There is no story now, for the wind is back. Rudd looks up at the snap and heave of the roof. He thinks it will hold but he is not sure. Behind him the door bashes frantically against the stove, and in front of him Tonderai stands motionless by the fire, his head turned towards the flames. Rudd looks around the room at the others. Some are relaxed, some buzzing, some quiet – all are tissue-papered in smoke and dark.

He pulls himself a little straighter. His toes, in his soggy shoes, feel warmer now, but his palms still sting from the drag of the stove. He tucks each hand under its opposite elbow, and twists his neck from side to side, wondering how long the storm will keep up its assault.

In the end it is a stretched ten minutes before the wind and the rain shift away like a tide. As the quiet settles, Tonderai begins again.

“Slowly, slowly,” he says, “Girl and Uncle do their work, and slowly, slowly change begins to happen. But at first there is so little to see that nobody sees it. Nobody that is, except Girl.

Every morning, when Girl looks up, she sees there are more faces at the window. She sees that their eyes look past Grandpa and his shirts. Now they try to see beneath his Table, for they hear the cries from below, and even from a distance they can see that the People are tired. Those who look in grow worried. They want to help, to do something. So, on some days, these people, these Watchers, throw in parcels of food, and on other days they reach their hands down to help the People out. This last worries Girl, for every day she sees that more and more of the People try to leave. She knows that soon the only ones left will be those who are not strong enough to leave, and then who will look after those who stay?”

Tonderai starts to pace to and fro, hands clasped behind his back. At first his voice is clear and steady.

“Girl’s heart beats faster. There is no time to waste. They must topple Grandpa from his Table. Uncle must hurry to do his work, and she must keep Snake, and Wife of Snake, under the story spell. So Girl makes her stories grow longer and longer. She fills them with magic and adventures, with Ancestors, and with feasts so big that all may eat and eat … feasts so delicious that she too dreams of their dishes.”

Then Tonderai’s slows his voice, draping sadness over the dark. “Girl’s stories are indeed grand and wonderful, but now fewer come to listen, for many no longer have the strength to do so, and many of those that do have the strength still, are too busy trying to escape.”

Rudd sighs. Too right, he thinks, his mood made darker by the wind as it mourns in through the cracks, searching for what happens next.

 Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023