The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant Page A

and the world vanished. Like the giant Buddhas, like his people, he would finally be scoured from history.
    The guards dragged the larger man off. Despite himself, Omed pulled breath into his worthless body.
    â€˜You right there, buddy? You right?’

    Omed went into Management. Where they put the suicides, the violent, the crazies. It was punishment and protection. A bright hell.
    The lights were on all day and all night. There was no one to listen to, nothing to see, nothing to touch but the bare walls. With nothing to cling to, Omed’s mind floated like an abandoned boat. At first he marked the passing of time with meals. He pressed his ears to the wall, eager for sound, any sound at all. Eventually, they became so finely tuned they could pick up the slightest noise through the steel. He could hear ants working the soil under his bed, clouds preparing rain, the sound of birds and singing and bells and the rush of wind through feathered wings and water trickling underground and his blood churning, churning inside. His mother came, telling him to be strong; saying his father had never given up, even when they finally came to kill him; he had not surrendered his beliefs. The guards came with questions and even Mr Parasole with his white, white skin, and his big hat. They said Omed had started the fight. There were witnesses. He should speak up. He had no words! They were well-fed and sweaty, beefy men, with thick necks. But he was alone on another ocean. Cool salt. Sun. Adrift with wraiths and water djinns and bird spirits and gods with trunks sewn with golden thread.
    The Poet sang to Omed, his face long and wise.
    A week can be a month and a month can be a year.
    It is that simple.
    But time is never caught like a fly in amber.
    It moves. It is a living thing.
    And time dresses as it pleases.
    For one it is a quick dancer,
    its skirts spinning around.
    For another it is an orphan
    dressed for a funeral,
    a slow march.
    When there is too much time,
    then there is more.

    Finally Omed was torn from the lighted cave. But he had cleverly turned himself into a curtain. They tried to open him, but he had gone; slipped into a world of his own making. He spoke with his parents as fluently as when he had a tongue. He knew everyone else to be ghosts: the guards with their pink fists, the swirl of inmates in dull prison clothes. Walls were everything to Omed. A thing only had value if you could hide behind it. Beyond the fences, he knew angry gods were marching, he could hear them stamping up a haze of dull desert dust, dragging the heavy souls of trapped men behind them. Omed slipped enough food between his lips to hold life. He spread oil through his hair and smelled of printing ink and the tintack odour of electricity.
    The Water Mother came to him one day as he plunged his hand into the toilet to paste the walls. Her voice bubbled up.
    Why have you not called for me, Omed? I have been waiting all this time. Look how my children have grown.
    He was used to hearing voices, but there was a clarity in this one that drew him closer. Eventually, he could see the outline of a woman, her hair bound to her head like a hank of seaweed. In the dark folds of her skirts, the faces of two children appeared. They were the colour of wet paper, a storm-cursed ocean.
    I have a message from the Poet, Omed. He asks, ‘Have you given up on freedom?’
    He had not heard from the Poet in a while. Tell me, what is freedom? Omed asked.
    She smiled and small fish glimmered between her gums. Freedom is many things to many people. You have to find your own meaning. For your poet it was the waves that reached the sky.
    Omed slapped the water. Waves mean death! I am free now. I am free from worry and fear. I am safe within this world.
    You call what you have freedom, but it enslaves you, she said. You are not the master of this world that you have built. You are trapped. You have built a wall when you could have built a bridge.
    Then what is