Once upon a time…

I woke to the call of the smoke-birds, those little dark things the elders say carry old faces in their throats. Their song stung me, like a name I had lost. I set out along the knotted river that bends through stone flats and tea-trees, following a map I once drew as a child. The lines were faint in my head, but my feet knew.

Here we have a custom: on the first frost, folk tie ash-bundles to reeds and float them downstream. They say the river remembers for us. I found one bundle tangled on a snag and broke it open. Inside lay a tooth carved from shell, shaped like a crescent. I knew it. It had sat once on a string at my neck.

A storm rolled off the ranges. The river climbed, thick and brown. I ran along the bank to the bend with the leaning red gum. In the churn, I saw a boy’s face—mine—laughing, then falling, a splash, a shout cut short.

I waded in, cold to the bone, and set the shell tooth on the stump. The water eased, like a breath let go. The smoke-birds fell silent. My name came back. The river had kept it, and now it was mine again.