by Joy Dettman
‘My dream was from the Book of Moni,’ he says, watching my knife work for me. ‘Its print is large and it has not so many pages.’ He smiles, and his lips bleed.
I complete my task and prop him high then give him water and a crispbite. ‘So now you wish to lecture me from Moni’s book, as Granny lectured me from the Bible. Does your book tell more of Noah and Mary and Moses?’
‘It tells of Moni and her land of milk and honey. It is written that she dwelled there for many years. And it tells of She, the nameless one Moni promised would come. From her womb a new world will arise. In my dream, you were the one Moni had promised.’
‘Ha. So this is why they use me to make the many foetus for their laboratories, so a new world will rise from my womb. Did Jacob, the lying one you call father, also write this tale?’
‘No.’ His eyes close. He is quiet for a long time; I think him asleep and reach gratefully for my cordial, but his eyes open. ‘The followers of Moni wrote it and it was printed in secret by the labourers in the great printing house.’
‘Granny was a prisoner of the city. You confuse me.’
‘The poison you drink confuses you.’ He takes the bottle, places it against the rear wall of our shelter where I must reach across him to retrieve it. ‘Moni had many followers in the city who listened to her words, and remembered them. It is written that She who will come will carry the old blood of Moni.’
‘I carry the learning of Granny, but I am not of her blood.’
‘Much of her ovum was Harvested.’ He coughs, and I try to still his words, but he shakes his head and speaks more. ‘The Book of Moni was written many years ago. It is said that there are pages in it taken directly from the words Moni spoke at the meetings; there is also much of it taken from her secret writings, which, after her . . . her reported death, were given into the hands of her followers.’
I am listening, sitting beside him in the shade.
‘Because it is a work of the eastern city, little thought was given to it in the west and little interest shown, until recent years. Much has happened, much has been learned that she could not have known – had she not possessed advance knowledge. There are many on the west side who now look on her as a prophet.’
‘Mockery was the only weapon the city could not take from her. I believe she mocked them with her prophesies.’
‘The High Chosen think as you. There are others of the lesser order who do not.’
‘Who are the others?’
‘Their names are not spoken. Some hold important positions, thus their names are not listed, but there is an old one, from the laboratories, who tells of the frozen embryo of Moni, which yet have not been Implanted, nor yet discarded. I believe they fear –’
‘Embryo of Granny? Frozen? As in a freezer?’
‘As in . . . yes, a form of freezer.’
‘Do they also freeze the unfinished foetus in their form of freezer?’
‘I know nothing of unfinished foetus. If it is done, then it is a secret process of the Seelongs’ inner sanctum, and unknown in the city. Little of what the three do is known in the city.’ He coughs, and it is a harsh sound. I lift him, hold him until he clears his throat.
‘I do not much like your city, Jonjan, and you weary yourself with this talk. Your throat grows dry, and you cough. You are as Granny in her last days. Talking, talking, as if she must tell me all today for she would have no tomorrow. There will be a tomorrow for you.’
‘In the endless time I lay helpless in the sun I lost faith in tomorrow.’
‘How many days?’
‘That is a question I can not answer. I slept, and waited for the golden chariot to come for me. But you came to return me back to the land of the living, as Moni was returned to the land of the living.’
‘You were breathing. I set your bone, gave you food and water.’
‘It is written in the Book of Moni that her heart was not beating when she was brought as a child to the city. It is written that during her short time of death, she touched the hand of God, and he gave to her great wisdom and advance knowledge.’
‘And this is why the storm guided you to her land? To find more of her advance knowledge, more of her writings?’
‘For that and for another reason.’
‘She had no pencil to write with. We had worn it away until it was smaller than half of my tiny finger, and she hit my hand with a not-so-small stick when I did not hold the pencil well, and she mocked me when I ran to her with my fears and questions. And we had no paper to write upon; each blank page in each book had been used. And we had no clothing to wear but . . . but blankets and the rags of the ancient ones, and I think if she had touched the hand of God, he would have given her paper and a new pencil with which to write his prophesies. And I think you would have been better served to remain in your city with your dreams of Moni, for the one you seek here is not the one I knew.’
‘I think it is as you say; this talking makes my throat dry. I think I would be better served if you should use your mouth for other than to turn my belief of Moni the prophet into an angry old female with a miniature pencil and a long stick.’
I do not much like his words, but he smiles again, and Lord, I love his smile, though I wish it did not make his lip bleed. I moisten it with my cloth as I say: ‘I speak only truth, Jonjan. If truth is not what you are seeking then –’
‘I think your truth will also be better served if you should put that cloth aside and use your mouth to . . . to moisten mine. I believe this is a truth I will accept very well.’
(Excerpt from the New World Bible)
In the fourth decade of the New Beginning came desire for exploration. And many parties were sent forth to explore. And it was found that the highways, built in the time before the Great Ending, had become as rubble and the parties returned, defeated by the land.
And the Chosen looked to the skies, for new roads might more easily be made there. And they looked towards their engineers.
In time, the engineers constructed winged machines to harness the sun’s energy and fliers were trained in the art of the flying of them.
And there was excitement and much made of the fliers who were youthful sons of the highest order. The crafts were by need of light construction, thus the fliers must be, by need, of the smallest stature.
And these youths rode the skies above the city and they were as birds. And many eyes turned to the sky to watch the grace of their flight. And soon they went beyond the boundaries of the city, and knew no boundary but that of the setting of the sun.
And the Chosen named these youths the searchers and the priests said unto them: Go with God and search.
For only in the second administration after the Great Ending did the new High Chosen think to count the cost of their predecessors’ folly. For disease and abuse had decimated the female population.
In the first all-inclusive census, in all of the known world, there were forty-nine ovulating females. The average age was seventeen.
Of the males, there were six hundred and five, both infant and adult. The average age was fifty-two.
Mutations and sowmen were not counted amongst them.
THE WOOD PADDOCK
Not long before nightfall, I leave Jonjan, wrapped warm in the blanket, his shoes now his pillow. I cannot wear them to the house, though my feet do not thank me for their loss as they make their careful way down the animal track, around the fence, then quickly back to the woods.
I must find a way to enter the house unseen. If his leg is to have a chance to repair then I must care for him a while in our meagre shelter. To do this I will need one of the hides from the barn, and the grey men’s paper towels. I will need food and a clean garment for him; I will steal for him a container of Pa’s pills that kill the aches and pains, for he is in great pain but will drink no more of my cordial.
Care must be taken that the men do not see me. And I will take care. They sleep soundly, though in the lower rooms close to the kitchen. Much o
f what I need is in the kitchen, but I will find a way. For Jonjan, I will find a way.
Footsore and weary, I cut through the trees to the water barrel track, the shortest, the easiest route to the house. It is wide enough and well worn by the many feet of the generations which have come this way to dip water from the pool. The walking is soft here and my feet whisper through kind dust as night begins its creep up to the hill.
I think it is as a dream, this freedom, and tonight unlike any other, for he lives. He lives. And I will heal him, and we will live together in the hills and set snares for the rabbits and steal Pa’s pumpkins and milk from his cows and eggs from his hens.
I know this track well. Since Lenny discovered the comfort of my bed I have walked here with him and his bullock so I might help to dip water from the pool. And long before that, I had walked this track with Granny.
I think of her now, and think of Jonjan’s city Book, and also of Granny’s mockery. She had loved to mock – to mock my ignorance. I remember one day so clearly. We had been to the cave, but the long walk proved too hard and she was weary, and when weary and frustrated by the aches of her great age, her patience with me grew short.
I did not walk beside her and hold her arm, although this path is wide enough. I preferred to step on her footprints, always several paces behind so I might look at her boots, which she made from the cow hides in the way of the old people. I also liked to watch the movement of her hair. Grey and heavy it was, and to her end, she wore it long, parted in the centre, which allowed it to fall straight past her chin. It covered much of her disfigurement.
I was at the questioning age, and had asked about the fire, for by daylight, from this path, the burned western rooms are clearly visible.
‘What made the fire start, Granny?’ I was an infant, and had asked an infant’s question, but as always she had given me an adult’s answer.
‘Man’s lust,’ she had said.
‘Is lust like the pig’s fat that makes our light, Granny?’
Her head tossed back, she laughed at me. I had not then learned that the hardest stick in her schoolroom was derision; I thought her laughter a merry sound and joined with her, laughing too, but she turned to me, angered, her voice loud against the stillness of the bush path we walked.
‘What are you laughing at, girl?’
‘I don’t know, Granny.’
‘Tell me more about lust, girl,’ she had said, ridicule in her tone.
‘I don’t know lust, Granny,’ I whispered.
‘Then don’t laugh at what you don’t understand. Lust, girl, comes in many shapes and forms. Lust for power. Lust for control. Lust is what Jem’s bastard is feeling when he watches your little curls bob-bobbing, and he’s thinking I’m not watching him, when he’s standing on the verandah playing with the rabid rat in his pocket. That’s what lust is,’ she had said, one blue-veined finger lending stress to her warning.
I did not meet her eye, nor look higher than her worn boots until they started forward again.
‘All this is Morgan land.’ Her hand flung to the north, the south, the east and west. ‘Mine, girl, for as far as the eye can see.’
‘I know, Granny.’
‘There were seventy-seven of us when I was born. Seventy-seven men, women and children all living in that house and the barn, the cellar and the huts.’
‘I know, Granny.’
‘You know. You know nothing.’
‘I will try harder to learn, Granny.’
‘Then learn and remember. I was once a child. I ran this pathway with other children. I laughed and played hide-and-seek in those trees. Whatever I might look like now, you remember that. Then the city bastards came, and they came, and they kept on coming.’
‘Yes, Granny.’
‘They murdered my family, then tried to burn my house. It beat the bastards, but left me like this.’ She had hit her poor face with her scarred hand, punched at her shrivelled breasts, and I had stepped back from her. This was not a place where I wished her to go. Once started on the city men, she would not be stopped. ‘They had left their crafts at a distance then came by night,’ she said. ‘Came while we were sleeping.’
‘Don’t say more of this story, Granny. It makes you sad.’
‘Hold your tongue and learn, girl. Kara was awake. I heard her, ran from my room just as the little bastards came with their flying packs hissing, hop-hop-skipping up the stairs. When last I saw those burned-out rooms, the passage was a wall of flame that barred the way to my family. I all but died trying to get to them.’
‘I don’t like that story.’
‘Listen and learn, girl. Listen and learn of the lengths those bastard searchers will go to get what they want. Listen and learn and speak when you’re spoken to,’ she had snapped, silencing me before continuing her narration. ‘I was in my eleventh year, and half wild. I evaded them, led them a merry chase, then led them into the fire. My gown was of the old fabrics. Fire caught it. It burned well.
‘They stunned me, took me, saved a life, but it wasn’t the life of little Moni. And in the city, the bastards laughed at what they had saved, called her the roasted rat, filled her full of hormones, then Harvested her eggs.’
She had spoken before of the Moni child, but always as if she had been another child also taken that night. I was an infant and had not associated Monique Morgan with that child Moni, and as for eggs – I knew only of the hen’s eggs, and believed these were what she had meant. She had sat on a fallen tree, sat long, talked at me long of rats and Rene and of flying.
‘They forgot that there is fight in a cornered rat, girl, that the roasted rat still had her sharp teeth. I murdered ten of the bastards in their beds – two each for my brothers and four for my father. I crawled into the sleeping bays, like the rat I was, and I slit their throats with their own fine steel tools while they slept.
‘And I rejoiced, and God rejoiced with me. His hand shook the earth that night, and around me their fine buildings crumbled, but the rat had become a hawk. She flew, her sharp blade at the throat of little Rene, the flier, and I don’t know if he was more afraid of my unveiled face or my knife.
‘Our craft was one of the old ones. Couldn’t fly as far or as fast as the searchers’, but it was big and didn’t rely on the sun. We rode the night, girl, and let it take us where it would. It dropped us in a field of blacrap and we thought we were done for, but we landed soft. The blacrap was sleeping and we walked through it. Walked for days and lived on the fruit of its belly.’
I had stood before her, waiting, waiting for the talking to end, my ear in tune with every rise and fall of her tone, for I was learning to read her moods, learning too that I must censor my questions. Lord, how I feared her anger, and feared the face of her anger.
What age was I then? Was it my fifth or seventh year? I do not know, nor can I ever know. It was long before her death began, long before she was consumed by her bed, until all that remained were the bright twin blue gems of her eyes on a pillow, and the yellow grey hair, and the teeth, talking, talking while the stench of her near death grew.
The earth trembled and the old house mourned on the day she died, understanding before me that she was gone. I remember its eerie moan. I waited for her call, as I had done for many days. Soon she would call and I would walk into her room and dribble water from a spoon into her poor mouth and she would talk at me. Already I had spent too much time in that odorous room, had bathed her too many times and I wanted to hear no more talk of her rabbits, so I had sat on my bed, waiting.
She did not call. I waited. The grandfather clock’s heart beat too slowly. I could hear the tock-tick-tock in the hall.
And I heard its old heart stop. Still I did not move from my bed, determined to wait for the summons that would not come.
Hunger brought me from my room. I tiptoed across the passage to her door; and through her long wide window I saw the moons were red, and across the full round face of the mother moon, a cape-clad ghost was flying.
Granny did not move. She did not talk at me. I slammed her door and the window vibrated in its rotting frame. She did not talk. I crept to her bed and my hand reached out to touch her face, but her own hands covered it, and they were cold in death and I could not move them.
I screamed.
Lenny came quickly. He carried her downstairs. So small she was in his arms. Until her death I had not noticed she had become so small – just a parcel of bones held together by a patchwork of yellowed paper was Monique Morgan.
I have sometimes wondered if Lenny had tried to straighten the bird-claw fingers before he placed her to rest in the graveyard. Or does she sleep still with her hands covering her face while mould weaves its delicate patterns between her twisted fingers, creating a softening veil to hide the Granny child’s awful face from her family.
A rustle of movement draws my mind back to the moment and to the dark woods. I glance left, right, behind me. Lenny has seen escaped sowmen. Or perhaps it is the ghost of the harmless trader Lenny buried here. Perhaps he is out tonight, still wishing to trade his goods for books.
My feet step more quickly. There is much I must do. From the loft I will take the hide I have spread there. Food? Far better to take it from the kitchen than to go in the dark to the cellar, which is beneath Pa’s bedroom. The paper towels are in the kitchen. Clothing? One of Pa’s clean overalls will be about; he does not change often. I will require a large container in which to carry water. Pa’s milk bucket will suffice, and it will be my basket when I return to the hill. The hide will be heavy –
I see a flash of white and think it a ghost, but it is the female dog. She comes bounding out of the gloom, the male behind her. They dance around me, so pleased to see their bringer of meat. I still my mind, my feet.
‘Lenny?’
It is old Pa who replies, and there is relief in his voice. ‘We thought you got took by searchers, girl.’
