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Of course, according to the blacks, to disturb a shadow is to hurt the original. In this Minggah, Guadgee said, were swarms of bees invisible to all but wirreenuns, and they are ready always to resent any insult to the Minggah or its shadow. These spirit-bees had entered Adelaide and secreted some wax on her liver; their bites, Guadgee said, were on her back.
Every now and then we heard a bird note, which made the women glance at each other and say, first, 'Guadgee, then 'Bootha, as it came again, and a third time 'Hippitha. To my uneducated ear the note seemed the same each time. I asked Bootha what it was.
The patient was to drink nothing hot nor heating but as much cold water as she liked, especially a long drink before going to bed. Guadgee said she would come in the night when the patient was asleep and take the wax from her liver; she would sleep well and wake better in the morning.
Again she said a sort of incantation, and again, after a while, came the whistling voice reply this time from another direction, not quite so loud. The same sort of thing was gone through with the same result. Then Bootha said she would ask Guadgee, a black girl who had been one of my first favourites in the camp, and who had died a few years previously.
The whistling voice came from a third direction, though all the time I could see Bootha's lips moving. Guadgee answered all she was asked. She said Adelaide was made ill because she had offended the spirits by bathing in the creek under the shade of a Minggah, or spirit-tree, a place tabooed to all but wirreenuns, or such as hold communion with spirits.
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