Wondering where all the horses had gone, Choopa went up to the top of the clear country again, just to make sure that no horses were hiding on the edge of the forest. No one was there and he started to canter back.
He stumbled and fell, somersaulted and was back onto his feet again, but he stood still because he heard a rustling, and he felt movement. Then suddenly there was a thunder of hoof beats. A big, strong colt stood in front of him, ready to strike. And then out of the bush there came — scuttling, hopping, leaping, hurrying — his friends, with whom he had created his spell from the time he found he could somersault and dance. They rushed up to him now, touching his nose with their noses, or patting him with soft kangaroo and wallaby paws, pushing the aggressive colt away.
Choopa began to spring about with joy. The animals seemed to clear a space around him … and then, as though Franz were there, indicating exactly what he was to do, Choopa leapt into a magnificent capriole there under a darkening night sky on Quambat Flat, with the first stirrings of leaves in a wind making the music for his ‘airs above the ground’. Here there was no fabulous riding school in the Habsburg palace, the Lipizzaner white horses were only there in a dream. Here, only Choopa, the dwarf, almost forgetting his circle of friends, dancing his ‘airs above the ground’ for love, and a gift to the high mountains up above.
Dawn was breaking. Choopa and Dandaloo must not be out in the open in broad daylight for all to see. Even if only Dandaloo were seen by men, now, it would be realised that Choopa was not far away.
Clouds had drifted over the stars in the last part of the night, and the cold was leaden: the sharp bite of frost had gone.
Shadows of big horses seemed to glide through the trees all around the flat, but their footfalls made no sound. There, too, apart from all the shadow horses, were the two silver stallions, kings of Quambat Flat, to greet Choopa and Dandaloo.
Dawn came in showing dark and lowering clouds. It was time to find somewhere to hide.
The first snow of winter came with break of day, falling in great, cupped flakes, like the petals of the windflower anemone that grows beside the summer drifts. It was just a light fall, to coat leaves and tree trunks, to linger on grass stems. It began to melt during the day and then the night brought a hard frost, giving every leaf a globule of ice.
It was cold for the man who was camping away from a hut. He had a fire, and the flickering light from his fire made the ice on the leaves glitter and gleam. Before he got into his sleeping bag, he put a few little heaps of carrots around about. He had no lasso, no halter, nothing with which to catch a brumby, nor did he intend to do so, because a man who loves a wild horse that he is training knows when the spirit within that horse has almost reached breaking point, and he would never wish to break its spirit.
Sometime, in that night’s wandering, Choopa and Dandaloo got the scent of a dying fire. Curiosity kept nagging at Choopa, and he traced the scent of the fire till he found the first small pile of carrots.
He gave a queer little sigh, and ate them.
He looked at the shape in the sleeping bag. There was another heap of carrots. Choopa, with profound trust, sniffed closer, finally sniffed near the sleeper’s face. There were carrots quite close. Franz’s eyes opened as Choopa’s whiskers lightly moved over his cheeks, over his lips. Slowly Franz’s hand moved up to stroke behind Choopa’s ears. Choopa snuffled his face once more, staying while the hand stroked, then he ate the carrots before moving, without a sound, down to the last heap of carrots by Franz’s feet. He ate them and then rose in a perfect courbette, illumined by the frosty stars, saluting the man.
Choopa dropped onto his forefeet and bowed, rose once more like a classic statue against the dark Australian bush. Then he faded backwards, into the forest.
A faint stir of air moved the trees, and the ice music rang.
Brumbies of the Night
Dedication
To Dougal, with love.
Foal of the Flood
Rain pelting down: water running everywhere: raging river, water racing over its banks, far and wide.
The pale grey mare pushed her nose at the black foal that lay half on the sand, half in the water. She knew that the foal was dead. She had hoped it would struggle to its feet in this sandy bay, where the current that had swept them away had dropped them both, but it was dead. Somehow she could not leave it. It must already have drowned before they were washed together into this sandy bay. She gave it a more gentle touch with her nose, and, as she lowered her head to the cold body, she heard a cry, as though borne on the racing, roaring water.
It was the desperate cry of a foal. She touched her own foal. Really, it was dead … dead, but … there was that cry … much closer. Listening for it again, she stepped into the rushing water, the swift current tugging at her fiercely. A branch hurtled towards her and entangled with her legs. The water was rising very fast.
There was the cry again.
Then she saw it: its head up in a desperate neigh that was half-muffled by water, a weakly-struggling and exhausted foal.
The foal was borne towards her, as the branch had been, and it hit her legs. Grabbing a mouthful of its mane, she took a step backwards, trying to dislodge the foal, whose legs were on both sides of one of her legs. The flood was getting stronger every second. She plunged, and got off-balance. The foal was tugged away, rolled over by the water. She sprang after it and took grip of it again.
They were being forced into the mainstream. The foal had felt that help had come; now he was seized with terror and had no strength left for struggling.
Suddenly desperate to get it to the bank, as though it were her own foal, Coolawyn forced herself to step back again and again, another step and another. Soon they should back right out of the force of the current, soon they must be in that swirl of water that would take them into the little sandy bay. Coolawyn’s grip on the foal’s mane was so strong that she had its head well above water. Surely this foal was not drowned.
Then she felt shifting sands beneath her hooves. She braced herself against the force of the water; gasping for breath, she dragged the foal to the bank. His hooves touched the sand and he was trying to walk. She pulled him right out of the water before she let go her grip of his mane.
Because her own foal had been dead for some time, her udder was bursting with milk. This foal was shaking and shivering convulsively. She pushed him towards her bulging teats. As he stumbled and put his lips up, the milk sprayed over his nose. The shaking, trembling foal began to suck.
Coolawyn, the pale grey mare, could just see her own, dead, foal. The water seemed to be rising up its body. This one which the god of the river had given her was about the same age, and he did look unusual, but as she felt him sucking more strongly, the aching misery for the dead foal suddenly became a fierce love for this one that the flooded river had given to her. She licked his back and he turned his milky head to her lips. He was no longer shivering so fiercely. Soon he would lie down to sleep, and she would lie beside him, curl herself around him, press her warm body against him, love him and warm him entirely. Before the river rose further, they must get a little higher, and then, when the foal had had a good sleep, they must leave this place for ever.
She could see that the river kept rising. Snow melt was swelling every stream that headed in the higher country. The water was lapping higher and higher up the sandy bay, touching her dead foal, moving it as though it were alive, and then, as the sand gave way beneath it, the foal’s body was swept away. The mare gave a strange little cry. The black foal vanished from sight in the seething, brown waters, but the flood had given her this very small, white foal. Now she must make it follow her to higher ground.
The rain stopped, but the snow melt kept the river rising and rising.
It was when the sun came out that Coolawyn saw that it was the foal’s eyes that made him look unusual. His eyes were a strange colour, like the red marks on the candlebark trees. Also, he was white, and no foals were born whi
te. Anyway, he was beautiful, and he was hers … given for ever by the river … Yarralala, the foal of the flood.
The sun did not shine for more than a few hours and then the rain started again, and the sound of the river could be heard, louder and louder. Coolawyn was frightened by it, and for all the rest of her life the roar of flood would fill her with unreasoning fear.
A great quantity of snow had fallen in the high mountains throughout the winter. It only needed the hot wind that had been blowing and then this rain that was falling again, to make the snow reef off.
Coolawyn knew she must go upwards to higher ground.
The roar of the river was getting louder all the time — that sound that so filled her with fear. The flood foal kept listening and trembling.
Coolawyn began to climb steeply upward through thick bush. She was surprised how well the foal followed. They would need water to drink, and grass, or rich seedpods, and leaves of bushes to eat … she must find food and drink. She was wondering, too, about the rest of her herd. If they had not been swept away by the flood, they would be on the other side of the river, where they were grazing when the flood caught them.
The day grew darker. Everything was like a bad dream. Coolawyn looked at Yarralala. He was white like the foam on the surface of the flood.
What had happened to the herd? Where were they?
She and the foal might be safe, but she would still have to take care not to be caught between two flooded creeks. It was on this side of the river that the biggest snow-fed streams flowed down off the very high mountains.
Often she looked at the little white foal. He was like a ghost. He was, indeed, beautiful.
They came to a flattening of the ridge up which they were climbing. To one side there was a deep hollow. That hollow might be warm and sheltered. It was surrounded by big trees, and shrubs were thick around their roots. With the flood foal trotting beside her, she went down into it.
Kangaroo grass, green and succulent, grew there. Coolawyn had a few mouthfuls as the foal began to suck again. She was tired, and the warmth of the little hollow, and its security, made her sleepy. It was as though she slipped away in time and place, away from the sad and frightening present, away from the roaring snow melt.
The foal moved and she felt a sharp shock as she saw the white foal beside her. Surely her foal was black. Then the picture flashed into her mind of the dead, black foal being swept away by the flooded river.
She heard her own cry of misery, but the little foal nuzzled at her and, loving it, she licked its funny little face. Presently they moved to the edge of the hollow, and then she and the little white foal lay down to sleep under close-woven shrubs and tall eucalypts.
Pale grey mare and white foal lay sound asleep, and the roar of the river was almost carried away by the weird moan of the wind and the swishing and creaking of long streamers of bark hanging from the tall trees.
Later, the little foal awoke and cried a sad, little wuffling neigh, calling for something that was lost. Coolawyn’s lips moved gently round his ears. She would give him love and comfort.
All through the mountains there was loss. The owls and the oldest of the kangaroos and emus were the only ones who could remember such a high and swift-rising flood … so much snow, so much snow to be washed away. There was deep snow in every gully; snow plastered thickly on every ridge and every wide mountain face. This wind that moaned through rocks and crevices, and howled in chasms, that might feel cold on a horse’s wet hide, was actually warm and would loosen the snow for the rain to wash away and make torrents to pour off the mountains. Those torrents would carry the bodies of small kangaroos and wallabies, carry rats and snakes from their holes … carry drowned foals.
Coolawyn was not the only mare to lose her foal, but she was the only one to whom the great gods of snow and wind, and rain and roaring flood, would give a pure white foal out of the raging stream.
They slept there, in that secure hollow, only disturbed occasionally by a fear that came in dreams. There had to be a tomorrow, many tomorrows, but, for the moment, sleep was needed to cure exhaustion, to start healing grief. Food was needed, and food was here.
Only some touch of the magic of the bush and the mountains could bless death, and grief and loss.
The immense rain and flood had been so sudden, and it had caused such terror, that a strange, lasting sensation of fear seemed to creep through the bush, to flow in the waters of every stream, to cry in the movement of leaf and in the moan of the wind.
The foal woke in the night, neighing with fear … or loss. Coolawyn started to her feet, a vision in her mind of her foal. Then the little white foal blew through his nostrils, a sad, plaintive sound, and she pushed it towards her milk, to give it comfort.
Something very disturbing was in the night. None of the usual sounds of the bush were to be heard, for the wail of the wind, the creaking of the trees, and the rushing of water sounded over everything else. It seemed to Coolawyn that no other bird or beast was alive in the world, only herself and the white foal.
The foal lay down to sleep again, calmed by the warm milk, and Coolawyn herself had been calmed by the foal’s rhythmic sucking. Another day would dawn, with rain or without rain; with a greater flood or with water receding. Another day for a pale grey mare and her flood-given foal.
There were no other horses near, because they had been unable to cross the raging torrent. Perhaps when the river dropped …
When the dawn came, Coolawyn went to drink at a small round pool in the centre of their little hollow. She was thirsty and she drank deeply, knowing that the foal was watching her. When she moved away, the foal walked curiously to the pool. By the time he dropped his nose towards it, the water had become mirror-still again. As his nose got close to it, he sprang backwards, jumped forward again, then swung round, as though expecting someone, and neighed wildly.
He turned back to the pool calling, calling to the pure white foal that he saw there in the water.
After his wild neighs there was only intense silence. He stared down at the pool, at the white foal that looked back at him, then raised his head and threw a sobbing call to the sky, and spun around, looking behind him. Then he began a frenzied galloping round and round the hollow, peering in behind bushes. He got more and more upset, rushing hither and thither. Coolawyn tried to quieten him, standing beside him whenever he stopped, exhausted. There he stood with all four legs planted apart, in the centre of the hollow, gasping for breath, until he could neigh again. At last he walked shakily back to the still pool, looked in, saw the white foal, bent right down to touch it with his nose, but it was only cold, cold water that his nose touched, and the foal’s face broke up and rippled away from him.
He stepped back and crumpled in a heap.
Coolawyn lay down beside him, cradling him with her legs, trying to comfort him.
For what did he seek with such desperation? His mother? Coolawyn felt sure that in the same strange way that she had accepted him as a gift from the flood, he had felt that he was hers. Surely he was seeking something else?
What was it that he had seen in that still pool?
The Still, Round Pool
All through the mountain forests there was the sound of water: the thunder of waterfalls and water rushing, swishing through overhanging branches and, further away from rivers and creeks, there was water whispering, seeping.
All these sounds melted into the mystery that floated around and over the mountains. Clouds might slide down the sky and touch a treetop — clouds with queer tales to tell. Sometimes a cloud might touch the pale grey mare and that ghostly white foal, and fill them with something that was fear and yet not fear, that was dread and yet not dread … something that somehow could fill the mare with elation. The sound of the water became a pulse that beat in Coolawyn’s body — the pulse beat of a storm.
Coolawyn and Yarralala grazed in their sheltered hollow — wraiths whose pale shapes were there, in the belting rain, then invisible. S
ometimes a pale grey head would be between the rough trunks of two alpine ash or there was the faint outline of a white foal inside a stand of slender ribbon gums.
A wombat seeking food was earlier than the evening half-light because he knew that the night was going to be rough. He stopped near the opening of his burrow, and stared at the ghosts of a mare and foal.
There was something very strange. Nothing usually disturbed a wombat’s life, but never had he known such a flood. It was the flood that had made his life so queer. There was almost no sound, except the noise the water made. No birds had sung all day, and the possums had not once quarrelled. Luckily, his hole was high up the ridge. Even a solid, strong wombat felt that something unusual was coming. He was almost worried.
Coolawyn barely saw the wombat. She was wondering where else they might find shelter and some good grazing if the creeks were too high to cross, but they could stay here for a while.
Yarra’s nose touched her flank quite often, and each time she felt a tingling current flow from his nose through her hair, into her whole body. Each time she knew even more strongly that this little foal of the flood accepted her as his mother, and she felt happier — not so entirely bereaved. Yet she felt that there was something for which he was searching.
She also kept wondering what had happened to the herd with which she usually ran. Undoubtedly, the raging water had forced them to stay on the other side of the river, where they had gone for good grazing, but had some of them drowned or been carried far, far downstream? Sometimes death by drowning and terrible disaster seemed to haunt her, to stay in her mind. There was a strong feeling in the air … and she and Yarra were alone.
Night began to creep up from the valley, and it became more noticeable that there were no bird calls and no sound of any other animals. Not even a distant neigh could be heard. Coolawyn felt as though she and Yarra were the only horses left alive. Then, after they had grazed for a while and it was almost dark, from far, far away, drifting up through a gully below their basin, there sounded one neigh — a neigh filled with longing.