The Gwinerboos the Redbreasts

The Gwinerboos the Redbreasts

Long ago, Gwinerboo and Gumai lived beside a wide stream, where grasses leaned over the water. With them lived a little boy who loved running along the bank, listening to frogs, finding smooth pebbles, and watching silver fish flash beneath the surface.

That morning, the adults gathered food beside the stream while the boy played nearby. Suddenly, a large kangaroo bounded out of the tall grass. Exhausted by a long chase, it stood still beside the water for a moment.

Somewhere in the distance, the voices of two hunters were heard - Quarrian and Gidgerig. They were following the kangaroo and would soon reach the stream.

Gwinerboo and Gumai looked at each other.

"I don't want them to take everything for themselves," Gumai said quietly. "Let's hide our find, and then we'll decide what to do."

And so they did. And the little boy saw everything.

Soon Quarrian and Gidgerig appeared from behind the bushes.

“Have you seen a kangaroo here?” Quarrian asked, catching his breath.

“No,” Gumai answered too quickly. “We were near the water the whole time.”

“I saw it!” the boy exclaimed happily. “It was right here!”

Gumai was alarmed.

“Hush, little one,” she whispered. “Don’t interrupt the adults.”

To distract the visitors, she invited them to sit beside the fire. Everyone talked about the journey, the heat, and the water. But the boy could not understand why he should keep quiet about something he had seen with his own eyes.

“And the kangaroo…” he began again.

Gumai turned sharply to him. The boy took a step back, tripped over a root, and sat down directly on the grass. Nearby lay crushed red berries that he had picked for his game. The juice had smeared across his palms and chest, leaving a bright red stain.

“Look at you now!” Gwinerboo said with a laugh, trying to ease the tension.

But the boy frowned.

“I simply told the truth.”

Quarrian and Gidgerig looked at each other. They pretended to believe the adults’ words, said goodbye, and walked away. But they didn’t go far. They hid behind the trees and waited.

Time passed. Gumai decided that the hunters were far away.

“Now we can get what we hid,” she said.

But just as the adults began to prepare dinner, Quarrian and Gidgerig returned.

“So the boy was telling the truth,” said Quarrian.

Gumai blushed with shame.

“We were afraid that you would take everything and not share it,” she confessed.

“Were you going to share it yourselves?” Gidgerig asked.

No one found an answer to this right away.

The argument grew louder and louder. Everyone remembered only what they had done themselves, and no one wanted to notice someone else’s work.

“We chased it all the way here!” the hunters said.

“And it came to our stream!” Gumai replied.

“I just want everyone to stop arguing,” the boy said quietly.

But the adults did not hear him.

Quarrian and Gidgerig took the catch and sat a little way off. When the boy came over and asked them to share, they too refused.

“Why?” he asked in surprise. “You were just angry because they wouldn’t share with you.”

The hunters fell silent. But stubbornness turned out to be stronger than shame.

Meanwhile, the sky changed. First, a thin gray cloud stretched over the plain. Then another. The wind bent the grass, the water in the stream darkened, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

Gumai raised her head.

“A storm is coming. We must make a shelter.”

She and Gwinerboo quickly arranged sturdy branches and grass into a shelter whose covering would hold against the wind. The boy helped as best he could.

And the rain was already falling in large drops.

Gumai, still angry with the hunters, began to sing an old song about clouds and wind. The words rolled over the water, as if the stream itself were picking them up:

“Clouds, come near; winds, sing your song; rain, give the earth a drink.”

As though it had heard her song, the storm grew louder still. Wind whistled through the trees, and thunder crashed so loudly that the boy covered his ears.

Quarrian and Gidgerig ran to the shelter.

“Let us under your roof!” they begged.

Gumai shook her head.

“You wouldn’t share with us.”

The boy looked at her, then at the wet hunters.

“But shelter in a storm isn’t the same as supper,” he said. “If someone is frightened, there should be room for everyone.”

This time the adults heard him.

Gwinerboo pushed back a branch.

“Come in.”

The hunters hid with everyone else. It was cramped inside, but safer. For a long time they listened to the rain drumming on the grass.

“We were unfair,” Quarrian finally said.

“So were we,” Gumai replied. “We should have told the truth and worked things out at once.”

Lightning lit the sky so brightly that, for a moment, the stream, trees, and people shone silver. In an old tale, a moment like that never passes without something happening.

When the light went out, Quarrian and Gidgerig were already standing near the shelter, not as people, but as two large birds. They spread their wings in surprise, circled over the stream, and soared high into the sky.

When the storm passed and stars returned to the sky, two new points of light seemed to shine among them. The old storytellers said they were Quarrian and Gidgerig, reminding everyone of the day when a refusal to share had nearly set them all against one another.

The boy looked at his chest. The red berry mark was still there.

“You can wash it off,” said Gumai.

“Or I could leave it until morning,” he said with a smile. “To remind us that I was telling the truth all along.”

Everyone laughed, this time with no hurt feelings.

Ever since, a little red-breasted bird glimpsed among the Australian bushes has brought this old story to mind.

Because sometimes a big quarrel starts with a very small unwillingness to tell the truth or share. And even a child’s voice can stop it, if adults finally decide to hear it.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨