The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 (volume 1)

by Paul Haines

  Either way: the whites changed all that. They broke the delicate web of lore and law, cut the strands that bound up the living, Dreaming whole. The Anima were driven out, or forgotten, or lost. Not until the whites built their own complicated, interdependent society with their own rules and beliefs did they return.

  When they came back, they no longer identified with the animals, the plants, the features of the landscape. Those things weren’t important in the white world. Nobody believed passionately in those things, not in the same way they supported Holden over Ford at Bathurst, or swore that Sony made better televisions than JVC, or lived and breathed Apple phones and computers and gadgets. When the Anima found their way back from the dark side of the Dreaming, they came to things of the new, white world that carried the potential for their secret life.

  “Open the door,” I said, gesturing at the white-and-steel maw set into the wall. Julie Kincaid blinked at me, tears running down her face. I tried to soften my voice. “Your daughter is inside,” I told her. “Don’t ask how I know. Just understand that it is true. If you act quickly, perhaps we can save her without . . .” I stopped. There really wasn’t a way I could explain what would have to be done to save the girl if the Animus of the cool room had carried her to the dark side of the Dreaming. I could only hope that we were in time.

  Hesitantly, her gaze fixed on me, Julie backed along the kitchen counter, and fumbled blindly with the handle to the door of the cool room. She paused, secured a better grip. Her eyes widened, and she turned away from me. I saw the muscles tighten in her shoulders. “I can’t—it won’t open,” she said, and grabbed the emergency release, yanking with all the strength in her slight frame. “Oh my God! Grace! Gracie!”

  Julie plastered her body against the whiteness of the cool room, slamming it with the flat of her hand, screaming her daughter’s name. The sense of hatred from the thing changed subtly to a cruel and bitter satisfaction.

  Some of the Anima still resented the changes forced on them by the new world. And some of them had been inimical to humankind even in the long gone days of old. This creature, the Animus of the cool room: it had a new-fledged Walker in its grasp. There would be no easy solution here. Time to Walk.

  I put my hand on Julie’s shoulder, above the t-shirt, skin to skin. Before she could jump away, I reached through, inside, and grasped at the Julie-within. By an act of will, I closed my eyes and the world around me bent, twisted. Tore. A soundless wind raked claws over my skin. I clenched my teeth against an impossible cold, muscles spasming against the blast. And then, with a sense of a vast door closing somewhere behind, we were through, and beyond, in the dark side of the Dreaming.

  Cool, shadowed, fogged, like a dim, undeveloped photograph of the dayside, the dark side is part reflection, part blueprint, part reverse-image, part . . . indescribable. What senses we use to perceive it and interact with it, I do not know. Among ourselves, Walkers speak of sight, and sound and touch, even though there are none of these things. What other words are there? What other ways of knowing? This is the dark side of the Dreaming. Other laws hold sway.

  I steadied Julie, pushing calm and strength down the connection between us until I felt her draw away from me, pull herself upright. “Where—” She paused. “Oh my God. What have you done?”

  “This is the place your daughter has come,” I told her. In this place, Julie Kincaid appeared as a slender, pale, big-eyed creature, like a cartoon ghost, staring at me in fear. I knew what she saw: the sigils and tattoos etched onto my skin glowing with power, turning me into a sort of animated scrawl in the were-light. At my chest, Kan-yo coiled sinously, graceful and strong in her true home. I set her on the ground, and she slithered away, questing into the dark. “This is not the time for questions, Julie Kincaid. This is a dangerous place. It is not for human beings. This is the home of dreams, and the things that live in them. I can come here when I must, and I am tolerated because I am . . . useful. There are things here that will help me, if I ask. But there are others that will harm. Stay close to me, and do as I say, and we will return safely, with your daughter.”

  Reassurances. They seemed to help her, or perhaps it was the strength I had already loaned her. Either way, she drew herself up, and looked around. “Where is she?”

  I did not need to look. “There,” I said, pointing at the shape I could literally feel, cold and vicious in the shadows. A thing of living darkness, it coiled, moving slowly upon itself. Squatting like a toad, it was at once vast and powerful, yet compact and dynamic. “That is the Animus of your cool room. That is its true shape in this place. It has taken your daughter within itself. It is our task to bring her back.”

  Julie made as if to move towards the Animus, then stopped. “How? How do you know? I—I can’t see her. I don’t know what that thing is. I don’t know . . . all I’ve got is your word, and this place, this place . . .” She began to keen, a thin, wordless cry lost between fear and despair, and I lay my hand upon her, giving her of my strength again. A dangerous thing to do, yes, but I had no rightful claim on the daughter. I could come to the darkside, but once the girl had given herself into the Animus, the laws did not permit me to reclaim her. Even if I did overcome the Animus by strength and guile, my days as a Walker would be ended. A Walker who breaks the rules of the Dreaming is outcast, outlawed, rightfully to be harried and killed by the Anima in proper defense of their home. If there was any hope of recovering Grace Kincaid, it lay with her mother. I could not let her fail.

  The keening faded, and Julie Kincaid drew a ragged breath. I released my grip.

  Kan-yo whispered to me then. Killayli and Eve watched, she said. Down Times and Sunlight Wires prepared to enter the darkside at my need. Yet they could not come to my aid unless the Animus itself broke the accord. Until then, they could only observe, even if I failed. Even if it meant my death, and the death of Julie and Grace Kincaid. The laws of the Dreaming are uncompromising.

  Such it is to be a Walker.

  Bringing my power to my skin, I gripped the sigil on my left arm, pulled it free, and cast it on the ground where it burst into brilliant light. That sigil cost me many hours of meditation, preparation, and pain. In the dayside of the Dreaming, it would now be a whitely visible scar, puckered and shiny, until I could repeat the rituals, and restore its power. Sacrificing it bought just one advantage: as long as the light burned, the Animus could neither flee, nor change its shape. Now we could talk.

  “Creature,” I said. “I am Walker Clouds-In-Spring.” My voice fell flat, without echoes in the newly lit space. Shadows crawled beyond the limits of my vision. “I am he that broke the Bridge Danyana with his song. It was I who drove the Dweller from the Mount Gravatt telephone exchange, and harried him back into the uttermost dark. I am the one who flew alongside Yuwattan of the steel eagle, from daylight to dusk without pause. I know the words of Kul-buru. I know the dances of One White Noise. I bear the sign of Iron, the sign of Glass, the sign of Copper, and the sign that burns. I bring this woman under my protection. She is the mother of the child you have taken, and claims her by the oldest right. Give up the girl as the Law demands, and we will go in peace. Deny this claim at your peril.”

  The shape before us moved and coiled. A bitter chill touched my skin, and Julie Kincaid shivered. For an instant, I thought the creature might risk defiance, hoping to overwhelm me here in its home. Those who dwell within the Dreaming have much more latitude than those of us who Walk there under sufferance. Their place; their laws. If the creature could destroy me swiftly, take my power for its own and harm no other Animus, no-one would take it to task except perhaps another Walker, and there are few of us.

  Yet perhaps it had some suspicion of Sunlight Wires and Down Time, for the thing moved and coiled once more, and then it shifted, and somehow it opened. There, within the deeper darkness, lay three rounded, softly glowing shapes like the eggs of a titanic bird.

  My heart fell.

  “What does it mean?” said Julie. “Where is Gr
ace?”

  “Grace is there,” I said. “I came late. This is not the first time she has entered the darkness, through the Animus of your cool room. Twice before she has come, and willingly. Each of those,” I pointed, “Is she, after a manner of speaking. One is the she-of-now. The others are she-before.”

  “Which one?” She stared into the darkness, her thin, pallid hands clenching and unclenching nervously.

  “That’s for you to determine. I have no right or claim to Grace. Only you, her mother, can bring her forth.” I drew a deep breath, tasting old leaves and dry blood. “You have to choose.”

  “And . . . if I’m wrong?”

  “Then we leave.” I could not look at her. “And Grace does not. We will find her body cold, dead on the floor of the cool room. The rest of her will remain here.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  I put my hand on her once more. “It isn’t our world, Julie Kincaid. Grace came here of her own choice. You have a claim on her, by right, but if you can’t make good that claim, Grace’s choice stands.”

  Julie sobbed. “She’s only a little girl! It was so hot. She hates the heat. We were going to get air conditioning as soon as we could afford it, but she was so hot, and she got a rash on her neck, and she cried. I took her into the cool room and we scraped some snow off the freezer. I put it on her neck, and she shivered, and then she laughed, and I loved her so much. I only wanted her to be happy!”

  The bleak, vile satisfaction of the Animus rippled like rancid waves in a cesspit. I took Julie’s shoulders in my hands, and forced her to look at me. “It is my strength which holds us here, Julie. Only the light of my sigil holds the Animus. Time is against us. You must choose, and choose now.”

  She looked past me, into the dark. “I can’t choose. I can’t do it.”

  “Then Grace dies.”

  “Don’t say that!” Her voice rose to a shriek, and for a moment, her eyes flared with light. A little power of her own, then. Not enough, but perhaps a hint as to the strength of her daughter.

  “Choose,” I said. “Now.”

  She took a tentative step forward, then stopped, and looked back at me. “Aren’t you coming?”

  I shook my head. “Best I stay out here.” If I entered the Animus—if it closed itself about us, took us entirely within its power . . . Could Sunlight Wires and Down Time act quickly enough to save us if the creature chose to kill, in defiance of the Law?

  “Please,” she said, her voice a thin whisper, her ghost-eyes wide and hollow. She glanced back at the living darkness, and the precious eggs within, and leaned close to me. “I’m afraid of the dark,” she whispered in my ear.

  I looked to the shadows where Kan-yo lay hidden, where presumably Eve and Killayli watched alongside her. Then I nodded, and took Julie Kincaid’s hand in mine, and we stepped forward into the belly of the beast.

  At once, the Animus closed itself about us, engulfing us in a tangible blackness. I felt Julie trembling violently against me, and I turned her face towards the egg-shapes. “There,” I said. “Choose quickly. I will hold back the dark.” With my free hand, I loosed the sigil from about my throat, and cast it down. The light it gave was wan and cold in that dark, bleak place, but it seemed to give Julie strength. While I stood, braced against the living dark that beat upon me like a thunderstorm, she knelt, and placed her free hand on one of the glowing shapes.

  “Oh,” she said. “She’s so hot. So itchy. The cool room is scary. She knows she mustn’t go there, but I’m there too, and it’s all right, the snow is so cold on her neck.” She looked up at me. “Not this one. This is the first time we went in.” She pushed the egg away from her, and it faded.

  There was a sound like the slaughter of a great beast, and the ground shuddered. The light of my sigil died, and the dark closed in. Julie gasped, and I gave up the sigil on my left thigh.

  When she recovered herself, Julie touched another of the eggs. Hesitated. Touched the last. Pulled her hand back.

  The sigil-light dimmed.

  “Peppermint,” said Julie, almost to herself, and pushed another egg away. “She had peppermints yesterday.” She placed her hand on the final egg, and said clearly, “This is the one. This is my daughter. I’ve chosen.”

  The ground shook so violently that I fell, and the sigil-light blazed, then vanished. Desperately, I unwound the sigil from my left calf and hung it burning in the air. By its light, I saw a small girl, locked in her mother’s embrace. The eggs were gone. There was no light except my fast-fading sigil. Julie Kincaid had chosen well.

  “The claim is made by right,” I said. “Release us.” Nothing happened, save that the sigil-light faded, and the dark drew close around us. “Release us,” I said again, “Or by right and by strength you will be destroyed.”

  The cold deepened to an ache that crushed bones and stole the breath from my throat. Fumbling, I unwound three more sigils in a blinding flare of light and welcome heat. As the living darkness recoiled from us, I spoke two more words, and flung the strength of my heart against the Animus. If I could break through, even for an instant, Kan-yo would know and the others could intervene. Power roared from me like a column of flame, beating against the dark, pushing it back, and farther back, even as the cold crept into my limbs. My breath burned in my throat. My body trembled, and ached, and still I pushed, and still the Animus held.

  Held. Trembled. Pushed back, and I did not have the strength to stop it. Inch by inexorable inch, the Animus closed in upon us as all my power flared and raved against it. “Julie,” I said, trying not to gasp. “Help me.”

  “How? I don’t even know what you’re doing.” She held her daughter protectively to her chest. “What do I do?”

  “I need the strength I gave you. I need your own strength.” I stretched out my hand, and it trembled in the fading light. “Take my hand. Please.” The weight of darkness came full upon me then, like a corpse across my shoulders, and I sank to one knee as Julie took my fingers in one hand. Gratefully, I drew from the fires within her, taking what strength she could spare, and she became even thinner and more ghostly, but the Animus recoiled. Hope flared, and I threw myself into the struggle anew. I could feel the dark life retreating, parting before the heat and light that raked at it—then Julie fell to her knees with a slow, sad, sigh, and I saw the terrible pallor of her skin, the fading light in her eyes.

  She was done. We were lost.

  The Animus bugled its triumph, and the terrible weight of its hatred redoubled, driving me down before it. I scrabbled for the last of my sigils, the spiral on my belly, preparing a final defiance. And then a small, sure hand clasped mine, and a great white light burst inside my head. Like a waterfall, strength and power rushed into me, filling me, stretching my skin taut and tingling. My hair stood on end, and a scream of rage and joy burst from my lips as Grace Kincaid, the newest and youngest Walker gave me her trust, and her power crawled like Tesla’s tame lightnings over my body.

  With a single word, I shaped a ball of dancing light at my fingertips and tossed it casually into the dark where it detonated with a soundless pulse. The Animus shuddered, and retreated, but I threw another, and another, and then I reached out, grabbed the slippery, rubbery, burningly cold stuff of the creature itself between my two hands, and ripped it apart.

  The Animus screamed.

  Light flooded in; real light, brilliant sunlight from the dayside of the Dreaming. I smelled frangipanis, and felt the warmth of summer. Under my hands, the were-flesh of the Animus flowed, and writhed, and changed until it was the door of the cool room that I clutched, forced wide with a strength greater than my own. The scream changed too, higher, flatter, more piercing, and I smelled smoke, and burning insulation. There was a flash, and a pop, and then near-silence as the compressor burned out completely. The Animus died then, on both sides of the Dreaming, and all that remained was the cool room itself, and the wreckage of the complex machine that had given the creature a home on the dayside.


  I knelt, and collected Kan-yo’s dayside form, tucking the phone away in my pocket. The white, puckery scar on my arm caught my eye briefly. There would be a long, wearisome price to pay for the power I had spent today, but for my pains, a new Walker stood beneath the sun. I smiled, and patted Kan-yo. Then I placed Julie Kincaid in the recovery position on the kitchen floor, and turned my attention to her daughter.

  Grace Kincaid watched me steadily, with wide, grey eyes. She was perhaps five, maybe six years old, her hair bound in childish ponytails, but her eyes were older by far. I nodded acknowledgement, and gestured at the sink. “Is there a kettle? I think your mother will need a hot drink.”

  “I can do it,” she said, and with a wave of her hand, she did. The little Animus of the electric kettle heard, and obeyed with a click and a hiss.

  I frowned. “You must learn to listen to them as well,” I said. “It isn’t enough to command their obedience. A Walker stands between the Anima and humankind. We have to speak for both, if we are to share this world.”

  She nodded solemnly, and her eyes strayed to the still form of her mother.

  “She isn’t hurt,” I said. “But she’ll be tired, and what little she remembers will seem like a bad dream. You will have to be patient with her.” I stood up.

  “Are you going?” Grace’s voice trembled a little. “What if it comes back?”

  “It can’t,” I said. “We destroyed it. I will come back, in time. The cool room must be cleansed before it can be repaired, so that it is free of the taint of old death and violence. The next Animus it attracts will be different. You and I will see to it, little Walker.”