Into That Forest - By Louis Nowra Page 0,16

sounded like the creaking of a ship; the whisper of dead leaves as an adder slid over them; the coughing of a distant tiger, like a pipe-smoker clearing his throat of spew; a barking snake; a possum munching on fruit; the devils yowling and snarling like something from hell when they were fighting over a dead animal. And the smells - soon I could tell the difference between the dung of all sorts of animals. Even the most stinky shit were interesting cos it were mixed up with the smell of seeds, animal flesh and fruit. There were many sorts of piss and it told you all sorts of things - what sort of animal, how old, how pregnant, how sick. I could sniff shit and know what sort of animal it were, and when I got really good I could tell how fresh it were. We learned to be downwind so our prey couldn’t smell us. And I learned something else: Corinna stopped feeding me her milk when her teats dried up and I realised why she had taken a liking to us. Her pups had died or more likely been killed by a bounty hunter. She thought we were babies so that’s why she took us in. Then I said to Becky that I hated that tiger man who stayed with me and me parents cos he murdered tiger pups.

It were not only bounty hunters who killed them as I found out one late afternoon when we were walking through the bush. It started to drizzle so we took shelter under an overhanging rock that looked like some sort of sandy frozen wave. I were glancing up at the roof when I seen some paintings on it. They must have been done by the blackfellas when they were kings of Tasmania, said Becky. There were four drawings of what looked like dogs but because they had stripes on them we knew were tigers. One had three spears sticking out of its flanks. We both went Oh at the same time, cos it made us sad to see how even blackfellas killed tigers. I remember us running our hands over the picture of the speared tiger, like we were trying to help it or save it cos there beside us was our saviours - Dave and Corinna. I felt terrible. For days I dreamed about our two tigers being speared by blackfellas and it were more nightmare, much more nightmare, than dream. Becky told me she had those nightmares too. See, we were family. We did not think that at the time, but when I look back, I know we were family and that’s the truth of it.

It were now summer, bright and hot, filled with so much lightning that trees burst into flames and burned for days. I loved going out hunting during these warm nights. We slept in the den of a day, keeping away from the terrible heat and the flies, millions and millions of them, that swarmed over us, filling our eyes and ears with their squirming, tickling bodies. And at night the snakes were gone. We and the tigers hated snakes. Sometimes at night we might come upon one of those damn snakes curled up on a warm log, its belly big with some small animal it had got, and the four of us made a wide circle round it, even though it weren’t interested in us.

One night when the full moon were glaring bright, we went hunting. We ended up passing through a forest of ferns taller than us when I seen a pair of bright burning eyes. It were a devil, and instead of being afeared I were cocky and I jumped at it, snarling and hissing like they do, and it took fright and skedaddled. Becky just shook her head, as if to say You are a right Tom Fool, Hannah, but I didn’t care cos I knew the tigers liked me courage. We drank water from the creek not far from the ferny forest and again Becky sneered at me for lapping up the water like the tigers but it were quick and water didn’t drip through me hands like it did to her. We four sat listening to the night sounds, hearing every little thing and Becky and me seeing into the darkness like we were born with sharp eyes. As we waited to hear the sounds of some animal we might kill come to drink at the creek,