Joey, the Boy from the Sky

Joey, the boy from the sky by Fairbanks 1. The small lizard, Ctenophorus isolepis: Central Military Dragon, scrabbled in a grass clump nearby, drawing the attention of the dozing boy. It darted agilely from under cover, swooping on a hapless greenish bug which it held cross-wise in its mouth before deftly chewing and swallowing its morning tea. The brown, pale-striped lizard darted on further into the sunny open and turned its head in an inquiring manner, surveying the boy; it ‘waved’ its front left leg several times as if in greeting. Billy, aka Bella, watched in silent fascination; he wriggled a finger in return greeting to this curious Earth-creature. Emotion welled inside his thin breast and a tear seeped out of one sun-blinded eye, dripping part-way down his pale gaunt cheek. The fleet-footed lizard scampered again, back into the shadow of the tall grass where it struck a statuesque pose. Bella roused himself from daze and summoned what energy he could muster to shuffle his bag-of-bones body closer to the mouth of the small sleeping cave, towards the welcoming sunshine. This Earth-sunshine felt so comfortingly warm, burningly warm, on his pallid, albinotic thin skin. It was so blazingly bright! It hurt his eyes terribly, accustomed to dark and dim luminescence all of his life. A flushing pink tinge on his exposed face, arms, and spindly legs was indication of sunburn. Adam had warned him and Josie about sun exposure, insisting they had no more than 5 minutes exposure at any one time, and no more than 30 minutes per day. Bella lay with the sun just reaching his covered chest but not his face, and he slowly stretched one stick-like bare arm and pointing finger towards the sheltering lizard. Suddenly, from nowhere, a grey-brown streak zoomed out of the sky and snapped up Bella’s new friend. The falcon: Falco longipennis flapped its pointy wings silently and landed atop a dead branch protruding from nearby on the cliff face. Another of Nature’s morning teas in action. Billy’s breath caught in his ribbed chest in stunned surprise. He exhaled a thin wailing cry; tears flowed; weak sobs welled. The emotion reminded him of his brother, Francesca, who had been left behind. He reverently touched the dusky-coloured beanie he wore constantly now, a parting sacred gift. Bella fell back into a dazed doze. Several flies crawled unhindered across his pale face, then clustered on the dirty bandage wrapped around his bony right leg. On this, their third day since The Escape, Adam Croix had set off at first light with the younger but stronger boy, Josephine/Jose, in search of water and assistance. He knew that they had come to a crisis point where he just had to find some help, risking discovery. Both of the boys were getting weaker as the harsh reality of their new surroundings took effect. All three of them were suffering from dehydration. They’d had virtually no food for two days, just a few insects and small bush creatures that Adam had collected from their cliff-face hideout area, eaten raw. Each also sported a ragged sore on their thigh where Adam had crudely dug out the implanted tracking device that would have led their captors directly to them; they had gleefully smashed the electronic implants into silicon grains and dust. With no way to clean the wounds, infection had set in. If he couldn’t find help today Adam was sure the boys would not last long, and his own days were numbered too. As fate would have it, about the same time as the falcon had dined on Bella’s lizard friend, Josie spotted yet another new sound in this alien landscape which he indicated questioningly to the man. It was a minute before Adam also heard what he recognised as the sound of a motor in the distance. Soon a line of dust could be seen, marking a land vehicle’s progress heading in their general direction. Adam easily swooped Josie onto his shoulders and hobbled as quickly as he could out into the open and down the last of the hill, following a dry creek in a direction he hoped would intersect with the oncoming vehicle. It was young Silas whose sharp Aboriginal eye spotted the waving boy on a man’s shoulders and alerted his father and uncle. The three were on a hunting trip, this being the season when bush turkeys nested and laid eggs. Silas could see this was surely no bush turkey, despite the flapping wing-like arms. Within a few minutes they found the destitute pair - a most unworldly of discoveries as they would learn. As the hot sun approached its zenith Billy had been collected from the cave and the rescue vehicle was bumping along through the bush towards the family’s camp. Bella was curled up on the floor in the back seat of the old Land Cruiser where he slept feverishly with his head in wide-eyed Josie’s lap. Young Silas handed Josie the water bottle again, beaming brightly at the scared-rabbit pale boy in a flimsy girly dress. Josie looked as though his skin colour should be black, pale and sickly as he was, but the other child was amazingly white - whiter than anyone he had ever seen! Silas remembered a cool zombie movie he had watched last week and was fantasising that they had found two zombie boys wandering around in the bush. Typically, the prescient Silas wasn’t far off the track. Apart from heart-felt ‘thank-yous’ and requests for water and for help, Adam had not told their rescuers anything of their ordeal yet and spoke very little; neither of the boys spoke a word. The Aboriginal men were not concerned. “There is a whole long story to tell, and I don’t know how to even start. I’m just too tired and weak for the moment. Do you mind if we wait for a bit with that?” “Yuwa. No worries, mate. That old lady, she make you a special tea when we get home, and you feel alive again more. Maybe you can tell story at campfire tonight. No worries, mate. You just rest. We get you home soon - no worries.” And so, by the light of a lively campfire in the middle of the desert outback, significantly under a blanket of blazing stars - and one timely shooting star - the amazing story was first told. The two boys remained silent, mesmerised by the glowing fire and the English babble. Faint light was rising in the eastern sky as the telling was finished. The world sat stunned.