LITMIR.BIZ

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not. Zuko may never be.” Her eyes were slowly closing.

      “I can take care of him. There’s no-one else, anyway.”

      “You’ll need some help. You’ll need to work also. You’ll need to sup­port him.”

      “Is he . . .”

      “What?”

      “Does he know?” He looked at the floor and then at the trees out­side. He couldn’t say the stranger’s name. “About Honey?” The wind had already started. It would blow through until tomorrow.

      She didn’t answer.

      “Can I get you water, Ma?”

      Her hands stretched out, too thin, the nails digging like claws into the flesh of his arm. “His name is Rahl,” she said. “Dominic Rahl.”

      Ash went out the back of the house to find his brother. Zuko clung to a tyre as it swung back and forth at the end of a thick dusty rope. Ash stood and watched. He might have been a tree for all Zuko seemed to care. Sometimes the child raised two bent fingers into the air as though he was testing the wind, waiting for something to change.

      10.

      They didn’t mean to go as far as they did in the end, but Ash couldn’t stay in that place with the dry earth and the white-hot sky any longer. The giant trees sucked the life from the soil and blew endlessly in the in-between season. He couldn’t stand the way time stood still, or the way Zuko played with their mother’s body as they watched it decompose. The way he pulled at her hair until it came out in chunks in his eight-year-old fists, the way he put his nose to her skin and sniffed it, or the way the sunlight streamed through the broken window and landed on dust alone. In the days following her death, they waited for something to happen, although nothing ever did. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to bury her.

      “Zuko?”

      “. . .”

      “What you want for supper?”

      “Maa . . .”

      “Aw, Zuko. It’s a simple question.”

      Zuko clicked his tongue and flicked his fingers. The movement calmed him, soothed his anxiety in response to the question. He looked out from the deep corners of his brown boat eyes. Click click. Flick.

      Zuko howled into the night when the moon rose, many nights after Yanela was gone. He paced the small house on restless feet like some kind of supernatural being that had no need of sleep. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he cried. Ash couldn’t tell if it was for their mother, for himself, or for its own sake. He couldn’t wait forever for something else to happen. He knew they had to go, or they might die of hunger.

      Click click. Flick. Click click. Flick.

      “I’ve got no rice.”

      Click click.

      “There’s tuna and potatoes but there’s no rice and there’s no egg, okay? I can’t make the chickens lay right here and now. What we’ve got is what we’ve got.”

      Flick. Flick.

      “I know you don’t eat fish. Today, you’re going to eat fish. You’re going to eat fish and you’re going to eat potato and you’re going to sleep and you’re not going to keep me awake. I’m sick of it. You hear me?”

      “. . .”

      “Okay. Relax. I’m sorry. I’m tired, okay? I didn’t mean it; it’s not your fault.”

      “FFfffffff.”

      “Yes, it’s his fault, Zuko. His fault.”

      The fingers answered, beside the child’s eyes.

      “Eat your tuna. Here, I’ll mash the potato for you. Is that better? Mush, just as you like it. I’ve taken the skin off. Please, eat the damn mash.”

      Click.

      “Please.”

      Flick.

      “Stop holding me to food ransom. If I had rice, I’d give it to you. I’ve got none. Now eat.”

      Click flick flick.

      “Sit down, Zuko. Damn it, Zuko! What is wrong with you?”

      But Zuko was already gone and out of the room. It’s me there’s some­thing wrong with, Ash thought. How many times does he have to tell me he doesn’t eat tuna fish and mashed potatoes?

      11.

      On the fourth day, the last box of Cheerios sat empty. Zuko crouched at the table in a ribbon of morning light, his fingers moving through the hovering dust. Clouds moved across the grass outside. Ash entered the kitchen, his chest bare, his taut stomach concave from the worry and the loss and the lack of food. He picked the empty Cheerios box off the table and shook it, and lobbed it into the overflowing bin. “There’s eggs,” he said. “The chickens are laying at least.”

      Zuko paid no attention. His fingers painted pathways in the air around his head.

      Ash went outside to the coop and set the chickens out. He clapped his hands and shooed the last dappled hen off her nest. Three creamy orbs nestled in the straw, still warm. He took them into the kitchen and fired up the gas, and then broke the eggs into a pan of bubbling oil. When the yolks held together with a texture of soft cheese and the whites were laced with brown underneath he plated and salted the eggs and put one down in front of Zuko. Ash sat opposite his brother and swallowed the eggs on his own plate in a few easy mouthfuls. Zuko leaned forward and sniffed at the centre of the yolk.

      “Egg,” Ash said. “It’s egg. Eat it.”

      Zuko whimpered. He stood and fetched the empty cereal box from the waste, put it back on the table, and sat down again. The single egg in front of him grew cold. Ash fetched a spoon from the drawer and broke the egg into sections. He leaned across the table and tried to force the pieces into his brother’s mouth. Zuko’s eyes squeezed tight at the gagging in his throat. Soundless tears sat unexpectedly at the corners of his eyes. “Okay,” Ash said. He put the spoon down. “Okay, okay, okay.”

      Zuko’s eyes opened. They sat on his face like upside-down boats, the whites clearer than those of any other eyes Ash had known. “Mama’s gone,” Ash said. “There won’t be any more of this horrible cereal.”

      When the sun was past its peak, a knock sounded. Ash opened the door. A girl stood on the mat in a white shirt and socks, and the grey skirt and black shoes of the school uniform, her hair braided back from her face in thick ropes that snaked prettily in crisscross paths across her head.

      “Hey,” Ash said. He stood across the doorway, preventing her from entering. “I thought you might be someone else.”

      “Who?”

      “Don’t know. Police, maybe.”

      “You haven’t been at school,” the girl said.

      He shrugged. “I’ve got . . . you know . . . my brother.”

      She lifted the books under her arm as though she’d suddenly remem­bered them. “I brought you some work,” she said. “I thought you could do it at home.”

      “What for?”

      “You have to learn.” She peered around him, into the house. He stood firm, stretching his body across the doorway as far as he could. “What’s that smell?” she said.

      He aimed his gaze beyond her, into the sky. “I cooked eggs this morning. I haven’t washed the pan yet.”

      Her nose twitched. He winced at the disgust he imagined she felt. He held out his hands and took the books from her. “Thanks,” he told her.

      She stood as though she still expected something.

      “My

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