The creek was almost dry in the August drouth. A green scum stood on the stagnant pools of water in the small basins among the fluted rocks. Ellen traced images in the smooth green surface with her vaulting pole and watched them twist away into grotesques or take other meanings. With the pole, a long broomstick she had found among the rubbish in the shed, she could easily swing herself over the pools. The lower pasture was burned brown except where the shade of the trees had saved a little moisture, but the tobacco was spreading wide fronds that crowded for room, and these were a brilliant green with waves of heat vibrating over them. The green scum made a curtain over the water holes, but when she tore the curtain away she saw the reflections in the water, the sky, blue and dry, the hills and trees. In a little while the scum gathered back and there was left only black water. To push the film aside with great zigzag strokes and make the world come into the pool quickly, the world big and clear and deep with a sky under it, this was her intent.

‘People a-dyen in ships at midnight and people a-goen to a foreign country with pots made outen gold and skillets made outen silver on the pack-horse, and gold cups. People a-goen to London-town – is this the way to London-town? – and an old, old queen. And a story about a horse could talk.’

She was sitting on a great flat fluted stone of the creek bottom, beside a water hole, sitting in the middle of the dry creek bed. ‘And a story about a horse could talk and one about Fair Elender. “O Mother, O Mother, come riddle my sport, come riddle it all as one. Must I go marry Fair Elender?” Elender, that’s me. And people a-dyen for grief and people a-dyen for sorrow.’

‘And there was the book with the poetry pieces to say. A brown book, it was. I can see as plain as day and I can see the words inside, pieces to say in school of a Friday. “O Sailor Boy woe to thy dream of delight” – a piece about a shipwreck. And then, “Come back, come back, he cried in grief across the stormy water.” I could say all that-there if I was of a mind that way. I know a right smart of pieces now, for a fact. And the Sands o’ Dee.

O Mary go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o’ Dee.

Water a-rushen up the almost dry creek all of a sudden, a flood a-comen in on Mary!’

She jumped from her seat and ran up the bank of the ravine, terrified, clutching at the brush, dry stones rattling back in her path. At the top she turned to look at the wall of water that might be coming up the valley through Bodine’s lower pasture. She sat on the brow among the bushes and snags, laughing at her fear, and after a little her pulses calmed.