Cover

ALSO BY CYNAN JONES

The Long Dry

Everything I Found on the Beach

Bird, Blood, Snow

The Dig

Cove

Title Page

Dedication

For P.F. and J.F.

stillicide, n

'stIlIsId

1. A continual dropping of water.

2. Law – A right or duty relating to the collection of water from or onto adjacent land.

From Latin stillicidium, from stilla drop + -cidium, from cadere to fall.

THE WATER TRAIN

The boy’s hand opened and closed as if he reached for a glass of water but it was just the nerves dying through his body.

With the thick rain the blood from the wound ran a thin washed pink.

Nearby again a pheasant crowed, a klaxon call as they make before thunder.

The bullet had gone in at the boy’s jaw and removed that side.

Branner stood over the body, the rain hitting his hood, drumming out the last rush of the train. Heavy and rhythmic, heavy and rhythmic.

Felt the shudder drop from the ground as the train gained distance.

Still the boy’s hand gaped, a fish dying in the air.

The rain hit Branner’s hood. Hit. Hood. Made a shelter for his mind. A building he hadn’t stepped out of yet. It closed him off.

The uppermost side of the boy’s face was visible and perfect and untouched by the bullet.

Branner wore the earpiece out so he could hear the rain and the sergeant’s voice seemed to come from afar.

– It was a kid, Branner said at the mic.

*

There is the silence as of after a great push of wind.

They stand at the crest of the field, overlook the ocean, the pines that stand in their line of sight.

She tightens her grip when she feels his words start.

– I don’t want there to be pain.

Her hand tightens. Do not speak.

He wants to say, I do not want there to be time, to think of you in pain.

– I do not want time to think of you in pain.

The light intensifies, as if it grows in volume. Time. There is no movement to the air, but in the ground now a minute growing shake.

Then far in the distance the sea at the horizon seems suddenly to smooth, the way soft butter goes with the pass of a blunt knife.

She squeezes his hand, as if she silences the earth. Silences him.

I thought I would be stronger than this. Not this, not anger.

He is aware in the last seconds of her great dignified fear as the trees ahead of them explode. Explode with silence.

A bird crosses the sky. Lone and black. Burns mid-air, disintegrates to ash.

A split second before he wakes, the force comes through his eyes.

The dream is like a dry mouth.