Black Warrior

by Tiffiny Hall

  Suddenly I hear shrieking. ‘It’s bigger, it’s growing! I’m ugly!’ I race upstairs, skipping two steps at a time. I burst into the bathroom, thinking Elecktra’s nose has Pinocchioed, all the lies catching up with her. She grabs my finger and fixes it to her head.

  ‘It always felt like my brain was expanding, and now look! I have twice the brainage. Two brains, Rox. Look!’ Lecky presses my finger hard into her skull. I try to tug my finger away.

  ‘Gross!’ I squeal.

  ‘No, feel!’ she says, pressing my finger down harder on the bony lump.

  ‘Yuk. Don’t!’ I yelp.

  ‘That’s the tiny brain for the small stuff, like where to get my coffee on Sunday mornings, which bracelets to layer for brunch, alerting me that monk orange is so hot this season and reminding me to visit the Brow Whisperer to have my eyebrows shaped. Then there is the bigger one, inside my protective skull, that tells me the important stuff, like how to drive and get off my samurai L-plates and how to find The One,’ she finishes, breathless.

  ‘I don’t think it’s another brain, Lecky,’ I say.

  She pokes me. ‘BTW, I am now smarter than you — so I wouldn’t argue.’

  ‘You were hit on the head in the cave fight or it’s a cyst like Art had on his head last year. Your body learns to deposit fat in the same spot, remember? You are actually wearing a little hat of fat there. Or maybe you’re growing a horn.’

  ‘Like a unicorn?’ she gasps.

  ‘A devil,’ I say.

  ‘You calling me a fathead?’

  ‘S’pose. You do get a fat head sometimes. Ha! But now you actually do have a fat head.’ I laugh.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she mutters.

  ‘You could have it removed,’ I suggest.

  ‘I’m against plastic surgery before the age of twenty.’

  I shrug. ‘It’s medical.’

  She pouts in the mirror. ‘I guess when RJ runs his fingers through my hair he could find it a turn-off.’

  ‘Who’s RJ? And I agree, no one wants to feel a horn.’

  ‘I’d prefer you referenced it as a lump.’

  I flick her hair. ‘Lump,’ I mutter.

  ‘He should love me warts and all,’ she says, parting her mop to see the pink lump squeeze through her blonde hair. Her face falls apart. ‘Who am I kidding! Boys hate warts and acne and horns. I’m Gate One because I dodged all that,’ she cries.

  ‘So who’s RJ?’ I press.

  ‘Ohmigawd. Ahmaze. He’s this new guy in my year. He’s a Rap Genius. He has seventy thousand hits on YouTube for his Epic Rap Fail. He’s super hot. Oriental, big Adam’s apple, talks like Mufasa from The Lion King. His voice!’ She flops her hair over her face and disappears behind a curtain of desire. I shake her out of it.

  ‘RJ. Sounds genius,’ I say. He sounds like another one of Lecky’s ‘toyfriends’. She toys with guys and never lets them go out with her. She loves to play and be the centre of attention, but when it comes to a steady boyfriend, Elecktra is too fussy. And the boys are all ready to be martyrs, even though no one is harder to ‘get’ than my sister. Sometimes I think no one ‘gets’ Lecky but me.

  She sighs heavily and flicks her leotard. ‘Totally. I’m off to Ballet Fu for a good cry.’

  ‘Is your teacher mean?’ I ask.

  Elecktra laughs. ‘No, silly. Sweat is fat crying.’ She smiles and waves. ‘Laters.’

  I walk to my bedroom to read when I hear the front door click closed and the sound freezes me in my step. Elecktra slams doors; she never closes them with a whisper. There’s only one person in this family who is that stealthy.

  I change into my ninja uniform, still spattered with relics of Elecktra’s alterations: a feather on the shoulder, a stud on the sleeve and sequins along the lapel. I fly out the window and land in the bushes below, just as Mum walks out the front gate. She is wearing her full ninja blacks — this is bad news. After a few minutes, it’s not hard to know where we’re heading. Past the letterbox, the milk bar, down Kickapoo Boulevard where you can see FunEscape Park, three blocks and we arrive at school. Mum slips through Gate One. It’s hard to imagine she was ever bullied; she’d have the Heros of the world in headlocks before they even opened their mouths.

  The black hole still swallows the front school yard. I hide behind Sergeant Major’s car, which is parked out the front of the mansion, and watch as Mum collects the clothes and shoes that pepper the blackened grass and throws them into the pit. She stops to inspect the lashing prints again. I don’t know why she’s so obsessed with them; the markings could be from the firemen’s hoses. She rubs her forehead, then clutches her heart. There’s a longing worn into her expression, the look people wear at departure gates in airports and at funerals.

  Mum zips around the front yard faster than a windswept shadow, filling the pit with the discarded clothing and shoes, then her eyes blaze in the reflection of a lit match. She unhitches a flask from her belt, squirts a liquid into the pit and gazes up into the sky as if searching the stars for something, or someone. Then she drops the match into the pit, which explodes into a bonfire. She looks up into the sky again. There is a calling in her eyes.

  ‘MUM!’ I scream, leaping out from behind the car. Her eyes turn to steel when she sees me.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says, but I draw in my breath and halt the fire with a cool wind. ‘Roxy, stay out of it.’

  ‘Why do you want to burn down the school?’ I ask. ‘Are you that crazy?’

  ‘I’m not burning down the school. Don’t be overdramatic, Rox. I’m making a flare. To fix this.’

  ‘Fix what?’ I hose water out from my fingertips onto the fire, then shout over the spray, ‘You’ve lost your marbles! No, Mum, your marbles grew legs and ran away!’

  ‘Never had marbles to begin with,’ she says seriously. ‘Only grenades.’

  The fire kindles dangerously, creeping towards Sergeant Major’s car. It snags on the wheels, then snakes towards the bonnet.

  ‘What are you trying to hide?’ I scream over the licking flames, which light the agony in Mum’s expression. She brushes her lashes down and angles her chin sadly to one side.

  Flames hiss onto the bonnet of Sergeant Major’s car. Mum’s eyes turn liquid, not with tears but worry. I could extinguish the flames any moment, but the fire burns urgency between us, heats all the things we are dying to say to each other yet don’t know how.

  ‘This has something to do with my father, I know it!’ I yell.

  The flames intensify and Mum jumps back. She smiles. This is exactly what she wants — a massive bonfire. I summon water and make it snow, blanketing the markings on the ground. The car fire is slow to burn out.

  ‘What’s going on?’ a voice booms behind me.

  I turn to see Sergeant Major’s triceps glistening in the ice of the burned-out car.

  ‘I — it wasn’t — a mistake,’ I try to spit the words out and explain. I feel Mum smile through her ninja hood in the darkness, but when I turn around, she has disappeared.

  I hear sirens, but then the sirens are drowned out by a flapping noise, as strong as helicopter blades. The sirens stop approaching and begin to chase in the direction of the thunderous flapping. Smoke rises in the distance. Loud explosions. Sergeant Major’s eyes widen as I hear the flapping intensify behind me. His face shades dark with terror, then he turns and runs. I don’t see what happens to him as I swoop to the ground. All I see is a flash of spikes, a thrashing tail and white razors. I hear panting and smell more smoke. A hot ember lands on my arm and burns through my uniform. I shake my arm, the ember skittling onto the grass as my dream alights in the darkness. Those turquoise stars beam towards me.

  I leap to my feet. Instinct makes my heart sprint, my legs kick in and before I can think I’m running hard and fast. The flapping is swallowing the world around me. The beats gulp every pocket of air. I’m too terrified to look. I keep my eyes trained on the road and pump my legs harder. A scream splits the sky apart, then a f
iery mass plunges from above. I shoot water out of my palm to drench the flames mid-air. The flames extinguish and I summon wind to float the body to the ground gently. A man in jogging gear lands on his feet, luckily only his singlet singed. He looks up into the sky, his eyes iced with fear. ‘Run!’ he screams.

  The flapping is above me. I don’t waste time looking up. I run through the blackness of town. Another scream tears open the sky. I flash a water whip towards the scream and extinguish the flames, then float the body to the ground in a wind tunnel. A girl lands with smoke tendrils rising from her hair. She flattens herself against the ground, then peers up at me through her thick fringe. Her eyes are slated with terror.

  As I turn to run again, more screams. I send streams of wind and water to save three other people plummeting from the sky. They hit the ground safely and scurry off to hide. I drop to the ground and commando-crawl under a car.

  Closing my eyes, I concentrate on stifling my breath, hiding, waiting, hoping whatever it is won’t sniff me out. There is a cry in the distance, then a thud on top of the car, another scream and a thud on the bonnet, then a fireball lands in front of the vehicle. I can make out arms and legs thrashing through the flames and summon water to drench the person. The victim has burned clothes, but he is okay. He limps away.

  The flapping returns. I refuse to look out from underneath the car at the evil that is destroying Lanternwood and probably wants to destroy me. When it is quiet again, I cautiously crawl out from the sedan’s undercarriage and stand up slowly, eyeing off the smoky horizon.

  ‘Watch out!’ someone calls. I look across the road and see someone on an evening walk with a puppy on a leash. I swoop to the ground as claws launch at me. One scratches my face. I taste the salt of blood as it drips onto my lips.

  I hurtle down the street, turn the sharp corner onto Kumgang Crescent and summon the wind to push me faster so that my feet slide across the ground. I feel something chasing me down, the breath like a hot tornado on my neck, the beating of the wings, the shadows that engulf the night and block out the stars. I know it’s coming for me, but I can’t look back.

  Suddenly a tunnel of wind blasts behind me, then a whip of pain stings my back, followed by intense heat. I scream. I see flames over my shoulder — my uniform is on fire. I summon water and ice my uniform for protection. Running in iced clothing is like running in armour. The fireballs slide off my clothes more easily now as I charge, leaving a trail of fire in my wake.

  My breath suffocates in my chest as I run faster and faster. The night blurs past me in flashes of black and white and broken starlight. The thundering wings block out all thought. I run up the wrong street into a court. I’m trapped. I begin to climb the side wall of a house, but suddenly the thunder is above me and I miss my footing and fall onto my back.

  I gaze up at the black mass throbbing above me. I’m paralysed. Two blue diamonds draw me in; I can’t look away from the blazing pair of eyes. Then the head forms out of the darkness and I see the jaws, rows of jagged teeth. A tiger with dragon wings growls in the darkness. Our eyes lock. Neither of us moves. I blink. The monster remains, pulsating in the blackness, like a giant heart. There is something human about his eyes that reaches into my gut and twists it. We remain motionless, staring at each other, not knowing what comes next.

  The tiger dragon beats its wings and the cracking sound makes me scream. I snap out of the daze and leap to my feet, summoning the wind to fly me to the top of the nearest house. I spring from building to building without looking back. I feel those diamonds burning into my back, but the sound of thunder disappears, leaving me alone with the turquoise stars in my mind, the turquoise stars from my dream.

  I find my street and float to the ground. The sky is silent again. The stars emerge in a silver blanket. I try to process what I’ve seen: the people falling from the sky, the flames, the tiger dragon, the blue piercing eyes, the beating wings. Dreaming, I must be asleep. I pinch myself hard on the arm and yelp. Nope. That hurt, I’m awake.

  I reach our yellow apartment and fly through my bedroom window and bolt it closed. My palms are wet from the water streams, my clothes are covered in soot, yet outside Lanternwood looks totally normal again. I creep downstairs, but Mum hasn’t returned. I slump onto the couch in the pitch black and shiver. Where do you go when your home doesn’t feel safe any more?

  SIX

  Lecky grips Mum’s hand. I can tell she’s tempted to also grab one of Mum’s blonde braids. We used to love chewing on the strands when we were little. Mum even cut her hair super short for a while because I was the worst, really rough at tugging her ponytails and pulling on her plaits like ropes.

  ‘Now I’m going to do a bit of hairdressing here. A small shave. Fantastico,’ the doctor says, giving us a toothless smile. Elecktra scowls automatically.

  ‘Come again?’ she asks, breaking out in the nervous sweats. I grab her big toe hanging out of her flip-flops to give comfort.

  ‘We need to shave a bit of hair. We can’t stitch up the wound with hair in it. That’ll cause infection. Alrighty? Fantastico.’ Dr McCavity smiles again and this time he loses his eyes, crow’s feet flying up to his ears. Elecktra and I always joke that Dr McCavity should have been a dentist, not a doctor. Mum says she once knew a surgeon called Dr Slaughter. I never want to meet him.

  ‘Giving me a bald spot will infect me too — as a social outcast!’ Lecky cries, sitting up, her eyes all pupil. The doctor gently pushes her back down with one finger to her shoulder and she slumps easily under the local anaesthetic.

  Elecktra turns to Mum, her same blonde hair whipping the doctor in the face. ‘I can’t be bald, Mum. I don’t have the big coloured eyes for it. My eyes are boring brown, the colour of mud. So not a feature!’ she shrieks.

  I roll my eyes. Lecky’s irises run rivers of gold through ebony waters. They transfix everyone who meets her. Her eyes are planets away from even being in the same universe as ‘boring brown’.

  ‘It’s a small patch,’ Mum soothes.

  Elecktra tries to wriggle off the bench again, almost ripping her tights. ‘It’s social suicide! You can’t do this to me.’

  Mum’s face softens. Elecktra sees an opening.

  ‘If I do this, can I get a puppy? Dogs are always in fashion,’ she pleads.

  Mum purses her lips. I shake my head. I’d rather be hanging out with Jackson on a Tuesday afternoon than coaching Lecky through this.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a tiny bit bald than carry a strawberry-sized lump of fat on your head? What would Gate One think if they found out? Kids can be bullies,’ I say, squeezing her big toe again.

  Elecktra relaxes onto the bench. The doctor takes out a tiny electric shaver. The buzz of the razor fills the silence.

  ‘Stop!’ Elecktra yells, but it’s too late. A blonde tuft sails to the floor and I scoop it up. Knowing Lecky, she’ll want to keep it.

  ‘Hold still,’ the doctor instructs, taking a scalpel. ‘Fantastico. Nearly there.’

  Elecktra’s face screws up, pushing her tiny nose into the manicured space between her eyebrows.

  ‘What does it feel like?’ I ask, watching a red line open on her head. Dr McCavity then uses a pair of tweezers to remove the pocket of fat. In my soapiest dreams, I wish I could remove parts of me too. Why can’t I be a babushka doll and hop out of the person that encases me and find a new person underneath?

  ‘It feels like he’s tugging and pulling, that’s all,’ Elecktra says with minimal lip movement, trying to do her best at keeping still, but it’s only an impersonation. Mum and I help to hold her down.

  I turn away when the doctor begins stitching. Even though it’s only six tiny purple stitches, they look gruesome on Lecky’s white scalp. Mum watches, her eyes trained on the wound. You can tell she’s used to blood. The thought turns my stomach even more than the surgery.

  I yawn. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. The dream haunted me. Those blue stinging eyes, the fangs, the dragon wings, the fur that
looked like black prickles. It felt so much like a dream, but my uniform smelled of smoke and was wet around the sleeves when I woke up. The last moment that felt real was Sergeant Major busting Mum and me at school. Mum disappeared, then it was all chasing, running, fire and screaming. This morning Mum said it was a bad dream and that she and Art had been having bad dream moods all week, something to do with the moon. But it felt real to me. Mum was at school, calling to something. Then a tiger dragon showed up. It makes no sense.

  The doctor winks at Elecktra, who is staring at herself in a hand mirror. ‘Nifty,’ he says.

  Lecky pokes her tongue out at the mirror, but I know it’s a jerk reaction to the word ‘nifty’. She has the same reaction to the words ‘neat’, ‘funky’, ‘gee whiz’, ‘trendy’ and anyone over the age of thirty using the word ‘cool’. Art is a serial offender.

  ‘Save it,’ she says. ‘I hate the bald patch.’

  ‘Elecktra Ran! Don’t you be so rude.’ Mum smacks her lightly on the leg. ‘Drama queen,’ Mum says, turning to Dr McCavity. ‘Thank you. You have done an extraordinary job with a difficult patient, and the patch is only the size of a coin.’

  Dr McCavity smiles and his eyes light for the first time. ‘Hokey dokey,’ he says and leaves.

  ‘Here,’ I say and lean over Elecktra’s knees and flick her hair to one side. ‘Why don’t you try a side part instead of a middle part? You have a natural cowlick anyway.’

  Elecktra studies herself. ‘Makes me look more European. Let’s do it.’ She slides off the bench and lands in a plié. Then with her new side part, she links arms with Mum and me and we leave to meet Art at the park.

  I copy Mum’s moves in the clearing, practising our martial arts patterns. Ever since I swallowed the Tiger Scrolls, we have been coming to Candletree Gardens to train together. It’s the done thing in Lanternwood; everyone visits here to improve their techniques in the fresh air. Watching people in a meditative state slowly move their limbs like branches in the wind makes me feel at peace. There is a family of three children practising opposite us. The father holds a pillow and a child punches into it. The mother instructs the other two boys on their feet position for their kicks. Lanternwoodians are such keen martial arts people that it’s not unusual for them to do a random kick while walking down the street, perform stretching exercises in line at the supermarket checkout or little punching movements over their car’s steering wheel while waiting at a red light.