The Wish Kin (8 page)

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.

They are woken early the next morning and led from the cell to the exterior of the building. The tall man walks before them, the two men with semi-automatics on either side and the boy behind. Colm wonders about this, wonders what the men think he and his sister could possibly do that would warrant armed guards. It seems absurd.

Strangely, he does not feel fear. The tall man, Colm thinks, appears to have their welfare in mind, for what reason he cannot imagine. And though he is not hanging all his hopes on the fact, there does seem to be some sort of chance they might be reunited with their father.

The sky is white this morning, the air hazy. A breeze is blowing from the north and carries with it the faintest smell of burning. Colm wonders at this, and speaks to the tall man.

‘Is that the smell of the Centre burning?' he asks.

The tall man does not stop but keeps on with his steady stride. ‘Where do you hear such tales?' he asks in response. ‘How can the earth burn?'

But you said so yourself last night! Colm wants to say. You said that the place was a fireball! He is uncertain, though, as to how the tall man would take this. He lowers his eyes and remains mute.

It is Lydia who speaks. Her voice is clear and smart.

‘You ask, how can the earth burn? Then I ask you, how can there be a time when it doesn't rain? How can there be a time when nothing grows? When the lakes and rivers have dried up? Our grandparents would not have been able to imagine this. But I cannot imagine a time of plenty.'

Colm looks at his sister, sees again that fire in her eyes. He wonders at her, wonders what it is that she has, sees how like their father she is.

The tall man does not answer but continues his steady stride. Colm, inspired by his sister, is roused to inquiry.

‘Where are we going?' he asks. ‘Why are we here? What do you want with us?'

But the tall man has had enough and gives Colm a cuff on the ear again. This time he hits a little harder, and it hurts.

The tall man stops at a doorway in the side of a building, a large metal dome. Colm wonders how it was that he missed this the previous evening. He finds it strange to see such gleaming whiteness here in the
brown desert where everything else is dirty and coarse and roughly made. But this building is clean and shining, as though it was polished this very morning by a hundred hands. The sun beats on its surface, making the air around it even warmer.

The two men with guns stand at the entrance of the dome while the tall man and the boy take the children inside. They walk the length of a curving corridor, the smoothness of its line broken every few metres by closed metal doors. One of these they enter. They are in a long room with white walls, white floors. Light filters in from above through panes of cloudy glass. The blue and yellow crest adorns the main wall. At the end of the room a man with a silver moustache sits behind a silver desk. He looks up from his work as they enter.

‘Yes?' he says.

‘The children of Rafe Bell, sir,' says the tall man.

The mustachioed man looks them over. His eye is sharp. He sees everything. Colm and Lydia stand perfectly still; they do not waver under his gaze.

‘Very good,' says the man. ‘Take them through.'

The tall man opens a door into another white room, this one furnished only with two straight-backed chairs. Opposite these a large mirror is fixed to the wall, beneath which an ancient holoview flickers and hums. The children sit in the chairs and the door closes. They are alone in the room.

The holoview is activated remotely. Colm and Lydia are shown images of the brown earth, of the dry
spinifex, of the electric blue sky. They see creek beds drained of their contents, paddocks parched and without crop, mountains scourged of every vestige of plant life. They see cattle falling to their bony knees with hunger, birds dropping yellow-tongued from the sky, mounds of dead and dying sheep set on fire and burning. They see towns where there is no water, men brawling and busting bones over a single pint of beer, women starving themselves into barrenness for their families, children sucking the blood from their chewed fingers that they might know a little moisture.

They cringe at these images, want to turn away. They shut their eyes against them but the images are stronger, are more powerful, and pull them in. The pictures are accompanied by sounds of crying, of weeping, of wailing. Cattle they hear moaning in pain, dying birds gasping, sheep screaming in the fire. Colm and Lydia shut their ears to the sounds, but the wails press through their flesh, pierce the bones of their hands and spiral down the tunnels of their ears. There is no relief.

Then, suddenly, the wailing stops. The images of pain and thirst are replaced with panoramas of open blue ocean, of gentle green islands floating on its surface, of lazy beaches and great swathes of cool shade. Riverbeds run with water, birds flock teeming to churning brown streams, animals drink in long quenching drafts. There is music to accompany these pictures, quietly swelling and joyous music that works
to dull from the mind all memory of dryness and to forge instead a sense of immediate succulence.

The images condense into a pinprick of light and disappear completely. The tall man takes them to their new cell. This one is in the dome, and very similar to the first. The children sit on the cool floor and scratch at the stones with their nails. They cannot speak about what they have seen, are disturbed by it, are unsure as to why they have been shown it. They eat a little bread, drink a little water and scratch at the stones. They listen for sounds but hear nothing.

They are taken again to the white room in the shining dome the next day and the day after that and the day after that. Each time they are shown images in the holoview. The mirror reflects the reactions in their faces. They return to their cell, find it hard to sleep. Their dreams are troubled and difficult.

One day they see themselves in the holoview. They are trudging past the northern gates on the way to the itinerants' well in Yarran. They are waiting behind the dry shrubbery for Ailis to finish her keening. They are standing with Joe looking across to Midgin. They are walking down the moraine from Hirrup's Range towards Nurrengar. They are on the escarpment watching their home burn, watching the grey smoke stain the sad sky.

On another occasion they are shown an image of their father. He is sitting in a white room on a stiff-backed chair. His face is thin and drawn. His clothes
hang from him like sacks. His skin is pale. A red welt crosses his cheek.

They see that their father is sitting opposite a large mirror. He is watching images in a holoview. They see themselves in the holoview, tired, grey of face, worried. They wonder at this and ask the tall man where their father is. ‘Is he nearby?' they ask. ‘Is he somewhere in the compound – in the dome?' They want to see him. But the tall man does not answer them, walks them quickly down the corridor to their stone-lined cell and locks them in with the key and the sliding bolt. The children are silent, crushed.

Then they are shown images that confound and amaze them. The images are of their valley back in Hirrup's Range. They see themselves running the ring-road at the base of Mount Nebo, tracing their way past the dry water tanks and home again to where their father is standing, waiting. They see themselves looking on as their father and his men bore deep into the ground, searching for the water table. They see themselves opening the wooden gate of the irrigation plant their father has made, watching the water sluice down into the dry paddock and fill the long, straight, earthy channels. They see themselves harvesting the first of their crop of beans, of meal, of tea, see themselves filling basket after basket, doubled over with the weight of the stuff. They see themselves sitting beneath the mulberry tree, their mouths and hands stained purple with juice, their faces smiling, their bellies sated. They
see themselves on the verandah in the late afternoon, their father between them, his arms about their shoulders. They see him kiss each of them in turn, his lips touching lightly the tops of their heads, the gentle spread of peace on his face. They see, finally, a little cloud over their valley, just a tiny one. They see it break open and release from its breadth a smattering of water droplets. The droplets fall for only a minute, maybe less, before they stop. The wet ground is made dry almost immediately with the strength of the lowering sun. But their father is there and he looks, smiling, at Lydia.

It is after this last series of images that the children begin again to talk. They stop taking their bread and water in silence. They stop scratching their nails against the stone of the floor. They feel as though they have been asleep, as though the images of suffering drugged them, as though now they have been awoken by the softness of the falling rain on their own land. They look at each other, open their mouths and speak.

‘The Wish Kin,' says Colm. ‘Ailis told me of a group of people who will grace the earth when there is nothing left. She told me of the Rain Maker, the Wind Breather, the Sun Tender, the Earth Bearer.'

‘The Fire Keeper,' says Lydia. ‘The Sea Singer, the Tree Watcher, the Water Joiner.'

Colm is taken aback. ‘You know of these?'

‘Father spoke to me of them,' says Lydia. ‘He said the time was near.'

Colm does not know what to make of this. He wonders why it was that their father never mentioned such things to him. He creases his brow momentarily then draws breath and continues. ‘That last image we were shown today, the little cloud and the droplets of water. Was that rain?'

‘I think it was,' says Lydia.

‘How could that happen over our own valley?'

‘I don't know,' says Lydia. ‘But do you think it was because of the Wish Kin?'

‘Ailis said there is a member of the Kin called the Rain Maker,' replies Colm. ‘So possibly.'

‘Was it because of Father?' asks Lydia. ‘He is a man of many gifts. Perhaps,' and she lowers her voice, ‘he is a member of the Wish Kin.'

Colm is suddenly nervous, worried, far more so than he has been before.

‘What will they do with him?' he asks, thinking of the mustachioed man behind the chrome desk. ‘Who are these people, the Clan, anyway?'

‘I don't know,' says Lydia. ‘Perhaps they want him for the good of the land. Perhaps they want him to help them water the ground once again.'

‘Why did he look so terrible in those images we saw of him? If they want our father for good then why do they not treat him well? And why did they come after us with such force? Why did they destroy our home? Why did they burn Nurrengar? Why did they shoot Parsefal?'

Lydia is quiet. She plays with the fraying hem of her shirt, twists the threads into little clumps. ‘It is clear then,' she says at length. ‘They do not want him for good.'

Colm's stomach lurches, his mouth grows cold. For a moment he thinks he is going to be sick. Then he gathers himself, remembers his situation.

‘We must leave here. If they don't want good for Father, they probably don't want good for us either.'

Later Colm thinks about this time and wonders why it was they didn't try to escape earlier. Later still he thinks that it was because it was almost a relief to be taken in, to be fed, watered and sheltered. After so long a time of running, of hiding, of uncertainty, after so long a time of decisions far beyond him, of fear and of danger, the simplicity of the small plank bed was a comfort to him, the regular food and water a boon. He thinks, too, about the tall man, about how it was that he felt relaxed with him, wonders if this was because he was missing his father. He thinks these and many more things later, when he is a little older, and does not hold it against his younger self that he was slow at first to think of escape.

Now they begin to look for opportunities. Each time they are taken from their cell to the white room with the holoview they look carefully about for a way of escape. They count the steps along the corridor, count the doors that open off it. They scan the walls for windows and vents, the ceilings for funnels and flues,
the floors for trapdoors and hatches. They find nothing.

Then in the white room they are shown images of the interior of the building in which they are held prisoner. It is as though their captors know their intention to escape and are taunting them with the hopelessness of such an idea. The children see, there in the holoview, the sleek bare walls of the corridor, the smooth stone floor, the flat, featureless ceiling. They see up close and in great detail their own cell, tile after tile, stone after stone. They see behind their bed, under the small wooden table, into their lavatory. They see their small square of hessian, the tin mugs from which they drink, the marked wall upon which they have numbered the days spent in the cell. They see all of these things and say nothing to each other. They stop speaking of escaping. Instead, they keep it closely in their hearts.

The days pass. They are taken out of their cell to exercise in an enclosed yard. They walk around and around, their feet pounding a path into the brown dirt. The sun beats down on their heads, the dust lines their nostrils. They look for a way out. They think about how they can escape. The tall man leads them back to the cell.

One day the tall man and the guards do not come to take them from their cell to the white room and back again. It is the boy alone, the boy not much older than Colm. He is nervous with them, his voice hushed and
shy. He does not have the ease of the tall man. Nor does he have the authority. The children sense this and question the boy in a way they never have the tall man. ‘Where is our father?' they ask him. ‘Is he here? What are you doing to him? Why can we not see him? Why are we being held captive here? What are you going to do with us? Why are we being shown these images every day? Why don't you let us go? Who are you?'

The boy fidgets and stalls. He does not answer them at first, but seems to feel bad about it and tells them to be quiet. The children persist, do not give up. ‘What is this place?' they ask. ‘Where do you come from? What is your name?' The boy relents at this last query, tells them his name is Moss, and says that he knows nothing about their father.