Legends of Australian Fantasy

by Jack

  Ros reeled back at a wild attack from the seer. Driven by surprise and panic, she rushed for Adi. From whence the sudden surge came, Ros didn’t know. It was all he could to slow the vicious outpour and prevent Adi from being riven in two.

  For herself, Adi was aware of a terrible conflict waging over her, buffeting her from side to side, but she couldn’t let it get in the way of what she had to do. She had guessed the source of the seer’s tortured motivations. There was a hurt in Magda Van Haasteren’s past that matched Adi’s own, and she maintained it still, perversely nurturing it just as she nurtured the Thrall. The two, therefore, the pain and the Thrall, had to be connected by more than just metaphor. If one wasn’t literally the other, then perhaps they shared the same origin.

  The Thrall had rushed at Ros and Adi like an ascending bubble of flame, sweeping their spark off with it. Adi didn’t understand what kind of creature it was, but she did understand the nature of human desires and needs. When Magda Van Haasteren had sensed that Ros and Adi had escaped, she had taken just one thing from her stinking hovel. That one thing was the candle, and she had been cradling it when Ros and Adi had found her.

  Adi’s right hand was slick with her own blood. Thumb and forefinger hissed when she closed them tight about the flame. It squirmed and writhed, as slippery as a slug, and it burned her as badly as her dead spark’s barbs. Pain lanced up her arm and assailed her body and mind. She fought it with fury and maintained her grip. It felt good to reverse the flow of ill-fortune. The Thrall would die just as all of Adi’s childish hopes were now dead and gone forever.

  The Thrall howled as the fire of its existence was slowly extinguished. Adi felt a lifetime of guilt and entrapment burn through her, and knew that she had guessed correctly. The source of the seer’s despair and power were one and the same. Had he betrayed the young woman he had been teaching? Had he used her love and thought to throw it away? Either way, the seer had taken her revenge on the man who had wronged her, forcing him to kill in order to live on as a captive, and to feed by taking that which he had taken from her.

  The storm intensified in direct proportion to the fading of the flame. When the latter died, so did the other. All resistance collapsed, and Ros and Adi fell to the ground, stunned by the sudden silence, spent.

  * * * *

  Ros could barely crawl. The glowstones shone fitfully and the air remained thick with ash. He could hear Adi breathing — or did he simply imagine that he could? — and by painful effort was able to follow the sound to where she lay huddled on her side, cradling the dead spark tenderly with all of her body. He touched her hair, and she rolled over to face him, leaving the awful thing behind.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Adi asked.

  ‘I think so. By her own hand.’

  She winced, but there was triumph in her eyes, too. ‘We managed it, then.’

  ‘We did. Together.’

  They lay side by side for a long moment, holding hands tightly, unsure exactly what this meant for them.

  ‘I suppose we should go soon,’ he said, thinking with no great joy of the crowds that would be waiting for them.

  ‘I’m taking it with us,’ she said with iron in her voice.

  He understood, and lacked the strength to argue.

  * * * *

  The closed cab that whisked Ros and Adi from the scene was the talk of the city’s night-owls, for its import was ambivalent, perhaps even ominous. While it was good news that the pair had survived, the fate of the treacherous seer and the great romance itself was not known. A new kind of anxiety gripped the darkened streets. Was seeing justice done better than seeing damage undone, or vice versa? If one couldn’t have both, who could possibly choose between them?

  * * * *

  The Mierlos guided them into the mansion, trusting in the cloak of night and a torturously complicated route to keep prying eyes at bay. Adi was shaking, and Ros felt as though every bone in his body might spontaneously shatter. A physician was on hand to tend their ailments, both physical and otherwise. Adi’s wounds were bathed and bandaged; Ros’s twisted ankle was bound. Both were given clean clothes and all the food they could stomach. No one asked about the ebon crystal that rested on Mawson’s former plinth in the study. That it was to be guarded and not touched was the only instruction issued, by both of the Mierlos’ guests.

  Shortly before midnight a small gathering convened in the study. There a senior Stone Mage presented his conclusions on the matter of the Thrall and its patron, Magda Van Haasteren. Her body had been recovered from the underground redoubt. An autopsy had confirmed Ros’s intuitive diagnosis: her heart had literally burst from the application of her own will. Neither Ros nor Adi were to blame for her death, although if they had been they would surely have been exonerated.

  Few doubted Adi’s interpretation of the creature’s origins, and several candidates were put forward to account for the man the Thrall had been. No one accused Adi of killing the Thrall too quickly, but it was apparent that the lack of an opportunity to test the hypothesis seemed a shame to some. Perhaps all such creatures had undergone the tragic birth and endured the grotesque symbiotic life as this one. Until another appeared, there was little way to tell.

  A representative of the city’s administration officially apologised for the damage done by one of its residents, and expressed a sincere hope that the incident would not affect relations between Ulum and the trading Clans, who were, after all, the lifeblood of the Interior. Adi assured him that it would not, and went on to profess her profound gratitude to the people of the city for lending their aid when need had been greatest.

  ‘On that matter,’ Jenfi Mierlo began, but her husband nudged her silent.

  There followed several other declarations, clarifications, and interrogations, all of which began to take on a slightly surreal nature until, finally, the hosts declared the convention over and ushered the officials to the door.

  ‘You’re welcome to rest here the night,’ said the mistress of the house when its halls were quiet once more, ‘but there’s something we want to tell you first.’

  * * * *

  ‘Your spark was powerful, yes,’ said Samson Mierlo, pacing awkwardly about the sealed study. His tone was the same as it had been the day he had informed Adi that Ros was lost in the Void Beneath. He indicated the twisted, black thing: ‘There’s nothing to be done for it now, though. You have to move on.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Adi asked, her face taut and pinched. Inside, despite the ministrations of all those who had tried to help, she felt the same.

  ‘I’m suggesting that we are not so different, Jenfi and I. That is, we are quite different from each other, but that’s what makes us the same as you two. We can serve as an example, if you need one.’

  ‘You must feel that all is lost,’ Jenfi said, turning violet with the effort of restraining her relentless croup. ‘But it isn’t. If a spark was all it took for love to survive — not just survive; thrive and grow — Samson and I would have parted years before now. Not one couple in the history of the world has ever been perfectly matched, and not one spark has lasted the length of a marriage. Sparks come and go — that’s the secret your twisted friend neglected to learn.’

  ‘You’re rather fortunate, after a fashion,’ said Samson.

  Ros stared at him as he had stared at Magda Van Haasteren, who had suggested the same awful thing.

  ‘This is the worst it will ever be,’ Jenfi explained. ‘You’ve seen what happens when expectations aren’t met. Hopes dashed, dreams unfulfilled — and that was before the spark was taken.’ She waved a hand expressively. ‘How much better to move forward with eyes unclouded in search of a new spark, one you brought into being yourselves rather than one that owned you.’

  ‘Because you have all the raw materials,’ said Samson. ‘You have a history — as anyone can tell you — and now you have shared something else too. Several equally important things. A common enemy and unity of purpose; grief — and a keepsake to r
emind you of everything that happened here. Sparks have been born from significantly less than that, in my experience.’

  ‘But what if that’s not what we want?’ Adi interjected. ‘What if everything we now have in common —’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘— the pain and the suffering, the memories, the exhaustion — what if that becomes self-perpetuating? What if we just want to leave it behind and go back into hiding again?’

  Jenfi Mierlo folded her hands in her lap. Ros recognised the fiduciary gleam that returned to her eyes.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘that isn’t an option just yet.’

  * * * *

  Dawn crept down Ulum’s chimneys and cast the beginning of another day in a muted golden light. It had been a long night for all in the city, and an especially dark night for some. An atmosphere of apprehension had settled in like fog, making restless even the most stoic of dreamers. Rumours continued to fly, if more sluggishly than previously without fact to back them up. Roslin of Geheb and Aditi Sabatino had not been seen for hours. Some said that they were gone and would never visit the city again. Had all of Ulum’s help been for nothing? Would the markets ever re-open?

  That morning’s crowds were simply waiting for answers. Wild-beard was among them, with a mazed look and a leer for any who caught his eye, along with the cab driver who had whisked Ros and Adi to safety after escaping the trap and the maid who had watched doppelganger-Ros decrepitate. They knew as little as anyone else. Those who did know were, for the moment, not talking.

  * * * *

  Ros dressed with a calm he would have though impossible just hours before. Adi helped him fold the fabric, which came in a style that had risen to prominence during his long apprenticeship. The terror of the everyday was for the moment deferred, thanks in no small part to her good example. The world of the Thrall and the seer — his world — had been no less challenging for her, and she had excelled in it.

  They had spent the night at the Mierlos, who had, without any obvious dissemblance, explained that only one guest-room was available. Although they had chafed at the intimacy at first, later they been glad for the opportunity to talk through everything they had been told — for a telling-to is what it had certainly amounted to. And later still, with the advice of their benefactors still clear in their minds, they had stopped talking altogether, feeling as though they hadn’t any choice in the matter but not in an inordinately negative sense. The truth of it was that it had been a relief to let go of the expectation that they should choose. The head couldn’t stand in for the heart, when it came to such matters. The moment decided, if anything did, and in that moment all had been well, and something of a release for both of them.

  When the folding and tying was done, they held each other tightly and cried for a while. There was nothing shameful or wretched in it. The time for that had passed. New challenges awaited them, deserving all their attention. They could still grieve, but at the same time they could also move on.

  Ros looked uncomfortable in his finery. Adi wished he would relax into it, but supposed he would in time. He had been so powerful, so potent, in Van Haasteren’s subterranean cave, and she was prepared now to give him the benefit of the doubt. For herself, she had chosen something absurdly impractical from her own wardrobe, recovered from the Lost Dolphin before souvenir collectors could claim it. She was aware that a large part of her took comfort from the familiar routine of dressing and the novelty of preparing someone else’s dress, and although it wasn’t a habit she wanted to encourage, for now she would embrace the task.

  ‘True stories don’t have endings,’ said he in a contemplative tone. Mawson had broken his silence for the third time to deliver that gnomic fragment, which she supposed gave some insight into his stony motivations.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, quoting in turn Jenfi Mierlo’s opinion on the importance of the people around them, not merely as customers who spent more when they were happy: ‘And love doesn’t thrive in isolation.’

  Hand in hand, they went to pay their respects to the city.

  * * * *

  Afterword

  ‘The Spark’ sits midway along the timeline of the ten linked fantasy novels in my Change series — the Books of the Change, the Books of the Cataclysm, and most recently the Broken Land. Inspired by the landscapes of my childhood rather than European or indigenous Australian mythologies, I had no conception when I set out on this journey that the places I revisited would become such an enduring obsession. The people who occupied them, also.

  My young protagonists Ros and Adi were left somewhat hanging at the end of the Broken Land trilogy, as had Sal and Shilly years before them, because the conclusion to their story lay beyond the purview of a series for young readers. I always intended to return, to see their knot tied, but the deeper I dove into their story the less, perversely, it became about them, or even about the landscape that originally inspired their world.

  Yet in a very real way, ‘The Spark’ is the capping stone on the entire series. All the characters I’ve loved are present, in one form or another, and all the motifs too. Loss, the passage to adulthood, the nursing and healing of old wounds — for me, that’s always what these stories have been about.

  And love, too, with which all can be endured.

  — Sean Williams

  <>

  * * * *

  An illustrator by training and a deeply unrepentant word-nerd, D.M. Cornish is old enough to have seen the very first Star Wars (the now unhappily titled ‘Episode 4’). From such flights of delight and fancy he has developed an almost habitual outlet for his passion of word conjuring through the invention of secondary worlds. A fortuitous encounter with a children’s publisher gave him an opportunity to develop these ideas further. A thousand words at a time, this has lead to the writing (and illustrating) of the Monster-Blood Tattoo series — Foundling, Lamplighter and Factotum (yet to be released). Rumour persists that he possesses a life outside of these books, but it is a vague and shadowy thing.

  * * * *

  The Corsers’ Hinge:

  A Lamplighter Tale

  D. M. Cornish

  Corsers’ Hinge, the ~ (noun) the vernacular and long-standing policy of conduct supposedly governing the behaviour of corsers — that is, grave robbers (a corse being a dead body, of course) — stipulating such ancient customs as how frequently a single boneyard or crypt or surgery may be plundered, disallowing such foul practices as employing murder to fill a toll (quota) and providing the modes of etiquette when corsers meet over a coincidentally prized tomb. Adherence to the hinge is, of course, entirely voluntary, but its existence helps a corser to hold to a certain illusion of respectability in their ignoble trade. Ashmongers — dealers in dead bodies and their parts — do not of course hold themselves to such missish restrictions.

  * * * *

  The first spring month of Orio had been especially poor for Bunting Faukes, corser and perpetual wayfarer; one of those times to bring a weaker soul to despair of the path of their life and to stoop to consider an early exit from under the world’s wearying weight. The cause of such disconsolation?

  Money.

  Forever money, Faukes reflected glumly, drawing out his long iron corse-pole to prod Hammer, then Anvil, his brace of donkeys drawing the rattling cart, as if the dogged beasts were to blame.

  As was the way of his profession, winter with all its maladies, its early gloom and low flesh-preserving temperatures was typically a boon. Yet this year’s frosted months had brought an inexplicable increase in the want for corses of all ripenings. Bunting could not account for it. Perhaps necromancy or some other fabercadavery has become all the fancy among high-flown society? Yet, what he knew all too well was that a multiplication of orders had made for a multiplication of work, bringing corser all too close to corser, contact that left only one with the prize and the other with ... well, amongst bruises and shovel wounds, potive burns and bullet holes, an empty order. In added insult, fresh-plu
cked spring was proving to be especially cheery, its balmy promise of a fine summer ripening ripe flesh all too quickly, inviting a torment of flies and making fraught the already chancy traffic of corses; its shortening of the nights denying him time to work.

  For only the second spell since his clumsy, best-forgotten start so long ago as a boneman, Bunting was enduring a genuine crimp in his career. As of late, no matter how excellent the money that came as a necessary recompense for such odious and dangerous labours, Bunting always seemed to have none and owe much.

  Only a fortnight gone, in the mighty mercantile city of Brandenbrass, Weakleefe Spleen — that infamous money-lending shaky benchman — had called in his debt. Accosting Bunting while he sipped a well-earned knuckle of Ol’ Touchy in the drinking room of the Mother’s Nudge, Spleen along with his terrifying malodorous scourge, Welkin Mull, and a quarto of sturdy roughs had left the corser in no doubt as to his responsibilities — as the master benchman liked to call it. Pressing Bunting painfully and making crude insinuations to his scourge’s flesh-melting skills, Spleen had demanded on point of death payment by a month; an entire season’s necessary living all due Newwich next — a mere seven days.