Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [32]
Soon the rocks became increasingly rugged and broken, cut into lopsided rifts and faults, as though a giant with an axe had used the hill-top as a random chopping-block. Among the faults strange colours glinted: the dull crimson of garnets, the yellow flame of topaz, the white of moonstone, and, very occasionally, the fleck of blue-green beryl. Unmined wealth. A jeweller’s shop of semi-precious gems; undiscovered; unexploited.
The girl’s fingers ran round the base of a moonstone.
‘They’re beautiful, Pete. Let’s take some with us.’
‘Come on, Mary. We can’t eat stones.’
Reluctantly she followed her brother among the desiccated rocks. But the jewels were something she didn’t forget.
Then, quite suddenly, as the children rounded a shoulder of granite, they stopped: stopped dead in disbelief. For in front of them rose a whole hillside aglow with shimmering colour: every shade of the spectrum sparkling, flickering, and interchanging: a kaleidoscope of brilliance rioting in the midday sun.
Mary’s eyes widened, her mouth fell open.
‘Jewels, Peter! Jewels! Millions and millions of them.’
But they weren’t jewels. They were something even more beautiful.
As the children approached the hill they heard a low, high-pitched rustling; a soft vibrating hum that trembled the air. Then, to their amazement, the blaze of colour began to move: shimmering: palpitating: rising and falling, as the butterflies opened and shut their wings. Suddenly, like bees, they swarmed – disturbed by the children’s approach – and in a great rainbow-tinted cloud went swirling south: south for the Victorian plains.
The hill lost its magic. The sun streamed down. The children plodded on.
At midday they rested for a couple of hours in the shade of a steep-sided ravine. Here they ate the last of the yabbies. To both of them, the prawn-like creatures tasted vaguely salt. And they had no water. The girl dozed, drugged to immobility by the heat of the sun: but the boy was restless. Soon he got to his feet.
‘Come on, Mary,’ he urged. ‘Kurura. Maybe that valley’s over the next hill.’
But it wasn’t. Nor over the next. Nor the next. Nor even the one after that, which they reached in the golden sunset.
They camped for the night beneath a low shelf of granite. They were hungry and thirsty; exhausted and disillusioned. There was no wood for a fire, no water for a drink. The sunset wind was cold; and so, when they came out, were the stars: cold and uncaring : cold and uncaring and very far away.
Before they slept the children talked awhile in whispers.
‘Pete!’ The girl’s voice was anxious. ‘You think we oughta head back tomorrow? Back for the waterhole?’
‘Course not!’ The little boy was scornful. ‘The darkie said there’s water over the hills. We’ll go on.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DAWN brought wreaths of mist, as the heat of the sun warmed the dew-wet rocks, making them steam like tarmac after summer rain. The children woke damp and cold, hungry and thirsty, their mouths dry and their voices hoarse.
‘Come on, Mary,’ Peter’s croak was harsh as a kookaburra’s. ‘I don’t like this place. Let’s push on.’
He led off, round a shoulder of smooth-grained granite. Both children moved a deal more slowly than the day before. Every step required a conscious effort.
They found that the shoulder joined on to a solid massif, a great wedge-like block of hills flanked by a subsidiary ridge which ran directly across their line of advance. Atop this ridge little puffs of cloud, sun-tinted fawn and pink, were rising and falling to the breath of unseen air draughts. Mary looked at the clouds: thoughtfully: hopefully. She tried to remember her geography lessons – in hot climates weren’t clouds supposed to form over water? Maybe beyond the ridge they’d come at last to the longed-for valley. She said nothing to Peter – disillusion, if it came, would be too cruel – but somehow her eagerness communicated itself to the little boy; he quickened his stride.
But the ridge proved unexpectedly steep,