The Lanyard

by Carter-Thomas, Jake

  "Nowhere," she said without pause.

  "Then--"

  "Come on!"

  They soon reached the edge of another dip, and ahead countless trees appeared like the strands of a carpet flushing out in front of them, below.

  "I always wanted to run down through these woods," she said.

  She held out her hand and waited for him to take it. He walked past her to the edge and looked down at all the trees, trying to picture the two of them, twisting through those many places where there'd be so little space for them to pass. Maybe that was the point. He thought of the bees on the ground, helpless, pathetic... Had they died fighting, or... something else. He blurted a reply. It was more of a question to himself than to her, but still it came -- a sign of weakness. "We could try..."

  "Ah come on, what happened to just holding a girl's hand and taking her places?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're younger than me, aren't you?"

  "No," he said, though he sensed he was.

  "Then?"

  "I'll do it."

  He reached out for her but she shook her head, moved around to the other side and held her right hand to him, the same one she had offered before. He touched her fingers. A tingle ran all the way up his arm the moment he made the connection. Her hands were quite small with long fingers, and nails part-polished and shaped into claws, deep white cuticles, the sort his father used to encourage him to cultivate, pushing at the skin around the nails after he bathed. She looked at him. He looked ahead and tried to control his breathing, plotting a route that he could carry, noting the stumps that came out of the carpet of fallen leaves below them, noting the narrow parts.

  He pushed off and began to jog down the slope. She took a place just off the side. She laughed at first and then stopped as he gathered speed. The forest bounced as he went, turning down to the left when he saw a small hollow, around and then between two of the trees so they could burst into the clearing as the ground flattened, forcing her to fall in behind him, stressing the grip she had on him as his hand slipped back.

  "Go faster," she said. "Faster!"

  He began to run at full speed. He felt his arm go taut and then slack as he accelerated. A pain in his leg he ignored. His backpack began to bounce on his back, picturing all his possessions tumbling in turmoil, thrown in a twin tub. She let out a cry of delight. It punctured the air.

  There was a stream at the bottom of the next dip, half-hidden in its channel by depth and overhanging grass, widening as they approached like some demonic fault in the ground. He knew that she wanted to leap across with him, even though it was fast becoming too wide to make in one step. He knew he did too. He didn't let up, eyeballing some rocks in the water that he might use as they approached. There was little time now. And, instead, he decided he would just plunge into the black water and push off. How deep could it be? She would tell him to stop if she didn't want him to, wouldn't she?

  She didn't say a word.

  He lost contact with the bank just behind a large tuft of grass that had flopped down over the edge like a long-necked animal desperate to drink. His foot plunged into the stream; he felt the resistance right away, the soddening suck as the air was pushed out of his socks and the fabric clung tight around him, heavy like lead. He didn't let it slow him, found the gravelled bottom, and used his momentum to push the other foot forward and up the side, keeping his other leg dry, though the splash tried to claw at him. She followed. His arm went slack for an instant and then pull returned, followed by a burst of joy; her weight seemed to be restraining him, and he felt he might stumble, vision fading at the sides and he regained an obsessive focus on getting out of the water. It only lasted a split second, the length of an unbroken stride, driving into the ground ahead. He never heard a second splash, as if the girl managed to clear the stream in one go. And he wondered was she that much taller, or more athletic.

  The way ahead was free of trees, the ground firm although muddy, just a slight cottony slip as he ran at it, nothing in comparison to crossing the stream. The pull on his arm lessened and the girl returned close to his right side. He could almost see her in his peripheral vision, he could hear her breath, exalted, ecstatic, deep. He could feel it, full of her taste.

  They got to the top of the next slope and she pulled on his arm to stop. She was out of breath. She let go and put her hands on her knees, bending over to try and scoop air with her tongue like a cat at water. He was out of breath too. But not in the same way, more like a dog than a cat, his tongue tasting the breeze, ears up, giddy thoughts in his head.

  Should he have kept going, pulling her along? Maybe. What if they went faster and faster and faster? Hadn't he learned they would begin to lift from the earth, become birds, become planes, the air lifting them over the treetops, become little dots of felt until the stream they had crossed wound around as it widened, a vein in the arm of the world. He thought of the loop of string through the small hole in the hilt of his pocket knife that he sometimes attached to his wrist. He saw in the mirror of his mind the girl in place of that knife, tethered to him as they flew, hands become like knotted thread. And he could see that string shadowed beneath them, only the shadow was not black like their cut-out silhouettes. The shadow was white. A brilliant white. Bright like the inside of a lightbulb, hurting his eyes until he had to open them.

  "Thanks," she said.

  "It's ok."

  "Good. Sorry about the hand thing."

  "Huh?"

  "Not taking your right hand."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah, I just can't see so good out of this side."

  "You can't?"

  "Actually, I can't see at all."

  She pointed up to her face but he couldn't see any difference. Not until he forced himself to look at her left eye and saw that the colour was more yellow, the texture clouded, and he wondered for a moment if she had seen it too, that ocean of blue light in the sky... Ten seconds or so, that's all it took. Or was it something else?

  He asked her what happened. She said, "Pass." Then, "My pa told me I caught something when I was young."

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "It's 'k. I don't mind talking about it."

  "What's it like?"

  "What's what?"

  "To not see out of one side."

  "Oh -- not so bad, close your left eye and try."

  He turned away and did it, casting his view all around the trees in a circle, all the way back to the rise beneath the area where they had met, and down again the other side, the trees, the grass made of leaves, the ever-swirling wind.

  "It's kind of the same," he said.

  "Yeah, it is."

  "I just see a lot of my nose," he turned around. "A bit like being in a cave, looking out. You know?"

  "Right. Funny thing is, if you kept it up you'd get used to it. The nose, I mean. I don't even see it anymore, only if I try and look that way. You know, if someone doesn't listen to my instructions, and insists on wandering into my blind spot."

  "I won't."

  She laughed. "I didn't mean you."

  "Right."

  "Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sell it as a flawless way of being, or anything. I guess with anything like that it's never as bad as you think."

  "Yeah... I once sprained my ankle and thought it was the end of the world. But it wasn't so bad. It got better."

  "This won't though."

  "I didn't mean like--"

  "I'm just messing with you."

  "Oh."

  "You're very kinda serious, aren't you?" She pretended to slap him on the shoulder but missed. "Dang... Depth perception."

  He wasn't sure if this was deliberate or not. He stepped back regardless, he recoiled, as if she had hit him. She laughed.

  "Uh... ok?" he said.

  "No. I could totally sock you one, if I wanted. But I won't."

  "That's good, I guess."

  "I mean it's not that hard to figure out what is close to you and what isn't
, you know, once you get used to it, and if you can't, well I guess you deserve to walk into things."

  "I guess you do."

  "So go on, close yours again and try and get me." She started to sway around on the spot like a fighter. "I'm pretty fast."

  "Only if you close yours."

  "What good will that do?"

  "".

  "You don't believe me?"

  "No, I mean the other eye."

  "But -- you know I won't be able to see anything, right."

  "Just do it, ok."

  "So you can try and hit me?"

  "Something else."

  "Oh?" she squinted at him and then smiled. "Well, only if you promise you're not going to whack me in the nose."

  "I promise."

  "Alright."

  She straightened up and closed both of her eyes.

  "No," he said. "Not like that. Keep the other one open, the left one."

  "Why?"

  "Just do it, please..."

  "This is messed up... I don't think I've ever done this."

  "Just try."

  He stared at the sky past her while he waited. She grabbed onto the top of her jeans with her hands as if this would help focus, and then she turned straight onto him and closed her good eye only, leaving her other eyelid flickering for a moment before it stayed open.

  He stepped towards her, trying not to make a sound or move too fast so that she would sense he was near. He stared into the bad eye, looking at it in stages as if it held the secret of the universe somewhere within the varied layers of detail he had already admired in the other, moving his attention from the outside to the middle, from where her skin wept pink at the corner, small dots on her skin, through her eyelashes, onto the white glass, following a couple of threads that he wished he could loop around his fingers and keep, towards the boundary of the iris, the coral mass, and on to the drop, the deep hole in the centre, the shaft that bored into her brain, into her soul.

  Pressure built.

  He wanted to stop. But he forced himself to take it all in until something strange happened, until he no longer felt the urge to glance anywhere else, and he felt himself tipping forward, leaning towards her, as if bound.

  "What are you doing?" she said, shuffling in place.

  He didn't reply, too seized on the black hole at the centre of the green galaxy that span around it, as if a million billion stars were in orbit, as if a million billion lives, and on each fleck a million experiences, of love, and life, and spirit. He wanted to stare this way forever. But why? He realised he would have to stop. Her eye had begun to flicker around, and her eyelids twitched some more like she really wanted to blink. And then the questions would really come. Why had he asked her to do this, what had he to gain.

  "You have a beautiful eye," he said.

  She smiled. "Stop."

  Then he thought of something that seemed so much easier than staring, something that wouldn't give him away. Something he might never have imagined doing, but now couldn't imagine not.

  He gave her a quick kiss.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They walked without saying much for a while then stopped at the edge of a clearing where the ground was muddied and some planks made a zigzag path across from one side to the other. The girl put her foot on the nearest plank. She pushed into the metal tread that was embedded on top of the wood. The board held. Without pause, she stepped onto it and began to walk, arms extended into a cross.

  The boy followed in his own measured way, being careful that each time he lifted a foot the beam was stable. The mud around the bottom seemed to breathe as he walked. The girl wobbled on the last part; her breath shortened before she stopped for a moment and shifted her weight, almost stumbling. She recovered her poise and then hopped to the other side, waiting for him to follow, pre-warned of the difficult dismount he held out his arms to help balance.

  After he had stepped off, she went back to the loose plank, and tried to lift it.

  "What are you doing?" he said, become in his head a mouthpiece for his father. He didn't care, not really, but someone, at some time, must have taken the effort to drag the lengths of wood all the way out there, dress them in chicken wire, and place them. Must have took more effort than collecting a few scattered rocks in a pile. She ignored his question and started to work her fingers around the edges, took hold of the plank and pulled.

  Underneath were crawling bugs, chitinous coins, legs wriggling over legs on darker mud that looked more like hardened black sugar, contrasting the pale bodies of centipedes burned out by the lack of sun. So many legs, jaws, arms, and yet the mass seemed to struggle to get anywhere at all, writhing around, like lines upon lines of cars seen from far away.

  "Gross," she said, pointing down to where a small spider struggled to clamber amongst the others, held back by the strange lump under its body, an egg that looked like a second head.

  Some straw had been thrown onto the mud underneath the plank. It had crushed and gone brown at the edges. A strange mist seemed to seep out of this straw, as if it was hot, composted down. And as he leaned closer something touched his hand, just brushed it, some of the legs, the spiders egg, the silk. He jumped back, shaking whatever it was off his fingers before he could see. But there was nothing there.

  The girl was smiling at him. It must have been her. She must have touched him, caressed him, with all the pressure of a fallen fly.

  "You ok there?" she said.

  "Yeah." he replied, rubbing his wrist. "Took me by surprise."

  "What did?"

  "Whatever touched my hand."

  "Oh, were you daydreaming? Thinking about me and all that straw?"

  "No... Just the bugs."

  "Yeah, sure you were."

  "Can we go now?" he replied, turning away from it all, away from her.

  "If we must."

  She dropped the plank so that it fell out of place, leaving the insects marooned in the open. He wanted to tell her that was wrong but didn't feel he could. Instead, he let her lead them up and out of another narrow valley that opened out to an area with more trees and rocks. She soon found a spot under one of the trees and reclined against a small mound, gazing up towards the sun, up into a sky still too light to see the stars, but white with wet clouds.

  She patted the ground but he didn't sit down next to her.

  "So now what are you thinking about?" she said.

  "What's out there, I guess." He was making it up.

  "In space?"

  "Yeah."

  "Mmm-K?"

  "Something like that."

  "Guess all boys think the same."

  "Huh?"

  "All boys think about escape, about the outside, always looking away, never in..."

  "".

  "I didn't mean to say there was anything wrong with that... Just not something that appeals to me, you know?"

  "Well, what do you think about when you look at the sky?"

  "Honestly?" She tilted her head back.

  "Yeah."

  "Mainly whether I have epilepsy."

  "Huh?"

  "You know what I'm talking about? Do you have it? Do you ever have any fits?" she said. "Any sudden pains in the back of your head?"

  "No..."

  "You've never stared up through leaves and wondered?"

  "Wondered what?"

  "How they got to be that way? How no two of them are exactly alike?"

  He looked up at them now, the sun twinkled behind them and made him squint to see. When he looked back to the ground he had the chasing twists of light still burning in his head, appearing over the top of the forest like he was looking at polaroid photograph about to burn in his hands. "Maybe they're like fingerprints," he said.

  "Yeah."

  He held out his fingers and wiggled them up to the sky. Each one seemed to move independently. There was brown mud down his palm in a long stripe. He imagined leaning closer to the stripe. The girl arched her head back to look at the leaves some more,
exposing her throat.

  "I heard that if you look at sunlight through leaves it can sometimes trigger a fit. You know, people can die out in the forest. Really. They're just walking along, looking at the sky -- like this -- and, and... they don't even realise that they have this thing... this... condition."

  "Then what?"

  "Then they faint. Then they die."

  "But... what's that got to do with the trees?" he said.

  "Something about the gaps making flashes of light. I'm not joking. People can have some sort of seizure and fall down. And if they are on their own then no one will show up to save them."

  "What do you know about the light?" he said.

  "That it's... bad?"

  He squinted at her, caught by the rounded rectangles of light that had passed through the trees and moved across her face as she slowly tilted her head. The patches made the centre of her eyes more radiant, colouring the whites yellow, glazed, not natural, wrong. He hit her on the shoulder. She didn't move. He half pulled her arm so that she had to look at him.

  "What?"

  "Don't do it."

  "Why?"

  "Because... what if it's true?"

  "If I die, you mean?"

  "...I don't want to have to carry you back."

  "Don't want to, or can't?" she said.

  "Get bent," he replied, joking, half-turning away.

  "Oh come on, I thought you were crazy about me?"

  She lifted her head as if trying to reposition it so she could see him, the sun gathered into small pools on her face, the light entered her eyes and sparkled as she swayed her head from side to side, a strange smile on her face, looking down at his feet, up at the top of his head. Then she sat up and lunged at him, grabbed hold, stared at him in the eyes as her hands worked to pull him down. The light she had taken in made her pupils seem to spin; her iris contained a swirl of daylight, as if it was trapped beneath the surface, reflective but somehow hyper-real, somehow deep. He tried to lean away but she moved right up to his ear.

  "You have to help me..."

  "Don't," he said.

  "It's happening..."

  "Stop."

  " I can feel it-- I'm gonna faint, I could swallow my tongue."

  "No."

  She laughed. "It's true.