Lyrebird Hill by Anna Romer Page B

understood me, because she was holding her shoulders tight and a crease had appeared between her brows. She examined my face for a long time. At last she asked, ‘Where you go?’
    ‘Tasmania. It’s far from here. Across the water to another land.’
    Jindera frowned, then shook her head. ‘No cross water Bunna. Danger there. Bad spirits.’
    A wedge of sorrow lodged in my chest. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I admitted. ‘But Fa Fa is in trouble. He’s lost a lot of money, and now the men from the bank want to take our land away—’
    I stopped, unable to go on. Jindera’s people had already lost their land – to us. But while ever my father owned this small pocket of wilderness there was at least a small haven for some of the Indigenous people. I thought of the poisoned damper, of the night raids and the cruel beatings, and I had to look away.
    That was when I saw Jindera’s mother, Mee Mee.
    She was sitting on a cleared patch of earth beneath the salmon gum where the marsupial skins had hung the last time I had visited. She was bent over a flat grindstone, a bark dish of water on one side and bowl of fine black seeds on the other.While I watched, she sifted a handful of seeds onto the grindstone, trickled it with water and then began to pound the seed with a smaller stone. The seeds came from grasses, or the flat succulent pigweed the native people called munyeroo. Later, when the men arrived back after the day’s hunt, the sticky balls of seed meal would be placed on hot coals and baked. Mee Mee’s seed cakes were highly prized, and whenever they were freshly made she always set a couple aside for me to take home.
    ‘Mee Mee,’ I called.
    She looked up and beamed, then got to her feet. Rushing over, she gripped my hand, tugging lightly on my arm as she always did in greeting. She wore a possum skin tied about her waist, and a fine layer of soft powdery dust. Her white hair plumed around her face, and her large brown eyes shone as she examined me.
    It only took her a moment to register my feeble attempt at a smile. She spoke to Jindera and they exchanged a few words, then Mee Mee looked back to me.
    ‘You go away?’ she asked, her voice jagged with alarm.
    ‘I am to be married.’
    Again Mee Mee looked at Jindera, who spoke softly to her at length. When Jindera stopped speaking, Mee Mee looked at me with a cry. Her eyes welled, and huge tears began to spill down her cheeks leaving damp trails on her dusty skin.
    I clung to Mee Mee’s hand. ‘I will come back to see you,’ I assured her. ‘I promise.’
    Mee Mee mopped her wrist against her eyes, but the trickle of tears seemed unstoppable. Reaching up, she cupped her palm against my face and looked into my eyes so searchingly that my heart wrenched. As I met her dark gaze, I became aware of the stillness, the utter quietude around us, as if the breeze had stopped blowing and the birds were poised without song, and the rest of the world sat frozen in time and only we three remained; I smelled burning on the air, and caught the mustyodour of damp stone; then, faintly, very faintly, I thought I heard the distant echo of screams—
    Danger , whispered my mind. Bad spirits .
    Jindera spoke sharply, and Mee Mee released my hand. I blinked, and the world washed back around us – the breeze sighed in the treetops, the river murmured along its primordial course. In a nearby tree, a lonely magpie stretched its throat and sent a volley of magical notes into the sky.
    I felt Jindera’s gaze on me. ‘This your home,’ she said, her fluty voice firm. ‘You stay here with family, where belong. You tell man, no marry. No cross water to other land.’
    ‘Oh Jindera, if only I—’
    The thud of a horse’s hoofs made us all look around. The group of girls who had followed us up from the river called out and pointed. My brother Owen was approaching in a cloud of dust.
    ‘Brenna?’ he called shakily.
    I was unwilling to cut short my goodbye, but something in my