Pointed Bones and Eagle’s Claws
THE most potent magic is that brought from a great distance.
When the world was young, when the white men, probably, weregug-guggering like apes, an old Pittongu man left the Murchison Range to travel far to the north. Like a knight of a much later age, he was well armed, carrying with him stone axes, stone knives, barbed spears, and a particularly deadly magic calledmaringilitha.
One day, when well forward on his journey, he dropped some of themaringilitha which, on striking the ground, caused a great explosion. The old Pittongu (bat) man was blown into dust, as were all his weapons, and on the place arose a great stone surrounded by very many little stones. Into the big and all the little stones entered the bat man’smaringilitha magic, so that these stones became of great commercial value to the tribes who owned the land, theWorgaia and theGnanji.
The most daring members of these tribes from time to time collected little stones and sang into them their own particular curses, then wrapped each stone in paper bark and tied the bark with human hair string. To all the tribes far south and east this new form of magic, calledmauia, came to be considered one of the most potent forms of magic that could be employed against an enemy.
Several of these stones had in the course of inter-tribal trade come into the possession of the Kalchut tribe, and were safely kept, with the sacred articles used in initiation ceremonies, in the secret storehouse situated somewhere among the hills east of Meena Lake.
Previous to Bony’s visit to theGordons, Nero and several of his older men had travelled to the storehouse, from which they had taken one of themauia stones and the pointing bone apparatus. Subsequently Wandin had set out with themauia stone in the dilly-bag suspended from his neck, to await a favourable opportunity of “opening” Bony’s body that the magic of the pointed bones might more easily enter it.
Seen only by the galahs, he had watched the meeting of Bony and Sergeant Blake, and then, when the policeman had departed, he had sat with his arms rested on his hunched knees and his forehead pressing down upon his arms, and willed Bony to sleep. Thinking he had achieved this, he scraped particles off themauia stone on to a piece of bark, carried the bark to the recumbent form of the half-caste, and spilled over him the dust of the magic stone.
Having then retreated to a secret camp, he made a fire and placed on it the piece of bark, watching to see how the bark would burn. It burned slowly, telling Wandin that the prospective victim would die slowly.
Out of the tribe’s sight that night he and his chief held a conference about a little fire. It was decided to perform the boning during the night of the full moon, when, it was thought, the dreaded Mindye, so fearful of the light, would tarry at his home.
Thus, when the full orb of the copper-coloured moon rose above the sharp rim of the uplands east of the lake, Nero and Wandin stole from the camp, regarded fearfully by the men and the women who suspected a deed of magic was to be committed this night. They passed the Meena homestead almost immediately below the veranda on which John Gordon sat reading to his mother who was knitting. On went Nero and Wandin, their naked feet making no sound, their black bodies covered only with trousers, until they stopped before a tree killed by lightning and never since used by the nesting birds.
It was Nero who knelt before the tree and Wandin who climbed on his broad back to reach a hand into a great hole in the trunk. From this hole he brought out the pointing bone apparatus which he thrust into his dilly-bag.
Neither man spoke and, turning away, they began the journey to the secret camp. Nero walked first, taking unusual care never to touch a fallen stick with his feet, careful to followclaypans as much as possible, Wandin walking in his tracks so that it would appear that only one man walked abroad this night.
The moon had reached the meridian when they came to the road at a place midway between the Karwir boundary gate and Pine Hut. Nero selected a claypan crossing on which the tracks of motors were hardly discernible in broad day-light. It was two o’clock in the morning when they arrived at the secret camp beside the banked fire. Nero gave his orders. One broke down the banked fire and added fuel, and on it placed an old rusty billycan. The other brought a kangaroo, the hind feet of which were tied together.
“Cut his throat and bleed him on to the bark,” instructed the chief in the Kalchut language.
This the second fellow did, using a curved sheet of bark already fouled with congealed blood. He and his companion were entirely naked save for their feet that were encased with feathers. Obeying another order given by Nero, the man who had replenished the fire brought a striped linen mattress case still containing a large quantity of feathers.
By now both Wandin and Nero had removed their trousers and had taken a dust bath. They sat on the ground, and, when the bark carrying the fresh blood was brought to them, each in turn plunged his feet into the blood. Then they sat together with their feet buried among the feathers in the mattress. Tea was made and given them in jam tins instead of pannikins, and, in order that their “insides” might be strong to project magic, they ate strips of kangaroo flesh, raw and bloody. Said Nero:
“Where that Bony feller camped to-night?”
“He’s camped on the veranda of Green Swamp hut. He always camps on the veranda, never inside the hut.”
“You pick up any more cigarette ends?”
“Not for many days. Bony feller knows we picked them up. He’s a cunning feller. So he puts his cigarette ends in his pocket and burns them when he makes a fire.”
“What Bony feller do all day?” continued Nero.
“He track aboutsandhills and then all along both sides of boundary fence crossing the Channels.”
Wandin chuckled, saying:
“Bony feller won’t track much longer. Before the moon grows round again he’ll be dead. Themauia bark said so when I burned it.”
The eyes of the two camped here flashed whitely in the firelight.
“What you do-bone him?” one asked, his voice fearful.
Nero nodded, replying:
“Bony feller come to know too much. Presently he get to know more. That’s no good to the Kalchut. When me and Wandin gone, you two will lie down and sleep and forget us, eh?”
It was an order, and the campers nodded understandingly. Then Nero and Wandin withdrew their feet from the mattress and detached from the masses about them all those feathers not securely glued. Great care was exercised in this; and then, satisfied that none would become detached from those remaining, they arose and walked into the moonlit night, Wandin following his chief.
Eventually the pair arrived at one of the depressions or channels on which no herbage or scrub grew, and they advanced boldly along this depression until the netted barrier was reached. They were most careful in climbing the barrier, both pausing to be sure that no feather had been detached by the wire barbs. And so, presently, they arrived at the western extremity of the high ground on which were the Green Swamp hut and well.
Now the moon’s light fell strongly upon the front of the hut, glinted in bars on the iron roof, fell upon the motionless figure lying on the veranda floor covered with a blanket. Nero and Wandin crouched on the warm moonlit ground less than two hundred yards from the sleeping Bony. With his hands Nero pushed the sand before him into a long ridge to serve as a protection to him and his companion, and to prevent their victim from dreaming of the ancestral camps in which lived their respective mothers, for such a dream would tell him who the bone pointers were.
On their side of the sand ridge Wandin buried the six bones and the eagle’s claws of the boning apparatus. Nero from his dilly-bag took a ball of porcupine-grass gum and proceeded to knead it into the form of a plate. Having done this he took from his dilly-bag a full twenty of Bony’s discarded cigarette ends, placed these on the gum plate and then turned up the circular edge to enclose them into a completed ball. With the ball of gum, containing matter that had once been one with the victim, on the ground between them, the two men crouched over it and began to “sing” it with their magic.
“Bony feller may you die,” muttered Nero.
“Bony feller may you die sure and slow like the bark said,” muttered Wandin.
“May you groan like a bull-frog.”
“May your liver bleed and be drowned in its blood.”
“May your bones become like sand.”
“May you sick when you eat.”
“May you be hungry and still sick when you eat.”
“May you howl like a dingo.”
“May you groan like a bull-frog.”
“May you sit down and roll on the ground.”
“May you die thirsty.”
“May you die with blood in your mouth.”
Each man spat upon the gum ball. Nero dug from the ground the buried boning apparatus-five sharply pointed little bones attached to one end of a long length of human hair string, and one small pointed bone and two eagle’s claws fastened to the other end of the string. And while Wandin repeated all the curses they had sung into the gum ball, Nero forced the point of each bone and the tip of the claws into the ball, so that claws and bones might take from the “sung” gum ball the curses to be transmitted to the victim. Thus was the evil magic sung into the cigarette stubs, that once had been in contact with the victim, to be sent through the bones and the claws into the body opened to receive it by themauia stone dust.
Nero passed the eagle’s claws to Wandin, himself retaining the five pointed bones. He knelt facing the sleeping Bony, and Wandin took a similar position behind him. With the human hair string connecting the five bones and the single bone and the claws, as well as connecting the two men, they pointed bones and claws at Bony and solemnly repeated all their curses. So from the tips of bones and claws their magic sped through the air to enter the body of the man asleep.
For a full quarter-hour they repeated their curses, after which Nero placed the boning apparatus in his dilly-bag and then gravely handed to Wandin the ball of gum in which were embedded the cigarette ends.
Wandin rose to his feet to walk away in a wide circular course that took him to the rear of the hut. A soundless black shadow casting on the ground a shadow as black, he cautiously moved round the hut wall, reached the end of the veranda, edged close and closer to the sleeping Bony, and deposited the gum ball on the ground a few inches from his head.
As it had come to the hut, so the shadow departed to rejoin the chief of the Kalchut tribe.