Jirra

Jirra is a Bunyip during the time of the Wild West.

Overview

Jirra went to America as a young girl. She traveled there in the entourage of a wealthy Englishman who, having spent his money to no avail in Australia, decided to try his luck on the American Frontier. Jirra's mother was a possession to Heathcote, the Englishman, or so he treated her. He took her and her six-year-old daughter with him on a ship across the Pacific, but Jirra's mother didn't survive the journey. Perhaps she was unable to be separated from the land that so deeply suffused her blood. Whatever the reason, Heathcote was left with the inconvenience of an unwanted aboriginal child. At the time, Jirra spoke not a word of English, and she was terribly frightened. Heathcote sold her to the ship's captain for one pound and forgot her - until the night, year later, when she tore open his throat.

The ship's captain contracted an acquaintance in the slave trade and convinced him to try to sell Jirra. No money changed hands, but the salver canceled a long-standing debt that the captain owed him, and both were quite happy with the deal. The captain thought no more of Jirra, and he likewise didn't recognize her the evening that she swam to his ship and broke both of his arms before throwing him overborad. As he sank, she watched with sad, moo-silvered eyes.

The slaver had a difficult time getting money for Jirra. Her not-quite-African appearance made potential buyers wary - many suspected the child to be "soft in the head." Finally, he consulted a friend who claimed to have extensive experience with primitive peoples around the world. The "expert" concluded that young Jirra was a rare cannibal tribe and might have value as a curiosity. This layman's anthropologist put the girl out of his mind until she arrived one midnight at his Arkansas ranch to feed him his own guts.

The slaver sold Jirra to a traveling freak show. Six wagons dragged this pitiful assortment all over the frontier to disgust and titillate audiences in theaters and at open-air shows. Jirra was the "Cannibal Girl from Deepest Darkest Africa." The proprietor filed down her teeth, and in her act, she squatted in a cage (it lacked room for her to stand up) and ate pieces of raw pork cut to resemble human body parts. The freak show proprietor was surprised to find that she took to eating raw meat as if it were natural for her. He assumed, wrongly, that it must have been a cultural practice for her after all.

Jirra stayed in the freak show from the time she was eight until she turned 12. She made friends with the bearded lady and the dwarf and was treated better by these people than she had ever been before. When the Change came on her, she spared them, freed them even (although both ended up back in other shows of a similar nature). Jirra methodically tracked her oppressors and killed every one of them and a few of their associates, too. She moved south, freeing slaves and other prisoners. Jirra didn't seem to care or understand a great deal of her ancestry, but she had some instinctive sense that her home was to the south. Her efforts to free slaves, though forceful and bloody, had little long-term success and these unfortunates were often as frightened of Jirra as they were of captivity.

Jirra continues to make her way toward Mexico and points south. In her wake, she leaves legends of a "fearsome striped carcajou" and, among slaves, tales about "Jeer the Chainbreaker."

Reference

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