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Nyura and I were inseparable. An unlikely friendship. Me the daughter of the community nurse, recently descended from the people who had murdered Nyura’s great grandparents. Nyura with direct unbroken lineage to the land, her ancestral language and the desert economy. In our childhood play, amongst the trees, rocks and water-holes we were oblivious to the terrible history of colonial abuse and the intergenerational trauma that still played out in the community.

Her Aunty Katapi became my aunty, as did Aunty Katapi’s sisters. They took us out into the sand dunes tracking goanna, finding witchetty grubs and bush tomato. They held us on their laps around campfires where flour was made into bread and endless pots of sweet tea were passed from hand to hand. Then the stories would begin; tales of the land and the dreamtime spirits who still inhabited the landscape. Tales that filled our imaginations with heroic deeds, kinship relationships and our responsibility to the land that fed us. Sophisticated myths that instructed us simply in Law and the reciprocity between human, land and spirit.

Now, in the darkness of this cold, close walled cave I hear Nyura's voice, so clear in my mind that it’s as though she’s sitting right here next to me,

‘Find your roots, spend time with your Gran, don’t just sit at your computer 24/7. It’s not all about academic brilliance. Remember…’

Remember what?

Her fine ebony cheekbones reflecting golden light from the water? The streak of dried mud where she pushed her hair away as she attempted to keep hold of the struggling fish? The fluid, languid way she moved though the spinifex when she hunted? Or, the sudden, terrible end to our phone conversation, when a drunken man smashed his fist into her temple. It was fast, she never saw it coming. None of us did…

Landing in Edinburgh during the beginning of the Covid outbreak, I realised I couldn’t spend anytime cooped up in university if I wanted to stay sane. I caught the train to Inverness and from there hitched to Granny’s croft. I walked up the rutted track, curving around low rolling hills, her white stone house appearing at last beneath the mountain.

I hadn’t called Gran to let her know I was arriving, but there she was, already standing at the gate, her wild hair and blue dress flapping in the wind. Her hand shading her eyes as she peered down the hill.

‘Och ma wee lassie,’ she cried, starting down towards me as I dropped my backpack. Granny stopped abruptly in front of me, peering intently into my empty eyes. ‘Och, ne’re mind, ma wee lassie. Ne’re mind,’ she said, grasping my head, pulling me towards her, our foreheads pressing hard against each other. That undid me. I found myself crumpling at her feet, wailing and clawing at the muddy path. She hunkered down and held me, crooning and rocking me like I was a baby.

That evening, as the firelight swelled and rippled across the lime washed walls, Granny rocked in her chair, smoking her pipe. I told the story of my life with Nyura, beginning at Partjar in the Western Desert.

Telling about my idyllic childhood brought back the incredible joy and sense of belonging of sleeping curled up on the earth, under blankets, between the warm bodies of Nyura and the cousins. Us kids safe between the fire and the circle of Aunties, who sat up late into the night singing and clapping, silhouetted against a brilliant canopy of stars.

We both left our childhood and the desert behind for university in Adelaide. Me to study literature and language and Nyura, medicine, so she could return to Partjar as a doctor.

We shared a house and worked numerous odd jobs to get by. Increasingly I found myself feeling unhinged and disconnected in the city, so far away from the land of my childhood. Nyura never seemed to falter. She knew she would eventually return. I couldn’t see a valid reason to go back. What would I do when she became a doctor and returned to Partjar? I threw myself even more deeply into my study to distract me from that inevitable, painful parting. But a question that couldn’t be ignored kept coming up for me, in the absence of Nyura, who were my people?

Towards the end of my degree we were spending more time apart. We were both studying hard. When Nyura wasn’t studying she was usually curled up in the fork of a tree in the garden, chewing on the end of a pencil, with a little black book on her lap and a dreamy look on her face. I asked her once what she was doing and she replied mysteriously, ‘You might find out one day.’

I was studying Gaelic syntax for an exam when Nyura came bouncing into my room with a grin on her face.

‘Guess what I’ve done?’ she asked mischievously, waving a piece of paper in front of my face.

I raised my eyebrows, ‘I’ve got no idea.’

‘I have applied,’ she answered excitedly, ‘on your behalf, for a scholarship to the Edinburgh University for you to study Celtic Mythology, Land and Belonging. If you pass your exams with distinctions it’s all yours!’

‘What?’ I asked, feeling confused. ‘I can’t afford to go to Scotland to study.’

‘But you can,’ she said, continuing to wave the paper under my nose.

I grabbed it. ‘Oh my god,’ I said, scanning the paper, ‘It says they’ll give me $20,000 to cover my travel and living expenses. I don’t believe it!’

‘I thought you might be angry with me. It’s true Ailsa! It won’t be hard for you to get those marks and then you’re off to Scotland. You can visit your Gran. How long has it been since you last saw her? Three years?’

‘But I’ll miss you so much,’ I said.

Nyura squeezed my arm, ‘You know we have to go our separate ways sometime.’

I pause in my reminiscing. Granny was staring into the flames,

‘Ya ken what ya need lass?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘Ya need tae go down the Cailleach hole an stay t’ree nights. Ya’ll find what ya need dere, nae doubt. Better’n anyt’ing ya might find in books ’n school.’

And now I’m here in this dark womb tunnel, with a candle, my sleeping bag and water. When it’s time to surface Granny will call me. Nyura is here beside me whispering, always whispering, about remembering. The sides of the cave flicker wetly and grotesque images dance across the stone. I lie still, listening. Nothing to hear but the slow steady drip of water, my wildly beating heart and my shallow breath.

It’s a timeless, eternal space. For millennia women have have crept down into the earth to pay homage to the old woman inside - to the Cailleach. I’m not the first to lie here too frightened to move or sleep, and I won’t be the last.

I watch the mesmerising shadows play across the roof. It’s only centimetres from my nose. I feel fear and grief sitting heavily in my chest. Granny said all I need to remember is that I’m safe. I try to concentrate on that. Slowly, ever so slowly, the tension in my body and my anguished mind begins to unravel and finally I sleep.…

When I wake there are deer fleeing across the roof of the cave!

Hunters with spears are chasing them. The stone roof has become a wooded landscape and I’m watching it from a great distance. They kill two of the does and their fawns. Suddenly, materialising between the hunters and the deer is a powerful, old woman with blue skin and a staff of living wood. She slams it into the ground and cries out in a terrible voice. A voice that shakes the earth and rattles the leaves from the trees. A voice that halts the hunters mid stride and has them trembling, grovelling on the ground at her bare and wizened feet. They know they have taken too much. Never should they kill a doe with a fawn at foot.

The old woman touches her staff to the lifeless bodies of the deer. They rise up and leap away. She strikes each of the hunters with her staff. They begin to writhe on the ground arching their backs. Their noses, necks and legs elongate. They begin to grow sleek brown fur and hooves, until finally they also leap up and scatter away, after their vanishing kin.

The old woman shape-shifts. Her tattered robes drop to the ground. Her skin changes to the colour of the night sky. Her staff becomes a pointed digging stick. I realise I am staring into the eyes of Aunty Katapi!

‘Ailsa it’s time. It’s time to come home now!’

The stone above my face is once again merely cold white rock, alight with shadows. I’ve seen Her. I know Her power to protect and bring balance to human relationship with land. I hear Her calling my name and I struggle out of my bag and worm my way back up the narrow sloping tunnel to the surface.

It’s Granny who greets me at the tunnel entrance, her fiery bright blue eyes burning with questions, but she is patient. We amble slowly home across the heath, each keeping to their own thoughts.

Back at the croft Granny passes me a wooden bowl filled with stew from the fire. Between mouthfuls I begin to tell the story of the dark womb of the Cailleach, of my fear and grief and the vision that appeared from the stone. She listens intently, nodding, murmuring softly until finally, I’m finished, exhausted and limp. Then she gently guides me to bed with a hot brick for my feet.

Some weeks later, as I am packing, Granny comes into my room and presses a small parcel into my hands, ‘Here lass, open it when you leave.’

As I sit by the window, waiting for the train, I pull out the parcel. Inside is a pencil and a little black book, it’s cover battered and stained. It smells familiar. It’s a moment before I can bring myself to look inside. I take a deep breath and slowly open it. There’s an inscription on the first ivory coloured page,

‘For Ailsa,

Memories of Partjar, together with you. Memories that make my heart sing. There’s room for you to add your own heart’s song here too, the tiny things that make you happy. Just like the blank pages of this book, the world feels so very full of possibilities….

Perhaps one day you will come home to Partjar and we will be together again?

Regardless, all my love, through eternity,

Nyura’

It’s some time before I stop crying and I’m able to focus on the next page. Such achingly beautiful sketches: me, up a tree above the shining water, laughing at her; a lizard sitting on her little brother’s head, whilst he grins in delight; Aunty Katapi, in the shade of a desert oak, with her digging stick….

I close my eyes and I’m back there, under the desert sun, wind whipping my hair - then I write:

‘Desert sky blue, same as the Cailleach’s face; sparkling white stone and the skin of my hand; obsidian night sky and Nyura’s shining eyes; Desert Oak sap, same blood flows in all…remember this!'