Free Wild Lands by Nicole Alexander

boy’s mother would not survive if her man did not return. Instead of spending the days usefully, making things or foraging like women should, she moved like a mouse and gave fright at the slightest sound. In contrast, the boy was bright-eyed and curious and the darkness of his hair, which shone a burnished copper in the light, reminded Bidjia of a Bronzewing pigeon. The day the warriors from another tribe came through, his clan had decided to cross the mountains and escape the encroaching white settlers. It was by chance that he’d approached the place of the white woman and child and seen the warriors. The mountain people were aggressive. He’d guessed that they would kill her. While many of his people were confused by the whites’ use of the land and the brutality that they directed against their own people, others were angry with them and sought vengeance for the changes forced upon their way of life. Bidjia didn’t even think of saving the woman, he only wanted the boy.
    So he had taken him and, with the few remaining clan members, they had walked away from their country, following the ancient pathways through the mountains and down the valley to the plains. The scuffling between two ancestral creator spirits, the giant eel-like Gurangatch, and the large native cat, Mirragan, had scratched out the features of the terrain, the rivers and hills, and it was the story of this unknown territory and the description created that helped to direct them to new lands. Bidjia would never have imagined that the whites would cross the mountains as well.
    They reached the camp some hours later. A wisp of smoke and the scent of roasting meat meandered through the trees, leading them to a shady clearing where two bark humpies sat among the timber. Colby and Darel had arrived some time before them.
    â€˜We saw no-one,’ Colby told them as the men sat around the camp fire. After Bidjia, he was the eldest of the clan. ‘But my spear was ready.’
    â€˜As was mine,’ Darel said enthusiastically.
    â€˜We saw a shepherd in the distance and heard musket fire, but that was it,’ Bronzewing told them. ‘And just as well, fighting is the last thing you want, if you wish to stay here.’
    â€˜And how would you know what is best for us?’ Colby asked. ‘You have been gone from here many months and you come back and tell us whether we should fight or not?’ He stared at Bronzewing from across the fire. ‘I think you would put the white Lycett first. He is your colour, and you are not of ours.’
    â€˜Enough,’ Bidjia warned. Drinking water from a kangaroo skin bag he passed it around the group. The wallaby smelt nearly done. It had been cooked whole in the fire pit and unskinned to retain its goodness.
    â€˜One of Lycett’s men came here when we were hunting,’ Colby advised the group. ‘Merindah spoke to him.’
    Colby’s woman, Annie, approached the men in Merindah’s place. Merindah was heavily pregnant with Bidjia’s child and kepther distance from the men now her time was drawing close. Annie pointed at Bronzewing. ‘Lycett wanted to know if you had returned. I said nothing.’
    Bronzewing nodded.
    She backed away quickly to wait near one of the shelters with Bidjia’s woman and the clan’s three surviving children, a young boy and girl belonging to Annie, and a sick one-year-old, who was Merindah and Bidjia’s child.
    â€˜He knows it was us.’ Jardi tugged the wallaby from the fire pit and began to cut pieces of cooked meat from the carcass, before pulling out the heart, liver and kidneys.
    Bidjia accepted the organs and divided them up between himself and Colby. The other men received a square of bark with chunks of meat on it and began to eat. Wooden bowls held the wild nuts and berries the women had prepared. ‘When the moon grows fat and lazy we will burn the adjoining ridge.’ Reaching for a kidney, he