by Joss Hedley
In the afternoon they prepare to take their walk again. They hear the key turn in the lock and the bolt slide back and they wait in expectancy. Moss appears in the doorway. His face is beaten and bruised.
‘Moss! What happened?’ Colm goes to the young keeper and looks closely at his face. His right eye is invisible behind a black and swollen lid. His bottom lip is split. A crust of dried blood has formed at its edge.
‘It’s nothing,’ says Moss.
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Lydia. ‘Of course it’s not nothing. It looks very painful.’ She tears a strip from the hessian square and moistens it with a little water. She dabs carefully at the dried blood. Moss draws a sudden breath at her touch.
‘Am I hurting you?’ she asks.
‘No,’ says Moss, and shifts his good eye to the wall.
Lydia dabs a moment more. ‘That’s better. At least now you won’t get any nasty infection. Why didn’t you clean it before?’
‘No time,’ says Moss. He runs his tongue slowly over the newly cleaned skin of his lip.
‘What happened?’ Colm asks again.
‘An argument,’ says Moss. ‘With Angus.’
‘Angus?’
‘The one you know as the tall man.’
‘What was it about?’
Moss stops, gathers himself. Enough, he says in the Inner Speech. They can hear us. He gestures Colm and Lydia through the door and they walk down the corridor. When they get to the yard Moss stands by the gate, serious and sentinel-like.
I told Angus I thought it was wrong that the Wish Kin be taken captive. I told him that we would all benefit if only the Wish Kin were allowed to do what they must do. He didn’t like that. He called me a traitor, said that I needed to be taught a lesson. Moss touches his fingers lightly to his eye.
There must be something more, says Lydia. I can’t see that that is enough to make him hit you.
Moss is grieved. What can I say to you, Lydia? he asks. I can’t make you believe me, about this or about anything.
Then Lydia is silent, only listens to Moss’s next words and does not speak.
The Clan plan to keep you prisoner indefinitely, he says. They figure they can use you in the future. Your father has not given them the information they need about the Wish Kin, and you have become a bargaining tool. I know you want to leave here and I think I know of a way out for you.
Neither Colm nor Lydia answers. They continue to walk their worn path around the exercise yard.
This may sound strange to you, says Moss, but I, too, am kept here against my will. I was born here, am part of the Clan by blood, and as such am expected to embrace the methods utilised by the community. Only I don’t, and never have. This has made things difficult for me. This morning’s incident with Angus is just one example.
What about your parents? Colm asks. Where are they? What do they think of this?
The Clan is governed by the Pater and the Mater. We call them that because we see them very much as parental figureheads, though we could never discuss such things with them. If you mean, though, my biological parents, then they are both Clan bureaucrats. They live in the western compound with the other bureaucrats. I live here with the keepers so we see each other only occasionally at Clan gatherings. They are not sympathetic to my views.
So everyone is housed according to occupation and not to family? Colm asks.
That’s right, says Moss.
Where do the children live who are too young to have an occupation?
You must understand, says Moss. A person’s role in the Clan is decided from birth. So there are babies and children living with my parents who are not their own. I, too, grew up with adults who were not my biological parents. It’s not a bad way. There’s a lot of good in it.
But you’re unhappy, says Lydia. Colm looks at his sister. She is walking quietly now, not pounding the ground as she usually does. She is listening closely to Moss.
Yes, replies Moss. I am. And that is why I, too, plan my escape. He takes an inner, silent breath. Only I will be more successful at escape than you unless you trust me.
Lydia stops walking and stands in the centre of the yard. She looks up at the small circle of sky above their heads and breathes deeply.
Tell me why you want to help us, she demands.
For your father, Moss replies. For your father and for the Wish Kin.
Lydia continues staring up at the sky. ‘Look,’ she says to Colm. ‘It is the Children’s Moon.’
Colm looks. Low in the still, blue sky he sees the white fingernail of moon. He cannot help but think at once of their father, of how, one afternoon when Colm was little, he had carried him up to the top of Mount Nebo and pointed out the soft white moon hanging prettily in the powder blue sky. The Children’s Moon, he had called it, because it sits in the sky at a time when even the smallest of children can see it and love it. Colm remembers that day clearly, remembers how happy he felt at the thought that the moon was a kind moon, considerate of little ones. He feels now the very same feeling he did when he was in his father’s arms at the top of the mountain, or at least something similar. It makes him both happy and sad at once.
How can you help us? he hears Lydia say.
You are to be moved from here in the next day or two. Where you are to be taken is, I’ve heard, not pleasant – and no one ever returns. So there is no time to be lost. Prepare to leave this evening, he continues. Save your bread from dinner and roll up the grey blanket tightly. The keepers change at ten o’clock. You will hear your door being unlocked just before the change. Sit quietly and count slowly to one hundred. Like this, one … two … three … Open the door and turn right. Run along the corridor, take the seventh door on the left. I will meet you there. Be prepared to go as quickly as you can. And be very quiet.
That evening, Colm and Lydia drink the last of their brackish water and stow carefully their cuts of bread inside their shirts. Either it’s a trap or it’s not, says Colm. We have no option, and little left to lose. Though, as soon as he says this, he thinks of the burns on Moss’s arms, his split lip and the bruises on his face.
Lydia has softened, he can see. Though she is not enthusiastic about the method of escape, he can sense that she is not opposed to it either.
You are right, she says. It is the only way.
They roll up the blanket tightly and sit on the plank bed waiting. Colm is beginning to be anxious. What if it is a set-up? What if they are caught? Perhaps it will make things worse for their father. Perhaps it will make things worse for them. His stomach starts to knot and turn over itself. He thinks they should not escape after all, that they should unroll the grey blanket and crawl under it, that they should sleep now as they do every night at this time. He thinks it is not too late to do this and is about to suggest it to Lydia when he hears the key turning in the lock and the bolt sliding back. And Lydia is counting, fire in her eyes, and he knows he must do likewise. One … two … three … and the knot in his stomach is growing larger, twenty-seven … twenty-eight … twenty-nine … and they are standing now by the door, fifty-one … fifty-two … and their breathing is growing heavier, is beating out of them in time to their counting, seventy-five … seventy-six … and Colm is lifting the blanket onto his shoulders and steadying himself, ninety-three … ninety-four … and Lydia is heaving open the door at one hundred – and they are away.
CHAPTER
9
Once again they are running. The night is cold and black about them, the desert air sharp against their skin. Moss is in front, strong and lean, running through the darkness, marking the way for them to follow. Lydia is next, her lithe body a faint grey spectre against the night; then Colm, last of all, bowed slightly by the weight of the blanket, running, running, across the cold ground.
It is harder, he finds, this time than the last. His lungs do not seem as powerful now as then, his body not as vigorous. When they had run that first day from their home, through the long, dark and twisting tunnel, they had be
en strong, well fed, well rested. Now they are setting off weary: from the poor diet, from the anxiety, from the long and tiring journey.
They had followed Moss’s instructions, opened the door at one hundred, turned right, run quickly and quietly through the corridor till they came to the seventh door on the left. Moss was behind it, waiting, and they followed him across the room and into another corridor. They got lost, then, in the labyrinth that was the dome, sticking closely to Moss’s heels, hoping that it was not a trap, hoping that soon the way out would be clear.
Ahead of them they’d seen a door, a low one, not much taller than Lydia. Moss had tried several codes on the keypad before it opened. The children had made their way through and into the darkness beyond. And now they are outside, running across the open stretch of ground between the dome and a cyclone-wire fence. On their right a cluster of buildings stands, dark and quiet, against the horizon. No lights burn in the windows, no fires blaze in the grates. This is a sleeping town: only the keepers that patrol the compound are awake.
Running, running, always running. The wire fence is closer now, the great dome further behind. A swoop of light illuminates the ground and Moss pulls them onto their stomachs. A spotlight, Colm thinks. He feels the sudden and unexpected heat of it on his back. His bowels groan inside him with the fear of detection and he presses himself closer to the ground. Who could guess that one could make oneself so flat, so thin? He who is so used to curling himself up tightly to fit in his glass box now makes himself as flat as he can. The spotlight burns on his back for a moment, then swoops by and is gone.
They reach the fence and press themselves through a slit cut into its links. The wire scrapes Colm’s right side, his face, his neck and down his right arm. He sees his blood gleaming on the cut wire, feels it wet on his skin. He hoists the blanket once more upon his shoulders and continues running over the cold ground, through the dark night.
His lungs are tight now, his body tired. He finds it difficult to see Moss and Lydia ahead of him, feels as though a film of black oil is swimming over his eyeballs. He hurries to catch up, feels the blanket slipping from his back, feels his head pounding, his legs throbbing, wonders why Moss wanted him to bring the blanket, what possible use it could be to them, thinks about dropping it right here, thinks about shouting at Moss, saying, Why don’t you carry the blanket, it was your idea to bring it in the first place? Thinks about this, about all of these things, thinks to forget the pain of running, the constriction in his chest, his cut and bleeding face, wants only to get there, wants only to see Father, to be with Father and Lydia with the rest of the world far behind them, wants only to be with Father and Lydia and maybe his aunt who lives in the weathered cottage by the sea with the beach houses and the swinging sign, thinks of how the four of them can live there, how they can live there by the sea with the warm golden sand and the calling white birds and the little fish that jump in and out of the water plop! plop! and the hearty food on the table and the soft warm beds and the gentle sound of the ocean crooning them into sleep night after night after tender night.
Moss is no longer running but is standing beside a large rock. Lydia stops, panting, beside him, then Colm draws himself up and is still, but for his heart beating. The rest of him, he feels, will never move again.
‘Gander?’ Moss asks them.
‘Gander,’ they say. ‘And you?’
‘Gander.’ Moss looks at Colm. ‘All right with the blanket?’
Colm shifts the weight from one shoulder to the other. He doesn’t want to carry the blanket any more. But he sees now what he did not before, what he could not for the speed and the urgency and the darkness. He sees that Moss carries a weight of his own, a large pack filled, he imagines, with food and water for them all.
‘The blanket is fine,’ says Colm.
‘Right,’ says Moss. ‘We’ll keep going.’
They run through the night, more slowly now than at first. This is a great relief to Colm who finds in time a rhythm, who discovers he can forget the anxiety and pain in the regular pounding of his feet against the ground, of the rasp of his shirt sleeves against his side, of the steady sound of his breathing through his dry mouth. Running, running, always running until the sky begins to lose its inkiness, and the black earth lightens to brown. Running until they can see the deep cracks in the earth’s hard surface, until they can see the bleached skeletal remains of animal carcasses, until they can see the sweat beads flying from their own skin. Running, running: and then it is too hot, the sun is too high, they have no breath left in them or any drop of moisture and they throw themselves down on the sand.
Now on this next stage of their journey of heat and sun and danger and fear they run through the night, rest through the day. Moss breaks open a small withered orange and they suck on the souring juice, chew on the dry, pockmarked skin. They sleep fitfully in coils in the dirt, in the lee of rocks, once by the side of a derelict ant hill. The blanket that Colm carries becomes a tent, a strong shelter from the scalding sun that burns the very air about them. They sleep and they run and they take small sips of water and tidy bites of bread until at last Moss says that that is enough, they are sufficiently far away now, they can stop running.
It is late in the afternoon when he says this. Colm is pleased and can see that Lydia is too. She looks tired, he thinks, and hungry. Moss catches a careless goanna and they eat its white flesh that night, cooked slowly over a modest fire. Colm wonders at this fire, wonders how it is that Moss is able to keep it burning with so little fuel, so little effort. But keep it burning he does, and they huddle closer to the flames as the air grows colder. Moss sings to them, his voice deep and gentle, his hands brushing a tender rhythm in the sand. He sings of times before the Great Dearth, as he calls it, as, indeed, the Clan calls it. He sings of times of plenty, of fields of fruit and flowers, of abundant food, of water, of vast pools of it, and lakes and winding blue rivers, of skies thick with clouds, and clouds heavy with rain, of the sweet watering of the earth, of the filling of the creeks and tarns. He sings, too, in his deep and gentle voice of the brokenness of the land, of the tearing of it, the barrenness of it, the pain of it. He sings of the sun, of the burning red sun, of the forests destroyed, of the oceans and air stripped of living things. He sings of the great underground fire, of the foolishness of it and the ruin. He sings and his face creases and folds, wants to cry, Colm thinks, but cannot for there is not moisture enough in him for tears.
Then he sings of times which have not yet happened, of future times, of times to come. He sings of the Rekindling, of the eventual gathering of the Wish Kin, of the gracing of the earth, of the healing of its ills. He sings of the Rain Maker, of the Wind Breather, of the Sun Tender, of the Earth Bearer. He sings with joy of the Cloud Drawer, of the Fire Keeper, of the Name Gatherer, of the Metal Carrier. He sings of these and many more of the Kin, many more who will join and begin together the New Time.
• • •
They follow the sun and the curve of the earth. Lydia walks ahead with a stick and a straight step. The boys follow closely behind.
‘Tell us, Moss, about the Inner Speech,’ says Colm. ‘What do you know about it? And how did you come to speak it?’
‘Yes,’ says Lydia, over her shoulder. ‘And your life with the Clan, and why you wanted to leave.’
Moss gathers his thoughts. ‘I learned the Inner Speech when I was very young from Angus and the other keepers,’ he says. ‘They told me that everyone is given the ability – some more so than others – and that it is like any skill: it needs practice.’
‘So there are other Clan members who can speak it!’ says Lydia.
‘There were,’ replies Moss. ‘At one stage, the entire Clan could speak it. I said before, to Colm, that when we began to amass wealth, we couldn’t stop, that greed slowly took over. There was a lot of trouble in the Clan when this began to happen, and gradually more and more members who were unhappy with the situation left. Those who stayed fell further and furt
her away from the original ideals and methods of the Clan.
‘After a time, it became clear that the remaining Clan members had lost their Inner Speech ability. Even Angus, who had originally taught me. I now think that only those with a pure heart can speak it, and that those not brought up with it can be long in learning it.
‘The Clan, though, were still able to close their minds to thought-raiders, at least to some degree. So that later, when I tried to listen in on them, I could hear only very little. I heard enough, though, to know that their intentions were very bad. I knew I no longer wanted to be a part of them. But because of my age, the only way I could leave was to escape.
‘The Clan knew that I still had the Inner Speech ability, and so kept me in close contact with prisoners so that I could listen to their thoughts, follow their story patterning. They forced me, against my wishes, to use my ability for them.’
Colm and Lydia look briefly at one another. Colm thinks again of the horrible burns on Moss’s forearms, knows that Lydia does too.
‘When some of the prisoners’ patterns disclosed information about the Wish Kin, I was intrigued. I decided to delay my escape until I knew more. And, after a while, I met your father. And then I met you.’
They walk and the air grows hotter, the ground drier. They stop and rest in a circle of shade, eat carefully strips of dried meat.
‘Moss,’ says Lydia, ‘how did the Clan take our thoughts and turn them into images we could see on the holoview?’
‘The Clan has always had very advanced technology, far beyond my understanding as a keeper. Many of its members are highly qualified scientists and engineers. Some of them, too, were members of the Twelve, and so are exceptionally clever – but you’d already know about that.’
‘Yes, we do,’ says Colm.
There is silence for a moment, then Lydia asks, ‘Do you know why the Clan showed us all those images?’
‘I think to trouble you and make your father talk. You were a bargaining tool, remember. But I’m not completely sure that that was the only reason. They showed them to your father as well, as you know. Maybe it was to see if he had the compassion, the link with the earth that members of the Wish Kin are supposed to have – but that’s just a guess.’