They Called Her Tilly

They Called Her 'Tilly'

And the wind, always the wind, its whispered secrets forever shape the sheoak's nod and sway. Old Guyani sits cross-legged beneath the ancient tree, listening. At her feet is a cairn

of limestone. The rocks, once gathered with care, now lie tumbled, lichen-flecked; a pile in disarray. Her dark eyes are closed against the harsh light. She breathes in deep the sea-tang that drifts in over the dunes, the sea waits. Faces fill her mind; they appear and dissolve as in a dreaming of long ago. Old bones creak, her head drops and her chin comes to rest against her withered chest. Her mind wanders into memory and quiet. As always, one face appears foremost, his features sharp through the haze of time, and in her mind she walks and as she walks she calls to him, "Marrula, Marrula – Brother, are you there?"  And the wind sings its soft reply: I am here Guyani. I am here... And she remembers.

           It was long ago; young Guyani sat on the edge of her cot, the smell of melaleuca and kerosene filled the hut. The lamp on the table cast dull light upon three small bags: one of sugar, one of flour and one plump with tea, all precious articles and hard to come by. These were presents for her brother. Young Guyani rose, she went to the door and peered out into the night. Soon my brother will come. She was too tired to remain standing, so she sank back onto the bed. The days were hard working for the Kilkerneys, and she was still only young. Guyani was almost asleep when she heard a noise and then saw the door of her hut swing open. It was Madison, the squatter’s only son. His sharp eyes took in her surprise and fear, as, with measured step, he moved toward her.

           Guyani jumped to her feet, but Madison was quick. He seized her by the arm and shoved her back roughly onto the bed. There he stood towering above her. Not a word had been uttered, yet she knew well what was to come, just as it had before. Madison began to unbuckle his rawhide belt. Guyani turned her head, she curled into a tight ball, she scrunched up inside and tried to shrink away, but there was nowhere to hide. The seconds ticked away in nightmarish anticipation as she searched her mind frantically for some form of escape.

           Suddenly, Marrula burst in. With one fierce glance he took in the scene, and shouting, jumped onto Madison’s back. But Madison was strong and Marrula only slightly built. They fought and Guyani stared on in horror, unable to move, unable to think. Madison grabbed Marrula in a crushing embrace and began to squeeze, but Marrula went wild. He slammed his head into Madison's face which sent him stumbling, knocking over the table. The lamp fell; it shattered and spilled liquid flame onto the floor. The bark walls of the hut caught afire and flashed into a heated, blazing light. Guyani, at the last, screamed. She threw her arms up and thrashed about. Madison ignored her and boxed her brother down with a heavy blow. Marrula fell to the floor and lay there senseless and still.

           Guyani tried to lift her brother away but Madison grabbed her around the waist and dragged her screaming from the burning paperbark hut. She looked back in despair to see the flames licking at Marrula's face as he lay on the floor. People from the homestead came running to the shouts and the smell of smoke. They stood in a restless half-circle, some watching the fire, others staring at Madison and the young girl as she coughed kneeling on the ground. Their eyes shone with iridic fire reflected by the macabre and dancing light. The noisome cackle of burning wood suddenly erupted into a splintered crash as Marrula tore through the rear of the hut in a blistering wail of terror and trailing flame. He escaped the inferno; stumbling through a burning wall, and in a frantic craze disappeared into the maw of that black fateful night.

           With the vivid recall of the memory old Guyani startles awake. She rubs her eyes;

her grey, tangled hair is thrown back as she stands, resting her bony hand against the trunk of the old sheoak for support. She cannot see over the rise of the dune, but she knows the sea is waiting. She feels it. She takes a few tottering steps that way but the glare and the heat of the day beats her down. She submits and stumbles back to the tree. Staring at the grave again, she is soon lost once more in memory and dreaming.

           At first light at the Kilkerney homestead there were many questions, but Guyani remained silent – she knew no-one would believe her against the word of a squatter’s son. So she was sent to work on another property, far away. When she arrived there nothing was said of the events that had played out that night. Not to her at least. They were kindly people, but strict. They wanted a quiet girl, they wanted no trouble. In total disregard for her name and tribe they called her 'Tilly'.

           After the fire, Marrula went bush, but he stayed not far from his people. Their camp was near the beach. Elders gave him special plants for healing, and he swam the salty water. His burns scarred and hardened, but his heart remained an open sore. One day, Madison came looking for him, to ‘finish the job’. He rode to the camp near the sea but found only old women, dogs and a few children playing in the dust. So he returned a week later, bringing with him three little bags; one of sugar, one of tea and a larger sack filled with flour laced secretly with strychnine. He proffered these as gifts for Marrula; he told those at the camp that he was sorry, that he wanted to make amends... The old women took the sacks but would not speak of Marrula. His evil design accomplished, Madison rode back to his farm and waited.   

           One day, in need of companionship and comfort, Marrula sought out his people. But as he approached their camp he heard no sound. He ran to the clearing and discovered many bodies, dead, laid out, flies and maggots feasting on their eyes and mouths. Many of his mob had been cut down by eating the poisoned flour, and it had been a slow and terrible death. Marrula's heart now burned with a fire of anger that his chest could barely contain. Madison had told no-one of his evil deed at the camp – used for baiting vermin traps, the poison was common enough and easily found – and in his mind he justified its use with stories he had heard of other landholders employing this trick to resolve their 'native problem'. Yet still it was many days before he gathered the courage to return to the camp. But when he arrived, he was not prepared for what he saw: for in the abandoned camp lay many dead, children, women, old men, and they were uncovered and baking hot in the sun. Madison held his kerchief to his nose and rode among the corpses searching for Marrula, but he was not to be found. The stench and guilt finally drove him to urge his mount up and over the dunes to the sea. There he dismounted and waded into the cool aqua in an unconscionable attempt to wash away what he had seen and what he had done.

           While Maddison was in the water, Marrula was in the bush just up from the camp. Like Achilles pacing outside the walls of Ilium, he stalked among the acacia and stunted gum in a fierce, uncontrolled rage, shouting out in language to the spirits, Grant me retribution! He practiced with spear and woomera and prepared for his revenge. Madison, meanwhile, had re-mounted and had ridden further up along the beach. Then he came to a low dune and decided to cross there and seek the track he could follow back to the homestead. But fate intervened and compelled him to cross over the dune at the very place where Marrula sat resting beneath a tall and shady sheoak tree.

           With each plodding step in the deep sand the horse's bridle jangled and it was this that alerted the resting Marrula to the unexpected arrival of his enemy. Marrula slowly rose to his feet, watching man and horse very carefully; his hand reached down to grasp the haft of his spear. The shadow under the tree engulfed his form as though to shield his movements and somehow aid him in his quest for vengeance. Madison was looking ahead for a clear track unaware of the young boy's presence – until a sudden premonition made him glance over at the tree. At that very moment, as Marrula was about to launch his spear, Madison reached down and with swift action brought his rifle to his shoulder. He fired just as the spear left Marrula's hand. The slug from the gun slammed through the neck of the boy, just as his spear sank deep into the thigh of the man on the horse.

           Marrula dropped like a stone. Madison barked a curse and sat unbelieving, staring at the spear jutting from his flesh. His horse half-reared, nearly spilling him from the saddle. With a furtive glance back at the tree, Madison summoned all his will and carefully dismounted. When his injured leg hit the ground it folded under him and the shaft of the spear snapped off, leaving the blade and two feet of smoke-hardened Mallee sticking out from his thigh. Madison swooned and with a cry of pain, dropped to the earth. He sat up clumsily and looked over to the sheoak but could see no movement from under the tree. He then grasped the stump of the spear, closed his eyes, and with a mighty effort pulled out the spear from his leg. And with the shock and pain he fainted and knew no more.

           Under the ancient sheoak old Guyani still sleeps and dreams. Then the wind passes to the southwest and a sudden gust swirls in from over the sea. It is the wind sound in the branches of the old tree above that wakens her. She rubs the grit from her eyes and looks up and is suddenly surprised to see the figure of an old man limping slowly toward her. As he approaches she recognises him and cries out, ‘Aaiee, it is YOU!’ She bends to grab at the only weapon to hand, a rock from her brother's grave. The wind suddenly squalls and a powerful, swirling zephyr begins to shake and sway the branches above, whipping the limbs and tossing them like flailing hair as if also to also show great feelings of anger toward the approaching old man.

           "You - it is you!" cries Guyani again in disbelief and horror.

           Madison, now timeworn and infirm, at last reaches old Guyani and then sees the rock in the old woman’s bony hand. "Tilly, wait! No – I have come to..." he begins, but she fails to hear, for she is intent on causing him pain. He lurches forward and tries to grab at her thin wrist, but gerontic and no longer strong, he trips and falls. His head hits hard against the gnarled trunk of the old tree – and all the years and all the collective bitterness seeping from Marrula's flesh and bones slowly becoming mineral, and all his pain and hurt and despair taken up, transmogrified into stem and phyllode, bark and branch – and all the countless passing seasons soaking up the essence and memories of the boy buried beneath the rocks –  all the slowly decomposing skin and blood and hair and sinew and rotting membrane sinking slowly into the earth, and the rain and dust and heat, all part of the growing, becoming part of the core and fibre of this ancient tree – all, all combined with the eternal force of a spiritual justice that no man controls nor understands – united into one mighty act of power, of destiny, of kismet or fate, the wished-upon retribution become manifest into a single moment of revenge and reciprocation – so frightfully alive, as violent as the fierce wind that with booming crack lets fall a heavy branch from the tree, which snaps, falling, striking down the sad old man whose life-blood spills splashing, dribbling, staining the dirt and rocks and earth of his past victim’s cairn on which he lies – And as he lay there groaning, Madison looked up one last time, up at the old woman now towering above him, a woman he wronged so many years before; and with his last breath he croaks, "Forgive me."

           Old Guyani drops the rocks she had been holding. She is silent. Once again she cannot move nor speak in the presence of this man. Then a voice that seems to come from deep within the grave at her feet whispers a wind-song reply, "Yes, you are forgiven." And with that Madison’s eyes close forever.  

           Guyani walks to the dune. She looks back at the scene one last time; the tree, the rocks; she shivers, feeling the salty wind soak into her soul. Then she walks on. She reaches the edge of the water just as a hegira of flaming sun slips beneath the horizon. She strides slowly on. She steps into the water, and deeper, until the sound of wind and wave call to her no more.                                                            

                                                                                                                                   ends

(Word Count – 2286)