Weedah the Mocking Bird

Weedah the Mocking Bird

Once, in the days of the old Noongahburrah tales, there lived someone named Weedah.

His most amazing gift was his voice.

Weedah could speak in a high, thin voice like a small child. A moment later, his voice would deepen into a grown man’s. Then he would laugh like a girl, mutter like an old man, call, whistle, and answer himself so skilfully that anyone listening with their eyes closed might think a whole crowd had gathered around them.

At first Weedah was just having fun.

He would hide behind a bush and call out:

“Hey, who's coming over there?”

The traveller would look around—but there was no one there.

Then from the other side a child's laughter would be heard:

“Here I am!”

The traveller would turn that way, while Weedah giggled quietly in the grass.

But in time, simple jokes were no longer enough for him.

On a broad plain, he built many small shelters from grass and branches: one here, another a little farther away, a third behind the bushes, and more beyond it. Beside each, Weedah laid a small, safe fire, so that from a distance the place looked like a large, busy settlement.

In the morning he would sit down near the first shelter and begin his performance.

“Mom!” he would call in a childish voice.

Then he would run to the second.

“I’m coming!” he would answer in a woman’s voice.

From the third came an old man’s cough.

From the fourth came laughter.

From the fifth came a song.

And from the sixth came an angry cry:

“Who is walking near our houses?”

The travelers would stop and wonder.

“How many people are here!” they would say.

Weedah would go out to them alone, but pretend that someone else was sitting behind each grass wall.

At first it was funny. Before long, though, Weedah began to use his gift dishonestly.

If someone travelled alone, he frightened them with angry voices and sent them off along a roundabout path. If someone left a basket or bundle beside a fire, Weedah hid it in another shelter and pretended to know nothing about it.

“It must have been taken by one of those people,” he would say and nod at the empty grass huts.

And he could barely suppress a smile.

Over time, people began to avoid this place.

“A strange community lives there,” some said.

“No, someone there casts spells with voices,” others said.

“And I didn’t see anyone at all, I only heard them,” others were surprised.

One day, Mulliyan the great eagle-hawk heard that several people he knew had not come back along their usual route for some time. They eventually reached home, but each told the same story: voices had led them astray, frightened them, or forced them to make a long detour.

“Something is wrong here,” Mulliyan decided. “I must see for myself.”

He came to the place where the grass shelters stood.

Immediately he heard a child crying.

“Don’t cry, I’m here!” a woman’s voice answered.

Then someone sang.

Then an old man laughed.

Mulliyan looked carefully around.

Smoke rose from several small fires, and the ground was covered in tracks. Strangely, most led into the settlement, while those leading out were jumbled, as though people had scattered in every direction.

Stranger still, the only person Mulliyan could see was Weedah.

“Good afternoon,” said Mulliyan.

“Good afternoon!” three voices answered at once from different directions.

Mulliyan did not move.

A moment later Weedah came out from behind the shelter.

“We have a lot of people here today,” he said.

“So I see,” Mulliyan replied calmly. “Especially the people no one can see.”

Weedah blinked.

“They are shy.”

“All of them?”

“Almost all of them.”

Mulliyan went to the first shelter and looked inside. Empty.

To the second. Also empty.

In the third he found someone else’s basket.

In the fourth – a lost belt.

In the fifth – several small things that the travelers had been looking for for a long time.

“Whose things are these?” Mulliyan asked.

“I don’t know,” Weedah replied quickly.

Then a stern voice came from a distant shelter:

“Don’t touch other people’s things!”

Mulliyan slowly turned his head to Weedah.

“Very wise advice,” he said. “A pity you didn’t follow it yourself.”

Weedah understood: he had been exposed.

He tried his last trick.

“Watch out! Someone’s behind you!” he shouted in a borrowed voice.

Mulliyan didn’t even look back.

“If you only listen to voices for too long, it is easy to forget to look,” he replied. “But I’ve already looked.”

Then Weedah raced among his grass shelters.

He ran from one to another, sending dozens of voices in every direction.

“This way!”

“No, that way!”

“Catch him!”

“I’m here!”

“I’m not here at all!”

It seemed like a whole crowd was rushing across the plain.

But this time no one was afraid.

At Mulliyan’s call, the travellers Weedah had once led astray arrived. They found their belongings, collected their baskets and bundles, and laughed as one lone trickster tried to sound like a whole settlement.

Weedah stopped.

“Are you angry?” he asked quietly, now in his own voice.

“We didn’t like being frightened or having our things hidden,” Mulliyan said. “But your gift itself isn’t bad. What was wrong was how you used it.”

Weedah lowered his head.

He suddenly heard real voices around him: laughter, conversations, quiet jokes. And he realized that none of his performances sounded as good as people who were not afraid of each other.

“I’ll return everything I hid,” he promised.

When the last basket was back with its owner, a light breeze swept across the plain.

The grassy shelters rustled.

Swish-swish-swish.

Weedah felt his arms grow light and his fingers sprout feathers. Suddenly his voice could make even more sounds than before.

A moment later, where he stood, a small bird sat.

The bird tilted its head and suddenly repeated the child's laughter.

Then the call of an adult.

Then a fragment of a song.

And then — the voice of Mulliyan himself:

“Don't touch other people's things!”

Everyone laughed.

“Well, now you’re a real mockingbird,” Mulliyan said.

Ever since, they say, Weedah has no longer built false settlements to frighten travellers. But his love of grass shelters and voices has remained.

He made cosy places among the dry grass, hopped nearby, and repeated everything he heard: bird calls, human voices, laughter, and the strange sounds around him.

Sometimes someone would stop, hearing a familiar voice in the bushes.

“Who's there?”

And from the grass in response, exactly the same voice would sound:

“Who's there?”

Only now it didn't scare anyone anymore.

So the gift that once helped Weedah confuse others became his song.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨