[Read] Hot Desk Extract: Jamil Badi - The Goanna Who Whispered

As part of The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowship program, Jamil worked on New Ancient Folktales, a collection of 11 original interconnected folktales. The collection explores how cultures of dominance over land and nature cause cycles of harm towards humanity, with truth-telling and connection being an antidote to these cycles.

This extract is from The Goanna Who Whispered, a ghost story about a trio of princes who kill a goanna on a school camp. Although they believe themselves to be destined for greatness and impunity, they do not expect the curse that follows them after their bloody act.

 

^{Image by Jaroslav}

They killed a goanna, those three bastard boys. Not bastard by blood, for they were King’s kin. No, bastards by nature they were. Everyone heard about it — hard not to, for the King’s voice stretches far and wide like time’s serpent. But let me tell you, these boys, although uncrowned at the time, felt the metal bite around their heads, bleeding that awful madness that princes tend to get. Though if you ask me, they were awful from the start.

The King called them nephews, and you know what that meant: dreams swollen with scenes of orders made, respect received, control kept and riches achieved. These boys drooled at the taste of their fate, yet they cursed at the fact that they were still just boys. Until they were men, their time was spent at a school their fathers had attended when their minds were ripe with royal visions. Now these boys kept no company except for each other. Besides, who would need a friend when your arse touched a throne? Though a chair isn’t going to make your throat immune to venom, or your skull strong against steel — but they weren’t thinking ahead! Except that middle one. Billy Bird’s Eye they called him, since his left eye was always zipping about like a crow on fire. Even when he slept, and his right eye stayed obedient, that left eye was darting about. Some of the kids said it was because one eye was fixed on the present, while the winged one was scanning his future, plotting and scheming. His younger cousin Joss always begged him to wear an eyepatch so the other boys wouldn’t pick on him. I’m a bit too old to be playing a pirate, don’t you think Billy Bird’s Eye would say. And miss out on the chance to be the country’s first Pirate King? their older cousin Lucas quipped back, mouth like a storm cloud with a tongue of lightning. If a king hides something from his followers, what he ends up revealing is a major insecurity, and who leads with insecurities? The younger cousins would nod, just as Lucas would have nodded when his father gave him the same advice.

One day the Headmaster told the schoolboys that they were venturing into the wilderness for seven days. They were to become men, for if they could prove their perseverance and endurance against the unknown of the Bush, there would be nothing in this world they couldn’t overcome. There’s nothing for us to do out there the schoolboys groaned. What good is a prince in a kingdom of sticks and mud? The headmaster merely smiled, all too familiar with this song and dance.

My father would never roll around in the mud,

My father has more important things to do than climb trees,

My father didn’t send me here to chase birds and smell flowers,

My father won’t stand it if I come home covered in leeches,

On and on they went, kookaburras of a childish kind. But those three cousins kept quiet, each wearing a face of disgust and pity. See, they knew those kookaburra kids would make piss-poor kings, kicking up such a fuss at the thought of grass-stains on freshly ironed pants. Lucas felt the clouds darkening in his throat and decided to let the storm loose. 

Did your daddies teach you to be this scared, or were you lot born that way?

The whole gaggle of them hushed and glared at the cousins. It would go this way a fair bit: Lucas looking tough, Joss leeching off that toughness, counting himself lucky to share blood with him, and Billy Bird’s Eye letting his gaze do the talking. Deep down, I reckon the rest of those boys knew the cousins had something they didn’t, because nobody let slip a single word against Lucas. The Headmaster, arms crossed, said with a grin, Well boys, who’s going to prove him wrong?

They killed a goanna, each for a different reason, though I suppose that doesn’t quite matter. When they were raining down blow after blow, they had the same scene in mind: shattered scales and broken teeth, bloody bones, claws and carnage. Nobody amongst them knew it would happen. See, it started out harmless enough, though these things tend to crescendo don’t they? Harmless, depending on who you ask I suppose.

I wonder whether that crafty Headmaster had an inkling of what was to come. Why else rile them up with bearpoke taunt? You could smell his words all in the air, creeping into the boys’ ears and ring-a-ring-a-rosying round their minds, daring them to drop dead. Some did – couldn’t hack slithering through mud like a brown snake, bounding through thickets and thorns, ripping grunts and growls from their squeaky voices. There was no room for tears if you caught a splinter from dragging and flipping logs. Instead, the senior boys brought by the Headmaster, adorning medals and muscles from camps prior, blasted the soft young brains with chants of Oomp papa oom pa! and obscene songs about feeding fires. Then after a handshake and ring-kiss from a local farmer, the Headmaster brought out the sheep. Are you gonna let that precious wool escape? Or are you gonna make sure it goes to the Kingdom? he asked. The senior lads spat out instructions like generals on the battlefield. Some of the boys followed, charging at the sheep, who raced around in a blind craze. The lot who stood fused to the earth, confused and cautious, well, they got the same treatment that the slow horse gets when there’s a hefty bet.

Go Go Go!

Again Again Again!

Move it Move it Move it!

Faster you pussy peasants!

If the boys had grievances or cries of anguish, they let them loose into the thick wool as they slammed into the sheep, dragged them by their feet, over and over again until, to the kids, they were just meat.