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“That does sounddark,” Xue admitted.
“And very much likenow,” Gray added.
Kadir nodded. “Which made me wonder. There was a volcanic event a thousandfold worse than when Tambora exploded. It happened 74,000 years ago. With eruption of the supervolcano Toba in northern Sumatra. It laid waste to hundreds of miles in all directions, and its volcanic winter lasted decades, driving humanity to a scant few in number.”
Gray began to understand. “You think Stamford’s Dark Dreaming is an account of that time, buried in legends and myths.”
“If that eruption was witnessed by the Aborigine people living here at the time, then the apocalyptic description makes sense. The fires, the tidal waves, all of it. I’ve wondered for a while if that event might have been what finally drove the Aboriginal people to the Australian continent.”
“If so,” Xue said, “it would support that they’ve lived in this region for a far longer time. Maybe it was such a prolonged history that eventually led them to understand the source of the volcanism in this region—or at least some part of it.”
Xue stared over at the box in Heng’s hands, likely picturing the bullroarer inside it and the promise it held.
Gray kept his focus on Kadir. The man’s lips had firmed into harder lines, his eyes had turned downcast, as if he was afraid of broaching something.
“What is it?” Gray pressed him. “What are you holding back?”
“It may be nothing,” he said, but the shine in his eyes suggested otherwise. “I read a paper a few years back. It challenged the accepted Out-of-Africa model for the origin of humanity. One of the foundational papers supporting that claim was written by two biologists—Wilson and Cann—back in 1987. They tested and studied mitochondrial DNA and were able to trace our human origins to a single female.”
“Mitochondrial Eve,” Heng said with a nod. “I remember that from my premed biology courses.”
“A woman whom the biologists stated probably came from Africa.”
“That’s what I was taught,” Heng confirmed.
“But that’s not where the story ends.” Kadir glanced around at those gathered in the galley. “Years later, both Wilson and Cannrefutedtheir arguments. This happened after they came to Australia and studied the mitochondrial DNA from hundreds of First Nations people. The results astounded them, so much so that they recanted the central tenet of their prior paper. They concluded emphatically thatHomo sapiensoriginated inAustralia, not Africa. To paraphrase Cann’s admission,mitochondrial DNA puts the origin of humankind much further back and indicates that the Australian Aborigines arose 400,000 years ago.”
Kadir let that sink in.
“Why have we not heard any of this?” Heng finally asked.
Kadir shrugged. “Since then—and all the way to today—there’s been evidence of genetic anomalies and archaeological dating that makes no sense. It all further refutes the accepted story of our origin. Even that first paper by Wilson and Cann clearly states that Africa wasprobablythe origin of Mitochondrial Eve. It was never acertainty. But once that theory was set in stone, it has become unmovable. Even when those same biologists later refuted it, they were ignored.”
“If those scientists were right,” Gray said, “then maybe we should consider the myths of the Rainbow Serpent in a new light, especially as their god is intimately tied to their origin stories.”
Kadir nodded. “We should. While reading through these old papers, I’ve noted many similarities between events related by Sir Raffles and the myths of the Rainbow Serpent.”
“How so?” Xue asked.
“According to legend, the Rainbow Serpent could appear in many forms and in many places, often at the same time.”
“So it wasn’t asingleentity,” Gray said, “but alegion. Possibly a new species.”
“Yes, but despite all the variations in these stories, there is a common thread. The insistence of asinglehuge snake that slumbers deep beneath the earth and whose Dreaming shakes the world.”
Gray turned to Xue. “That almost sounds like a description of the pieces of Theia buried in Earth’s upper mantle.”
“And when that huge snake truly rages, it brings fire and flooding.” Kadir cast his gaze upward to the world burning outside. “You’ve already mentioned how the Rainbow Serpent—or at least, its smaller multitudes—were said to be capable of traveling from waterhole to waterhole beneath the earth, from onethinspot to another, bringing destruction or salvation. Digging deeper into those same stories, you can find its actions morespecificallydescribed.”
“Like what?” Gray asked.
Kadir faced him. “When a Serpent punishes someone, it swallows them whole, digesting away their bones and regurgitating them out as stone.”
Xue’s brows pinched. “That sounds exactly like the petrifying toxin.”
“In this process,” Kadir continued, “it plants tiny seeds of itself into a body.Little rainbows, they’re called, that can grow in that stone and be reborn anew, carrying the soul of the afflicted back to the sleeping giant under the earth, where it joins the Dreaming and lives again forever.”
Gray pictured the video he had been shown from the morgue in Cambodia. Heng and Xue shared a look, likely making the same correlation. Had they all witnessed one of those rebirths? Was that what had happened to Matthew?
