Authors: Tony Shillitoe
‘
B
y all the powers in the earth and sky, water and fire, I conjure you—fly!’ Bulging yellow eyes stared back, but the mottled green frog stayed put. ‘Fly!’ The frog leapt into the reeds. Exasperated, she sank onto the cool earth and stared at the white clouds. ‘What am I doing?’ she scolded herself. ‘There’s no such thing as magic. And if there is I don’t have it.’ She closed her eyes, and let the dappled light and shadow play across the inside of her eyelids. The meeting with Emma was annoying her. Instead of giving a definite answer, no matter how outlandish, the old crone had been enigmatic, teasing, and gave no answer, just a hint of possibilities. Now she had Meg believing that there might be magic. How stupid was she?
‘Well?’ her mother asked, arms akimbo in the doorway, when Meg returned from the old woman’s cottage.
‘Nothing,’ she told her.
‘A silver shilling, and she told you
nothing’?
‘She didn’t charge because she had nothing to tell me,’ Meg explained. ‘I used the shilling to get flour instead. I tried to tell you I didn’t have the Blessing, but you don’t listen.’
Even though she was bitterly disappointed, Dawn honoured her promise and hadn’t raised the subject in the past few days. But the old crone’s failure to confirm that she did not have the Blessing haunted Meg. She started experimenting with conjuring spells whenever she was alone. Not that she had any idea what was involved in casting magic, except for the fragments that were mentioned in ballads and stories she remembered being told as she grew up. She tried to make water become milk, bread disappear, Sunfire change into a butterfly, her brothers silent, and now a frog fly. And all that her experiments proved to her was that magic was not real. How could something come from nothing? She opened her eyes and rolled onto her stomach. The farmhouse well was dry and the rains hadn’t come. Her wooden pail was lying on its side, waiting to be dipped into the river and carried to the house. Sunfire was also on his stomach, watching her, as always, but when his ears pricked Meg sat up, peering along the river path where she saw a young man walking towards her. She got up.
‘Hello,’ Button Tailor called. He was carrying a bunch of purple wildflowers.
‘I was daydreaming,’ she explained, as he reached her. ‘I was meant to be getting water.’ Sunfire sidled up to Button and thrust his nose against the young man’s leg.
‘Sunfire, isn’t it?’ he asked, reaching down to rub the dingo’s ears.
‘Seems he likes you,’ she said.
Button held out the gift of flowers. ‘These are for you.’
Embarrassment flushed her cheeks. ‘They’re pretty,’ she lamely replied.
‘Like you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Do you want me to carry the water?’
She stumbled on her answer. ‘No. It’s not heavy.’
Button ran his hand quickly across his forehead, pushing aside his dark locks, and said, ‘I’d better keep going, then. I promised Short Barleyman I’d help him to repair the thatch on his barn roof this morning. I hope you like the flowers.’ He rubbed Sunfire’s head again, smiled at Meg, and continued along the river path.
Meg’s insides were melting. Her cheeks were on fire. Button’s smile—white teeth behind soft lips and dark stubble—enchanted her. His blue eyes smiled like his mouth. She checked that no one else had seen her moment of confusion before she collected the pail, scooped it full of water and headed for home, flowers in one hand, pail in the other, thoughts of Button Tailor burning her. Her mother was baking bread when she walked in. Relaxed by the warm, enticing aroma, she poured the fresh water into the drinking bucket and returned the pail to its resting place beside the door. ‘Where are the boys?’ she asked.
‘Peter’s asleep,’ Dawn replied, without looking up from her dough rolling. ‘Mykel is hunting kangaroos. Daryn is fetching wood. It’s Alunsday tomorrow—or have you forgotten the feast in the market square?’ Dawn stopped and looked up, smearing a streak of flour across her cheek as she tried to wipe aside a loose hair. ‘In fact, I want you to find some mushrooms and wildroot for the numbat seasoning.’
Meg was relieved. Looking for mushrooms and wildroot released her from any further farm chores for the day because she’d have to search the hillsides above the valley to find what was needed. Basket on her arm, knife in her belt, she left the house, with Sunfire in tow, and headed up the slope of the northern hill. On the crest, weaving between the tall gum saplings, she surveyed the valley where her village huddled along the riverbank under the protection of the river gums.
Smoke rose from the Bakers’ chimney. Late morning sunlight glittered on the aquamarine river. She wondered if her brothers had evaded their chores to go fishing again. Three tiny figures were crossing the bridge, heading for the market square, and a horse and cart was coming in from an outlying property, probably the Tillers’ farm, bringing sheep to market. Her farmhouse, nestled between trees, looked small and fragile. At the back of the house, tiny strips of coloured cloth hung on a line strung between two trees. She couldn’t see her mother. Movement overhead made her peer into a tall gum, where she spotted a pair of koalas, a female with her young clinging to her back, foraging for eucalyptus leaves. She checked Sunfire’s whereabouts, but he’d disappeared into the bush.
The best wildroot was in the next valley. She’d often gathered it, her mother teaching her when she was old enough to walk what to look for in the earth. Wildroot’s seasoning flavours were a village delicacy and people believed that it had medicinal qualities. It could also be boiled to produce a soft green dye that Meg’s mother liked to use for dresses and tunics.
Descending the steep slope, Meg spied Sunfire scouting through the bush, stopping occasionally to mark his territory. Sometimes a strong scent held him fixed to a spot while Meg pushed on. She farmed a circle of cream mushrooms in a sunny patch of grass. She loved the silken texture of the mushroom skins. She cut the stems and gently removed the clinging clumps of soil before placing them in her basket. Then she continued towards the rocky creek that cut through the valley.
At the bottom, where the tree canopy kept the air cool and moist, naked tree roots curled across the earth from their trunks, dipping into the creek’s clear water. Patches of bright green moss and yellow lichen added
colour to the sombre grey roots and dark brown earth, and red and white-spotted toadstools sprouted in unlikely places. The toadstools were a good sign. Wildroot often grew near them. Meg searched for the soft bulges in the earth that betrayed the wildroot’s presence and soon found what she was seeking. She knelt and burrowed into the soil with her fingers, unearthing a thick wildroot tuber. She cut it loose from its thin fibrous roots and cleaned away the dirt, exposing its green skin. Wildroot flesh was orange and pulpy, good for mashing and spreading over cooked food or for stuffing inside numbats, fish or chickens. The skin was the green dye source. She gathered seven wildroot tubers.
Satisfied, she brushed down her skirt and looked for Sunfire. ‘Sunfire!’ she yelled. The dingo’s yelp echoed along the narrow valley. ‘Where are you?’ she called. ‘Come on!’ The dingo yelped again. He was on the opposite slope, halfway up gauging from his yelp. He’d found something and wasn’t going to come. ‘Frustrated by another wombat burrow,’ she muttered, remembering how he was perpetually puzzled by the fact that wombats could fit down their burrows but he couldn’t. She hoisted her basket and climbed, hoping to find more mushrooms as she went to see what had secured Sunfire’s attention.
The vision of the grey horse stopped her cold. It was saddled and its reins dangled. ‘Hello?’ she called warily. Sunfire was several paces downhill, staring at the ground. Meg put down her basket and drew her knife. ‘Sunfire,’ she tentatively called again, but he ignored her, transfixed by his hidden quarry. Summoning her courage, she crept towards him. Dark stains stretched along the horse’s flank, and a long weeping cut ran up its shoulder and neck. The dark brown saddle was soft fine leather and the black blanket beneath was
embroidered with the royal gold serpent crest. Meg’s father had worn the same crest when he marched off to the distant war. Her heart quickened.
A few paces from Sunfire, she saw what was consuming his attention: a man face down in a hollow—a soldier in chain mail—an arrow embedded in his back. His sword was lying across a flat stone just beyond his reach, the blade stained with dried blood. ‘Sunfire!’ she ordered. The dingo, hackles raised, glanced at her, but stayed where he was, growling. She edged closer, until she could see that the man’s breath wheezed painfully in and out. ‘Sunfire!’ she hissed. ‘Enough.’ The man’s legs jerked. Meg instinctively raised her knife and Sunfire’s growl deepened, but the soldier sighed and was still again, his breathing noticeably shallower. He was dying. She’d seen people die from illnesses and accidents. Only three cycles earlier, Brightsky Beekeeper had died of the consumption illness. Meg had visited Brightsky, with a gift of butter from her mother, and found his corpse. The soldier’s face, turned to the side, was already grey like the faces of the dead. His beard was matted with blood and his hands were lacerated, and the metal arrow punched through the chain mail corslet’s rings was buried deep between his shoulderblades. What could she do? ‘Hello?’ she said. The soldier’s breathing quietened. ‘Can you hear me?’ As she reached to touch his shoulder, his eyes flickered, startling her. And he stopped breathing. She sat back. Sunfire’s ears and tail drooped. He came forward cautiously, to sniff the soldier. As if he was satisfied that the man was dead, he turned and trotted towards the horse.
Meg stared at the dead soldier, wondering who he was, and why he’d died on a hillside a short distance from her home. He wasn’t someone from her village. By the freshness of his wounds, he’d fought a battle that
morning, or the previous night. Who had killed him? Her fear rose. Were his killers close by? She scanned the trees and bushes. Sunfire was circling the horse, apparently unconcerned for anything except his curiosity. If there was anyone near, he’d know, she decided. She sheathed her knife, and studied the grey face again. He wasn’t very old. Behind the bruises and cuts and beard, and the death mask, he was handsome. Who was he? Would he have a wife or a young woman who was already missing him, like she missed her father? Why had he come so close to Summerbrook? Was he lost? Or had he been looking for someone?
It took most of the afternoon to bury the soldier in a shallow and rudimentary grave. She stripped him of his armour and weapons, thinking that they might be useful to someone in the village, leaving him his underclothes to wear into the afterlife. The hardest task was pulling the metal arrow from his back. She couldn’t fit him in the shallow grave with it in him, and she couldn’t relieve him of his corslet. She’d never seen such a thing. Arrows in her village were made of wood. It took her several attempts, straining and wriggling, and when it finally came free she was smeared with the dead man’s blood.
Among his meagre possessions, she found what she guessed, being unable to read, were letters, and a small picture of a woman painstakingly drawn in detail on a scrap of parchment. He also had the Jarudhan holy symbol of a circled tree on a silver chain. She buried these with him. She kept his money purse. It held twenty shillings and thirteen pennies, more money than she had ever seen at one time. After she’d stowed the soldier’s belongings between a rock and a fallen log, camouflaged under a small bush, she coaxed the horse to the creek, leading it by the reins, warning Sunfire away every time he sniffed at the horse’s legs. While the
horse drank, she carefully inspected its wounds, confirming that the cut down the neck to the shoulder was deepest. ‘I need to get someone in the village to look at this,’ she crooned. ‘Horseman Farrier knows all about horses. I’ll get him to look at you.’ She gingerly patted the horse’s nose when it stopped drinking. ‘Guess you need someone to care for you now,’ she said. ‘I can do that. We need a good horse.’
Her mother was horrified when Meg returned late that afternoon with a bloodstained face, and blood on her hands and clothes, and told her the tale of the dead soldier. ‘It’s not my blood,’ Meg had to repeat to convince Dawn that she wasn’t hurt. Dawn made her wash and change her clothes, and Meg stowed the dead soldier’s purse under her bed. She reasoned that the money would come in handy when times were hard for the family, and she knew that if she told her mother, Dawn would insist on the money being given back to someone somehow.
Horseman Farrier and a small party brought the horse back down from the hills the next morning, on Alunsday, and they confirmed Meg’s story. Speculation was rampant amongst the villagers as to why the soldier had appeared in the surrounding hills when the war was a long way distant. Most conceded it was likely that the young soldier had been waylaid by thieves, especially as he’d been stripped of his armour and weapons, but when Meg tried to correct the details, explaining how she had prepared the soldier’s body, that only worsened the speculation. Fear of attack from a Rebel war party quickly replaced the fear of attack from a gang of thieves. The Alunsday festival mood was sombre and subdued, and shortly after the marketplace ceremony and shared meal people retreated to their homes.
Meg enjoyed caring for the horse, and its wounds showed signs of healing. ‘He’s the Queen’s horse,’ Horseman Farrier warned, after he’d sewn the torn skin on Alunsday morning. He pointed to the serpent brand on the horse’s right shoulder. ‘He bears the Queen’s mark. If the Queen’s soldiers come to Summerbrook, you’ll have to give him back.’ Meg listened, but she silently vowed to hide the horse if any soldiers did come. A good horse would be valuable on the farm.
‘You need a name,’ she said, while she curried him with a makeshift brush late on the Alunsday afternoon as the sun set across the distant mountains. ‘Something strong and fearless.’ She pondered choices, as she brushed, but she couldn’t find one that satisfied her. ‘I think you’ll name yourself,’ she finally said, frustrated by her lack of imagination.