Day Boy (20 page)

She nods at that. And we're soon drinking that tea, dark and sweet, and feeling the
house shake.

‘They say the storms are getting fiercer.' She takes another sip of her tea, stirs
in some more sugar. ‘Like the world's trying to rid itself of us. And them.'

‘Need worse storms than this,' I say.

And there's a burst of thunder that makes me jump, and a crash of something heavy
that doesn't help with the jitters either. Thom laughs, and I give him a look, but
I can see that he's as spooked as I am.

A girl coming out of the storm, even if it's a girl we know, seems awful suggestive
of odd things to come. And Anne, if I'm true about it, scares me more than anything.
Even if it's the sweetest sort of fear.

‘Storms bring monsters,' Anne says.

‘The monsters are already here,' Dain says, making us jump. He likes an entrance.
‘Miss Anne, I am sorry, but it's true. The monsters have been here for quite some
time. This is just a storm. Now, you may stay the night. If there is no mischief.'

Anne blushes at that; there's some heat in my cheeks, too.

‘Or I can accompany you home through this storm. Don't worry, you will be quite safe.'

‘Will I now,' Anne says.

Dain's face shifts in ways I'm not sure I've ever seen it shape. He folds his arms
across his chest: all careful and considered. Protecting himself, or her, or both
of them.

‘Your mother and I have an agreement.' His voice is soft. ‘And I am a man of my word.'

Anne looks at me over her teacup. ‘Well, you raised him
proper. And that goes in
your favour,' she says, and I realise that these two had scarcely ever said a word
to each other. And that that goes for most of the town. That what they're used to,
and what I am, are such different things we might be in different towns. ‘I'll spend
the night here, thank you. But if you would let my mother know? I know you'll be
out in this, all of you will.'

Dain nods his head. I can see the storm in his eyes, his pupils wide. The Masters
are men of moods and heights emotional. And he stands there, body electric with the
wild air.

‘There's a piano in the living room,' Dain says, as though she doesn't already know
it. ‘If you would do us the honour.'

Anne smiles. ‘The honour would be mine.'

I'm glad now I've kept it dusted. Not that Dain would allow anything else.

Anne plays a few dancing notes then looks up at Dain. ‘You keep this well tuned.'

‘I tune it myself,' Dain says, and there's more than a hint of pride in his words.

‘So it's true what they say about you?'

‘We hear the notes, perfect, yes.'

‘Then I better play perfectly.'

‘I would never think to pressure you so,' Dain says.

Anne laughs, and then she plays, music I've heard, and music I haven't. It's a beautiful
sound. Dain seems to relax; more than relax, he's transported. But it's Thom that
surprises, he has the biggest purest smile I've ever seen on his face. After nearly
an hour she stops. Dain's eyes have less of the storm in them. He is still as stone.
Anne looks at me, as if to ask if that's what he's always like.

I shake my head. Takes a lot to drive the storm out of a man like him. And all too
little to draw it back.

‘My mother will be worried, Master Dain.'

‘Yes; yes she will,' Dain says, like he's just woke from a dream, and I guess he
has. His pupils expand, and his head swings towards the door. It's calling him again.

Thom clears his throat. ‘I'm to bed,' he says.

I raise my eyebrow; get the arch good, I can feel it.

‘You'll be sleeping on the lounge, I guess,' Thom says.

Dain looks at me with those storm-lit eyes, lightning and thunder, the threat and
the echo of it, and I feel myself wilt, my eyes wander.

‘Yes, course I am,' I say.

So it's decided, Thom to his bed and Anne to have mine.

Dain's there till the others are abed, and me dragging stale cushions from the linen
cupboard to place on the three-seater. He watches me make up the couch good and proper.
‘You will be a gentleman,' he says.

‘Course I will,' I says. ‘When am I not?'

Dain snorts. ‘Then I best give Mary a visit.'

I can see he wants to be in the middle of that storm, that he wants to run with it.

‘You best,' I say.

He's already gone.

And I spend the night a-toss and a-roll on that damn lounge, leather stuffed with
bricks, I reckon. My head on cushions smelling of dust and age, it seems to have
shrunk some because I can't get myself to sleep. And I'm thinking of Anne and Thom
in the other room.

I wake early, it's still dark but I must've got some sleep:
Dain's staring over me.
The storm is quietening, but for the rain's soft breath and fall.

I sit straight up, blinking, confused. Is it day, is he up in the day?

Dain raises his hand, gestures for me to lie back down. He's soaked to the bone,
his eyes glowing, but he looks like the night's done for him well. He looks restful,
calm almost, if any of his kind were capable of calm.

‘No need for you to rise just yet,' he says. ‘There'll be work for you to do in the
morning.'

‘I was a gentleman,' I mumble ruefully.

‘You always are,' Dain says with a chuckle. ‘You always have been. Now sleep, long
day ahead.'

I'm up with first light and the rain's still falling, lighter soaking rain, got coffee
brewed and I'm sitting on the verandah, watching the rain fall. Smelling the damp
in the air. Sometimes all I want is for nothing to change but those regular shifts
of season, the heat into cold, the cold into heat. I want to stop time and step out
of everything, and watch the world around me, as I am.

But all I get is these quiet and brief times. Me, and this dark brew, and the lightening
of the day, and the ache that runs through my body like tears and laughter mixed
together. I'm a young bloke but I can't help feeling that time is running down, that
it's slipping from me. There's nothing for it but to take some pleasure from the
cup in my hands, from the world and its silence.

I'm sitting there, maudlin and watching the rain.

Hear laughter behind me.

‘There you are,' Anne says, and she smiles at me. And I'm
happy to see her, and angry
at once, cause my quiet sadness is broke, and even that ache is fragile, and I'm
jealous, there, I admit it.

‘He's always up early,' Thom says.

‘Fella can have too much sleep,' I say, and I take my cup and brew them some more
coffee, and we all sit there looking out at the rain, silent, everything silent but
for the hiss of it. And Anne's hand touches mine, and there is a rushing wild as
any storm within me, but I sit still.

Until her hand lifts and it's like it never happened, and maybe it didn't. We stare
out into the lifting gloom. And maybe I do want things to change.

Trees are down, and the light picks the wounds from the shadows one by one. Eucalypts
that have fallen, bottlebrushes that have split, green apples dropped. Got axework
ahead.

‘Tell me when you want to go home,' I say to Anne.

‘Soon,' Anne says. ‘Mary'll be waiting.'

I look to Thom.

‘Get some umbrellas,' I say.

We walk through the wet. Thom splashing through puddles, Anne and I walking close.

‘He adores you, you know,' she says. ‘You keep him safe.'

‘Much as I can,' I say. ‘Ain't much safe in this world.'

‘We all know that,' she says.

Mary's standing at the door when we arrive.

‘Ma'am,' I say.

She frowns at me. ‘You been a gentleman?'

I nod, even manage it without a smirk. Because I have been, haven't I?

‘He saved me from the storm and all,' Anne says.

‘Don't know why you were out that way,' Mary says.

And I feel a little heat again. Mary pays a bit of attention to that, but lets it
pass, both of us too good at reading faces. ‘Thank you for bringing her home.'

‘Pleasure,' I say.

‘I brought her home, too,' Thom says.

Mary smiles. ‘Course you did. Now, I've bacon cooking. You all hungry? There'll be
work for you boys, no doubt.'

No doubt of that at all.

So we eat at Mary's and by the time we're done, the rain's fading down, following
the storm into the east, and the Sun's up and the sky looks as though it's been scrubbed,
and we get to home and work with full bellies. Trees need breaking down and carting
off. Axe and saw work, the sort that a full belly's good for.

We cut through wood, we jump from centipedes and scorpions. And we do it in silence,
mostly.

‘She's quite the girl,' Thom says.

‘She is at that,' I say. ‘And don't you get no designs.'

Thom don't say nothing. Best not to, I'm the one with the axe.

They like the sea, they worship the Sun, and the music is their third love, as Dain
says. Not blood, they never count it as love, it's a base sort of thing, that desire.
Music for them is a door to quiet. Music is almost as perfect as their forms. And
they can sing, and they can dance—I've seen both—maybe play a fiddle or a flute to
some jauntiness.

But music, great music, is something only we can give them. That's why the great
Orchestral Hall is near the heart of the City in the Shadow of the Mountain.

Music is close to their hearts.

And is in our blood. Whether they admit it or not, that makes us the sweetest of
musicians.

CHAPTER
29

AUTUMN'S THE SEASON beset with pasts and futures. Memories hazy of both. Summer bleeds
into it, then winter rears out. The first frost comes not long after that storm.
I like them changes. I like the cold, until I'm sick of it. And the river that seemed
inviting takes on a sombre kind of air, and grows misty as though it's knitted itself
some sort of gown.

There's apples that need wrapping up and putting away, and fences that need mending.
Storm has left its raggedy thumbprint upon the earth, and brought us a new weariness
to contend with.

I don't know how I did without Thom. I managed, I guess. Just like he'll manage without
me. But past and futures bleed.

I let him mark the doors of those my Master visits. And I watch. Soon I'll be out
of town, working the farm. Switched one labour for another.

Already I can see that Thom's got Mastery in him even though he's just a lad. It's
in his walk, the steadiness of his gaze.
There's nothing ill-fitting in him. He's
as blessed as Grove in his way, but he knows it, expects it even. Might set a bit
of jealousy in me, but I'm too busy for jealousy.

Dougie calls a meeting. There's a swift scratch of chalk across the door, midway
to tell us roughly when. I rub it away with a thumb.

‘Keep your wits about you,' I tell Thom.

He sighs, the reproach of the underestimated.

We reach the cave around midday. I don't come here that often, there's too much of
Dougie in it. This is his kingdom. Could have been Grove's but he's never wanted
it. He leads from a distance, way out front, and mostly none of us can see him.

Dougie isn't like that. He's cunning in his thick-headed way. He sits and talks and
gets down with us boys—even if it's just to give a clobbering. Won't see Grove doing
that.

We've a few lanterns burning: gold light, thin smoke. Place smells of smoke, and
boys: a musty kind of stink. Bad odours and bad feelings; it's why I don't come here
much. Isn't a bit of the town more hostile. And this is my bit.

There's a small stack of books in one corner, even a tattered comic or two, colours
thin, fellas and ladies in the pages, gods almost, leaping and doing the sorts of
things that gods do in godly cities. None of that ever made sense to me, but Twitch
likes them. There's a chair that someone dragged up in another corner, looking about
as beat and threadbare as something can be and still own the name furniture.

We're all of us there when Dougie gets up on that chair and clears his throat.

‘Good to see you boys,' he says, face grows proprietorial. ‘My lads, in these times
of cold and turbulence, the change of them seasons has sent a new colleague to us.
And set itself to cast out an old.'

I tense up, and he gestures calm at me. ‘Now, dear Thom. You know us all, but we
know little of you.'

Thom nods at that, and looks to me. I shrug.

‘What do you want to know?'

‘You were Crèche-raised weren't ya?'

‘Yes.'

‘What's it like in that belly of the mountain? What's it like being of the Crèche
and all? I was Academy-raised myself.'