Moon Filly

  Winganna became more and more restless as autumn weather stilled the creeks, stilled all growth. Then one frosty morning, when the sun rose bright and clear, sending glittering shafts of light into the bush to touch him with the fire of life, he, a burning, golden horse, led his herd off on one last wild wandering before winter; one last galloping with the wind on the high places, before the snow came.

  Wurring wondered sometimes, as they trotted along through mountain-ash forests and on long ridges where the slightest movement of cold air made a quickening of his own identity, whether they might learn anything about where Ilinga and her dam had come from.

  They were just where the tall ash merged with snowgums, when they stopped for the night, and the cold wind blew, making both those bright chestnut horses eager, alive, coiled springs of energy, making them dream strange dreams of gal­loping free on the great, high snowgrass hills before winter came.

  Here there was the occasional echoing sound of a neigh. There were no horses to be seen, but Wurring knew they were

  not far away__ He was a horse now: he would go to find

  them, gallop with them, with his mane and tail flying, perhaps fight a fight or two.

  He set off through the trees towards where the last wild neigh had echoed and lingered on the wind - a long, long neigh that shook him with a wild excitement.

  Trotting, trotting, he cut across the head of a gully filled with tall mountain ash, and the thrilling scent of eucalyptus leaves that had been bruised by the wind filled his nostrils, the cold wind lifted his mane off his hot neck, thrillingly, thrillingly.... Young horse, wildly alive, trotting through the bush.

  Behind him, not very close, trotted a small brown shadow, slowly, but keeping him in sight.

  Wurring reached the other side of the gully, and a faint track led him up on to a long ridge top where the snowgums grew - white and silver snowgums, wraiths moving in the wind, silver arms weaving, leaves whispering. The track be­came more defined. He went on, eagerly.

  This track turned upwards on a short, thickly timbered spur, and the trees ended. There was a plain studded with rocky tors that loomed like dark islands against the twilight - a high, open plain where the wind sang of life and adventure, where the wind picked up a thrilling neigh and cast it wide, wide over the mountains.

  Wurring heard the neigh and saw the scatter of horses in among the rock tors. With more caution, now, he turned off the track and moved around the edge of the plain, watching the other herd. Far over the opposite side, he could see what must be the stallion, a big bay horse, surrounded by mares and foals. Those horses that were spread all over the plain, gallop­ing in the twilight wind, as he wanted to gallop, were younger. He moved out into the open to join them.

  The brown shadow, well behind, stopped in the trees, but when the young horses received Wurring with gay galloping and only mock battles, Ilinga went out into the plain too. She moved quietly, but with a swinging stride and a carriage of head and tail that attracted the glances of every horse that saw her.

  Wurring was startled when she joined in the galloping, and then, when he saw the interest she stirred in the other herd, he felt an amused pride. Sometimes, when he slowed down, she galloped beside him, flank to flank.

  When they stopped to drink at a pool that reflected the last light in the sky, he could feel an excitement throbbing through the mob.... These young horses recognized them both as un­usual.

  The young filly had the bearing of that magnificent breed that had once lived far, far away where the moon rose, and Wurring, who was named for the sun, resembled his sire with forelock and mane the colour of living light.

  It was late when Wurring led Ilinga back to their sleeping herd - and she, at least, was tired the next morning, when they all climbed up into the high country, and Winganna set forth to race against winter.

  The wind blew cold from the north and cried of snow, and the last golden everlastings bent and rustled in the wind and told a tale of the sun - the last white everlastings whispered of the moon and of the path which moonlight throws across the snow.

  3: Legend told by the Falling Snow

  Far, far away, to the east, where both the sun and the moon rise, and where the ground sounds hollow below galloping hooves; where rivers vanish into caverns and tunnels, legend had it, there had once lived a magnificent stallion, and he had stamped some - a very few - of his filly foals with his own

  unmistakable characteristic, a magnetism as strong as the moon’s, the legend said, and with moonlight were they col­oured. These mares, in turn, handed on this characteristic to a few of their filly foals. They grew into mares that no stallion ever forgot.

  Wurring never knew how this legend came to Numeramang that winter, whether it came in the snowflakes, whether the kangaroos brought it, or the wombats who wandered about, grubbing for food in the daylight, but he knew of it. There was another, equally old legend of a chestnut stallion sometimes being born into the wild herds, a chestnut who burnt with the creative fire of the sun, who blazed with life. Wurring bad been named for the sun and though he was still unaware of it, he possessed a quality even his sire had never had to such a degree - the sun’s fire.

  Now, as the snow fell softly, another legend had come over from the east, and it said that sometime, in some spring of some year, between some day and some night, and in a strange light, the blaze of the sun and the gleam of the moon would meet and blend over bright snow, but before this could hap­pen, the sun would almost go.

  These tales were everywhere. Even the lyrebird’s dance, deep in the forests, told them, because somehow the legends were as old as the bush and the ancient hills and yet they had been forgotten and were now known again. Now, this winter, the secret of them was called up in the song of the grey thrush, and in the great flight of currawongs, high in a frosty evening sky, that sang and sang of something that was to be, had been and would be for ever, and yet something that was almost impossible - the union of sun and moon.

  Winganna had led his herd back to Numeramang just before the first snow fell in the higher mountains. He had been warned by the thrilling cry of the black and white currawongs and the harsh calls of the gang gangs, but he had also known, himself, that snow was coming, known by the colour of the sky, the touch of the wind, and by every hair of his body, every bone, every vein.

  At Numeramang, sheltered by the encircling candlebarks, the herd was warm, and though the grass had lost its sweet­ness, so had every blade of grass in the mountains. Winter was a time for survival, but for the young it was a time to race with the wind and to gallop through curtains of falling snow, a time to learn of great mysteries, a time when their world was made strange and beautiful - and occasionally a time for the im­possible to come true.

  Ilinga had grown taller, longer legged. Winter had rough­ened her coat, but Yarran still gave her good milk to make bone and muscle. The very air, laced with snow, made bone and muscle too - and she galloped with Wurring, hooves thun­dering over bare ground, hooves silent over snow.

  After the third or fourth snowfall at Numeramang had fallen and started to melt away, the wild need to wander seemed to enter the yearlings of the herd, and away they went, suddenly, at dawning. Manes and tails caught in the breeze, snow dust flew from their hooves, galloping, wheeling, they vanished through the trees. Ilinga went with them.

  This was no short gallop a mile or so from Numeramang and back again. The west wind bore them, urged them, drove them - the west wind blew them to the east. Before mid-morn­ing they were crossing through the Tumut River, breaking ice in the little pools at the edge, pawing at its glassy surface.

  Wurring saw his own head reflected in the mirror of ice, saw the forelock and mane ablaze with light. He thought that his father looked at him from the river, and leapt back, but the image persisted in his mind - a horse’s head blazing with sun­light.

  Half-afraid, he led his followers racing across the cold water and into the bush, but the west wind blew them, and t
o the east was his desire. In the east, he felt instinctively, lay the answers to many mysteries. Where had Ilinga’s dam come from? Why had she died? Why had no stallion come for her? She was not coloured by the moonlight, but there had been something unforgettable about her... yet no stallion had come.

  On and on they went, straight upwards through rough forest Country. At last they reached the top of the immense, forested Will they had been climbing. Only timbered ridges stretched for miles and miles, with a hollow, like that from which they had just climbed, between them and the next ridge. A clear track led north, along the ridge.

  Wurring sniffed at it and studied it closely. Every animal seemed to use it, horses, kangaroos, wombats... There was even the queer pad mark of an echidna, and this one was very recent. Snow still lay where there was shade.

  Wurring turned north along this track, Ilinga close behind him. When he got his breath he started to trot. Speed seemed so important, so wonderful. Soon they would find somewhere where they could gallop. It was also wonderful to be going to new places, places he had never known existed.

  After going a little way he could see - and feel - that the valley on the eastern side was opening up. Just then the track turned east too, and he led his little mob down it, slithering on the wet earth, stumbling on rolling stones, steeply down and down.

  Then they were on a great open ridge which went tumbling down below them, its lower slopes quite invisible.

  Wurring raised his head and looked across the valley. His ears pricked forward. There were rock cliffs - a queer, plum-coloured rock - a lace of waterfall coming out of one sharp cut Valley, and steep slope after steep slope falling into the valley.

  Their track skirted around a cliff that was the same colour as the ones opposite. Even the soil was plum-coloured, and in places snow still lay.

  The mob of young horses slid their way down. At one par­ticularly steep place they paused to look and listen again.

  Up from below came a long, eerie neigh.

  There were horses down in the valley. Wurring did not move for a moment, but before he had time to feel afraid, that neigh sounded again.

  Why should he fear, even if all escape routes lay upwards? He started down again, feeling filled with curiosity, and his curiosity was deepened by the sight of Ilinga, whose expres­sion had become strange, as though a memory had stirred...

  He went down the last part of the drop, off the track, hidden in a gully, but he had already seen quite a lot of the valley floor. Only a few horses were in sight, and there were some things of odd shapes, things, not horses nor any animal. For a horse as young as Wurring there was nothing much to fear. In any case, stallions do not fight very much in mid-winter when the cold, and the snow, and the lack of food are their enemies.

  Wurring walked quietly out into the deep valley.

  Only those few horses ... and no others appeared out of trees and scrub. Wurring looked at them before he studied the queer-shaped things.

  Only one of the small mob took any notice of them, and this one was an older mare, a grey with a big foal at foot. She came up and had a good look, a long look, at Ilinga. Then she looked curiously at Wurring.

  He failed to find out what she was so curious about, but later he heard her forlorn-sounding neighing, and she seemed to tell the wind, and the cliffs, and the stream that ran down the valley, seemed to cry to the grass and the trees: ‘Lost, all is lost except courage. There is evil to come, and great danger, from far, far away. Old tales may come true, true...’ Her sad neighs died down, and the echoes slowly faded around the cliffs.

  Wurring went to inspect the squares of mud and the high rocks built up like a tree. He could not know that this was a building in which men had lived when there was a copper mine at Ravine, but he did not like the feeling they gave him. He looked at Ilinga to see if they brought her any memories. Her expression was still the same, puzzled, alert, as though something she had once seen were being half-disclosed again.

  Down at the creek there was an open flat, enough space for galloping. Wurring began to play, buck, rear, gallop round and round and soon the other young ones were following him with mad joy. In what strange future would they be taking part? Was not every future that was worth anything, strange and unknown? But were these young horses enfolded in something compelling that had been foretold centuries before and written in the line of flight of the birds, told in the rhythm of the kangaroos, told in the dance of the lyrebirds and the brolgas? Was there something foretold and so compelling that they sought its fulfilment, sought the answers to their questions, sought the unbelievable fire and joy of the sun and the mystery of the moon with every muscle, every sense they possessed, with their eyes, their ears, and the vibrant hairs of their bodies?

  Ilinga, with rough, dark coat, moved with such wild joy that suddenly it was necessary to make the whole of Ravine ring with their neighs, so that their happiness challenged the world.

  Wurring could feel the way in which the other horses joined in - a sort of throb of excitement going through his young mob, as if they all knew that the future held great dangers, high magnificence.

  The grey mare stood and watched them, the other few horses watched too, watched the sunlight flaring on Wurring’s coat, even though it was winter-thick, flaring in his tossed mane, his streamer tail.

  First the grey foal galloped to join them, then the others, and last of all the mare, and they danced a dance to call down joy from the winter sky, and strength, and wisdom, and courage: and it also called for beauty, and for mystery from the earth and from the night that must come - glory from the stars and the moon. Glory, yes glory.

  Then suddenly Wurring was galloping down the stream, along the clearing, then threading through timber, galloping and jumping, keeping on and on till the bush opened on to another small flat. The horses burst through the trees on to this flat, across it, and into the water.

  They were at a junction where two streams met - deep pool and shallow bar, then the swift-rippling, wide waters of the Tumut.

  A junction, a meeting. Why was the whole bright day filled with an ancient meaning that had been known in the past and was still to come true?

  It was hot, and they drank at the meeting place of the waters. Strong, cold water tugged at their legs, while the slip­pery stones rolled under their hooves, and the waters told Wurring: ‘Further east, further east. Not now, the time will come.’

  The birds, flying overhead, were crying of snow.

  Numeramang was sheltered when snow fell. They thought of Numeramang, and with the thought they were away, the wild young horses, racing for home - racing the winter, and racing the snow: racing Time, so that the age-old words whispered by the grass and the trees, told in the movement of the snow crystals and the music of the wind, must come true.

  4: A Dance of Winter, Death in Summer

  Snow, snow, snow, the flakes came drifting down, drifting, whispering. The loads of snow might slip from the smooth, leathery leaf or silver branch, and whisper as it fell softly into snow on the ground. A snow crystal, star-shaped, glittering points, might land on the fur tips of Wurring’s ear and trans­mit its message that the world was wonderful, and his, if he earned it. The whole rhythm of the moon, the grace of sun­beam, the blazing fire without which nothing can live - his, if he earned them.

  Snow crystals fell on Ilinga, jewelled her ears, nose, mane, back.

  There was still grass close below the light covering of snow. Winganna would not move the herd lower down unless the snow became heavier.

  It was still possible to gallop. By day the snow-spray fol­lowed behind like a cloud: by night, when the young horses went madly tearing round, the spray was The Milky Way.

  Then the winter did get heavier, and the old stallion led all his herd lower, into forest country where the grass was rather hard to find, but where they were warm, and could find at least a little food without having to dig for it.

  The young ones roamed for miles and miles in the forest. S
ometimes the snow even fell down there, white flowers on the unflowering ferns, a winter blossom on the tall peppermints. Once Wurring and Ilinga, alone, went deep into a damp gully that was filled with blanketwoods and great tree ferns. There was a small flat floor to the gully - not just the hillsides drop­ping steeply into a narrow creek.

  The two young horses paused for some reason, as they were about to put their noses to the freezing water and drink, and they stood perfectly still among the snow-touched ferns.

  There was a lyrebird dancing his dance to the snow, tail outspread.

  Wurring and Ilinga watched the dark bird’s steps, the mim­ing, the movement of the delicate, beautiful tail. There, in the cold, snowy gully deep in the bush, they watched while a lyre­bird danced and the snowflakes, which are made by the music of the spheres, fell slowly through the freezing air.

  Many mysteries can be woven into a dance and a rhythm to the music of falling flakes, to the soft whisper of snow, but it is not always easy to understand, even while the perfect move­ments are danced.

  Wurring and Ilinga watched, standing absolutely still.

  The lyrebird might have known that he had re-discovered a dance which told an old, old legend of the bush, he might have known that his dance told of the sun and the moon — of a strange night and a strange light over snow. Wurring felt this in his bones and veins, but it was not something that he could know, like he knew that sweet grass would surely grow at Numeramang in the spring.

  Colt and filly, they watched till the lyrebird had danced all the mysteries of the world, and had vanished into his dark thickets.

  Then they heard a dingo crying as though he were crying to