Free The Wish Kin by Joss Hedley

over the good of it and reorganise it for evil.’
    Colm is mystified. ‘Why would this happen?’ he asks. ‘Won’t it be enough for people that there will be rain again? That the land will be renewed?’
    â€˜I hope so,’ sighs Ailis.
    There is a noise from behind the curtain leading to Ailis’s room and Lydia and Brae emerge, their hands joined, their faces soft and smiling.
    â€˜Better?’ asks Ailis of Brae. The boy nods and looks at Lydia. Her eyes are bright, fiery.
    â€˜It was your porridge, Ailis,’ she says. ‘It fixed him at once.’
    The two sit down on the rug beside Colm. Brae takes out a stack of the metal discs from a leather pouch and places them, image down, on the floor in seven rows of seven. He and Lydia touch the discs, turning them one by one, shifting them about in their positions. Ailis turns back to Colm.
    â€˜You could try heading north,’ she says. ‘You never know, Gowan may be there yet.’
    Colm looks again at his sister. She is deeply engaged in the disc game with Brae. ‘Lydia,’ he says. ‘We should pack.’
    â€˜Just one more game,’ she replies.
    It is her turn now. She moves her hand across the seven rows of discs and touches one briefly, then flips it over to reveal the image of a wolf, strong and fearless.
    â€˜Father,’ she says, looking at the disc. She turns it face down again then passes her hand through Brae’s thin fringe of hair. ‘Thank you, Brae,’ she says, and stands. She picks up her pack and begins to stow her gear into it. Her almost empty water bottle she packs last, near the top.
    â€˜Here,’ says Ailis, ‘have a little more.’ She fills their bottles with water from the clay urn then kisses the two of them goodbye. ‘Travel well,’ she says.
    The woman and the middle-aged boy stand at the door of the hut waving as Colm and Lydia walk slowly from the campsite. The children pass the mound of rusting car parts and the old man sitting in its shade dreaming of happier times. As they are entering a patch of scrub they turn one last time and see their hosts looking westwards. The children shift their gaze and watch as a herd of kangaroos make their way across the scrub towards the lakes of Glen Isla.
    â€¢ • •
    They walk north. They are feeling well for the rest, for the good food at Ailis’s. They take careful sips of the water from their bottles and nap in the heat of the day. Lydia rolls onto her side and blows a small well of air into the red dirt. Sleep comes to her quickly. Colm lies on his back and ponders the things of which Ailis spoke. The Wish Kin. So strange. Not a power, as such. Ailis had called it a sympathy, a compassion. But it was something so strong and so deep that the earth must somehow recognise it, and respond to it. But how could such a thing happen? And how many Wish Kin were there? Who were they? Were they together now? When would the Rekindling start? Why didn’t it start soon?
    His head thickens and whirls. He wants to know the answers, to understand fully. He grasps at the metal disc about his neck. It is strangely cool.
    The sky at this time of day is bright, the brightest of blues. Electric blue, their father used to say. Colm gazes at it, at its brilliance, its completeness. It seems perfect, he thinks. More than perfect. How can one thing be so wholly blue, so wholly bright? He thinks of tales his father told him of how once the sky was home to thick, heavy rain clouds, great banks of them that covered the expanse like enormous weightless mountains. He thinks of the stories of the huge leaden thunder clouds; of gunmetal grey sheets rolled out across the firmament, which filled the air with charge, sent spears of current to the ground, burst and covered the earth with floods of rain. He thinks of riverbeds, dry and cracked for years, filling now with sweet brown water, thinks of it swirling and eddying in