Blackheath's Daughters

However, Scout is too busy playing with the possum twins to notice the girl being snatched away. The mystical breezes beguile his senses, his eyesight no longer sharp. When he does notice, he's too worried about Three-Legs, to raise the alarm. He will find her before nightfall. He had to otherwise it might be cattle-dog stew on the menu. Scout bats away the young possums and watches the trees for clues, for anything out of the ordinary. The hunger filling his gut brings unwanted bile to his throat. A name almost escapes his loping tongue. He sucks hard on the bile as he bounds into the bush in search of answers.

Moglu is long gone-the child is wrapped around his shoulders and he is running up the western slope at breakneck speed. The girl is fish-scales against his shiny skin, her blanket of red congealed into the texture of barramundi.

The succulent flesh of a stillborn animal is fresh in his mouth.

He has answered another mother's ritual call for peace. Every season he sups on a girl-child born from the shanty-town above the valley. They are like the elders of an animal family offering up their firstborn-a sacrifice to his fierce need. In exchange, Moglu slaughters only the old and dying when food becomes scarce.

Once he was forced to eat one of the foreign devils, Three-Legs' predecessor. Moglu was sick for weeks, his flesh erupting in strange mucus-ridden pockmarks that only Goanna could cure. Lizard piss was useful for many of the ailments the foreign devils brought to his valley.

Twenty years earlier, Moglu had been exiled by his people for the abomination of partaking in White pleasures. One morning he awoke to find his shadow stolen from his back. Father Emu was running with two shadows and the tribe was fearful the sacred serpent would come and take them all as punishment for Moglu's crime.

When Moglu was banished to the Valley of Nine Seasons, Emu was cured. However, when Imankatha consulted the great gods he was told Moglu could not come home until his shadow returned or his bones were as white as the alter-moon.

Moglu could not understand the riddle the Gods had given Imankatha. He had seen the bones of a thousand animals and scores of men; all their bones were white. At first, he thought his bones must be as black as his skin, at least until his spirit left his body. Using his hunting stone he scraped the flesh from his rib-cage only to find his bones were as white as any dead man's. After that discovery, he resolved to find his shadow instead. Over the changing seasons the land became one with his body. The grey earth was his shadow, his breath, and the immolation of his soul.

At night his cries could be heard reverberating across the crystalline skies until suddenly one moonless night, snow clouds lit up the sky with their heavy burden. With the coming of the ice-nights came the first girl-child. On the first full moon of the summer solstice, the child would miraculously appear at the creek-head.