Winter Solstice

 

Jayden’s Mum had read him Beowulf, that Lady poem about shallots and the Narnia Chronicles and she knew what happened to the children of those men who’d abdicated responsibility and still she got arrested and locked up.

 

‘The swan roads,’ Jayden said, pointing to the lake. ‘That’s the swan roads.’

‘What, the lake?’ asked Matt.

‘Yes, that’s their roads to winter. They’ll go inland now, to the flooded paddocks. That’s where the swans will go to have their babies.’

 

They listened to the swans’ calls as the birds gossiped together on the lake, getting ready to leave for the winter. The reservoir began to glow bright with the moon. And there it was, there she was, this horned critter, like a moon but female, a Venus reflected in the lake. No, she was like Kali. Angry and beautiful.

 

‘Oh my god did you see that, Jay?’ Matt grabbed Jayden’s arm. He began to cry, again. He was trembling. Matt was weeping now and then lifting his face to the moon. Jayden remembered when Ratty and Mole had encountered The Piper. She’d read it to him, his mum. She’d said, ‘I’m quite sure Kenneth Graeme was off his nut when he wrote that chapter. But Damn! What a good yarn.’