by Joss Hedley
‘Are you gander?’ Lydia asks.
‘I’m gander,’ says Colm. ‘Are you gander?’
‘I’m gander.’ They smile at one another, dress quickly and hasten outside. Manon is sitting with the kittens in her lap, holding tiny droppers of milk to their pink mouths.
‘But they are so tiny!’ says Lydia. ‘Where is their mother?’
‘We don’t know,’ says Sylvan. ‘Manon found them in the woodpile a week ago. But there was no sign of their mother.’
‘Poor little things,’ says Lydia. She sits down on the bench beside Manon. ‘May I feed one?’ she asks.
Manon places the smallest of the kittens, a little grey tabby, into Lydia’s lap. The kitten at once begins to purr loudly. He lifts his tiny face and smiles up at Lydia.
‘He likes you,’ says Sylvan.
Lydia laughs, pleased. She looks at Manon. ‘Does he have a name?’
‘Colm,’ says Manon.
‘Don’t be silly, Manon,’ says Sylvan. ‘You know that’s not his name.’
Manon is quiet, does not look up. Colm looks down, scuffs his bare feet about in the dirt.
‘Tell them his real name.’
Manon is silent, only turns her face to the side.
Sylvan draws a breath then says loudly, ‘Otik. His name is Little Otik.’
Nobody speaks. Little Otik continues to purr and smile. After a moment, Lydia hands him back to Manon. She glances at Colm and the two head indoors.
‘She’s strange,’ says Lydia.
Colm sits down heavily at the table. ‘We’re going too slowly,’ he says. ‘The chances of our meeting Father on the way are slim. So now we’ve just got to get to Wonding as quickly as possible. If it’s still there,’ he adds.
Lydia looks serious. ‘What if it’s not?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Colm. ‘But I can’t see what else we can do. It was always our plan to meet Father there. We have to at least try.’
The front door opens and Parsefal appears with a small arm of kindling. ‘Morning!’ he says brightly.
Lydia rummages in her pack and produces the blood sausage.
‘Perfect,’ says Parsefal. He chops it up and browns it in a pan with some onions. Colm goes to him and leans against the wall at the side of the stove.
‘Parsefal,’ he says. ‘Is there a way out of here other than by foot?’
‘There is,’ says the man. ‘But it’s not cheap.’
‘A truck?’ asks Colm.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Northish. Or east.’
Parsefal stops stirring the sausage and looks at the boy.
‘Everyone is going south,’ he says. ‘Or west to the coast. There’s nothing north or east.’
Colm shrugs. ‘It’s where we have to go.’
‘Weren’t you listening last night?’ says Parsefal. ‘I told you, there’s a fire underground. There’s nothing left up there.’
‘Please, Parsefal,’ says Lydia. ‘Please help us.’
Parsefal takes the pan from the heat and spoons its contents onto small plates. He calls out the window to Manon and Sylvan. The five of them sit around the big wooden table and eat the sausage and onion with cuts of fried bread. Manon pours a pale yellow infusion into chipped china mugs and they wash down their breakfast with thirsty gulps of the stuff.
‘My daughter wants a child, don’t you, Manon?’
Manon looks at her father, then at Colm and Lydia seated opposite her.
‘I do, Father,’ she says, in a voice more level than any she has used since the children arrived. ‘I do want a child.’
‘The kittens are not enough, are they?’
‘No, Father. They are not.’
There is silence. Parsefal exhales loudly and pushes his plate away. He scrapes his chair back from the table to make room for his belly.
‘What if you stay here?’ he says suddenly to Colm and Lydia. ‘At least for a while. There is nothing north or east but danger. You are young, you cannot look after yourselves. Stay here with us. Manon will care for you.’
Colm is unmoved. ‘We must leave,’ he says. ‘We have made arrangements.’
‘There is nowhere to go,’ Parsefal reiterates. ‘There is no point going anywhere except south. We may head that way ourselves before long, who knows. And you’ll make my Manon happy.’
He takes his daughter’s puffy hand, touches the sleeve of her blouse lightly. ‘Then we’d all be happy,’ he says.
Colm looks at Sylvan. The young man is curling Manon’s long brown hair around and around his fingers. Why doesn’t Sylvan give Manon a child? he wants to ask. Surely that would make sense.
But he keeps the thought to himself. Instead, he says, ‘Thank you very much for the offer, but we can’t accept. Please, won’t you tell us how we can leave here?’
‘You won’t leave us,’ says Manon, her voice deeper now than before, her face a little harder. ‘You are here now. You must stay.’
‘We can’t,’ says Lydia. ‘We have a very long way to go.’
‘Just how far north do you expect to get?’ asks Parsefal.
Colm shifts slightly in his seat. ‘As far as we can.’
‘You are meeting your father?’
‘Yes.’
A crackling is heard in the distance, the sound of gunfire. Manon gasps, and clasps her hand to her mouth. There is a brief silence then the sound comes again. Sylvan leaps up and crosses the room quickly to the door. He wedges a huge beam of wood across it and secures the windows on either side. Parsefal, too, is up, slamming shutters and fastening them with beams of wood. He drags a shotgun from a corner cupboard and loads it quickly. Manon extinguishes the fire and drags Colm and Lydia under the table. The two men take their positions on either side of the door, Parsefal with the shotgun at his shoulder peering through a sliver of window, Sylvan with his hands wrapped around the handle of a shovel.
There is silence for a few moments, then the gunfire sounds again, this time a little closer. Colm feels Manon’s grip hard against the flesh of his arm. He looks at her and does not know her.
The minutes tick slowly by. The sound of gunfire edges slowly closer, creeps along the road from town, around the mouth of the old quarry, towards the top of the steep stone steps carved into the rock face beyond the front door. The gunfire is accompanied now by the sound of sputtering engines: a convoy of ancient auto-bikes, Colm thinks, or an old jeepney or two. Manon pulls the children closer to her and Colm feels a bruise begin to fill out his skin.
‘Is there no trapdoor?’ he whispers to Manon. ‘Is there no way out?’
Manon stares at him. ‘Out!’ she exclaims, shocked. ‘Why would you want to go out? We will stay here. We are safe here.’
‘But they can get in,’ said Lydia. ‘They are clever and strong. They got through the firewalls into our valley.’
‘We are safe here,’ says Manon again. ‘Lie still against me. Imagine I am your mother, that I will shield and protect you. Then all will be well.’
They are quiet, lie still against her, and watch the two men by the door. The sound of the convoy draws closer, stops outside the front door, and Parsefal raises the shotgun to his eye. There is shouting, a demand for the children and a wild hammering at the door.
‘We can’t keep them out, Manon,’ says Colm. ‘They are too strong.’
‘You have not seen my father at work,’ says Manon, and even as she speaks Parsefal hurls his great weight against the front door and acts as a cushion against the force coming to it from outside. His body rocks and shudders, his face grimaces with every blow, his bulk resounds dully as stone and metal strike heavily the wood softened by flesh.
‘What is he doing?’ cries Lydia. ‘They will kill him!’
Sylvan seizes the gun from Parsefal and takes aim through the sliver of window beside the door. He pulls the trigger and the sound of the gunpowder exploding in the barrel is so loud that Colm feels his skull will split with it. A moment later a b
urst of semi-automatic rifle fire splinters the window, sends the glass as a storm of silver shards across the room. A second round rips across the door and Parsefal’s face turns white. A bloom of blood appears on his belly.
Manon screams and presses her hands into the floor to raise herself and run to her father. But now it is Colm who is gripping tightly, and he restrains the woman, keeps her down by his side under the table. Sylvan fires another shot and another. Parsefal, amazingly, maintains his stance, his head upright and determined, his hands holding firmly the lintel, his legs strong pillars beneath his bleeding body.
The rifle fire ceases, and receding footsteps are heard. The air stills. Sylvan lowers the shotgun from his shoulder and turns to the great man leaning against the door. Parsefal’s head rolls slowly forward, a gem of blood falls from his lip. Manon goes to him, presses her dress against his wound to staunch the flow. Still the great man remains standing, his knuckles white, his fingertips bruise-black from the effort of holding the raiders at bay, from the effort of keeping himself upright. Even when Manon tries to coax him into sitting he does not move.
Colm and Lydia crawl out from under the table. They pick their way carefully through the broken glass and gather linen and towels for Parsefal’s bleeding. Colm passes by the back door. He thinks of the kittens, hopes they are not harmed.
‘Won’t you sit down, Papa?’ pleads Manon. ‘It is over. They have gone now.’
Colm wonders how she can say this when clearly there has been no sound of receding vehicles, only of footsteps. Parsefal himself, he decides, thinks so too; the great man does not relinquish his hold, despite the blood that falls now without any stopping, both from his belly and from his mouth. Manon’s dress is soaked scarlet.
Lydia, crouched beneath Parsefal with towels, coughs. She straightens her back and drags air to her lungs. Colm, by the table, feels an irritation in his throat. He looks at Sylvan and sees that the young man’s eyes are red and weeping. His own begin to moisten, his chest to tighten. He coughs, and so too does Manon. Parsefal splutters air through blood. Lydia’s eyes stream with tears.
There’s a funny smell, Colm thinks, and he covers his nose and mouth with his hand. He looks again at his sister and, strangely, finds it hard to see her. He closes his eyes tightly for a few seconds and opens them to see the room filling with smoke.
‘Fire!’ he shouts, and then all of them have their clothes clamped over their faces, and breathe stiffly through fabric. Flames poke at the corners of the ceiling, find their way down the wooden walls and across the splintering floor. The room blackens and heaves. Colm drags Lydia to the broken window that they might take air more easily, that too they might find a way out. Sylvan and Manon prise Parsefal’s fingers from the lintel and the man staggers forward. They catch him on their shoulders, crumpling beneath the size of him. The door is painted in blood. Colm and Lydia haul the great beam of wood from across its face. At the back of the room a section of the roof crashes flaming to the floor. Sparks fly upwards and the fire is fuelled further by the fresh rush of oxygen from above.
And then Colm and Lydia between them have the door open. They run out of the burning house, Manon and Sylvan bearing the wonder of Parsefal still upon their shoulders. All five of them come out of the house, all five of them breathe now without smoke in their lungs, cling to each other for the fear of their flesh, forget the previous fear that kept them locked up inside. They turn and watch the house grow bright with fire, watch it crumble into broken, blackened pieces lit with orange and yellow and blue.
A clicking is heard from behind them and they turn again to see five men standing in a half-moon around them. Two of them bear guns, cocked and ready. The others stand sentinel, their brows a menacing black. The two with guns press forward until they are on either side of Colm and Lydia. The men’s bodies are heavy with dirt and sweat, the smell from them thick and low. They do not speak but gesture that the children walk forward. The others part for them, making the way straight that they might be escorted from the front of the house to the small rusted jeepney at the bottom of the stone steps. Colm and Lydia step up into the vehicle. The guns are pointed to their heads. They cannot look back, but hear only a long, low wail: Manon’s. Colm does not know if it is for them or for Parsefal. There is too much blood for the great man still to be alive. Colm feels a wail of his own beginning like a slow season in the pit of his stomach, working its way up through his gullet and into his throat. But here he swallows it, presses the thing back down. It would not do to cry now.
The rear section of the jeepney is covered in thick canvas and devoid of windows. It is dark within, the air stale. The children can see nothing. The engine starts and the vehicle lurches forward. Colm and Lydia are thrown about as the jeepney climbs the steep hill. Their fingers clutch at this and that and they find their way back to the bench seat along the side. They cling to one another.
The driving does not stop but goes on and on. It grows hot inside the cabin. Colm and Lydia have no water. Their packs are still at Parsefal’s house. Lydia lies down on the bench seat and puts her head in Colm’s lap. They need to drink.
The air clots about them and sets their eyelids closed. The movement of the jeepney lulls them to sleep. Their dreams are dry and tight. Hours pass.
The convoy slows. The jeepney stops and the canvas is unfastened and lifted up at the rear. A man in faded fatigues holds out his hand and the children take it and are lowered to the ground. The bright sun scalds them and they blink into the glare.
The land is flat and brown and dry. Scraps of saltbush break the plain. Three autobikes lean on rusted stands. The five men stand in an arc about Colm and Lydia once again. Two hold their guns at the ready, but lower their weapons at a signal from the one who appears to lead them. This one is a tall man and handsome, who wears a blue and yellow crest labelled The Clan over his heart. This one speaks to them, his voice as flat and dry as the land upon which they stand.
‘You are the children of Rafe Bell,’ he says.
‘No,’ says Colm. ‘We are not.’
The tall man smirks, then begins to walk around Colm, examining him. ‘Colm. Male. Eyes, blue,’ he says. ‘Hair, fair. Build, strong. About fouteen years.’ He looks then at Lydia. ‘And younger sister, Lydia, eleven. Pretty little thing, aren’t you?’ He pauses, strokes the curve of her cheek. ‘Well, if you are not the children of Rafe Bell, you are certainly close enough for our purposes.’
‘What purposes?’ asks Colm. ‘And what about our friend? I think you killed him.’ The tall man smirks again. ‘You’re quite impudent, aren’t you?’ He cuffs Colm’s ear, lightly, but enough to startle the boy. ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t touch you if you were the son of Rafe Bell. Perhaps I’d be more careful.’
Colm is silent, staring.
‘Are you thirsty?’ the tall man asks.
‘Yes,’ says Colm. ‘I am.’
The man looks at Lydia.
‘And you?’ he asks. ‘Are you thirsty?’
‘Yes,’ says Lydia. ‘I am.’
The tall man turns to one of the others, a boy not much older than Colm. The boy, whose left shirt pocket also bears the blue and yellow crest, hands the man a leather water bladder.
‘Here,’ says the man. ‘Drink this.’
Lydia drinks, then Colm. The water is cool and sweet and flavoured faintly by the gentle brown leather. The children drink till their bellies bloat.
‘Enough?’ the man asks them when they hand back the bladder.
‘Thank you,’ they say.
He signals to the young boy, who steps forward with two cuts of bread. The children take these gratefully and slip them into their pockets.
‘Someone’s been following us since we left our home,’ says Colm. ‘Is that you?’
The man ponders him, a small smile curling his lip. ‘Yes,’ says the man. ‘You are slippery fish.’
‘And where are you taking us?’
‘To the same place we took Rafe Bell.’
> Colm feels his eyes brighten, his breath come more quickly. ‘Will we see him?’ he asks without thinking, and immediately wishes that he hadn’t.
‘And why would you want to see Rafe Bell unless he was your father?’ says the tall man.
Colm doesn’t answer but looks out past the man to the vast expanse of dry brown land. The sun is taking its downward path and from this and the tyre tracks in the earth Colm and Lydia can work out the direction they have been heading.
‘Are we going to the Centre?’ asks Colm.
‘You know there’s nothing there,’ says the man. ‘The place is a fireball. Isn’t that what everybody has been saying?’
‘Yes,’ says Colm.
‘Then why would we be going to the Centre?’
Colm shrugs, uncertain. He knows, though, that they are heading north. And the Centre is certainly north.
‘Come,’ says the man. He hands them back into the jeepney, and the darkness and heat fold in on them once more.
• • •
It is many hours later when the convoy stops again. Colm and Lydia step out from under the canvas and stretch themselves slowly. The air outside the jeepney is cold. The sky above them is milky with stars.
They are in a makeshift compound. Razor-wire rings the crude constructions. Men patrol the area with antiquated weaponry. A Clan member with an implement akin to a .22 stands by the door of a corrugated-iron hut. The children lean away from him as they enter.
The tall man leads them into a room, small and without window or vent. He motions that they might sit and the boy from the convoy brings them food and water. The man in fatigues paces about the perimeter of the tiny cell, checking here and there for weaknesses in the walls. The two men with guns stand solemnly by, looking neither left nor right.
‘You will stay here,’ says the tall man. ‘In the morning you will be called for.’ He looks around the room then leaves, taking the others with him. The door is closed and locked. A bolt slides across on the other side. Footsteps fall faint along the corridor.
Colm and Lydia eat slowly the bread they have been brought, drink carefully the tepid water from tin cups. They lie down then on the single plank bed, cover themselves with the square of hessian, surrender themselves to the darkness. Colm wraps his arms about his sister. He feels her shaking, hears her teeth chattering. He tightens his hold on her, warms her cold fear with his body and she is quiet. Colm closes his eyes, curls himself into Lydia’s shape and spins them both slowly across the milky night sky.