This Golden Land (43 page)

     Neal looked up at the stars as they peeped over the summit of the mountain. Then he looked at Jallara, her deep-set eyes filled with starlight. "I am not sure you understand all my words but I need to tell you. Josiah Scott is my real father, of this I have no doubt. I was not left on his doorstep, he took me because for whatever reason, my mother could not keep me. The day he sat me down, when I was twelve years old, and said I was old enough to know the truth, when he said he was my adoptive father, there were tears in his eyes and I thought it was because he was speaking a painful truth. I know now that it was a painful
lie.
To protect my mother, I now believe. I was not a foundling, Jallara, but a love-child, and that is a very different thing. Josiah Scott and my mother were in love but were forbidden to marry. I also know now why he never married. He has been in love with her all these years. But. . ."

     "But what, Thulan?"

     "If the lady who appeared to me in my vision was in fact my mother, does that mean she is dead?"

     Jallara shook her head. "It mean the power in her tears save your life."

     Neal struggled to stand up but found he was incredibly weak, so he stayed seated on the cool sand. Although he was naked and the night was cold, he felt no chill. And then he had another concern. "Jallara, you told me the mountain was taboo, but I had to come here. I couldn't stay away. Please forgive me if I have offended you or your ancestors. I suppose I will not be initiated into the clan now. In my defense, I followed a
thulan
in there."

     To his surprise, she smiled. "You come because mountain call. Ancestors call. You one of us, Thulan."

     He stared at her. "I was
supposed
to go in there?" He sighed and squinted up at the rising stone wall, backdropped by stars. "Does it have a name?"

     "No name."

     When I get back to civilization I will add No Name Mountain to the map of Australia. And then he thought: No, because then white men will come looking for it, desecrate it, and slap a name on it like Victoria or Albert. Maybe even plant a flag on top. Neal shuddered at the thought.

     A breeze came up, cold and frosty, but all Neal was aware of was how it lifted Jallara's long wavy hair. "Jallara, did Thumimburee know what it was I would learn here?"

     She shook her head. "Every vision different."

     Neal thought about this. And then he realized that walkabout had nothing to do with survival, it had to do with spiritual revelations and self-knowledge.

     "If I had not asked to be initiated into your clan," he said in awe, marveling at the mysterious workings of the unseen world, "I would not have come to this mountain, I would not have seen the ancestral wall, and I would not have realized that I do have a father and that I am someone's son." How would a scientist explain it, because no instruments, no clever tools or charts could analyze and measure and categorize his mystical experience. "The First Ones have converted me, Jallara. I now believe most definitely in the spirit world."

     She shook her head and tapped his chest. "Thulan already believe in spirits. Always there."

     He wondered if she was right. It did stand to reason that, if a man
yearned to discover the existence of a spirit realm, then part of him must already believe. "I've learned something else about myself," he said quietly, his bones still aching as if he had truly been trapped inside rock. "I am arrogant."

     She gave him a puzzled look. "Arro-gahnt?"

     "I thought I had all the answers for your people, that I could miraculously create a better way of life for you by giving you bows and arrows and sturdier huts, when you have managed to live and survive here for thousands of years. That mural
is
your recorded history, is it not?"

     She smiled. "Ancestors. First Beings. Thumimburee."

     He nodded. The first and newest figure as one entered the stone wave was the current clever-man.

     "I cannot believe now what I said to you when we left the billabong five months ago, about how it didn't matter where your people went because you had no towns, no homes to visit. I saw this as a white man's world. But it isn't. You have your own landmarks, your own places that call to you. We think of your people as aimless nomads, because we cannot see the song-lines or the Dreaming places."

     Neal had been so certain Jallara's people would regret leaving the plentiful waterhole. And then he had been stunned to find the clan arriving at hidden water deposits—holes in the limestone floor of the desert, covered with stones and brush, and filled with sweet water. He had thought he would tell them how to live, when they had sorted it out thousands of years ago. He smiled sheepishly. "It would be like having Thumimburee walk into my father's house on Beacon Street and tell us that our fireplace was wrong, that we did lighting wrong, that our beds were ridiculous, and then show us the
proper
way to live. I saw myself as the superior white man come to enlighten you. Whereas the truth is, you enlightened
me."

     Neal fell silent and stared at Jallara. His mind was clearing now, his body recovering from its ordeal. As the experience within the mountain began to recede and seem more like a dream than an actual occurrence, Neal returned to the present and to reality, and to suddenly wonder what Jallara was doing there.

     "Why are you here? Does Thumimburee know you followed me?"

     When she smiled demurely and looked at him from beneath thick black lashes, Neal's eyes widened. He noticed something different about Jallara. She was heavily costumed and decorated. He had never seen her this way. Feathers, many necklaces of seeds and bones and teeth. One necklace was fashioned from shells. Where had they found shells in the middle of a desert? "What—" he began. And then he knew.
"You're
the third ritual."

     "First, pain," she said with a smile. "Second, spirit world. And now, manhood."

     Although he was suddenly filled with sexual desire, he started to say, "We are not married. And I have promised myself to someone else." But he stopped. Jallara was not here for love or devotion or to take his heart from Hannah. Her presence with him at this sacred mountain had more to do with religion than carnal needs. Had she been chosen for the task because she was half white? Had she requested it? Or had she competed with the other girls and won? It didn't matter. The more he looked at her in the moonlight, looked deep into her exotic black eyes and saw her moist, smiling lips, the more he stopped questioning the moment.

     Jallara reached into a pouch that hung from the belt of her grass skirt and brought out small green leaves that carried a pungent aroma. She pressed them to Neal's lips and he tasted a bitterness that was not altogether unpleasant. She reached into another pouch and produced small red berries. Neal waited for her to feed them to him, but instead she pressed them against her neck, tilting her head and brushing her hair back as she squeezed the berries against her bare skin, sending juice running down to her shoulder. To Neal's surprise, she reached up and drew his head down so that his mouth met sweet berry pulp, and the mixture of the two flavors produced an unexpected delightful and erotic taste.

     Jallara drew away from him and rose to her feet. She held out her arms and hummed as she executed a seductive dance in the moonlight. Neal was mesmerized by the swaying of her breasts, the supple undulating of her hips. When she reached behind and untied the belt of the grass skirt, to remove the rustling garment and toss it aside, Neal saw that she was completely naked. He groaned with desire.

     When she finished her dance, her skin glowing with perspiration, Jallara
knelt before him and gently pushed him back onto the sand. She leaned forward and swung her long hair back and forth over his erection. She ran her tongue lightly over the still-tender tattoos. Neal inhaled her earthy, musky scent, and sent his hands exploring the hills and valleys of her mysterious landscape.

     He reached up and pulled her down, moaning with excitement. She encircled him in her arms. He rolled her over so that Jallara lay on her back and he looked deep into her eyes as he caressed her breasts, nipples, and belly.

     Jallara clasped him tightly to her and, with her warm moist lips against his ear, murmured in her melodic language words that sounded to Neal like water tumbling over stones.

     When he entered her, and she wrapped her strong thighs around him to draw him deeper inside, Jallara looked up at the mountain that blotted out the stars, and she thought: What did you see in there, Thulan?

     Jallara had never been inside the mountain. No female had, as it was taboo for them, and the men never spoke of it. She was envious, wishing she could experience what Thulan had. For the first time in her young life, Jallara wondered why men created secret places for themselves, forbidden to women. She thought about it as she held the white man in her arms, felt his hardness within her, felt his hot breath on her cheeks and neck. And something occurred to her that had never occurred to her before: Women already have their own secret places, and in them we create life.

     Jallara groaned with pleasure. Thulan felt warm and strong in her arms as he pressed his lips to her hair, neck, shoulders. She felt dampness on her skin and realized that he was crying. Initiates often cried after their ordeal, because spirit-visions were powerful. Recalling that she had thought Thulan needed healing, and knowing that in a few days they would be saying goodby, she stroked his hair and whispered sweet words into his ear.

     As he moved rhythmically inside her, Jallara smiled up to the stars and thanked the mountain spirit. The sickness had left Thulan's soul.

H
ELP
!
H
ELP
!"

     Hannah snapped her head up. She listened. Had someone shouted for help? The constant howling wind in this bleak wasteland played tricks on the ears. She squinted into the afternoon glare and surveyed her surroundings—the red-sand desert was marred by twelve gaping holes with rubble mounds in between, giving the desolate plain the bizarre appearance of a field of giant moles.

     Hannah was herself kneeling on one of the rubble heaps, called mullocks, sifting through sand and rock brought up from the mines. With a small curved pickax, she searched for gemstones overlooked by the miners underground. She had found several large opals—from pale blue to black opal with a heart of fire.

     "Help! I've got a bloody cave-in here!"

     Hannah shot to her feet. Which of the mine shafts had the call come from? She saw men running, and when they gathered around a crater and looked down into it, she realized that it was the mine being worked by Ralph
"Church" Gilchrist, the bullock drover from up Toowoomba way. Since opal was only found underground, shafts had to be sunk and then tunnels dug parallel to the surface. From what Hannah surmised as she joined the others, Church's shaft was clear, it was his offshoot tunnel that had caved in.

     "Are you all right, boyo?" Mike Maxberry shouted down.

     A thin voice rose up: "Get me outa here. I've got ceiling coming down. If you need incentive, I'm clutching an opal the size of yer arse."

     They had all arrived now, to stand at the rim of the crater and look down into the darkness. Charlie Olde cupped his mouth and shouted, "Church, you stupid sod, can you hear us? If you're dead, give a shout."

     Hannah saw that although the men joked, fear was plain on their faces. So far, no one had been lost to a cave-in, but the threat was always there, and every morning that the men climbed down into their shafts, the thought stood on their minds loud and clear: Is today the day I get buried alive?

     "I need the bucket!" Church shouted back.

     Jamie O'Brien called for the windlass, a huge contraption requiring six men to haul it from another mine to Church's and stabilize it over the hole. Jamie's men had constructed it out of wagon planks and axles, and it consisted of a horizontal barrel supported on vertical posts and turned by two cranks so that the hoisting rope was wound around the barrel as the bucket went up and down. It was used for hauling rubble out as mines were dug. It made Hannah think of a giant wishing well.

     As Jamie O'Brien helped to anchor the windlass and keep it level, he shouted, "We're lowering the bucket, Ralph. Can you clear your way out?"

     O'Brien no longer needed a splint or crutches, but was able to walk again, albeit it with a limp. And as he wrestled with the cumbersome windlass, Hannah was unable to keep her eyes off his wiry musculature. Jamie had removed his shirt so that his torso glowed with perspiration in the afternoon sun. And Hannah was flooded with sexual desire.

     It frightened her, this ache for Jamie O'Brien that grew with each passing day. She was not in love with him. Her heart still belonged to Neal. But her body had a mind of its own.

     The other night, over a supper of roasted goanna and damper, he had asked, "When are you going to call me Jamie?" Hannah had relied, "Although
we are in the wilderness, Mr. O'Brien, we must maintain proper decorum. In fact, I believe we must do so
because
we are in the wilderness."