by Joss Hedley
‘Do you think he is a member of the Wish Kin?’
‘I don’t know.’
A small breeze blows up the grasses, cools the sear of heat on their cheeks. Moss teaches Colm and Lydia how to close their minds to thought-raiders, and how to tune their Speech so that only those intended can hear it. Colm and Lydia tell Moss stories of their father.
‘He was famous even before he joined the Twelve,’ says Colm with pride. ‘When he worked for the government he was always designing amazing things. He invented a system so that toxic wastes could be destroyed without harming the bionetwork. He imagined incredible irrigation arteries that could reach far into the Centre and supply the land with water so that even the deserts would become green and lush.’ He pauses, remembers more, rushes on. ‘And he made drawings for huge atmospheric balloons that would work like magnets to attract pollutants, which would trap and alter their chemical structure so that they would help the atmosphere instead of destroying it.’
‘That sounds amazing!’ says Moss.
‘It was.’
‘Then he joined the Twelve,’ says Lydia, taking up the story. ‘The Twelve, as you know, were a band of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers dedicated to building a better world, and to helping others do so as well. They were working on a system that would guarantee the continued life of the bionetwork. But it meant that people had to change the way they lived, that they had to consume less. And lots of people didn’t like that very much.’
‘But everyone believed in the Twelve,’ says Colm. ‘Everyone really believed that they would be the ones to make things right. They were so clever, and their work was so successful – right from the very beginning. Things were really starting to change.’
‘Then people began to refer to them as saviours of the earth.’ This was Lydia. ‘The Twelve never wanted that. I think they hated it. But the more successful their work was, the more famous they became.’ Lydia stops, looks at Colm.
‘Our father received most of this attention, because he was young and handsome and the spokesman for the group. But he found it hateful. He wasn’t that sort of person at all.’
‘Was that why he left the Twelve?’
‘That – and other reasons.’
• • •
The days are hotter and hotter. The children get up very early each morning and walk in the cooler part of the day, rest when the sun is high. When their food and water run low Moss scavenges in the dirt, finds brown beetles buried deep and veins of moisture trapped in brittle roots. He sings to Colm and Lydia as they walk, sometimes in the Outer Speech, sometimes the Inner. The songs, Colm finds, seem strangely both to cool his flesh and burn his heart.
‘Will you teach me your songs?’ he asks the older boy one day.
It is early morning. The sun is soft against the pale cliffs that rise from the earth on either side of them, tints them orange, gold. The sky is close and creamy, their footfalls quiet on the dusty ground.
‘You must sing of your own time,’ says Moss. ‘Of your own knowings.’
They walk on in silence. Colm thinks of Joe, of Marla and her children, of the green brew they drank there, of the dark cellar room, of Turi, the little rat baby. He thinks of how Marla referred to the child as her lucky charm, of how she believed he brought water to the place, made the vegetables grow. He thinks of how the strange child broke away from his mother’s teat and gazed upon Lydia, how Lydia in turn gazed upon the child, how there was recognition there, and quietness. He thinks of all these things until there is a beauty in the words, a solidity, a cohesion, and a small thread of sound begins to accompany them, so quiet at first that it is almost imperceptible, then louder and louder so that it fills the words, reaches the corners of the consonants, the spaces of the vowels, wells up around them and through them, so much so that there is not room enough on the inside of him and he opens his mouth to the song that emerges.
Now it is Colm who sings, who cannot stop singing. He has never sung before, not really, and he finds that he loves it, wants never to stop. He sings in the Outer Speech as they walk through the day, sings softly as they sit about Moss’s bright fires in the evening, and sings in the Inner Speech when the darkness lies over them to lull them fast into their sleep.
One day he sings a future song, the first of its kind he has tried. He sings of the gathering of the clouds at the time of the Rekindling, drawing from images he has seen in his father’s books, from tales he has heard others tell. He sings of the clouds appearing as great snowy mountains, rolling in from the ocean and covering the sky above the dry land. He sings of the weight of them, of the heaviness and the bursting. And he sings of their breaking, their splitting, their letting fall from their midst the sweetest cool rain.
‘Look,’ says Lydia when he has finished, and points to the sky. The three of them lift their gaze into the blueness, see there a wisp of white, a mere ribbon of cloud.
‘A sign,’ says Lydia. ‘Perhaps it all will happen as you say. Perhaps clouds will come, and soon.’
They watch, and the frail ribbon gathers itself, fills out so that it is a proper little cloud, though still very, very tiny, a mere puff, and hangs before them, a guide, it seems. As Colm watches, he feels again a sense of remembering, a grasping within at something long forgotten. And Brae’s shiny metal disc, which is engraved with the little white dove, grows strangely cool about his neck. He is not afraid.
• • •
They are heading north now. The ground is drier than they have yet seen, the air hotter. Sometimes in the evenings they see an orange glow on the northern horizon. They wonder if it is the great fire at the Centre.
‘We can’t keep heading due north for much longer,’ says Moss one day. ‘Certainly the Clan are less likely to look for us there, but it is only going to grow hotter and hotter the closer we get. We need to head northeast now, at least for a time.’
Colm and Lydia follow the diagram he is scratching in the dirt. The Centre he draws as a great pool of fire; Wonding he patterns on its eastern side with pretty waves and boats. Their current location he marks with three stick figures in an aspect of motion. The distance between this point and the place of destination seems deceptively small.
‘It’s a long way really, though, isn’t it?’ Colm says.
‘Yes,’ replies Moss. ‘A very long way.’
‘Where do you think the nearest town is, Moss?’ asks Lydia.
Moss scratches about in the ground, indicating a point quite close to the walking figures. ‘Jenna’s Crossing,’ he says. ‘A couple of days away. But the Clan would expect us to go there – so we won’t.’ He indicates another spot in the dirt. ‘We’ll go further on, to Kulwurra.’
‘Is that a big town?’ asks Colm
‘No, it’s small,’ Moss replies. ‘But functioning as recently as a year ago. Not sure what it’s like now.’
‘We really need to get a truck or something to take us on the next leg of our journey,’ says Lydia.
‘Wait, Lyd,’ says Colm. ‘We don’t even know what Moss wants to do. He doesn’t have to come with us to Wonding. He probably wants to head south, away from the fire.’
Moss is silent.
‘Well, Moss?’ says Lydia.
‘I don’t plan to go south,’ the boy says at last. ‘I plan to head north, with you.’
‘Why?’ asks Colm.
‘For the same reason that I helped you to escape from the dome. For the Wish Kin. If your father is a member and he needs you with him, then I want to make sure you get there safely.’
‘Thank you,’ says Colm.
Moss smiles and scrapes the stick about in the dirt. Colm suddenly feels tremendously happy.
• • •
They reach Kulwurra three days later, approach it carefully. The journey in is hard. The road is blocked by large boulders and it takes the children a long time to travel a short distance. It is difficult to tell whether the boulders are deliberately placed in order to prevent raiders e
ntering the town, or if there has been an earthquake or some other type of natural disaster in the area.
The town is quiet, the streets deserted; not even a dog sits in the shade by the old river bank. The children walk cautiously, glancing at shuttered windows and doors firmly locked and bolted. Colm sees a curtain flutter, wonders if they are being watched.
They make their way through the eerie outskirts towards the heart of town.
‘Looks like there’s no water left,’ says Colm as they near the town well. Ahead of them, the well, positioned precisely in the centre of the town square, is clearly boarded over. A sign is nailed to one of the posts. Empty, it reads.
‘How strange that they put that there,’ says Lydia.
They stand in the square for a moment looking about them, wondering where to go now, what to do. Still, there is little sign of life. A lone crow flies overhead, cawing into the silent sky. The children cross the square and push their way through sticky coloured fly strips into a dusty milk bar. The woman behind the counter looks up from her crossword as they enter.
‘Do you have any drinks?’ Moss asks.
‘Nuh,’ says the woman.
‘No Fantas or anything?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Any water?’
The woman lets out a long, hot breath and heaves her bulk off the stool. Her belly scrapes along the linoleum counter, dragging her crossword onto the floor.
‘Not cheap, water,’ she says.
‘We can pay you,’ says Colm.
The woman keeps her eyes on Colm as she lowers her arms into the cool box. ‘Three waters?’ she asks.
‘Thank you,’ says Moss.
She pulls out three small glass bottles and holds out her hand. Colm places three coins into her palm. When she does not respond, he places another coin and another. Only when there are six coins in a little heap on her palm does she open the bottles and slide them across the counter. The children drink the murky water slowly, uncertain.
‘Where does this come from?’ Moss asks.
The woman shrugs. ‘Ask no questions, hear no lies.’ She ducks down behind the counter for a moment then reappears with the crossword book in her hand. ‘Aah,’ she says as she lifts herself back onto her stool. ‘Eight-letter word for “pain” beginning with s.’
‘Soreness,’ says Colm at once, and the woman counts out the letters before marking them carefully on the page.
‘Very good,’ she says without looking up.
‘Can you tell us,’ Colm asks, mildly confident in the light of this small success, ‘where we might be able to find someone with a truck or something?’
‘A truck,’ says the woman.
‘Yes, please.’
She ponders a moment then says, ‘Six-letter word for “out”, second letter b.’
‘Absent,’ says Colm.
Again the woman counts out the letters before marking them on her page.
‘Seven-letter word for “irritant”, ending in e.’
‘Nuisance,’ says Colm after a moment.
‘That’s right,’ says the woman. ‘You are.’
‘Oh,’ says Colm. ‘So you don’t know anybody with a truck, then?’
The woman lifts her head from her crossword, looks closely at the children. ‘You’ve come a long way by the looks of you.’
‘Yes,’ says Moss. ‘And we’ve further to go. If you could help us out with some information we’d be grateful.’
‘Not that that’d do me much good.’ The woman’s mouth is turned down but they can tell she is smiling. ‘Come on, then,’ she says. ‘We’ll ask Will.’
They follow her back through the fly strips and into the heat of the day. She raps on the window of the shop next door and they wait, the four of them, while the bolts are slid back.
‘These kids wanna go in your truck,’ says the woman to the young man who emerges. He has cropped black hair and a long, pale face. His blue eyes squint against the sun.
‘Do they?’ he says. ‘Where do they want a ride to?’
‘Do I look like a travel agent?’ The woman turns and shuffles back into her shop, the fly strips falling behind her with a soft slap-slapping sound.
‘We’d like to go to Bennett’s Creek,’ says Moss. ‘Or in that direction.’
Will folds his arms across his chest and turns his eyes upwards. ‘It’s expensive to go up there,’ he says. ‘Even if I had to go that way, it wouldn’t be cheap.’
Colm finds the manner of these people irritating, wonders why they can’t just say outright how much things will cost.
‘Then there’s that fire everyone’s going on about,’ says Will. ‘That’s gotta be a lot of danger money right there.’
‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ says Moss. He lays his hand on the young man’s shoulder and the two turn away into the gloom of the shop.
Colm and Lydia sit on the side of the road and scrape their feet in the dust. Colm wishes he had a book to read. He hasn’t read anything in ages. Why didn’t they think to pack something? Ah, but they did, he recalls. Only they couldn’t decide what. Damn. If only they’d packed something. Anything would have been better than nothing.
Moss reappears. ‘He’ll take us out there tomorrow morning. In return we pay for fuel and clean up his shop.’
Colm and Lydia are slightly taken aback at this. ‘Right,’ says Colm. ‘That sounds gander.’
They follow Moss through the street door and into the shop. The walls are lined with dark wooden shelves, the shelves with figurines and miniatures. A thick film of dust coats everything.
‘He wants all this cleaned up,’ says Moss. ‘Dusted, wiped down. Thinks it should take the rest of the day. I reckon he’s right.’
Lydia picks up a small rubber figure dressed in a pink leotard and mauve leggings. She has never seen such a thing before.
‘Is this a doll?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ says Moss. Lydia holds the doll nervously in her hands, her arms stretched out at some distance from her. It is clear she has no idea what to do with it.
‘In past times,’ Moss explains, ‘young girls would play with such a toy, dress it up and pretend to take it shopping.’
Lydia continues to stare at the doll, looking, Colm thinks, as though she really wants to understand it but can’t. All she says is, ‘Shopping?’
Will enters carrying a bucket and several old cloths, then leaves them to it. They get to work clearing the shelves and wiping the dust off ceramic clowns and plastic poodles. Colm wonders at the strangeness of it all: only a short time ago they were prisoners in a shining white dome and now look at where they are! It is all a little odd.
The work takes them through the afternoon and into the evening. There are countless of these toys, many of which are clearly some sort of storybook character from a past age, most unfamiliar to Colm. Some he knows from tales their father had told them, and a couple of others from books kept from their father’s childhood. But, like Lydia, he does not properly understand them. As the room grows gloomier and gloomier, hundreds of small shadows play upon the walls; Snow Whites and Ginger Meggses and Popeyes stretch elongated limbs away from the window. Colm begins to feel uneasy among the things, begins to wish the job were over and done, begins to wish they had never agreed to such a peculiar bargain.
Will enters from the back of the shop and snaps on the light. Suddenly everything is plain again, and easy. Colm forgets at once his nervousness at Will’s offer of food and they all troop past the now gleaming glass cabinets and shiny shelves to the sitting room beyond.
It is a funny room, Colm thinks later. At the time, he was happy to be away from the eerie figurines of the shop and the cold of the desert evening, happy to be drinking weak herbal tea and eating hard brown biscuits. But later that night when he is in the little bed at the top of the stairs, reflecting upon the day, he thinks how odd this room is, how anomalous, in its charm, its quaintness, with the faded tapestries on its walls, its little worked ottoman, it
s neat nest of walnut tables. Everything so ancient and cared for, everything of another time, another era, when such stuff meant something, when the things that mattered weren’t just finding water and food and somewhere safe to sleep. How strange it is to think of a time when beauty might mean something. How strange and how wonderful.
CHAPTER
10
When Colm wakes the following morning his throat is dry and sore, his body heavy as though his veins are full of lead. He tries to get up but finds he cannot even lift his head from the pillow.
‘Could’ve been something in that water we drank yesterday,’ says Moss after he has peered down the younger boy’s throat and laid his hand against Colm’s forehead. ‘I reckon it looked a bit suspicious.’
‘Why aren’t we sick, then?’ asks Lydia.
Moss shrugs. ‘Just lucky.’ He wipes Colm’s face gently with a damp cloth. ‘You’re probably not fit to travel, are you?’
‘I’m gander,’ Colm replies, his voice a whisper. ‘I really am.’
‘Don’t be silly, Colm,’ says Lydia. ‘You’re far too sick to be going anywhere.’
‘Well, I can’t stay here, can I!’
‘I’ll fix something up with Will,’ says Moss. ‘Don’t you worry.’
‘I don’t mean just because of Will,’ croaks Colm. ‘I mean because of the Clan. Won’t they be searching for us?’
‘Maybe.’ Moss looks out the window, worried, Colm thinks through his haze.
‘You can’t travel,’ insists Lydia. ‘You need to rest.’
‘Will’s got a truck, hasn’t he?’ asks Colm. ‘Can’t I just lie on the back seat?’
So an hour later, after a breakfast of powdered eggs and oatcakes, they set out in Will’s hundred-year-old truck. The woman from the milk bar sees them off with half a loaf of bread and a can of Fanta.
‘Heard the young fella was sick,’ she says. ‘Thought the drink might cheer him up.’