The Wish Kin (9 page)

The children, though, are jubilant that they have an answer to anything. When Moss takes them later that day to the exercise yard they greet him by name, ask him how he is.

‘Gander,' says Moss. He is quiet for a moment then asks the same of Colm and Lydia.

‘Gander,' they say. Moss smiles almost imperceptibly at this exchange. Colm and Lydia look at one another carefully in recognition of the fact. Their thoughts of escape shift slightly as they pound the floor of the exercise yard.

The following day Moss takes them to the white room. They are shown a series of images that confuse them more than any of the others they have seen. They
see themselves walking along a crumbling asphalt road. On either side of them the ground bubbles and blisters. Smoke spirals up from gashes in the earth. To their left they see a small corrugated-tin hut slide burning into a flaming hole. A young child sits in the middle of the road crying. His face looks like a rat. He sees Colm and Lydia and runs to them. Lydia catches him in her arms and picks him up, heaves him onto her hip. The child snuffles into her neck, buries his little ratty face in her hair and is quiet. Colm takes Lydia's pack and they continue their walk down the crumbling asphalt road.

They see then that they are standing on the edge of a great abyss. The rat child is not with them. Behind them for miles and miles is the red desert. Before them the great abyss smoulders and smokes. In its depths molten rock swells and spews. The heat from below burns their faces red, cooks their innards. They move back, their eyes singed of lashes. They blink and blink, trying to film their eyes with moisture. Their eyeballs feel like dry stones. They spit into their hands and rub the white paste from their mouths across their eyelids. The paste thickens with the heat of the dry stones in their sockets and sets. Their eyelids are glued shut. They cannot open them, cannot prise them apart. They are blind. They reach for one another, call out for one another, terrified of falling into the abyss.

The same scene is played over: the desert, the abyss, their eyelids glued shut. The scene is longer this time. They reach for one another, call out. Their fingertips
touch and they still themselves, then move slowly away from the edge of the abyss to where it is safe. They lower themselves carefully to the ground, sit on the hot desert sand and pick carefully at one another's eyes to remove the paste that they might see again.

Another scene. They are walking along a dry riverbed, following the twists and turns to its mouth. They stop some distance away and turn their faces to the sky. They can smell something extraordinary in the air. They climb out of the riverbed and set foot upon a road.

A town opens up before them. It is fragmented, much of it is missing. Colm and Lydia watch themselves wandering through the remains of buildings, past great tracts of vacant land, along the edges of steep chasms. The streets are empty, they pass no one. They make their way to the sea. Palm trees grow in a long straight line down the middle of the road. The light is bright, white, severe. At the water's edge a small weathered house stands looking out to the horizon. They knock at the door and are greeted by a woman in her forties, tall, lean, her hands and face like those of their father. The woman leads them out to the back of the house where the ocean lies stretched belly up between the land and the sky. She takes them down to the sand, past a string of faded beach houses, a wooden jetty half swallowed by the sea, an empty fish market, gutted, filleted, its windows and doors boarded up, its sign broken and swinging from a single hinge.
Wonding Fisheries
, the sign reads. The children stand beneath it, listen to the creak of it as it swings in the breeze from the sea, screw their faces against the light from the sun, and wonder how it is that they are here.

What just happened?

Colm hears his sister's voice but knows without looking at her that she did not speak. But he looks anyway, wanting to acknowledge her. She does not return the look but keeps her eyes fixed to the holoview, empty now of images. Colm tries speaking to her in the same way.

I think we were just in Wonding
, he says in his mind, but he has no idea if she has heard him.
I think we were just in my thoughts
.

It is true, it is what he thinks. The first of the series of images were unknown to him, were disturbing to him with their portrayal of themselves in places he knew they had never been. But this last, this image of the riverbed, of the tall, lean woman like their father, of the weathered house and the sand and the broken swinging sign, these were his own pictures, the pictures he conjured up over time and with the gathering of information told to him by their father.

What do you mean?
he hears in his head. Now he is uncertain. Is this Lydia speaking to him? How can he be sure? He needs to think, to be cautious. He does not answer, keeps his mind quiet, still. He is alert and watchful.

Colm!
he hears.

He waits. He says nothing, does nothing. He stares at the empty holoview, at the mirror above it. What is that mirror for? he wonders, not for the first time. Why is it here? He has heard about two-way mirrors before but never seen one. Is this a two-way mirror? Is there someone standing on the other side watching us, watching us watching ourselves, watching us watching ourselves do things we have never done in places we have never been?

I don't know
, he hears.
I wondered if it was a two-way mirror when I first saw it. Perhaps it is. Perhaps they are watching us. Perhaps Father is on the other side watching us
.

Why would they need a mirror to watch us?
he replies without thinking.
They have been watching us all along with no need at all for a mirror
.

True
, he hears,
but do you remember the image we saw the other day of Father watching us in the holoview? Do you recall that we saw ourselves from behind Father's head but we also saw Father front on, as though we were looking straight into his face? It seems there were two cameras
.

Cameras?
Colm replies.
I don't know about cameras. What sort of camera films things that have never happened? What sort of camera films ideas about a place from inside someone else's imagination? Those images are created somehow, but I doubt if cameras have much to do with it
.

He stops, aware suddenly of what he is doing. He is
angry with himself for speaking in his mind, for not testing things. But he does not know how he can test things, how he can be sure that the voice he is hearing is indeed Lydia's. He looks again at his sister. Her head is bowed now. He wonders if she is asleep.

The door opens and Moss enters. He leads them back to the cell. As he is taking his leave he looks at them as though he wants to say something, but does not. Colm keeps his mind quiet, listening, but hears nothing. The door closes and he is alone with his sister.

‘Was that you speaking to me before, when we were in the white room?' Colm asks.

‘Yes.'

‘How did you do it?'

‘It wasn't just me,' she says. ‘It was you too.'

Colm is silent. The concept is beyond him. He counts slowly the scratch-marked days on the wall. Then he says, ‘Did you and Father ever speak to each other in this way?'

‘Sometimes,' she says. ‘Not very often.'

‘When I was there?'

‘No. When we were in the bush, watching a bird or listening to the wind.'

‘Why now?' Colm asks. ‘Why did you choose to speak to me like this now?'

‘Isn't it obvious?' she replies. ‘Though it seems to make little difference. It seems they can read everything anyway. Those first scenes we were shown today were my thoughts.'

‘The rat child,' says Colm. ‘Was that Marla's baby?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why did you think of him?'

‘I liked him,' she says.

• • •

They sleep. In the morning, after their breakfast of dry bread, currants and brackish water, they continue to speak of the things that weigh upon them.

‘Why do you think they are showing us what is in our own minds?' Colm asks his sister.

‘Perhaps to frighten us,' says Lydia. ‘Perhaps to control us. Maybe there is something they want to find out about us, so they trick us into believing that they already know to encourage us to speak freely of it.'

Even before she finishes this last sentence, recognition crosses her face. Her hand flies to her mouth, dulls the final words.

Quiet
, she says to Colm. He hears the words in his mind as he did the day before.

What?

We must not say any more. We must wait
.

That afternoon when Moss comes to take them to the exercise yard, they are hushed with him, not their usual selves. They greet him. ‘Hello, Moss,' they say. ‘How are you?' He replies as usual. ‘Gander, and how are you?' ‘Gander,' they say, but that is all. They do not question him as they have. They follow him silently out
of the room and along the curving corridor to the little circular yard in the centre of the dome building. He enters with them, as is the custom, and secures the gate. The children start to trace their worn path. As they pass Moss the third or fourth time he stares at them with great intensity.

You can use the Inner Speech to talk between yourselves
, he says.
You must not worry. They cannot hear it. It is only I who can hear.

The children are shocked, shaken, but they do not miss a step. They continue to walk their ring-round path, continue to look down at the dirt beneath their feet. The sun passes behind the wall and a welcome sheet of shade spans the floor of the yard. The children stop by the little bench against the far wall, sit themselves down, look across at where Moss is wiping a stream of sweat from his cheek.

How do we know this is true?
Colm asks.

You don't,
he hears Moss say.

He turns to Lydia. ‘Did you hear that?' he asks, conscious now of the rather flat sound of his voice in his nervousness, uncertainty.

‘Yes,' she replies.

He speaks again inaudibly, using the Inner Speech, as Moss calls it.
How do we know that we can trust you?

You can't know
, he hears their keeper reply.
At least, not for the moment. But at the very least you can see that you must not use the Outer Speech for subjects of importance
.

Colm and Lydia nod. The sun dips further and the circle of sky above the yard is tinted violet.

And don't let them guess that you are using the Inner Speech. Converse as usual in the Outer Speech so that they do not suspect.

But we've already –

Keep it quiet, to yourselves.

Tell us, then,
says Colm,
tell us who the Clan is.

Moss rattles the keys and the two get up from the bench and cross the yard to the gate. He unlocks it and they pass through. None of them speaks, either with the Inner or the Outer forms of speech. Each one feels that they have said too much. Each one worries about the consequences of this.

Colm and Lydia's room is colder than usual when they return. They take bread for dinner and wash their faces with spit like cats before retiring. Colm pulls the hessian square close up under their chins.

‘Winter's coming,' he says.

The days are growing shorter, the nights longer. Still the sun beats down during the day, but it is the nights now that give Colm and Lydia trouble. Their square of hessian is not enough. They ask Moss for another and he says that he will see what he can do. Brother and sister huddle together in the closing dark and catch snatches of sleep between bursts of shivering.

‘Why is it like this?' Lydia asks. ‘Still so hot in the day but so horribly cold at night.'

‘It's the desert, Lyd,' says Colm.

Lydia is tired, exhausted from too much worry, too little sleep. Her body is thin: her ribs show through the skin of her back; the base of her throat meets the top of her chest in a series of small wells.

‘I know it's the desert,' she says, her voice slightly irritated. ‘But why? Why so hot and so cold all on the same day?'

Colm shrugs. ‘I don't know.'

They have stopped being shown the images. Moss still comes to their cell but only to take them to the exercise yard. They are bored, restless. They talk again of escape, though these are difficult conversations with little agreement. Whether it is because of what Moss said to them, or whether it is something else, they choose to use the Inner Speech to converse on the topic. Still, though, they have no idea as to whether or not they are being listened to.

We shouldn't speak of this at all,
says Lydia.
We should wait until something shows itself. Then we should act.

How long have we been here?
asks her brother.
Weeks now. Nothing has shown itself to us. We will never get out of here. We will die in here and be absolutely no use to Father at all!

I don't want to speak any more about this. It's not safe.

Since when have things been safe? There is no safety anywhere, not in here, not out there, not even back at home! We have to leave, Lydia. We have to get out!

Colm finds himself becoming desperate in a way he has not previously. He finds himself wanting to take risks. He has always been a careful boy, cautious, circumspect. Now, though, he is reckless, impulsive. He decides to trust Moss.

‘Hello, Moss,' he says the next time he sees their young keeper. ‘How are you?'

‘Gander,' replies Moss. Then, in the Inner Speech,
Thank you for trusting me
. He smiles at Colm. His eyes are clear and bright.

You know?

Yes.

How?

It's in your face,
he replies.
It's more open to me.
He leads them from the cell, along the corridor and to the exercise yard. Colm and Lydia begin their walk. Moss stands by the gate.

Your father is no longer here,
Colm hears Moss say.
He was taken away three days ago.

Colm almost shouts out, but shifts back to Inner Speech in time.
Taken! Taken where? And why, before we have even seen him?

Moss is slow in answering, then says,
You guessed correctly that the Clan considers your father to be a member of the Wish Kin.

Colm again is shocked.
Really?
he says. And then,
But what has that to do with the Clan? What business is it of theirs?

Let me explain,
replies Moss.
The Clan was formed to try to fix the bionetwork using science and principles of sustainability. Over the years, our ideals and our methods have attracted many people. Our numbers grow and our wealth increases. We share all we have with one another and look for ways to mend the problems.

What – by raiding properties, burning homes, shooting and imprisoning people? What sort of ‘mending' is this?

Moss speaks softly, sadly.
We've become corrupt, I know. When we began to amass wealth we couldn't stop, we wanted more. We've fallen into compromise, sold out. Our methods no longer match our original ideals.
He pauses a moment, head bowed, then continues.
The reason your father was brought here was as part of the mending. And the reason you, too, have been held here these past weeks.

What do you mean?
asks Colm. He is feeling annoyed, uncertain of what Moss is telling him.
I don't understand you.

The Clan for some time has been hiring raiders to search out members of the Kin. They do this so that they can oversee the Rekindling
, replies Moss.

And what is the Rekindling?
Colm is exasperated now, almost angry, such that it is not until Moss is part of the way through answering that the younger boy softens and remembers, recalls the conversation with Ailis in the tent, recollects, indeed, what she said of the Wish Kin.

The Rekindling
, explains Moss,
is when the Wish Kin gather together and begin to express their compassion for the elements. So the Cloud Drawer will work to gather the clouds together, the Rain Maker to help them give rain, the Plant Yielder to bring from the earth flowers and fruit and new green forests. The Rekindling will be a wonderful time, when things that are wrong are finally made right. It will be a time that is remembered forever
.

Colm is chastened now, quiet. He listens meekly to his keeper, reflects, too, on what Ailis said to him on the same subject. He thinks of her comments about the accompanying of plenty with greed.

How will the Clan oversee this time?
he asks.

I'm not sure. But I know the result will be that the Clan has complete power over the Wish Kin. They will use the Wish Kin for their own ends, and whatever good the Kin does, the Clan will charge money for it. The Clan will grow richer, and the Wish Kin and the rest of the country will continue to suffer. But the Kin aren't to be used in this way. The work of the Wish Kin is for all.

Colm glances back at Lydia who is walking behind him.
Can she hear this?
he asks Moss.

Only if I want her to,
the keeper replies.

Why do you not want her to?

She doesn't yet trust me as you do. It is good that she is cautious. It is wise.

Am I foolish, then?

Perhaps a little,
replies Moss.
But it might work in your favour at this time.

Colm sits down on the bench at the far wall. Lydia keeps walking, her eyes on the ground, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Colm looks across to where Moss is standing by the gate. The keeper looks serious, sombre.

So where have they taken Father?
Colm asks him.
And will we be going there too?

You were brought here for two reasons. Firstly, because your father would not speak, would not give the information the Clan required. They thought that if your father saw that you were captives here, that you were being shown disturbing images, that you were thin and underfed, that he would talk. You were also brought here because the Clan thought they might glean some information from your story patterning – that is, from your imagination. And they were right. Your father did not need to talk. The answer they were looking for came from your own patterning. You confirmed what they already believed: that the Kin will gather at Wonding.

‘What?' cries Colm. He stops himself at once, realising that his shock has caused him to break out of the Inner Speech. He casts his eyes quickly from his keeper and looks instead at the brown dirt at his feet. Lydia spins at his exclamation, hurries to him.

‘What's the matter?' she demands.

‘Nothing,' says her brother.

‘Why did you just call out like that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Don't be stupid. You were thinking of something. What was it?'

Colm is evasive, hedgy. ‘A joke,' he says. ‘Something from before.'

‘Don't lie to me, Colm,' says Lydia.
You were speaking with him, weren't you?

Who?

Moss, of course! You were speaking with Moss about
escaping. You shouldn't. It is you and me, Colm. No one else.

I think he's trustworthy, Lyd. I think it's all right
.

If he's trustworthy, then why hasn't he found us a blanket like he promised? How can you possibly trust him with our escape when he hasn't even managed to get us another scrap of hessian?

How do you know he didn't try? He could have tried but not succeeded.

Then he could have told us.

Would you have believed him if he'd said that he tried?

I might have. I wouldn't now, though
.

Moss rattles the keys and the two make their way back to the gate. They do not speak, either to each other or to Moss. Colm is confused, disturbed. In the past he has always trusted Lydia's insight. Now he doesn't know what to think. He chose to trust Moss because he felt that there was no other option. Now, in the light of Lydia's anger, he is unsure.

How could you get information from me about the Wish Kin gathering at Wonding when I didn't even know myself?
he asks Moss as they walk through the corridors to their cell.

It was from your patterning, as I said,
replies his keeper.
Patterning is what we call the themes within your mind that play themselves out in your imagination. We look at the elements within the patterning, which we think of as clues. These do not have to be conscious. They are matched with the clues taken from the patterning of others
until a picture, like a great puzzle, builds up. The clues in your patterning gave us the final piece of the puzzle.

I don't understand, Moss
, says Colm.
I thought you said that it was only you who could hear us in the Inner Speech. Are there others, then, who can read the patterning?

Moss is ashen. Colm thinks the keeper is about to be sick.
No
, he replies at last.
It is only me.

Colm feels again his insides rear and lurch.
What?
he cries.
Why would you do this? I thought you were trying to help us!

Moss lowers his head and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. There, Colm can see that the young keeper's flesh is a mess of horrific burns.

I'm sorry
, says Moss.
I had no choice
.

• • •

Colm dreams, thickly and confusedly. The images – of his father, of Moss's burns, of the wasted land – are troubling. It would be nice to dream a little more often of his small glass box, he thinks. It would be nice to dream of spinning through space, of warmth and comfort, of whispering stars. He has not dreamed like this for a while and he misses it. He curls himself over, makes himself small and neat, thinks about fitting inside his glass box, and drifts off to sleep once again.

Moss arrives later with a thick grey blanket. Lydia thanks him tersely. She is tight-lipped and uncommunicative. Colm sees Moss looking at her, thinks he
looks sorry, repentant. The following day Moss brings a spoonful of jam for each of them and two small squares of chocolate.

Does he think he can buy me?
Lydia asks when he is gone.
Is that what he thinks?

I don't know, Lyd,
says Colm.
Maybe he likes us and wants to help us. Maybe that's why he's being nice.
He tells her something of the conversation that he and their keeper had the previous day, tells her of the Clan and of the Rekindling. Lydia is unmoved.

I still don't see why he would want to befriend us. Isn't he our captor?

Colm does not know what to say and can see why Lydia is untrusting. But he likes the boy and wishes things were different, wishes they might become proper friends.

In the afternoon they prepare to take their walk again. They hear the key turn in the lock and the bolt slide back and they wait in expectancy. Moss appears in the doorway. His face is beaten and bruised.

‘Moss! What happened?' Colm goes to the young keeper and looks closely at his face. His right eye is invisible behind a black and swollen lid. His bottom lip is split. A crust of dried blood has formed at its edge.

‘It's nothing,' says Moss.

‘Don't be silly,' says Lydia. ‘Of course it's not nothing. It looks very painful.' She tears a strip from the hessian square and moistens it with a little water. She dabs carefully at the dried blood. Moss draws a sudden breath at her touch.

‘Am I hurting you?' she asks.

‘No,' says Moss, and shifts his good eye to the wall.

Lydia dabs a moment more. ‘That's better. At least now you won't get any nasty infection. Why didn't you clean it before?'

‘No time,' says Moss. He runs his tongue slowly over the newly cleaned skin of his lip.

‘What happened?' Colm asks again.

‘An argument,' says Moss. ‘With Angus.'

‘Angus?'

‘The one you know as the tall man.'

‘What was it about?'

Moss stops, gathers himself.
Enough,
he says in the Inner Speech.
They can hear us.
He gestures Colm and Lydia through the door and they walk down the corridor. When they get to the yard Moss stands by the gate, serious and sentinel-like.

I told Angus I thought it was wrong that the Wish Kin be taken captive. I told him that we would all benefit if only the Wish Kin were allowed to do what they must do. He didn't like that. He called me a traitor, said that I needed to be taught a lesson.
Moss touches his fingers lightly to his eye.

There must be something more,
says Lydia.
I can't see that that is enough to make him hit you.

Moss is grieved.
What can I say to you, Lydia?
he asks.
I can't make you believe me, about this or about anything.

Then Lydia is silent, only listens to Moss's next words and does not speak.

The Clan plan to keep you prisoner indefinitely,
he says.
They figure they can use you in the future. Your father has not given them the information they need about the Wish Kin, and you have become a bargaining tool. I know you want to leave here and I think I know of a way out for you.