Episode Five

Flight

One day there was the distinct sound of children playing across the trees. The sound was caught and dropped by the wind, and picked up again. Dalyon heard it many times and calculated the direction of the sound in relation to the position of the sun at various times of the day. The children moved around but they moved around in a particular area that ended some distance from the yard. Night came and went and now that Dalyon knew how to listen, he heard the children many times.

Then came the day when he sensed that he was being watched. He saw nothing but a movement in the top of the closest tree that had peered at him over the fence every day for as long as he could remember. Before the big fence was built there used to be more of it. Now, just its top appeared over the line. It was a good place for a person to sit. This person in the tree might have been a crow, but it felt bigger, softer and more curious.

‘Why do you sit in that tree looking at me’, he asked? ‘Why do you sit, why do you go, why do you sit and go?’

 No-one and nothing responded and his question became a song that he sung on the swing for days afterward. ‘Why sit and go, why sit and go, why are you looking at me in that tree?’

Today the air was as clear and sharp as a pin. It was morning, and the crows had started up again. There was something else warbling away, creating a kind of music that Dalyon memorised for future songs. And then he heard it, the child’s voice. She was singing in his language, but with a sound that rang out across the sky like a calling bird.

‘Why sit and go, why sit and go, why are you looking at me in that tree?’

 There was no mistaking the sounds of the words, the rising and falling of notes, the hesitation, the start again, the repetition. She sounded quite close. She was singing to him. A mixture of fright and excitement rose in him. Frightcitement. He bolted to the house. The sound followed for a moment then stopped, then started, then stopped again.

Dalyon went to the side door and peered into the darkness. The shape of his mother was lying stretched out on the bed. With his help, she had dragged the mattress down the stairs to lie along the wall opposite the table, straight after Bob and Terry had left the last time they came. After they got it down there, she went straight to bed and fell into a long sleep. In the days that followed she had spent more time lying on the mattress than walking around. Now she lay there breathing heavily, as she did when she was in a long sleep, although today the music was different. She was stopping and starting, stopping and starting. Sometimes she stopped for a long time, before starting up again, and at other times, like now, the breathing was noisy, noisy, noisy, stop, noisy, noisy, noisy, stop.

Dalyon strained to hear through Ma’s breathing whether the outside singing had followed him right to the door, but it seemed to have stopped and not started up again this time. He listened hard. Had the child gone?

He ran to the fence and looked up and up, climbing in his head, marking every toehold. This fence was far bigger than the time he scaled it before, where he stood in the insect world. On the Wednesday afterwards Ma told Terry and Bob that he had left the yard.

*

Ma had to tell Terry and Bob everything that was new. She would write it down in a little book that they gave her, with a pen that they gave her.  That was when they sent the others to build the fence higher, to keep them both in. There was no need to keep Ma locked in. As long as Dalyon was there, she said she would stay.

Ma told him that they knew this. Ma seemed to be able to see right into people’s minds. She said that this was why they spoke to him and not to her.

‘Stay’, Bob said. ‘You stay. Understand. You stay, or she will die. See this.’

Bob had spotted a beetle scuttling across the floor by his chair. He put his foot down on it hard and when he lifted his foot up the beetle was partly flattened with one leg still waving.

‘That is what it is to die.’

Dalyon watched the beetle with its one leg waving goodbye, and that was when Dalyon knew Bob was the tracking animal that had found its way right inside the yard.

Terry smiled at Dalyon and said, ‘What Bob is saying, is that your Ma needs you here with her or she will feel very sad. Also, we want to keep you safe. The forest is a dangerous place for small boys. You must promise to never, ever, ever go there.’

Dalyon didn’t understand why Ma and he must stay in the yard with the tracking animal sitting right there, but he did understand that Terry and Bob wanted them to stay, because of what they said and because of how Ma told him what they were thinking, and of how she knew.

She said that a person’s body and face moved in a kind of language that told you what they were thinking and feeling. Bob and Terry’s bodies and faces did not move into softness. Their song was ugly and tuneless, the creaking door of the old shed. That door won’t be still in an ugly hot wind. Bob and Terry could made that hot wind blow on and on and on. Creak, creak, creak went the door. Ma sat with her eyes looking at their shoes, which were dusty and scratched, from the way that they had ridden a long way through the dirt. Ma later told him she looked at their shoes because she didn’t want them to know from her eyes what she was thinking.

 After they left, Ma held him for a long time. She laid her soft cheek on his head. He felt caught like an animal waiting to be set free, but he did not struggle. Even so, she held him tight to make him hear what she wanted to say.

‘Please Dalyon’, she said. ‘Please. I know it’s hard. We must do as they say. It is the only way. Be a good boy for Ma. One day you will see something new’.

It was a sad and tired song that Ma sang to him that day.

*

 Now Dalyon ran back and peered into the dark house where Ma’s shape was stretched out on the bed. He could no longer hear her heavy breathing. She lay quiet.  He forgot when she last stopped. He crept up to the bed and stood by her head.

‘Ma?’ he said,’ but she did not move. He patted her head. ‘Ma?’

He pushed her arm then, and it fell and hung with the back of its hand resting on the floor. He patted Ma’s shoulder, as she had often done to him. ‘Be a good boy,’ he said.

There again, beyond the perimeter, was the drifting sound of a child singing. Dalyon realized with a feeling that the child had moved further away. It was as if he had dropped something that would roll away and be lost forever if he didn’t move quickly. He went to the door and looked out and up into the tree, and saw nothing but the leaves moving softly.

‘Don’t go,’ he whispered to the child.

She must have felt his will. She stopped moving and sang a little song in one place, and now Dalyon felt shock and surprise as another voice joined hers, taking the low part. The two singers were like the crows and the warblers, creating a sound that prickled and drew him even more.  Their song was long and beautiful, looping around and around and around.

When at length it ended, Dalyon turned back to look at Ma. She was paler than he had ever seen her, and very still except for her hair which moved slightly in the breeze that came from the open door. She may have been lying that way for a long time as he had listened to the sounds outside with his head tipped towards his shoulder so that his main listening ear could catch each nuance.  Her arm hung down from the bed with its hand resting on the floor. He went to her side, picked it up and put it gently beside her under the covers. Her skin was cool. Her eyes were a little open and she seemed to smile at him. He closed his eyes and felt felt her standing beside him. ‘Take the package from the flour drum and go,’ she told him. ‘I will come a little way with you.’