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tossed it into their midst, then went off again round the side of the hut.
    Keeping low to the ground, he scurried forward on all fours, scrabbled among the beaks and claws, and with the maddened birds flying at his arms, and buffeting and pecking, scrambled for cover, then crammed the wet mass into his mouth.
    The taste of it, the strangeness, the familiarity, dizzied him. The creature whose dreams he shared came right up to the surface of him. It fed on the saltiness of the stuff, and for a moment entirely took possession of him. He saw things through its eyes in bewildering flashes, and found himself shaken with sobs, but where the tears came from so suddenly, and why, he could not tell. A stranger, a child it might be, who had never wept, was weeping in him. He looked with wonder at his hands and at the remains of the pulpy mess. Wiped it off, a little afraid now of its power, and out of habit muttered syllables that were a formula against bad magic, though he did not think the magic was bad.
    He went back to the line where the clothes, brighter now, were filled with sunlight and the lightness of breath. They moved about with vigour and were so lively, so emptily ghostly, that he felt a kind of dread at first of venturing in among them. The shirts made floppy gestures, shook their cuffs, launched out in a gust, and by instinct he ducked. The skirt stirred and swayed. It was like standing in the midst of a crowd that was never still. Now where was that? Where? After a little, with the air ablaze on his shoulders and scents springing up where he trampled the grass, he began to move in and out among them, daring the stroke across his face as he let one soft thing, then another, brush against him, lifting his arms so that a watcher, seeing him pass from one side to the other of the line, dipping his head, might have thought it a kind of dance, a strange blackfeller’s dance among the washing. Imagine!
    When darkness fell he crept close to the hut. From anpening between the slabs, yellow light poured forth and where it fell made all the sharp little stones of the yard start up in shadow. He stepped round the edge of it, then squatted and very gingerly extended his hand so that the brightness crept up his arm, but there was no warmth to it.
    He crept closer and crouched under the sill. From within came voices, and though the words made no sense to him, save for one or two of them, the sound did, the hiss, the buzz.
    He put his shoulder to the rough slabs, believing that if he could only get near enough, the meaning of what was said would come clear to him, he would snatch the words clean out of the speakers’ mouths. If he could get the words inside him, as he had the soaked mush, the creature, or spirit or whatever it was, would come up to the surface of him and take them. It was the words he had to get hold of. It was the words that would recognise him.
    He did not want to be taken back. What he wanted was to be recognised.
    So when next day he began to run towards the boundary fence and the paddock where the three children stood staring, he had no notion of abandoning the tribe, even less of breaking from one world to another. It was a question of covering the space between them, of recovering the connection that would put the words back in his mouth, and catch the creature, the spirit or whatever it was, that lived in the dark of him, and came up briefly to torment or tease but could be tempted, he now saw, with what these people ate and with the words they used.
    He was running to prove that all that separated him from them was ground that could be covered. He gave no consideration to what might happen when he arrived.
    The dog intervened. It flashed out and began snapping at his heels. The boy raised the gun to his shoulder. He sailed up onto the fence rails to save himself, and before he knew it the words were out. The creature or spirit in him had spoken up, having all along had the words in there that would betray him