Extracted: Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick

RTÉ News​

17-05-2025

We present an extract from Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night, the debut novel from Gethan Dick.
Someone wakes you and it's the end of the world. Someone lets you sleep and it' the end of the world. Somebody comes in you and it's the end of the world. Somebody comes out of you and it's the end of the world. Every second, every millisecond, the world is ending.
Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night is a novel about mothering, wolves, bicycles, midwifery, post-apocalyptic feminism, gold, hunger and hearth. What's worth knowing, learning and passing on, what's worth living for and what sometimes cannot be explained. The fact is that the world ends all the time, the thing is what to do next. It's a tale fizzing with energy, anger, fear, and, ultimately, hope.
And like I said, I'm not telling you this to say I saw it coming. After something happens everybody wants to say they told everyone it was going to, they saw it from way off, they know the moment they knew exactly when it was going to happen, they probably even know when they picked their pointy finger off that final pint and poked it at your face and told you it was going to happen. They're liars. No f**ker saw this coming. I didn't see it coming even after it had happened. But it was coming, nonetheless.
And it's no help to try to sort cause from effect, to get caught in the loops of if this, if that, would things have been different or would it all have turned out the same but a year, a decade, a generation later? In the end, you are where you are. Because maybe it's like love: that there's a moment, a moment as small as when you're there trying to climb over some railings, and you're both laughing so hard you can't keep your eyes open, and something snags on one of the spikes and you're trying to say, 'Wait ... ' But the laughter's like a hammer in your belly and the words are underneath it and then there's a rip and a thud and the laughter's getting higher and higher pitched as your lungs empty out and it'll be bruises and mending but you're over. And then empty, ringing air as you both gasp for breath at the same time, then the laughter starts again. And it's not until years afterwards that you know that that was it: the moment after which no other future was possible.
Though obviously you don't know what that future's going to be. It's only by thinking very, very small that we carry on imagining we know what the future holds, and even then, life will get in the way. And like I said, almost all the things people reckon they say about the future, you only hear them after that future's already become the past. So, to be straight: I didn't see it coming, I don't know why it happened, and I don't know what's going to happen.
That makes me different to most of the people I've talked to about it, which, to be fair, is not that many. There was me and Sarah and Pressure Drop and Adi and, for a bit, Joy and Trevor, in the Arches – a set of converted railway arches on a cul-de-sac and an amazing place to hide. When we'd arrived in the dark the night before, I'd had no idea how amazing, beyond the heavy doors and a lot of very solid wall all around. The first night there we all huddled in Arch one, the United Kingdom of Divine Love Church. They had a carpet, along with cushions and blankets. We made nests and hid in them. Nobody wanted to stay up making guesses about the noises outside.
I must have slept. 'Must have slept,' as if there's some kind of shame in it, so, fine, I didn't 'must have slept,' I just slept. I was tired, it was night, I've always had a knack for it. No bed too uncomfortable, no bus too rattly, no house party too noisy. It's all changed now obviously, but back then I could've slept through the end of the world, and some would say that in fact, night after night, I did. People who can't sleep think people who can are thoughtless or simple or haven't understood the enormity of the situation. Actually, it's just like any other survival instinct – some people are better at it than others. Some are better at running, some at fighting, some can go for ages without food, some immediately cop off with the nearest alpha male, some sleep. And that first morning in the Arches it was pretty clear that only me and Pressure Drop had, and he'd been weed assisted.
It was quiet outside when I opened my eyes. I didn't move. The others were talking. There were shadows moving on the wall behind where the pulpit was – though there wasn't actually enough light to cast a shadow and 'pulpit' is too grand a word, 'lectern' maybe, or just one of those angled things that you sometimes saw at a restaurant with a menu taped to it. The others were trying to decide whether to look outside. They'd been trying to decide for a while.
Adi was saying 'No, no, no, no, no – for a start, I opened this place up, and maybe it doesn't matter but that makes me responsible – not for you guys, but for what's in here, and I don't want that on my head right now.' He was always like that, proper, full of thoughts about how things ought to be done and how the things that had been done would be explained when the people in charge got back in charge. Now it just looks sweet and naïve, but back then Adi's uptightness seemed sensible and reassuring despite how young he was. 'Anyway, you don't even have any kind of logical or rational reason for opening up, do you? What's your reason for opening?'
'It's psychological.' That was Joy. 'That's not a reason.' 'Yes, it is. And you can't argue with psychology, if somebody needs something psychologically you can't argue with that.' As well as being an idiot, Joy was super pretty and Trevor's girlfriend – all things that made it difficult to argue with her, but Adi wasn't giving up.
'Well if you can't argue with it, it's not just not a reason, it's not rational or logical either!'
'I think we will have to take the decision all together.'
That was Sarah – also difficult to argue with, because she was older and, it became apparent, only insisted on something when she totally knew she was right. I learned much later that she'd been taught to pick her battles by her father – a Black United States serviceman who came to build airbases in the midlands and never went home to segregation after he discovered he could win a dancing competition with a white girl as his partner.
Without knowing its pedigree I could hear the quiet, gentle ruthlessness in her voice. There was a collective rustle as she, Adi, Joy and Trevor all turned to look over at where me and Pressure Drop were still curled in our bundles.