Waramingo's Boys and Other Stories: None

By Judith A. Lewis

A BOLD WALKABOUT ACROSS THE LAND OF VISION, IMAGINATION, AND REALITY

"The stories in this book are a combination of my imagination, vision, and experiences and contacts," writes storyteller Judith A. Lewis about this compelling collection of 65 stories about the Australian Outback, the Pacific, India, and traveling. "They came to me in vivid detail and I felt compelled to share these insights into a richer way of looking at our relationship to the Earth."

Her theme is the journey, across landscapes, through cultures, or into the vivid realms of visionary experience. Lewis writes evocatively about traveling, in spirit and body, across Aboriginal and cultural terrains, from meeting kangaroo spirits to long-lost fathers. But she writes with equal insight and warmth about the enigmas of the heart, its secrets, joys, aspirations, and epiphanies.

A twelve-year-old girl survives an illness by communing with the waratah in bloom. A traveler in Bombay is arrested by beauty amidst the frenetic urban haze. Two twins separated in early childhood journey towards each other. A homeless man constantly walks the highways to bury his past. An Aboriginal medicine man named Waramingo meets the Dreamtime ancestors.

"A lot of the visionary stories pertain to the land and its secrets and those who visit it from afar," Lewis says. "I believe that the Earth is alive and awaiting our recognition as are the other dimensions that we all could inhabit. I hope my stories help you remember what you already know, that there is no separation, that everything, from stones to stars, is part of us on this lovely planet."

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 17, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595888436

Judith A. Lewis

Judith Lewis was born in Queensland, Australia, and later lived in Sydney for many years. She holds two medical degrees, an R.N. (Registered Nurse) and an N.D. (Naturopath), and practiced natural medicine for many years in Australia and the U.S. She has lived in the U.S. since 1990, and when she is not writing, she designs and makes silver jewelry and creates xeric gardens in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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WARAMINGO’S BOYS

AND OTHER STORIES

Judith A. Lewis

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Waramingo’s Boys and Other Stories

Copyright © 2007 by Judith A. Lewis

All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-44516-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-88843-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

For Richard, for loving me and recognizing and

honoring the artist in me long before I ever did.

Contents

Foreword

PART I

He Has Gone Walkabout

Waramingo’s Boys

Calling the Water

Kangaroo Dreaming

Emu Plates

Nandina

Watchtower

Willy Arena

Marbles

The Sand Boy

Jarrah Hill

Turtle Dancer

Wandezi

Clara’s Cup

The Story of Gerie Lake

The Gaping Rock

The Swans of Nerideen

Wiraloo Remembers

PART II

Kookaburra Screaming

Kangaroo Shooting

Waratah Window

The Wattle Rider

The Spirit of the River

Golden River

Marion’s Dance

The Miracle at Mazrus

Talepa Rocks

Jabala Mountain

Canyon Cry

Smoke Signals

The Golden Quilt

The Road Home

Laughing with the Moon

The Pearl Necklace

Larney

Lost Pearls

The Long Goodbye

Red Stars

The Lost Cage

Packy Island

The Drunken Sailor

Hiro

The Island of Sarnweno

The Volcano’s Edge

The Road to Nardeen

Bombay Daze

The Market

Bombay Brothel

Golden Doorway

Jamboola

Sideways Dancer

Rockford Manor

The Mission

The Lost Years

Charlie

Mr. Watson’s Women

Leyland Shaperelli

The Hands of the Chirrotts

The Lineup

The Warning

The Way We Were

The Lines of Orris

The Starcatchers

The Secret Life of Ergon

PART III

Fragments of a Dream of the Future

About the Author

Foreword 

I have discovered that moving to another country is a great way to deepen my understanding, knowledge, and appreciation of my own native land.

Having lived in the United States for seventeen years now, I have grown used to the questions I am routinely asked when Americans hear my accent. It is always interesting to me because for a fleeting moment in their minds I represent kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles, the Sydney Opera House, Aboriginals, the Outback, and of course Crocodile Dundee. I want to shout out that there is so much more to our great southern land but I answer any questions they have and it always amuses me when they find my accent beautiful.

Growing up in Australia, I found that someone who spoke beautifully was usually English and not Australian. I didn’t think the Australian accent sounded beautiful at all. Yet when I came to America people told me my accent was beautiful. Now I know what they hear because I hear it when other Australians speak (usually on television). Remember, there are only 21 million of us in that big country. We could all fit into Los Angeles, and I rarely meet another Australian. What I hear in the accent is a warmth and an expansiveness in the voice that comes from being aware of the great distances between cities and the huge area of land devoid of development that provides the tone and the inflection. It is those great expanses of land that I think about a lot since I left and this has led me inevitably to the Aboriginals.

The stories in the first part of this book are fictional, primarily about Aboriginal culture, a combination of my imagination, vision, and remnants of experiences and contacts from my past. They came to me in vivid detail as I sat down to write and I felt compelled to share them as some I think are insights into a richer way of looking at our relationship to the Earth wherever we live.

I don’t claim to be an authority on Aboriginal culture. I have traveled over a lot of this country and have worked with the Aboriginals in the Northern Territory and with the Torres Strait Islanders on Thursday Island in my earlier career as a Registered Nurse. Before working and traveling in these areas many years ago, I lacked knowledge of these original inhabitants of my country of birth. It was not part of the educational system.

I have since educated myself and when I think about Australia now as a country it is often the Aboriginal energy that rises up and speaks to me. For this reason I hope that Australia will always be known as a dry continent and that large stretches of land will forever be undeveloped and thought of as uninhabitable except to the Aboriginals whose songs will echo over the land into eternity, this wonderful arid land that I love.

The second section of the book is comprised of short stories set in places I have visited in person or in dreams, and others, like Kookaburra Screaming, involved events that happened to me growing up in Australia. The characters in other stories are composites of numerous people I have met over the years who have provided me with a wonderful collage to draw from. Out of the thousands, two have remained in my awareness, as vividly clear as the moment I first met them. The character Ron in Packy Island was real as was the man in Bombay Daze. The way they lived out their lives, as different as they both were, took enormous courage and fortitude.

The third part of the book is purely visionary, a longer story that for me was like watching a movie that played just above my head as I wrote. It was also like overhearing fragments of a conversation, or even a great saga, in a dream. Was it about our Earth the story was telling, or another Earth somewhere else? Certainly some of its themes are relevant to our condition today, the Earth in change, landscapes falling apart, spiritual beings coming to help from all over. I have not heard the whole story through yet, so the tale is incomplete, but as soon as I do hear the rest of it, or even more of it, so will you, when I write of it soon.

A lot of the other stories are visionary too and pertain to the land and its secrets and all the creatures that share it with us and those who visit it from afar. I believe that the Earth is alive and awaiting our recognition as are the other dimensions that we all hold the latent capacity to inhabit. I hope that some of my stories help you to remember what you already know, that there is no separation, that everything, stones, animals, trees, water, clouds, stars, and flowers, are a part of us as we journey together for a brief moment called life on this lovely planet.

I am indebted to the Aboriginals who embody this view and to my husband, Richard Leviton, for his enormous body of work about the subtle and invisible spiritual energies of our home planet. They remind us of what it means to be alive, to open to our full spiritual potential, and to experience the invisible and powerful energetic connections that we all have to Nature and the Earth. If you are alive you are a part of the Dreaming. Waking up is the difference between being a spectator and a co-creator.

My first memory of writing a composition at school when I was about eight came to me the same way I received the long story in Part III, which I only realized as I wrote these stories many years later. I remember being excited as I wrote that first composition and getting high praise and marks for it and for several after, but then my desire to write got submerged and other things took precedence. It was many years until my creativity started to open up again and now it is central to my life. Whether I am creating gardens, jewelry, or writing, translating the vision into physical reality fuels my life.

When I first started to honor my creativity, I had a vision of an old woman, a magus holding a huge clear glass bowl full of colored, luminescent balls like bubbles and giving it to me. I think the bubbles are infinite and the more I open the more I have. As I take one out more appear. Each one holds the seed of a vision, a creative idea, a storyline, a jewelry design, or a painting. As a young girl I would roam the dry river beds in Australia looking for agates and other stones and dream. I was always amazed at how many different versions of agates there were; it was an endless stream of variations, an endless Dreaming.

Each of us is unique and we are all highly creative. Some of us are more in touch with it than others, more willing to enter the dreaming and create something that was not here before. We all have the ability to tune into another reality and see what happens, consensus reality is not the only way to be in this world. The aboriginals never tuned in to this and maybe they still carry the original idea of who we once were when we came to this earth. They exist within the dreaming, anchored deeply to the earth, and wait for us all to awaken to create with them.

PART I 

He Has Gone Walkabout 

I think the Aboriginals have not entirely left their original star system. Only a part of them is truly here. Maybe the world was originally sung into existence. I see them walking, moving as if on air, a few feet above the ground across the Australian landscape in their Light bodies as they have always done and will continue to do.

They are nomadic by design, their continual movement and their songlines creating a never-ending chorus and affirmation of their existence, of all existence. It is as if by continually affirming this Creation story they strengthen the original pure intention of the great Creator Spirit. Maybe they hold the blueprint for existence on Earth. They volunteered to keep the original story alive on a great southern land and anchored the story in a massive red rock in the middle. Uluru.

Religions will come and go, but the Aboriginal story will remain the same. All religions have divorced themselves from the land, but the Aboriginals are the land. They can’t live without it. If you lock an Aboriginal up in a cell he often dies. His lifeline is severed.

In another star system, the songs of the Aboriginals are relayed back and forth to energize the Earth and balance it. Whatever is superimposed over the truth of original Creation, the songlines of truth reverberate deep within the Earth. Aboriginal bodies are the conduits.

For thousands of years they have never had any desire to accumulate things or acquire wealth. While civilization blossomed in different areas of the Earth, the Aboriginals remained the same as if they existed in a realm slightly above the Earth, a glorious, innocent existence in tune with all of Nature, living mostly out in the open, sleeping under the stars, sometimes painting, wanting nothing more than to exist in the Dreaming.

What are the dots in an Aboriginal painting?

I see a tall, dark Aboriginal male, spear in hand, walk toward Uluru. He disappears into the rock wall. He steps out into the sky, into a star system. He walks through the sky and thousands of colored dots about a half-mile wide suddenly appear alongside him, like an enormous Aboriginal painting in the sky. It rises up like a giant carpet and he melts into it.

The dots move through the galaxy like an undulating carpet of yellow, red, and brown earth tones—thousands of dots, part of a scroll, moving slowly from one star system to another. The male Aboriginal has become one of a million bright red dots in the painting and explodes out of it and soars in a brilliant arc of flame and disappears.

A long gold ribbon attaches itself to the scroll, pierces it, and comes out the other side and falls to Earth. It lands on the Earth in a coiled, bright gold form, a minute dot shimmering with life.

The Aboriginals dance and uncoil the ribbon and toss it into the air. Words fly out of it in song and they start to sing and dance in a frenzy. Animals come to watch. It is a coroboree. The weather starts to change, wind whistles around the dancers, and huge drops of rain hit the dusty ground and bounce up about a foot. Lightning flashes across the sky then it starts to pour. They keep dancing in the dust, the colors painted on their chests start to run, their bodies glisten in the rain.

The storming sound of the bullroarer fills the air. The dancers come to an abrupt halt. The rain suddenly stops. An Aboriginal boy lays a huge eucalyptus branch on the ground and a couple of old men sit on it and light a pipe and look up to the sky. Two more join them and sit facing the four directions. Smoke rings rise from the pipe and they intone something in unison.

A teenage boy takes a puff from the pipe, turns, and faces south. He hands back the pipe and walks away. He is dressed in a loincloth, his curly black hair reaches his shoulders which are narrow. His limbs are long and skinny, he is barefoot. A piece of woven brown leather circles his left ankle and he carries a spear. He keeps walking; the smoke rings follow him until he is a tiny dark figure in the flat landscape. He never looks back as the others stand in a group and watch him from under the trees. The Great Spirit will guide him. His mother knows this as she wipes a solitary tear which rolls down her face. He has gone walkabout.

Waramingo’s Boys 

Their story lives on in the hills even as their frozen forms still gaze over the land, maybe for eternity.

To see them from a distance they look like five boys standing together. There are slight differences in height but they look about the same age. It is said they arrived on Earth on the back of a comet that landed in the desert and created a massive hole that is now a deep body of water. They were standing in single file on the comet’s back like five black silhouettes against the sunset, and just before the comet hit ground, they flew off and landed on their feet in a circle around Waramingo’s hut.

He was meditating when this happened. Waramingo, an old medicine man, heard the noise and felt the Earth shake and shudder for a few seconds. It was the sign he had been waiting for, and even though the comet had hit far from his hut he knew it was time, and even before he opened the door of his hut he knew they had arrived. As he walked slowly to the door and opened it, the Sun sank over the horizon and the boys were standing silently in the soft twilight. Waramingo looked up to the sky and raised his arms in thanks before greeting the boys. He was wearing long, loose, yellowed clothes, his long grey curly hair fell just below his shoulders, and his bright brown eyes in his tanned old face were alive with joy.

The five boys were brothers and he knew they would arrive but he had not known how many would come. After greeting them, they sat with him around the fire talking and eating. The boys had come from another star system yet Waramingo could communicate with them in sign language. He had lived alone in the desert for many years, knew the rhythms of the land and the animals and the weather, knew all kinds of ways to communicate.

He was one with it all and he knew every star in the sky. Waramingo lived several miles from the nearest neighbor, but people knew of him, even spoke in whispered tones about him. They believed Waramingo could change the weather, and stories circulated that he could fly but others said he was traveling in the light. Whatever it was it appeared as if he could fly. He walked for miles in the desert always returning to his hut near the rocks.

When the brothers arrived they slept on the flat land under the stars and in the shadow of these great rocks. Waramingo was busier than ever after their arrival preparing medicines. He stored his healing herbs and berries and dried foods in the hollows of the rocks near his home. The five brothers had powers and reminded Waramingo that he too had such powers, the ones they were demonstrating to him every day. They looked like young boys, but actually they were developed souls capable of great magic and through their rituals they taught Waramingo.

Sometimes at night they traveled great distances through the sky. They told him they had work to do with children to help develop more parts of themselves. As the children slept, the boys entered their dreams and taught them. The teaching was fun, and the children created bubbles so big it was impossible to hold on to them, gradually the boys awakened the children to even greater powers.

One night the boys walked with Waramingo to where the comet had hit and showed him the hole it had left. They saw no one on the walk. The comet of course was gone, disintegrated, and all that was left was the huge gaping hole a half mile wide. In its center was a pile of dust or minerals, and after they climbed down to it the boys tasted it and gave some to Waramingo. It had a consistency he had never felt before as he rubbed it between his fingers. The boys chanted as he did this and he joined in and soon water was seeping through their toes. Back at the edge of the huge hole, they were

ankle deep in water, and two days later birds were landing on the comet hole which had become a lake.

This was good for Waramingo because aside from the tiny spring in the rocks, which sometimes ran dry, he had to walk several miles for water, and sometimes he had to exist on water from plants and berries for weeks at a time or he would have to fast.

The five boys were each different but did not have names, yet they seemed to identify themselves with individual sounds. Each of them would make it before they communicated with Waramingo. They looked like normal human boys but their skin was extremely dark and had shiny points scattered over it. It looked like a map of the stars. They had extraordinary abilities, all of their senses highly developed, their vision the most striking: they could see clearly for miles, and they could see behind them as if they had eyes in the back of their heads. They told Waramingo they were one soul but had chosen to split off into five to make it easier to accomplish their goal, which was to help move forward the growth of people.

Waramingo could only remember fragments of it, but he had connected with them before as a boy. A rock thrown at him by another boy had so stunned him that he had lapsed into unconsciousness. He almost died and just as his family prepared for his death, Waramingo woke up and asked where his five brothers were. His mother told him that he had none, he was an only child. He isolated himself after that, roamed alone a lot as people thought he was crazy talking to imaginary brothers.

When an actual brother was born, Waramingo stopped talking about the five imaginary brothers, and his imaginary life receded and no one spoke of it again. As a grown man he discovered he had healing abilities and after hundreds of people traveled to see him and many years had passed he became a hermit in the desert, communicating only with the spirits. In vision he had seen the brothers’ arrival several times over the years and had drawn their image in charcoal on the rocks.

The boys stayed with Waramingo for several months, leaving on missions now and then, though it was mostly in the area where Waramingo lived that they did most of their work. The rains came, the lakes filled, and the surrounding land changed, became a fertile place for life. Plants grew that Waramingo had never seen before and his food was plentiful. With Waramingo’s help, the five boys sang the place into a new existence.

He became used to the boys being with him and begged them never to leave, but they explained they were messengers and eventually must return to their star. He asked them how they would leave since they had arrived on a comet which was now a pile of minerals at the bottom of the lake. They assured him that the comet had been just for his benefit. They could have arrived in an instant from nowhere or anywhere, it seemed, suddenly appearing, and you will learn learn to do that in the future, they told Waramingo. As he looked around at his beautiful new world that they had created together, doubts about sustaining it when they left filled his mind. The boys saw his doubt and said, Waramingo, doubt is your biggest obstacle. Remember your self-imposed isolation after we last visited you as a boy and how long it took you to awaken to your healing abilities, powers every person could have. Do not doubt you can do it.

The boys referred to life on Earth as the long sleep from which eventually, slowly but certainly, all would awaken. The reason they looked the way they did, a body like the night studded with stars, was that they had woken to their universal nature and had been around longer than Waramingo. Where they came from anything was instantly possible the minute you thought it so everyone was extremely careful of their thoughts.

The more the boys told about their world the sadder Waramingo felt because he knew they would be leaving soon. He was afraid he would forget what they had told him although he would never forget the magical time he had with them when they created a new landscape.

As a parting gift the night before they left, the boys manifested images of themselves in the rocks above his hut. In the morning when he woke, he sensed they were gone. The Sun was not yet over the higher rocks, but silhouetted against them were the five boys standing in a line looking over him, and they did this for the rest of Waramingo’s life. He was buried near the lake which, the story goes, as passed down for generations, Waramingo had created out of mere dust.

Calling the Water 

It is a hot day. The sun scorches the land and the sky is blue and cloudless. The Aboriginal women come together and lie in the dry creek bed. Six of them lie flat on their backs and listen for water. Their dark skin glistens in the heat in striking contrast to the white sand beneath them. One of them says, It’s further south, three days away. They place smooth rocks in a circle and stand in the middle, open their mouths wide and cry out. Their sounds rise up out of the riverbed echoing off the sides. It is deafening as the tempo rises and the women standing in a line on the riverbanks clap sticks.

A whole day passes as the women take turns standing in the circles of stone and clapping the sticks. They are thirsty and chew red berries. At the beginning of the second day before the Sun rises the women look down at their feet in the sandy creek bed as a tiny stream of water about three inches wide trickles through their toes. They scream and laugh with delight and crouch down and drink it and splash it all over one another as it increases in strength. They have called the water. Babies will surely be born soon.

Further down the river an Aboriginal girl squats in the smooth sandy area under a casuarina tree, while an old woman circles the tree humming. She is calling forth the soul of the unborn child while the woman labors. Occasionally, she massages the back of the moaning girl. She lubricates her hands with the wax of a tree and speaks softly to the girl.

She leans back and with a giant moan from the mother, the baby slips out into her waiting hands. She coats it in charcoal and places it on light-colored bark. The baby screams and she sticks a finger in its mouth while she attends to the mother and puts the afterbirth aside to bury it later. Soon she will place the baby in a small scooped-out shallow area to let it connect to its songline.

Kangaroo Dreaming 

Lightning flashes across the rocks in the distance and the Rock (Uluru) looks purple in the afternoon light. Parts of the sky are yellow-green as if it is about to hail. An Aboriginal boy rubs two stones together and makes fire; he is in his initiatory stage and alone in the desert. He watches the light display miles ahead of him. A giant crow flies overhead squawking and circling again closer now to his head. The boy stands still on one leg and looks straight ahead; the ancestral spirits who are working with him urge him to stare at the rock and ignore the crow. He hears a whirring noise in his ears as the kangaroo spirit is with him.

Images of hundreds of kangaroos hopping away fill his head. They are all heading toward the Rock. He is one of them now, bounding along. He is no longer a boy; he has a huge tail and moves fast across the arid landscape. They move together and with a giant leap travel over the top of Uluru and continue to rise, flying in the sky above the Rock. They form a line and circle around the Rock; the lightning illuminates the top again, and there are dancers up there, their shiny painted bodies dripping color in the rain.

A whirring noise sounds in his ears and his head aches. He opens his eyes and he is still standing on one leg, his foot pressed against his inner knee which is starting to ache. Around him, birds gather and land on logs and tree limbs and a giant frill-necked lizard arrives. He is surrounded by animals and it is so still he cannot hear a sound. Suddenly, he hears a thumping noise and a giant red kangaroo arrives from behind. He waits for the kangaroo to nudge him with his head. His foot drops to the ground, he is on both legs now, turns, and looks into the kangaroo’s eyes. The boy reaches down into the skin-bag around his waist and pulls out ashes and places them in the kangaroo’s pouch.

He was born on a kangaroo songline and this is his Kangaroo Dreaming.

The lightning subsides and the clouds move quickly. He is tired now. He lays down on the earth and sleeps. The animals stay awhile surrounding him.

He wakes an hour later, alone in the bright sunshine with the heat scorching his body, and a roar comes along the ground as he rolls over to get up.

It is the bullroarer. He walks towards it in the late afternoon sunlight.

Emu Plates 

A long gold line of sunlight paints the ground and the sky to the north is dark, as an Aboriginal girl walks over to the sunlit beam and places five shiny aluminum dinner plates on the dry soil. She looks to the north and the sky is becoming overcast and she watches the beam disappear and the plates light up under a flash of lightning. She crawls into a hollowed-out tree stump and crouches down and watches the storm. Huge raindrops splash off the plates and they flip over and fly through the air with the wind. She watches as they flip and turn in the sky, shiny discs turning in a dark sky.

Concentrating, she closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. Her back is damp but it is still warm despite the rain and she welcomes the coolness on her skin. The voice of her aunty sounds in her head: Use the energy that is before you. The lightning is still around so she has access to it. Humming softly, she wants to succeed; she is no longer in the tree stump and the plates dance in front of her. She rises up, floating about six feet above the ground, and reaches out to collect the plates. Four of them are easy to grab and the fifth floats higher up above the tree line. Humming louder, she calls the plate to her but it floats even higher, shining brightly.

Aware of the power of Nature around and in her she must be careful, deliberate. The middle of her forehead is heating up and she sends a ray of light from there out to the plate and it flies quickly back into her hand. She stacks the plates one inside another and places them on her breast then flips over and floats for awhile.

Down below her, she catches sight of a lone emu standing in the shelter of a eucalyptus tree. It shakes its feathers and does a little frantic dance on the spot splashing mud at the tree. Her rite has been witnessed; aunty’s clan is the emu. Much later as she wakes in the hollowed-out tree, five aluminum plates sit on top of her head sheltering her from the rain.

Nandina 

An ochre-colored rock stands alone in the desert. In size and shape it resembles a camel. It stands in an arid environment; full-size trees could not survive here, just a few shrubs and dry grass among small rock formations under the blazing central Australian sun.

An Aboriginal girl about twelve years old sat in front of the rock on the dry dusty red earth and played with a collection of rocks she found in a dry creek bed several miles south. The rocks were like marbles smoothed out by years of flood waters. The stones, a gift from her grandmother, were significant to her and she carried them in her dilly bag.

Her name was Nandina, and as she moved them around to form patterns in the dirt, images of her ancestors floated before her eyes. She saw dances performed and a trail of stars. She tried to reach out and touch the stars but they were just beyond her reach. Going into a trance she saw the trail of stars more clearly. Daily, she sat here doing this, hoping to see further.

The animals in this area seemed to sense what she was attempting to do. They left her alone and watched from the sidelines before moving on. Birds flew overhead. Flocks of kookaburras screeched overhead but none landed on the large rock which her back leaned up against. She heard a humming come from it. Sweat dripped from her upper back and her forehead and her mouth was dry. She was used to this scorching sun but she was starting to get hungry so reaching into her dilly bag she pulled out some berries and chewed them.

Their sharp astringency was like an energy surge for her body and she felt as if she could see and hear more clearly. Closing her eyes again, she breathed in deeply and images flashed before her. The trail of stars appeared and she reached out to touch them. As she did this, she could feel her body floating upwards, above the rock. Rising higher now and moving swiftly above the landscape she was weightless and going higher. Looking down, she saw a herd of kangaroos bounding across the flat plains, a hundred of them forming an arrow-shape.

Suddenly she felt lonely and lost and the stars were gone. She flipped over onto her back and closed her eyes and the stars appeared again and she was on her way moving swiftly higher until there was no more land and she floated in darkness amongst a million stars.

She woke to find she was somewhere different. A huge column of light appeared before her and shimmered and vibrated. It opened and she found herself floating in a soft pink column full of flowers of different colors. Their scent was intoxicating, petals floated in the air, and there were flowers she had never seen before but some she was familiar with