Corroboree Read Free Page A

seen some Aborigines who looked like snowmen.’
    â€˜Snowmen,’ Charlotte whispered.
    Eyre stood up. ‘Come away now,’ he said. There’s nothing to be done. I’ll have to make a report to the governor; and perhaps a note to Captain Billington, too.’
    Charlotte stayed where she was, the warm wind blowing the hem of her cream-coloured dress into curls. ‘Do you think—?’ she began. But then she stopped herself, because she had asked the same question already in her mind, and so many times before, and the answer had always been the same: that she would never know. The desert does something to a child. It makes a child its own; as do the strange people who walk the desert asking neither for food nor for water; except what they themselves can discover from the ground.
    Eyre had explained that to Charlotte time and time again, in different ways, perhaps to prepare her for this very moment.
    She turned and looked at him, and there were so many anguished questions in her eyes that he had to look away—at the lawns, the kangaroos in the distance—at anything that would relieve him from the pain which she was using like a goad—forcing him to face up again and again to the most terrible secret of his whole life.
    â€˜It’s not possible,’ he said. Then he reached out his hand, and said, ‘Come on. Come away. There’s no profit to be had from staying here.’
    â€˜I always thought—’ she blurted; and then she took a breath, and controlled herself, saying in a wavery voice, ‘I always thought that he might have survived somehow, and been taken care of. I mean—why else would they have taken him? Except for money perhaps, and they never asked for that. I always imagined that he might have grown up amongst them; and lived a happy life, for all that had happened. Even Aborigines can be happy, can’t they, Eyre? You know them better than I do. The men, I mean. They
can
be happy, can’t they?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Eyre.
    He took her sleeve, but she twisted away from him, and looked down again at the body lying in the lawn.
    â€˜He looks so contented,’ she said. ‘They killed him, and yet he looks so peaceful. As if he were at home, at last.’
    Eyre frowned towards the Aborigine who had brought Biranga in; and thought of what he had said. ‘
He didn’t even put up his hand to save himself. He was just standing, sir; just staring.
’
    He said to Wawayran, ‘Make sure this fellow gets buried; soon as you like.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ Then, ‘Please, sir?’
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜Well, sir, the burial, sir. Christian or Wirangu, sir?’
    â€˜This man’s a Wirangu, isn’t he?’
    Wawayran didn’t answer at first, but stared at Eyre in a peculiar way.
    â€˜He’s a Wirangu?’ Eyre repeated, sharply.
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Well, then, give him a Wirangu burial.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Charlotte had already returned to the house. Eyre stood on the lawn for a moment, undecided about what he should do next. Before he could turn away, though, one of the black boys came towards him with his hand held out, and said, ‘Mr Walker, sir, this was found in Biranga’s bag.’
    Eyre peered at it, and then picked it up. It was a fragment of stone, carved and painted with patterns.
    This is nothing unusual,’ he said. ‘It is only a spiritstone.’
    â€˜But what it says, sir.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    The boy pointed to the patterns and the pictures. The stone says, this is the mana stone which will be carried by the one spirit who comes back from the world beyond the setting sun; and by this stone you will know that it is truly him.’
    Eyre turned the stone over and over in his hand.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, at last. ‘I saw something like this before, once upon a time.’
    â€˜Well, sir, if Biranga was