The Wish Kin

by Joss Hedley

  ‘No,’ says Lydia.

  ‘Right,’ says the woman, though her face seems unsure. ‘You’re free to go. Just be certain to stay together. The area can get a bit rough of an evening.’

  They pass back through the door, barely acknowledging the young man as he takes their place at the desk. Colm glances back at the woman: she and the man beside her are talking in low tones and looking in their direction. Colm takes Lydia’s arm and hurries her through the door. The bright sun hits them hard on the skin and they hasten to find shade against the wall of one of the prefabricated sheds.

  ‘That sheet she had,’ says Lydia. ‘Our names were on it. Did you see?’

  ‘No,’ says Colm. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I am! Colm, we have to leave. We can’t stay.’

  ‘I know.’ Colm is thinking of the way the woman looked at them. ‘But we can’t leave without water.’

  ‘So we’re going to wait until sundown? That might be too late!’

  ‘Lyd, what are we going to do out there in the desert without water?’

  Lydia baulks and scuffs, but, despite his concerns, Colm is determined. He feels a sudden fire within him, a peculiar resolve, and turns and shoulders his pack.

  ‘Come on,’ he says roughly, and steps into the street. He doesn’t look to see if she is following, but takes the street in long strides. A moment later he feels the brush of her sleeve against his.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘Of course we need water.’ Her tone is quiet, apologetic.

  They change their shirts and pull their hats down low over their faces as shields against the sun and against further recognition. At the edge of a dingy marketplace they purchase provisions: several cuts of dry bread, a doubtful-looking blood sausage, a fistful of crystallised currants, two tomatoes slipping out of their skins. These last they eat at once with some bread, the rest they stow away safely in their packs.

  When they are sitting in the shade resting and waiting for time to pass, a thought occurs to Colm: what if the woman in the transit office was checking some sort of missing persons list? What if their father had requested a search so that the three of them might be united once again? It makes him sick, this thought. He wants to go back to the transit office immediately to find out, to ask the woman and explain, but knows that such a move might also sound their end. He deliberates only briefly: the fire he felt earlier, though merely a memory, gave him an immediate strength. But he ponders that memory and finds himself strengthened again.

  In the late afternoon they make their way to the well. The streets are thick with itinerants, the air hot and fetid. They lose themselves in the crowd, hope that they will be lost to others. The road widens once they pass through the northern gates of the town and the landscape spreads out flat and brown around them. The sun burns still, though the afternoon is well on, and the children trudge wearily, their skin parched, their mouths dry.

  They pass the workings of the old quarry: a great gash in the ground; mounds of rubble and dirt; an ancient dozer, rusted through, its front wheels reaching up the side of the sharply chiselled wall as though trying to escape. Children play at the quarry’s edge, their fingers tracing streets and highways in the dust.

  A little further along they join another queue. The sun lowers and the queue grows longer. The sky is streaked with pink and yellow, the town behind them glows golden in the evening light. It is almost picturesque.

  The sun slides down behind the darkening plate of the earth and the sky softens. Colm and Lydia place their packs at their feet and wait for the queue to move on. They shift forward slowly, stand on tippy toes from time to time to see how far away the well is.

  ‘How can there be only two wells in this town?’ Colm wonders.

  ‘Maybe it was never meant to be a town,’ suggests Lydia. ‘Or not one of this size. Maybe this is a new thing, because of the fire and the raids.’

  ‘That might explain why Ailis didn’t mention it,’ says Colm. ‘But why here? Why this place?’

  Lydia shrugs. The crowd shuffles forward and they see coming towards them the same young man who had stood behind them in the line at the transit office earlier that day. The young man walks lightly despite the heavy leather water bladder strapped across his back.

  ‘We meet again,’ he says when he sees the children. He is smiling, cheerful. ‘Got your bottles?’

  ‘Yep,’ says Colm.

  ‘You’ll be needing more than that, surely,’ he says when he sees the two small anodised flasks. ‘That’ll barely last you through the night, then you’ll have to line up here again tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘We’re moving on,’ says Colm. ‘We won’t be here tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Ah, that’s right. You two reckon you’re heading north.’

  Colm and Lydia say nothing. A shout comes from the front of the queue.

  ‘Well, where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘Out there,’ says Colm, indicating the stretch of night-covered brown land.

  The young man sighs. ‘No, you’re not. You’ll freeze. Have you any idea how cold it is out there at night? This is the desert, you know. It’s not like other places.’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ says Colm. ‘We’ve got sleeping bags.’

  Another shout is heard from close to the well, and another and another. The line breaks and surges forward, and several people run back along in the direction of town, their water vessels clutched tightly to their chests.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asks Lydia.

  ‘Skirmish,’ says the young man. ‘It’s quite common. Someone jumping the queue or taking more than their fair share.’ He looks about him briefly then says, ‘Look. I’ve got enough water for you for tonight. It’s going to be hours before you get to the front of the line. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll get you organised with somewhere to sleep.’

  Colm and Lydia look at one another. They ask one another with their eyes, is it a trap? There is a sliver of doubt in Colm’s mind and he hesitates. Is it wise to spend a night in this town?

  The shouts from the well grow louder and Colm sees several people pushing and shoving one another. Two men break out of the line and begin to wrestle in the dirt. Even from a distance Colm can see their teeth bared in anger, can see the scratch of blood down the cheek of the older man. The crowd chants in time to the circling of the men’s steps, to the blow of skin against skin. The older man falls backwards, his face sideways in the dust. The crowd closes in, beating, panting, as though they themselves are fighting. Colm hears them inhale like a many-chested organism and sees them tighten further around the battling pair. A cry goes up, a great cheer, and the organism exhales, spitting out the older man from its throat. He lies still in the dust for a moment, his face and limbs a bloodied mess, then raises himself slowly, painfully, and limps away into the oncoming gloom.

  Colm and Lydia look at one another, distressed. The eruption of violence is a reminder of that which they fled, and of that which still they are fleeing. Colm suddenly feels far more uncertain about camping out in the desert than he does about staying with the young man.

  The young man sees their hesitation. ‘It’s too rough out here,’ he says. ‘Come with me. My friends are very warm-hearted folk and would welcome you most kindly.’

  The children step out of the line and fall in beside the young man, Sylvan, on the road towards the quarry. They take a small path that skirts the top of it then veers westward through a stand of shrivelled, leafless gums. The gums look embarrassed, Colm thinks. Such majestic trees were never meant to be seen in such a state.

  A man welcomes them as they make their way down a steep flight of steps cut into stone. ‘Sylvan!’ he calls. ‘Who have you brought us tonight?’

  Colm and Lydia smile shyly. Sylvan introduces them and tells them the man’s name is Parsefal. Parsefal has a big belly and a greying beard. His eyes are bright beneath a weathered brow. Later, when Colm thinks about Parsefal, he considers him to be the stron
gest man he has ever known, startlingly so. Now, though, he is tired and welcomes the way the great man lifts them both into his arms and carries them with ease down the steep stone stairs.

  ‘Come and have some soup,’ he says.

  The house stands by itself at the bottom of a small valley, crisp with dry grasses. An arid creek bed meanders by the southern end of the house, a row of withered canna lilies droops along its eastern. Candles flicker in the windows and a figure moves through its dark interiors. Parsefal crosses the threshold and deposits the children at the kitchen table. They are attended to at once by a youngish woman, Manon, who serves them soup, its thin, brown wateriness broken by ribbons of pale green leaves. Manon strokes and caresses the children as they eat, words of purring delight falling from her mouth.

  ‘Oh, Sylvan!’ she exclaims. ‘Where did you find them? They are beautiful! Like a little prince and princess.’

  ‘Leave them, Manon,’ says Sylvan. ‘Let them eat. They’re tired.’

  ‘The boy is so lovely with his little curls and his fine young shoulders,’ coos Manon. ‘He is neither a boy nor a man. And the girl – so strange! – with her white, white skin and her yellow hair and her eyes like clear pools. Tell me, children, where were you born? Who are your parents? What manner of people would give life to such creatures as you? Are your ancestors kings?’

  ‘Manon!’ says Parsefal sharply from across the table. ‘That is enough.’ He sighs and addresses Colm and Lydia. ‘Pay my daughter no heed,’ he says. ‘She is yet childless.’

  ‘Perhaps the little prince and princess will stay here with me!’ says Manon brightly. ‘Perhaps they will stay and be my own little ones!’

  ‘That is very nice of you,’ says Colm politely. ‘But we have a long way to go.’

  ‘And we have a father,’ says Lydia. ‘He would want us to be with him.’

  ‘Then why are you not?’ Manon asks.

  ‘We are on our way to meet him,’ replies Lydia.

  Manon lowers her eyes briefly then looks up through her lashes. ‘You speak of your father,’ she says, her brown cheeks flushing. ‘But you do not speak of your mother. Do you have a mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Colm. ‘She is buried beneath the willow tree that was planted on the day that she and our father first arrived in our hills.’

  ‘She has been there long?’

  Colm glances about the room, fidgets with his spoon. He loves that story, of his parents planting the tree, nurturing it, tending it. And, even though he hates it that his mother is dead, he loves it that she is buried there. He doesn’t want to talk about it with Manon, though.

  ‘Enough, Manon!’ says Parsefal.

  Sylvan touches the young woman’s sleeve. ‘Let us say goodnight to the kittens,’ he says.

  Manon stares at the children, her wet mouth slightly open, her fingers working the hem of her dress.

  ‘Poor little things have no mother,’ she says. ‘No mother. A child needs a mother. Poor little prince and princess need a mother.’

  ‘The kittens, Manon,’ insists Sylvan. ‘They’ll be waiting for you.’ He takes her elbow and leads her quietly from the room. Her gaze stays on the children, stays deep in Colm’s eyes, until she crosses the threshold and the door is closed behind her.

  ‘Aah,’ says Parsefal, ‘it is not good.’

  ‘What is the matter with her?’ asks Lydia.

  Parsefal’s face is sad. ‘It is this place,’ he says. ‘So dry, barren. It is not good for a young woman to be here.’

  ‘Will you stay?’ asks Colm. ‘Or will you head south with the others?’

  ‘It is very hard,’ replies the man. ‘I do not wish to move from here. This is where I was born, long before the town was established, and where my father and my father’s father before me were born. But then I think of my daughter and of how she would be happier somewhere else.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Lydia. ‘Why would she be happier? We have been in the south and it is just as dry there as here.’

  Parsefal shrugs. ‘They say a great underground fire will come and destroy this place. It is better that Manon goes before all is consumed.’

  ‘Tell us about this fire, Parsefal,’ says Colm. ‘We only heard of it for the first time this morning.’

  ‘It began about a year ago,’ says Parsefal. ‘Way up north in an old coal-mining town. Some say that it was sparked by a lightning strike, some by a mound of smouldering rubbish. Either way, it slowly began to eat its way into the earth and into the coal. At first, no one noticed anything. Then, over time, steaming fissures started to appear in the ground and bushes to sink into the soil – and the townsfolk decided they’d better do something about it. But while they were working out just what it was that needed doing and exactly who should do it, the fire had crept a little further, and now sheds and fences and outbuildings were falling into the earth. Then one day a little boy was playing in his grandmother’s garden when he noticed a pillar of steam shooting up from the yard. He was excited, this young boy was, and curious, so he determined to cross the yard to look at it. But the moment he stepped out, the ground beneath him collapsed and he was swallowed up, sucked into the pit of burning coal, of smouldering earth. As he fell he managed to take hold of a tree root, and it was to this that he clung until his older brother hauled him out. But, ever since, he has had nightmares ever since of the fires of hell opening up beneath him.

  ‘Then the townsfolk began to really worry and some of them packed their bags and their trucks and their barrows and made their way out of the town to start a new life where there was no fire. But the fire continued to burn, swallowed up houses and post offices and village shops and followed the fleeing townsfolk to the west and to the south. The townsfolk, though, travelled faster than the fire, and were able to get away. But the fire has been burning now for quite some time, is hotter and hotter, and, they say, is wreaking destruction across the country. It will come here one day, of that there is no question.’

  The door opens and Sylvan enters. ‘She is asleep,’ he says.

  ‘Good,’ says Parsefal. ‘And we should be too.’

  He takes the children into a small room off the kitchen. Three of its walls are lined with empty wooden shelves. Against the fourth are stretched two small camp-beds.

  ‘This was the pantry in more abundant times,’ says Parsefal. ‘Now we can keep all of our food in a small box in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Lydia. ‘We have a sausage we should give you before it spoils.’

  ‘We’ll cook it up in the morning,’ says Parsefal. ‘Sleep now.’

  Lydia shrugs out of her clothes and climbs into one of the little beds. A moment later she is sighing the soft breath of sleep. Parsefal pulls the covers over her shoulders and closes the small window, checking closely its lock.

  ‘Strange that you haven’t heard of the fire,’ says Parsefal as he is leaving. ‘It is no small thing.’

  ‘Our father is very protective,’ says Colm. ‘And our home very remote. Our father wanted us to be safe from raiders – and we were for a long time – but it meant, too, that we were mostly cut off from outside news.’

  ‘Your father is wise, I think,’ says Parsefal. ‘I wish I could do the same for Manon.’

  There is silence but for the faint mewing of kittens in the adjoining verandah.

  ‘Well, son,’ says Parsefal. ‘I bid you goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ says Colm. And then – ‘Parsefal! Do you remember the name of that town where the great fire started?’

  Parsefal stands in the light of the half-closed door. ‘Yes, I do,’ he says. ‘I remember it well. The name of the town is Wonding.’

  CHAPTER

  6

  Colm shifts and stirs on his camp-bed and dusts away the insect he feels creeping across his cheek. It is early morning, he knows: he can hear the creaking of footsteps in the other room and sense the softening light upon his eyelids. He moans slightly and rolls onto his side. His bone
s are aching and tired, and he wants to sleep some more.

  The room is airless, warm. Colm pushes the blanket down around his waist, feels the air upon his back. He breathes deeply, slowly, willing sleep to come upon him once again. He folds himself up into the foetal position, imagining that he is inside his kind glass cube, imagining that he is spinning slowly through space, through the still, buoyant sky. In his mind there is only the whispering of the stars.

  He feels the insect creeping across his shoulder and brushes at it again. His hand is met, suddenly, by another, and his eyes snap open.

  ‘Manon!’ he exclaims, and he sits up and draws his hand from her grasp. The woman is looking at him, smiling, her teeth a ragged line of yellow in her mouth.

  ‘Did you think my hand was a little ant creeping across your skin?’ she asks, her face doughy, her voice high and childish.

  Colm nods, uncertain. Manon laughs, a girlish, melodic laugh.

  ‘So soft is my touch, yes?’ she says, and laughs again.

  Colm says nothing.

  ‘Is it soft?’ she asks. ‘Is it like a little ant, or a tiny beetle?’

  Colm nods.

  ‘Yes?’ asks Manon.

  ‘Yes,’ says Colm.

  Sylvan appears in the doorway. ‘Manon,’ he says. ‘Have you fed the kittens this morning?’

  Manon does not answer but continues to stare intently at Colm. Her fingers move lightly across the covers.

  ‘Manon!’ Sylvan says again, this time more sharply.

  ‘No,’ she says, turning to look at him. ‘I feed them every day. It is your turn.’

  Colm sees Sylvan’s shoulder slump ever so slightly. His face looks as though it is stung from a slap.

  Lydia emerges from under the covers and she rubs her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s happening?’

  Sylvan, rousing himself, steps into the room and takes Manon firmly by the arm. ‘Manon and I are going to feed the kittens,’ he says. ‘If you get dressed quickly you can see them.’

  They leave and Colm and Lydia are alone.