Moon Filly

  She began to move on, and they moved on with her - north instead of east - and Ilinga saw no way of escaping.

  * * *

  There was no way of escape for days, neither northwards, in the trees, nor eastward in the vast spaces. At last it became clear to Ilinga that, whether these horses came with her or not, she must seek Wurring.

  Every sign seemed to tell of an early winter, every bird cried of cold and snow, and one flight of mountain duck went overhead with their loud honks sounding an ominous warning. Their cries seemed to be of the vanishing sun. Ilinga listened, and saw their patterned flight in the sky. Could something dreadful be going to happen to Wurring, for Wurring was the sun?

  The sky looked laden with snow, and the wind howled round rocks, round the shoulders of mountains, down narrow valleys.

  The two stallions were getting nervous. For Ilinga even fear seemed to have gone: there was just a burning purpose. She trotted on across the path of the wind, mane and tail tossed, recognizing all the country she crossed, as though in a sort of dream, yet never coming to the end of the dream - never finding the place she had come from and where she believed Wurring to be.

  Where had she come from? What did the place look like?

  The wind cried an eerie: ‘Wh-e-r-e, oh wh-e-r-e.’

  They had gone for many miles without seeing a sign of other horses. Just at the moment in which Ilinga saw the first track, she also noticed the hollow thud that her hooves made on the ground. Was there something she remembered? Hollow-sounding ground?

  Suddenly she felt completely certain that she was near Wur­ring and she began to gallop. The country had become steeper. There were trees, scrub: a cliff of streaked and broken rock reared out of tree heads that were tossing in the wind. Thick wattles whipped her shoulders and flanks as she galloped up on to a ridge. The stallions were behind. She knew, by now, that she could race that bay - though perhaps not out-last him.

  The wind cried around that cliff, and then the big, white flakes of snow began to fall.

  Wurring must be found before the snow covered all the world, before it became impossible for a horse to travel over the hills. Ilinga felt the cold flakes on her back, and sped faster up the hill.

  She was quite close under the cliff - it seemed to rise straight across the valley that must lie between this ridge and the next one. She reached the ridge top, and the ground fell away in front of her, steeply down. She stiffened her forelegs, trying to slow or even stop. The ground was damp. A thick rope of wild raspberry tripped her. She made a quick jump, and, as she landed, her feet began to slide. There seemed to be a long, long slope of grass and bark streamers that had fallen off the tall trees.

  She was sliding fast. She missed crashing into a ribbongum by flinging herself sideways. Then she was off balance, going faster and faster, sliding on one flank, and the slope was get­ting steeper and steeper.

  Then there was no longer the ground beneath her: she was falling through the air. She saw the cliff above her, and the snow-laden sky. Then all at once the dark day became darker. She was falling down in a narrow place. The light of that snowy sky was far above.

  9: Vanishing Stream

  The two stallions reached the top of the ridge only a few moments after Ilinga did, but she had already vanished from sight. The brown horse was going faster than the bay, and he slithered at the top of the ridge too, but Ilinga had broken that rope of wild raspberry, so that was not there to trip him, and he did not begin to slide out of control.

  Both horses started down, but they went slowly and they were puzzled. There was the mark of Ilinga’s slide on the grass and in among the bark streamers, but it was not possible to understand how she was no longer to be seen.

  Down they went, slowly, carefully, the bay keeping his distance behind, for there was no reason to look for a fight when the filly, over whom they might have fought, was no longer there. At the beginning he had felt quite confident that his greater weight would make it almost unnecessary to do more than strike a few blows, and the young brown stallion would know that he was unable to have that filly, but while they had followed her he had learnt that the filly and the brown stallion were both faster than he, and the filly had some quality which might make her most difficult to win. Something which the Ravine horse did not acknowledge, but which was really quite apparent, was that the brown stallion had a superiority of intelligence which had put him into position of leader, just as much as his speed had.

  As soon as they realized that Ilinga had really vanished, those two horses heard the moan of the wind again, felt the cold flutter of the snow at their faces, the solid cold of it gripping their backs. Flutter of fear, grip of terror; the winter was coming: the filly had gone.

  Fear... terror began to shake the bay from Ravine. The

  brown horse’s mind was filled with the necessity of finding Ilinga. For him, Ilinga was mystery and beauty, and perhaps had the added attraction of being unobtainable because she must belong so profoundly to someone else.

  The descent into the valley became very steep and now the

  snow began to lie on the pound. The two horses found them­selves sliding. The brown checked himself and set off across the hillside at an angle. A wombat’s track helped him.

  The bay was a much more clumsy mover - also heavier. His feet broke the edge of the track away and suddenly he. was sliding fast. The brown watched with great interest... Ilinga had slipped... Ilinga had disappeared, but they had already moved over to a less steep slope than the one she went down. Whatever had happened to her, might not happen to the bay.

  The bay simply stuck in a bush. What snow had coated the bush now fell on to him. His efforts to get up churned up the earth.

  At last he was up and shaking himself. The snow fell more thickly: the filly was nowhere to be seen: Ravine lay a long way behind him, Ravine and his mares. He had had enough.

  He took one last look down into the empty valley, shook the snow out of his forelock, and turned for home.

  The brown stallion watched him go, but only tor a moment, then he went on down into that knife-cut valley.

  There was no valley floor, only a creek. He had to climb up a few feet again, to get a slope on to which he could cling with his hooves, and work his way downstream, to a point below where Ilinga had slid. There, even if he could not find her, he must see her tracks.

  The wind could not touch him down there, though its sound was hollow up above him. The big snowflakes dropped straight down between the tall trees, melted as they touched the dark stream, lay on leaves and ground, log and branch.

  The snow on his hide, and the hollow roar of the wind, made the brown horse so nervous that he was ready to leap in the air even if an unusually large snowflake fell on his back. Though he listened very carefully, there was no other sound except the wind’s. He neighed once, and stopped so that he would be sure to hear even the faintest sound. There was no answer, and certainly no noise that Ilinga might have made, had she been climbing up out of the valley.

  He went on, past ribbongums that reached up out of the deep valley, up, up, towards the grey sky that was half-van­ished in the dense-falling flakes. Wild raspberries and bark streamers tied themselves around his legs, fallen branches tripped him.

  The great cliff was towering above, its rocks like no rocks he had ever seen before. It closed the end of the valley. He must be right where Ilinga had fallen, and yet there was no sign of her, nothing at all. She was not lying there, hurt. There was not one track to tell that she had been there. He searched on one side of the creek, then jumped over on to the other side and searched that. Soon the snow would cover even his own tracks... cover everything until the spring came.

  This cliff ended the valley. The brown horse took a few more uncertain steps. He was walking down beside a creek and yet a cliff was right across the valley... The filly had simply disappeared. The air was so full of snow that the falling flakes made him feel dizzy, lost. Everything was uncertain.

&nbs
p; He looked up the slope where Ilinga had surely fallen. Snow went into his eyes, this straight falling snow that made his head reel. He took a few more steps forward, and then some­thing told him to stop. One forefoot was still stepping out, but he stopped it in mid-air.

  Underneath that hoof there was only space.

  He looked down. His head spun and he stepped backwards. There was a great hole right in front of him.

  It was impossible to swing round, in this steep-sided cleft, and thus get away forever. He backed, but then he had to see into that hole again. Placing his hooves with great care, he walked forward, inch by inch, till he could see in again. The waters of the creek went hurtling, splashing into the hole, water splashing on to white rocks, and then vanishing into darkness. Snowflakes fell straight down into that hole too.

  Water falling, snow falling, everything disappearing. The brown horse backed away again, shaking. He started to climb back up the slope. After he had scrambled up a few feet, he stopped... and stood... young, handsome, intelligent horse, so wet from the falling snow that his coat looked almost black,

  except for white flecks, and now the snow was matting his mane and forelock. He stood...

  The filly he had been following for days had fallen down

  this slope.... She was following someone else, as though her

  life depended on it... but she was beautiful. She had gone and he must find her.

  There was absolute silence, lonely and fearful silence. The bay had gone, and he was alone, and then there came a long drawn-out, eerie cry of the wind around the cliff.

  The brown horse felt the sweat of fear stinging and burning against the cold touch of the snow, but he turned down again towards the hole where the creek vanished beneath the cliff. The ground was becoming more and more slippery with the snow. He pressed each hoof into the wet earth, as he walked, clinging on to the steep slope, and he went to the edge.

  There was no other hoofmark except his, not any track of Ilinga even right at the edge. The only unusual marks that he could see were lower. A wide shelf of earth looked as if some­thing had slid right over its surface, and there was a lump of mud slowly being washed off one of the shining white rocks. Perhaps there was a scratch mark on another.

  If Ilinga had fallen, where had she gone? It would have been difficult for her to climb out. Also there would have been plenty of marks if she had scrambled out of that hole. He stood staring at the dark cavern into which the creek vanished, and the thick snowflakes were falling, falling, everything was mov­ing. The cliff, the cavern, the tall ribbongums, and the steep hillsides were whirling around him.

  Suddenly he called, wild and loud. The echo came rolling back at him out of the cave, then rang off the cliff, rolled round the valley.

  The filly was not his. To follow her was like trying to catch and hold a moonbeam. For her there was some other tremen­dous attraction that drew her and drew her... the rising sun in the east... something... someone. She was not his, perhaps never would be, yet he could not drag himself away.

  He stepped right back from the hole, jumped the creek, and stood waiting and watching, waiting while the snow fell softly, steadily, and without sound.

  He watched and waited for hours and nothing happened at all, no one came: nothing could be heard but the wind. At last he climbed some distance up the opposite side of the valley from which they had come down. He found a place where the ground flattened out a little. Here there was some grass, if he nosed around in the snow, and he could still see that hole at the foot of the cliff.

  It was as though he expected Ilinga to form like a ghost, in the darkness of the cave, and emerge as solid flesh. This was a dream, but he could not leave.

  Aloneness pressed in on him, and the winter snow clouds closed down and down. The ground became white and the only marks were where the drips fell from the trees and melted the snow through to the earth. Silence, silence and gradually night closed in while still the snow fell.

  All night that young stallion stood beneath the trees, slowly becoming shrouded in snow. In the morning there was no other horse to disturb the white stillness.

  Not a very great deal of snow had fallen and, though the sky was heavy laden, no flakes fell as daylight came. The young horse climbed higher on to really flat ground, and scratched around for more grass.

  It was not possible for him to leave that cave where the river vanished... where the filly had vanished too. Something called him back. As the second night fell, he had gone to the shelter of the same ribbongum, and was waiting. Snow was falling again, but the wind had ceased to cry. The whisper of snow sliding off leaves was the only sound. Winter had come. Winter’s snow would bind the land. Only the birds would move over the great white hills. A horse would be caught and held - held till he died. Every nerve, from the tips of his hooves to his ears, to his withers, his back, told him to go, to make for low country quickly while he could still move through the snow, but he waited through the long, dark night.

  10: A Dream or a Memory

  The dark day became darker. Snowflakes still spattered her, then Ilinga felt a crushing bump. The bump was on sloping earth, otherwise bones might have been broken, as it was, she slid.

  Rocks caught at her, spinning her, but they broke the speed of her slide. Finally she crashed on to cold wet rocks. Water sprayed over her, and the only light was a small patch above and to one side. A dark rock roof sheltered her from the falling snow.

  She felt around with her hooves for solid footholds. It was all rock - uneven, with spaces between, and very slippery. She leapt up, shaking all over. She began to slip and slide her way towards the patch of light, hooves scrabbling on rocks. When one foreleg slipped between two boulders, and twisted, she knew she must be more careful. Careful ... but there was a glassy surface of water on the white rocks from which she must jump to get on to that sloping patch of earth on which she had landed and then slipped.

  She stood measuring up the distance, and as she stood, the picture of the place where she had fallen, the cliff, the vanish­ing stream, the cave in which she stood, all seemed to sort itself out in her mind as a dream or a memory of something she had seen before... some dark hollow she had walked into with her mother?

  Her eyes were becoming used to the darkness. She looked into the cavern and felt quite sure that she had been in some­thing like this before. Then she turned to climb out... but what was below? Where did that cavern lead? Where had she come from? Where was Wurring?

  Slowly she turned and began to move with great care over the slippery rocks. Now there was just nothing in her mind except that she had seen whatever she was coming to before, and that she must find Wurring at the end of the darkness.

  After she had gone some yards, the floor of the cave became smoother, still slippery, but smooth, and there was a smell of wombat. All the fears with which she had lived for these past days, were pushed away by certainty. She was coming to the end of her journey. It was as though she were drawn along by some magnetism that made her forget fear, and darkness, and being enclosed - as though she were doing something that she had always known she would do but had not been able to remember. This certainty that she would find Wurring after she had gone through the darkness was all part of the stories which the wind and the grass had sung, which had been in the lyrebird’s dance, and the moon dance of the brolgas.

  Something stronger than a dream had possession of Ilinga. As though she had already seen him, she knew that Wurring was ahead, in a wide sunny valley - a valley in which at least her feet would know the way.

  She simply knew, just as she knew that she was alive, diat Wurring was ahead.

  There must have been some narrow cracks above her head, through which light could filter, because there were only small areas of absolute darkness, and Ilinga’s eyes had become at­tuned to it.

  The floor of the cave grew very rough again, where rocks must have fallen. The creek rushed and foamed beside her as she scrambled and slid over the boulders.
This rough part stretched interminably. As it went on and on she began to feel almost afraid again - afraid that she could not get through, afraid that she would not get back over the rocks down which she was sliding - then the certainty of Wurring being ahead flooded through her, and she strove on and on.

  At last she was on smooth ground again - and there was a faint light ahead.

  It was only then that she began to feel the presence of the encompassing dark, feel it like a thick curtain behind her. She started to hurry - and heard her hooves echoing over the quietening sound of the stream. The sound made her be more careful. Others would be ahead as well as Wurring.

  The light ahead grew more definite, a patch getting bigger and bigger. There was a bend in the tunnel, and once she was round it, she could see a widening cavern ahead.

  Memory came in a flash that caused her to stop and then go far more slowly, for she could see in her mind an open cavern and her mother standing in it. In her mind’s picture there was a sandy floor, a nice rolling place, and it was all sheltered from rain and snow. Could she be coming to this cavern from its back?

  As she drew closer, she could see the silhouette of a horse against the light - a horse sheltering in the cave. Her feet moved slower and slower, more and more carefully. The shape against the light was that of the iron-grey stallion.

  Ilinga stopped, a surge of fear forcing her to gasp for breath. She tried to become still, afraid that her very fear was strong enough to be smelt, or heard, or felt, down by the cave opening. She pressed herself against the rock wall, and the cold of it bit into her hide, but the hard rock steadied her. She would just have to wait till the stallion moved away.

  The iron-grey was restless. Over and over again she thought he would go, but he only walked a few steps and threw his head up. At last Ilinga realised that he was worrying about the snow, and that he probably would not move while the snow fell