Author: Colin Jeffrey

“Take your medicine, Jomley,” Yanwah entreated, holding the rough wooden bowl to her child’s lips. “It is helping you.”

Jomley made his usual face, turning away and shaking his head.

Yanwah sighed. She new the medicine tasted bad, she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to drink it. But it was all that she had.

“You know you will get a treat afterwards,” she said, a little more sharply than she wanted to. She paused, breathed deeply, calming herself. “We can walk down to the old dock after, if you like?”

Jomley’s eyes flicked to hers.

“Will the seagulls be there?” he asked, voice raspy.

“Yes,” she replied, smiling. “They always are.”

He considered this, then opened his mouth begrudgingly. Yanwah tipped the bowl gently. Jomley grimaced again, but did not resist. The bitter liquid disappeared in a few gulps.

“Good boy,” she said, kissing his forehead. His skin was too cold.

—

The walk to the dock was slower than it had ever been. Jomley leaned heavily on her side, his legs thin beneath his trousers. But he walked. Just.

The sea wind was strong, pulling at Yanwah’s shawl and whipping Jomley’s thin hair around. The weathered dock stretched out like an arthritic finger gesturing at the horizon. The gulls screeched and whirled overhead as they approached.

“They came to see me,” Jomley said, smiling faintly, barely able to look up to the sky.

Yanwah squeezed his hand, looked down at him. “Of course they did. They like you.”

They sat at the edge of the dock, legs dangling above the water. Below, the shell of the sorrow machine – that’s what the folk in her village had called it – loomed from under the surface, its tortured metal body slowly rusting. After the people had pushed it into the water, It had sunk to the sea floor, but it was always visible when the tide was low. Jomley peered down at it.

“Will it ever work again?” he asked.

Yanwah shook her head. “It’s better that it sleeps.”

“But they made it to help people.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “But it hurt them too.”

Jomley paused for a long moment, his breath shallower. “Did it help you?”

Yanwah looked out at the clouds gathering on the skyline. After the invaders had returned to the heavens, the machine had taken her grief, transformed it somehow, and breathed it out as songs. Strange, otherworldly melodies, imbued with something more than just sound, they had echoed through the village, kept the memories of the fallen alive.

“It helped me go on,” she said. “But not to heal.”

Jomley nodded slowly, as if he understood.

“I don’t want to forget Papa,” he said at last.

“You never will,” she whispered, pulling him to her. “Not ever.”

His cold little body leaned against her shoulder. The waves washed gently against the dock. Under the sea, the sorrow machine hummed faintly in its watery bed, ready to put voice to her despair.