It is November 1789 in the scratched out colonial town of Sydney. Eliza Collins (nee Swift) wakes to the giddy sensation that her lucid dreams have returned and that her body feels reawakened. Thirty-one, a widow and a student of enlightenment, Eliza dares to hope that her grief has finally lifted and that she can now renew her social contract. Today she will approach the astronomer and ask to work with him and with the women, learning the local language. This, she knows, is the key to her purpose. It is the new world and she will play her part in it.
Why then is the path to the headland so forbidding? Why, despite her gifts, is the language so opaque to her open mind? Why this doubting of her mystic visions in the vast antipodean starscape. Fireside ceremony, ominous intoning, forbidding guardians of the stars, all create mystery on her quest. Eliza’s dreams persist and seem full of promise, yet within them she senses a loss of power and insight.
Can this really be the promised new world? Eliza has her independence. She has her friend Meg. She is determined to fulfil her social contract. But the fledgling colony is struggling. Disease, hunger and thankless toil surround her. There is violence in the air. She faces doubt and despair. How is it that the most downtrodden still display glimmers of hope and calm wisdom? Eliza is challenged by spectres of grief returning, and in her dreams she encounters three mythical birds. She will learn to trust, she will learn this language, but not until she learns to listen.
In her dreams among the stars Eliza must surrender, first to the wiley raven, then to the sensuous owl and finally to the powerful, wild emu. She eventually unlocks the key to the Yura language and learns that her power lies not in creating the story of her future, but in sitting, listening, and quietly retelling the myths of this land. There, on the other side of time, sitting among the women, Eliza finds her place, in the space between the stars.
Eliza turns to Meg and begins to share her story. Gradually, the past unfurls in the telling. Her love for Thomas. Her sudden awakening. Her unbounded passion. Her hopes for their future.
As Eliza’s past resolves, here on the other side of time, a dangerous flashpoint ignites and we witness the end of the beginning. Alarmed birdcalls signal revenge and retribution.
Eliza sees playfulness in the women, yet there on the headland, her own spirit wavers as shadows resurface. Drained of hope, Eliza faces her failure to embody her vision for a new world.
Eliza encounters black cockatoo and wedge-tailed eagle, birds of different feathers. With the notebook copying complete, Eliza can finally hear the women’s entreaties and their dark predictions.
The women on the headland continue to encourage Eliza, and she finds some grace, humour and renewed purpose. Her dreams evince treasured memories and ghostly spirits.
Deep shadows rise into the light as Eliza aligns with her purpose and integrates loss and love. She receives her third and final talisman.
Eliza grapples for a sense of place, even in her dreams. Beguiled by the sentinel, Eliza finds only emptiness. Still doubting the value of her shadow self, Eliza surrenders to the notebooks.
Eliza settles into her future. Back and forth a flow of stories loud or whispered, laughter and song. They watch the glittering constellations and Eliza gives thanks for the salve to her spirit.
Eliza’s joy bubbles forth with her study of the notebooks, and her dreams evoke a gentle, yearning spirit. She faces an uncomfortable truth and resolves to yield to newfound insight.
‘I am magpie’ is a lyric novel of Australian historical fiction set in the very early colonial years in Sydney. This story references the enlightened age of the late 1700s and the Indigenous language of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Observe Eliza’s struggle through her dreams and her daily endeavour to create a worthy social contract. In Eliza we see the vibrant innocence of the young woman, the benevolence of mother, the wild passions of lover, the determination of a pioneering spirit and the striving for wisdom echoed in her older friend and neighbour, Meg.
