No Man's Land

by A. J. Fitzwater

  She poked at the idea of the rocks like a wound …

  … then rocked back in her saddle as though she’d fallen face first into the ocean.

  The idea of water flooded in, a jubilant sibilance. Streams everywhere. Along the sky, along the skin, along the ground, under the ground. Winding, pushing like blood in the veins, stretching out beyond her sight, reaching towards the ocean, then beyond … beyond all that …

  Tea came to herself scrabbling in the bottom of a cut, pushing aside rocks she couldn’t have moved six months ago. Water pushed hard against stone beneath her hands, wanting out, wanting to be useful, wanting her praise. Wanting to take her to that beyond, where Robbie might be.

  The water hesitated, afraid of the hot air turning it to nothing useful. Tea clenched her fists, then released them with a long outflow of breath. She pulled on the water like she had when she’d reached out to the eels, reeling in a rope made of silk, gentle, but firm enough to show love.

  Izzy’s triumphant whoop caused Tea to step back in time. The little stream flared out, searching for a way to join the river, greet Shag Point, caress the South Pacific, touch the Southern Ocean.

  Around and around, all water is one.

  “Look at what you did!” Izzy cheered, dancing on the spot as she held both Morgan’s and Carmine’s reins. Unimpressed, Morgan let go a stream of pee.

  Tea shrugged her aching shoulders. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? You pulled water out of the ground like Jesus!”

  “Izzy! Don’t be blasphemous!” Tea couldn’t help but glance around the empty valley. “How can this be a gift from God if there are only three of us that have it?”

  “Four,” Izzy reminded her, handing over reins and swinging back into the saddle. It took Tea three tries before she could make it up. “So, we don’t know exactly where this comes from, but I do know it’s something we need to make good use of.”

  That word again: useful. Bringing her back down to the ground again. She heard it in her mother’s voice. What had she wanted, expected, from this? She hadn’t thought much beyond the first panic coursing through her veins.

  Wasn’t this why she’d joined the land girls? To do something bigger while waiting and waiting and waiting for her brother to come home safe?

  *

  Panic rose in Izzy’s chest like a full moon. She reached out to the mustering dogs as she tried to reach out to Tea with her words; the dogs had control, her tongue did not. The more she spoke, the further Tea retreated into her water-carved cave, but she couldn’t stop.

  “Imagine being able to find water even during the height of summer! We’d have the jump on the other farms. And you’d be able to touch the blood of lost animals. Less loss adjustment! And keeping the animals hydrated and the exact balance and time. Exact dipping and fertilisation, meaning less waste. Gosh, Tea. Your abilities are a gold mine for the farm!”

  Maybe it was the wide-open space, being able to talk freely without the men looking down on her. Keeping herself to herself was so hard, even with Grant’s quiet understanding.

  Hours passed with Izzy’s chatter falling like pebbles while Tea’s face became stonier. Izzy poked around the edges of Tea’s whaiwhaiā, but she didn’t have the range the other girl did. She could get nothing off her. What had she said that made her lock up so tight?

  The hills provided a welcome coolness as the sun crept lower and the mustering hut beckoned respite. Even dismounting, setting up the campfire, and restocking the little tin hut, Izzy couldn’t stop her mouth running wild.

  “I’m doing this for Robbie.”

  The dam burst, and words fell out of Tea like rushing water. “I’m doing this for Robbie. All the boys can go off to war, but we can’t!”

  Suddenly fumbling for words, Izzy stripped a saddle bag off Carmine with fumbling fingers. She’d never seen Tea this stormy. It didn’t feel right at all. “It’s not what women are supposed to do.”

  “Forget supposed to,” Tea enunciated slowly as she curried Morgan down. “What about fair? Shouldn’t the world be fighting with every tool at its disposal? Aren’t women useful beyond looking after the land and the kitchen?”

  Izzy sighed and leaned her forehead against Carmine’s sweaty flank. Fighting. Anger. Fists. She wasn’t allowed to show them. Her tongue like a knife, maybe, when the moment was right. But she couldn’t betray herself, her blood, like that. And neither should Tea.

  “I know it’s not ladylike.” Tea’s voice swelled with waves of emotion. Her anger was a flood. “But I can’t be part of this war and be expected to keep smiling all the time!”

  “You’re going too fast, Tea. I know it’s not fair. It’s horrible, and I want to make it better for you, for all of us girls left behind. But you need to learn how to use your whaiwhaiā, and how to temper it.” Izzy couldn’t bring herself to look Tea in the eye. “You can’t go full tit, or you’ll burn out. It will hurt you.” She started to say more, but she bit it back.

  “What do you mean? How could something so special hurt me? This isn’t a cold or a cut. It’s not an illness that would … would kill …” She trailed off for a moment, hand clenched in Morgan’s mane. “I have to do something.”

  The fight, the stone, in Tea’s voice made Izzy flinch. “I’ve never heard you speak like that. That you wanted to fight.”

  “It’s not a very ladylike thing to mention.”

  “Bugger ladylike! We’re up to our elbows in sheep shit daily.”

  “Izzy!”

  Long shadows from the hills touched their feet. Yes, this was what she was good at. Izzy reached into the shadow, twisted it to her means. There. Anger taste. Whaiwhaiā burning too bright, too hard, too loud.

  “Tea, show me your hands.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Take your gloves off.” Izzy had to take a deep breath. The shadow was squeezing her chest. “Please.”

  Tea stripped off her leather riding gloves. “See. Dirty, from being up to our elbows—”

  Izzy dropped the handful of grass she was using to brush Carmine and grabbed Tea’s hands. Tea flinched at the sudden touch.

  “This is what I’m talking about.” Izzy squeezed Tea’s hands too hard, making knuckle grate painfully against knuckle.

  The skin on Tea’s hands up to the tan line was darker than the rest of her. Not quite the oily taniwha skin of that incredible, terrible first night of discovery, but the scale ridges were showing.

  Izzy continued. “If you’re not practised, if you’re not careful, things will start to show. Then you’ll really be in trouble. If you want to fight, you have to survive first. Do you know what they do to people like us? They call us mad. Lock us away in asylums. Put us in prison. And they don’t do it to protect us. They do it to protect themselves. They just don’t know from what.”

  Tea stared at her hands, and the hands holding her. The war, inside and out, battled across her face.

  “Concentrate,” Izzy said, weariness weighting her grip. “You have to learn to concentrate. Carry on. Chin up. Pay attention. All those things we hate to hear.”

  Tea pulled away, rougher than she should have, her ragged nails scratching Izzy’s flesh lightly. In the moment it took her to turn back to attending Morgan, her features moved like heat against the hills. Her skin rougher, a shimmer of oily colour. Hair like tendrils. Her desires a halo. Then she was Tea again, rounded cheeks, pert, tired.

  Izzy couldn’t bear the taut silence in which they set the fire, billy, and stew pot. Muttering something about checking the sheep, she drew space around her and paced the long line of the flock. Twilight and exuberant dogs danced around her as she tried to sort through the detritus of her thoughts. Had she pushed her friend too far?

  Friend. She was thinking of Tea as a friend. But it was more, much more than that. Something people called unnatural. Something she had
been far more afraid of than her canine flesh. Being a dog was easy. Being human, her type of human, was almost impossible.

  She had to be careful there, too.

  The day’s wariness and weariness settled into her bones and muscles. The fire was so inviting, but she didn’t want to encroach on Tea’s space and thoughts. Stars prickled overhead, the celestial shapes of her ancestors. Did Robbie look upon these same stars, too, and think of home?

  Robbie. Was he holding a gun, driving a tank, building a bridge? What did a sapper do, anyway? She found it easier to imagine him building something rather than destroying, bringing death.

  *

  Tea massaged her right hand. How could she have been so careless, not even realising her eelskin was growing on her under her gloves? Another thing she had to learn now she was on her own. Robbie had always been the last one to see her leave the house, or she’d look in a mirror. She’d hated and loved her brother’s fussing, thought herself vain.

  Released from saddle stance, the pain in her right arm grew, little spasms shivering her bicep, her elbow stabbing like it was full of hot glass. She clenched and opened her right hand, stretching her fingers wide, but nothing made the pain dissipate. It was like the creek hadn’t let her go, like it had wrapped its eel tails around her hand and was pulling, pulling …

  “You alright there?” Izzy’s voice, out of the nearby dark.

  “Uh. Don’t creep up like that. You scared me.” Tea hugged her upper arms, where goosebumps had replaced the almost-scales on her skin.

  “Sorry. I thought you heard me.” Izzy’s face resolved into angles underlit by the fire.

  “Mmm, no. Too lost in my thoughts again. Not being careful enough.”

  “Tea, I need to apologise. I was too harsh—”

  “No, you’re right. Maybe it was … instinct.”

  “Preservation.”

  “Yes.” Tea clenched her hand again, the hot stabs unrelenting. She tried to put a wan smile on her face. She hated Izzy being mad at her.

  “Thattagirl. Hey, what’s up with your arm?”

  “I don’t know. Saddle cramp, probably.”

  “Let me look.”

  The scent of Izzy’s skin being slightly wrong made Tea flinch back. “No! You’ve still got fur on you. And you changed when you told me not to!”

  “So? No-one out here but us. And I don’t bite. Well, not hard.”

  “But we were just talking about …”

  “Yeah. I know. Sorry about that, mate. Maybe you should let your skin go, for a bit. Sometimes it’s nice to relax.”

  Tea still didn’t give her hand over to Izzy’s investigations. “Are we mates?”

  “Of course.” Izzy bit her lip, her eyes slipping away for a moment. “Look, I’m sorry for being so harsh. Really. That’s my preservation instinct. Things are … harder for us.” Izzy patted a dog that nuzzled her as if in agreement.

  The heat now reached Tea’s eyes, and she knuckled away the dampness it created there. “Why is this happening to me?”

  “What, the whaiwhaiā? It’s not happening to you, it’s your power. It’s what you do with it.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a gift or I’ll … ow!” A quake of resistance travelled up and down Tea’s arm.

  “What did I say before? You’re trying too hard.”

  “No. That wasn’t me. It’s like someone punched me in the arm.”

  “Hmm. Like that time at the dinner table.”

  “That was a wasp … oh, bother it. I know it wasn’t. Yes, like that, but it’s becoming more intense.”

  Tea screwed up her face, trying to remember all the sensations of that first night. In the light of discovering Grant and Izzy’s whaiwhaiā, she’d considered and dismissed it as one of them giving her a metaphorical ‘kick’, but they didn’t have the connection to water like she did. “It comes and goes. I just … know it’s not connected to the eels or my skin. It’s something different again.”

  “This has happened before?” Izzy wriggled her fingers in a gimme gesture, and Tea finally relented. Somehow Izzy’s hands were hard and soft at the same time. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I thought it was just me getting used to the heavy workload.”

  Izzy massaged Tea’s knuckles, rubbing her hands between her palms like rubbing a dowel to start a fire, except the effect was cool relief trickling along her nerves. “There. That’s better. Hey look, your eelskin is coming in, nice and smooth. Well done.”

  “Ow!” Tea pulled her hands out of Izzy’s grasp, strange relief clashing with the throbbing pain. “You said it would stop if I turned a little.”

  “I said it would help you relax. Here. Let me put a cold rag on it.” Izzy squeezed out a rag in the bucket of water they’d collected for cleaning. “There. That better?”

  “Not really, but thank you.” Tea hoped Izzy couldn’t see her blush in the low light.

  “Has this strange pain happened before you came to the farm?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know.” A memory intruded, dribbling heat back into the well created by the coolness. Tea caught her breath, her chest tight. “Well … no. That’s silly. I’m making it up.”

  “No. Go on. Tell me. Nothing you tell me can be stranger than what we already are.”

  “Well. Oh gosh. Robbie used to get into fights when he was out at dances. I somehow … knew before he got home. To be ready to clean him up. Like I felt the blows, too.” She bit her lip, tears threatening to embarrass her again. “If it was bad then, when he was close by, what is happening to him that I can feel it a world away?”

  Izzy’s expression twisted into something Tea had never seen on her mother: a sharing of pain, a creating of space to let her feelings for Robbie sit and be nourished. She loved her twin more than she’d ever been allowed to admit, and now this. She’d pushed it away too long. They were connected by more than just familial ties.

  The weight of Izzy’s gaze became too great, and Tea looked away. “Pass the tea, please.”

  “Tea. Look at me,” Izzy pleaded. “You have to know what’s going on.”

  “I do. I can’t …”

  “I know Robbie. We’ve worked together. We’re friends.”

  How can women and men be friends like that? Madness from the pain clashing and chewing on Tea’s thoughts. They’re supposed to get married if they like each other …

  Izzy continued, “There’s this thing. When we’re in our animal skin. We can … reach out to each other. And it makes sense you’d feel Robbie much stronger because you’re linked by blood.”

  “By water. That storm Grant talked about.” Lightning struck along Tea’s veins. “OW! Oh, bother it. That one really stings.”

  “Tea, he’s at war—”

  The tears were running freely down Tea’s cheeks now, the pain fluid, running all over her like the flow of the river. “I know,” came out as a strangled whisper. “He’s in battle. That’s what I can feel, isn’t it? I don’t know what to do. He’s all the way over there. I’m here.”

  “You’re doing the best you can, fighting the good fight on the home front.”

  “Don’t give me that propaganda!” Tea twisted her hands together like she wanted to break the bones to make the pain empty out of them. “I bet girls could fight and still be ladies, given half the chance.”

  The dark hand of pain had worked around her neck and up her skull.

  “Oh Tea. Here’s your, er, tea …”

  A small moan was the only thing that could escape Tea’s frozen face.

  “Tea? Tea! What’s going on? Tea! Oh, sh—”

  Sky, land, and the water in between all smashed together in a furious chaos full of shooting stars and darkness black and crumbling as coal. The grind of muscle against skin, flesh against bone, blood through veins, the pulse of her heart filling her m
ind until she thought that was all she ever could and would be. The pounding sped up, slowed down, then she almost strangled on the silence. Her heart tripped over and started again.

  Kick. Flesh in spasm. Knuckles cracking. Bones twisting back on themselves. Skin, like a thousand needles, shaping her to its will. A voice, but Tea couldn’t make out any words. It was deep and rough like a man’s, then higher and slower like a woman’s.

  Shouts, muffled and distant, as if hearing them through wind and rain. A rattle, pennies in a tin. Stars exploding in languid arcs, ice-burn fragments sizzling through her edges.

  She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t answer her call. She could only see staccato night.

  And the pain in her arm! Hot and cold and fierce and she wanted to tear it from her, grow another, grow a different her …

  Tea seeped back into herself, the light-dark chaos receding into a half-remembered nightmare. Her chest ached, as though her heart had almost succeeded at hammering its way out.

  “There you are.” Izzy’s voice, warm and gentle. “You were gone a long time.”

  Tea tried to speak, but only an eel-like hiss came out. She was lying down, her head on something soft and warm.

  Izzy’s lap.

  Izzy’s onyx eyes held her pinned down. Beautiful, so different to Grant’s guarded green gaze. Tea tried to pull away, but it only manifested as a frustrated twitch. No. Women don’t look at other women like that. It was wrong.

  Maybe Izzy was concerned. Yes, that’s it.

  “I’m fine.” Tea’s voice slurred like she’d had too much sherry after dinner.

  Izzy helped her sit up. A relief not to be held in that strange way, but Tea also felt the loss of her warmth. “No, you’re not. That was something altogether different from the incident down at the creek. Where did you go?”

  Tea tested out her arm. It held only a memory of pain now. “I think … I think I was in a battle.”

  “With who? Where?”

  “There was sand. And it was night. And the stars. No, they must have been bullets and shells. And the shouting. And the water there. Tastes so different. My arm hurt so much. But it doesn’t now. Oh, that all sounds a mess. I’m not making any sense at all.”