Episode Two - my post-apocalytic story

 

Two – Swing

It was between day and night, when colours glow. The surrounding forest was noisy with the broken-up arguments of pink and greys, birds with no interest in glowing colours, preferring to spend twilight squabbling over night perches. Ma stood with Dalyon looking up at the sky, trying to see the first star. 

‘Look at the clouds,’ she said, ‘how they are lit from underneath. I love that. When you see the first star you can make a wish.’

She began to sing a song he hadn’t heard before. 

‘When you see a falling star, catch it in a silver jar, and everything your heart would wish, will come to you.’

She said, ‘it’s a very old song Dalyon, very beautiful. My mother used to sing it to me, and her mother sang it to her. And her mother. Once people believed such things, and perhaps they were true. Do you think so?’

She put her hand to his chest. ‘Your heart is in here,’ she said.  ‘If you put your hand here you can feel it beating.  Pom-pom, pom-pom. When you feel a wish come into your heart, and you see that first star, the wish will come true. Here Dalyon, I’ll show you.’

Ma put his hand on his chest. Something was moving in there, living in him. This creature inside his chest might want different things from him, things he did not know.

‘Dalyon doesn’t want that wish,’ he said. ‘Go away heart!’

‘Why not? Why don’t you want that wish?’

Dalyon couldn’t say. He ran off to play on the swing until darkness fell. There was no trampoline then. 

Night came and they went inside to eat, wash, and move steadily towards bedtime. He arranged the toys, chose the purple alligator to hold through the night, saw pictures of children at bedtime. The bedtime children lived in two old story books that Ma had when she was a girl. She sang her songs – one about stars and another about the moon. Then her kiss, her disappearance. There would be the soft drift of sleep until morning, because tonight the moon was thin.

Sometimes when it was big, that restless moon woke him up, wanting to play. He would change what he did on those nights. He would go outside to fly his swing and sing for the moon. The cat would come and find him there. It would lie down to watch, just past the reach of his coming and going feet. The cat knew the right place to lie. The moon, the swing, Dalyon and the cat would all make a line. In the morning when the early sun woke him, he would be lying on the ground with the cat next to his head.

Ma would be asleep. He would go back to his bed until she came for him.  She would ask about the grass seeds in his hair and on his pillow. He would wonder about them too. She would brush them away. That was the way of things. All things in the universe had a natural swing and rhythm, back and forth, back and forth.

*

 

The sky was an even grey, the day that the black cockatoos appeared in the tree with the deep red feathery flowers that hung in cylinders above the clothesline. Ma came after they had landed, but she did not see them. She began to hang the faded clothes in tidy connected rows, clipping them together, not looking up far enough. She was looking at her feet and at the broken basket of bundled damp cloth when the first flower dropped.

Dalyon had seen them first. He sang to them in their language.

‘I wish I were a red-tailed black cockatoo,’ Dalyon’s song said. ‘I wish I were sitting on that branch of the red flower tree with a flock of friends and a heavy cracking beak chopping off the flowers one by one with one eye on her hanging out the washing. It’s fun to see how she jumps as the first flower falls and she looks up to see Dalyon eye to eye, hers all bare and glowing and Dalyon’s small, sharp and neat like a black beetle. This bird here is called Dalyon.’

Dalyon clicked off another flower, and another. Dalyon and the flock worked together dropping the red flowers at her feet. She stopped what she was doing and watched them. They stayed awhile for her. Together in the tree, Dalyon and the flock formed a large feathered cloud, a black thundercloud, mysterious and magician-magnificent. Dalyon stretched out his wing and his tough leathered leg, and she stared, unable to move, a wet towel hanging loosely from her hand with its corner dangling in the dirt. It formed an enclosed space with her rounded arm and her curved body, and the ground growing red with fallen flowers. Dalyon displayed his long sharp claws and drew them back into hiding. She had soft fingers, no claws, and limp arms that grew strong when she carried a load. The entirety of her grew strong as she lifted her boy or used her body to shield him from the sun.

Dalyon did not speak. The flock was silent. The day was as still as a picture in Ma’s storybook. They were here in this light, in this tree, drawn in thick pencil against the smooth grey sky. Now they lifted off as one big dragon-bird made up of smaller parts. They could break into pieces, and they could come together. 

Ma held her breath. Now Dalyon could feel her breathing.  He could feel her sadness at his leaving. The air held and lifted the flock high so that the small house below, with its narrow yard and lines of junk, became smaller and smaller, and the trees closed in around it. Beyond this place there were only trees, some living and some dying, in the vast unsettled forest.

Dalyon flew low over the forest, just brushing the tops of the trees. That was when he saw something of interest, half hidden amongst the undergrowth. It was metal and fine netting, a thing to jump on. It was something that a boy needed to help him grow strong. Perhaps Ma could go and get it for him.

 Dalyon sent the thought, and Ma was shown the thing that she must do. It filled her head as she gazed out beyond the fence to where the trees went on and on. The thought that she must leave came into Ma’s mind, and it stuck there like a prickle in her brain, irritating her every time she stopped being busy and sat down to think. It made itself into an annoying dream when she fell asleep at night and stayed with her in a repeating loop of mind pictures after she woke in the morning.

*

Now Dalyon forgot all about what he had seen. He returned to being a boy and went back to building things, lining them up all along the fence around the house. He chased and caught the cat, and put that in the line, but it kept running away.  He brought it back again and again. Finally he gave up and went back to more cooperative objects.  Life was predictable, the way he liked it, but still he kept feeling that things would change. There was a missing piece in his understanding somehow. Perhaps it was the cat. He placed it in a sack and put it squirming into the line, to discover that it was not the missing piece after all. He released the cat and sat down in the place where the sacked cat had been. He stayed like that as the sun moved through the sky, with his eyes fixed on the locked gate. Ma saw him as she looked out from the kitchen window, and her heart broke for him.

*

Ma struggled against the press of her journey for two nights, but on the third day she rose at the first light and placed food and water on the low table. She told him to eat when he was hungry, and to drink when he was thirsty. She said she would return when the sun had left the highest part of the sky and was sitting on the line of trees that he could see from the top side window that wore the curtains made of broken lace.

There was another story. She might not return at sunset. If this story happened, he was to put his pyjamas on and brush his teeth. He should go to bed then and sleep. If she was late, she would make camp and come back in the light. If she did not come back the first day, she would come back the next. If she did not come back by dark on the second day he was to go to the pantry where the flour drum was, and find the package that she had tied under the lid. He was to open it up and look inside. Then he would know what to do next.

She made him promise to stay. He promised. She left, and he heard the click of the door as it locked down. He climbed the stairs to watch her leave the yard and follow the animal path that came at length to the tree that always slept, even when small animals ran upon its back. The path ended by the bowing tree that belonged to the pink and greys. 

Dalyon closed his eyes and watched as she found her way through the scrub. He saw the thorn bush where she scratched her arm and heard the curse that she said. He watched her hair fall down around her face, and how she moved her arm quickly like she did, and he saw her pull the band from her hair and throw it away. He heard the rustle of the undergrowth and felt the eyes that watched her as she crashed her way through the forest, always adjusting her path back to the line she had chosen, after she had been diverted by rocks and trees and spiders.

When she reached the grasses by the river he decided he was hungry and remembered her instructions. He ate. After he had eaten he noticed he was thirsty and he drank the sweetened water that she had left by his plate. Ma unwrapped a parcel of food that she had brought with her. She ate dried fruit, took a long drink, refilled her bottle at the river, and wrapped the parcel again. Dalyon went back up the stairs, sat in the corner by the lace window, and closed his eyes. Ma was walking along the river now, searching for the crossing place.

This was when the sun began to move faster than she could. He waited for her to turn back, but she didn’t. She kept on. He knew that she would not be back by the time the sun reached the line of tree tops. He went downstairs and constructed a strong line of objects starting with the low table. He made sure that the edges met one another and that the wall met the line at the other end.  He counted the things he had lined up, many times. The sun was moving down the sky. He swept the floor and rearranged the odd assortment of chairs that was the kitchen furniture. The sun was dropping lower. He climbed the stairs and put on his pyjamas. He brushed his teeth. He gave some food to the cat. He took down the book in which there lived two lost children. The children were called Hansel and Gretel. They came upon a witch’s cottage made of food and killed the witch by pushing her into the fireplace. He showed himself the story, shouting at the witch to get in that fire and not come out. He sang a song about an old man who played nick-knack on his drum, and nick-knack on his shoe. The cat crawled its belly out from under the bed where it had slept for most of the day, and settled itself at his feet, purring loudly. Dalyon pulled the curtain back, saw that the moon was thin, and went to sleep.

Ma was sleeping too, beside a fire she had made in a clearing by the river. Mosquitoes bothered her in the night. She thought about her boy alone in the house. She thought that she was searching for him, forcing her way through bracken which kept grabbing at her arms and pushing her back.

He felt he was being squeezed. There was pressure, and a shock of dry air, as his head emerged from darkness into the brightest light. He felt himself torn, separated from a world that held him close. He shivered on a rough surface until he felt a touch and found himself lifted and held against warmth and softness which moved in waves beneath his fragile body. A form, light leaking around the edges, shadow and a shower of fine strands focused shards of light, drew him out and anchored him in this place. The skin on his forehead tightened as it dried and the gentle pressure of surfaces traced and informed him of the limits of his body.

Dalyon sat all through the next day on his bed, sometimes swaying and sometimes shaking the restlessness from his body with a loud shout. He closed his eyes and watched as she returned bit by bit. She was dragging the heavy thing tied together with vines, behind her. Sometimes she stopped to rest.  As she came closer to the river he saw that an animal was tracking her. He looked harder. The animal was big. Sometimes it walked tall like Ma, but with heavier, stronger steps, and sometimes it loped along on four, using its bent over hands to give it an extra push along the ground. It had hair all over, strong teeth and big hands with sharp claws. It was smart. It was hungry. If Ma did not come that night Dalyon would take the package tied to the lid of the drum that held the flour. He did not know what else.

He watched as the tracking animal closed in. ‘Go away! GAAH!’ he shouted, but it kept going. He closed his eyes and shouted right into the beast’s ear. It stopped then, and sniffed the air. Ma dragged on. The tracking animal looked around and that was when Dalyon saw its children, following a little behind, tumbling over one another, playing. It waited for them to catch up. It was about to go forward again when it looked back, seemingly straight at Dalyon. He stood up on his bed and jumped at it.

‘Go away!’ he yelled. ‘Get!’ His jump made him fall on the floor. The cat scampered out from where it had been sleeping under the bed and ran off.

The tracking animal shook its head. It had not seen him. It had caught something else on the wind and began to lope away in another direction. Dalyon saw that it had been distracted by a dead kangaroo. The kangaroo had a round belly and was lying on its back, stretched out and stiff. It had its mouth open, and flies spun around its head. The tracking animal come upon it, sniffed at the carcass and the ground around it. As its children caught up, it began to tear at the side of the dead kangaroo with its claws and sharp teeth. When it had changed the kangaroo into meat, it moved aside to let its children eat. Ma kept going, faster now, looking behind her, then head down, leaning into the wind.

It was late when she returned. Her hair hung around her face in coiled wet strings. She had dirt on her clothes, lines of dirt on her face, and old cuts on her arms where blood had dribbled and dried in a small series of red-black bumps. She took a long drink, gave him food and drink, kissed him, and went to bed to sleep for a long time. The next day she rose when the sun was already in the middle of the sky. She spent the rest of the day working on the thing. Dalyon stood by to fetch what she asked. When she was looking away and busy in her work, he glared angrily at it. He did not like this thing. He made days of circles around it before he gave it a chance to show what it could do. For a long time the swing and he went to war against the trampoline, jumping out at it when it wasn’t looking, claws exposed, and they called it many bad names.