by Mark Lingane
Gavin gasped and hid lower in his seat.
“It’s not your fault. Just be strong.”
“People, you see what happens when you are difficult and argumentative,” the Mola declared. “Please assist with these minor requests.”
“You’re right. I need to be strong.” He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. This is what the teacher had told him to do. The teacher had believed.
He stood and shouted. “I am Gavin, and I am a tesla. You shall leave these people alone.” He threw back his hand and focused on the cyborg in front of him.
The doctor rode the cart out of the subtropics and into the western desert. After several days, while making camp, he dragged Isabelle’s body off the cart and laid her in a ditch beside the main track. She lay there throughout the night, as the dust and insects circled her. When the sun rose, she was alone. The day wore on. Heat and humidity started to edge toward the extreme. The hum of life was distant, echoing from another land. She had ceased to sweat.
Two figures cast shadows across her face. She was too tired to open her eyes, too tired to even listen. Her head spun as she was lifted by a pair of thin but strong arms. She drifted in and out of consciousness as she was carried mile after mile. She felt herself being lowered. Cold water washed over her face.
To Sebastian, it was one of those days he was always going to remember when, finally, his Aunt Ratty turned up. He hadn’t enjoyed living by himself and looked forward to his aunt’s arrival. He’d felt isolated waiting for news, or something that showed he still had a family. Sitting across the road from his house on a fallen log, obscured from view, he watched her approach alongside a dilapidated mule clomping up the dust. It had several large and unquestionably heavy boxes strapped to either side. The dry leaves blustered around her in the brisk wind, forcing her to pull down the oversized sunhat and cover her eyes. She whipped the beast with a willow branch, urging it onwards under its ridiculous load. The creature’s head hung low and it slowed as it staggered up the gentle incline to Sebastian’s home. Its flanks heaved, revealing its malnourished state. Ratty didn’t look any better. She was painfully thin, her sundress hanging loosely from her bony shoulders.
Ratty pulled the mule to the front of the house and tied its reins to a veranda post. The old gray mule swayed, trying to keep its balance. She felt along the top of the doorway, then stepped back and placed her hands on her hips before simply trying the handle. Sebastian watched on and played with the key in his pocket. She angrily and incessantly knocked until Sebastian eased himself up from the concealed log and ran across the road.
Her language, he thought, was hardly appropriate after he had tapped her on the shoulder. His mother would never have tolerated it. Ratty eventually calmed to a point where she was able to string a verb and noun together, then demanded Sebastian take her luggage to his mother’s room, now hers.
“Oh, yes, this will do very nicely,” Ratty said, as she stepped into the spacious and sumptuous room. “You’ll have ta get rid of those sheets, of course. Take ‘em away and burn them.”
“But they’re my mother’s—” The ringing slap across his face halted him mid-sentence and had him spinning in surprise.
“Well, she ain’t here. I don’t want catching of what she’s had. And you don’t want me to get sick, ‘cause then I’ll really make your life a living hell. Didn’t you ever get told to be respectful to your elders? It’s the way me and Alex was brought up. And you don’t want disrespecting his memory.”
Sebastian was shocked by the reprimand. Ratty had never laid a finger on him, let alone spoken so aggressively. He stared at the floor and shuffled his feet.
“Get me new linen. I want some good stuff, appropriate to my … what do they call it? A boudoir.” She appeared to revel in the exotic sound. A lopsided smile cracked her thin lips. “Get the rest of my stuff … I mean … accouterments.”
Ratty sat on the bed and caressed the luxurious sheets, but he found it odd that she ran her hands over the linens if she wanted them gone. He fumbled with the door handle as he quickly tried to leave.
Ratty spotted a jewelry box on a bedside table. Her eyes flicked over to the door to confirm Sebastian had left before greedily opening the delicately decorated case. The contents made her gasp. She extracted a set of delicate diamond earrings and clipped them to her ears. Moving to the dressing table, she sat and slowly turned her head, marveling at her reflection as the light bounced off the fine diamonds.
“Oh, yes, very nice. The hussy never deserved such finery. But that fool of a brother was never going to see sense.”
A small envelope stuck up from the base of the box. Carefully, she ran her finger under the seal, prizing open the flap, and extracting the piece of paper. She read it carefully, then hid it back in the base of the box, underneath the contents. She closed the lid, locking it, and hid the key in her top. She hadn’t noticed the thin, gold necklace wedged in the bottom of the envelope.
Ratty knew the house well, having desired it from the moment her brother had bought it, but still wandered through the spacious rooms with gleaming floorboards, rearranging the furniture to suit her taste.
The back door was slightly bowed and required all her strength to open it, but once revealed, she couldn’t stop smiling at the vista. She dragged a chaise from the far side of the room, scratching the floor, and positioned it to take advantage of the view out into the fields below and the mountains beyond. The afternoon rain had emptied the pastures, leaving the wheat waving in the gentle breeze. A handful of farmers were passing the house, looking for shelter from the daily monsoon.
The Oakley boys passed by. Ratty smiled at them and twisted her long hair between her fingers. Rapacity winked at her.
-2
THE FIRST FEW days, Ratty tasked Sebastian with cleaning the house from top to bottom. He felt the whole process pointless, as his mother kept it clean with military precision, and certainly did a better job than he. Surely he was uncleaning the house, but it was better than being slapped again. The chores mounted day by day over the weeks, and a visit to the baker’s mill by the river for a selection of sweet pastries was soon added. The small walk gave him some breathing space, with the process of going somewhere helping to clear his head.
Sebastian took the long way home via the school. Its empty windows looked dark and abandoned in the rough wooden frames. He was beginning to miss it. It had always given him a chance to catch up on sleep. The key was still hidden under the rock. He toyed with going in and hiding away from the passing world. The wind picked up and rustled the bag of pastries reminding him of his errand. He sighed and continued his way home along the dirt path. The leaves tumbled along the arching tunnel of eucalyptuses. He kicked a stone, seeing how long he could tap it along the left rut without losing it. He rounded a corner and spotted two figures meeting in the center of the deserted lane, each standing in separate ruts. One man dressed in a Drizabone riding coat, wearing an Akubra, and a woman clutching a large hat to her head in the strengthening wind. It looked like Aunt Ratty.
Sebastian didn’t recognize the man from this distance, and was unable to clearly hear what they were discussing, so he crept off the track and deeper into the trees to move closer. Their hands met and the woman placed something in her purse. Their conversation filtered through the branches. The woman’s voice cut through the air and he was easily able to identify her face under the wide brim. It was his aunt. The man stood with his back to him, his hands on his hips.
“All I’m telling you is that if you send through the information, you’ll be looked after,” the man said. The sides of his coat fluttered in the wind.
“The ‘looking after’ had better be of the highest quality. I’m a lady of exquisite taste.”
The man laughed. It wasn’t pleasant. “You keep an eye out, and say if anything changes.”
“Into what?”
“Hope he doesn’t. That’s all. Just keep that disc close. You’ll know. Then you let me
know, and the world shall blossom into a delectable garden of delights for you and your exquisite taste.”
A fallen branch cracked under Sebastian’s foot. They stopped talking and glanced toward him. He retreated back behind the large trunks. The man continued talking.
“You sure she’s been taken to Toowoomba and not the other one?”
“That’s where the drunkard said.”
“Seems odd. Nothing but brothels and gambling houses out that joyous way.” The man fidgeted nervously. “We’d better split. We shall meet as equal heirs upon flowing rivers of silver.”
“Dollars will see me right,” Aunt Ratty replied. “When they paying?”
And with that, the man left. Aunt Ratty slowly trailed after him back toward the house. Sebastian stepped out onto the track staring at the ground. The mention of Toowoomba concerned him. He sat and thought about the conversation. A bunch of half-sentences had given him plenty to worry about. Maybe she was referring to Rapacity. He was the kind of guy who could turn into something nasty. In the end, thinking about it wasn’t going to solve anything, so he trekked back to the house.
As he entered the kitchen, Ratty spun, her face full of rage. She slammed her hands onto the table.
“You took your sweet time. Those pastries ain’t better be stale.”
“I saw you on the school track. Who were you talking to? It looked like Prevaricator Oakley.”
She raised her finger at him. “Don’t you go spying on me. It is none of your business who I choses to speak with. Get on with your chores.”
“Chores! I do nothing but—” A slap rang across his face.
“You wait to see what real chores are about. You’ll be wanting you’d never been born.”
The fury in him rose. He went to complain, but another vicious slap drove him back into the corner of the room. Blood flowed out of the corner of his mouth.
“You got no respect, no manners—” slap “—that cow of a woman was probably pretending to be sick—” slap “—just to get away from your despicable bones.” Another slap sliced across his burning cheek.
And he felt something inside change. A connection. A fusion. Light flashed across his vision and pain lanced through his head. He fell to his knees with his hands clenched in pain in front of him. His body burned so fiercely it felt like he was catching alight. She snatched a poker and swung it down.
Ratty let out a sudden gasp, and the poker clanged against the floorboards. She stood, stunned momentarily, before managing to rally her anger. “You stupid child. Look what you gone and done.”
Sebastian’s life became routine over the next week, as Ratty cracked down on him, usually from across the room, her hatred became visceral. He rose early, trekked to the markets to collect the freshest food, prepared breakfast for Ratty, and served her in bed. Instructions came thick and fast, starting with cleaning the house as she showered and prepared for the day. He ran endless errands for her, collecting shiny trinkets and luxuries, as she sat around nibbling on various sweet delicacies.
She refused to drink the rain tank water and instructed Sebastian to collect clean, fresh water from the spring. She told him to get two buckets in case they had visitors; running out of water would be the height of rudeness. And so Sebastian struggled home each day with the heavy load in the sweltering heat and humidity. By nightfall, his limbs ached and his hands were blistered and raw from the work.
Ratty would kick the buckets over at the end of the night, ensuring the need for a new supply when the sun rose. And he would need a final clean of the house before bed. Every night he scrubbed the floors, but the strange black burn marks from where he knelt cowering from Ratty’s attack would not budge. He had thrown away the poker that had bent without ever touching him.
As the weeks unwound, he was given a new destination to add to his morning rounds—the distiller. Sebastian returned home each day with an ever-increasing number of cider bottles clinking in the baskets. And always, he was paying out money. It flowed through his fingers like water.
Rapacity started to turn up through the week and would stay late into the night. The adults’ conversation would increase in volume as the evening wore on, laughing uproariously often accompanied by the clinking of the cider bottles. Sebastian would never hear the front door close.
Each day, Aunt Ratty lay on her chaise by the back door with the grand view over the fields, wearing an endless supply of dresses. She had bought many new clothes, as her old ones had grown too tight. She blamed Sebastian for washing them poorly. Her daily excitement came from watching the farmers toil, their rugged and tanned bodies glistening in the sun. She cooled herself with one of Sebastian’s mother’s fans, as he packed away food he had collected from the markets into the cool room below the house.
“Child.” Her voice was distracted and distant. “I wish to see Rapacity. Fetch him.”
He turned to face her. “How should I know where he is?”
Before she could control herself, she planted another ringing slap across his face. “Don’t you go answering me back, insolent child. Do what I instruct.”
Sebastian sprinted out with tears of fury running down his face. He ran to the Oakley’s neglected farm and banged on the door.
John opened it and leaned lazily against the doorjamb.
“Where’s your fathead brother?” Sebastian spat.
“Maybe I dunno,” John replied. He smirked at Sebastian’s discomfort.
“I don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want me to be here, so tell me.”
John wandered out onto the veranda and gazed toward the horizon. “It’s a big place out there. And he’s a man of the world.”
“Shut up and tell me where he is.”
“No.”
Sebastian had had enough. His blood was boiling. He was exhausted from the continual menial tasks. He hadn’t seen anyone he liked even vaguely for months. His life was being dominated by these greedy, lazy rednecks, and he’d had enough. He saw red, clenched his fists, and charged at John. They both collapsed onto the dust, with Sebastian pounding on John’s chest.
“Tell me where he is,” he screamed, as he landed blow after blow on the bigger boy’s body.
“All right, get off me.” John pushed Sebastian off, picked himself up, and dusted off his clothes. “In the name of Joshua Richards and all things holy, he went to the lake. He bought a new boat with your money.” He pushed Sebastian, who stumbled and fell over. “Now get off our property.”
Sebastian jumped up and hovered around the veranda before turning and running up toward the main track.
“Next time I won’t be so easy on you,” John shouted after him.
Sebastian followed along the path out to the west of Talinga toward Lake Woleebee, kicking the occasional rock out of frustration. He longed desperately for his mother, but it had been months, and the doctor had not returned. Surely, the doctor was taking care of her in the hospital. If she were dead, wouldn’t the man have returned by now? He took some hope from the old saying: “No news is good news.”
Fresh cart tracks veered off the path to a distant clump of trees. The lake was still fifteen minutes away. He followed the tracks into the low valley, where he stopped and listened. Voices.
Sure enough, one was Rapacity, and the other was a young girl he vaguely remembered from school, a few years older than him. She had disappeared for six months, only to reappear as quickly and mysteriously as she had left. Caroline. He recalled that some of the meaner boys called her different names, ones he didn’t understand, in unpleasant tones.
“Yeah, let’s see how many times we can jump on it before it breaks,” Sebastian heard Rapacity say.
“Ain’t that a waste?” Caroline replied.
“Nah, not my money,” Rapacity said. “Anyway, from what I can work out, she’s nearly spent the family money. She has to sell the house soon, then abandon the stupid boy to go back to her own village. I’ve been working a little scheme so you and me get some of
the cash. Then we can go join Prevaricator out west. We can get our own place. He’s got something going on which is getting big wins.”
“You naughty boy,” Caroline purred. “Stealing from an old lady and cavorting with known criminals.”
The talking stopped. Sebastian ran. He didn’t care where he was heading. It sounded like he wasn’t going to have a home soon enough, so it didn’t matter. Sebastian ran until his lungs hurt and he collapsed face-first onto the ground in a valley. He rolled over and looked up at the wide-open blue sky, waiting until his breathing calmed.
A faint buzzing rung out nearby. He turned his head to see what insect was planning to kill him. A lizard stared forlornly at him from inside a dusty old bottle. It was one of the tricks the boys did to occupy their bored, evil minds. They would pull the lizard’s legs back then squeeze it into the bottle. The lizard would be stuck inside until it died. Sometimes the boys would take the lizard-in-a-bottle home and watch it perish. Sometimes they simply threw it deep into the desert.
He teased the lizard out of the bottle until he could grab its head and slide it all the way out. The lizard bit him on the finger and scuttled away. The buzzing persisted.
He stood and followed the sound over the hill and discovered Lake Woleebee on the other side. And lying on the edge of the water was a body, dressed in strange black armor. He’d never seen anything like it. Each part of the body was covered with a sculptured piece made up of large tiles that gleamed in the sun. A white edge ran around each tile. A helmet covered all but the face, which was an absolute white with a slightly leathery texture.
Sebastian broke a branch off a tree and prodded the body. It didn’t move. He moved closer to inspect it. It looked completely dead. It lay facing the sky, its eyes open. As Sebastian reached out to close them, he felt a pain stab into his head.