STANDING HIGH IN the landscape, the Mountain has always been there. Listening, watching, teaching, arranging the flow of the winds, giving life and sustenance to Country, directing the River’s course and cradling the bones. The Mountain held the stories of the people, and the people told the stories of the Mountain. The call came from the Mountain in story and song to draw the people to join the ancestors in the sky. People came from all over to be buried with the bodies of their ancestors. Grooves in a rock on the eastern side allowed the dying to slip off the earth and flow over the sea and into the sky, where their spirits became ancestors.

The Old People told the stories of the Mountain. Going to the top brought a person to the notice of the creature who wandered there. ‘Do not be mistaken, it follows no Laws in life. It is a thing of cunning, hate and hunger for what others have. It will try to make your spirit think that it is a poor lost soul that needs to be carried past the flames that wait to take those who are forbidden passage to the stars,’ the Old People said. They warned that the only purpose of the beast was to take everything that made a person and corrupt it. As it wandered, it grew more monstrous, the desire to torture engulfing and twisting its reason, thus ensuring its perpetual (un)life.