the moon.... Or was it a dingo? Was it that lyrebird just teasing? Then suddenly there was a sound like the far-off cry of an angry stallion. Wurring shook the snow out of his mane. That lyrebird must have seen them. He started back to the rest of the herd, Ilinga close on his heels.
* * *
Winganna took the herd to several haunts he had visited in other winters, and where he knew there would be shrubs and grass to eat. At last warm weather came, and the snows were melting into the streams. It was time to go back to Numeramang, to climb up and up, and finally go through that ghostly black sallee forest, then through their own candlebarks into the big clearing.
The grass was free of snow and beginning to show some life.
The heap of bones that had once been that dark mare had been dispersed by dingos. Nothing now really told the exact place where she had died, but both chestnut horses, sire and son, knew where it was.
Yarran’s milk had stopped by the end of the winter, for she was in foal again, but Ilinga was well grown, and no longer needed it. She still shadowed Wurring, and the other colts had become increasingly jealous about it.
The grass grew fresher, sweeter every day. Strength seemed to surge through the brumbies, through the kangaroos, the wombats, all the wild animals. Then, one day as the sunlight sparkled into the plain, spring was suddenly there, and Wurring was indeed a horse, golden, burning, a shaft from the sun. Now it would be the fillies, too, who snapped and kicked at Ilinga, to chase her away from her foster brother, the horse who was the sun, but Ilinga walked with pride beside him.
Once, early that spring, they were contentedly grazing, when Wurring felt a prickling of danger in his coat. Just at that moment Winganna must have felt it too, because he flew, with tremendous fury, into a thick clump of scrub, and apparently chased another stallion. Wurring followed, but he did not get more than a glimpse of an iron-grey horse - who was heavy but could gallop - and, after a while, being not yet a two year old, he could not follow the mad chase any longer, and had to stop and stand, feet spread, head down, gasping for breath, and the sweat dripping off him.
Who was the horse who had been watching them?
A wind blew out of the east, and touched his hot coat.
Wurring found Ilinga as he went back - knew he would find her because of the strong feeling of her presence well before he saw her - and, as he looked, it was as though he saw her for the first time. She was different, beautiful, and, because she was beautiful, danger had come into their lives.
They went back together, and had been with the herd a long time before Winganna returned.
The huge chestnut was very tired, they could all see this, and he walked towards Ilinga and looked at her earnestly be- fore he went off to roll in his rolling hole to get the sweat out of his coat.
After all, what is danger? What is pain?
Only Yarran, whose son was so handsome, and who had fostered the filly from far away - the filly who was now becoming so beautiful - only Yarran knew that danger was indeed danger, for both the young and for those who are losing their swiftness, as Winganna was losing his.
The grass grew and the pea bushes blazed with gold and brown peas - gold for the young horse, velvet-brown for the filly. They galloped, they leapt, they rolled in the sun, growing stronger every warm, sunny day, and Wurring was wild with the joy of life.
What was danger?
He led the young mob of colts, and also the fillies who followed him, galloping over the mountains, but they could not really get far because the rivers were very high, full of the water from the melting snows.
The young horses grew stronger, but that long hard chase must have strained Winganna, because he took a long time to gain the full glory of his summer coat and regain his vigour.
Yarran wondered if that other horse would appear again. If he were far younger than Winganna, he too would be strengthening with each warm day.
Then one evening a flight of black cockatoos flew over Numeramang. The weather was clear, and it was most unusual for black cockatoos to utter their weird, wild calls in fine weather, but this evening their crying could be heard for a long time before they appeared. It was of winter and death that they were calling, on this lovely summer evening.
The rivers had dropped sufficiently.
He came two nights later, his dark, iron-grey hide almost invisible in the night. Clouds seemed to come with him.
Some of the mares smelt him before Winganna did, because, when he started threading his way through the herd, he kept well to windward of the stallion. At last, either he could not find what he was looking for, or he determined to attack, for he gave a roar, and, with a mighty rush, he sprang for the chestnut.
Winganna was taken by surprise, and the other horse, with his dark colour, was less easy to see than he was, himself.
Wurring heard the roar, heard his sire’s answer, and he felt the hair along his back standing up. Then, as he drew closer to the rest of the herd, he could feel terror running through it, like a fire, from horse to horse.
Terror ran wild that night, for those two stallions fought throughout the darkness, hour after hour; drawing back, resting, and then starting again. All night long there was the smell of blood and churned-up earth, and sweat. There was the sound of pounding hooves, the gasping, rasping breaths, and sometimes a scream rang out to the stars.
The watching herd could only see the vast, struggling bulk of the two horses fighting for their lives - a rearing shape, for a moment, head and forelegs and huge shape of chest and upstanding body suggested against the night sky, the flung mane, the straining haunches.
Even like that, a silhouette against a lighter cloud, they could tell the greatness and nobility of Winganna - their stallion. The other horse was heavier, not ugly, but with a sort of horrifying characteristic that seemed to show in every movement and certainty emanated with the smell of him. This characteristic, this odour, was of cruelty.
Thunder of hooves on the ground, the dull sound of hooves on flesh, the flash of the whites of the eyes, flash of teeth, the stench of blood, of sweat, and the. rasping heave of their breathing - the night contained this and nothing else. It all added up to horror and fear.
Wurring heard and smelt it all. Yarran heard and smelt too, and knew that it was this of which the black cockatoos had cried: ‘Winter and death.’ Ilinga, standing beside Wurring, was shaking all over with a terror that was far greater than any of the others seemed to feel.
Wurring should have taken her away, but he could not know what the outcome of this battle would be - the two stallions seemed to be so evenly matched - and there was the dreadful attraction of the fight. He did not know who the cruel stallion was, did not know that he was years younger than Winganna.
Being equally matched would not give Winganna victory. Only luck could do this: the other horse, unless he was unlucky, would endure longer.
Luck came for Winganna once, but it was not sufficient. The cruel iron-grey horse slipped, and for a second his quarters and flanks touched the ground. Winganna was too tired to move fast enough, and the other was up before he could leap on top of him and beat him down.
Slowly, through the dark and clouded hours, Winganna was worn down, and, at last, finished.
Yarran shook all over with fear. This sun, Winganna, her mate, was dead and the next one, possessor of more of the sun’s fire, was Wurring. Would the iron-grey horse realize this and maim Wurring, as she feared he might? They should go, but somehow they could not leave, and it might, indeed, be death to move.
The dawn came, and the strange stallion had something else on his mind. He started immediately to race through the herd, searching for something. When he did not find it, he tore all around the flat, looking among the trees. Then he came back to the herd, and it was clear that he was full of a desperate fury. Whatever, or whomever, he was seeking was not to be found.
Then he rushed among the young horses and the mares, kicking and biting indis
criminately. Wurring was knocked sideways with a savage blow. The horse, in an uncontrolled fury, raged on.
Before Wurring could pick himself up and collect the thoughts in his spinning head, the horse had stopped in front of Ilinga.
Ilinga was terrified, mesmerized, as though watching a snake. At last she started to move backwards. The horse stared and stared at her. Slowly, slowly he began to move forwards. Just then Wurring’s head stopped spinning, and he sprang, but the horse shook him off without seeming to notice him.
Ilinga turned, with a scream, to gallop away. Any doubt the horse might have had about whether she was the daughter of the mare for whom he was searching, went when he saw her moving. She moved with the rhythm that only mares of a certain breed possessed. He shot forward after her. Wurring sprang forward too.
It was lucky for Wurring that the blow he got on the head knocked him unconscious without seriously injuring him. Otherwise he might easily have gone to his death, following the stallion who was now driving Ilinga away - to the east.
The watching herd were all shaking with fear. This was something that had been foretold, but all the other wild animals of the mountains had known it better than they - the animals like the kangaroos and the wallabies who had really been forever and forever of this earth, air and water. The grass, the trees, the wind, and the snow, itself, had known that this was going to happen, and had cried it aloud for those who had ears to hear. Other things had been cried aloud too, but now the whisper in the leaves’ singing was: ‘Danger! Danger!’
5: Brolga's Warning
Wurring felt as though he were at the bottom of a dark hole, fighting to stand, fighting to be still, fighting... something. The hole was going round and round. There was light far away. Then the light whirled closer; whirling, bigger, bigger. If only he could be still. Bigger and bigger, the light was rushing towards him. He seemed to see Yarran’s head. Then he shut his eyes, and there was nothing. After a while he could feel the cool earth beneath him: the cool earth and it was still. When he raised his head all the surrounding forest started to spin, and in the still centre of the sky was Ilinga ... but this was a dream. Ilinga was only in his head, for she was not really there.
It was two days before Wurring could do more than reel giddily to the stream to drink.
After those two days no scent hung to tell him where the iron-grey had taken Ilinga.
Most of Winganna’s herd had vanished. Only Yarran remained, and three of the fillies who had been most jealous of Ilinga, one having come as a foal when Ilinga came.
Wurring was grateful for their company, but as soon as he could really move, he must find Ilinga, must search the bush and the great high plains where snow would fall in winter, search, search, search. To the east he should go... surely to the east.
At last he could jog along without his head spinning so much that he fell, so he started off on the track they had taken for Ravine. Yarran and the fillies following. Down by the Tumut they found some of Winganna’s herd, and Yarran, soon to foal, stayed there with them. Wurring led the fillies steeply up the hill, the same way as he had gone before.
When he reached the top he felt an irrational hope that he would find Ilinga waiting for him, down there, where they had played together. The moon was risen... and it was by the
light of the moon that he had first seen her....
He led on down the slope, picking a way where they could be as quiet as possible, but it was so steep that they slid often, bumping shoulders and flanks against the rough-barked peppermints, or occasionally against a white ribbongum. The cliffs on the opposite side were in shadow and looked dark and threatening because of the moonlight elsewhere. Wurring felt that the sound of their slithering must echo off those cliffs and fill the whole valley. He was glad when they could enter into the gully down which he had gone the last few hundred feet, that other time he went down. He stood and waited for a while so that any noise they had made might be forgotten.
Then, as they waited, a sound filled the air. Wurring felt the hot, sweaty hair stand up all along his back. The fillies crept close. The rough trumpeting grew louder. He looked up. Great wings were passing over the moon.
Wurring recognized the sound, saw the enormous birds, but, even though he realized what they were, his heart kept thundering in his chest. The brolgas were circling: there was nothing to fear; yet what news did they bring? Black cockatoos had told of the winter of Winganna and his death. The lyrebird’s dance had mimed a story... a story whose truth he could only feel, not understand. What did this flight of brolgas mean? What did the shadow of those great wings across the moon portend?
Under cover of their trumpeting, he led the fillies down and down the narrow gully. The hair still stood up on his back, the skin still crept, his heart still pounded.
The brolgas, calling continually, began to circle lower and lower. They were enclosed within the cliffs, making ever smaller circles within those walls, and their calls echoed, echoed, echoed, till the whole of Ravine was filled with the weird clamour.
Added to this noise was now the sound of thundering hooves, for a brumby herd was galloping downstream as the brolgas landed on the grassy flat by the creek. Wurring and the fillies stood among a few trees, tense, frightened, but watching.
The birds landed and arranged themselves in the pattern of a dance, folding and unfolding their wings, the soft grey feathers silvered by moonlight, the red heads dark. There were three pairs, advancing, bowing, retreating, picking up sticks, throwing them, catching them. Then suddenly the usual pattern altered, the wings were unfolded more often, catching the moonlight. The birds mimed danger and fear, mimed wounding and recovery... danger and fear, above all, danger. Then slowly they seemed to dance no longer to each other but to the moon, the moon alone. And then when they were done, they ran with wings outstretched again and took off down the valley, circled upwards and upwards, as though drawn by the magnetic pull of the moon, great wings blotting out the silver light, calling, calling, till they were at an immense height. At last, one by one, they flew off towards the east.
Danger, danger. Wurring felt that every call told him danger. To the east lay danger - but to the east lay the only way which Ilinga would have gone.
First he would very quietly follow that frightened herd. From the sound, it was quite a size - contained more horses than had been here on his previous visit. From them he might learn something. But when he drew close to them, where they stood, still nervous, far down past some of the mud brick ruins, he could see that there was a mature, heavy bay stallion. Clearly it would be foolish to go too near. It was just as he stood, hidden in some bushes, watching, that a furious neigh, a stallion’s neigh, rang out from high above on the eastern side of the valley.
* * *
Ilinga had been given no chance to stop, by that furious, iron-grey stallion, until they reached the Tumut River, about midday on the day after he had killed Winganna. He had to stop to drink there. She needed water too, but even her thirst could wait if she could escape while he drank.
She waited till he must have been very full of water - brown filly standing in the rippling silver stream - then braced herself, swung round, and leapt away: but it was as though that horse felt the first bracing of her muscles, because he had got round her, before she had got to the first line of trees, and was threatening her with bared teeth.
He drove her back into the water and made her stand in front of him, while he finished drinking.
Ilinga shivered with terror and misery, and the icy touch of the water. She watched the horse fearfully. It had been obvious that he had thought he recognized her, after he had failed to find whatever it was that he sought in the herd, but she could not remember ever seeing him. She had indeed felt a flash of fear and loathing when she smelt him, before he leapt at Winganna. Then, as she stood shivering in the middle of the Tumut River, she wondered if this horse could have been the one who had stolen her mother - and hurt her - for this was
a violent-tempered horse. Something or someone had hurt her mother, she was sure, before ever Winganna came and took her from... from whom? Ilinga looked closely at the iron-grey, but she could not remember. The horse began to move towards her. His ears were layed back and she hated the look of him. She spun round, lashing out with her heels.
He struck her heavily on the quarters.
A shrill squeal of anger and surprise was forced from her. It was certainly not worth being lamed by this horrible horse. She moved on, wondering why he had singled her out, whether he had owned her mother. She wondered suddenly if this could be her own sire, and almost stopped in her tracks, but got a swift bite. She looked around with loathing, lashed out and sprang aside, so that the heavy blow missed her.
What was it that had been in the thrush’s song? ‘A filly coloured by moonlight, like the moonlight mares used to be coloured of old, a filly sired by the night wind, begotten on a mare of the breed of the moon.’ She knew she was not coloured by moonlight, only a very dark brown.
The iron-grey was too heavy to go fast up the hill out of the Tumut. A heavy, loutish horse, no sire of hers, she was sure. Twice when she tried to break away, he bit or struck. Perhaps he would get more tired, after all he had been fighting all night. She went faster. She would go the way he wanted, but she would make him travel faster, try to wear him out completely, and then get away.
Soon he was blowing and sweating, but fear had made her tired too, and her own heart was thumping. She could not do it, could not go fast enough to get away. She strained on upwards through the bush, tiring herself while she tired the horse.
When she turned along the track that Wurring and she had taken into Ravine, he swung her southwards so that they would go round the head of the valley. She realized that this was country she had never been in before. When Winganna brought her with her dam to Numeramang, he must have brought them through Ravine for it to give her that feeling of recognition. Soon the iron-grey turned her in a more northerly direction, and when they had gone some distance, they struck a track which went east. Once they were going along this track, she again got that indefinable feeling that she knew the country. She must be going back where she had come from.