Red Spikes

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘Euh,’ said Diammid.

  Razor’s hand touched his arm again behind the rock. ‘Nought sudden,’ he murmured, and resumed chewing very slowly.

  The hero moved, from the upper right of their view down through the trees towards the middle of the Vale.

  ‘Is it just a head, floating?’ said Diammid.

  Razor swallowed. His voice came much clearer, but much quieter. ‘There’s a body. Watch. Where there’s less mist.’

  The head coasted down the hillside, closing its eyes and pushing its face through branches, or looking from side to side in a slow, wavering, over-sized way. Something hung from its underside, some dark spindlyness, some bright metal.

  Slowly, behind the rock, and with his eyes on the floating head, Diammid pulled the glass open to its full length.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Razor. Diammid could hardly hear him. ‘I’m not so sure about that now. With this one.’

  ‘Just to see that body, the nature of it.’ Slowly Diammid raised the glass to his eye.

  ‘Mmph.’ Razor shifted uneasily.

  ‘Phaugh, you should see this, Razor!’ Diammid whispered. ‘It’s just like us, only all streakly and straggly. Weird. Like dangling iron. But – what’s that on its back?’ He took his eye from the glass and checked, then put it back.

  ‘I wouldn’t be looking through that,’ whispered Razor. ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Why, it’s a shield! Great long thing. And his swords! See how they flash, their curved blades? – Ooh, you should see the hilts of them. And he’s got knives at his waist, and an axe, and— What are those beady things hanging from his belt—’

  ‘Sh! Put it down, Master,’ Razor hissed. ‘He’s coming clearer. I’m sure you can see him just as well with your own eye now.’

  Diammid took down the glass and scowled into the Vale. The hero had paused in a clearing, about to plunge into a part of the Vale where the trees grew taller than himself. His heavy head turned and nodded, choosing the way. The head moved first and the slender body swung and drifted after it, brandishing its swords.

  Diammid put the glass to his eye again. ‘I just want to see—’

  ‘Master, I wouldn’t.’

  The hero’s head swivelled dozily towards them.

  ‘Oh, look at the earring! It’s—’

  Diammid’s eager voice switched off, as suddenly as if by electricity. Diammid was gone from beside Razor. The red leather spy-glass hung where he had held it. Comb-marks streaked the air where he had stood. Swirls at the other end showed the force with which he had been sucked through.

  The glass dropped, clink-tap-clink, and rolled, and lay. Smoke wisped out at the top; a trickle of molten orange glass ran out the bottom, and pooled on the rock.

  ‘Psst! Anderson!’ said the coat-rack.

  ‘What?’ Diammid stared. ‘Who’s that?’

  A coat kicked out with a thin bruised leg, and now he saw the eye in the shadows. ‘Rickets?’

  The boy hung there like a hunchback by the collar of his blazer. ‘Can you get me down, Anderson?’

  ‘Yes, but they’ll—But I’ll—Is it Bully has done this, or Teasdale?’

  ‘Just for a piss, Anderson, and then you can hang me up again. Please. I’m busting. It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ And he lifted the boy down and waited there nervously. It took more than a minute, but eventually Rickets came hurrying into sight. ‘Quickly! I can hear them coming back from Gym!’

  And it was accomplished.

  ‘Thanks, Anderson.’ Rickets pulled the coats around himself. ‘I owe you. Go away, now – you’d best not be found here.’

  Diammid went, trying to shake off the scrape of Rickets’ boot against his shin, the imprint of his bony hip as he lifted him down, the pale face with the watery greenish eyes, the smell of drains about the boy.

  Bells rang above Diammid. His eyes would not open.

  It seemed to him that he had only just been born. A great amber eye had brought him into being. He had started as a hot line on the air, then suddenly, violently been plumped into shape and thrown down on this grass. And now he was a dense honeycomb of pain, his every cell outlined with fire.

  The hero’s towering shadow darkened Diammid’s eyelids. The black mist came and went. When it was there, it furred everything – sound and taste and skin – like iron filings on a magnet. It made the bells at the hero’s waist clank and clack; when it cleared they rang sweet and properly metal.

  Diammid’s cheerful voice chimed across the supper table.

  Where they come from, they come from other worlds. Where they go, they go back to other worlds; I don’t know whether back to those they came from, or on to fresh ones, or what.

  What do you mean, what other worlds? Teasdale scoffed. You talk so much rot, Anderson; why don’t you run orf and write one of your po-wems or something?

  I’m telling you, I talked to Razor; he told me.

  He filled your head with gumf, is what. Razor is a filthy peasant what has et one toadstool too many. You there, pass the bread-and-dripping.

  But why don’t they come here?

  What do you mean, Rickets?

  When they’re in our world. Why don’t they do anything here? Come over to Grammar and – I don’t know – flatten Raglan for us? Rickets finished under his breath. Flatten that one. He nodded faintly towards Teasdale, who was biting bread and calling up the table to someone.

  Oh, they never come out of the Vale. Least, that’s what Razor says. The sides are too steep, maybe. I don’t know; I’ve never been there.

  And you never will. There was Teasdale again. You piece of slop.

  Diammid’s eyelids unstuck from each other. The hero’s booted iron legs led up to the bells and blades at his waist, to his swords in their battered black sheaths, to the head that blotted out so much of the sky.

  ‘S-sir.’ Diammid’s whole painful body trembled.

  Ah. The hero’s head tilted, the boots stepped away, the giant eyes came down. First the painful amber eye regarded him through the mist, then the other slewed grey across the eyeball, seeming to see nothing.

  The hero opened his neat mouth. Diammid sensed a much larger, rawer mouth opening somewhere nearby.

  Gorwr hay sheen hee pashin drouthsh, the hero said. Then both his eyes turned amber as the mist thickened, and he tried again: You hay seen hee passin throok.

  The mist furred Diammid’s eyes and brain. The hero was saying several things: You have seen me passing through this place, as well as You have seen things you were not intended to see. But most urgently the hero wanted to know, Have you seen him? Which way did he pass?

  ‘Who, sir?’ cried Diammid, but the mist had frayed and faded, and only the grey, uncomprehending eye swerved and slid above him. Diammid felt ill watching it – at any moment he would be sick all over the hero’s boots.

  But then the eye flickered, and steadied amber again. Crothel had a piece of Baltic amber in the glass case in the Science Room; there was a lacewing trapped in it, with some scraps of ancient leaf-litter. That specimen was a poor approximation of the amber world into which these eyes were windows. A dragonfly hung there, its thorax the length of Diammid’s arm; whole thorny lizards hovered, wrinkled-leather birds with tooth-edged beaks, entire mammoths – bubbles clung to their flanks and crevices, golden with the hero’s interior fire.

  ‘Who, sir?’ Diammid said again, to stop himself dying of the sight.

  This time the hero understood. Mine enemee. His voice rumbled in the ground. Skulls hung on cords at his waist, skulls of wolves and of Diammid-sized people and of horned, toothed beasts Diammid did not recognise. They clacked and clinked together on many notes. My foe! The mist thinned, the words turned to roar, the eye dimmed and slithered, and the ground shook hard, banging against the back of Diammid’s head. The hero blurred against the clouds, and the skulls became dull metal bells, and swung and sang.

  Then the amber eye burned above him. You cain tell me, s
aid the hero, into whuchaputchatha . . . The eye dimmed, then shone very bright and hot. Into which aperture did he flee?

  ‘I have seen no one but yourself today, sir.’ Diammid trembled, pinned to the ground by the heat.

  And other days? Many years might pass in this place, that do not signify for the duration of the Chase. The eye came closer and hotter. Diammid squirmed.

  ‘But I have never been here before, sir!’

  I could crush your head like an asp’s under my boot-heel, rumbled the hero, pushing his face lower. I could cut you apart and hang your still-living pieces in the trees. Do not toy with me.

  ‘Oh, but I’m not, sir! I wouldn’t!’

  The hero brought the full heat of his amber eyes to bear on Diammid. The boy’s skin crisped and curled and flamed up like thin dry leaves. He arched on the ground. Screams forced themselves out of him, unconnected to his will.

  Then the black mist closed in with a sifting sound. Diammid’s skin rose into iron fur. The mist blotted out the sky; from here to high in the Vale behind him the air turned hollow, so that his cries echoed lostly. And something emerged into this hollowness, heavy, scrambling, tearing the vegetation, breathing hard and steadily.

  The hero’s head swung up to face that other, and his amber eyes glared and glowed. Show yourself, coward! He drew both swords; they tzanged and spat on the iron-rich air. The skulls at his waist clacked out a horrid laughter. The trees had turned to leafless bone on all sides.

  He strode up the hill. His iron boot-toe kicked Diammid in the side; his following foot caught Diammid’s head a blow that exploded the world into fireworks. The boy lay gasping, the enemy crooned farther away and higher, the giant’s swords whipped the weighty air and the trees rattled and rubbed their bones with his passing.

  It was nearly tea-time and Rickets was dozing, when Anderson pulled apart the coats and lifted him down from the coat-hook.

  Rickets shook out the arms of his shirt and blazer, blinking up at Anderson, not daring to speak. Anderson seemed taller, thinner. His face was one big roughfeatured scab, incapable of expression without cracking.

  ‘I thought you were— Shouldn’t you be in the San?’ said Rickets.

  Stillness and patience clarified the air around Anderson, spreading out from him like a pure oil.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rickets finally said, in a muted voice.

  Anderson jerked his head, Come on.

  Rickets bobbed along uncertainly beside Anderson, then settled to walking. He longed to ask, What happened to you in the Vale? What did you see? Will you ever tell, or was it too terrible? But the blunt, crusted ruin of Anderson’s face was too awesome; he could not quite bring himself to. And then they passed the last empty dorm and went up into the Prefects Wing.

  These stairs, these halls, were richly scented with Taylors Imperial tea and woodsmoke and buttered toast. A carpet runner muffled their footfalls, and peaceable sounds came from behind each door – the clink of glass- ware, Victrola music winding up, assured voices in conversation.

  They stopped at a door guarded by two big boys. Rowdier talk went on within. ‘I’m here to see Bully Raglan.’ Anderson’s voice was a burnt-out croak.

  One of the guards gave a startled laugh, and Rickets stifled a gasp. No one called Raglan ‘Bully’ in front of his lads.

  But the guard knocked on the study door and stuck his head round. The talk paused inside. ‘Anderson’s here to see you.’

  ‘Anderson?’ Raglan’s sharp voice shook Rickets like a gust of wind. Anderson’s hand rested briefly on his shoulder.

  ‘The boy who – the one who got burnt.’

  ‘I thought he was unconscious!’

  ‘Well, he’s here, Raglan, and asking to see you.’

  Raglan gave some signal, and the guard opened the door wide.

  Rickets stood on the threshold, his mouth sagging open. All was rich reds and browns in blazing candlelight. Every surface invited the hand, from curved polished wood to embossed wallpaper to gilded picture frames to plump velvet upholstery, to the rug on the floor, thick-napped, brightly patterned, quite unmarked by wear. The difference between this warm place and the scarred Prep Common Room with its mean coke fire made Rickets ache.

  The prefects sat around a table that was crowded with a miniature city of silverware and porcelain. At its pinnacle rose a many-storeyed cake stand. Sweet buns gleamed and glittered on the lower levels; a merry-goround – an entire carnival – of iced and cream cakes ornamented the top tray. Bully Raglan’s bad-tempered face was all the uglier for peering at Anderson around such beauties.

  The other prefects winced and goggled at the sight of the burnt boy. Teasdale looked to Raglan to see how he ought to behave.

  ‘What is it, Anderson?’ Raglan was rattled, but did not want to show it.

  ‘I’ve come to vouch for Rickets.’

  Raglan’s gaze touched Rickets for the merest fragment of a second. ‘Jolly good. But I’m having my tea, boy. Can’t this wait?’ His voice was smooth as cream after Anderson’s croaking.

  ‘I’ve come to vouch for any other Prep boy who needs protection from you, Bully Raglan.’

  A high giggle broke from Teasdale. The other prefects froze.

  Raglan slowly, smoothly adjusted his head the way Rickets imagined a snake would, lining itself up ready to strike. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said almost soundlessly. ‘What did you call me, Anderson?’

  ‘Bully, sir.’

  Only the faces changed. The prefects’ slackened in disbelief; Bully’s assembled like a fist. Even the cakes sat stiller on their stand.

  Raglan was fast; he leaped around the table. But Anderson ran two steps and launched himself straight across it. Boy, vessels and cloth disappeared on the far side. A cake flew out of the crashing to the underside of the marble mantel, stuck there and then fell, leaving a smear of cream.

  The prefects exploded from their chairs, shouting.

  ‘Collar him!’ said Raglan. ‘Burns or not, I shall beat him senseless!’

  Anderson had landed in the fire. Now he rose, the back of his dressing-gown alight, the flames sheeting up behind his gruesome head. He dived again, between the prefects’ odd-angled bodies and upflung hands, fetching up against the wall, the bulwark, the immovable might that was Bully Raglan.

  And the wall buckled.

  ‘Get him off me!’ The bully tried to step back, but Anderson had a death-grip around his knees. ‘Do something! Help me, you wasters!’ Batting at the boy’s flaming back, the blond floss of his own hair catching fire, Raglan fell.

  ‘It was wonderful!’

  The circle of faces glowed back at Rickets in the faint light from around the dormitory window-blind. Soft laughter warmed the air at his face.

  ‘It sounds wonderful!’

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d seen it. Raglan on fire and screaming!’

  ‘Go on, Rickets. Don’t stop there.’

  ‘Well, then they threw Raglan’s smoking-jacket on Anderson to smother the flames, so that was ruined. And they rolled him on the carpet, so there were these scorch marks . . .’ Rickets sighed with pleasure. ‘And then they called Matron because Raglan was making such a racket, and she made him look like a goose with that bandage, and the pre’s had to carry Anderson back to the San on a blanket and, I tell you—’

  ‘He was unconscious, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes! And he stank of burning, and he was filthy, covered in ash and he was bleeding – his face, you know, where he had knocked the scabs – and all the – he must have fallen right on the cakes – he was all over jam and cream, and this big splash of tea down his nightshirt. He was soaked; he was a mess! And they carried him off in the blanket, and even with the mess and the cream and such, he was – I don’t know – like a prince being carried on a litter, or maybe a soldier with his comrades bringing him off the battlefield, with the gun-smoke hanging in the air still. The noble dead, you know? The glorious dead.’ Rickets’ whisper was breaking up with glee. ‘Lying there
with his robe around him, and all these prefects his servants. It was – perfect. I can’t tell you!’

  ‘He didn’t have permission to leave the San,’ said Lowthal.

  ‘Really?’ said Tregowan.

  ‘He was supposed to be in bed, ordered by the doctor. O’Callaghan said he heard Matron say. She couldn’t believe he walked that far, let alone got in a fight.’

  ‘Let alone won!’

  Hands clapped softly or covered laughing mouths.

  ‘So is he all brave because he went to the Vale?’ chirped Crewitt Minor. ‘Is that what happens to you?’

  ‘Well, it didn’t happen to Chauncey and Ark, did it?’ said Lowthal. ‘And that boy, the one who brought Anderson back – he’s a weed, isn’t he? He’s a very quiet sort of person. I mean normally, not when he’s blubbing and carrying on like he was then. Nothing brave or reckless about him, that I’ve heard of.’

  ‘He’s mad in the head, is all. Anderson, I mean. He’s sick. Delirious. Brain fever.’

  ‘Cave! Cox!’ hissed Harvey at the door, and they scattered to their beds.

  Mrs Cox entered the suddenly silent dorm. She made one slow, suspicious patrol, sniffing and hmming as if trying to decide which boy she would pounce on and sink her long teeth into. Lowthal gave a creditable snore, but, ‘Don’t imagine I am fooled for one moment by you, James Lowthal,’ she said. And then she sat at the open door with her lamp, pointedly rustling the pages of her book.

  Rickets lay full of his story, the darkness lit by the memory of that crowd of enthralled faces. Their owners fell asleep one by one around him. Things would be different now; things would be much improved, wouldn’t they? Bully’s reputation surely could not survive this? The whole of Grammar bubbled with laughter at him.