Ngarlu-Kurr

I didn’t believe in ghosts. At least not in the way whitefellas talk about them.

To my professors, spirits were metaphors. Cautionary tales for primitive minds.

But to my people, to the Noongar, spirits were real.

Sometimes sleeping. Sometimes walking. Sometimes watching.

But always there.

So when I saw the artifact in the museum flyer, I knew exactly what it was.

Ngarlu-Kurr.

A black stone. Swollen. Intimidating.

Unearthed by BarrowCorp miners near the Porongurup Range. Now on display in Perth, under halogen lights.

They called it the Warding Stone.

But I knew it by older names.

The Soul-Eater.

The Name-stealer.

The Curse.

I went to the museum.

Stared at the glass case in the 'Aboriginal Gallery', heart hammering.

The stone pulsed behind the display like a dying ember.

Not carved. Not shaped. Just… wrong.

It pulled at the eye like a whirlpool.

A toddler passed by, looked at it, then screamed.

I flinched.

It was real.

Not a myth. Not a dream passed through smoke and ash.

The museum’s plaque called it “a symbolic representation of spiritual warfare in pre-colonial Dreaming narratives.”

They didn’t know what they had.

Or worse… they did.

The next day, I raised my voice in my indigenous cultural studies lecture.

“This artifact shouldn’t be out in the open. It’s dangerous. There are stories…”

Professor Langley chuckled. “Kye, I appreciate your cultural sensitivity. But oral histories often contain allegory. This is a priceless piece of our shared history.”

“It’s not ours,” I said, louder now. “It was buried for a reason.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s been sterilised, catalogued, and ethically sourced. The state cleared it. You’re letting superstition cloud your thinking.”

Superstition.

That’s what they always called it. Until something went wrong.

From the left, a snide remark cut through the room:

“Token blackfella. Course he’s the one to rear up over this nonsense.”

The words hit harder than the cold lecture hall air.

The sneer hung in the air long after the words had left that man’s mouth. I could feel eyes flicking between us. Some curious, some uncomfortable, others downright hostile. But I kept my gaze steady on Professor Langley. He didn’t flinch. Probably used to it.

I clenched my fists under the desk. That room, that institution, it wasn’t made for people like me. For voices like mine. For truths that made people uncomfortable.

After class, I didn’t stick around. I needed air. Needed distance.

I took the train to Mandurah. Walked the red earth roads to Aunty Moira’s shack. She was sitting out front, smoking bush tobacco and watching clouds roll in like bruises.

“You seen it, haven’t you?” she asked, not even looking at me.

I nodded. “It’s awake.”

She handed me a mug. “The miners broke the seal. Soil wasn’t strong enough to hold it forever. Wasn’t meant to be found again.”

“Can it be destroyed?”

“Not by hands. It doesn’t die. It feeds. Grows fat on death. Dreaming’s thinnest where it sits on glass.”

I set the cup down, shoulders drawn tight. “I want to put it back.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then: “You sure? It changes those who touch it. Spirit don’t come back the same.”

“I don’t care.”

She looked at me then - really looked. Deep, like she was seeing not just me, but everything behind me. “You will.”

----

I waited until the museum closed.

The storm that had been crawling across the ocean all day finally arrived, thick clouds, whipping wind, air so tense it rang in my bones.

I wore gloves. Not for fingerprints, for protection. My duffel bag was lined with ash, bone, emu feather, and ochre all blessed by Aunty Moira.

The alarms didn’t trip when I broke the case. The cameras blinked to static.

The stone wanted to leave.

As I lifted it, pain lanced up my arms. It was hot, not like fire, but like something older than fire. Something alive.

My breath came shallow as I slipped it into the bag and ran for the staff exit.

I didn’t stop shaking until I was an hour into the bush.

I walked barefoot, just like Aunty Moira told me - "to remind the stone you’re flesh, not shadow."

Twenty-seven days I walked.

Barefoot.

Through a storm.

Living off Country.

Like the old fellas.

Twenty-seven days. Dirt roads. Cold wind.

Country that didn’t want me there.

Until I got close.

Then it changed.

Country decided it wanted me, but only part of me.

The burial ground was a scar of black dirt east of Kalgoorlie, Ngadju country.

Even the miners avoided it.

The sky above churned with ink clouds and shivering light.

The air held its breath. No wind. No birds.

Country here wasn’t welcoming.

Country was watching.

Country was afraid.

I opened the bag.

The stone spoke.

“Warragul. Blood of the first. Heir to the hand that wielded me. You have returned.”

The voice was everywhere. In my scars, in the hollow beneath my ribs, in the soles of my feet. I dropped to my knees.

“Do you want power? I remember the taste of empires. The scream of musket and chain. I can give you fire.”

Visions hit me like lightning:

Colonists burning homes.

My grandmother crying in court.

My cousin bleeding under police boots.

BarrowCorp signs staked into sacred hills.

“Take me up. Let me feed. I will cleanse this land with storm. I will make them remember.”

And if I were to be honest.

I wanted it.

I reached out. Curled my bare fingers around cold stone.

It didn’t burn.

It welcomed me.

My skin split. Not from pain, from shedding. Like a cicada splitting free from its old self.

I saw the Dreaming but not like before. I wasn’t just seeing it.

I was inside it.

A forest of smoke and bone. Rivers made of stars. Ancestors walking backward through time.

I saw the first man. Marran. Wielding the stone against the bunyip tide. Saw each spirit he killed become trapped inside. Each blow made the stone stronger, but heavier. Angrier.

Until finally, it turned on him.

Fed on his memory.

Made him forget his own name.

Until a figure stepped through lightning and smoke. Tall, cloaked in storm.

Mamaragan.

I knew him from stories whispered over fire.

Thunder in his veins. Justice in his hands.

He wept as he struck the weapon from Marran’s grip.

And now the stone had found me.

“Wield me, Kye. Become legend.”

I stood at the edge of legend.

And I said:

“No.”

I turned my back.

And walked into the earth.

The ground opened, folding me into its gut. I didn’t fall. I merged.

My bones cracked. Not broken but re-written.

When I opened my eyes, I was still Kye Warragul.

But I was also more.

The stone lay buried again. But it had left its mark.

A shard of it lived in me now. Not power.

Memory.

The weight of what was.

Weeks passed.

The museum said the artifact had been stolen by radicals.

BarrowCorp filed insurance claims.

Langley moved on to another grant.

I didn’t return to uni.

I moved south, to the edge of Noongar country.

Taught language classes at a local school.

Sat with elders.

Listened.

Remembered.

But sometimes, at night when the wind changes and the ground whispers.

I feel it dreaming beneath the soil.

Waiting.

And I say-

“No.”