The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05

by Bill Congreve (ed) (v1. 0) (epub)

  The pictures her words evoke in Salus’s mind make him sweat and shiver as if he has been tossed upon hot coals and submerged in an ice bath, all at once.

  In an effort to regain his focus, Salus snaps open his kit and draws out his whetstone and secateurs. After a discreet spit onto the stone, he begins rasping his blades across the surface, making a sound as unpleasant as nails on a chalkboard.

  A whispering near his feet causes Salus to glance down.

  A pale-green shoot pokes between his mirror-polish brogues. Blind, it sways, lengthens, searching for the sunlight. The seedling’s tip curls about itself like a tiny vegetal foetus.

  A cold, hard lump of dread coagulates in the pit of Salus’s stomach. Such a tiny thing; such a pretty thing, and he has already killed so very many ...

  Groaning, he lowers his secateurs towards it.

  The seedling unfurls. A slender arm-like stem embraces his ankle. Salus’s fingers twitch. His secateurs crash to the floor and shoot through the gap beneath the cab door. They hit the cobblestones with the high, clear ring of metal on stone.

  Frozen, Salus watches the seedling rise. Within seconds it reaches his knees. Bell-shaped flowers form atop it. Pale pink at first, their colour soon grows deeper, richer, redder ...

  One of the flowers bends its face towards Salus’s, as if offering itself. For an instant, Salus contemplates plunging his hand into his kit and withdrawing his spare secateurs.

  Instead, he leans forward, and inhales.

  ~ * ~

  Miss Monitus is dusting Salus Sententiae’s office - between pausing to sigh over the myriad heart and flower drawings she has discovered hidden under his blotter - when the door bursts open.

  A balding coachman in the Grey Man’s livery stands there, panting.

  “Fetch some blankets and make ready a sofa, lass,” he says. “Your employer’s been wounded in action. I’ll haul him upstairs.”

  “Wounded? Haul him?” Miss Monitus scowls. “Sir Salus Sententiae’s a right important personage - ye’ll not be hauling ‘im nowhere!”

  She pushes past the coachman and hurtles downstairs to check on Salus Sententiae herself.

  On the grey flagstones by the door, she stops, mouth open, and stares.

  And then she laughs, as giddy and breathless as a child on a merry-go-round.

  Because before her stands a hansom-cab awash with scarlet flowers and emerald-green leaves. Slender green fronds twine about the cab’s wheel spokes; brilliant flowers burst from the spaces between its wall panels. And in the air there lingers the most delicious scent. Discernible even above the soot and coal-smoke, that scent evokes memories of her grandmother’s oat biscuits fresh from the oven, of lavender-scented bed sheets, of her dear old papa’s cologne.

  And sprawled on the cab’s step is Salus Sententiae. His hat is askew on his head. The wide smile on his face is an expression entirely at odds with Miss Monitus’s understanding of her employer’s nature, yet it is an expression she has oft longed to see.

  Smiling, Salus Sententiae looks relaxed, and very debonair. With a little bow, he extends a bouquet of flowers towards her.

  * * * *

  For the past three years, Karen Marie has been a stay-at-home mum and occasional writer living in western Sydney, but she is about to take a plunge into the great unknown by journeying to China for a year with her partner and two young children. Karen was deeply thrilled and incredibly honoured when ‘The Last Deflowerer’ was chosen as a finalist in the 2008 Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy Short Story.

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  * * * *

  * * *

  Bitter Dreams

  IAN MCHUGH

  The blackfellas brought the body down to the town gate in the grey of morning, when the mist was lifting but hadn’t yet burned off. There were four of them and they carried the remains up on their shoulders, on a stretcher made of branches and plates of paperbark.

  They didn’t wear much, despite the cold, just loincloths and possum-skin shawls and one of them in a pair of cut-off moleskins. They were tall men, as blackfellas are, all ropy muscle, with the long, skinny calves and broad, long feet of runners. In the weak light, when their shadows were faint on the ground, their heavy brows and wide noses still gathered darkness around their eyes. Their hair was matted with clay and their faces, torsos and limbs were scarred all over with the white lines and dots the blackfellas use in place of pictures and letters.

  They left the body outside the gate, wouldn’t pass between the posts carved with English runes - couldn’t, with the dreams of the land mapped all over their bodies. They turned around without a word and jogged back into the bush, not hurrying, just because that’s the way they preferred to move.

  ~ * ~

  Constable Robert Bowley sat on the porch outside the post office with Maise Wallace, drinking tea while Maise worked at her embroidery. Georgie, Maise’s old half-dingo bitch, lay curled up at her mistress’s feet.

  Bowley toyed with his teacup, gazing at the buildings across the way. Hunched things, all, imposed on but never accepted by the clay and rock they squatted over. Mockeries of Englishness, with their crooked frames and sagging spines, tarred timbers and dark shingles unalleviated by the runes carved into their surfaces. They huddled beneath their roofs, shaded by alien trees and encroached by grass that was never green even in the wettest months.

  Only the church was made of stone, not counting the coolroom out the back of the pub, and only it rose higher than the houses, and not by much. And it was even sadder than they, with no priest there since before Bowley had first come to Useless Loop. Its stones had all been shipped from England because local rock refused to take the shape.

  He examined his hands around Maise’s porcelain cup and saucer: the dirt that would never come out, at the base of his fingernails, in the creases of his knuckles and the fine lines that etched his skin. The cuffs of his uniform jacket, permanently impregnated with clay dust. He ran his thumb across the largest chip in the edge of the saucer, fitted the leathered pad into the shallow cavity.

  “Bowls.” Alby Tucker stood at the front of the porch, one booted foot propped against the edge of the boards, toe upwards so that Bowley could see the runes scorched into the leather sole. “Mate, you’d better come see what the blackfellas have left outside the gate.”

  ~ * ~

  “Bloody hell.”

  Bowley stood over what was left of Stink McClure, forcing himself to look. He couldn’t bring himself to squat down beside Alby and examine the corpse more closely. He rested one hand on his service holster and had the thumb of the other hooked in his belt, both fists closed so no-one would see the shake in his fingers. He breathed through his mouth.

  Maise stood beside him, her face pale, arms folded across her chest. Bowley doubted it was because her hands were shaking. Beyond her, German Braun and young Dermott O’Shane watched Alby prod at the corpse, their lips pursed in mirrored expressions of distaste. Their shadows all bunched up close under their boots, reluctant to cast themselves across the corpse.

  “Been dead a day or so,” said Alby. He poked about under the ribcage with a stick. “His liver’s gone as well.”

  Bowley could see there wasn’t as much left inside the open belly as there should’ve been. There wasn’t much left, in fact, to show that the carcass had been old Stink, just his grey nest of hair, his crappy old home-made snakeskin boots and that prickly-pear of a nose of his. As well as opening his guts, whatever had eaten him up had chewed off his penis, and dug out his eyes, and ripped apart his cheeks to get at his tongue. His blood-matted beard hung from shreds of skin around his ears. His lower jaw flopped loosely on his chest.

  German asked, “Vas it a villyvilly?” Ingrained soot made the furrows of his always-sweaty brow appear even deeper.

  Maise said, “Willywilly wouldn’t chew him up like that.”

  She knew. A willywilly had taken her husband, Nev, not a year after Bowley arrived in town, left his carcass with a
ll the hair sucked off it and scattered around. But, with the sun now peeking through the clouds, they could all see that Stink’s corpse cast no darkness beneath it, on its bed of bark and sticks. Whatever killed him had drunk up his shadow as well. The body seemed to float, a hair’s-width off the ground, cut adrift, as the corpses of the dream-eaten are.

  But what the hell kind of dreaming would tear a man up like that? A willywilly wouldn’t make a mark on a man, just leave him bald, not needing to devour the parts that anchored him in his flesh in order to pull out his soul. A bunyip or potkoorok might chew a body up, some, but the dreamings that lay in billabongs and creeks didn’t have teeth, as such, and tended to crush up the guts and bones and leave the bag of skin that contained them intact.

  “Maybe it was dingos, or a goanna, after,” said Alby, pressing hands down on thighs to come upright. The ligaments in his knees creaked as he straightened.

  Bowley shook his head, doubtfully. He extracted his thumb from his belt and scratched at the edges of his moustache, his skin still raw from the morning’s cold-water shave. He wished he’d remembered to put on his uniform cap - still on Maise’s outdoor table beside the cold dregs of his tea. He felt vulnerable without it, his lawman’s persona incomplete. He realized his hand was still shaking and put it back to his belt.

  “Dingo’s too smart,” he said, “and a goanna’s been around long enough to know better.”

  “What about the blackfellas?” said Dermott O’Shane.

  “Why would they bring him in if they’d done it?” said Alby.

  The young Irishman shrugged. “Maybe he did something to them. They wanted us to know they’d had their justice.”

  “Old Stink?” said Bowley. Stink McClure had been a mad old bastard, but he’d known better than most how to stay on the good side of the natives. Although, if it was the blackfellas that’d done it, no-one in their right mind, not even a magister, was going to dispute it. That meant case closed, no further problems. Bowley didn’t think so.

  “We should go out to check on the others,” said Maise.

  The Del Mar clan, she meant, her blood kin, in their fortified farmstead up the top of the Loop, where the track crossed the ridge and turned to come back down. She had a sister up there, Lucy, and a niece, as well as all her cousins and uncles and aunts. Less important, for her, King James Campbell and White Mitchell with his retarded brother and all the other antisocials prospecting the gullies and creek beds between Del Mar’s and the town.

  Everyone looked at Bowley, the Queen’s Man, the town’s sole protector, although he was as mundane as any of them. Useless Loop was too small to maintain its own magister or even a runesmith. Only German, the blacksmith, with the dozen signs he knew that worked on hooves and boot soles. The town had Bowley and the rune posts at the gate and the rune stones laid beneath their houses and in a ring around the town. And they had the runes on their boots and bullets of English silver in their guns. None of which would stop a really strong and bitter dreaming, should the land ever throw one up, just make it angrier.

  Alby snuffled back a chunk of phlegm and dug in his vest pocket for a handkerchief. He saved Bowley from having to answer. “Bugger that, Maise.”

  Bowley nodded, hoping his relief wasn’t too obvious. He badly wanted a whiskey, couldn’t while he was on duty. He thought he might get away with a gulp or two from the bottle under his desk, later.

  “Come crank up the telegraph for us, eh, Maise? We’ll get onto Ballarat and see what they say.” For a moment he thought she’d argue. Her shoulders were tucked up like they got when she was that way inclined. But she nodded. Bowley waved a hand to encompass Alby, German and O’Shane. “You blokes take the body to the pub and put it in the coolroom.”

  Alby snorted. “Ulf’s going to be bloody happy about that.”

  “Tell him I’ve deputized you,” Bowley called back over his shoulder, walking after Maise, his shadow stretching ahead and eager to be gone.

  ~ * ~

  Investigate. Report. Was the terse reply that came back from Ballarat in the middle of the afternoon.

  Bowley had stayed at Maise’s for lunch after they sent their telegram, returned, without thinking, to his accustomed seat on post office’s porch. She’d made his food in the same manner, neither his fear nor her anger enough to derail them from their familiar patterns. Neither of them had spoken while they ate. They rarely did say much. Usually, it was because there wasn’t all that much to say, just closeness to be had and that was something both of them felt was best taken in silence. Today the crow’s feet at the corners of Maise’s eyes had been tight with worry. A lot going on inside of her, he could tell, although it was unlikely that much, if any, of it would find its way into words.

  Leaning against the frame of the stationhouse door, Bowley unfolded the paper for the dozenth time and re-read Maise’s scrawled transcription. As if, somehow, the message might’ve changed from the previous eleven times he’d read it. Investigate. Report. “Green Christ.”

  Maise had wanted to ride out right away. Bowley had started to shake his head, to point out that there wasn’t time to get out to Del Mar’s and back before dark. She’d smelled the whiskey on his breath as soon as he opened his mouth. He’d watched her rigid back as she stalked away.

  He watched her now, back on her porch with Georgie sprawled at her feet, both of them sharing the last rays of sun and Maise pretending not to see him watching. He’d always thought, vaguely, that one day he’d make an honest woman of her, although both of them were past childrearing age. He’d never quite gotten around to asking. In truth, he was happy enough to just share the stillness of her front porch and, sometimes, the warmth between her bed sheets, whenever the urgency was enough in both of them to keep him there overnight.

  Cold nights alone stretched ahead of him.

  His thoughts circled back to worrying at what the hell might’ve done that to old Stink, like nothing he’d ever seen before - heard about, maybe, but only up north, nowhere nearby - and where it might’ve come from and how could it, since dreamings didn’t move from the patch of land that dreamed them? And how strong was this dreaming? Strong enough to get past the rune stones and the gate? Because if it was, there was no-one and nothing here that could stop it from doing to the whole town what it’d done to Stink McClure.

  There were dreamings that came that strong, he’d heard, out in the desert, where the land was still wakeful and warlike, that could take over a person, or more than one, and use them as its teeth and claws ... He shuddered, thinking of human teeth tearing up Stink.

  Georgie’s shadow slunk off under the porch, leaving the dog still asleep in her patch of sun.

  Other animal shadows flitted across the dusty clay of the street, looking for dark places to hide. Their frantic owners pursued them. Cats, chooks, a couple of early-rising possums and Ted Wright’s brown nanny goat, united in flight. Georgie awoke with a start, twisted wildly about and, with a swallowed yip, followed her shadow under the porch.

  The pair of horses hitched at the watering trough in front of the smithy started in alarm as their shadows bucked, shadow-legs stretching with their feet anchored to the runes beneath the horses’ shoes. German tumbled out and lunged for the animals’ reins. The horses quieted before he even reached them, opting to freeze with flight denied. Bowley could see their ears flicking, trying to pinpoint the threat. German’s head swivelled to look down the street, towards the gate. Maise was up out of her chair and looking that way too.

  The horse was a dappled grey of the long-necked, spindle-legged variety bred to tolerate sorcery. Its rider wore a battered oilskin coat, with worn and faded edges on its collar, cuffs and hem, and slashes of lighter colour where it had dried out and stiffened in the dust and sun. A rough Hessian shawl draped the man’s head and shoulders beneath the sagging brim of his hat.

  He reined his horse to a halt in the middle of the street, facing the setting sun. Neither the man nor his horse cast a shadow. They stood,
superimposed on the world, but not really fitted to it.

  Two days at least for a magister to come up from Ballarat with a company of redcoats in tow, and Bowley’s superiors had made it plain that they weren’t coming to his aid at all until he could tell them more precisely what they’d be walking into. So who in hell was this, right here and now?

  Bowley reached inside the door and took his uniform cap from its peg. Maise looked his way as he stepped outside. He tried a tentative smile. She didn’t respond. He pretended not to notice, smoothed his jacket and hitched his gun belt. He straightened his policeman’s badge on its silver chain and stepped down from the porch.

  He was acutely conscious of the eyes that followed his progress across the rutted clay. Maise and German. Alby, leaning outside the pub with Ulf Erikssen. He could feel his shadow’s reluctance to follow, a heaviness in his calves and feet, like his legs had fallen half asleep. He willed it to stay with him.