Zane stops looking at their faces. He can’t do it anymore. He reaches out, plants his hands on someone’s shoulders, and he jumps and kicks and pulls himself up. He scrambles out of the water, above the water, using their flesh as hand and foot holds. He’s out of the water and on top of the crowd.
Zane fights upstream. The wind buffeting him helps as he kicks and pulls. The crowd bears his weight like he’s not there, like a river carrying a log. However, his muscles quickly burn with exhaustion.
He rolls onto his back and finds that he hasn’t progressed very far. The sea continues to gather its dead. Still on his back, resting and watching, Zane doesn’t dwell on any single floating body too long for fear he’ll find either of his parents, for fear that he’ll decide to join them.
Zane looks out past the static-colored sky and toward the edge of the darkening horizon. The color of it all seems wrong. And now there are inky, oblong-shaped shadows coloring the ocean swells and gliding beneath the water’s surface. Those shadows are the size of submarines.
He flips onto his stomach. There are large splashes, or breaches in the water behind him; they sound like detonations. And then there’s screaming and the microphone-feedback sound changes pitch and volume.
Zane does not turn around again. He is determined only to fight for his life, to scrabble and crawl his way back up the beach, to the dunes, and then away. He daydreams of crawling back in time, somehow; going all the way back to the day of his first meeting with Dr. Colton and its night filled with moths. Zane has always remembered that day (and night) so vividly, it’s as though he must surely know the way to get back there.
The morning after, there will be a dark purple sunrise, and the sky will remain that color for the length of the day. The tide will be coming in, the surf swelling well past its usual heights. The water will be blood red. The water will still be thick with countless bodies and the large shadows underneath.
Zane will return to the beach. He will clear the dead off the top of the tallest sand dune; rolling bodies down into the crashing waves. He will be alone. He will remember his father telling him about how it was good that his brain was different than everyone else’s. Then, in the new silence of the world, he will sit and listen for the high-pitched, feedback sound, the one that will continue to be just beyond his reach.
Gailestis
By Allyson Bird
Twins. Non-identical but both with silver hair. Their mother named them Gerda and Kay after the characters from Hans Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Her favourite story, she had told them, when they had been old enough for her to read it to them. Born old they were, and acted like it, too. There was no laughter in their lives, just the drudgery of poverty day after day, living in a cabin in the woods.Trees overhung the dwelling, which had once been in a clearing. The mother had died giving birth to them, but on having her fortune told by a wanderer who told her what fate lay in store for her, she put aside two gifts for them. To be given to them on their eighteenth birthday. Her father hid them.
The father worked in the sawmill and would come home tired and worn out—his hands sometimes bleeding. One day he didn’t come home at all and his children did not care.
The daughter did what most daughters might do in such a situation, cleaned the cottage in the woods, and cooked the supper each night.Mould grew on the walls—and no amount of scrubbing would get rid of it. She served mostly unappetising food.Beef was quite cheap but no amount of seasoning and herbs could disguise its taste. Nothing that came into the house, once cooked, looked or tasted quite right. The son declined to take his father’s work and took employment as a gardener of the house belonging to Dr Jaspers. He had kept the land that had been in his family for years and let young Kay look after it now. Kay tried his best but lately canker and disease attacked most of the plants and recently a red weed had established itself in the pond near the old bridge. No matter how he cleared and cleansed the bright red weed still took hold week after week, escaping the pond and moving further towards the house. The doctor muttered and discussed the problem with his neighbours, but they shook their heads, thankful that it hadn’t happened to them.
The house was in re-claimed swamp, a wooden structure with an old tin roof, and very little warmth of any kind in it at all. Sheep wandered close to the place and one had died recently, at the back near the windswept manuka tree. It had not been removed and the falcons fought over it.Above the carcass a small canopy of totara trees, their brown bark stripped away to the bleached bone colour. Flayed. Black fungus covered the older trees and the wasps hung around all the time. Gerda thought of those trees as if they were capable of movement and it seemed to her that they stealthily fixed themselves closer to the house each year, their branches reaching out to her, begging her for something she didn’t understand. In the autumn, birds hung around the seeds attached to the succulent crimson parts of the tree.
As a child, even in the summer months, when the wind threatened to take the roof off the house, Gerda would climb one of the trees—an enormous gum. She hauled her old dusty pink blanket up there, too. She would sit with her skirt firmly between her knees, as the leaves lashed her arms, and her grip became weakened by the strength of the gusts. If she flew from a tree her head would be dashed against the boulders in the field. Would her blood make the crops grow better, she thought? High winds on sunny day. That was when she would look out at the far blue horizon and wonder what was beyond it—what great secrets there would be to discover and what treasure to find. A child’s hopeful thoughts. Long gone. The creatures which once dwelt in those trees occasionally returned to breed but they never stayed long and preferred Lake Poukawa amongst the willow and raupo even though it was frequented by duck hunters who were less than stealthy and threw empty beer cans into the lake to use as target practice. Everything was a target to them—stationary or moving. Gerda knew one of them. She liked the way he looked at her, but he was a giant of a man and he towered above her. Now and then he brought a brace of birds for her and laid them on the porch. Kay didn’t like him at all but chose to ignore what he did— thankful for the extra food. Gerda often checked at least three times that she had locked the doors of the house at night, but knew really that she might just be locking trouble in. She didn’t feel anxious but just kept doing it anyway, and was not sure why. The man was called Peter and he lived in the cramped space of an old shipping container two fields away. A tight fit. He had painted it dark green and had placed skulls of wild boar on the roof. And once, not far from her home and his, she had found the heart of a large animal nailed to a tree. It hadn’t been there long and a trail of blood ran down the trunk onto the soil and pooled. It looked to Gerda that the earth had rejected it.
The trees were a great place to put a hammock, but as the canopy became denser it blotted out the blue sky so Gerda spent less and less time in it, until she had quite forgotten that she had it at all. The undergrowth claimed that, too.
She would sometimes camp out in an old army tent found in a giveaway once. People in New Zealand often reused things over and over—some even straying from their original use. A car as a chicken house, for example. Gerda was afraid of nothing. She hardly felt anything, although she tried to feel fear by climbing the highest trees and being alone in the dark. Nothing. Nothing to be afraid of at all. Once, when bitten by her own dog, which her father uncharacteristically had given to her on her seventh birthday, she didn’t cry. She just washed the wound in the stream and ripped some of her dress away to bind it— tearing at the cloth with her teeth. Her father felt nothing for her, either. To add insult to injury, sandflies bit her skin around the wound. She must not scratch, she told herself, and managed not to, but only just. She liked books, though, and felt for the characters in them—their joys and trials, but she believed in her non-existence as a person, that nobody would ever notice her.She didn’t really have a place in the world. Animals did. She didn’t.
By the side of the track to her house, Gerda had once found an old
battered brown suitcase. It had stickers all over it proclaiming the destinations it had been to or pretended it had—Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, and San Francisco. Probably places the owner had only dreamed of, like Gerda. In the suitcase she found just one thing. A postcard with a picture of a red pool on it framed by frost, addressed to a person in England. Winter 1977. On it the words, ‘My childhood was full of nightmares, of events that did happen, and of those yet to come.’ Events. Things. Images effortlessly conjured up. Ones that should not be thought about. How had the postcard ended up in New Zealand away from its destination? Gerda had a feeling many objects somehow made their way back to New Zealand.
When she was thirteen, Gerda earned a little money, took the train into Wellington that summer, and found her way to Cuba Street where she bought some colourful clothes, hoping that they would make her happy. The psychedelic swirls of yellow, red and purple just made her feel sick. No flowers for Gerda—to be worn in her hair. A southerly wind whipped through the city, reminding her of the time she had clung to trees. She tucked herself in close to the buildings.
Gerda’s ancestors had come to the country as settlers although it had been an unsatisfactory settlement. Six generations out from Europe and the only thing Gerda cared to do was to make black bread and almost as black plum and berry jam from their little orchard. The crop seemed to yield less and less each year. Kay’s hands were always covered with it and she knew what to expect when he dipped his fingers into it—sometimes she washed the squashed juicy blackberries off her thighs and sometimes she left them there. Six generations out from Europe and no close relations to speak highly of—they were all dead or had gone off to find better work in Australia. The wop wops of New Zealand hadn’t suited them at all.She just thanked whoever that there were none of the snakes that her Aussie neighbours had to put up with. She had heard of the Kiwi man who had gone off to the Australian mines and been killed by a snake. The strips of bark hanging from the trees often reminded her of the hated creature. Kay had put a rubber snake in her bed once, which she had prodded a few times with a stick to make sure it was rubber, although she knew there were no snakes in New Zealand, and then she had got him back tenfold by putting something very much alive in his bed.It wasn’t too hard to find cockroaches. Kay hit her with a skipping rope that had been left lying on the floor. She had never forgotten. Still her brother was the only kin she had, now. She hated her dependence on him, but it was inevitable. She had nothing to look forward to in that relationship.
And lately Dr. Jaspers killed more than he cured. Not deliberately. The life seemed to ebb away from his patients, the ones who still wanted his services out of some misguided loyalty. There had been rumours that he had experimented on a few—used some herbal remedies.She had heard he had talked of suicide. Then that he had brightened up a little and tried Maori medicines.The kill or cure ones. He was a small, thin man with a slight stoop, and he then would diminish his height even further by bowing his head down to look at you over his glasses to see into your heart. Gerda knew he would find nothing in hers except some strange connection with Kay, which was more of dependence than with feeling.
One morning, Gerda found her brother with his head on his crossed arms lying across the kitchen table. He looked up as she entered the room and she saw that his eyes were blood shot. Dark circles hung below them.
“You didn’t sleep well, then?” The question was just a way of breaking the ice. She knew he didn’t sleep well at all.
“Nope. And I have to go to work. Dr. Jaspers told me that if I couldn’t solve the problem of the red weed he’d have to let me go. Nothing grows for me either, now.”
“Why now …what could be different?” She knew he didn’t know the answer but she asked it just the same. The silence was unbearable some days.
“Nothing. Each year I do the same thing and it usually turns out fine, but since that red weed came along, nothing grows.”
She rinsed some bowls in the sink and put them on the side. She looked up and out of the window. The branches of the manuka and totara trees seemed closer than ever.
When Gerda knocked on the door of the doctor’s house, he seemed a little surprised to see her but let her in. The house had once been quite beautiful, she thought, but the burgundy hall carpet was quite faded and led to an equally dull room. Little colour within but packed with books on tables, and on dusty shelves. It had started to rain and it could be heard quite clearly pounding the tin roof—a grand design of a house, typical of the villa style but large, very large. Gerda thought of the books she had read, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof came to mind. She was only just hanging on herself, and why? She thought of little monsters with no neck, and smiled.
“Good afternoon, Gerda. I was just going to have tea. Would you like something? Are you hungry?”
Gerda remembered her manners. “Thank you. That would be good.”
“When I say tea—I mean wine and cakes. That is what I drink and eat at this time of day.”
Gerda nodded and Dr. Jaspers left. She roamed around the room picking up books and putting them down, being careful not to disturb the red ribbon bookmarks found in each one. Oddly enough, they were placed a few pages from the end in almost all of them. She picked a book up. Red cover with a woman in Victorian dress sitting down—etched in gold. A Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. Dr Jaspers returned as she put it down. He noticed what she had been looking at. She sat back down on a settee, folded her hands on her knee, and waited patiently. He entered the room twice. On the first tray lay plates of cakes and tarts and on the second a bottle of red wine and the most exquisite glasses she had ever seen. They were a cranberry colour with flowers and leaves carved upon them. She hoped she would not break one. Dr Jaspers quickly poured her a glass of wine without spilling a drop and handed it to her with a smile.
That day Gerda let herself enjoy what he gave her. The cakes were covered with white icing and they had tiny silver snowflakes scattered across the surface. She thought of frozen ponds and small ice skates. A drop of wine spilled from her lips onto the icing and she, without thinking, licked it off the cake. Dr Jaspers watched her over the top of his glasses.
At last she mentioned her brother. “Kay has tried to get rid of the red weed. It isn’t his fault that it has taken such a hold.”
“I know.”
“Then why will you be letting him go?” That sounded too polite, she thought.
“Out of desperation, my dear. I’ll hire someone new, and perhaps they can do something to clear it from my land.”
“Give him another chance?”
Dr. Jaspers put his glass of wine down. “Perhaps,” he said. He hesitated. “If you come for tea each day. I need the company. Then I will consider it.”
Gerda thought about the implications of that. If coming into the house led to what she thought it would… would it be so bad? Worse that the mundane and routine existence she went through day after day.
She nodded.
“Good. Then that is settled. Shall we say we have an agreement for two weeks? Perhaps longer?”
Gerda nodded again.
“But there is one more thing.”
Here it comes, thought Gerda.
“I noticed you looking at that book by Aubrey Beardsley. I like to draw. I’d like you to pose for me. Nothing too over the top… you understand?”
Gerda nodded again. It perhaps won’t be too bad, she pondered as she helped herself to another iced cake. Mentally, she was working out where the line was she would not cross and she couldn’t find it.
They continued to chat for another half hour, both sipping at the wine and nibbling at the small cakes. At the back of her mind Gerda was trying to tell herself that the wine wasn’t affecting her, but when she got up to leave she swayed, just a little. Dr. Jaspers reached out and held her arm to support her. His touch was icy. She jumped a little and then looked down at his fingers. The nails were strangely long for a man. White as if covered in nail varnish. The finge
rs—delicate, too.
The next day she came back and after a brief conversation about how he wanted her to pose he placed the easel, paper and pencils exactly where he wanted them. Dr Jaspers handed her a glass of wine and pushed the plate of cakes forward to her across the table.
Then he handed Gerda a floor length red silk kimono. He indicated that she could change in another room. There seemed so many so she just picked one, the dining room as it happened, with heavy curtains that she let be whilst she changed. The kimono was way too long for her but she hitched it up when she walked. On entering the room, Dr Jaspers asked her to lie down on the chaise lounge. Her silver hair hung loose around her shoulders.
“May I adjust your robe?” he asked.
Again the nod. No words.
He exposed one of her breasts—a pearl of a nipple, and backed away quickly. His ice-cold hand had brushed her skin but she had tried to ignore it. Her head lay on a crimson pillow and as she lay there, she felt herself get drowsy. She slept. And as she did so, Dr Jaspers drew. He drew with precision as if conducting some minor operation. He stared for an awful long time before he put pencil to paper. Gerda dreamt of dark open empty spaces and when she did finally awake,for an instant her vision was filled by the deepest red.
The next day after the wine and cakes, he asked her to put the kimono on again but to leave it undone. Indeed, he took the long strip of crimson from the loops, and wound it gently around her neck, tying it in a tight bow to the side, smiling as he did so. She swallowed but said nothing and glanced to her left at the white nails. She might have been completely naked for all that the kimono concealed. Again Dr. Jaspers stared for a long time before beginning to draw. Again she fell asleep and dreamt—this time she saw figures moving around when the dark turned to red. When she awoke, she had no further recollection of the dream.
The Grimscribe's Puppets Page 24