Stories of Hope

by Aussie Speculative Fiction

  A Town Called Hope by Silvia Brown

  LEGEND TELLS OF A SUMMER of flames, generations ago, when nature gave up on us. The land has not stopped burning since, no matter how hard fireys like my father work to keep it at bay.

  Growing up, he dragged us all over the country, looking for a safe place.

  “Nowhere is safe,” he said. My mother covered my ears but it was already too late. I’d heard him and he knew what to do. I saw the spark of determination back in his eyes. That night he packed his bag and left for a place called Hope. Mother chose not to believe him and we stayed with the latest community we’d found.

  I’d wanted to believe him, with all I had. A year later, I lay on the grass next to my bike and wondered if Hope was also the stuff of legend. Maybe the hazy smoke that turned the sky red, and tainted my skin the same hue, was at fault. Maybe I was the one to blame for my father’s absence.

  Setting my hand on the ground, I sat up and felt the familiar rush of the roaring blaze that consumes everything in its path. The feeling came over me as it always did, making me feel claustrophobic in my own body. My blood signing as the same flames burnt with the pulse of the approaching inferno. The conflicting sensations of thrill and shame surged through me. This is why Mother and the rest are afraid of me. Filled with unstoppable energy, I grabbed my bike and started pedalling. Riding through the dense smoke knowing I couldn’t stop. Not until I got home, not until I joined Mother and the others in the safety of the underground wildfire bunker.

  My legs ached by the time I jumped off my bike and ran to the entrance, grabbing for a handle that would not give, no matter how hard I tried.

  “No!” I screamed. The fire was getting closer, I could feel it taking over me. Back on my bike, I raced to the gravel road, going as fast as I could, fleeing from the wall of fire approaching behind me.

  A sudden wind change turned the fire and gave me the chance I needed to escape. I rode until I started panting and the next farm emerged through the red twilight. I’d decided to keep going when I saw her. A young woman in black clothing returning to the house. I had to warn her. Taking the path onto the property, I dropped my bike by the porch and walked inside. There was no one in the hall, my heart pounding in my chest. I knew I’d seen her.

  The kitchen was also deserted and my throat ached at the sight of the tap. I ran it until the water came out in a clear, steady stream. I drank greedily and filled my bottle until the stream went dry. They’d run out of water and I knew that was a death sentence.

  From where I stood I noticed a pantry door and my tummy rumbled at the thought of food. As I got closer, I heard chewing noises coming from inside. I yanked the door open. A boy that, by his looks and his size, could have been my little brother, his skin the same strange red hue as mine. His cheeks were full of the bread he cradled to his chest. His startled scream was muffled by his mouthful and he coughed it all out, gasping for air.

  We stared at each other and his skin began to glow. He felt the approaching fire too. We needed to find the woman and get out of there, there was no time to lose.

  “Where is she? The woman? Is she your mother? We have to go!” I yelled.

  He looked down and grabbed onto his knees, hiding his face.

  “They’re gone. Mum . . . she said . . . ‘You’ll be safe here,’ that’s what she said. I wish she’d lock me in so you wouldn’t have found me. I wish she’d taken me with her, but I’m not one of them. Please just let me be. Lock me up. So she’ll know where to find me when they all rise to meet the lord saviour.”

  You gotta be kiddin’ me, I thought to myself. I had to think and fast.

  “I know you can feel it too,” I said and he lifted his head, a surprised and guilty expression on his face.

  “But Mum said it’s better this way, there’s something wrong with me.”

  “Me too.”

  The roar of the fire drowned out his reply, I grabbed his hand.

  “My father is a firey! He’ll take care of us!” I yelled. Or at least so I hoped.

  The boy held on and we went outside to get my bike.

  The farm was ablaze, cutting off our escape. “Do you have a bike!?” I asked.

  He nodded and ran to the end of the porch, grabbing a kid’s bike with training wheels. Oh, Christ, I thought as he came rushing back and looked up at me expectantly.

  The peeling paint on the porch began to char in the searing heat. The building creaked, as the burning structure weakened over our heads.

  “I’m Eli!” he shouted, cleaning his face with his sleeve.

  “Not now!” I screamed back at him, gesturing towards the road. “Go!”

  I got off the porch and on my bike before the house could collapse on us. Eli got on his own right behind me.

  We charged through the wall of flames, the fire curling around us until our clothes smouldered and our bike tires started to melt.

  On the other side we started pedalling, our skin glowing like hot embers.

  “My mother always called me H,” I said as we biked down the road.

  “What does it stand for?” Eli followed me closely, his legs pumping as he tried to keep up. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.

  AT THE TOP OF A HILL we stopped and drank some water while I checked my father’s map. The one thing he’d left me with. A circle marked the place called Hope and, some distance below it, an ‘X’ with the words, ‘Fire Station’ in his handwriting.

  “We have to keep going until we get here,” I said pointing at the fire station.

  “How much longer?” Eli asked and I shrugged.

  The wind changed and I raised my hand, feeling the bushfire being pushed towards us. Eli looked at me with wide eyes and started riding ahead.

  AS THE SUN WENT DOWN, our water dwindled but not our determination. We kept going, following the scorched signs that guided us towards a red brick building that the map said should be my father’s fire station.

  There were fire trucks parked outside and we tried to open the taps for water without success. I walked around the structure, looking for a way in, Eli trailing behind me.

  “Can I help you?” a man’s voice boomed. He was wearing ragged, yellow uniform pants and big, black boots. A bushy beard covered his face.

  My shoulders felt lighter, he’d know where to find my father. As he got closer to us, I stopped and so did he.

  “H!” He fell to his knees and I ran towards him. Just like I’d daydreamed everyday since he’d left. His arms embraced me while Eli caught up.

  I let go of my father and introduced him.

  “Dad, this is Eli. He’s from a farm just a few blocks from us.”

  “Hi, matey,” Dad said before going on, “H, where’s your mother?”

  “I was late.” Tears streamed from my eyes. “I was playing outdoors when I felt the fire coming . . . and they, they locked me out of the bunker.”

  My father frowned and asked me no more questions. Eli avoided his gaze, probably thinking about how his mother had abandoned him too.

  “Not to worry, Munchkin,” my father said and I was embarrassed and delighted. It had been a long time since he’d called me by my pet name. “I’ll take care of you. Both of you.”

  RIDING IN THE FIREY’S truck with my father and Eli, I kept an eye out for the sign for Hope but it never came. Had I missed it perhaps?

  “Dad, are we there yet?” I asked.

  Eli looked up, his eyes asking the same question.

  “Not quite, we need to pick up the brigade on the way,” he explained.

  Clicking a switch, he turned the sirens on and Eli buzzed with excitement. Soon enough we saw torchlights coming out of the dark bush. Firemen climbed on our truck as they took a break from the fight. My eyes felt sticky and I struggled to keep them open. I woke up when the truck stopped.

  I followed my father into an enormous fire station, twice the size of the one before. That was when I first noticed how ragged his uniform was. How thin the soles of hi
s boots were. The crisp stench of burnt leather strong in the filtered air. He led us to a room with long tables filled with more firemen. Their uniforms were just like my father’s. Their faces stained black with soot, their eyes aching red, and the moment they saw us, the room fell silent.

  “Dad,” I asked grabbing his sleeve. “Is this Hope?”

  “No, Munchkin,” he replied. I looked at him, confused.

  “My father was a firefighter and so was his father before him. They knew there is no such place. Fighting alongside my brothers, I learnt that hope is not about safety. Not about defeating an impossible enemy. Hope is persevering against the odds and never giving up the fight. Hope, is the future. H, you are Hope.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SILVIA Brown is a Spanish-born Australian poet and writer. She has published a number of short stories and is the brain behind Telltale Literary Translation. Silvia is currently working on her poetry collection which will be published later this year. https://silviabrown.wixsite.com/portfolio

  Icarus and Memory by Alan Whelan

  DAEDALUS LET HIS HEART pull him down to Tongariro where Icarus lay broken, his body near the mountain’s black and smoking lip. Smoke drifted innocently past the dark red pool around his head. The halo of death, he knew, but he dropped through the air as fast as he dared. He hoped to hold his son, tell him the steps he must now take to reach the honoured dead. Give him love to sustain him on that dark road.

  Daedalus landed about 400 tuke, roughly 150 metres, from the crater. He dared fly no closer. He took off his manu aute, his kite, storing it on ice in a declivity of the rock. Here nothing grew or lived except Daedalus; there was only ice and rock, except Icarus. He strode, fast but careful, to his son. The boy rolled easily into his arms when he knelt and lifted him and for a second he thought Icarus was alive. But his son’s head lolled, lifeless.

  Daedalus had been too late from the moment the boy had flown down to see if the air from the crater would lift him the way the warm updrafts lift the birds. Instead it had burned his manu aute so that he plunged from the sky. He was killed for his innocence: his joy in flight and that curiosity about the world he’d inherited from his father. Daedalus could say nothing to his son that the boy would ever hear. But he held the boy, not minding the blood shed from his body, and, weeping, kissed his mouth in farewell.

  He stood, still cradling his son in his arms, and walked the last steps to the edge of the crater. There were rocks and water far below, visible for only instants as the sulphurous smoke swirled. He nodded. He knew Icarus would not hear him, but he said, “Farewell, my son. I do not think I will ever smile again. Unless I think of you.”

  He kissed the boy’s breast and, at last, threw his body into the crater.

  The volcano’s rough breathing meant he never heard the crater lake splash, but he felt that his son was safe. He had entered the realm, not of Hades but of Rūaumoko, the unborn god, who would take the boy to his land and perhaps even love him. How could he not?

  Daedalus turned away, alone, stricken. And hunted.

  That smirking ariki, the tribal leader Ahemoko, had made Daedalus and Icarus build for him a vast, mad maze in the forest. Then he’d imprisoned them in it, because they’d helped Theseus to slay one of Ahemoko’s monsters. But before dawn that day, he and Icarus had taken the two manu aute Daedalus had made, and flown free. Daedalus had wanted to return to a homeland whose name he barely remembered, but he found he didn’t know the way. He did know that Ahemoko would feel himself defied and slighted by their escape. Neither he nor his myrmidons would forget or forgive that.

  Daedalus found his manu aute where he’d left it and tied it to his back. He climbed a high ridge to leap from and take flight again. He let the wind find and lift him, since he had no destination now. At last, after slowly circling the crater until he had decided not to die, he broke away from Tongoriro and flew in the direction of Ehekiri, a small village on the East Coast. He’d been well received there, years before. For their ariki, the fat, jovial Kokaru, he’d made a series of dams for their rushing river as it closed with the sea, so that trapping both sea and river fish was easy. He expected to find Kokaru even fatter and happier.

  He landed near the marae, where some recognised him and said, “Tena koe” or “Kia ora”, depending on how well they’d known him. Children ran to fetch Kokaru, who emerged from his whare, older and indeed fatter than Daedalus expected, but just as happy. He boomed, “Kia ora Atetaru!” Atetaru was his name here: Daedalus, in a tongue with no ‘d’, ‘l’ or ‘s’ sounds. Kokaru embraced him. “It’s good to see you again! It’s been too long, my friend.”

  Three young women filed shyly out from his whare. Kokaru waved in their direction, a little vaguely. “My daughters. I think you knew Tia before you left us. But she’s grown, eh?”

  The oldest daughter looked him in the eyes. Women here did not look down in front of men. “Tena koe, Atetaru. I remember you, up to your knees in the river, moving stones.” She looked at him, unsure if she was right.

  “That would be me, Tia.”

  “These are my sisters, Harete and—”

  The youngest, about twelve and still plump, cried, “Tia!” She stepped forward, wiggling. “And I am Kaia.”

  Etetaru let Kokaru and his daughters welcome him with the hongi, the touching together of foreheads and noses. As an ariki, Kokaru’s head was sacred and no commoner should touch it. Etetaru, like Kokaru, was descended from gods, but his ancestry was not known here. Still, Kokaru tended not to worry about such things. If he was quizzed he would roar that everyone in the village of Ehekiri was an aristocrat. Except the slaves, of course.

  Kokaru took Etetaru into his whare, a simple structure, floor a little below the earth for warmth, made of wood, set with woven raupo. Etetaru sat on flax and told about the death of his son. When both men had wept for Ikaru (here Icarus had been Ikaru), he told about the escape from Ahemoko, who would eventually come to Ehekiri in pursuit of him. Kokaru shook his head at that and said, “We’ll keep you safe. If we have to die, or Ahemoko dies, you will live.”

  Etetaru said nothing but touched his hands to his heart. There was no word for “thank you”: a favour or a gift must eventually be returned. The trick is not to try to return it too soon.

  Then Kokaru told him about his adventures, marrying two new wives, and leading a taua, a group of warriors, in a raid on the bigger village three hills away to the north, one of whose leaders had insulted him. “Actually, that’s how I met Ataahua. My youngest wife. High-born. Pretty. Good weaver. Nice rump. She wasn’t happy when I carried her off, but I cared for her and she settled in. She could go back if she wanted. But her puku’s fat now—fat with a baby—and she’s happy. Like me.” He looked at Etetaru. “Like you’re not.”

  They talked longer, but eventually Kokora waved him out, telling him to look around while there was still some afternoon left.

  He emerged from the whare, blinking in the sun and looking for Tia. And, he supposed, her sisters. They, Tia in particular, had the power to make him happy. He was suspicious of that. It dishonoured Ikaru. An old woman saw him looking about and laughed. “Ah! Those three, they’re down in the river. There’s a big swimming hole just above your dams. You’ll always find them there. Like fishes.” She laughed again when Etetaru followed the direction she’d pointed.

  The pool was busy, and young men and women swam and laughed and clambered over each other like great eels. But Tia and Kaia saw him and waved him in. He doffed his cloak, all he was wearing, laid it on the grass and dived, wanting to get his head wet.

  The water was much deeper than he expected and he had to kick to keep his head above it. Tia watched him gravely. She reminded him of Nausikaä, the graceful king’s daughter who saw Odysseus and wanted him, because she perceived that Odysseus was beloved by Athene, just as Daedalus was. He considered calling Tia Nausikaä, to tease her while paying her a compliment, but it occurred to him that she didn’t know those names. Even to him they were s
omehow fading, losing their richness and flavour. He said nothing. She smiled, still grave. “Here you are, back at last. Atetaru, the clever man.”

  Kaia said, “Handsome man!” and Tia put her hand on the top of her sister’s head and pushed. When the girl emerged, spluttering and still trying to be flirtatious, Tia pushed her down again, holding her for some moments. When she emerged she looked fiercely at Tia, but swam to her quieter sister, Harete.

  Etetaru looked at Tia, trying not to be amused. “She has a good heart.”

  “You only think that because she called you handsome!” Then she laughed. “Yes, I suppose she has. And it is good to see you again. I remember I thought you were nearly a god, when you were making your dams. What will you do this time? If you’re staying?”

  “I’ll stay unless I bring you trouble. Ahemoko is not as brave or as wise as your father, and certainly not as happy. But he can raise a much bigger taua.”

  “You’re clever. You’ll lay traps for any taua coming for you. Or for us.”

  “I suppose I will.”

  “But . . . you know what you can do? We need a bridge over this pool. A high bridge, that the children can jump off. And me. Could you do that?”

  She looked at him intently. He understood that she wanted him to stay. He took a breath, not knowing what he wanted. What would Ikaru have wanted?

  At last he said, “Yes. Of course we need a bridge.” She hugged him, and he was very aware, as no doubt she expected, of her body against his. Ahemoko had kept him for years, and he hadn’t touched a woman’s body in that time.

  He kept his back to her as he left the water, so she wouldn’t see his reaction. Kokaru noticed though, and laughed at him, but he said nothing aloud. He took Atetaru’s arm. “There’s a whare in which an old couple died together. I put a tapu on it.” He shrugged. “I’ll lift it now, and have the place cleaned, mended and smoked, with new mats, so you’ve got somewhere to sleep tonight.”