Free The Wish Kin by Joss Hedley Page A

great rushes as it follows its path to the sea. He thinks of deep pools of water, dams and tarns and little lakes, and of the soft green vegetation that grows on their banks. He thinks of animals making their way slowly through the balmy evening air to drink from their depths. Lizards there’d be, geckoes and blue-tongues and frill-necks. Birds of every variety, currawongs, magpies, kookaburras. And herds of four-footed beasts, of cattle, sheep and horses. All would drink from the pools and meres and rivers and these would be full because of the great emptying of the clouds upon the land.
    All this he thinks about from the things his father has told him. Few of these creatures has he ever seen himself and never has he laid eyes upon water in theway he knows it once existed. Nor, for that matter, has he ever seen rain clouds. The most he has perceived is a wisp, a small feather of cloud. Like that one there in the sky above him now, the merest thread of whiteness in the endless bowl of blue. He watches it make its way across the expanse, sees how its edges scatter and spread to tiny fibres that are left behind to dissolve into nothing. The slightly larger thread he follows with his eyes, observes as it curls upon itself with the help of an updraft, as its tail meets its head so that it looks like a smoke ring blown through the lips of some kindly giant of the sky, a smoke ring that would be the envy of Ailis’s father sitting there with his empty pipe, his empty lungs. There is an ache in Colm as he watches, and a feeling of something long, long forgotten, or of something never even known. The cloud pushes further upwards, blown by the breath of the gentle, skybound giant, blown until its edges fray once again and it dissipates: twenty tiny threads of silk disappearing into the blue.
    â€¢ • •
    Two days later they come to a sizeable town resting in a valley between two hills. Colm is confused, and rechecks their position against the map.
    â€˜It can’t be Gowan,’ he says. ‘Gowan’s still a day away.’
    They approach the rambling outskirts carefully, buttheir need for water and provisions drives them into the town’s centre. A passer-by tells them the place is called Yarran. They stop at the town well and wait in line to fill their bottles. The woman ahead of them turns and looks at them.
    â€˜You’re not from here,’ she states. ‘You shouldn’t be in this line.’
    â€˜Where should we be?’ Colm asks.
    The woman shrugs. ‘Not here,’ she says. ‘Try asking at the transit office. Someone there should know.’
    They drift out of the queue and head towards the low prefabricated hut across the road. A long line snakes through the door and along the front of the building. Colm and Lydia take their positions at the end of it.
    â€˜How could Ailis not know of this place?’ Colm asks Lydia.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜She said that the nearest town was three days’ journey north, not two. Why didn’t the menfolk of her clan come across it in their travels?’
    â€˜Maybe they avoided it,’ says Lydia. ‘Look at it. Can you imagine them wanting to live here?’
    Colm scans the untidy street with its mean little shacks and bags of rubbish stacked up in foul-smelling piles. Crowds of people dressed in rags, their feet bound with filthy cloths, push past them. Flies swarm over market stalls that sell rotten fruit and limp brown vegetables. Flea-bitten dogs scrap over morsels of meat.Small children run naked and dirty in and out of passing trailers and barrows. Colm shakes his head.
    â€˜So strange,’ he says. ‘They live so close to this place but are so different. It’s like they’re from another age.’
    â€˜It’s like everyone is from an age all of their own,’ says Lydia. ‘Ailis, Marla, Nurrengar. And us. All of us making our way however we can.’
    The queue moves a