Free Sing Fox to Me by Sarak Kanake Page A

own,’ she said. ‘It’s too stressful … I’d just rather not know he was gone.’
    They often talked about him like he wasn’t there.
    Samson looked over his shoulder. The trees rustled, light wavering between the leaves. He was completely alone. Something flickered deep in his chest.
    No one had followed him. No one was worried, or watching. He was completely alone, and completely free. The flickering in his chest turned to flapping, and the flapping turned to an almost painful beating of wings, as though a bird was trapped inside him. He opened his mouth, ‘WHA-HOOO!’
    The bird burst from inside him and out his mouth into the sky and trees. He looked up again. This time he tried to follow the bird, but the early morning sun through the rain mist dazzled his eyes. Then he ran. He ran through leaves and under branches, over rocks and around trunks. He ran until his feet were sore and his throat was dry from yelling. A loud rushing got louder and louder, and all of a sudden there was the smell of water and the sound of water, and Samson was thirsty.
    â€˜Oi!’
    Samson turned. Clancy’s friend Murray was holding a fishing rod and standing alongside a deep, bluish-grey creek. He was wearing the same cowboy hat as yesterday, and the big, fat black kookaburra was still perched on his shoulder.
    â€˜You allowed down here?’ he asked.
    Pardon? signed Samson. His hands felt nervous.
    Murray raised his eyebrows.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Samson. He hadn’t asked if he could leave the house or waited for his granddad, in case it wasn’t alright to be out on his own.
    â€˜Looks like you’re going fine,’ said Murray, but then he eyed Samson. ‘You need help getting home?’
    Samson thought of their house in Queensland and wondered if he would ever get home and where home was anymore. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m going all over this mountain today. I’m going see everything .’ His hands followed his voice, and the sign for everything was like holding the entire world in his hands.
    Murray smiled. ‘Everything, you reckon?’
    â€˜Everything,’ said Samson, even though his mum said he shouldn’t repeat.
    â€˜Ready for what you might find?’
    Samson shrugged.
    The kooka on Murray’s shoulder snapped its head from side to side, as though it was trying to understand.
    â€˜You never know what’ll come out on a walkabout,’ said Murray. He flung his fishing line into the water and swiftly pulled it out again. One hand coaxed the line through the reel, and the other held the rod. When he pulled it back again, the line spooled out beneath him.
    â€˜What’s “walkabout” mean?’ asked Samson.
    Murray waited a bit. Maybe he didn’t want to explain. The bird opened its beak and closed it again. Then Murray said, ‘A walkabout is a journey that teaches my mob about our ancestors.’
    â€˜I’m sleeping in my dad’s room,’ said Samson, but it sounded like a question rather than an answer. ‘He’s my ancestor.’
    Murray smiled. His lure split the surface of the creek again. ‘It’s not quite like that.’
    â€˜Are my mum and dad on a walkabout?’
    Murray took a long moment before answering. ‘Have you heard of the Dreaming?’
    Samson shook his head, which was a sign everyone knew.
    The line flicked over Murray’s shoulder and back into the water like a needle pulling thread. ‘Some people have different stories for how the earth got to be the way it is. Your lot have the Big Bang or God, but some of my mob reckon a huge Rainbow Snake moved around the world shaping the mountains and the riverbanks, making it the way it is now.’
    Samson had seen rainbows before, after thunderstorms, stretched over the ocean in glowing arches. But in his mind, this Snake wasn’t like that. It was like a rainbow Paddle Pop. Swirling