The Hum of the Sun. Kirsten Miller

he said to Zuko. Ash held out a leg. The boy pursed his lips and turned away. He leaned against Ash’s back and peered into the sur­rounding dark. “You’ve got to eat,” Ash told him. He put the meat into his own mouth and chewed. Food had never tasted so good. He ate half the chicken and waited for Zuko to get hungry. When the boy still refused to eat Ash dug his fingers into the meat and pulled it from the carcass. He ate until his stomach churned and resisted any more.

      He buried the bones and blackened feathers in a shallow grave ten feet from the dwindling fire, and looked around for a bed. He’d brought nothing for them to sleep on, and the only pillows were the stones that surrounded the fireplace. “Come on,” he said to Zuko. “Let’s go and pee.” His brother looked at him. Ash pulled Zuko to his feet. “You’re not going to see a toilet for some time. We’re going to have to get used to doing everything out here in the open.”

      Ash paused, facing a nearby tree. He opened his fly and pulled the zip down. He watched Zuko’s face as the child watched him letting loose a thin stream of the water they’d drunk from the bottle that day. “I know I’m bigger than you,” he said, laughing. “But you’ll get there, one day.”

      Zuko tried to imitate him, struggling with his own button. Ash pulled up his fly and went behind him, put his arms around the boy’s waist and helped to him undo the button. At the release, Zuko’s small round belly forced the zip down. His penis emerged and along with it, the force of his pent-up stream.

      Later, Ash helped Zuko put on the jersey before they lay down. In the dark beside the dying fire, beneath their mother’s jacket that covered his shoulders, Zuko’s whole body shivered. Ash pushed himself closer, to try to let what little warmth that remained in his own body seep through into his brother’s. Ash lay awake throughout the night, while Zuko’s body shook in restless dreams.

      6.

      The first thing Zuko knew was blue. His heart shouted at the sight of the colour that was so deep, so pure. He made a sound, a gurgle, a rush of emotion like a burst spring. He knew the word and what he wanted to say. The sound, though, was wrong. The word floundered, emerging guttural and stillborn. He waited. He imagined his own soul swimming in that blue. He travelled up into it, his skin startled and fresh from the space, and there was nothing to potentially bump into. He blinked. But where was the pattern in a daylit sky? The sun! Up, arc across and down, up, arc across and down . . . a pattern of movement bigger than anything made-up or self-created. It was an arc to mark the whole of his life, more dependable, more countable than the random scat­tering of stars the night offered. A repetition of the same, the rou­tine that ultimately made his days and his nights. Suddenly, in the vast empty space of limitless sky, it made sense. The movement of the sun contained him, if nothing else would stay. The endless repetition bound him to the earth, and prevented what chance there was that he might float away. He rolled over, onto his belly. The earth cracked, red and dry. Tufts of grass sprouted everywhere. It gave him a feeling of salt in his chest, or the crunch of a boot on grass. It satisfied his need for brittle resistance. Even if he had words, he could never explain this. Easier then, to keep himself contained. Nobody would ever know how much he spilled out of himself, in reality, into everything else. Even his own skin was barely enough. He stared up. Slowly, he became aware of another sound. Perhaps a voice that called, but still his thoughts would not disengage enough to focus on it, or understand what it was. “Zuko . . .” His mind was fixed, like resin, on what his eyes wanted. It struggled and pulled to unlatch itself, to land on something else. “Zuko . . .” It was his name. He knew something was required of him, a response from inside or outside himself, but the sky was too big, the blue too rich and end­less, and now it consumed the whole of his attention. Still, the sound pulled at him. Something familiar, a word, a voice. It wouldn’t stop until he connected his eyes, but looking was the difficult part.

      Only when Ash stood over him, bent down and eased him up by his armpits, did the motion, the touch and the tension release his mind and finally allow his eyes to come back. His vision fell upwards to land on Ash’s face. He started, dazed. The force of Ash’s help provided the momentum to stand. “Enough sleeping,” Ash said. Zuko yawned in response.

      Ash sat on a stone beside the small resurrected fire and pulled the margarine tub from the bag. He opened it, and handed it to Zuko. As Zuko put the fried dough circles into his mouth one by one, the salty feeling in his chest diminished with each crunch that came as his teeth drew together. The world was bright. He blinked at sunlight, yawned again. “I’m glad you’re eating,” Ash said. “We’ll have to find some water soon. And something, at least, to sleep under. The wind last night nearly froze us.”

      A light gooseflesh still covered Zuko’s skin. He felt himself shiver, and it was as though there was a plank inside him. The hard wood of cold kept him stiff, with the rest of the flesh around it threatening to melt, as though made of jelly. He’d been cold before, but only outside himself. Now his skin rose up in tiny pimples like a chicken’s right after his mother had plucked it. If this was cold, it was of a different kind. This cold had a texture that went from wood to unbending steel. With his skin pulled tight around it, it rendered him unwilling to move.