrugged and gestured for her to go ask the performers herself.

When she got the courage to walk into the clearing and introduce herself, one of them pointed at me. "Hey, you!" he called. I stood up straighter, surprised. "You're that Lara girl!" The crowd parted for him as he came over and shook my hand. When he let go, there was white chalk paste all over my palm.

It was hard to see him properly in the twilight, but up close I thought he might be in his late teens. He was still skinny and he had a big, wide grin. "I like your movie," he said. He was speaking with the same accent as Blanket had. "You must like stories, hey?" I nodded. He puffed out his chest and gestured at the other performers. "Me and my brothers here, we're going to tell you the story about the Kookaburra. Maybe you could put it in your next movie, okay?"

They hadn't minded us filming at all; quite the opposite. So, we stood around with the gathering crowd watching them finish applying their costumes. Before they started, they lit a large fire so everyone could see them.

I hadn't realised I was still surveying the crowd until Sam took my hand and smiled up at me. I smiled back and wiped some of the chalk paste from my hand onto her the tip of her nose. She couldn't do anything about it because I had one of her hands and the other was in the camera strap. She just scrunched up her nose went cross-eyed trying to look at it. I chuckled.

The performance was more than just music and dance; the boy who'd come up to me was also the narrator and he was a bit of a show pony. He introduced everyone to each of the troupe and then pointed to the older man at the back. "He's Old Johnson," the boy said. "And he's a grumpy old man." The crowd laughed. "He's also the only man allowed to make the sound of the Kookaburra. It's a special sound, you see. Only special people can make it. But Old Johnson is so grumpy, even Kookaburra is afraid of him!"

Old Johnson was old; he had a long greying beard and a brow so heavy it nearly covered his eyes. He stood up and pretended to look around the crowd until he spotted the narrator. "You!" he shouted, and then then took off his boot and threw it at him. "You respect your elders!" The boy pretended to hide behind a person at the front of the crowd. Old Johnson shook his head and went back to sitting up the back of the group.

I saw him pick up a long, hollow branch covered in intricate and colourful designs and put it to his mouth. Embedded in some of the patterns, I noticed spirals similar to those on the painting I'd copied from the cave. That piqued my interest. The branch itself, that was probably a didgeridoo. Confirming what I'd suspected, Old Johnson made a barking noise with it and all the brothers pretended to jump in surprise.

"You see? Everyone is afraid of him. Even the spirits are," the boy said, coming to stand in the centre of the cleared area again. From there, he began to launch into a story about how the spirits were awoken in the Dreamtime, and how that was like the Kookaburra waking up the sun.

It was very entertaining, partly because all the performers were very charismatic, and partly because I'd never seen anything quite like it. Their dancing and percussion was somewhat reminiscent of some of the performances Sam and I had seen when we'd been in Africa, but there was something else in their display. These men were so cheeky, so mischievous. There was so much life and energy in their performance it was impossible to not be engaged by them. At one point, one of them was standing up explaining why his colleague was a terrible brother and relating it to a fable about the bush chicken. The 'bad' brother faced us and put his finger to his lips, and then went a got a bucket of water and threw it sideways so it splashed against the speaker.

The crowd laughed – even Sam did – but my smiled faded immediately and I just stared at them. I had a very vivid memory of being splashed with water after I'd ripped up that sacred design. Around me everyone was laughing, just as they had been when I'd been standing drenched on the pavement. It was chilling.

When the performance was over, Sam took one look at my expression and said, "Alcohol, stat." She grabbed my hand, towing me toward the kitchen area. I looked back at the performers; the audience were mingling with them and talking. If I could get the boy alone I might be able to ask him more about the spirits he was telling us stories about. He might even know what the thing haunting us might be.

In the cooking area, Macca was hard at work supervising some of his volunteers handing out beer cans to people with IDs. Sam held up the front of her t-shirt like a basket. "Fill it up," she told him.

"What was that? Pour beer all over that white t-shirt?" he said, opening a can and pretending to be about to pour it onto her. "Sure!" She just laughed and pried the can from him. I watched their hands touch.

"Lara needs a lot of alcohol," Sam jerked her thumb at me. "Do you have anything stronger than beer?"

"Beer's fine," I said shortly. "What is it?"

"VB," he answered, offering me one. I took it from him and managed not to throw it at his face. "I got a good price. Plus it has the added benefit of being so disgusting people won't actually drink that much of it." He inclined his head to the cooking area. "There's probably some meat left if you want it. I'd cook it a bit more before eating it, though, it's been out for a while."

Sam smiled coyly at him as he handed her another beer, and then she glanced at me. I gave her a long stare, but she looked away in the middle of it and followed Macca's directions to the food.

The meat was attached to the in-tact carcass of a cow and was sizzling away on dimly glowing coals. Parts of its flesh had been hacked off, but its head wasn't actually on the fire and just stared at us from underneath long lashes. Its eyes were clouded.

"Oh, my God," Sam said, forgetting whatever she was playing at with Macca. She spent a few seconds filming it. "It's looking at me, and it's judging me for being about to eat it."

I wasn't as disturbed by it as Sam was. I threw back the remainder of the beer in my can and gave it to her as I walked up to the fire. Taking out my pocket knife, I cut along the muscle in the rump, and then pried the meat free with the very tips of my fingers, hissing, "Ouch, ouch!" I dropped the chunk of meat on the naked coals and poked it around a bit with the tip of the blade. When I was sure it was cooked through, I speared it with the knife and presented it to Sam.

She gaped at me. "That was so totally Survivor," she said, and took a bite out of the meat with her mouth. I would have made her take a few more bites, but she spotted something over my shoulder and completely forgot about the food. "Oh, it's that guy!" she said. "The one with the EFP camera. I'll be right back, I promise."

She rushed off and I watched her stop the man as he was walking somewhere. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying, but I think he was complimenting her. However, unlike her conversations with Macca, she wasn't having any of it. She said something, winced at him and then pointed at me. I thought her lips might have said, "That's her." I waved at them, and they both waved back. The cameraman looked disappointed.

I should have been happy she was obviously telling him she was taken, but on the other hand it just complicated everything. If it was so easy for her to tell him she was taken, why was she not telling Macca and flirting with him in front of me? It wasn't fair, I'd never do that to her. A rock formed in the pit of my stomach as I watched her gossip with the cameraman.

He'd actually asked about her handheld, and it looked like she was scrolling through some features as they had their heads together watching the LCD. She always looked so serious and professional when she was deep in discussion about features of various media equipment. I loved watching her. I would have enjoyed it a lot more, though, if I wasn't so upset about that smile she'd given Macca.

"Tomb Raider!" someone said from beside me, and then giggled. I turned my head, and found myself face to face with a group of three teenagers. They were drinking, and since Macca was insisting on IDs I assumed they weren't minors. Two of them were girls and they were pushing the boy forward. "Hi," he said, and then went bright red. The girls rolled their eyes and continued to giggle.

"Hello," I said, feeling rather uncomfortable.

When the boy didn't say anything else, one of the girls said, "He just has a torrent of Tomb Raider, but he says it's so awesome you're here trying to help us that he's going to buy a real copy." The boy looked like he might actually die of embarrassment. I felt awful for him, and even more so as his friend added, "Also he thinks you're really hot."

"Shut up!" he hissed and elbowed her.

"Thank you," I said, carefully avoiding three quarters of what she'd. "And it's my pleasure to be here."

The boy managed to escape, mumbling something about needing more beer and the girls followed him. I watched them go. It was such an odd feeling to look at a total stranger and know that they'd thought about me like that. I looked down at myself, wondering what the big deal was. It wasn't as if I was one of those girls who thought they were ugly – I knew I wasn't – but I didn't see anything particularly exceptional about my appearance. I always assumed I was rather average and that had always been enough for me. There were a great deal more important things to spend my energy worrying about. The fact that I'd just been dragged four thousand kilometres by some supernatural force who apparently wanted me to brutally murder someone, for example. Or, Sam flirting with Macca. I frowned again.

Why would she do that? Was she trying to make me jealous? Was she genuinely flirting with him to make some point I didn't understand? Or, worst of all, was she actually interested in him?

"Lara!" Sam's voice called, and I looked up at her. She'd managed to sweet talk the cameraman into letting her put his camera on her own shoulder. "I'm holding a Betacam!"

I didn't know what the significance of that was, but Sam looked like she was about to explode with joy so I called back, "Suits you!" as pleasantly as I could. My chest felt unbearably heavy, and I had a sudden thought about what would happen if she hooked up with Macca right here in the blockade and I was left sleeping in our tent alone. What would happen to our beautiful new house if we broke up? What would happen to me?

She was just getting back into a discussion again when I felt someone strike my back. It echoed through my ribs and unfortunately I still had the pocket knife in my hand. Within half a second, it was against someone's throat and my heart was pounding.

The man who had struck me turned out to be middle aged, and his kind eyes were watching me with abject terror. "I'm sorry!" he said desperately, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you! I was just trying to give you a friendly old pat on the back for supporting a good cause!"

I lowered the knife and stepped back from him, just horrified with myself. What had I nearly done to an innocent man? In the process of backing away, I almost fell over a deckchair and directly into the fire with the dead cow.

The man looked like he wanted to take a step toward and help me catch my balance, but he didn't. His eyes kept moving between my face and my pocket knife. I stowed the blade and slipped it back in my pocket with shaking hands.

"Are you alright?" he asked, looking genuinely concerned. "Jesus, I'm really sorry. Fuck, that was stupid, wasn't it?"

I shook my head dismissively, waving my hand to show him I was alright. Well, of course I was alright, I hadn't just had a knife pulled on me. I had just been so deep in thought, brooding about Sam that I hadn't— Oh, God. That was too close.

I finally managed to gather some composure. "No, I'm so sorry," I said. "God, I really am. I hope I didn't hurt you. I don't handle surprises very well."

He smiled warmly at me. "I don't know my own strength," he said, holding out his big hand to me. "Forgive me?"

"Only if you forgive me."

I shook his hand and he chuckled, despite what had happened. "Well, at least I have a great story to tell my mates," he said. "Lara Croft nearly took my head off! So, can I get you another beer? You look like you need to chill out." I shook my head, and he nodded. "I get the hint. See you, then. Good on your for supporting us." I watched him head off to wherever he'd originally been going.

When he was gone, I exhaled. I hadn't realised I was so on edge until that moment, but now that I focused on the feeling, it was similar to what I'd originally felt in the hotel room. I couldn't decide what was affecting me more: the presence, or Sam's behaviour. Regardless of what it was, though, I probably shouldn't be around crowds of people until I'd managed to sort my head out.

Sam was engrossed in a serious conversation about the Betacam; I didn't want to bother them. I wasn't even sure I wanted to be around Sam right now. Well, that wasn't true – of course I did, I always wanted to be around her. But I didn't want to see anymore of her flirting and I wanted to pretend it had just never happened. Maybe I could go for a run or something so I could think. Actually, that was a great idea.

I headed out of the blockade camp and onto the road on the other side of it. As soon as I was clear of tents, I broke into a sprint.

I ran along the road for some distance, enjoying the feeling of my muscles working together and the warm breeze on my face. It was dark and I couldn't see any details about the road, but that just made me feel like I was running faster than I probably was. I pushed myself just a little harder, revelling in the burn in my legs. It was actually a really pleasant feeling; I had so much energy I felt like I might be able to climb all the way to the top of the Gorge. I thought the better of it, though, because it was dark and I didn't have a headlamp with me.

It wasn't very long before I'd worked off all the excess adrenaline and I slowed to a halt, leaning my hands on my knees and panting. There was real clarity in feeling completely exhausted.

I turned and looked behind me to see how far I'd run. In the distance, I heard the drone of many conversations blending together, with the occasional shout and shriek of laughter. Lights from various sources moved around the camp. Behind everything was the glow of a large bonfire and the sound of drums as people experimented with them.

Around me, though, it was almost silent. I heard the rustle of leaves blowing in the breeze and the sound of my own breathing.

It was at that point that I became aware of a deep rumbling coming from the gorge. It was a sound that was hidden well in between the hum of distant conversations and the breeze blowing my hair around my ears. I turned my head toward the gorge, trying to figure out what it was. When I couldn't, I decided to investigate.

I had no idea about the terrain between the road and the gorge, and the only light I had on me was my mobile. I didn't really want to waste the battery, though, because although I was sure Macca would have organised for some sort of recharge station I suspected there would be stiff competition for it.

Hoping I wouldn't come across anything that wanted to kill me, I squinted and moved through the brush using only the moonlight to assist me. As I approached the river and the cliffs rising beside it, the humming sound became louder, but I was still unable to identify it.

The entrance to the main gorge was a long sand bank on the side of the river. The water was almost still, but I didn't fancy the idea of swimming through it, so I walked along the sandy edge. As I the bushland disappeared behind me and was walking between two widely spaced cliffs, the details of the sound became even more difficult to distinguish. The cliffs were feeding soundwaves to each other and every time the sound bounced the echoes were harder to place.

I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from at all, even though I was standing right here and probably really close to it. I stood in place, turning and tilting my ears in various directions, but I couldn't pinpoint it.

Just while I was worrying that it might be something to do with the cave-thing and that it might actually be coming from nowhere, it stopped. Someone laughed, and then it made a barking noise like I'd heard Old Johnson make in the performance.

"Girl!" a voice called to me. It echoed several times on the rock face. I saw the owner of the voice when he turned to me; his face had the white chalk on it and white strips like ribs walked toward me from where he'd been standing on a boulder in the centre of the sand.

Without the strange music, there was an eerie silence in the gorge.

I recognised the player by his long grey beard before he spoke again. It was Old Johnson with his didgeridoo and a half-full orange juice container. He was bare-chested and bare-foot, but had put a pair of ordinary jeans on. It was an odd contrast with the rest of him. He laughed again, not sounding at all grumpy. "Girl, why are you here?" he said, again sounding anything but grumpy, "Don't you know that this place is full of crocodiles?"

I looked apprehensively at the dark, still water. "I'll be alright."

I think he was impressed, but it was difficult to tell under his facial hair and chalk paste. "What did you come here for?"

I pointed to his didgeridoo. "I didn't know what the sound was so I came to find out. I hope I didn't disturb you."

He shook his head. "No," he said. He regarded me at length, and took a mouthful from the container he was holding. "Have this," he said, holding it out to me after he'd finished. "Not like your beer. This is our booze, this stuff."

I looked at the bottle on the end of his outstretched arm, not sure if in their culture it was impolite to refuse. In the end, I took the bottle and drank from it, hoping it wouldn't make me go blind. It didn't, but what it did do was burn my throat so badly I actually gagged. He chuckled. "I told you: good stuff!"

I wasn't sure about his assessment, but it certainly was strong. He flicked his wrist at the bottle. "You take the rest. I got plenty at home." While I was recovering, he turned the didgeridoo over in his hands. "I just come out here because this will be gone soon," he said, looking at the cliffs. "I played here since I was a boy. I learnt to play here, on this sand." He shook his head, his brow even lower than it usually was. "My boys learnt to play here. Their boys, too. But not anymore. Soon it will be dust."

"I didn't know they were going to mine inside the gorge," I said. "I thought it was ten kilometres from here? Perhaps it will be safe."

He shook his head. "They are always like this," he said. "They say one place and then after the government lets them, they mine all the places. Argyle was like this. Now Windjana will be like this. I know what they're after in the rocks here. They don't even know what they'll find."

"What will they find?" My skin prickled as I asked the question.

He smiled humourlessly, watching me stroke my bare arms. "I think you found it already," he said. "Or it found you first."

I could feel him looking at me, even though it was difficult to see. He actually walked slowly all the way around me. The sand we were standing on was slightly wet and the moonlight shone everywhere except his footprints.

"Now I got a question," he said when he was around at my front again. "What's a white girl doing with all them spirits hanging around?"

"You can see it?" I asked, feeling my heart flutter. Someone who knew about what was happening! "Wait, there's more than one?"

"Hah!" he said, and then gestured at me to drink more. I followed his advice. "Yeah, more than one," he said. "You'll see."

I wanted to ask him so much more, but he turned away from me and put the didgeridoo to his mouth. After a moment, he started to play it. The sounds filled up the silence in the gorge again.

Some of the rhythms he was making with it resonated so deeply that I could feel them in my ribs and in my skull. Each time he made a different noise with it, a bark, or a wail or some other sound, it echoed off the cliff face sometimes up to several seconds later. It was surreal, as if the very rocks were shouting back to him.

After a few minutes of listening to him and wishing Sam were here to see this, I began to feel sick. At first, I thought it was just the regular nausea of having drunk a little too much too fast, but it quickly escalated. I put my hand on my stomach and went to say something to Old Johnson, but he was facing away from me and immersed in the music he was making.

God, I hoped I wouldn't throw up on this lovely clean sand. As I looked down at it, my breath caught. It was so clean and the moon was so bright that it looked like the same diamonds I'd seen on the beach at Broome. It couldn't be real, I must be hallucinating. I bent down to take a handful of them, and just like cut diamonds the pebbles ran through my fingers as I sifted the ground.

I must be hallucinating, I thought, looking at the orange juice bottle Old Johnson had given me and wondering exactly what it was brewed with. Perhaps some sort of Australian mushrooms filled with potent toxins?

I stood back up. The wind had picked up in the gorge, and I could feel it rush down between the cliffs and past me, blowing my hair all over the place. I fussed with my hair, trying to keep it out of my eyes. When I managed to get most of it tucked into my ponytail, I happened to catch sight of Old Johnson.

His jeans and his hair were perfectly still.

While I was staring at him, my pulse beginning to race. Someone's fingertips pushed the last few strands of hair behind my ears. I felt more than I heard someone whisper very close to my ear, "Follow me." There was no one else around me. I felt so ill and I was so scared that I obeyed the voice.

Nothing was leading me and no one took my hand, but I knew the direction I was supposed to walking in. I moved slowly, frightened I would throw up if I jolted my stomach.

As I walked, I felt the grains of the sparkling sand slip up between my toes even though I was wearing boots. I looked behind me, but there were no footsteps. It was as if I'd never stood on that beach with Old Johnson. I must have been, though, because I could hear the warbling of his didgeridoo so clearly that sometimes it almost sounded like it was coming from inside my skull.

By the time I reached the edge of the gorge and the route I'd arrived by, I wasn't completely sure where I ended and the landscape began. The water felt as if it were part of me and when I bent down to touch it, it was as if I were dissolving into its depths. Around the edges of the water crocodiles lazed, not even paying one scrap of attention to me. I went right up to one and touched it; it twitched, but didn't move.

Everything was breathing. The plants, the rocks. They all seemed to be drawing deep breaths, expanding and contracting with each one.

I stood on the edge of the gorge, looking back into it. It was empty: Old Johnson was nowhere to be seen. The riverbed was covered in the sparkling diamonds, like the broken scales from my dream.

Someone collided with me and screamed. That shocked me enough for me to return at least somewhat to reality. I spun around, finding Sam. I could have cried with relief to see her; I didn't even care about Macca. She even had our torch in her hands.

Sam looked directly into my eyes for several seconds before she said, "God, Lara, it's you! Where did you come from, I didn't see you! Someone said you'd run off this way and I was so worried that..." her voice trailed off as she got a good look at me. She put her arms on either of my shoulders and gave me the once over with the torchlight. "Wow, how much did you drink? You look terrible!"

I was shaking. "I feel terrible," I said, and then noticed she was only wearing her bikini top with her trousers. She was also covered in the white chalk paint. "What…?"

She looked down at herself. "Oh, right," she said. "The performers were teaching us about what all this means," she said, spinning around to show me. "It's pretty interesting, it's a shame you weren't there."

There were stripes on her back, too. I didn't even want to ask the question but I couldn't help myself. "Did you do those?"

She looked a little guilty. "Macca did," she said. My stomach dropped, but I was too distracted to say anything about it. She would probably have said more herself, but she spotted the bottle in my hand. "Is that what you're drinking?" she asked.

I hadn't even remembered that I was holding it, and after Old Johnson had disappeared, I wasn't completely sure anyone but me would be able to see it. It was a relief she could. "I think I've been poisoned," I said. "Or drugged, or something. God, I…" I exhaled. "I think I'm hallucinating, but I'm not sure." The didgeridoo was still playing. "Can you hear that?" I asked her. "The playing?"

She didn't even need to check. "Yeah, of course," she said. "That's not hallucinating."

I could still feel the breeze warm against my neck. At least Sam's clothes were moving with it. "Old Johnson said the thing that's following us isn't an 'it', it's a 'them'. Spirits." I could still feel then around me. "I think I have to go somewhere with them."

Sam looked surprised. "Now?" she asked, and I nodded.

She was lost in thought for a moment, her eyes glazed as she watched me. Then , suddenly, snatched the bottle from me and poured the rest of it down her throat so quickly that I couldn't stop her. Just in case I tried to, she had her hand extended between us to prevent me from succeeding.

"Sam!" I said, "Didn't you hear me? I have no idea what's in that, it could be poisonous!"

She wiped her mouth, even her eyes watering from the strength of it. "I heard you. If you're poisoned, so am I," she said hoarsely. "Whoa, that's gross. So where are we going?"

I stared at her a moment, unable to believe the gravity of what she'd just done. She had no idea what was in that bottle except that it had made me extremely ill. Then, she'd drunk it.

"Lara? Which way?"

I tried to focus on her question, but I wasn't sure how to answer it her. As I was trying to explain my feeling of needing to go in a specific direction, I saw movement on the opposite side of the gorge where I had been headed. Because the whole landscape was pulsing, at first I couldn't be certain I did see something. I squinted at where I thought I'd seen the slender figure, and then I caught sight of the moonlight shining off a head of white-blond hair. Something inside me surged toward her.

Amanda. Where on earth was she sneaking off to at this hour? She wasn't heading for the didgeridoo music, she was going somewhere else.

"There," I said, pointing at her and keeping my finger raised until I was certain Sam had seen her. "I'm willing to place money on that being the way we're supposed to go."