Episode Six

 

He was on the fence, climbing with the package tied to his waist.  The hardness and sharpness hurt his hands, and his hands and feet bent to the wire and stone that was the fence. More trees appeared as he climbed, and he noticed again that tree tops were joined to thick posts pushed deep into the ground. He knew that stars under the ground held them up. The picture was clear, and he could see right through to where the arms of the stars reached under the house, and joined with those that came from the other side.

This would guide him back, the trees holding hands under the ground, and if Ma listened to the ground she would hear his footsteps as he passed from one star to the next.

Three - Secrets

Dalyon was in the forest, the path that Ma had taken on the day of the tracking animal and the trampoline. The rain had been. The damp climbed up into his shoes and socks and he would have taken them off but Ma had told him to keep them on. He walked with a travelling song, his feet pressing into the floor of dying leaves. He kept on walking into a brown puddle that soon rose to his ankles, and he stopped to watch the water as it met his legs, moving softly. The water was warm and a small black beetle was struggling on its surface. Dalyon bent down and scooped up the beetle. He let the water drain through his fingers so that the little animal could find a dry place to land. It stretched its wings to dry, then tickled across his hand and up onto the inside of his arm. He let it crawl under and up onto his shirt, to his shoulder. Dalyon looked down again and noticed that instead of feet, a wobbly disc of puddle joined to the bottom of his legs. He was stuck there with this new foot so he twisted to see what else was around. A crow called to him, ‘Get going, Dahl-y-on. Dahl-y-on, get going, caw, caw, caw!’ It was laughing at him.

He dragged his old feet through the disc, leaving a water channel that closed over behind, reached dry land at the edge of the little lake and jumped out. Jump, jump, jump! Sqwelchsqwelch. He was hopping along the path like a crow. The crow called out, ‘Stop, stop, stop that!’

He didn’t want to be a crow so he turned back into a boy and walked on. Each step made a scrunch-squelch, scrunch-squelch, scrunch-squelch, beating out a new travelling song. His hand felt the heart that lived inside his chest. It was singing along with a pom, pom, pom, pom. He stopped his foot-song and the heart went on singing.

Dalyon did a jumping turn to see where he had been. When he landed he noticed how a picture of his foot-song had been left with every scrunch-squelch, and how even as he turned and moved on, and turned back again, that there was a drawing left in the ground from every move. The drawings were made of broken sticks and leaves, and some bent-over grasses and bushes. He wondered if this music would be played by others who would weave their own song into his.

Before him were clues to the comings and goings of kangaroos, and some round droppings, big and small, which he stopped to examine. He squatted down. Something smaller than a kangaroo had made the little marbles of poo. He picked up one of the marbles and rolled it around in the palm of his hand, then let it drop down onto the ground. It fell in a new place. He stood up.

He stood quite still, listening, his head tilted to one side, a smile in his head. He had stopped and everything else had too. There was waiting that made a gap in the music. The gap ended. A bird spoke behind him, and the crickets started up again. The bird was a whispering bird that told its secret and waited for another to tell it a secret in return. Nobody replied, but they were listening. The bird whispered its scratchy secret again. A warbler answered, telling everyone, ‘Dalyon is coming with a scrunch-squelch, scrunch-squelch, scrunch-squelch. Dalyon is at the sleeping tree.’

He had reached the sleeping tree and stopped to examine its surface. Now that he was close he could see more than he had on the day Ma had passed it by. A soft shiny green blanket had been caught falling from its side. Its head was at one end, with a pillow of dirt, and thick hard hair that stuck out in all directions. There was dirt stuck to its hair, and a scurry of black beetles playing there. Hide and seek, seek and hide, hide and seek, seek and hide.

He and Ma would play that game. Dalyon smiled to himself as he saw the picture of them playing together. Ma was counting to twenty, slowing down or speeding up at the end. He found a good place to hide in the time that twenty took. Behind the sleeping tree. Ma took a long time to find him. His whole body started to giggle as she came close, and that was when she found him. She faded away, back to the house, to the bed where she lay so still.

He felt sad when he thought of Ma alone in the house without him, and so did the heart. Was she counting to twenty as she slept? He was finding a very good hiding place this time. They would laugh when she found him, but for now she was still sleeping, like this sleeping tree. He was thinking about Ma as he ran his hand along its length, walking along, almost falling over the big rock that was nestled up against it, but he kept his hand on the sleeping tree all the while.

Along its top was a smooth place where animals have played. He saw that there was a long crack in the surface, the doorway to a place where the smallest creatures had their houses, where they lived and ate and played hide and seek. Dalyon’s thoughts told him that when the sun was hot a brown snake slept by the sleeping tree, but she was dreaming now beneath the ground, far below the rock. Small silvery-white things, little shelters on stalks grew along the bottom where the tree lay along the ground, and orange and white discs clung to its side.

Dalyon looked to where he would go. Ahead the path was clear as it curved towards the bowing tree of the pink and greys. Beyond that he had a picture of the path changing from the thin line to a circle of clearing, with trees bending in on every side, and a moving patch of sunlight. He hugged the sleeping tree goodbye and scrunch-squelched on.

Along the way birds had left some of their feathers behind. Dalyon found one with a rainbow drawn above a soft grey and white puff. It was painted yellow and pink, yellow again. It ended in green. This feather was a baby. He placed it on the flat of his hand so that a breeze caught and floated it away. He tried to see where it had landed and found instead a feather from a warbler, long and tough. The stick that went through the middle was bare at the bottom. This was a good place to hold. He twisted it this way, and that. The stick started off thick and blotchy white. The bottom was sharp. As itpassed through the white part of the feather which travelled most of the way to the top it changed from white to black, until the feather itself became black and pointy at the top, separated from the white by a crooked line. He ran his fingers down and found that the feathery bit stuck together. He did it again, and the stuck-together feather tore and separated. A warbler sang an angry song when it saw him do that, so he stopped and put the feather behind his ear. He turned his head to show the warbler. The warbler sang a happy song now, someone else answered, and they went on like this, singing and answering, singing and answering.

Dalyon sought more feathers and found one left by a pink and grey. It was pink and white, soft as the rainbow feather that flew away. He pressed it between his fingers and it stuck there. He found another grey, green, black and blue that changed in the light as he moved it around. He stuck this one into his hair.

Dalyon was a feather finder. If he found enough he would dress all in feathers and turn into a bird. He looked, gathered, dressed. He saw that each leaf was a feather too, long with a stick along the middle and pointed at the end. He saw that the trees were giant birds stuck to the ground by one big leg. He dressed himself all in leaves and feathers. The forest was happier with him now and it breathed softly, blowing on the bird feathers and leaf feathers. Dalyon was a birdboy. He belonged to the forest.

The ground here was soft and damp, and his shoes left shoe shadows behind to say that a boy had walked this way. Ahead were tree feathers all stuck to a thin stick. A vine had wound around them and there were purple flowers growing on the vine. Dalyon sat by the tree feathers, pulled them from the stick and tied them as foot feathers all around his shoes, winding the vine round and round his foot as he went. He stood and walked a little way then looked back to see what sort of shoe shadows he had left. They were the shoe shadows of a Dalyon bird, not a Dalyon Boy.

The forest was happy with him. The warblers were warbling and even the crows were cawing softly. The whispering birds joined in, and the tree birds whispered too. Dalyon began to sing. The forest music was good that day, good for a travelling one.