Tomorrows Child (17 page)

I was sitting
in Boy Heaven, I guess.

The storm
continued to batter our little house. The wind whistled through the
gaps and the rain hammered against the tin roof. It seemed
relentless, though the thunder and lightning appeared to be less
frequent. Still, when lightning filled the room, I braced myself
for the clap of thunder.

There was no
measure of time to indicate how long the storm persisted; there
were no clocks in Libby’s house and no watches on our wrists. There
was no need to measure time, it was no longer relevant, but it was
ingrained in us anyway. We estimated length of time, and as long as
we agreed, that was all the evidence we needed. As the thunder
eased to a gentle rumble we accepted that we had been holed up for
at least an hour, maybe two.

The fire, the
food and the spiced tea contributed to a relaxed atmosphere.
Navarre had returned to the lounge and shut his eyes. Perhaps he
was sleeping. Libby had gone to her room now that it appeared her
worry was for nothing. Phoenix relaxed back on a pile of cushions
and tossed a thin knee rug over himself, leaving his chest exposed.
Libby was right, he was modest.

I felt sleepy
too and wanted to lay back and relax, but unless I left the room,
any attempt to lie down in the small and modest lounge room would
position me closer to Phoenix than I already was. I was beyond
distraction and discovered that all my thoughts tracked back to
him. If I were normal, I may have recognised the signs and
symptoms, but I was anything but normal - I’d never been
normal.

Phoenix rolled
over to his side, reached out and took my hand. “Don’t spend too
much time worrying about what might happen or what is expected of
you. It will work out in the end. It always does.”

For the second
time today, Phoenix had presumed wrongly, “I was thinking about
something else actually, but since you mentioned it… how can you be
sure it will work out?”

“Things always
work out exactly how they’re supposed to. It may not seem like it
at the time, but in the end, when we look back, we see it couldn’t
have gone any other way.”

“What if I say
no and choose not to be a part of the prophecy?” It was an option I
had to consider.

“You won’t,”
Phoenix seemed quite certain.

He still held
my hand and squeezed it a little. Phoenix held my hand often and
normally I considered it to be a method of reassurance, as I’m sure
it was and still is, but for me, the intent had changed. His hand
was warm and definitely reassuring, but there was something more. I
couldn’t move for fear that I would cause him to move, but I
couldn’t think beyond the presence of his hand and the closeness of
his near naked body. Still, I didn’t know where these feelings were
coming from. I had not considered Phoenix to be more than a friend
before this very moment, and I didn’t know him long enough to have
developed anything more. But the intense feelings remained.

“If the
prophecy is part of your purpose, any decision you make will just
bring you back on track. If it’s something you need to deal with,
the patterns in your life will return you to this same path until
you finally deal with it.”

“Then there is
no decision to make? If I always end up where I started… back here
making the same decisions? That doesn’t seem fair.” I wondered if
Phoenix had more invested in my decision than he was letting on.
Was he trying to convince me or was this actually the truth?

“Then why did
Libby tell me that I had to choose?”

“Because she
wants you to decide for yourself, accept your role and be a willing
participant.”

“Do you have
any idea how tiring it is?” Navarre smiled, “I don’t mean to sound
mean, but you either need to get with the program or go play with
the kids.”

It must have
been the mellow mood that had developed in the room because this
didn’t upset me as it should have. I knew I was behaving badly…
childish even. “You’re right, but I don’t seem to have any control.
Maybe it’s because I’m new here and everyone seems to know what’s
going on except me. I’m not used to feeling so stupid.”

“Not everyone
knows. I only heard about it these past few days. I knew about some
stuff, but I’d never actually heard the prophecy,” Navarre
answered.

“I thought
Raven knew; she said some things that made me think she knew
everything. But she stopped before she finished. I assumed she was
talking about the prophecy,” I told him.

Phoenix shook
his head, “She doesn’t know anything about the prophecy. She knew
you were having a hard time after your mum died, but that’s all. I
don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Correct me if
I’m just imagining things, but I don’t feel like I’m a part of the
life here. I hardly know anyone. I don’t contribute anything. I’m
just a freeloader. I don’t like it and I don’t think it helps my
situation. That’s probably why Raven hates me so much.”

“I’ll talk to
Libby and see if we can organise some community time mixed in with
some free time. You’ll be amazed at what everyone gets up to. It
will be a nice surprise, I think.”

“I think the
rain has stopped,” I commented. We hadn’t noticed, but realised now
there was no wind or rain, and the thunder had stopped long ago. “I
don’t want to see what a mess the storm made.”

“I just want to
stay here, it’s nice and warm and the company is good. What more
could a man ask for?” Phoenix smiled and rubbed my hand with his
fingers. Maybe Phoenix did feel the same as I did. My stomach
flipped at his words, I blushed and bit my lip, “but we can’t stay
here all day,” he added.

I wanted him to
kiss me, right then, more than anything I’d ever wanted. My stomach
was like an ocean in a storm, with the waves washing sensibility
from my mind. As Phoenix moved to stand up, his face came within a
few centimetres of mine, his breath hot across my lips. He smiled
and reached down to help me up. My breathing was a little erratic
and I blushed. I really wanted him to kiss me, but I stood and we
walked to the door.

As we stepped
through the door, a new world faced us. Instead of the fresh flush
of green we expected to see, our world was white. And beneath the
cover of snow was a scene of devastation and chaos, frozen in the
slush and mud the storm left in its wake.

The view before
us mirrored the devastated world we lived in. Trees were uprooted
and twisted, leaves and branches were strewn across the yard, and
everything was covered in a film of powdery white. Several sheets
of tin lay twisted on the ground, but they too were growing white
under the falling snow.

“Oh my…” Libby
had woken up and was standing behind us. I shot her a look of
sympathy. Her beautiful garden was nearly ruined, not completely
destroyed, but there were certainly casualties.

“Flamin’
hell...” Navarre remarked as he stood beside me.

Pepper was
running around the yard, digging for bugs and pushing the debris
and snow with his nose. At least, he’d found what he was looking
for. Icy water pooled in hollows, making small islands appear,
which caused him to leap and splash as he filled his tiny belly.
The snow continued to fall and turned brown and sludgy as it landed
in the muddy puddles.

“It doesn’t
snow here!”

“Let’s go. I
fear we have bad news to deal with, and there’s nothing we can do
here today,” Libby said as she slipped her feet into a pair of
purple gumboots. I noticed a tear fall across her cheek.

Phoenix took my
hand as we walked in silence behind Libby. No words could take away
her pain, yet I feared that the worst was yet to come. As we
entered the remains of the forest, we realised the damage wasn’t
limited to the garden. The forest had suffered too. Many trees were
down; some were twisted in place, but remained standing, while
others had become half trunks, sheared and splintered. The path was
no longer an easy trek with barriers of fallen trees blocking our
way and preventing any progress. Navarre climbed up over the
uprooted and thrashed limbs and claimed they were safe. Libby
hesitated, but followed. Then Phoenix and I did the same.

We eventually
stumbled out of the forest and into a scene far worse than any of
us expected. Tahinah’s beautiful garden was a broken and jumbled
mess, but on the ground, surrounded by our friends, lay a body.

The people
stood surrounded by chaos, encircled by broken trees and debris,
while the snow continued to fall. These people seemed beaten, pale
and visibly weakened by the scene before them. I couldn’t see what
they were looking at, but Libby knew. She stood tall and squared
her shoulders and I became aware of the importance of her presence.
Libby was their strength whenever life appeared hopeless and cruel.
She wouldn’t let them down today. The crowd parted to make way for
her. I saw it then… stretched out on the earth… the lifeless body
of Basil Huxley, Libby’s oldest friend.

Libby knelt
beside the man and held his hand in hers. There was no need to take
his pulse or listen for signs of life - Basil was obviously dead.
The blanching of his skin was no contrast to the snow that
surrounded him. A deep wound on his head and the red blood that
caked his hair and streaked his face were proof enough.

Basil had lived
in the area his whole life. He and Libby had been friends since
childhood. Basil was the last of Libby’s old friends who was still
in the area. If the truth be known, he may have been Libby’s last
living friend.

Slowly, the
group withdrew to give Libby the space she so obviously needed. I
had no idea what to do. My relationship with death was new and the
pain too fresh for me to be detached or offer any comfort. I could
feel my legs weaken and wobble beneath me and an ache began to grow
in my heart. I slowly stepped back, until I was as far from death
as I could be without entering the forest. No one noticed my
absence and I thought it best if I just went home. This was their
grief. Each one of them had known Basil for many years and his
death would be felt sorely by everyone.

Phoenix was
beside me before I’d made it over the first pile of trees. “Where
are you going?” He didn’t really need to ask, so I just looked at
him and said nothing. “You can’t go home and you shouldn’t be
alone! Besides, you’ll probably get lost.”

As I started to
speak, I realised I was close to tears. The words caught in my
throat and exposed the fragile grasp that held my emotions in
check, but the façade didn’t fool Phoenix.

“You don’t have
to go near Basil or Libby if you don’t want to, but you shouldn’t
be alone either. You’ve fought so hard to deal with the grief of
losing your mum, wallowing in misery now won’t help. If you want to
talk about it, we can sit for a while.” He pointed toward a wooden
bench embedded into the base of a tree. “But if you need to cry,
that’s okay too. I’m your friend. You can always cry on my
shoulder.”

He was right. I
was on the precipice of darkness, looking down the mouth of the
monster that had held me in its grip for three long months. I
forgot that Phoenix had been there, forgot that he watched me while
I waited to die. He was there the morning I chose to live and had
been there ever since. My mind was crowded with dark thoughts
fighting to gain control and take me back to that dark place… but I
couldn’t lose the fight, not this time.

I brushed
flakes of snow off Phoenix’s bare shoulder, “Aren’t you cold?”

When he didn’t
answer, I sucked in a breath of freezing air and waited for the
tension to leave my body. It didn’t. So we sat for a while longer.
Words wouldn’t come and my lip trembled each time I tried to speak.
The salty taste of unshed tears burnt the back of my throat and
filled my mouth with the sharp taste of acid. Trying to stop the
tears was hard. Finally, with aching cheeks and burning eyes, I
turned to Phoenix and cried. But I didn’t feel defeated. I’d simply
allowed the sorrow to exist for a moment.

The sorrow
never fully left. It couldn’t. It possessed me like the monster
that haunted my dreams.

“What do we
do?” I looked around at the mess “I don’t know what else to do… but
go home and be alone. I’m good at that.”

“We’ll wait and
see what the others say. We have adults to tell us what to do.”
Phoenix smiled and led me over the debris toward the house. The
cleanup began before we arrived, but most of the yard was still
littered with broken twigs and leaves. Scattered here and there
were piles of logs and remnants of larger trees that had
fallen.

Basil’s cause
of death came from Emily, she and Luke being Basil’s neighbours –
or at least, they were. Luke went to check on the old man as soon
as the rain had eased up and found him on the floor of his old
house. Part of the roof had blown off and at first it looked as if
one of the beams had collapsed on Basil. Luke carried the old man
to Tahinah, in case there was anything she could do. They would
have taken him to Libby, but couldn’t get through the forest. When
Tahinah saw Basil, she knew the truth. His death wasn’t caused by
an accident, Basil had been shot, murdered by raiders who struck
during the storm.

The men
organised us into working parties while the women took care of
Basil’s body. I stayed with the working party. Clearing the pathway
to our house was one of the first jobs and this was obviously the
best place for me. The job required little skill and provided me
with a reason to stay and work. There seemed little to do other
than drag and pull at the branches and trunks until the path was
clear. I stood looking at the pile of twisted wood and thought it
would be easier to make a new track than clear the old pathway.
Lachlan and Seth walked up and stood beside me. They too surveyed
the pile of wood.