The Seven Sisters

The story

Anyone who has ever looked at the sky on a clear, moonless night knows that small cluster of stars that looks like a handful of sparks.

The Greeks called them the Pleiades. In the Australian desert, for a very long time, they have had another name: the Seven Sisters.

Their story is as long as a continent. Some desert peoples have chosen to share part of it with people who live far away, in museums and in paintings, and we follow just one version of it, the public one. Others exist, different from people to people, and the most secret parts stay with those who have the right to know them.

It began, they say, in the time of the Dreaming, when the world was still being formed and the land had not yet decided on its shape.

Seven sisters were walking through the desert.

They were young, strong and fast. They carried digging sticks, searched for roots and seeds, and chased small animals through the bushes. They talked little and sang a lot, because when you walk, songs help you remember the way. The eldest led the group, her eyes always fixed ahead. The youngest walked at the back, and stopped to touch every stone.

By day the desert was a red sea, with the air shimmering above the sand. In the evening it opened into a silence so vast you could hear the fire breathing. The sisters sat in a circle and shared what they had found, and the youngest always asked the same thing: “How much further?” The eldest always gave the same answer: “It isn't the road that ends. It's we who keep going.”

They were not alone.

For some days, someone had been following them. They noticed it one evening, when the fire went out and in the silence they heard, very far away, a footstep that was not theirs.

“He's back,” said the eldest sister.

The man's name was Wati Nyiru. He was tall and very handsome, with a voice that could charm anyone. He wanted one of them for himself, and he would not take no for an answer. He had a power: he could change his shape.

One day, as the sisters were walking, they found a lone tree in front of them, in the middle of the plain. Its shade looked inviting. But the eldest sister stopped.

“This tree wasn't here yesterday.”

The sisters looked at one another. At that moment the tree seemed to move, like a man waking up. Then it melted into the air, and the sisters began to run.

Another time, near a waterhole, they saw a handsome young man who said he was a traveller. He was kind and spoke softly. But the youngest felt a shiver, without knowing why, and tugged the hand of the sister nearest to her.

“Let's go,” she whispered. “Now.”

They walked away without looking back. Behind them, the young man stopped smiling.

Each time they escaped by a hair. Each time he came back, with another shape, another voice, another way of getting close. And they learned to recognise him: by his footsteps, too light; by his words, too sweet; by the sudden silence of the animals.

They kept going.

Some days were harder than others. Days when the wind blew sand into their eyes and their throats burned, and none of them had the strength to sing. On one of those days the youngest sat down on the ground and said she couldn't go on.

The eldest sister did not scold her. She crouched beside her, gave her the last sip of water and put the digging stick in her hand.

“Walk slowly,” she told her. “But walk. Ahead of us there's a place where the water is already waiting.”

It was true. At sunset they found it.

They walked for days and days, across the red sands, the spinifex plains, the dunes that shifted in the wind. Wherever they stopped to rest, they left a sign: a waterhole where there had been dry rock, a boulder in the spot where one of them had sat down to sleep, a gorge carved out by the weight of their footsteps. Those places, they say, are still there. Those who know them can sing the road the sisters took to get there, and the song is a map you learn by heart.

That is what the country is: not an empty land, but a web of stories.

At a certain point the sisters understood that the land was no longer enough. They were too tired to keep running, and he would not stop. They gathered in a circle and spoke in low voices.

“If we stay here,” said the eldest, “he'll catch us.”

“Then where do we go?” asked the youngest. “Where can't he follow us?”

The eldest sister raised her eyes.

That evening the sky was dark and full of stars. There was no moon, and even the faintest ones could be seen, one above another, all the way to the horizon.

They took each other's hands. The ground beneath their feet grew light. The seven sisters rose from the earth, one after another, and climbed. They rose above the dunes, above the waterholes, above the places they had made. From up high, for a moment, they saw their whole journey spread out below them like a necklace of tiny fires. Then they rose higher still, until they were small, then tiny, then only a glimmer.

They are still up there today. Seven stars close together, as if holding hands.

The man who pursued them did not give up. When he saw them rising, he lifted his head and followed them into the sky as well, as many versions tell. In some stories he became a group of stars that rises after them and chases them every night, without ever catching them. It is said to be the constellation other peoples call Orion.

On a clear night you may count only six of the Seven Sisters. The seventh point is fainter, and depending on the air and on your eyes, you can see it, or you can't.

In this story, the chase is not over. The sisters rise, their pursuer rises behind them, and the desert below remembers their passing in every waterhole and every rock. For those who know the story, the sky is not above the country: it is the same road, seen from another side.

This story belongs to the Anangu Custodians, who in 2017 chose to share it with everyone through the National Museum of Australia's “Songlines” exhibition.