Silver Brumby Echoing

  Each mare would have taken the other foal, while desperately keeping her own.

  In a strange way, Burra felt sorry for the white mare. He realised that she was trying to get back to her herd, but every time she got the foal away with her, it turned back to Yarra, and she would keep calling. Once Yarra went quite a distance down a long snowgrass lane that ran between rocks, but Coolawyn neighed and neighed in misery, and went after them, bringing Yarra back, so that the other foal came back too, with the white mare following.

  Burra would have let the white mare and her foal go, but for Yarra and Coolawyn … Coolawyn was more important than anything.

  The two white foals and the sad white mare created a frightening feeling that something quite inescapable was going to happen.

  Sometimes Burra was sure he heard a distant neighing in the night. The darker the night, the closer the neigh sounded, and the more upset the white mare became. The herd could not rest, and it seemed that insubstantial wraiths slid between rocks — phantoms or memories called up by the sounds, and by a desperate longing for something that no longer existed. The mountains seemed full of mysterious beings.

  Then, on the night in which the neighs were very close, the white mare answered, and after her call had echoed round and round the rocks of Paddy Rush’s Bogong, there was a deathly silence.

  Burra kept rounding up the white mare and the two foals, so she could not escape.

  The night grew colder and colder. Burra was hot from constantly trotting or cantering, but he felt the leaden cold on his grey coat. Sweat broke under his silver-grey mane, and the still air, pressing down, told him that something was going to happen. He should be moving his herd down lower, to the Cascades, or even to the Ingegoodbee, but surely these gallopers by night, who would steal Coolawyn, were waiting between them and a safe place for his mares.

  Something very cold landed on his hot back, then came a feather-light touch on his nostril. Burra tossed his head. Drifting, floating down through the dark night came snow … snow … snow.

  The world would be changed — all sound deadened, all growth stilled for the time of short days and long, long nights. If the sun shone, there would be absolute brilliance reflected off the white mountains.

  Now or never, now or never. The white stallion, near the head of the Crackenback River, began to hurry and his herd followed him, only the three young colts keeping up to him.

  Winter …

  Before the bright white snow covered the land thickly, the mare must be brought back to his herd, the grey mare taken, and they must go, then, back to the safety of the low country where they belonged.

  Snow touched ears, noses, backs, withers. Snow would soon mat eyelashes, touch eyelids. They hurried on through the falling flakes.

  Burra and Coolawyn both knew in their deepest selves that tonight was the night. It was now or never for the white, night gallopers, but surely they would never come as high as this.

  The white stallion had known it even before a flake of snow touched his eyelids, but that icy touch reminded him that, though winter often held dark days — days when, like the wombats, they could graze and find food — the snow reflected a blinding glare in which he and his herd could be entirely lost … and could die.

  They must hurry. None of them had ever been on Paddy Rush’s Bogong, none of them had ever been so high in the mountains. It was not as though the rocks and ridges, valleys and hollows were drawn on that stallion’s mind, like a map. He would just have to head in the direction in which his instinct told him that his mare and her foal were to be found.

  Occasionally he neighed to call her. She only answered once.

  There was also that beautiful grey mare to be captured, if possible, but now, with the winter’s snow beginning, the real importance was to take his own mare and her foal back to their own bimble.

  Both Burra and Coolawyn heard his call, and the white mare stopped biting and kicking at Coolawyn, and sent her one answer. Her answering neigh caused the already nervous herd to fly apart again. They went in all directions, dashing through the snow-filled night.

  Presently they came back to Burra and to the two mares and their foals whom he had kept together with him. All the mares and foals, all the yearlings, were jumpy — a current of fear running through them all — and the cold snowflakes seemed to touch bare nerves.

  Burra stopped his cantering around and around for a fleeting moment, and listened intently. There was utter silence. Could that white herd be climbing up and be going to hurtle through rocks and over an edge in amongst them?

  Then it started. A wild cacophony of neighs echoed off rocks and off the dark and heavy clouds, and the snow began to fall more steadily. The young colts and yearlings came hurtling with the stallion — a wave of almost invisible horses. They neighed and neighed to the wild sky and the falling flakes. Time and space; the snowgrass lanes and hollows between heaps of rocks; everything seemed filled with horses and their mad neighs, with their leaping bodies, with all the bucking, kicking, rearing white horses, the invaders who could see more than could the grey ones.

  Burra did not mind if the white mare was recaptured, but there was the problem of her foal and the attachment between it and Yarra. Undoubtedly, Coolawyn would do what Yarra did.

  Burra flung himself at the white stallion, but, while they struggled together, some of the yearling colts were driving Coolawyn and the white mare away, collecting up the two foals, and vanishing into the dark and the falling snow.

  Burra landed a resounding whack on the side of the white stallion’s head, though being barely able to see even his outline, and he took off after the departing colts and the mares.

  Coolawyn was already evading them and making a strong effort to hurry back to Burra.

  For one instant, the white stallion stood out in the strange snow-glow, before darkness enfolded him. Coolawyn saw and knew that he was beautiful, but knew, too, that Burra had something which he did not have — and she belonged to Burra.

  A wind was making the falling flakes into a maelstrom. Coolawyn shook the snow out of her eyes, dodged the colts in a frenzied rush, and called Yarra as she went. She knew where Burra was, even though she could barely see his shadowed shape in the night and the thick-falling flakes.

  She felt Yarra close at her side, in the mix-up of half-seen, half-felt, half-heard shapes and sounds of horses. There was a beat of snowflakes in her eyes. The other mare might go, the other foal, too, in the unreal night. Something was telling her that Burra was as strong as the grey rocks of Paddy Rush’s Bogong, that he was as strong as bright beams of sunlight. Sunlight should soon dispel this weird night of phantom horses galloping in the dark.

  Then a great blast of wind laden with twisting, whirling snowflakes picked up Yarra and carried him for several feet. It spun Coolawyn round, and drove her uncontrollably. She was rocking on her feet, quite unable to stand still and quite disorientated. She had no idea which way she was going or if she was just being carried hither and thither by the wind. She struggled to keep upright.

  She gasped out a neigh for Yarra and heard what she was sure was a muffled answer from somewhere, and tried to battle towards it — stumbling, rocking with the strength of the blizzard.

  There was a lull, and she was leaning so hard across the wind that when it was quiet, for a second, she fell to her knees. Something loomed close by and she struggled up to it. It was a dark solid rock against which she could shelter, if only she could find Yarra.

  The other horses seemed to have faded right away into the clouds of spindrift snow. She did not know where they were — or where she was, either.

  Coolawyn did know that there were snow gums almost closing both ends of this valley. In that tearing wind she could not be sure if she was going uphill or downhill. She kept calling Yarra. Suddenly, and with intense relief, she felt him at her side, and they sheltered together by the rock. All around them, the snow swirled in a twisting cloud.

  Yarra pressed against her
, but he kept calling. After all these months, Coolawyn knew that he was calling the other foal, realised that it was the other foal for whom he had always searched.

  Something seemed lifted by the wind and dropped in a collapsed heap at Coolawyn’s feet. The other foal …

  The rock gave little shelter — it was only something firm to stop them being blown apart from each other.

  Presently, Yarra nudged the other foal to its feet. It made the same wuffling noises that Yarra often made if he were worried …

  Though it was impossible to see through the blowing snow, Coolawyn knew that this was the other foal — the counterpart of Yarra. Somehow Yarra had drawn it to him through the blizzard. She knew that there was a weird bond between them, a bond that made each one always search for, and find, the other. It was as though a spun-out web was linking them.

  Coolawyn barely wondered where the mother had gone. Yarra had somehow drawn the foal to safety beside him.

  The snow swirled down, all around. The shallow valley had become a wind tunnel. If they could reach the trees, they could huddle beneath them, they would be safer. Here, beside the rock, they were all plastered with snow.

  Coolawyn forced herself away from the strong rock, to try to take the two foals to the cover of the trees. As the wind grabbed at them and hurled them up the valley, that second foal gave a neigh as though he knew quite certainly that his mother was close, and he struck off on his own. Yarra moved away from Coolawyn’s side, but she grabbed at his mane. She knew that as long as Yarra stayed beside her, the other foal would come too.

  Struggling to keep on her feet, she led them on, borne on the wind up the valley. She gathered her breath and snorted gently in their ears if the wind almost took them. The other foal called again, and just then they stumbled into the line of snow gums that closed the wide valley.

  The trees were already becoming bowed over with the weight of snow, but underneath the weighed-down branches there would be almost bare ground.

  Coolawyn pushed her way through the snow-covered leaves and twigs, leading the two foals beneath the canopy of bowed-over branches. There they were out of the grasping, tearing wind and the thick-falling snow.

  Yarra was jittery, but the other little one could not keep still. At last he forced his head out through the branches, and he neighed a sad call, over and over again. During a pause for breath, he suddenly shook with excitement, for there was an answer blowing on the wind.

  Yarra called him back under again, but he shot right out into the blizzard — and straight back. An exhausted mare stumbled after him.

  The white mare nuzzled her foal all over. She had not a kick or a bite left in her. She barely seemed to know that Coolawyn was there. Her legs folded and she lay down to sleep.

  The foals curled up between the two mares, warm and safe.

  The wind blew and the cold snow fell outside the calm of their igloo.

  To Get Below the Blizzard

  Burra was looking for his favourite mare.

  The white stallion was trying to get his herd together. They were scattered everywhere, and he must get them down below the blizzard if he possibly could — lower down it would be warmer, and the snow would be falling as rain. He must get them out of the snow before the sun came out to shine blindingly on every prism of snow and ice.

  Their way downward lay right into the blasting wind — into the stinging, biting, snow-laden wind.

  None of the white mares and foals had followed as high as Paddy Rush’s Bogong, but had stayed among the trees and rocks on the Brindle Bull. There was only one mare of his herd up there on Paddy Rush’s Bogong, and that was the mare whom he had come to take back. She had vanished in the snow.

  It was becoming desperately important — a matter of life and death for the herd — to get the young colts together and go on to pick up the remaining mares and foals and drive them down out of the snow … the thought of that one white mare being left alone with her foal up in the deep snow worried him, and he knew that she had not come with him because of the white foal who ran with the beautiful grey mare.

  Where did the grey mare get the white foal?

  He stood still for a while, buffeted by the wind and the snow, often throwing up his head to call, but his voice was carried away by the blizzard.

  A shadow loomed up, then another. The young horses were coming to him.

  Now that they were all mustered, their way lay into the hurl of the wind.

  The white mares and foals were somewhere ahead. Behind was that white mare. She might make her own way down to safety, if only her foal would leave Yarra. That anxious white stallion had to return to his herd and take them to their own country.

  It was disturbing to go without that one mare, and he kept looking back to see if she were following.

  He saw only the driving snow.

  Did he imagine a pair of shadow foals? There was nothing except a cloud of wind-whirling flakes. Those two foals who caused his mare to leave him were only a dream surely. It was ridiculous that two identical foals should belong to two different herds. Somehow their obsessive need to be together made life impossible. He would leave the herd in safety, down near the Tin Mines, and go back.

  Daylight would come, and what then? What then?

  Burra was calling. Coolawyn heard his neigh, though it was muffled by the snow-thick branches that made a canopy overhead.

  She heard the longing — and, possibly, some fear — in his neigh, and the sound was like that which he had made after the great flood, when he was so afraid that he had lost her for ever.

  Her answering call startled the two foals and the white mare who were with her. Her call seemed so loud because it was enclosed by leaf and branch and snow, and it filled their ears. Perhaps it did not travel outside to the half-lit world of snow.

  Coolawyn had stood up, and her head brushed the icy ceiling that curved over them. The other three still lay close to the trunk of the snow gum that sheltered them.

  The heat from their bodies had partly melted the snow on the branches and then the melting snow had frozen, making a curved ceiling of ice above them.

  Burra’s call came again, and it came from closer.

  Coolawyn pushed her head and shoulder out amidst a shower of snow and the tinkle of ice that was shaken from the leaves.

  There in the grey dawn, Burra stood, his beautiful grey head pointing to the sky as he called. His mane and forelock, and his tail, were all matted with snow, but his whole body vibrated with the power of the neigh he flung to Coolawyn. The faint light of the coming day touched him as though there were a light within his body, so that he glowed with life in that blizzard world.

  The snow slowly ceased to fall as the dawn crept through the clouded sky. The wind had changed, and raced out of the gates of the day, lifting the snow from trees and rocks and from the ridge tops, lifting it in great twisted spirals, as the daylight strengthened. Coolawyn watched as a dancing willy-willy of snow spun round and round Burra, hiding him entirely, winding upwards.

  She burst out of her covering of branches, and snow, and ice, and she called as she went towards him, ploughing through the deep snow.

  Then the tall spiral of snow whisked away on the wind, and there was Burra.

  Snow exploded off the branches as Yarra and that other foal pushed their way out of their igloo, and the bent snow-gum limbs, freed of their weight of snow, whipped upwards.

  Burra, quite startled, watched the white mare appear too, and he realised that danger had forced her to cease attacking Coolawyn. He knew, too, that there was no time for bickering now.

  He must collect his herd together, and head for the Cascades. It was time to take them down to lower country.

  A lone currawong flew across the grey sky calling: ‘Winter.’

  Two brown ducks winged their way across the sky in the direction of the Indi River. Soon in the high mountains there would only be heard the occasional howl of a dingo, or a fox’s bark. A hare might leave its t
rack, but the mountains would be enfolded in the white silence of winter’s snow.

  Snow could mean death to foals — even foals who had been strong enough to survive the flood.

  That white stallion was driving his herd down through country which he had only seen for the first time the night before, and which now, of course, was completely different, covered by snow. With every step he took, he knew he had left a mare and foal behind. He kept wondering how she was faring.

  Already more light was coming into the clouds. They might dissolve and the sun could shine. He must drive his herd even faster, so that they were not caught by a dazzling day.

  Burra had not yet realised that he would have a mare and two foals that would find the glare off the snow quite blinding. He did notice that, even though the other foal was with them, Yarra clung very close to Coolawyn’s flank, touching her. Then he noticed that the white mare and her foal had their eyes almost shut. Yarra had his eyes closed, too.

  Burra stared at each one of them. If they momentarily opened their eyes, surely their eyes were the colour of a fine sunset. Floating up to the surface of his mind came the memory of that red eye — just one eye — staring at him through the mint bushes. That was the night after the flood had swept one foal away. A shiver trembled down Burra’s grey back, and it was not caused by cold snow.

  He heard Yarra calling to that other foal, saw the mare trying to keep up with Coolawyn. A small branch blew across the snow and hit her on the shoulder. She shied as though she had not seen it.

  On they went. Two of the older mares led the way, breaking track through the snow. Burra urged the white mare and her foal from behind. Coolawyn kept Yarra by her side. Soon Burra heard the small snuffling noise that Coolawyn and Yarra were making to each other, and it seemed that the other mare and her foal had heard them and had begun making the same noise, so that they stayed together and did not get lost. They struggled up closer to Yarra and Coolawyn. There was no snapping and kicking now. It was strange that Coolawyn had begun to feel a sense of responsibility for the other foal — and necessarily for its mother.