Nanberry by Jackie French Read Free Book Online

the blue. No, not the supply ship from England they had been longing for, had expected now for over a year. It was the colony’s tiny ship Sirius , sent to the Cape months before to bring desperately needed flour and seeds for planting.
    It had made it back!
    â€˜Maria!’
    â€˜What is it, sir?’ She ran out, looking so scared he had to reassure her. He pointed at the tiny ship in the harbour. ‘Sir, are we saved?’
    He had to laugh at that. ‘Scarcely. She’s got supplies for another four months, at most. But at least we’ll have seed to plant this spring, and fresh flour instead of weevils. Now what’s for dinner?’
    â€˜Fish stew, sir, and maize pudding. Sir, about the o’possum …’
    He shook his head, tiredness overcoming him again. ‘I don’t have time to preserve it tonight. Tomorrow maybe, or the day after … Now, where is this fish stew?’

Chapter 10
NANBERRY
    W HITE-GHOST CAMP, THE TIME OF FEAR AND
CONFUSION (10 M AY 1789)
    Nanberry lay without moving on the thing called bed . It was made of wood and set above the ground, with sides on it, like a giant container for grass seeds. A thing called pallet was on top of it: some strange skin covering filled with bracken. It crunched when he moved. On the other side of the room Arabanoo sat next to the girl, Booroong, as she slept.
    His world had vanished. ‘Dead,’ whispered Arabanoo to the sleeping girl again. ‘All the people dead.’
    Not just his family, thought Nanberry, but bodies on every beach.
    Everyone dead.
    The laughter, the stories, the world. Gone.
    Would their ghosts whisper on the wind?
    Booroong muttered, half awake. Arabanoo held her tenderly. He lifted a coolamon of water for her to drink, and stroked herhair. Booroong and Arabanoo were from the same clan, which was why Arabanoo talked to her, not him. Booroong had fourteen summers. She was a woman now, though when she was brought in she had been wearing a bungu-skin apron to show she wasn’t married yet. Nanberry was nothing to a warrior like Arabanoo — even a captive one — not till he was initiated as a man.
    But Nanberry could never be a warrior now, unless Arabanoo did the ceremony alone. Nanberry would never be allowed to carry spears, never be able to marry. Would he be a boy forever without the proper rites?
    He lifted the pale cloth he was wearing and looked at the sores on his skin. They were starting to form scabs.
    He was going to live. Just him and Booroong and Arabanoo. Could a warrior, a boy and a girl re-create a people?
    Maybe Arabanoo would marry Booroong. But where could they live? People had died at every beach and every stream. How could they live where their family ghosts must roam?
    Suddenly Arabanoo gave a cry. Nanberry sat up, as Arabanoo opened the cloth — his shirt — and stared at his own chest.
    White blisters puckered the dark skin.
    Arabanoo looked at the blisters for a moment, then stood up, and walked to the door. He looked out at the harbour. The empty harbour, thought Nanberry. No women singing in their canoes as they cooked fish for the small children. No warriors on the rocks with spears.
    At last Arabanoo had looked enough. He came back into the hut, and sat on the thing called chair , as though to wait.
    Nanberry hoped the man called Surgeon would come again soon. The Surgeon had saved him, and Booroong. Maybe he could save Arabanoo too. For only Arabanoo now knew how to make a warrior.

Chapter 11
SURGEON WHITE
    C OCKLE B AY H OSPITAL , 18 M AY 1789
    Arabanoo was dying.
    The Surgeon sat in the small isolation hut — shoddy, leaking, like every building in this wretched place — and held the old man’s hand. Arabanoo muttered in his fever.
    The Surgeon had ordered the convict orderlies to place the bed so that the translator could see out the door to the tree-clad harbour, the sunlight streaming down like gold rain into the water. But for the