The Rain Heron

by Robbie Arnott

  She reached forward to grasp the edge of the canvas. The oil-stiff fabric bent beneath her fingers, and the rain-breath behind the curtain quickened. As it did, something struck her chest with enough force to throw her onto her back. Falling, she heard a high, familiar scream.

  Her head smacked against the dirt. She scrambled up onto her elbows, disoriented. Harker was above her. One of her legs was half-raised, and on her face, in her stance, in her pumping chest and even shimmering in the air around her was a pure bloom of rage. It writhed across her features, baring her teeth, flaring her nostrils, sapping her skin pale and widening her eye.

  It wasn’t just fury that was distorting her face; a river of blood had flowed and dried down her right cheek in a rusty, flaking trail. Above it was only a deep echo of flesh. The empty socket glowed with red rawness. Harker’s lips were moving, but she wasn’t speaking. Her skin swam with hues of pink, red, purple.

  Ren was sure she’d reached the moment of her death, that Harker would kill her as soon as she decided on a method. And she might have, if it hadn’t been for Barlow, who, awakened by Harker’s scream, had stood up and slowly walked over to stand by Ren.

  Please. She didn’t mean anything.

  Harker ignored him. The soldiers had looked up but not moved, not even the one named Daniel, the one who’d hit her with his rifle. Still Harker stared down at Ren; still her body twitched with feverous rage.

  Barlow continued: I’ll take her away. We’ll go. You’ve got what you came for.

  He moved forward, arms splayed in front of him, conciliatory and calm, and finally he snagged Harker’s attention. She dragged her eye up from Ren to Barlow, before taking a quick step towards him and slashing a leg forward in a vicious, whipping strike, buckling his knees, toppling him. She began screaming at him—more high, wordless howls. It seemed certain that she’d fall upon him, rip at his body with teeth and nails.

  Even in this mania, her grace was still present. On she screamed, her whole body rigid, shaking. Barlow’s son had woken up and run forward, but a soldier had caught him by the neck and was holding him high in the air, little arms pinned tight, as screams poured out of his young body, mingling with Harker’s.

  Ren watched it happen. She would have done something. She would have stopped it all. But she couldn’t, and she knew it, so she did the only thing that occurred to her. She crawled back to the box and thrust a hand beneath the canvas. She felt cold, hard rods—metal bars. A cage. She ran her palm over each bar, circling the structure until she found a latch. The sound from within grew into a pelting crash of water. Her fingers fidgeted with the mechanism.

  A loud click chimed from beneath her fingers. The door to the cage creaked beneath the pressure of her hand, and the sound of rain reached a storming crescendo—the sound of breaking banks and coming floods.

  Harker stopped screaming. She turned to the cage as Barlow flinched, as his son sobbed, as Ren tugged on the metal. A crack of thunder joined the storm. The door was halfway open, pushing against the canvas, when Harker, suddenly calm again—as if the shock of seeing the cage being opened had snapped her back into her trained state of tranquillity—pulled her pistol from its holster, aimed it at Ren and fired in one fluid, graceful movement.

  The bullet tore into the base of Ren’s throat. Her body crashed into the cage, slamming the door shut. Ravens burst from the trees around the clearing, their rasps long and loud. The sound of rain disappeared. The stream gurgled. The wind blew, thick with the scent of pine.

  PART 2

  19

  YEARS EARLIER, ON the country’s south coast, a small port suffered an uncommonly brutal winter. It was always cold in the port, but this winter was worse than any other in living memory. Hail filled the wind; ice glazed the streets. The gardens were scraped rough and gorgeous by frost. People stitched themselves into woollen cocoons. Blood slowed. Skin tore. Despite the cold, it never snowed.

  Even in milder weather, it didn’t make much sense to live there. The people who did claimed that they stayed for the port’s sharp beauty. It was surrounded by long squeaky beaches of cloud-white sand, so pure that visitors often thought the grains were snowflakes. Huge humps of grey-pink granite rose behind the beaches, sparkling in the thin light, rolling into large hills and small mountains. Gnarled trees were scattered in the gullies between the rocks, bent to wild angles by the ceaseless attention of the wind.

  Beyond the granite and sand was the dark sea, slashed white by the wind, and in the midst of all these colours and textures and elements, perched between rock and sand and water, was the port’s town. Its buildings were small, built with bleached wood and cement. Smoke leaked from chimneys at all hours, all year. Pale piers pushed out into the ocean, tethering boats, gathering salt. There was no arguing that the place was beautiful; but beauty could not fill stomachs or clothe backs.

  The real reason people lived at the port was a particular resource, found nowhere else. It wasn’t the snow-bright sand or the iron-tough trees. It wasn’t the nutrient-rich seaweed that clumped on the shore. It wasn’t the muscle of the wind, and it wasn’t the glint of the granite (which, although striking, was impossible to mason and largely worthless). The jewel of the port was something not easily seen—a slippering, shimmering treasure that only the port people knew how to find.

  20

  TWO YEARS BEFORE that harsh winter, a boat sped away from the port’s blinking shore. On it was a girl named Zoe. She had never been to sea before, and the lurch of the water was sending rubber into her legs. Her messy red-brown hair whipped free from the band holding it back and slapped at her eyes. Towards the prow, her aunt pushed the throttle. The boat raised its nose and picked up speed. Zoe collapsed into a bench at the back, raised her collar to the cold. Her aunt stayed upright, teasing the wheel with a bent finger.

  Zoe turned to face the town, watching it glint until it was no longer discernible. The sea around them grew darker than the blue-green tides she was used to. Soon the waves stopped breaking, the white lick of their caps replaced by rippled, changeable humps. Above them the sky was thickening with clouds. She huddled into her jacket.

  After an hour her aunt pulled up the throttle, bringing the engine to silence and slowing the boat in a sudden wash of foam.

  This should do.

  She pulled a large net from a compartment on the side of the boat, and laid it on the floor. Then she retrieved some plastic trays from the boat’s tiny cabin. She turned to her niece, her face serious.

  You know what we’re doing?

  Zoe nodded.

  You know how it’s done? Has anyone told you?

  Zoe shook her head.

  Good.

  Her aunt looked out at the water.

  This time you’ll watch. Just watch. Listen. And one day you can do it yourself, if you decide you want to. If you’re willing to pay the price.

  She began rolling up one sleeve of her padded jacket.

  When the sleeve passed her elbow she moved to the edge of the boat.

  Watch.

  Zoe followed her. Her aunt’s proximity to the water made her nervous, because she knew her aunt could not swim—none of the older people from the port could. Younger generations like Zoe’s had been taught, but most people over thirty had never learned.

  But this first fear of Zoe’s disappeared when she saw the small curved knife her aunt pulled from a pocket in her trousers. She lifted it to the rough skin of her exposed forearm. Zoe’s thoughts of currents and water temperatures disappeared as she looked at the knife, her aunt’s arm, the scars on her skin.

  She had seen them before. Their pale corrugations had winked and shone as her aunt cooked, washed dishes, fixed furniture. Zoe had assumed that little white scars were something all adults wore on the fleshy parts of their arms. They did not seem to trouble her aunt, so they did not trouble Zoe, not even when she saw the fresh bandages, the scarlet flare of the newest additions to her aunt’s collection. But now, seeing the blade hover above h
er aunt’s skin, a rush of realisation crashed through her.

  Watch, her aunt repeated. In a slow, clean swoop the knife arced down, pressing into the skin before it broke and gave way, splitting open millimetres from a blue-purple vein. Blood sprang, but not in a gush or torrent like Zoe had feared. It leaked in a rich, even stream down her aunt’s arm, which she had moved to hang over the side of the boat. The blood collected on the underside of her hand in a ponderous dollop before it fell through the cold air, carried sideways by the wind until it hit the sea.

  Keep watching.

  The blood drizzled into the navy. Her aunt’s face showed no pain. Zoe felt sick, and scared, and somehow fouled, as if she was witnessing a circus trick gone horribly wrong—an elephant snapping a tusk, an acrobat garrotting himself on a wire.

  Her aunt stayed still.

  Only human blood works, she said finally. Other kinds have been tried. Nothing does the trick. Pig blood goes closest, but it doesn’t get the same results. Makes them go all jangled and skittish. Hard to control.

  Zoe stared at the waft of blood, her throat slick with bile. When the cloud had spread into the size of a quilt her aunt lifted her arm and wrapped a length of gauze around the wound.

  Now we wait.

  Zoe swallowed.

  What happens? What do they do?

  Her aunt nursed her arm and watched the water. Zoe stared at her, and felt herself grow colder, and did not watch the slopping sea until her aunt finally raised a hand and pointed at the waves.

  They do that.

  Zoe whipped her gaze to the bloodied sea. She saw only dark water and her aunt’s drifting blood. But she heard a splash, from somewhere out of her eyeline. She moved closer to the side of the boat, and saw the water break. Something long and languid emerged from the sea. More shapes rose, strange and rubbery, pink-white against the navy, waving lazily in the air. Zoe watched. She did not blink, did not exhale: not until the owner of these tendrils floated up to the surface in the centre of the blood cloud.

  The squid’s wide violet hood was a metre long and half as wide at its blunt base. It tapered upwards, past the enormous yellow orbs that were its eyes, ending in a neat arrowed point of flesh. At least a dozen tentacles swam away from the body, working through the water, pushing small tides towards an opening in the hood that Zoe soon recognised as a beaked mouth, clacking at the reddened waves.

  Her aunt touched Zoe’s shoulder.

  Wait a minute.

  The beast drank, shovelling at the blood-water until almost all the crimson colour had vanished. Then it stopped. Its body bobbed upwards to float on the surface, and its huge yellow eyes dimmed behind a cloudy membrane.

  Zoe turned to her aunt, panicking.

  Is it dead?

  No. Just resting.

  Her aunt turned around, bent into the boat.

  Just the way we want it.

  When she straightened she was holding the net. She extended her arms, loosened it with a few shakes, then hefted it to the height of her chin.

  I hope you’re still watching, she said, before tossing it overboard, where it spread in a wide dish above the comatose creature. When it landed Zoe waited for the beast to stir, but it didn’t. The net draped gently over its body, small grey sinkers dropping the edges beneath its hood. Her aunt began reeling it in, hand over hand, and still the squid did not move. Its eyes remained clouded, its body listless, even as her aunt hauled it into the boat, grunting, heaving, sweating in the cold air.

  Fill a bucket with water.

  Zoe did as she was told, leaning over the side of the boat, wincing at the sea’s bite on her hands. Bucket full, she turned back to see her aunt removing the net from the squid’s body. She put it aside, then slid one of the plastic trays to lie at the base of the hood, right beneath the beak. Still the beast dozed, unaware that it had shifted worlds.

  Her aunt pointed at the squid.

  Pour some of that water on it. Use a cup.

  Zoe filled a mug from the bucket and splashed it onto the fleshy hood. Her aunt frowned.

  Slower. But keep it up. Keep it steady.

  Zoe began trickling the water in a thin stream, and her aunt moved to kneel before the beaked maw.

  I’ve been telling you to watch me all day, but this part is the most important thing you need to see.

  She reached for her bandage, pulled it carefully upwards until the gash was revealed. Blood began to ooze down her arm again. She lifted her wrist and knelt before the beast, her knees inches from its beak. She wriggled, positioning herself for an act Zoe could not anticipate. When it came, it was simple: her aunt leaned into the squid’s maw and raised her hand high. Blood ran down her skin and collected on the point of her elbow in a thick droplet. She manoeuvred her arm, aiming for something Zoe could not see, until she’d found her target. With a wriggle of her wrist the droplet fell. The orb of blood descended, round and bright, and landed on a small white gland that sat just above the bony beak.

  The clouds misted away from the squid’s great eyes. Zoe sucked in a breath and paused her pouring. Her aunt’s face flashed up at her.

  Don’t stop. We’re nearly done.

  The golden eyes rolled, rising suns, and her aunt stood up, re-bandaging her wound.

  A sudden wave of iridescence flashed across the creature’s body, flickering from the point of the hood to the end of the slack tentacles. Zoe leapt backwards. Her aunt grinned as waves of colour began dancing across the squid. Its pale-purple form began hosting splashes of gold, bursts of blueness, vivid greens and reds and blues that swirled and danced across the unsquirming flesh.

  Get ready, murmured her aunt, and as she said it Zoe saw the final act: a thick stream of blue-black liquid shot out from somewhere near the squid’s beak, landing in the waiting tray. Her aunt shifted her stance as more of this substance gushed out. Enough came to fill the tray, and she quickly swapped it out for a second. When this was half-full, the stream thinned. The shifting colours on the squid’s body began to slow, to shine less sharply. When the dark liquid had decreased to a trickle the creature settled back into its former shade of pale purple. And when no more liquid flowed, her aunt stood.

  Quick. We need to get it back into the water.

  They did not use the net this time. Zoe followed her aunt’s lead in handling the squid gently, almost tenderly. The flesh was slimy and heavy under her hands. Together they lifted it over the edge of the boat and dipped it tentacles-first into the sea. They held it there, letting it find its strength and bearings. When it began to wriggle against them her aunt loosened her grip.

  It’s time. Let go.

  Zoe did as she was told. The beast hung in the water for a moment, as if paused in thought, before gathering its appendages around its eyes and propelling itself downwards, pushing fast into the brine.

  It was gone. Zoe blinked. She rubbed at her head. She was filled with confusion and astonishment and an ache of loss at the disappearance of the creature. She wanted it to come back, although she wasn’t sure why. She turned around to see her aunt carefully decanting one of the trays into a large glass container, not spilling a drop. When her aunt was finished she straightened up, saw Zoe watching her, and let out a sudden burst of laughter. It rang loud, a chime that raced across the sea’s chop before she spoke again.

  Not so hard, was it?

  She pointed at her bandaged arm, at the bottle containing their blue-black haul.

  Blood for ink. A simple trade.

  They decanted the second tray, then gunned back to port. The time passed strangely for Zoe, as if elasticised by her tiredness. Eventually she saw winking lights on the horizon, and realised it was the sun reflecting off the white sand and the granite hills surrounding the town. She watched them grow in size and brightness until a thin curtain of rain began to fall, swamping it all in grey.

  21

  THE INK WAS sold to people from the north, then churned, vaporised, and used to make perfectly antiperspirant deodorant that rende
red pores sweatless and odourless for up to three days. It was added to sauces and stews to create a rich, meaty-fishy flavour, or mixed with vegetable gum and powdered horse hooves into a paste that was sold as industrial-grade engineering glue. It was greased onto engines to provide unusually long-lasting lubrication, and it was brewed into a black wine that hit the tongue like a sweet ocean breeze. But it was most commonly used as dye.

  When mixed with other colours of dye (or paint or chalk or lesser inks) it vastly enhanced the qualities of that colour, in the same way that salt brings out depth of flavour in food. Adding it to a matte red would bring out a bright pop of open-vein crimson, while mixing it with a basic purple would create violent blinks of violet. It lent a soft, mossy texture to an average dark green, and a navy depth to dark blue that was so strong it brought about the smell of the sea. White shone brighter; orange shimmered like a sunset. Pale blue became so skylike it made one forget about the existence of clouds.

  22

  ZOE KEPT GOING out with her aunt, although her aunt did all the bleeding. She itched to wear scars of her own, to draw the squid with her blood, but her aunt would not allow it.

  When you’re older, she’d say. Your mother would kill me if I let you open a vein at your age.

  Then she would laugh, because Zoe’s mother was dead. Her aunt didn’t find that funny—she laughed because she laughed at everything. It was the only response she was capable of, regardless of the situation. She laughed at jokes and television, but she also laughed at food and trees and weather reports. Breakfast made her laugh, as did rain, splinters and trousers. She laughed at good fortune and horror. The more tense or difficult the circumstances, the wilder she laughed. When she learned that her sister—Zoe’s mother—had died, she screamed, bit her cheek and cackled, spraying blood from her mouth across a tiled floor.