126 / 156
128
A Single Drop
across the empty plain.
Blood begins to seep through her cracked lips as I hoist her onto
my shoulders with a groan from my objecting back.
‘Why can’t we go back to the Ngadyung Waterhole? White Man
would have moved on by now.’ Nerida’s cracked voice scratches my
ears from behind my shoulder.
‘They don’t budge, you know that.’ I try to maintain my patience;
she is too young to understand the White Man, who settled on the
Kamilaroi land just short of six moons ago.
She says the words that we’ve both been hiding from. ‘But I’m
thirsty.’
‘Distract yourself,’ I say, growing with irritability, my temper
quickly falling through the cracks of the hard ground.
‘Tell me a story, Kirra.’ She has regained the honey sweet voice
that once charmed every member of our tribe, including me this
time. I listen for the soft whistle of the wind, and the distant call of
a brown eagle, then after a deep breath of the pungent summer air,
begin an age-old story.
‘A time ago, in a distant generation–’
‘Long, long ago,’ she adds.
‘Long, long ago, in a time we call the Dreamtime, there was the
longest drought season any spirit had ever seen. And there was a
frog. It was the largest frog ever known, larger than the wedge-tailed
eagle’s wings, its tummy wider than the length of a swamp eel. It was
called Tiddalik. It was so thirsty, drying up in the barren land,
burning under the scorching sun.’ I look up at the sky, then down
again at my bare feet.
‘And it was greedy,’ added Nerida, ‘Greedy like the White Man.’
I continued. ‘So greedy that one day, it stole all the water in the
world and drank it. There were no streams, no creeks and no
waterholes left. The animals began to thirst, so they gathered and
tried to get their water back. And there was only one way to do that,
Nerida.’
‘They had to make Tidallik laugh.’ Nerida giggles – I can feel her
chest vibrating against my back, and I wait for her laughter to
subside, then continue.
‘The kookaburra told its funniest joke and laughed louder than
ever, but Tiddalik’s mouth remained shut. The kangaroo jumped
higher than the scorching sun, but still there was no water. The
11