by Joss Hedley
CHAPTER
17
And so it rains. Two quiet chords of recognition, of remembering, bring the clouds to the sky, bring the weight from the clouds, and the rain falls upon the thirsty earth, falls and falls, so that the skin of the earth is softened, is sated, so that dry riverbeds begin to thicken to mud, begin to gather to pools, so that the cracks in the bare plains fill with water and smooth out, an unbroken sheet now of gleaming brown, so that the shrivelled succulents that occasion the dirt fatten, swell with moisture, so that glassy droplets run from the bark of trees, from the spindly leaves, run fast into the jagged roots, so that the air is filled with a sound long forgotten, with a sound never heard by many, a sound thought lost to the aging memory: the sighing of the contented earth.
Colm, Lydia and Moss stand still and silent beneath the falling rain. Their bodies are wet, their faces shining. They turn their mouths to the sky and swallow the sweet water, gasp with the rush of it, the substance of it. Their arms float gently upwards, lifted with the joy of their exalting flesh. The pores on their skin open, spew out the dust of years, and drink and drink.
They stand there for days, it seems, or months. The hours rush and collide and fall over each other as the rain pours down from the sky, as the wind drives it into the wet sand in arrows and small spears, as the vast Pacific swell of ocean is pockmarked by it and pimpled. The tide moves slowly in; everything is surrendering itself to water.
Behind them, Colm hears a sound, familiar but not at once recognisable. He turns to find the source of the sound and sees great sheets of water rushing off the sloping edges of the blocks encircling the tarmac. He remembers then the irrigation system their father had constructed back in Hirrup’s Range, recalls that this is the same sound as when the sluice gates opened and the water raced down the deep wooden channel and into the spreading pipes. It is the sound of abundance, of plenty.
Moss moves beside him, Lydia takes his hand. The three of them walk back up the beach to the shelter of palms. Their footprints do not last but fill at once with water.
They are quiet as they walk. There is enough, they think, with the rain and the rising ocean and the wet sand and the low growl of thunder. There is enough here with their quenched skin and the tines of distant lightning and the sound of water falling quickly on water.
The rain is heavier now, the cloud darker. Colm wonders how the whole weather process works: does the cloud have a certain amount of rain inside it, which it has to let fall before it disappears? If that is the case, why is the rain heavier now? Shouldn’t it be a bit lighter? It has been raining for some time, after all. And do clouds indeed disappear? Or are they just left like empty ethereal bladders in the sky ready for refilling?
A shout, and they turn to look. There is movement across the tarmac at the airport buildings. The rain has brought out the Clan.
Come, says Colm. We must go to the prisoners.
The rain increases. It is difficult now to see. The children lower their heads, keep their eyes on the sodden sand before them. They hurry around the tarmac to approach the airport buildings from the west and avoid the Clan, running out now from an exit previously unknown to the children and onto the beach. The journey around is made long through the rain, through the wind, but they are not sorry for it. For how could three children who have never seen rain be sorry for it now that they do?
The cloud is hanging low over the buildings, seems to shroud everything. Fog, says Moss, and Colm nods, remembering vaguely of having once heard of this. The fact of the fog means that they can move quickly across the short stretch of tarmac, the weather itself a shield against sighting.
The tarmac – here with the weather so low, the rain so dense – is slick with water. Great pools have gathered in the area around the buildings. The children wade through these to get to the doorway of the underground industria – thankfully still deserted – and slip quickly into the tunnel. Water is flowing under the door of the building and across the concrete floor. The tunnel walls are streaming.
As they descend, the rushing, whooshing sound of the water follows the children into darkness. They cannot hear the mechanics of the industria for the watery din, wonder in fact if it is even working at all. They descend and descend, careful now for the slipperiness of the ladder, the uncertainty of step.
They find themselves again on the ledge looking out across the cavern, but at a scene quite different from what they saw before. There is urgency now, and anxiety. The workers in their sturdy grey overalls move about in disarray, switching switches, turning wheels, shouting orders to one another across the grinding of the machinery. On the podium, the Pater stands in heated discussion with Angus and several others. He is gesticulating dramatically, his face struck with fury. The water is a grey film on the cavern floor.
A command is given and several of the workers scurry off into outleading tunnels. The Pater paces back and forth on the podium. The others try to speak to him, Angus included, but he indicates aggressively that they refrain, that they leave him to his pacing.
‘Look,’ says Moss, and indicates towards the high ceiling of the cavern. Colm and Lydia gaze upwards, see above them rivulets of water seeping through the stone and dripping down towards the floor in long silver threads. The walls too are slick with water.
The children stand and continue through the tunnel. As soon as they can, they climb into the air vent and follow the pillars of light till they are above the first of the cells. The woman they saw crying earlier has her face pressed to the stone wall. Her mouth is fast to the running water, her dry body quick to it.
In the next cell, the two young men are face down on the floor, their tongues lapping at the grey water as it seeps beneath the door. In the third cell, the muttering man lifts his face heavenward before scooping the stuff into his hands and drinking thirstily. ‘Sweet,’ the children hear him say in a voice rasping and unused. ‘Sweet, sweet!’
It is the same in each of the cells on this level. Prisoners, parched and dry for so many years, quench now their long, hot thirst with the rainwater that seeps beneath the prisoning doors. Their shouts are heard along the corridors and up into the ceiling. The children hear them calling out to one another, calling out in joy at the wonder that is water.
The next level down and the water is heavier. The floors are awash with it. The prisoners slosh about in it up to their ankles. In the first of the cells containing ten or so people, there is still a sense of jubilation at the sight of it. But when they reach the last of the cells on this level, the sense is less excitement and more concern. For the prisoners here have drunk their fill, have bathed and splashed about, and are now anxious that it is not stopping, that it continues to rise.
Further down, the children look into the largest of the cells, that in which their father is incarcerated, and see the two hundred or so prisoners within. The water here is lapping at the knees of those standing, at the chests of those sitting. Worse, the sewer trench surrounding the cell is flooded and the room is awash with excrement. There seem fewer prisoners now than yesterday. In a flush of panic Colm wonders if it is because some of them, too weak to sit up, have drowned where they lay.
‘We have to get them out!’ he cries to the others, not caring to hush his voice, not caring to use the Inner Speech. And for once Moss does not remonstrate with him but nods, intent.
The three of them crawl over to the space above the cell door, look down into the corridor. The keeper is standing knee-deep in water, shifting about anxiously and throwing his gaze up and down the corridor. A band of keys hangs at his belt.
There is a horrible sound from within the cell, a deep chilling moan, and the children look to see a man holding in his arms a woman, her body limp, her head hanging backwards on a scrawny neck. He is pumping her arms, blowing air into her mouth, but she has wilted, it seems, is without life.
Horrified, the children crawl back through the space until they find a way out through a panel and into the flooding corrido
r below. They feel the force of the water at once. It pushes at their legs, threatens to tumble them, to take them along in its current. They join hands, hold hard against the weight of it, the zeal of it, and make their way in the direction of the cell door.
But even as they are pressing on, as they are pushing through, Colm wonders at it all. How is it possible, he thinks, that the thing they have all desired for so long, the thing he himself has desired for his entire life, and which has at last arrived, how could it bring with it not only joy and wonder and satedness and bliss, but fear and terror and destruction and ruin? No one has ever spoken of this to him, he has never heard such words – fear, terror, destruction, ruin – associated with the beauty that is water.
And for himself, that it was he who first drew this cloud, he who first stirred into wakedness that which gave birth to the rain – it is as a bitter pill. Worse, he thinks that he has done wrong in the drawing, for that act has led to this where people lie trapped, with water to their chests, in fear of drowning as, perhaps, others have drowned already.
There is a shout behind them and they hear a heavy drag and crash through the torrent: the sound of someone approaching. At Moss’s command they inhale deeply and drop beneath the churning surface. They wait.
Gander? Colm hears Moss say.
Gander, he replies. And Lydia too responds. Gander, she says, though it is clear from the thinness of her Speech that she is labouring. A heavy pair of black boots charges past them, propelled, Colm imagines, by a pair of legs belonging to a keeper, or perhaps to one of the grey-clad workers. A few moments later, Moss indicates and they surface. Lydia takes in air hungrily.
Come on, says the older boy, and they follow him along the corridor with its churning, dangerous water and into the open space beyond.
The man in black boots is in conversation with the keeper of the cell. The former has not gone all the way to the keeper – who is still some distance off, out of sight of the three – but is standing at a bend in the corridor afraid, or hesitant, reluctant. Colm sees at once that it is because he is in a hurry, disturbed by the rising, agitated water.
‘They’re going now!’ shouts the man in black boots. ‘You’ll have to take the podium exit! They won’t wait!’
‘What about the prisoners?’ calls the keeper.
‘There’s no time! We’ve got to get out! The whole place is flooding, the engine room is destroyed! We’ve got to go now!’
He turns and charges back towards Colm, Lydia and Moss, who again drop beneath the surface of the water, wait with eeking breath for him to pass. Colm sees the boots dimly through the darkening, deepening water, sees how, suddenly, they do not pass but stop right there, just a short distance away.
Go! he wills the man. Go!
The boots shift, point back towards the keeper. Colm feels his breath weaken.
Moss’s voice seems faint. Gander? Colm thinks he hears. Gander, he replies, and waits for Lydia to respond. She does not.
He reaches for his sister, finds Moss searching for her too. Their hands meet hers, find their way to her face, her mouth.
Lydia! calls Moss. His voice now is as a whisper, though Colm knows he is shouting. He sees his sister’s eyes panicked and staring. Her cheeks are blown out, her lips pressed hard together in an effort not to take in water. She looks desperately at Colm, at Moss, then releases the last of her breath.
In an instant, in that brief moment when they all know that Lydia’s automatic reflexes to surface will kick in or that her next breath will be her death, Moss grabs her and presses his mouth to her own, blows into her lungs his final reserve. In that same instant, the black boots shift again and turn from the keeper of the cell. They move away, disappear. A moment later the children crash up through the water’s surface, suck in the steaming air.
This time, thinks Colm, this time I am breathing bliss.
Lydia is shaking. Her face is a strange colour, her lips pale. Moss takes her hand, leads them along the corridor towards the door of the cell. The keeper appears before them, his face crossed with anxiety.
‘The prisoners!’ he calls after the black-booted man, now long gone. He looks at the children, sees Moss in the lead. He is startled, bewildered, does not make sense of things. He sees Moss, knows that he knows him though does not stop to think from where, and begins, suddenly, strangely, almost to plead with him for help.
‘What about the prisoners?’ he asks the boy. ‘What are we to do with them?’
Colm is beside Moss, looks at his friend carefully. That same fire, known well to him now, is burning in the older boy’s eyes.
‘You must escape,’ Moss says to the man. ‘And you must go now. But give me the keys. I will deal with the prisoners.’
The keeper spins the band of keys from his belt and tosses them to Moss. He is relieved to be given an order, to be able to relinquish authority, to be able to save his skin. Such is his fear that he does not grasp that the one to whom he has so relinquished is a ragamuffin boy half his age. The children do not watch him depart.
The door to the cell is heavy, made more so by the weight of the water upon it. Moss turns the key in the lock, the three of them pull on the handle.
‘It won’t budge!’ Colm shouts. ‘The water is too strong!’
‘Keep trying!’ Moss shouts back over the din of the rushing water. ‘Pull harder!’
The water is higher and higher, its churning stronger and stronger. Lydia’s face is a fretted knot of focus; Colm can see the strings of muscle standing out in her neck.
‘What about Father?’ he hears her say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The others, on the inside, they can push,’ she says.
She calls to their father in the Inner Speech, but so that Colm and Moss can hear.
Father! she calls. Father!
There is another rush of water, another increase in its level.
Lydia! they hear from beyond the cell door. Colm!
Father! Father! cries Lydia. You must push the door. You must get everyone to push on the door!
And then a strange thing happens to Colm. He feels as though he is beyond the door with his father, is on the inside of the cell with him. He is both here in the corridor pulling at the door handle with Lydia and Moss, and is also inside the cell standing beside the frail form of his father. Rafe Bell, seated now on the hard floor, has deteriorated still further. His eyes are sunken and hollow, his cheekbones stand out like razors in his face. He raises a feeble arm to his son.
Colm, he says. Tell the others, those there who are stronger, to push. I am too weak.
He drops his arm and lowers his head, exhausted, it seems, with the effort of speaking to his son. Colm feels a tearing in his chest, but turns to several men and instructs them in the opening of the door. He too pushes, and from the outside he pulls, and the door, wanting to open to free those within, is at last able.
A wash of water floods into the room and several people disappear into its depths. There are screams and those who are able plunge beneath the water and draw their loved ones to the surface. Colm wades back to where he last saw his father, drops into the torrent to search for him. His breath runs out before he finds him, and he surfaces. Again he plunges, and again and again and again. But every time there is nothing. He comes up for air.
‘Colm!’
The boy turns at the sound of his name, hoping to see his father. But it is Moss.
‘I need you to lead them to the top, to the podium! Lydia too. I’ll stay till everyone is out then unlock the other cells.’
‘But Father!’ shouts Colm. ‘I can’t find him!’
‘Go, Colm! You have to go. They don’t know the way. You need to show them.’
‘I can’t go without Father. I have to find him. I’m not leaving.’
‘You are! Colm, you must go now! These people need you. Go! GO!’
Colm plunges beneath the water one last time, hoping, praying, that he might see his father. There i
s nothing now but darkness.
He surfaces, reels under the punch of pain, the great iron-knuckled fist of pain, in his gut. ‘This way!’ he calls to the people. An elderly woman clings to his arm, a child drags at his shirt. He lifts the child onto his back, motions to Lydia who holds in her arms a small baby. ‘Let’s go!’
This, Colm knows, is the hardest thing he has ever done in his life. There has never been anything harder. Never, not even when he was so long without food and water, or when he was crushed up inside the belly of the aeroplane. Not when he ran and ran through the tunnel till his body screamed at him, or when, exhausted, he hurled himself down the side of the plateau. No. This is it. This is the hardest thing. He has to abandon his search for the one he loves in order that these others might live.
Remember who you are. Remember who you are. And he does remember, and he knows that this is his duty, his obligation. He is the Cloud Drawer, a member of the Wish Kin. And as such he must serve his fellows.
He presses on through the torrent, grasping tightly the legs of the child on his back, keeping his arm strong for the elderly woman who clings to him. ‘Hurry!’ he calls over his shoulder to the others. ‘Please hurry!’
The corridor twists and rises. Colm has never walked this way before, has only ever viewed it from the space above. But he does not let doubt set in. He turns his mind from it and thinks only of moving upwards. He keeps his eye on Lydia, keeps her near.
It is a slow journey, this one. It is slow for the many people behind them, for their weakness, their exhaustion. It seems hours before they reach the ledge overlooking the great cavern, hours and hours of pressing through fast-flowing water – though it lessens a little the higher up they climb – hours and hours of the weight of a child on Colm’s back, of a woman on his arm, hours and hours of wondering, agonising, about his father.