by Joss Hedley
Moss hands them another rind of bread. ‘You never finished telling me about your father,’ he says. ‘About why it was that he left the Twelve.’
‘It’s not a very nice story,’ says Lydia.
‘Please tell me.’
Moss looks serious, concerned. Colm thinks he is trying to make up for the trouble underground, wants there to be only peace between them. So he speaks.
‘You remember what we told you about the Twelve – the fame, the success. After a while, things began to get worse again because people didn’t want to listen. Well, they did and they didn’t. They wanted it both ways. Instead of following the principles set out by the Twelve which would have made the system work, people began to consume even more, thinking that, oh, one more of this won’t hurt, or a little more of that won’t do any harm because, after all, the Twelve are on the job, science has it under control. This was incredibly difficult for our father, incredibly frustrating for him – for all the Twelve, really. The Twelve came under even greater pressure to create more eco-enhancements, to counter the ever-growing consumerism and destruction the people were bringing about. Our father found this pressure unbearable and then, when he discovered that a number of the Twelve were corrupt, he cracked.’
‘Our parents fled then,’ says Lydia. ‘They left the city and hid in the bush. It was a terrible time for them. They were chased – by police and helicopters and everything. Our father had become public property, you see, was considered vital to the saving of the world.’
Colm wipes his mouth, continues the story. ‘They got away and headed south where they established the fortified valley in Hirrup’s Range. Our father was still ill at this time, but had plans to begin work again soon, this time with more trustworthy people. He wanted to form a community on Hirrup’s Range and was beginning to get better when our mother was killed: a sheet of loose earth slid from the side of the mountain onto the car in which they were driving. Our father suffered a complete breakdown then: he was sure that our mother’s death was no accident. I don’t think he’s ever really recovered.’
Colm stops, broken. He feels wrecked on the inside – at the misfortune of his father, at the death of his mother. His head bows, his hand releases the bread it has been holding. He is far away.
‘Colm,’ says Lydia softly, and Colm feels the pressure of his sister’s hand on his arm. He looks up, gathers himself, remembers where he is.
Lydia and Moss are looking at him with concern. Lydia seems calm and unaffected by the telling of the story. He cannot understand this. He thinks that maybe it is because she was so small when their mother died, and when their father was ill. He thinks that maybe she can’t really remember their mother, or their father as he was before.
‘Are you gander, Colm?’ Lydia asks.
‘I’m gander,’ Colm replies. He picks up the bread he dropped, dusts it off, looks again at Moss. ‘Our father has never spoken much about that time, just snippets really. I suppose he thinks we’re too young, and not ready. But maybe now, after all this, he’ll tell us. Maybe now he’ll think we’re ready.’
A sickness grips him; the knowledge that some unknown thing has to be done, and done by him, is as a lead weight in his gut. He wants to take to his bed, to curl up in his small glass box and spin far, far away. He wants to take to his bed and sleep and never wake up. But he doesn’t. He forces himself to stand, to breathe deeply.
‘Might walk to the sea,’ he says to Lydia and Moss.
‘Be careful,’ they say.
He nods, and sets out around the rim of the tarmac, keeping close to the shelter of outbuildings and packing crates.
At the edge of the tarmac he heaves himself over the line of blocks so that the sea is stretched out unimpeded before him. The tide is low, the beach between him and the water a good fifty metres across. He walks a little, his bare feet rejoicing in the night-coolness of the sand, then stops at the dark line of water coming in from the east.
It is the strange, grey time just on the edge of dawn. The air, already warming with the nearness of sun, folds in gentle layers about Colm as he stands. He sees the way it is slowly lightening as the sun draws yet nearer, as the sun sends the first of its scouting rays from beneath the horizon into the new land of day. He watches, and it seems that no time passes as the light grows brighter, grows clearer, grows so that he can make out the shape of the headland far to the south, the jumble of rock just to the north. He looks at the lightening day, at the clarity that shapes the oceans and sand, and feels a leaping inside him, an arc of joy.
In the distance, way out to sea, he imagines he sees something. What is it? he wonders. It is not on the water, but it appears to be not far above it. At least, the perspective from here to there makes it seem as though it is not far above it. He gazes at the little thing, stares at it, wonders if it is something of his imagination, something he wants to see, if it is a fleck of dust on his retina, or if it is real. He stares and stares, but the thing is so small that he has no answer.
He knows what he thinks it is. At least, he knows what he wants it to be. Yet he can barely allow himself to think the thought of the thing.
But a voice in his head – his own? his father’s? – prompts him. What is it? the voice asks. Name the name of what it is. And he listens to the voice and responds, opens his mouth, moves his lips to form the shape of the word, raises the back of his tongue to the roof of his mouth then flicks the muscle round and forward to just behind his teeth to form the sound, breathes out with the saying of it, and says it. ‘Cloud.’ The moment he gives voice to the word, he knows that what he sees there above the lightening grey of the sea is indeed that very thing.
At once the dim shape seems to swell, to bloom. Colm watches it, sees how it takes shape and form, sees how its edges thicken and increase. He drags his eyes slowly to bare space on the left of the cloud and watches as the nearest rim of it stretches out in ribbons to follow the same path. He sings and the cloud thickens, grows a fullness, a depth, at its heart.
The day grows lighter. Bands of red and yellow dress the sky, blooden the moving water. A crest of sun appears, flaming, on the horizon. Colm shifts his eyes from the little cloud to look at the fiery spill of colours, but the little cloud does not like this, will not let him look away, and follows again the shift of his gaze so that she, deepening, burgeoning thing, is still in it.
Colm laughs, feels his cheeks burn hot. The little cloud is nearer now than before, and seems larger. She is growing fuller and fuller, for Colm is singing to her once more, and, it seems, she likes this. He thinks for a moment of Jeune, of how she liked his singing too. Now he sings of the cloud’s beauty, for he thinks that as she gets closer and fuller, the wonder of her increases. He sings and watches the frayed thread-like edges of her fill out so that they are like small cloud satellites around a cloud moon. He laughs and sings, watches now the cloud grow pink and fat with expectation – a woman with child, he thinks, a woman with many children. And she, fatter and fatter and pinker and pinker, proud and content with her mad, joyous lot, her brood of blossoming baby clouds, clinging close and expanding her reaches so that there is much of her now, much of her to look at, to sing to, to rejoice in.
A whisper passes through Colm’s mind, a whisper of the last time he did this, of the last time he sang to a cloud, to a wisp of mist in the sky, when he was on the beach near Aunt Ilena’s house. The whisper reminds him of Moss’s reaction, of how the older boy grew anxious, edgy, told him to stop it, to stop with his singing, said that it was not the right time. Another whisper, but from Lydia. The cloud was answering you, she had said to him. It was responding to your words, your melody. And more, from Moss, Enough. It is not the right time.
Whisper, whisper. What did they mean? Enough. Enough. He’d been edgy, had Moss, anxious. It is not the right time, he’d said. But what did he mean? Colm is pulled in his mind, drawn in to the whispering, fractured a little, troubled.
But the cloud lures him back. She is so ful
l now, her children about her growing, grown, so that they are as big as her, so that they are bigger. Where is she now? Colm wonders, for in place of the pretty little cloud is a vast expanse, solid almost, though still flushed pink with the sun.
I know the colour of you, he sings, and the cloud swells yet further, shows him that she is happy that he knows.
He sings and sings, the cloud blossoms and unfurls, loads the sky with radiant thickness. The sun is fully above the horizon now, is travelling quickly, but Colm can see that, at any moment, it will journey behind the wealth of cloud, will disappear from sight. What then? he wonders. But on he sings, and on and on and on.
And he is right. The sun rides and rides till it finds itself bedded again, after so short a day, beneath the blanket of cloud. At once the light changes, lessens. It is as though it is the first phase of dusk, Colm thinks, or the latter of dawn. He has never seen such a thing before. He has never seen any but the natural course of the day bring down the sun’s brightness. It amazes him, this sudden dimness, and in turn amazes him that he could not have previously thought such a thing possible. He looks at his pretty little cloud, now unrecognisable as a vast field of whiteness in the dimming sky, and marvels. How can this be? He listens to the pushing ocean, to the wind in the sand grasses. He cannot believe what he sees, cannot believe what has just happened. He hears again the whisper, again the words of Lydia. The cloud was answering you. It was responding to your words, your melody. He shakes his head at this, shakes the whisper from out of his ears, the thought from out of his mind. But how? he thinks. Such a thing is not possible. But he thinks of the other time when he played with the cloud, and he hears now another voice, his father’s, pressing him: Remember who you are, Colm. Remember who you are.
He lowers his head, draws his gaze from the cloud to the water at his feet.
Why, Father? he asks.
Still only the insistence of the words. Remember who you are. Remember who you are. And then, Only you can do it now.
It is not his father’s voice, he knows. It is the memory of it. But it is the last thing he heard him say.
And so he gathers himself.
‘I am Colm Bell,’ he says aloud, his head raised now to the growing bank of cloud. ‘I am Colm Bell, son of Rafe the scientist and inventor, and of Rose the artist; brother of Lydia, my closest companion, and fellow traveller of Moss. I am Colm Bell who loves each of these people, who loves, too, the beautiful Jeune, who wants one day to be with her again.’
The cloud thickens and greys, moves in slowly from across the sea. Colm is terrified by the sight of it, by the awfulness of it and the might. He covers his fear with an act of his will and curls his fingers to fists.
‘I am Colm Bell who ran for hours through the tunnel to safety,’ he says. ‘I am Colm Bell who survived for months in the desert. I am Colm Bell who has learned to thread my life into songs. I am Colm Bell who converses in the Inner Speech. I am Colm Bell who believes in the Rekindling. I am Colm Bell who desires that our land be made whole once again.’
The cloud is no longer out to sea. It is no longer in the distance. It is directly above the boy, and is low over his head. It is a fearful thing. There is no sky left, no sky or sun, only great grey mountains of cloud, of dense, heavy cloud. There is whispering, whispering, and pressing, pressing. Colm pushes the heels of his hands into his temples, wanting to still the growing upheaval inside, wanting to quiet the memories of voices, of words.
Remember who you are. It is up to you now. The cloud was answering you. It was responding to your words, your melody. Enough. It is not the right time. Enough. Enough. It is not the right time. It is up to you now. Your words, your melody. Only you can do it now, Colm. Remember who you are. Remember who you are. Remember who you are.
‘I am Colm Bell!’ he says into the stormy sky, he says into the thick, grey humming cloud. ‘I am Colm Bell!’ His voice is strong and firm. It does not waver as he unfolds the sounds of who he is, the sounds of the parts making up his name. ‘Colm Bell,’ he says along the edge of the hum of cloud. ‘I am Colm Bell.’
It is not enough. The cloud wants more. The whispering and the pressing demand of him more, lure from him more. And he knows there is more, but what? What?
A shout from behind and he turns. Lydia and Moss are running towards him across the sand. Their faces are stretched, fearful. He can see that they are saying something to him, but he cannot hear them for the slow crash of waves, for the rush of wind stirring the sand into flurries. Only with this last does he realise that the air about him has become brittle, charged. It crackles his blood, twists into his heart, and he feels suddenly – profoundly – nervous. What? he demands, now angry, of the air, of the cloud. What is it you want?
There is a low and unsettled rumbling – thunder? – and Colm finds himself growing mad with frustration. I am Colm Bell! he shouts to the blackening heavens. That is who I am! There is no more! That is it! I am Colm Bell! But the thunder does not desist, grows instead deeper, and the cloud thickens and lowers so that there is no light at all, so that the day seems almost like night.
A hand on his arm, and Colm sees Lydia at his side. Her eyes have the fire in them. He sees that Brae’s disc is glowing bright on its cord about her neck, looks down and sees the same luminance emanating from his own. Lydia’s fingers bear into his flesh.
And then, looking at the disc, feeling the push of his sister’s fingers into his skin, hearing the rumble of thunder, the whir of the wind in the dry sand, he is taken back, is taken back to Ailis’s tent where first he heard of the Wish Kin, where first he listened to her tale of how they would one day gather to work with the earth to bring sweet rivers of rain, to soften the touch of the sun on the skin, to press into the soil a hope and a grace that had not been known for lifetimes. He thinks of Moss, who stands behind him now a little way away upon the beach, and of how the older boy had named for him this gathering of Kin, how he had called it the Rekindling. He thinks of Parsefal who had told him of the great fire in the Centre, and how it had started at the very place where the Rekindling was to occur, here, in Wonding. He thinks of how it was that their father had instructed them to meet in Wonding if ever they were separated, and wonders at the symmetry of it all, at the circular framing of these particulars.
Then he thinks of the images shown to him and Lydia in the holoview at the dome, of the image of the tiny cloud breaking and letting loose a scattering of water droplets over their own valley so very far away now, and wonders again how this happened, if indeed it did happen. He thinks of the few times in his life when he has seen a wisp of cloud, thinks of times more recently when it seemed to him as though he could play with cloud, as though there was something in the nature of the cloud itself that would respond to him, that somehow, perhaps, beckoned to him. He looks now at this great dark field of cloud spanning the length, the breadth, of the sky, thinks how only a short time before it was a mere tendril on the horizon, shakes his head at the ringing that he hears making its way to his mind, the whisper, a new one, finding its way to his thoughts, shakes his head against it, does not believe it, cannot, clamps his mouth, grinds his teeth, screws up his eyes against it, but it stays, is there, is present, grows louder in fact and still louder, so that his body vibrates with the truth of it, so that his heart cracks and blooms and grows, so that his skin smoothes out like a suit of shimmering silver, a suit that covers the ringing whole of him, so that his eyes no longer stay closed but open so wide he can see the entire world in a glance, whisper whisper louder and louder so that his head is full of every piece of wonder and beauty he has heard and seen and known, so that his feet are as though there is no earth beneath him, not the softness of sand or the cool touch of sea, but rather as though it is the cloud upon which he stands, the cloud which bears him up, the cloud that forms his pattern and place, the cloud that speaks his name.
Cloud Drawer! it says, in a voice of thunder and sky. Cloud Drawer! Cloud Drawer! And he cannot escape it, cannot
turn from it, and does not, knows he cannot for it is not separate from him, is not something other, and he does not wish to turn from it, but listens to the voice of thunder and sky, feels all that he feels, thinks all that has happened before and is happening now and does not want to do anything other than that which is bidden of him, that which is meant for him now to conclude, to begin, to continue, to unpeel and remember, and so he remembers, with that dark sea and sky, and so he speaks out for the first time his name, speaks it out to the air, to the black cloud above him, Cloud Drawer, Cloud Drawer, in the kind Inner Speech, kind, kind, so his fear is not all, Cloud Drawer, Cloud Drawer, and then in the Outer, in the way that the cloud would beseech him, he says it, so small, a young teenage boy on a planet of sand. ‘I am the Cloud Drawer,’ he says to the earth, to the sea, to the great, massing cloud.
‘I am the Cloud Drawer.’
The air, so charged and brittle, seems strangely to break. Brae’s metal disk glows yet brighter on Colm’s breast. He feels a fire in his chest, wonders if it is in his eyes as he sees in Lydia’s right now. His sister’s hand is still on his arm, her fingers pressing still into his flesh. She is having her own remembering, it seems to Colm. She is staring into his eyes with her own wild and fiery ones. Her body trembles: small convulsions against the enormity of recognition.
But Colm feels strangely light now, feels oddly relieved. He looks again at the sky, and at the great and beautiful cloud that is its face, sings softly to her in the Inner Speech. The cloud billows further as he sings, seems to welcome his drawing, blooms joyfully into it. There is contentment between them, between the cloud and her boy.
Lydia’s fingers tighten their grip on Colm’s arm and he looks again at his sister. Her eyes are intent now upon the great bank of cloud, her lips working silently, working over and over. Colm tunes his listening to hear, tunes out the din of the crashing waves, of the flurrying sand, of the electric resonating air, listens carefully to the movement of his sister’s lips, to the breath coming out from between them. ‘I am the Rain Maker,’ he hears her say. ‘I am the Rain Maker.’ Her lips open to a sigh and the answering word falls as a drop of water on her face.