The Dreaming by Barbara Wood

Author:Barbara Wood [Wood, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Historical, General
ISBN: 9781596528604
Google: ZkKDoAEACAAJ
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Published: 2012-05-15T10:51:34.435000+00:00

As Sarah followed the river, she walked with great care so as not to disturb the Dreaming Sites she passed. Each time she came upon a site she recognized—the Diamond Dove Dreaming, the Golden Cockatoo Dreaming—she softly sang it to show respect.

She carried a small bundle that contained the clay and ocher and cockatoo feathers she had been collecting for the ritual she had planned to perform when Joanna's baby was born, to ensure the child health and good magic, and to bind it to the land into which it had been born. But Sarah was going to use the objects for another purpose now, because the bundle also contained emu fat stolen from the cookhouse, a hair-string headband she had made for herself and a pair of shoes Joanna had bought for her long ago and which Sarah had never worn.

She walked with the sun in her face, steadily, with a long stride, and with her eyes always ahead. She had to make sure she was far away from buildings and flocks and men. She had to go to a private place. And as she walked, she sang the songline of the Fur Seal Ancestor—the song-line of her mother and her grandmothers.

Presently she came to a place on the river that was protected by a screen of trees and boulders. She listened to the wind and heard no voices riding it. She turned in a slow circle and saw no farms, no fences, no riders on horseback. White people, Sarah knew, feared Aboriginal magic. Mr. Simms had once locked her away for three days without food and water for doing what he called "a heathen practice." She had only been trying to call down the rain because the mission's crops were dying.

She undressed slowly and folded her clothes into a neat pile. She untied the bundle and took out each object, whispering its song as she placed it on the river bank: the ocher, the fat, the feathers, the hair-string, the shoes. Then she walked into the river and washed herself in its cold water. She gathered stones and grass and made a small fire on the bank, singing as she fanned the flames, inviting the spirit of the All-Mother to give power to the fire. Then she proceeded to make paint out of the clay and ocher.

When the paint was ready, Sarah greased her body all over with the emu fat. She rubbed it into her skin until she glowed red-brown in the dying sun. She massaged it into her hair, she mixed it into the ash of the fire, singing the songs of the All-Mother. Finally she began to paint her naked body.

First she highlighted the contours in red and black paint, calling upon the Bush Berry Dreaming from which the black had been made, and the River Clay Dreaming from which the red had come, bringing their power into the designs she created. The white paint she applied with a stick, tracing stripes from her shoulders down her arms, and circles on her breasts, and dots on her abdomen.

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