The Winds of Heaven Read Online Free Page B

as big as mill wheels, as big as round towers.
    ‘That magic kid, he climbed up into the sky, of course,’ said Fan.
    A lot of her stories ended in this way, and it was strange how she could make something like climbing into the sky sound natural and easy – as if you could be somewhere quite ordinary, walking round the corner of Main Street into Palm Street, for instance, or standing outside the bank or the post office waiting for Mum and Aunty Rene, and suddenly it would happen: the winds of heaven would blow and the sky would come nearer and there’d be a kind of ladder in it where you could put your foot and climb up and be gone. Just like that. Before anyone else had noticed that something amazing was happening.
    ‘Do you make those stories up?’ asked Clementine, because they weren’t like the stories she’d read in books or the ones Mrs Carmody read to them at school. Fan couldn’t have got them from a book anyway, because she hated reading. She read like a little kid in Infants, or like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen; big girls who sat in the front row of the class, repeating the year they’d done before.
    When Aunty Rene made her read out the shopping listbefore they went on messages, Fan had to sound out all the bigger words – words like tomatoes and potatoes and kerosene, and when she got them wrong, Aunty Rene would say she was a dummy and make her sound them out again and again until she got them right. Clementine and Mrs Southey weren’t allowed to help; Aunty Rene made Fan do every single word herself, right to the bottom of the list, even though anyone could see how much she hated it. Her face would turn bright red and her eyes would slide in all directions, as if they were trying to run away from the words written out on the list. And whenever Clementine picked up one of the story books she’d brought from home, Fan would get this panicky look and she’d grab Clementine’s hand and say, ‘C’mon, let’s go outside and play.’ Even if they’d only just come inside.
    She was ten, a whole year older than Clementine, but when school started again in February, Fan would still be in fifth class, the same as Clementine. She’d had to repeat the year, like Lizzie Owens and Christa Jorgensen. ‘Because I’m a dummy, that’s why,’ she told her cousin.
    ‘No, you’re not,’ Clementine protested.
    ‘Ask anyone!’
    And it was true that on Clementine’s first day at Lake Conapaira, walking down Palm Street with Fan, two girls playing jacks in a dusty front yard had bawled out, ‘
Dummy Fan! Raggedy Fan! Fan’s got a face like a frying pan!
’
    ‘They’re just jealous,’ Clementine had said indignantly, because Fan’s face was as beautiful as ever.
    ‘As if
I
care!’ Fan had retorted, skipping on down the road.

    ‘Do you make those stories up?’ Clementine asked again,because Fan wasn’t listening, she was still gazing through the window at the star-filled sky where the magic kid had climbed.
    ‘Make them up? ’Course I don’t!’ Fan got down from the window and settled herself comfortably against Clementine’s pillow, drawing her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. She didn’t have pyjamas or a real nightdress; instead she wore an old green petticoat that was far too big for her, and which Clementine somehow guessed had also belonged to the vanished Caroline. The lace on the hem was all torn.
Raggedy Fan
. Her long bare legs were powdered with red dust. She hadn’t had a bath tonight; she’d taken off when Clementine’s mum had called them – across the yard, through the back gate, down the lane and out of sight. Mum hadn’t bothered to send Clementine after her. ‘Oh, let her go,’ she’d said wearily. ‘She’ll keep.’
    ‘They’re true, those stories,’ Fan said. ‘They’re from the Dreaming.’
    ‘The Dreaming?’
    ‘The oldest, oldest time.’
    ‘You mean like the Garden of Eden?’
    ‘The Garden of Eden!’ said Fan scornfully. ‘Older