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.’

 

 

 

Winter Solstice Part Four

 

Jayden put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. ‘Mum will really like these shrooms too,’ he said and then remembered that night out on the water poaching, when he felt scared and small and cold and his Mum was ranting about poetry or something and about the end of the world.

‘Parents, man,’ Jayden said, trying to sound understanding but he also knew what he was talking about and he tried to communicate this to Matt through his side hug.

Parents who didn’t think, who were so busy with their own dramas that they forgot to pick him and Matt up from footy training on that low, misty oval late at night. Parents who privileged their ancient vendettas against teachers over the yearly school camp. Parents who fought a landlord’s injustices in court and then ran some poor bastard down outside a BP service station. Fucking parents.

Jayden’s Mum had read him Beowulf, explained the Lady poem about rogue onions 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 and left her kid alone to deal with the shit..

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

‘What, the lake?’ asked Matt.

The two of them stared at the pond and the birds. Jayden saw lights behind them but also lights gathering in the swans who squwarked and gossiped on the water.

 

The green leaf letters

One day early in February, at the beginning of our second summer, eucalypts began dropping their green leaves. Bright green sickles mosaiced the concrete steps to the fire tower where I work. I’d never seen this before. Normally the track is covered with dead brown leaves. Noticing the green ones was a bit different.

Two days later, I phoned my boss from the tower at the end of the day. ‘I’ve just spent the whole day with a sense of impending doom,’ I told her.

‘I don’t even go there,’ the fire officer said. ‘Every morning, the crews are organised, FDIs are finalised and then it’s like, whatever happens will happen.’

That day was the hottest ever I’ve spent on the tower. Most of the small schools in the south west shut down due to fire danger. I wish I’d taken a screenshot of the emergency site that day because looking at the school shutdowns made me think – this is the future. If this happens every year from now on, whose parents will be able to go on checkout at IGA? What happens to medical centres when doctors and nurses have to stay home?

The temperature readings in the tower blew out because I was sitting on granite, which warms faster than soil, meaning the little tower room turned into a hothouse. Sweat soaked my clothes. It was an act of endurance to stay there. I saw a smoke curdle into the sky behind Mount Lyndsey, mapped it and reported it in.

‘It’s kinda grey blue. I think it must be around the Hay River area. It’s a weird colour.’

Turns out the smoke came from silage that had spontaneously combusted in the heat, knocking out a whole season of feed for the dairy family who worked there for generations. The smoke’s colour was from all the plastics catching fire. Silage doesn’t normally self-combust, my farmer son told me. Silage is too wet. Normally.

‘How you going on the granite?’ Marty who also works on the tower was in contact throughout the day. ‘Do you have enough water? Use mine if you run out.’

There’s a code between us. We carry our own stuff up the mountain and we don’t share, especially water at one kilo a litre per trek up the hill. We may text each other when the clock battery needs replacing or maybe metho for the Trangia but never the water. Believe me. It’s a thing. We never share water.

‘I’m afraid I’ve already crossed that line,’ I messaged him back. By then I’d drunk four litres of water, poached two litres of Marty’s stash and not even had a wee.

‘Do you want me to bring some more?’ Marty replied and I thought, bless this man. The only person on Earth thinking of me today is the other fire tower guy.

Just like prior to a wind storm, the Eucalyptus trees dropped their green leaves in anticipation of the event a few days later. This time, it wasn't a wind storm but an extreme heat event. All of the trees knew this event was coming up. 

They knew what was about to happen.