The Seventh Day

Joy Dettman was born in Echuca in Victoria and now lives in Melbourne.

Joy, a mother of four, is a full-time writer and a published author of several award-winning stories and the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
and
Yesterday's Dust
.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY JOY DETTMAN

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

HIS COMING

THE REMEMBERING

GIRL

THE WOODEN TRUNK

THE GREY MEN

THE ESCAPE

THE SCENT OF FREEDOM

JONJAN

THE WOOD PADDOCK

UNFEATHERED WINGS

HELP ME

IT IS WRITTEN

THE HONEYDEW

NEWSPRINT

THE SEARCHER AND THE SOWMAN

ANSWERS

YESTERDAY

AARON J MORGAN

SCATTERED PAGES

THE V CUBES

LENNY MARTIN

IT IS TIME

THE SPRING CAVE

THE INFANT

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

INCONTINENCE

THE RAINS

STEAL THE NIGHT

ONLY A WORD

THE FLOWER

WELL ENOUGH

THE LETTER

COME HOME

EPILOGUE

With my own eyes I have seen the proof of it. Two pigeons have returned to the old loft. I have been there and seen their dear fledglings, flapping helpless wings. They cannot fly, not yet; ah, but let a cat loose amongst them and I think they will learn fast – if their will to survive is strong. If not, then they will die and only their feathers learn to fly.

That is the way of things now and there is no changing of it.

Today, as I set my fingers loose amongst the letters of my writing machine, I say to them, ‘Learn to fly. Learn to fly or the past will die.'

Poor fingers, in these past years they have mastered many new skills but how blindly they go about this one. I think they are not as the fluttering fledglings but have much in common with long blind worms seeking entrance to the old ones buried deep in the graveyard; they thrust, then back off to approach once more, but from a new direction.

Fly my fingers. This is no time for blindness. You must learn to play joyfully over this machine, finding the t-h-e and the a-n-d, slam-slamming these letters down until your work is done. There is much to record and a need to record it, for it is time.

These were Granny's words.

It is time, girl.

Lord, I hear her now. I see her now. Eyes that were sapphires, not yet dug from yellow clay. Teeth of storm-stained granite, propped haphazardly, like tombstones in the old ones' graveyard.

It is time, girl.

Her voice was a rasping whisper, her scream discordant, but I will not yet write of Granny; she is not the beginning, though there will be much of her life to record.

I have beside me many pages; they will be enough for me to reach the end – if first I can make a beginning. I like this paper very well. I like to touch it, to feel it against my face, to smell its clean newness. Each page holds the sweet perfume of freedom.

But I must not write yet of freedom for freedom also is not the beginning.

So where is the beginning? Should I write of the Great Ending, of which I know little? Or should I write only of that which I know – the dark of that night, and the crying and the falling and the small light that drew me in? Or . . . or will I start at the day of the three grey men who came in their thundering craft? And the dogs barking and the men running and the flash of purple light, and Pa falling.

Or should the beginning be the day of Jonjan?

Yes. Yes. He must be the beginning, for he was my beginning.

Jonjan

See how fine the letters of his name appear on my clean paper. So strong, so black they are. Has Sern, the mender, not proven himself worthy of his new name? But my mind runs too quickly ahead; I believe it tries to tell the end before it tells the beginning. Slow my mind and speed my finger, make the tap-a-tap rhythm begin.

It wasan endless day t h ed ayof hiscom ing

Foolish fingers. See what you have done to my fine paper! Do you not know that this is an important task I have set you? How badly you make these letters, but how flawlessly I remember that day and how I love to remember that day.

I saw him first as a speck of silver flying before the storm. I saw his beetle machine and the deep blue of his overall that matched well the blue of his eyes. And his hair, long it was, golden and flying free. And clean.

Ah, rest a while my fickle fingers; there will be time enough for you to find the tap-a-tap rhythm of the printed word, for my mind, as it is apt to do when I think of that day, has gone a-wandering, gone back to the old Morgan house.

Endless days of light. White light in the morning, white sky at noon, sleepy white light in the slow wearing down of late afternoon. On such days the searchers come to our mountains to ride the winds. Like graceful eagles they swoop and dive, seeking for scuttling prey, but they do not find me.

I have watched them brush the tree tops, near touch the earth, and I have seen one fall to earth on the hill to the north of our house. I laughed at him, for then he had the grace of the cocky rooster who flaps his wings, making much noise and dance with his attempts to fly but raising only a fine cloud of dust that hangs on the air looking for a place to settle.

There is much dust here. The winds lift it, toss it high, striving to block out the sky with it. Eventually it finds a place to settle, on brick and window, on roof, and on the grey leaves of my freedom tree. Dust turns them a greyer grey and when I walk beneath my tree, its leaves rain grey dust on me.

Granny once told me of the other rain, when water drops fell from the sky to paint their spotted patterns and make small craters in the dust. There is no rain now, nor has there been such a thing in all of my lifetime, though there have been wondrous storms, raised by the thunder giants who once lived beneath our mountains, who shook all of the earth with their anger while their light-guns spat fire which made the dead trees burn.

I have seen such things. In the time long before Granny's leaving, we walked far in such a splendid storm to watch a distant mountain burn. So fierce and red it was, red as my hair beneath a noonday sun. I do not walk far now. I must stay behind the tall fence and wait for the three grey men who come by night and leave before dawn. They are time's only measurement, their comings and goings, their Plantings and their Harvestings.

Time? I do not think much of it, though Granny possessed an understanding of time's concept; she tracked the hours and the days of time, and the many years of time. Since her leaving, the great clock in the upper hall does not measure days with its majestic tock-tick-tock, for what is time but the movement of two hands around the face of a clock? I have found that if I do not set its great heart a-beating then there is no time.

Today Lenny and Pa work in the shed where they try to make the generator's heart beat, so our lights may glow brightly and our fences sing. They do not sing today, and in the cellar the freezers do not hum so the men curse loudly and I wander free.

From the front verandah I can see the fence, and the gate. Beyond it, there is only the down, down, down of the mountain. I can not see the western fence. It is far away, but from the west I see a wind storm rising. I like these storms. They hide the sun and make the searchers fly faster for home.

Then, racing before the storm, I see one. Just a glinting of silver it is. I hope the winds will crush its fine long wings and toss it from the sky, for those searchers are evil things. Granny feared them. There was little she feared, thus I learned from her to also fear them.

I creep down the verandah where time has made a rubble of old masonry. Only here and there has the pattern survived, and the red rock colour. At the end of it there is a grey water tank, city new, and beneath it and around it, Pa's pumpkins grow. Each year they are planted in this place so they may catch each escaping drip of water.

The dusty green of the large leaves is restful to the eye and soon I forget the searcher and his craft, and I become the searcher, for the first of the golden flowers are upon Pa's pumpkins. And there! My eyes find one, and my hands cup it. I love these flowers well and wish to steal one for my hair but I may not steal one; Pa needs all that will open.

The wind becomes a howling wail before I look again for the craft. It has made a circle and now it returns from the north. So close it is. I can see it is not a long-winged searcher with a small bubble head, but a strange baby thing with plump body and beetle-wings and a flier sitting astride it. I have not seen such a thing before.

‘Fly away, beetle,' I whisper. ‘Fly away home, for the winds blow strong, you will not fly long.'

It does not hear me, but glides to the earth on the flat place that was, in the time of the ancient ones, named Morgan Road. I stand tall on the tank's support from where I can watch the beetle push its round nose close to our gate as its silver wings wearily fold down.

And he steps from it, and my shoulders, soaking up the cool of the water tank, shiver while my back and head crawl with the irritation.

Why do I think of blood? Blood on dust. And a hand . . . a hand that would not hold me.

I cower, push my back against the tank's corrugations, rubbing hard, up and down, up and down. I shake my head, shake it until the image of blood on dust shatters and the pieces scatter like small rats disturbed in the barn.

The two crazed dogs bark wildly, and from inside the shed Lenny curses them. Pa mimics him, and I mimic Pa, but softly. I like to do this. Pa is very old, and his voice, near worn away, comes up slow from his belly, barely rising to his dry throat before it is squeezed out through lips that have no energy to waste on movement. His right leg is lame so he has a stick to aid with his walking. From behind the tank I watch him limp from the city men's shed, his free hand shading his eyes as he looks towards the house.

He does not see well. His eyes will not find me. My eyes see very well and they are following the stranger as he climbs the gate and walks so freely towards the house. His overall is of a deep blue and fits his form as a skin, his yellow hair blows wild in the wind, as does my own. Quickly my hands tame it, plait it as I step back, and back, to crouch low amid the prickling pumpkin leaves.

Pa clears his throat; this he always does when he knows he will need to make words. He spits what he has cleared to the dust, then calls to the stranger. ‘We ain't trading, and we ain't giving nothing away. Move on, boy.'

These words do not still the city shoes, but give focus, for the stranger turns, smiles, walks purposely towards the shed.

‘I am Jonjan, son of Jacob, of the High Chosen,' he says, both hands lifting high. ‘And I am pleased to see your face and your shelter, old man.'

I like his words and the sound of his name. ‘Jonjan,' I whisper. ‘I am Jonjan, son of Jacob.' He has a clean face with no hair upon it, and such a carefree swing to his stride. I like his long limbs. They bring to me memory of another male who found his way here. A harmless being, his mind was not of the new world, nor of the old, but elsewhere, and when Pa spoke his warning that day, the words had made that stranger tremble and drop his basket of trade goods to the earth. He wished only for books, of which we have many, but he did not get his books. Nor did he walk long in this world for it was his misfortune to come on the evening of the three grey men. Their craft is black and loud, and they have many shiny tools from the city, one which shoots a stream of purple fire. It sheds no blood, but melts the flesh, bringing a faster death even than Lenny's dart gun.

Lenny buried the trader in the woods. I spied on him and watched him dig the hole and mark a tree for him, but I do not wish Jonjan to sleep in such a hole. He is so young and beautiful as he stands looking into the dark of the shed, searching the cavern of sweating shade.

‘You're not hearing good, boy,' Pa says, drawing a line before him with his stick, then spitting across it.

‘I am no threat to you, old man. I search only for the history.'

‘Less you're wanting to be part of
his-story
, then get off our frekin land before I start believing you ain't got the sense of a sow, boy. Move on, or I'll set me dogs on you,' Pa says.

‘My craft will not handle the storm. I have been forced far off course,' the stranger says, his hands now open wide, his palms up. ‘I ask only shelter until it passes.'

I believe his words, and his stance, but the dogs do not. They inch forward, crawling on their bellies. Huge dogs they are, one brindle, one white, hungry, strong, and eager to taste fresh game.

Then Lenny walks into the light. Like Pa he is, with his long nose and small eyes near closed against the glare. Other parts of his face are protected from the sun by rusty face hair which near hides the narrow slash of his mouth. His green overall, though stretched to fit, was made for a finer, longer male; the legs of it crinkle, wrinkle above his boots. He wears a greasy cap pulled low over his eyes, and he lifts neither head nor cap, as the grumble of thunder growls up from his barrel chest. Like bookends he and Pa, they have been hewn from the same rough rock, though one has been well weathered and near worn away by storm and wind and time.

Together they stand, their two great dogs at their feet. Jonjan stands apart, looking from the barn, to the dust storm, to his craft.

‘It has no anchor. If I might stow it indoors I would pay well –'

‘You reckon that frekin fence got built for decoration, eh, boy?' Lenny says.

But the stranger is not looking at Lenny. He is staring now at the tank-stand and at the green of the pumpkins, and I think his eyes are very good, for too quickly he turns his head. Too fast, he steps back, then back again.

‘Good health to you and to the Chosen,' he says, and the snarling dogs cower closer to the earth.

‘He seen too much, Pa?'

Pa's index finger strokes his face hair as he spits to the dust, and with a swinging motion of his right leg, turns to Lenny. ‘Reckon so, boy.'

Lenny sighs. He stares towards the pumpkins and my hair, his own finger scratching beneath his cap. ‘Reckon he knows what he seen, Pa?'

‘Reckon he thinks he knows. Reckon that's maybe why he come.'

Jonjan is on his way and walking quickly when Lenny's whistle quivers, falters then dies, and the dogs, a well-matched pair, run free. One hits the stranger in the back, the second grasps his ankle, dragging him to the dust. They straddle him, their bared teeth only inches from his eyes.

‘I'm not a searcher,' Jonjan cries. ‘I am no threat to you or yours.'

‘Makes no never-mind now, boy. Stuck your nose where it shouldn'ta got stuck and you come unstuck.' Lenny appears to be such a slow beast but he has much strength and can move with unexpected speed when necessary. Before the storm is upon us, the gate has been opened and both rider and his three-wheeled flying machine have been dragged into the old barn.

Pa calls to me then, and the dogs search, but the winds are grey with dust, and wild. Pa does not find me for I have lifted the lid of the water tank and climbed within, where I remain, crouched low in the little water, safe from dust, and from the dogs. As with the shed and the generator, the grey men brought this tank. It is a good place for me to hide, and when I do not wish to be found, I am not found.

Afternoon light has given way to evening when I scramble from my hide to share my drips with the pumpkins. In the shed the men still curse the city generator.

I walk the length of the rear verandah and through the back door into the kitchen where I take up my cordial from off the table, which is a rickety thing, but large enough to hold all we need. This cordial I drink daily, and when all of the bottles are empty the grey men return and bring more for me.

The last bottle is almost empty. I smile. So
that
is why Lenny and Pa's labour in the shed has such importance. The grey men require much bright light for their work with me.

Lord, how I thirst for the cordial. I pour a measure into a mug, add water, then drink it fast. I make another which I carry outside. The stranger is in the barn and he too will thirst.

My eyes near closed against the last of the windborne dust, I sidle along the edge of the house to the western corner, which is not far from the shed. The dogs sense I am about; there is much yap-yapping, but they are tied by strong cords to either side of the barn's main door; they will not break free.

It is a very wide doorway, as the barn is wide – many times the dimensions of the city men's shed, which is forty paces south of it. As with the house, the barn has stood tall and strong on this land since before the Great Ending. I like it well, and like the loft, where once, long, long ago, many men slept in compartments, separated by small walls. Each compartment has a window opening and from these I can look out to the tops of the mountains that surround our land.

Tonight I enter through the side doorway. And he is there, bound hand and foot, then tied to a wide support beneath the loft, his arms dragged high, his feet barely touching the earthen floor.

I peer at him from the doorway, and at his beetle machine, then I creep inside, my back to the wall, and I offer the mug, though he has no hand to hold it.

He stares at me, and in disbelief, but says not a word.

I step nearer. Words do not come easy to my tongue; I have had little use for them since Granny died, and this evening, my fickle tongue denies me. My finger reaches out and briefly touches his blue overall. ‘You thirst?'

He flinches, and for a moment his feet lose their purchase on the floor; he swings there by his arms, but his eyes do not leave my face. I draw back, place the mug down and wait until he gains his feet before approaching him again, for I have such a strong desire to know of the others.

‘You . . . you are a very young one of them,' I say.

‘You are female.' His words are less than a whisper.

I wait, for I like his soft voice and wish him to say more. He says no more.

‘Do you know my name?' I say.

‘I know nothing,' he whispers. ‘Free me. I have not been here today. I have not seen you.'

‘You are here. I think you are not blind, so you see what you see, and you see me.'

‘Oh, Moni,' he moans as he struggles against his bonds, trying to lift himself high, then he slumps, stands motionless, his eyes raised to the roof. ‘Oh, Moni. Help me now.'

‘Oh, Moni,' I say, copying his words and his tone. I like to mimic. I can make the call of the rooster and of the crow too, the whistle of the eagle. ‘Oh, Moni. Help me now.'