Fusion

by Kate Richards

  ‘They never work.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t change people, you can’t go back and fix all the things that happened between people before you were born and because of those things, everything burnt-up and crashed and crazy and stupid – every death and every vomit and every nightmare is your fault and there’s no way of putting any of it right, no way to make sense of it, no way to heal no matter how hard you try.’

  We look up at the sky and the stars fall down from space all round us and the cold wind coming down from the mountain pulls at our hair and Wren is dearer to us than ever at this moment, and further away than ever.

  Christ says, ‘You tried pretty hard?’

  Wren says, ‘I didn’t find any answers. Not one. Nope. The only thing I believed in was wrong. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I reckon if you get hurt by a stranger then you’re afraid of strangers. If you get hurt by someone who’s meant to care for you and love you then you’re afraid of everyone.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. But if that happened, it’s not like it’s forever, I mean – it doesn’t have to be like that forever. Sometimes you find someone and it works out pretty good – well I think it can.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘I feel it. I can’t say how exactly. Maybe that’s the magic. It’s magic and at the same time it’s kind of generous because it’s the birth of something, like you might just leap into the sky, you know? I mean I think so, I feel it somewhere here. You’re so alive and your heart goes three times as fast, half in fright, and there’s this bright colour everywhere and whirling – and you think – maybe this is why I’m here.’

  ‘You’ve got some good people in your life, wherever they are.’

  ‘Maybe. Somewhere, I guess. Yeah, I feel like I do. Good people. Like you, Wren.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Everyone needs someone.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too much to lose. Too much pain.’

  ‘That’s why you keep on trying to be better.’

  ‘Better at what?’

  ‘At being a human being.’

  ‘I’m no good at that.’

  ‘Being a human being?’

  ‘Mmm. Yeah.’

  Turning her head to the side to face his, she smiles at him. ‘But Wren, if you hadn’t found me on that road I’d be dead now.’

  He doesn’t smile back. We watch him move as if he’s going to kiss her but then he turns his face away and says, ‘I reckon I’ll just stay here.’

  ‘Come on, really? Forever?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Thing is, here I get to spend time with animals – the cats, the wombats and wallabies and the birds and the wild horses. And with animals you don’t have to do anything and you don’t have to be anything. They’re open-hearted. Curious. Unconditional. Be with them, breathe with them. Listen to them. They have wild souls and still they understand humans, you wouldn’t believe how well.’

  ‘But then – but what – what are you looking for?’

  ‘Looking for?’

  ‘Wishing for? In your life?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, what do you want? Why are you here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know where my soul is.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Y’know, togetherness, taking care of each other, being close, good sex.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know how you go about that – like, how do you find someone? – and even if you are lucky enough to find someone – hell, why on earth do they like you – not you, sorry, I mean me – and even then, if they say they do – like you, I mean, like me – could you bear to believe them because it’s so unlikely that anyone would, and so you wonder at their judgement and are they a bit odd, they must be odd, and what does it mean – love – and what if to you – what if to me – to her or him, whoever – it means something different?’

  Christ says, ‘I think trust is the hardest thing to ask for and the hardest thing to give but when you have it, back and forth, it’s the best thing in the whole world.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  They share another joint and the sky is soft and heavy and we look up at the sky and the stars fall down from space all round us and the wind coming cold down from the mountain picks our hair up in its arms.

  ‘Which would you rather be – left or right?’ Christ asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well say you’re naturally right-handed, that’s how your brain works, but you’re Sea, so you’ve only got your left hand and left leg. That would be harder.’

  ‘Harder than what?’

  ‘Than being right-handed and having a right hand.’

  ‘When they were little maybe. Not now, not for a long time.’

  ‘Do they get angry with each other?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s weird. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Since the fire they’ve been so quiet.’

  ‘They got hurt. It’s a shock. I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That you got hurt.’

  ‘D’you think some things are meant to happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  ‘Yeah. But what’s happened exactly? It’s – weird. I mean I don’t know who I should be scared of, or what, or if whatever it is, is still out there.’

  ‘You’re safe here.’

  ‘I know.’

  Birds have now stopped chittering in the trees, readying for sleep. The outline of a wombat shuffles along under the apple trees, we can hear him pulling up grass and munching. A creak and then crack! and a dead branch falls from a snow gum behind us – it will weather under the sun like bone and become the silver-white of bone.

  ‘Have you ever had a dream that you’re not in?’ Christ asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder if the twins’ dreams include both of them. Because that would mean – they’re never alone, not even when they’re asleep, cos you know, that’s the only time it might feel like they’re alone, free-willed, I mean, I can’t imagine. What exactly would that be like? Every single second of every single bleeding day. And then all night too.’

  ‘They’ve got it worked out.’

  ‘Do they tell each other the truth?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How can you know for sure?’

  One of the cats jumps two metres up into a snow gum, fur and muscle and bone turned fluid for an instant and then back to fur and muscle and bone.

  ‘Quantum whatsit?’

  ‘Nah, cats defy gravity.’

  ‘Where has my memory gone?’

  ‘We’ll make you a new one.’

  Christ doesn’t reply.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  She doesn’t reply.

  Wren says, ‘I’ve forgotten my father’s face. He died on my birthday. I’m not sure he ever knew who I was. Not really. And you know what’s worse? I never knew who he was until it was too late. Too late to have made a difference.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘When we got back home from the funeral my mother said, Only two people I ever loved are dead. No use me going on, is there – and I said, I don’t care less what you do – so she locked me out of the house all night.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Hunkered down in the backyard toilet. It was raining. It was cold. Cold like set to freeze.’

  ‘Didn’t you have any friends to go to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Other family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you yell out?’

  ‘No.’


  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Nothing I did made any difference.’

  ‘Never ever?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Even when you told the truth?’

  ‘I didn’t tell the truth.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Shhhhhhhhh.’ He kisses her. The briefest, loveliest touch of lips.

  Winter is coming for us wearing her long black cloak. We know this not just because the days are getting shorter and the nights colder, but because our minds are slowing and our spirits burning lower like candles nearing the end of their wicks. No snow yet, fog rising from Blindeye Creek in the late afternoon and the air bitter before the sun goes down. Little Bear, Box Head and the Spirit Cat are asleep in their basket in the living room. This is their winter hibernation spot, plenty of blankets to crawl between and space enough for stretching and sighing when the fire is lit in the evening.

  Though it’s early yet, the energy in our room has a shifting, sparkling quality like that of fire because of our fever – a virus or a bacterium we’ve caught and which has found a cosy place to breed in at least one of our lungs.

  We sit up on our mattress and cough, paroxysms of coughing. One throat is raw and one lung at least is inflamed and with each inhalation our spine shifts to the right with a little crack. Despite wearing two men’s flannel shirts, a jumper over our thickest wool dress and two pairs of socks, half of us is terribly cold. We cannot rest nor sleep for the pain in our side. Instead we wonder about Christ.

  ‘If there is meaning in her ramblings

  she was delirious, it wasn’t her – the fever was talking

  or her unconscious mind, as in dreams. The truth and the answers are here in her words if only we can unravel them. She’s frightened of someone with good reason. We must keep her safe

  it doesn’t matter, it isn’t for us to unravel anything

  but the old bruises?

  so?

  and her broken leg – what if that was no accident either?

  maybe it was – maybe it wasn’t

  who was she talking to, in her fever?’

  A sigh. ‘It doesn’t matter

  but—

  fever

  things change, they shift. Even memories. We can help

  no, she’ll find her own way

  listen a minute. Hear it?

  what?

  singing – she’s singing that song.’

  Cough.

  ‘Well then. Fresh air

  now?

  yes, for our lungs.’

  Cough.

  ‘Please.’

  Sigh.

  ‘It’ll help.’

  Another sigh. Louder.

  Wren stands in our doorway. ‘Soup?’ he asks. We lurch. ‘Please,’ we say, half-smile and ease off the mattress, cough, wince, stand up crooked and slow and shuffle past him into the corridor and then out, where the air is cold enough to turn our breath smoky and the miles of hair the shade of brown closest to black, knotted and tangled and falling all down our back, has drops of dew frosting on it.

  ‘O look at that patch of daisies! Old gold exoskeletons. O! Let’s kneel

  no they’re nearly dead, let’s walk

  but see these here – this is a colour to feel and taste. This is the colour happiness!

  or the colour nearlydead

  let’s pick some for our room.’

  Sigh.

  ‘Those over there are the best looking

  fine

  no let’s leave them for Christ

  here?

  she can see them through the window from her couch

  her couch?

  she came the morning they bloomed

  does she like wildflowers?

  now we have something to give her, something beautiful.’

  Bending one creaking knee, we pick the daisies one-handed, our other hand holding a towel to our red running noses, ragged breathing on both sides. The cold stiffening our blood. Together forever for always and forever – this we believed to be true more than we believed anything else in the world. Something is tearing at us, collapsing and expanding and stretching and choking us. We read about such things a long time ago – we are not in safety, neither have we rest, neither are we quiet – and none of it made sense but now we feel it – fear, for it is fear that is tearing at us, stretching and choking us. Fear and – a new thing, a new thing with its own set of oddly sharp teeth – envy.

  Our cough is worse – we argue about wrapping a scarf round both our necks – yes because it’ll keep our throats warm and no because it’s scratchy and hot – and no won but it doesn’t matter either way because something bigger is circling us, something dark and hungry and unresolved. Coming for us.

  So we are distracting ourself by making soup with herbs from the garden – lemon thyme, rosemary, sweet marjoram, wild pepper, and also a lemon for juice and zest and a couple of onions and six cloves of garlic. And some snow daises for the house. They grow best protected from the wind beneath the snow gums. We tie the stems together into a posy with a blade of grass.

  In the living room Christ is sitting on the floor near the fire, her legs out straight, stroking the heads of the cats as they sleep. Wren comes in and Christ asks us how we are feeling and we can only smile and then grimace and shake our heads and there’s a whistling followed by a wheeze as we breathe in and out. Pointing to the daisies—

  ‘But these cheer us up

  in a way.’

  We hold the posy out to Christ – it glows – and we say, ‘For you,’ and cough and Christ’s face – her eyes – glow too and Wren’s eyes first go black and then flatten like life is bleeding from them, though he says nothing. We go into the kitchen.

  Yesterday Wren chopped the head off one of our chickens, eviscerated it, plucked the feathers from it and washed it until the water ran clean. Now we rub the chicken pieces with a mix of salt and sweet paprika and wild sumac and oil and lemon zest and put them in a pot with the garlic cloves, set the wood stove burning and go back into the living room.

  ‘It’s not just that I’ve lost my memory,’ Christ is saying to Wren by the fire, looking down at the daisies in her hand. ‘It’s that cos I’ve lost my memory, I’ve lost me. And my family? Where are the people I love? Do I have people I love? Are they – I mean – where – and—’

  Our hands shiver over our hearts and we say, ‘We’re sorry.’

  Wren says, ‘You’re here. That’s what matters.’

  O and now we see again how Wren looks at Christ, how the colour in his face changes. He is luminous, a beating light in his eyes and he doesn’t notice if anyone else is in the room – if we are in the room. More than that – when he’s with Christ, does he know we exist at all?

  Silence.

  We try again. ‘Perhaps we can trigger your memory.’

  Wren snorts, ‘Like hypnosis? That doesn’t work.’

  ‘Not hypnosis

  no not that.’

  Wren says, ‘Memory loss is protective. It keeps you from having to relive bad things. Why do you want to try and relive bad things?’

  ‘You didn’t have any jewellery,’ we say to Christ, ‘but we still have your clothes.’ We go out and come back with the shirt and jeans Christ was wearing when she arrived in the truck.

  ‘Maybe you fell off your horse and it got a fright and headed into the bush and joined one of the packs of wild horses that live in the mountains around here,’ Wren says.

  ‘Don’t think I’ve ridden a horse before,’ says Christ. ‘But who knows?’

  ‘Here.’ We give her the shirt and jeans. She holds them for a minute and smooths them out and smells them and frowns and says, ‘What about shoes?’

  ‘You didn’t have any socks or shoes. That’s why your poor feet were cut and black and blistered.’

  ‘Maybe you were kidnapped,’ Wren says wildly.

  ‘Stop being an idiot

  stop.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  We look at
Wren and see the warm live bounding animal in him and the energy spinning so hot and red – the boiling furyred. The blood in his eyes with nowhere to go.

  ‘But the map in my backpack and the compass,’ Christ says.

  ‘Maybe you’re in the army and you were out training and got hit by a stray bullet. Or—’ he pauses for effect, ‘maybe you fell out of a hot air balloon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or a plane.’

  ‘Wren, that’s stupid,’ we say, frowning. ‘And she doesn’t have a gunshot wound.’ Then we turn our heads to Christ. ‘There will be a good answer. Your memory will come back

  yes

  and we’ll keep helping and we won’t give up

  we won’t give up

  time will heal

  yes

  we all need to be patient. Time will heal.’

  ‘Time won’t,’ Wren says. ‘It’s not a saint.’

  We sigh heavily, unevenly, and our breath on the right side gets caught in that same throat and we cough and cough and then wince with pain and so our left side must still, must hold the breath all the way out – hold it till the stars come and the coughing stops.

  Wren says to Christ, ‘The thing is, your family don’t care or they’d have come looking. Maybe they’re the ones that hurt you.’

  ‘That’s unfair,’ we say. ‘We don’t know anything yet. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  A thicker silence falls on the room and all of us in it.

  Then he says, ‘Sorry. I said that wrong. I just meant, I mean – that it doesn’t matter – about any of them – they’re nowhere. You’ve got us now.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him

  don’t listen

  he’s not like this, he’s really not at all like this, something’s got all twisted up in his mind

  he’s being an idiot.’

  Wren says, ‘I’m not an idiot.’

  Christ is slumped forward, rubbing her eyes. We try to make it better, make it lighter. We whisper something quick quick and soft to each other and then we look at Wren and we grin at him.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘I’m not trying to be funny.’

  ‘That’s true. You’re not funny, Wren

  not funny.’

  Very quietly: ‘You’re lonely

  and—’

  Even quieter: ‘We know what you want.’

  And we add something more to one another – and laugh – and we look over at Christ and we can see in her eyes that she knows what we mean and now she’s grinning a bit too.