The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  “Ghalya,” I hiss. “You are angering the prince! Be quiet or I shall slap you, hard!”

  But the prince is smiling.

  “Never mind,” he says. “Hush, child. Hush, Zahara. It was wrong of me to ask. You are a Christian woman now. I only thought to distract myself from dark thoughts with prayers from my childhood. They make me feel a boy again, playing warlord in my father’s jewelled costumes.”

  I understand with a thrill that this is the key to my new song. The black, unshelled kernel of his grief. If he will only show it to me, I can weave it into my protective music. Then all I will have to do is steal one of his son’s bones for my new risha, and Ghalya will be safe.

  No pine nut was ever shelled without first hitting it with a rock.

  “Did your son dress in your robes, as a boy?” I ask with false hesitancy, my heart galloping.

  “Yes, he did,” Fakr-ad-Din says hoarsely.

  “In your castle by the sea?”

  “No. In the Palace of the Moon. He laughed, even when he grew tangled in them and fell. He cut his lip. Kept laughing, even as he bled.”

  “Is that where you buried him?” I prompt softly, dangerously.

  But Fakr-ad-Din’s gaze is vacant. He travels along the river of his grief. I must put my waterwheel into that flow. I must harness the power of it.

  The Prince’s nephew returns and the moment is lost. He guides me out of the Prince’s inner sanctum and pays me for the food in gold coins I can never use, never show to anyone. I carry them back down the cliff face with my dangle-legged daughter, my oud, and my frustration. I am so close.

  Next time. Next time, he will tell me.

  When I get back to the stone hut in the pine forest, half my goats have been trussed and slaughtered. My jars of flour and oil have been loaded onto donkeys for transport to the town.

  Bristling with edged weapons and hostility, the Janissaries are waiting.

  * * *

  The pasha’s narrow face is impatient.

  He taps his palm with a riding crop. The end of his jewelled turban tucks under his grey-bearded chin. The beard boasts to all who see him that though he leads the uniformed Janissaries, he is not of them.

  He is a pasha of Damascus, a Muslim and a free man, not a Christian conscript sworn to celibacy, trained for war and severely disciplined since childhood to owe their loyalty to the Sultan alone.

  “I told you, I haven’t seen anyone,” I say again, my throat shrivelled with thirst. Forced to kneel before the pasha with a yatagan sword resting lightly on the nape of my neck, I glance at the huddle of villagers behind the pasha’s retinue, Ghalya among them, restrained tightly by her terrified Aunty Rafqa and Uncle Estefan.

  “Where is your husband?” the pasha demands. “Consorting with the rebels, no doubt.”

  “He is a woodcutter, my lord! He is cutting wood in the forest!”

  “We will see. Take the instrument from her.”

  The sword at my back slides beneath the knot of the sling. If they take the oud, it will mean my daughter’s death. My fingers fly over my shoulder to the knot, to seize the sling, and are sliced through for their troubles.

  My blood is everywhere. Men are shouting. I am frantic.

  “No, my lord! Please, my lord!”

  Somebody kicks me between the shoulder blades. Somebody else drags me away from the green where the Pasha holds court. I smell incense and fowl droppings. My right hand, before my eyes, is a fountain of red. The fingers do not function.

  They have taken my oud. I will never play again.

  Stones are cold against my back. Rafqa and Estefan have propped me against the side of the little church. Bkassin’s church was paid for by the coins dribbling back to the village from all the sons taken to be Janissaries.

  Sons like Rafqa and Estefan’s son. His name was Yusuf. Now it is Mehmed, but I still recognise him. I remember how Rafqa cut her hair when he was taken, as though he had died. Now, his face swims in front of mine.

  Young. Handsome. A bare, cleft chin.

  “Wind it tighter to stop the blood,” he tells Rafqa. “I will beg my lord for the use of his Jewish physician.”

  I realise Rafqa is ruining her best striped sash by binding my bleeding hand with it. Estefan looms behind her, muffling Ghalya’s face against his paunch.

  “Kill her,” I gasp to my dead husband’s brother. “Kill her, or find a way to bring my oud back to me.”

  “You should not have been carrying it, Zahara,” Estefan answers, stricken. “You gave up women’s witchcraft when you married Hisham. Music is for men only.”

  “My son risks his life for you,” Rafqa says, crushing my hand between both of hers. “He betrays a lingering affection for his former family simply by speaking to his own mother, and now—”

  I watch her mouth moving but the sounds lose their meaning. In the white clouds overhead, I see the shapes of snow-covered pine trees, and Hisham standing beneath them, swinging Ghalya into the sky. I see him drinking from the mineral spring.

  Then the spring dries up. Hisham digs a well behind the stone hut. Down in the dark, that is where the demons find him. They slip from the stone into his bones. They make him scream and writhe.

  The Jesuits hear him in passing. They hold long conversations, not with me, but with one another and with the God they say has led them through the valley. I don’t hear their God speak, but the brothers say that Hisham must go with them to the monastery.

  I trail after them with Ghalya like a milk goat with a kid at foot, ignored by them, until they are forced to bar me from the Cave. My woman’s blood will pollute it, they say.

  “Run away, Ghalya,” I try to say. “Run away. Don’t go to the cave. Don’t go to the cave, Hisham. You’ll die there. You’ll die in chains.”

  Whiteness is everywhere. The clouds have come down. They are all around.

  “Which cave is she talking about?” Rafqa says sharply.

  “My God,” Estefan says. “She is speaking of the grotto. The grotto of Fakr-ad-Din’s father. She knows where he is. The pasha spoke true. Hisham is a traitor.”

  “We must tell the pasha, right away. With this information, we can protect our son. We can protect the village.”

  And then I do not hear or see anything at all.

  * * *

  When I wake, frogs are crooning to a crescent moon.

  The bed by the open window is a lump of layered blankets on a swept clay floor. My right hand is a heavy lump of bandage and clotted blood. I can’t feel anything inside. There is no sign of Ghalya, but then, she would not be allowed to sleep with me. I am a bad influence. Rafqa will be her mother, from now on.

  For as long as she has left to live.

  Crawling to the storage shelves behind the closed door, I take Rafqa’s funeral garb from its wrappings and put it on. My husband is dead. I have never worn mourning colours for him, but the night is black, and the robes are black, and I must reach the grotto to warn Fakr-ad-Din of what I have accidentally done.

  Is that why? Mother’s voice demands in my imagination. Is it to warn him, or to find out, at last, where he has hidden the bones of his son? Is it to warn him, or to beg him to bring his soldiers down into the valley and murder the pasha, murder all his Janissaries, including your own nephew, so that you can have your oud returned to you and save Ghalya from the stone demons?

  I climb out of the window. Take the forgotten road out of Bkassin, far enough that the pasha’s guards will not see me, before circling around, heading for the southern end of the valley where the mighty cliff waits.

  It takes hours to cross the valley floor. There are no wolves in the pine forest. They will not come where there are demons.

  I see no demons.

  “Where are you?” I wonder aloud; I wonder if I am still delirious. Or walking in a dream, for I do not grow thirsty, or tired.

  I find the base of the waterfall by its spray on my face, and climb the perilous path between the sleeping firebirds. The p
ath is treacherous enough by day. It is foolhardy to attempt it by moonlight. Yet I make no missteps in Rafqa’s curled, black satin slippers, and when I find the grotto I call Fakr-ad-Din’s name into its empty depths.

  For, of course, it is empty. There were no scouts to give warning of my approach. No lanterns live in the dripping dark.

  I stand there, a pillar of futility and pain, wondering if I should simply throw myself off the edge. It is a long way down. There is no chance I would survive.

  * * *

  When I arrive back at the village, it is emptied of the pasha and his soldiers.

  I realise that the shapes of men I avoided on my way to the valley were the bodies of villagers who had defied the pasha, tied to upright halberds before being stoned to death.

  Placing one foot after another, one ruined slipper after another, between the uneven stones of Bkassine’s main street, I collapse by the building that houses the village spring, drinking spilled water from broken buckets out of a dust-flecked pool while reflected sunlight spears my gritty eyes. The village water is tasteless. Not like the mineral water that rushes from the mountain.

  After a short rest, I stagger back to Rafqa’s house.

  “I curse the day that Hisham ever laid eyes on you,” she cries. “I curse the day your house was joined to mine.”

  Ignoring her, I seek another source of crying, one that comes from a room that once belonged to Rafqa’s son. His toy wooden animals still sit on the window sill. Ghalya lies limply in a bundle of furs. Her face is flushed and her eyes are staring.

  I see the stone demons move inside her. I see them eating her from within. Estefan moves back from her. His eyes are wild.

  “We should not have done it,” he says. “We should not have helped the pasha. Now the girl has no father to guide her. No wonder she has gone mad.”

  I feel my knees touch the floor beside the bed. I gather Ghalya into my arms.

  Let them leave her body, I beg wordlessly. Let them leave her body and enter into mine.

  But they do not leave her body. Three days later, she is dead.

  * * *

  Standing before the stone firebirds, I take the oud out of its sling.

  Every movement that I make is slow and deliberate. I have only half a thumb and my two smallest fingers remaining on my right hand.

  It was months before my wounds healed and I was able to steal the oud back from the wedding celebrant who had taken it. After that, it was only a matter of desecrating Ghalya’s grave. The stone cover, placed there to prevent her demons from infecting anyone else, was no barrier to the demons, though it was to me. I used a woodcutter’s axe in my left hand—the hand furthest from God, the hand closest to the Devil—to break through the stone, and then through the ribcage of the perfect daughter I had borne.

  With her breastbone for my risha, I knew the song of my grief would be powerful enough to move mountains.

  I look up at the firebirds. When they open their eyes, fire will cover everything that falls into their line of vision. The pine forest will burn. Gazelles and wildcats will flee for their lives. Villagers, too.

  My mother told me the music was not for setting the firebirds against the Ottomans, but that was before they murdered my child. Her granddaughter. She cannot stop me.

  She will not stop me.

  “Awake, spirits of the mountain,” I sing. “Children of the sun. Fakr-ad-Din is taken to Constantinople. There is work to be done.”

  The great birds shiver. They ripple. They begin to glow.

  In the always-shade of the cliff face, the firebirds open their eyes.

  The Lady of the Swamp

  Janeen Webb

  Detective Inspector David Dyson shrugged into the jacket of his too-tight suit. He straightened his tie and squared his shoulders before he stepped outside to face the waiting crowd of journalists. The summer sun was high: the day was a scorcher. Dyson missed his air-conditioned city office—he was sweating before he had even made it to the end of the corridor of the country church hall he had commandeered for his search headquarters. The questions began before the heavy door had closed behind him, the reporters shouting over each other to bid for his attention. Television cameras winked on, microphones were thrust at his face.

  “Come on, Dyson,” one of the older men yelled. “It’s hot out here. Give us a break!”

  “Yeah!” said another. “The public has a right to know about this swamp massacre. How bad is it?”

  Dyson held up his hand for silence.

  “I know you are all anxious for answers,” he said, getting a general laugh. “You all know me. I’m a cautious man. I don’t jump to conclusions, no matter how tempting a quick solution might be.”

  “Was it wild animals?”

  “There are rumours . . . ”

  “Patience,” Dyson said. “It’s early days yet. I will now read a prepared statement.” He cleared his throat, his cough loud in the sudden silence.

  “As you know,” he said, “the remains of several bodies have been found in the swamp. At this stage, the forensics team is still working to establish the exact number: I am sure you will appreciate the delicacy of the process. DNA tests take time. My officers are checking the list of missing persons against the records of the Company concerned, in an effort to establish which unaccounted-for employees may have been in the area at the time to work on the access road. Obviously, not all of the dead are necessarily Company employees, so we are asking anyone with missing friends or relatives who may have been in the vicinity of the swamp to come forward.”

  He paused for breath.

  “What about the old lady? What about the diaries? Why are you keeping them secret?”

  Dyson shrugged. “Word travels fast,” he said.

  “It’s a country town,” one of the women said, smiling.

  “All I can tell you,” Dyson said firmly, “is that yesterday when we widened our search one of my officers found a cave. The only artefact in that cave was an old biscuit tin, and in that tin were a number of exercise books—the sort that kids use in school—and a bundle of loose papers. They were mostly just records of bird and animal sightings, dating back for about twenty years.”

  “But?”

  “But the most recent notebooks contain some pretty weird stuff. I have no reason to believe they will shed any light at all on the massacre. But we are checking them out, just in case there’s a speck of something useful.”

  “Have you found her? The old woman, I mean?”

  “So far, there’s no trace of her anywhere. The townsfolk here confirm that an elderly lady did have a beaten-up plywood caravan out there beside the swamp, but nobody has seen her lately. There’s no caravan there now. If the journals hidden in the cave really are hers, they will almost certainly turn out to be nothing more than the ramblings of an eccentric old woman who lived rough in a swamp and spent too much time on her own. And until the forensics team is through, we can’t know whether she died there—as part of the massacre or from other causes—or simply moved away.”

  “But . . . ”

  “No more questions: that’s all I have for you, for now. There’ll be further bulletins as and when more information becomes available.”

  Dyson turned to leave.

  “Will you release the diaries?” one of the journalists shouted.

  “All in good time, my friends,” Dyson said. “I’ll release them when our people are through with them.”

  * * *

  Back in the relative coolness of the office at the rear of the hall, Dyson gulped down two painkillers with a mouthful of tepid bottled water. The very thought of releasing those journals had made his headache worse. He intended to do no such thing. He had enough trouble to contend with. He hoped—would have prayed if he’d been a religious man—the things recorded in there had not really happened. He felt in his bones that the diaries must belong to the old lady, and he’d been profoundly unsettled by what she had written. He, who prided himself on being
one of the toughest in the force, had had nightmares after he’d read them. He told himself that the old biddy had probably been cooking up those magic mushrooms he’d heard grew around that particular swamp, and recording her hallucinations—that, at least would explain it. The problem was that she sounded sane enough when she wrote about verifiable events—the town meetings, the Company and so on. But then, she also recorded other things, terrifying things that could not—must not—be true.

  Dyson went back to his borrowed desk. He sighed deeply as he opened the hinged lid on the big, old-fashioned tin once more, resigned to taking another look at the diaries. Some of the old schoolbooks had fallen apart when they were opened, scattering papers. Dyson decided, on reflection, that he was not being paid nearly enough for this. He settled down, unwillingly, to read, shuffling backwards and forwards through the pages of spidery handwriting, trying to figure out a plausible sequence of events.

  June 21st

  Today, I found a cave, a very special cave. It has been a chilly day, a day of biting winds and slippery ground. I was walking along a ridge when I skidded, lost my footing, slid down the bank. I turned my back on the wind to get my breath and wipe my muddy hands, and I was amazed to realize that I was looking at a well-preserved midden—a mound of bones and shells and debris that spoke of occupation.

  I was cautious, careful not to disturb the pile. I edged my way around to see what lay behind. And I found the low entrance. I did not hesitate: I ducked my head and stepped inside, out of the wind. Everything was suddenly quiet. I fumbled in my jeans for my pencil torch, and shone a thin beam into the gloom. I couldn’t see very much, but I could make out that beyond its narrow mouth the cave widened and opened into a high cavern, with clean sand on the floor. And on the sand were footprints, dozens of them, of different sizes—and all of them barefoot, except for my own tracks. I tiptoed further in, feeling like an intruder in somebody’s home. I couldn’t shake the sensation that the inhabitants had just stepped out for a while, that they’d be back any minute. I knew that this was not true—the first people had been cleared out long ago, hunted off their lands, never to return. And yet, I felt that I was being watched.