Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

was injured but strong in heart, trying to

keep command. As I came up through the bushes I heard him

groan. Vera Swift lay across his body, her hands over his mouth,

her elbow pressed into his throat. What I had heard was his death

sound. She saw me and gave chase. She carried a knife, she was

every way faster and stronger than I was. I was stricken with a

mortal fear. I knew she would never let me live or come to the camp

again. I took to the swamp forest. She hunted me again at night; 1

thought I heard her calling my name. I saw a chance, stole the longboat early in the morning and took off west, beyond Gline’s cape.’

So it came out, with many pauses for breath but absolutely clear.

Dag Raam and I said nothing; we did not even exchange glances.

Hilo lay still, then cocked an eye at the guitar again and I played the

songs of the Rhomary land and the chants of the Gnai, far into the

night. The intern came back and Rayner came to sit beside his

grandfather.

Dag Raam spoke to the old man once and said:

'Hilo, you have come a long way. You have come all around this

world.’

‘Seems so, Dag-boy,’ said Hilo, very faint. ‘I took the long way

home.’

Then he Spoke no more except in his other language and toward

morning, with a grey dawn breaking over the Long Portage, he was

gone. We went out of his room and down through the quiet, creaking house. Rayner let his mother sleep. Dag Raam said to me:

‘This will make no ballad, Cat Kells.’

‘1 know it.’

I went out with Rayner Mack into the rainwashed garden and

looked up to the sky, the sale camp of Ha-hwoo-dgai, and hoped

indeed that Hilo Hill had come there. I might have chanted again

but I could not. All my songs were sung.

Everything changes and sometimes more quickly than we have

time to reckon on. Soon after the old man’s death Ruby Mack sold

up her great house and sent her son to Rhomary to complete his

schooling. She planned to live modestly in the town but a doctor,

newly arrived in Derry, was smitten with the handsome widow and

they married. Now she lives on Medicine Hill, still in the best part

130

Cherry Wilder

of town.

Rayner took to spending his holidays in Rhomary; he did not

care for his stepfather. We exchanged letters for about a year. If

there is anything more popular than a newsballad it is a love song

but, you see, I do not even have this to offer. The balladmaker did

not fly off with the handsome silverwing; I felt regret, for there

might have been more in it than a summer’s dreaming.

What was the truth of the story? Nothing can be proved now.

Hilo is dead and, in any case, he was not much of a witness. It is all

a m atter of belief. I believe he told the tale as plainly as he could. I

believe it fell out on the beach in the Red Ocean as he told it. More

than that I believe in the ocean he crossed, in the floating islands

and in Palmland. I believe there is a race of lizard-folk living far to

the west of the Rhom ary land, and they call themselves the Gnai-

na-gada, the Children of the Broken Snake.

There is one scene left, one last verse in my ballad. Hilo Hill was

buried beside his wife Janie in the cemetery of Derry town, on a

headland overlooking the sea. A plain stone marks his grave; there

are no dates, only the name Willem Hill and the words ‘Home from

sea, a common inscription in this place. I go there sometimes in

summer and sing a chant for him; no other balladmaker has ever

got wind of the story. One summer’s day as I climbed up between

the stones carrying my guitar and my string of climbing lilies, I saw

that someone was there ahead of me.

I wanted to run as Hilo had gone running through the