‘What do you want me to do with these?’ she asked.
‘Keep them safe. Keep them in a box.’
And that’s just what she did.
Probably still there.
I stay at Mary’s, sleeping in Anne’s old room. Never saw inside it when she was here; now I don’t really care to. But you’ve got to put your head down somewhere, and Mary’s gentle. We’ve hardly had a cross word since I been here. I even help in her shop. Not much. Sweeping out the front, only till I’m sore. Slowly finding strength.
Certain comes to visit some days. We talk a little, Grainer’s working out fine, or we just sit. Don’t have much talk in me.
Train’s lingered several times and when it does I hold my breath, waiting for the sword to fall. But then it leaves again, tracking west or east. And I breathe. Masters came to speak to Certain, but they never came to me. And so I’m held, not moving forwards, not moving back. I was a Day Boy once, now I don’t know what I am. And I dream of Dain every night. He stands there above my bed, just watching, never saying a thing. He’s waiting to see what I do. I’m waiting too. Maybe I’ll die waiting.
One night there is a scratching at the window, the sound that I had thought forgotten but never was, never could be.
‘I do not seek entrance. You shall come to me.’
I pull myself from the bed. Try to hide my hesitation, but there’s no hiding from the likes of them.
‘Hurry, boy! Did you think that there would be no consequence to what you had done? Through the dark I have come, through the secret ways.’
I open the window, I’ve no choice. A darkness fills the window. Two bright lights shining in its heart, offering no true illumination. I shake and I shudder, the fits start their rising in me. And the darkness moves, reaches out, touches my face with old dry fingers. The fit falls from me like dust.
‘You’ve reason to fear, for I am nothing but fear. But I’ve not come to kill you.’
I know there’s worse things than death, and that being left behind might be one of them.
‘Why you here then?’ I squeak.
The dark shape laughs, the bright lights wink out. ‘We used to call it cutting to the chase, boy. Dain honed you to an edge, didn’t he? He was always the maker of weapons. The bombs and furies that are thoughts given free range. And that is why he was cast out. We worried that he might make that which would effect our destruction. That was his vanity: that was his true work and it put the fear into us. And perhaps we were right.’
I lower my gaze, but he can see my surprise, I hear it in his chuckle.
‘Oh, we are not perfect. There in the dark, we sometimes forget that. There where nothing changes, where the oldest men squabble and mark out ageless grievances, over and over. You have reminded us a little. Now, I did not come to eat you. I came to warn you. More will be coming, a new five to replace the old. Not today, not for a while yet, but they are being made ready. What you choose to do with such knowledge is up to you.’
There is a great rustling of wings, a susurration as Dain might put it, and the Dark is gone, replaced by the lesser dark.
‘What choice do I have,’ I shout into the dark.
It says nothing back.
Mary comes knocking on my door. ‘You all right in there?’
‘Just a dream,’ I say. Hell, it could have been a dream.
I can hear her hovering there, just outside my door, uncertain to the comforting of boys.
‘Just a dream,’ I say again. And the floorboards creak her passage away.
I’ve always loved Midfield, but me and it have changed. We don’t fit anymore.
Rob the auditor finds me on that field where Dougie and I once fought, looking north to the next ridge along. He and Sarah. Riding in from the south. Maybe they’ve been here a day or so, though I doubt it. Both are stained with the passage of the Sun. Rob drops from his horse, neat as a pin. Sarah doesn’t get down. Just looks at me, hand curved above her brow to keep out the Sun.
I don’t say anything for a while. Get back to considering the limits of my world.
‘Land falls away beyond that ridge,’ Rob says. ‘Flat as far as the eye can follow, nothing but grass and rotten stumps of trees. East of here there’s forests. What do you think of that? More than you’d have ever seen along the train line.’
‘Didn’t expect to see you here,’ I say.
‘Didn’t expect to come back so soon. But you go where you’re called, even if that means some backtracking.’ He runs a thumb over the tattoo of the Sun on his wrist, spits a spit all speculative. ‘Heard you were out of a job.’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
He grins. ‘Maybe.’ He settles down on his haunches like a tired old man. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he says. ‘There’s miles plenty enough ahead in these bones, unless the world thinks otherwise. Mark, I don’t dither. I don’t hesitate, and I’m rare to give second chances. You want what I’m offerin’, then I want a yes.’
‘After what I done? All those dead…’
‘I know what you done, boy. Some lives possess a trajectory. They’re a gunshot, aimed at birth. You’ve been heading towards us since you first bawled at your ma’s breast. Ain’t gonna kill you. There’s been enough of that, besides it weren’t your feud. These Masters fight. They grow sere as old thorns on their battles, and it’ll be the death of them. There’ll be new Masters soon, and do you think they’ll be easy on the one that did for their brothers? You’re a reminder—the tenuous way of things—and their kind don’t like that. Stay here? You will shrink and be broken.’
This town’s not got much to offer me now. But it’s given me more than hurt, and I’m not so dumb I can’t be grateful. But he’s right: already I feel the town different, feel it putting its pressure into me. The air’s quickening out there, and growing stale here.
Might be time to be moving on. Sometimes leaving isn’t running.
‘Wasn’t your fault. Situation like that, you fight or you run. Most times you die. But here we are. No one’ll blame you, not one of us anyway. Only thing that’ll kill you now is anger. Anger will bend you in ways that they won’t accept. Stay angry and it’ll be your death for sure.’
‘I’ve had enough of anger in me,’ I say, and I mean it. And I feel better for the words. The moment they pass my mouth. ‘I’m done with anger.’
Rob shakes my hand. ‘You’re a surprising quantity, my boy.’
‘He’ll fit right in,’ Sarah says, and I turn, and look up at her. She winks at me.
Rob smiles, a little softness to all the severity of his face. ‘You ain’t done growing yet, not by a long way. This horse ain’t going to be an easy ride, but you’re coming along.’
‘Do I get to say goodbye?’
‘Life’s one big goodbye,’ Rob says. ‘An unutterable farewell.’
‘Bloody poets,’ I hear Sarah mumble. Rob gives her a hard look and she laughs. I don’t.
Rob sighs and looks at me again. ‘From what I’ve heard, you got no one to say goodbye to.’
‘A day’s all I need,’ I say.
Rob laughs this time. ‘A day, all that you can do in a day. A day’s forever for you and no time at all.’
‘I’ll follow you, if you let me do this,’ I say.
Rob nods, and he’s grinning. ‘Some steel in you, then, boy. I can shape steel.’
He considers. ‘We’ve work in the town next to this. Don’t want you walking those paths alone. Like I said, you backtrack if you need to, and I’ll do that for you. Two days, we’ll be back. I hear you’re staying at Mary’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll come for you the morning of the second day. You better be waiting.’
‘You’ve my word,’ I say.
Which is how I join with those who, in a proper sort of world, I shouldn’t. First step to becoming something fearful.
CHAPTER 48
I SAY MY goodbyes. I visit the graveyard where the boys are buried, because that is proper. There’s no hard feelings that I can feel. We’d have all done the same. But it’s awful quiet.
I lay a handful of red flowers on poor Grove’s tomb. Always thought he’d be the one to do that for me. The world looked kinder on him, right up until the end. I breathe in that silence surrounded by my boys, and I feel the grief of what I’ve done. But it is done. They’re dead, and I’m not. I could have run, but they would have caught me. My life was forfeit.
I’ll be thinking on this forever. But now, when it’s raw, all I can do is stand amongst those fresh-dug graves and whisper their names. I’ll take them with me, those names. Till someone whispers mine and I’m down in the earth with them.
Certain’s waiting for me at the farm. Grainer too, the heat’s kept them inside. And I think about that, how I’ll be all in it, out in the places where there is no inside to hide from the summer, or the winter, and the howling storms.
Certain goes to the cellar for cider.
‘When you heading out?’ Grainer says, looking down at his hands (a good sight harder than they were, those palms, thickened and cracked by serious work). I don’t ask how he knows I’m leaving. Everything’s a surprise with Grainer, so nothing is.
‘Tomorrow, maybe the next day.’
Even here, amongst friends, it never does to be too specific.
Grainer nods.
We look out across the dusty yard. Petri’s curled up at my feet. She lets me rub between her ears, her tail thumpa thumpa thumping.
I squint up at Grainer. ‘You look after the old man.’
‘I will,’ he says.
‘I might be back,’ I say. ‘I might check up on you.’
Grainer shakes his head. ‘You won’t be back. Someone else will: and I’ll be here to greet him.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say.
Then Certain’s there with the cider and we sit, and drink, and complain about the damn heat.
Mary knows as well, and I wonder if I’ve written my intentions on my face. Never thought I was so obvious. We cook dinner together and eat in silence. Mary looks at me, from behind her plate, and her knife and her fork. Chewing polite, and slow. And it could almost be any other night since she took me in. But it isn’t.
‘You find Anne, you say hello,’ she says. ‘If the trail takes you that way. And I guess it will eventually.’
I take a few more bites, and swallow. ‘How did you know?’
‘Rob visited me. We were good friends once, and he asked if it were right to take you.’ Her lips thin, and then she smiles, and there’s warmth in it. ‘He asked me. Like you’re mine.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said it was your choice, that you’re near enough a man.’
I look at her, and take another mouthful. When I swallow it, I nod. ‘I don’t think I’ll get to the city any time soon.’
‘You’ll get there eventually, and when you do, you say hello to my Anne, and tell her that I miss her.’
I finish my meal; pack what little I have.
And then to bed and a sleep unexpected and deep. Me and the night turn oblivious for a while.
There’s a knock on the door before that last dawn, barely a soft touch, a whisper of a knock, but I’m already awake. Sleeping light is not a habit I’ve broken. I pick up my bag. Mary’s not up, don’t want to wake her, it’s better if I don’t, and I ease my way to the door and open it.
Rob nods. I leave the house for the fading dark. Birds are already singing.
‘Good man,’ he says.
The roads are long, but I’ll follow them. Thom and Anne are out there in the belly of the City in the Shadow of the Mountain. I’ve buried Grove, and Dain is gone. This town is a shadow to me. Nothing more than echoes.
My Day Boys carved a G into my arm, they marked me as a ghost, and there was truth in that; I’ve made ghosts of them all. I’m not a ghost myself. I am disembodied. Untethered. But there’s life in me yet, and hope.
Dain and this town made me what I am, taught me what I need to know, but now I have to make my own mark in the world. Now, for better and for worse, the lessons ahead are my own. I might not have chosen to be a Day Boy, but I choose this.
Sarah smiles at me, and it’s as warm a smile as I’ve seen these last months. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and I hear no hesitation in my voice.
Rob leads me to a horse. Grey coat, big eyes: they regard me with soft interest. ‘This is Kala. She’s a sensible beast.’
I pat her broad back, and yes, she’s steady. Start to put my foot in a stirrup, and Rob settles a stilling hand on my shoulder. ‘We ain’t riding today, boy. We’re walking. By day’s end you and Kala will be best friends.’
He shows me how to strap up my stuff. And then it’s time to go. Before the Sun rises and the land grows too hot beneath its hard thumb.
Every story should end with another step, and another leading out past the words.
You get to know somewhere by walking it. Feet know it first and once they do, the place opens like a flower. Its smells, its shapes, its shadows. I’ve walked this town all my life, from that first walk, hand held by my Master. Can’t believe that it ever felt so huge.
It isn’t: towns have edges. They cut against the world, and the world is big, and the world likes to remind you. Sends its storms and its tumults.
Home’s simply that: a brief respite. Home’s the sense of safety, but only the sense of it. Can’t dig deep enough to be safe, and if you could you might as well stop breathing.
We lead our horses to the edge of town, and that nub of road that goes nowhere.
And we keep walking.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Well, this book is yours now, lovely readers.
This book, like all books, is born of quiet and chatter, solitude and friendship, generosity and jealousy, and all the grand and silly dichotomies that make up books and people.
Thanks again to Sophie Hamley, who quietly and persistently insisted that I finish it in a very troubled time. Thanks to Diana, who read it when it wasn’t quite what it is now, and told me true what she thought, and who loves me desp
ite my prickles and vacancies, and who I love not nearly as well as she deserves, but a fella can keep trying.
Thanks to Text, and Mandy Brett in particular, for taking a chance on the weirdness, and driving me to some sort of logic, and for editing the book with sensitivity, poetry and patience.
Thanks to my family, none of whom are monsters.
Thanks to my friends, who have waited patiently for this book, through all the years (and years) of me talking about it—and refusing to let anyone read it. To Danni, Jodi, Veronica, Jaqui, Alex and Paul here’s the thing to read at last—hope you like it (keep it quiet if you don’t).
Thanks to my work family at The Avid Reader. Particularly to Helen Bernhagen, who has worked with me for nearly five years’ worth of Sundays, and to my boss Fiona Stager, who makes the place a refuge and a grand redoubt of stories and storytellers, who inspires us all, and provides a steady decent wage—nothing more important to a writer. And to Krissy Kneen, who is always an inspiration.
I wrote a fair chunk of this while half my face was paralysed, so thanks to the Bell’s palsy as well.
And thanks to Terry Martin, who originally published a very different short story called ‘Day Boy’ in Murky Depths 4 all those years ago. It still sits as the heart of the book.
Finally, thanks to the town of Gunnedah, where I spent my boyhood, which is both Midfield and not at all, as all fictional places are one thing and another: back to dichotomies.
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