Grace and the Mokoi
short story
Hannah Bengtsson
marleythegroodle@hotmail.com
A brief fictional story about a fictional member of the stolen generation. A young aboriginal girl gets taken from her family and her heart is stolen. She recovers it and escapes.I'm not entirely sure that my placement of the Mokoi spirit in this is accurate but I had heard and read that the Mokoi also ate children as well as punishing people for using black magic. HB.
Grace tried to nod but she couldn’t move. Her body felt unbearably heavy. There was a heavy rock on her chest. She closed her eyes and recalled the whispering gums and the smell of rain on a baked earth in the summer time. She recalled the singing heat of the grassfires and the bitter charcoal smell that was left in their wake. She called on the wind and the rain, the sun and the fire to give her strength back. Grace sighed and got to her feet, still holding her daddy’s hand. “Ready?” he said. And they walked away from the crying shadows. They walked away across the red earth beneath the brilliance of the stars that stretched above them in an inky blue sky.
