The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay Read Free Book Online Page B

new and shocking, that one day Charlie would ring to tell him there was something wrong with his mother; the possibility had never occurred to him before.
    â€˜Your mum’s been with us all day—she’s worried about him too. I mean, he’s such a good age, you have to . . . But he just looks sort of small, and he’s not talking very much which, you know . . . Anyway, I said I’d ring and tell you.’
    And for the first time, the world felt big: the shrunken version of phones and email and fast flights ballooning back to its thousands of kilometres of vastness.
    â€˜Do you want me to come home? Does Mum want me to come?’
    â€˜Your mother always wants you to come home, Dan. It’s been ten years, mate, and you’re terrible at even calling. But look, it’s a long way.’ She was back to her pragmatic self.
    â€˜I’ll see what I can do about work, about coming. But Gramps’ll be all right, Charlie. He’ll be fine. You know, he’s the man who can fly.’ And he laughed into the line’s silence before he heard Charlie take a deep breath.
    â€˜You should get some sleep,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I called so late—I did it without thinking.’ He heard her swallow, and swallow hard again. ‘And I guess I’ll ring you when I know . . . when I know what’s happening.’ She said goodbye then, and the line clicked.
    In Sydney, thought Dan, it would be four in the afternoon. The sky would still have all its colour, and Charlie would be sitting by a window somewhere, watching the light change, thinking about her grandfather. Tired , thought Dan. I’ve never heard her sound so tired . He rubbed his hair, hard. He’d think about it all in the morning.
    Still in the darkness, he watched the lights through the window— points of blue, green, orange and red, and then the yellow-white of ordinary lights in ordinary rooms like his. A floor of lights went off in one building across the river—maybe its cleaners had finished for the night— and a single light went on in another; maybe a phone had rung there, too, or an argument had just finished, or someone was just getting home. Dan reached for his phone, got halfway through dialling Caro, and then hung up as the light across the river clicked off again.
    So many lives , he thought. So many stories . Above the lights and the buildings, the flare of the city obscured the stars.

Dawes
    I n the darkness, away from the bustle and mess that constituted settlement, William Dawes tipped his head back towards the night so that his silhouette showed a nose pointing straight up, and then one long line—chin, throat, neck, chest—running down towards the ground. His face, spare at the best of times, pared itself back to skin and bone when pulled taut like this, and what little fleshiness did sit around his cheeks, under his chin, disappeared against his skeleton. His hair was clammy with the sweat of a long and busy summer’s day, and the air was so heavy it might itself have been sweating, although the occasional puffs of wind that reached across the water from the south were cooler now, already touched by the smell of rain.
    From the camp, a little way off, came great shouts and screams—he paused, waiting to hear laughter, but there was none—and the gashes of orange and red bonfires threw darker shadows onto the night. Their burning wood crackled a staccato percussion under voices calling, voices singing.
    â€˜And we won’t go home until morning, we won’t go home until morning, we won’t go home until morning—’ this last word stretched to a perfectly timed ritard ‘—until the break of day.’
    But this was home now; here they were, and almost two weeks into it.
    The air above growled with thunder and a new whoop went up from the camp: ‘Come on, come on.’ William Dawes shivered: he could see the lightning in