The Makara Sisters

This all happened at dreamtime, which was a different time. Before us was a dreamtime when time was different, and earth was different. There was a nothing, and then there was a something born from the nothing, and this was Numbakulla. Numbakulla was like a thought, like a light. Numbakulla moved through the nothing and dreamed.

The dreams of Numbakulla grew into souls which he kept with him. Soon Numbakulla had many spirit children inside of him. Numbakulla continued to dream, and these dreams became alive with skin you could touch. These dream bodies were called tjurunga, they did not yet have souls. Numbakulla hid the tjurunga in caves across the world. One day Numbakulla placed a spirit child into a tjurunga and an achilpa was born. Soon he had made many Achilpa and they lived and thought and dreamed in caves and in valleys all over the world.

Achilpa are our ancestor spirits. The Achilpa lived in a time that was a different dreamtime than ours, when rules were not the same. These are the creators of the land and of the water, of the mountains and of the plains. They are fire and they are ice. They are the rain and the thunder The Achilpa did not have to work as people do to eat and to learn and to make, but they also had a work to do. The Achilpa made us, they made animals, they made life. The Achilpa taught us language, and hunting, and music, and dance.

With the Achilpa in dreamtime were sky heroes, forces of nature and of the seasons- the sun, the moon, the stars and the other heroes of the sky. There were also the early people of the earth who the Achilpa had already made- who knew the Achilpa, could see them and touch them and live with them. Sometimes, by doing a brave thing or by doing a beautiful deed, an Achilpa or even a person was able to reach Kauwa-auwa, the great pole to the skies and could join the sky heroes.

During the Dreamtime, in a cave on the land lived seven sisters. These sisters were Achilpa that the ancestors called the Makara sisters. The Makara sisters were very beautiful. They liked very much to dance at night, and in their cave. The Makara sisters were also great hunters. By this time, there were also some very early people who lived nearby this cave in a village. The people of the village were not very good hunters and were often hungry. Often they had gone to the Makara and had asked the sisters to teach them how to hunt but the sisters would not teach the people. The sisters never spoke to the people and people said that they were very cold. They were so cold that ice hung from their skin, which only made them all the more beautiful.

The people thought that it was not a good thing that the Makara sisters would not teach them how to hunt. The people did not know that the sisters could not go near people because they were so afraid of the fires which people always like to have. The people were also angry with the Makara sisters because they would not dance in front of them even though everyone knew that the Makara sisters loved to dance. People did not know that the Makara believed that dancing was very sacred and did not like to dance for people because they feared that people would not understand.

In the village lived seven brothers who the people called the Berai-berai boys. The berai-berai boys were very bad hunters, but they had learned a very special art. The berai-berai boys would tie a string onto a bee and let it go, the string would hang out of the bee hive and honey would drip down the string. The boys would collect the honey in bark baskets and bring it to the Makara sisters in order to get the sisters to talk to them. The boys did this many times before the Makara sisters tried the honey, but once they had tried it, they liked it so much that they waited anxiously for the berai-berai boys to bring them more honey. Once, when the boys brought the honey, the Makara sisters asked them to stay.

The Makara sisters led the berai-berai to a valley where they danced for the boys. In their dance, the sisters taught the berai-berai about how to hunt snakes with spears. At this time there was another Achilpa walking through the valley. This Achilpa was a very ill-tempered ancestor spirit named Kondole. Kondole was a spirit of fire. Kondole was a greedy Achilpa who believed that he could have anything he wanted. When Kondole saw the Makara sisters he wanted to have them. He ran across the valley, grabbed two of the Makara sisters and stole them away to his home.

With the berai-berai boys, the other five sisters hunted for Kondole for a very long time. They had many adventures and learned much about each other. When they finally found the two sisters with Kondole, the Makara sisters and the berai-berai boys had begun to love each other very much.

Kondole lived in a fire mountain, a volcano. It was very hot there, and it hurt the sisters to be there. Kondole made the sisters dance for him on the mountain and would laugh at them when they cried and their ice would melt. It was a very sad time for the Makara.

With the strength of their love, the Makara sisters fought against Kondole. They threw spears at him, but this did not hurt him. They danced around him and sprinkled him with ice to put out his fire, but it was not enough.

For so long, they could find no way to put out Kondole. Finally, a berai-berai boy came up with an idea. He took a string and tied it through a stick and made a roarer. He spun the roarer over his head and it made a sound like thunder. The Achilpa of thunder came to see what the sound was and felt sorry for the Makara sisters. He showered Kondole with rain until Kondole ran, but thunder followed. Kondole ran into a cave to hide from thunder, but thunder followed him even there. Thunder was enormous, gray and warm, furious and reckless. The rain fell upon Kondole until he was gone. But with him, the Makara sisters had melted into rain and disappeared into the earth.

When the berai-berai boys saw this they were very sad and cried for their beloved Makara. From the skies, the sky heroes saw all that had happened and felt a great sadness. The sky heroes wanted to make the love of the berai-berai boys for the Makara sisters live forever. The sky heroes wanted to let the Makara sisters love the boys forever. From the sky, the sky heroes sent Kauwa-auwa, the great pole and let the berai-berai boys climb to the sky on it. Then they brought up the spirits of the Makara sisters into the sky and turned them all into stars.

There, in the sky we can still see the Makara sisters, twinkling, dancing together. And there, that line of stars, like a belt with a string hanging from it are the berai-berai boys. In the sky at night the berai-berai hunt across the heavens while the Makara dance for them. One hour before the berai-berai stars have disappeared from the sky, the Makara have already gone so that they can perform the sacred dance for the berai-berai alone, and we can not see it. But when they do this, they sprinkle frost from the sky. This frost collects on the grass of the morning to this day to remind us of the love of the Makara and the berai-berai.

There were many other stories from the dreamtime, then one day, the Achilpa's work was done and they grew very tired. Their bodies sank into the ground, and they were no longer seen. But the spirits of the Achilpa continue in the world even now, because they are the second soul in every one of us. When we are born, we are born with two souls, one comes from our mother and our father, the other is the soul of an Achilpa living on t