Cover Competition

Here is a tale long in the making.

Once, there was a man in love. Pure, desperate aching love.

For the object of his affection was a Dead God washed upon the sandy shore.

None knew from where or whence the God had come, nor how it died.

Merely that on one grey morn a thing of a hundred wings with feathers of fish scales was borne upon the waves to slither lifeless onto land.

And the people were witness to a miracle. For in the God’s wake the ocean did not heal.

A blistered path paved into the waves who crashed and crushed themselves on walls intangible.

A single garden’s road passing to the horizon before descending down beneath the sea’s skin.

Many trod the path left in the Dead God’s wake eyes overtaken with awe as waters rose to eclipse their heads raging, raging all about them never grazing even a finger’s weight upon them.

But no soul ever walked beyond the path’s downward slope below the watery weight and into the darkest place.

And as is the way with all things mundane or divine the people lost their awe forgot interest and sorrow in such a being’s passing.

Though many tried none could pluck free a scaled feather or a piece of Dead God flesh nor could any find a centre to the corpse. Were the teams twenty-strong two-hundred-strong or merely dozens-strong none could lift none could find the God’s dead centre no heart, no mouth, no eyes.

Now, pure and desperate love that aches is not a thing to come quite quick. Nay, this was fostered love passed down and grown.

From a great-grandmother who was not the first nor the last to set eyes upon the corpse. But so besotted with what she saw in those silver wings dewy with sea-salt was Ol’ Ma’am that she fastened brooches shaped like curving fish wings.

Her son did try to fight his own adoration, proclaiming as he grew that no brilliant reflection upon the Dead God’s brow would tempt his faith. Another brother went the way of clergy holding talks and sermons in the shadow of fin-like wings.

The sister, a prim loon. Curls and lace in public squares but come dark there’d rise shrill shrieks and someone dancing in the night between the silver fin-tip wings with a breath so ragged that more than few feared a terrible conjoining.

And on went the fever passed to children and spouse. The brother-denier an unwilling drunk lost in the colours given off when sunlight graced the Dead God’s hide. His children paint with strange grey eyes. The brother-prophet trained his spawn as missionaries clad in twisted trout skin. The sister-loon still plays her game oblivious to our disgust at her callow saunters shameless, maybe for her family goes and dance in skins.

The children bred for those marriages were not things of love and made new persons strange and hollow Stooping Steven Dancing Dunai No Name Prat Cannibal Milt and more besides.

Until there was Natori.

Not a strange thing about the boy only pleasant only kind. Well, perhaps a little strange. For since his youngest words he told us all of how he loved it.

His many kin for all their works the strangest dancing and most unbecoming obsessions never spoke of love. They never dared give voice to that emotion swimming amidst their soulstuff never.

He spoke to it as he grew. When his aunt, uncle and cousins retired from their dances he spoke one hand resting so gentle on the Dead God’s side whispering sweet nothings.

And of course, one day Sweet Natori best of his line disappeared.

Said to have walked into the ocean’s swell diving beneath the waves.

But those are rumours whilst I know the truth of Good Natori’s fate. For he told me himself.

Long after his loss I watched him rise from the Dead God’s path wet as newborn babe water pouring from his skin. Though he walked upon dry land I saw him as still below the water’s depths. I went to speak to him but found myself before a changed man.

His eyes were silver coins rippling like waves under a gentle breeze and around his mouth sprouted wings of scaled fish.

When he spoke his voice was the crash of waves underpinned by the creak of deforming stone deep, deep beneath the ocean’s face where only trenches and tombs of whales sit.

But his words were men’s.

He told me he had walked in the step left behind learning the Corpse God’s name

it was.

He told me how he had sunk diving into a black muddy plain stretching forever in all directions beneath the weight of the world’s waters to meet with old things.

But they were kind and spoke in soothing tones with words which smelt of soft salt breezes and looked as dim stars hung in this watery night.

I have come, he said to love

and wed us two. Be our witness. I watched as one man did what hundreds over years could not.

He took one wing, amidst the hundred in gentle grip as husband takes spouse’s hand and nary pulled as I swore to hear a sigh a gust of wind from something rotten taking another breath.

They slid into the sea those two waves a gentle lap upon their skin kissing Natori’s head disappearing.

I watched for hours more reward with a glimpse as something massive far greater than the corpse we’d found breached the water high into the sky.

A turgid cry like whale song but from a thousand maiden throats and the shadowy shape of a kiss between Natori and something nestled deep between the fish-skin feathers with beaks and eyes and hands and mouths before they dove back to the water.

Gods.

He loved it. I know it, saw it in his coin-coloured eyes. I have never seen a love so deep I could have drowned.

In the spirit of “can’t be fucked”, we opened up front cover clout to a competition.

In reaching page 64 you will likely have seen the winning entry (hint: it’s on the front).

The covers depicted here deserve clout too. They are beautiful and extraordinary and we’re grateful to the talented artists who entered. Thank you for sharing your art with us and the world.

We would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional custodians of the land on which Woroni is created. Sovereignty of these lands and waters was never ceded. This beautiful continent always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

We pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge the ongoing oppression imposed upon them by the colonial system, of which the ANU is a product. First Nations people have faced the violent seizure of their land and the coercive suppression of their culture and language without reconciliation or reparations from the settler state.

Colonisation of waters stripped communities of their means of subsistence, interfered with water-based cultures and traditions, and undermined First Nations soverignty.

We acknowledge our own role in colonisation. The name Woroni was taken from the Wadi Wadi nation without permission, and we are striving to do better for future reconciliation. Woroni, like all media organisations operating on unceded land, owes a responsibility to First Nations people to amplify their voices and stories, and it is one we hope to always strive to fulfil.