Free When Darkness Falls by John Bodey

married means having babies. I don’t think I’m ready to have a baby yet.”
    â€œLook. Let’s just grow this one up first and we can learn as we go.”
    â€œWhew! I’m glad that’s over. Better check the bait—and how about filling my pipe for me, Grandson.”
    â€œHang on, Grandad! That’s it? It’s been a good yarn, but what happened to the mun ill murra tree, the weeping willow?”
    â€œOh yes ... I forgot about the trees. Well, let’s get organised again and I’ll finish the story.”
    â€œHere’s your pipe, Grandad.”
    â€œThanks, you’re a good boy. Now, where were we?”
    â€œAt the chasm waterhole. Datun had taken Kahla as his wife.”
    â€œOh yes...”
    â€œThe chasm and its waterhole became their new homeland. They had no wish to leave, no desire to find the parents who had so deliberately left them to die. They were happy and content, with full bellies and a supply of water that would last them a lifetime.”
    â€œDid Datun and Kahla make children?”
    â€œYuggamush, Grandson. Let me finish this story so we can get on with some serious fishing.”
    Many years had passed. Boodjang had married Cuddy. Munni and Nelli now had five children and she was expecting her third. Datun and Kahla had married and she was swollen with her second child.
    Datun was sitting by the water one day with Nelli watching their children dive and collect mussels from the depths.
    â€œWhat ails Mother, Nelli?” he asked. “I have noticed her lately taking long walks, dreaming by the fire, and at times looking across the water with a distant look in her eyes.”
    â€œIt is in her heart. We are happy and settled, and have been here almost seven summers now. In all that time she has looked after us, teaching us, helping the women with their births, teaching them all she knows of the laws and the ways of men, and not once has she complained. She grows old, Datun.”
    â€œShe is dying? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”
    â€œNot dying. Her heart longs for her homeland. This is not her home. This is our home. Do you realise that in the last seven summers, she has not had a man, not felt the embraceof another? Her grandchildren love and cuddle her, but she hasn’t got the love of a man, to hold and keep her warm at night and give her the comfort we take for granted. She longs to have a man to look after her and to grow old with.”
    â€œThen let’s not talk about it. Let’s take her home.”
    â€œThat’s what I have been thinking. Then if Mother wishes to stay, we will always have some place to go walkabout.”
    â€œWhen shall we go?”
    â€œLet’s leave that to Mother. I know she will be sorry to leave. But she must before her heart breaks.”
    They left under the cold light of a filling moon. There were only the three of them. They left the new tribe and walked off into the night. Their passage was steady and comfortable and they walked till the rising of the next full moon. As they crossed a vast flat, skirting the turkey bush and the coongaberry shrubs, Munni felt a change in his mother, and his anxiety grew as her footsteps quickened.
    â€œAre you all right, Mother?”
    â€œOh yes Munni. Just a little closer and I will be sure. That low range of hills to our right ... I know those hills, and if this is the creek I think it is, then we are only a day’s walk from the river. Oh Munni, we are nearly there.”
    â€œNearly where, Mother? This land is unfamiliar to me. This is not our homeland. Did we pass this way when we came?”
    â€œNo, my son. This is the land of your father. You were only a baby when your father died. I was his fourth wife, and with his death, his first wife asked me if I would like to go back to my own tribe. I was only fourteen summers and still missing my home, and she freed me, otherwise I would have had to marry another