‘Welcome back,’ Tohiro said, stepping back to let him in. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Things went better than you thought?’
‘Things went faster.’
Curiosity plucked at the corners of Tohiro’s eyes. Ian gazed into the house, willing away the questions that begged to be asked. Tohiro closed the door.
‘You look…’ he began.
Ian waited. Like shit. Or maybe pounded. The silence stretched and he glanced over. Tohiro’s face was a soft melancholy. Ian nodded, barely moving, half asking him to finish, half daring him.
‘You look older.’
‘Yeah, well. You know. Time.’
A shriek and the drumming of bare feet and Diane had leapt into his arms. His spine protested the weight. Ian held her carefully, like something precious. Then, as if she’d suddenly remembered that they weren’t alone, she drew back, tried to make it all seem casual.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey. You been good?’
Diane shrugged – an I guess gesture.
‘We were just about to have supper,’ Tohiro said. ‘If you’d like to join us?’
Ian looked at Diane. Her face was impassive, blank, but at the edges there were the touches invisible to anyone else, anyone who didn’t know her as he did.
‘I think I’d rather just roll on home,’ Ian said. ‘That good by you, sweetie?’
‘Sure,’ she said, upbeat enough that he knew it had been her fondest wish. He let her ride him to the car, piggyback.
That night, they both suffered nightmares. It struck Ian, as he calmed Diane from hers and waited for his own to fade, that there would be more nights like this; screams from her or from him, then warm milk and nightlights and empty talk that gave the evil some time to fade. That if they were lucky there would be many more. Nothing more would happen to Flat Diane; justice would not come to call for him. It was the best he could hope for.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered to her as she began to drowse. Curled into her blanket, her breath came deeper, more regular. ‘It’s over. It’s over, sweetie. It’s all right.’
He didn’t add that just being over didn’t mean it hadn’t changed everything forever, or that some things don’t stop just because they’ve ended. Or that a girl set voyaging takes her own chances, and no father’s love – however profound – can ever call her back. Those weren’t the sorts of things you said when all you had to offer your child were comfort and hope.
Singing My Sister Down
Margo Lanagan
Margo Lanagan (1960–) is an Australian writer primarily known for her dark fantasy short stories, some of which are influenced by folktale. Although Lanagan has been a published author since 1990, she first came to the attention of readers outside of her own country with the collection Black Juice (2004), for which she won a World Fantasy Award and a Michael L. Printz Honor Award. Subsequently, Lanagan has become perhaps the most critically acclaimed contemporary Australian fantasist, and her novel Tender Morsels (2008) also won a World Fantasy Award. New work includes the novel Watered Silk (2011) and the story collection Yellowcake (2011). The horrifying ‘Singing My Sister Down’ (2005) is Lanagan’s most anthologized story and continues the thread of ‘weird ritual’ stories in this volume.
We all went down to the tar-pit, with mats to spread our weight.
Ikky was standing on the bank, her hands in a metal twin-loop behind her. She’d stopped sulking; now she looked, more, stare-y and puzzled.
Chief Barnarndra pointed to the pit. ‘Out you go then, girl. You must walk on out there to the middle and stand. When you picked a spot, your people can join you.’
So Ik stepped out, very ordinary. She walked out. I thought – hoped, even – she might walk right across and into the thorns the other side; at the same time, I knew she wouldn’t do that.
She walked the way you walk on the tar, except without the arms balancing. She nearly fell from a stumble once, but Mumma hulloo’d to her, and she straightened and walked upright out to the very middle, where she slowed and stopped.
Mumma didn’t look to the chief, but all us kids and the rest did. ‘Right, then,’ he said.
Mumma stepped out as if she’d just herself that moment happened to decide to. We went after her – only us, Ik’s family, which was like us being punished, too, everyone watching us walk out to that girl who was our shame.
In the winter you come to the pit to warm your feet in the tar. You stand long enough to sink as far as your ankles – the littler you are, the longer you can stand. You soak the heat in for as long as the tar doesn’t close over your feet and grip, and it’s as good as warmed boots wrapping your feet. But in summer, like this day, you keep away from the tar, because it makes the air hotter and you mind about the stink.
But today we had to go out, and everyone had to see us go.
Ikky was tall, but she was thin and light from all the worry and prison; she was going to take a long time about sinking. We got our mats down, all the food parcels and ice-baskets and instruments and such spread out evenly on the broad planks Dash and Felly had carried out.
‘You start, Dash,’ said Mumma, and Dash got up and put his drum-ette to his hip and began with ‘Fork-Tail Trio’, and it did feel a bit like a party. It stirred Ikky awake from her hung-headed shame; she lifted up and even laughed, and I saw her hips move in the last chorus, side to side.
Then Mumma got out one of the ice-baskets, which was already black on the bottom from meltwater.
Ikky gasped. ‘Ha! What! Crab! Where’d that come from?’
‘Never you mind, sweet-thing.’ Mumma lifted some meat to Ikky’s mouth, and rubbed some of the crush-ice into her hair.
‘Oh, Mumma!’ Ik said with her mouth full.
‘May as well have the best of this world while you’re here,’ said Mumma. She stood there and fed Ikky like a baby, like a pet guinea-bird.
‘I thought Auntie Mai would come,’ said Ik.
‘Auntie Mai, she’s useless,’ said Dash. ‘She’s sitting at home with her handkerchief.’
‘I wouldn’t’ve cared, her crying,’ said Ik. ‘I would’ve thought she’d say goodbye to me.’
‘Her heart’s too hurt,’ said Mumma. ‘You frightened her. And she’s such a straight lady – she sees shame where some of us just see people. Here, inside the big claw, that’s the sweetest meat.’
‘Ooh, yes! Is anyone else feasting with me?’
‘No, darlin’, this is your day only. Well, okay, I’ll give some to this little sad-eyes here, huh? Felly never had crab but the once. Is it yum? Ooh, it’s yum! Look at him!’
Next she called me to do my flute – the flashiest, hardest music I knew. And Ik listened; Ik who usually screamed at me to stop pushing spikes into her brain, she watched my fingers on the flute-holes and my sweating face and my straining, bowing body and, for the first time, I didn’t feel like just the nuisance-brother. I played well, out of the surprise of her not minding. I couldn’t’ve played better. I heard everyone else being surprised, too, at the end of those tunes that they must’ve known, too well from all my practising.
I sat down, very hungry. Mumma passed me the water-cup and a damp-roll.
‘I’m stuck now,’ said Ik, and it was true – the tar had her by the feet, closed in a gleaming line like that pair of zipper-slippers I saw once in the shoemaster’s vitrine.
‘Oh yeah, well and truly stuck,’ said Mumma. ‘But then, you knew when you picked up that axe-handle you were sticking yourself.’
‘I did know.’
‘No coming unstuck from this one. You could’ve let that handle lie.’
That was some serious teasing.
‘No, I couldn’t, Mumma, and you know.’
‘I do, baby chicken. I always knew you’d be too angry, once the wedding-glitter rubbed off your skin. It was a good party, though, wasn’t it?’ And they laughed at each other, Mumma having to steady Ikky or her ankles would’ve snapped over. And when their laught
er started going strange Mumma said, ‘Well, this party’s going to be almost as good, ’cause it’s got children. And look what else!’ And she reached for the next ice-basket.
And so the whole long day went, in treats and songs, in ice and stink and joke-stories and gossip and party-pieces. On the banks, people came and went, and the chief sat in his chair and was fanned and fed, and the family of Ikky’s husband sat around the chief, being served, too, all in purple-cloth with flashing edging, very prideful.
She went down so slowly.
‘Isn’t it hot?’ Felly asked her.
‘It’s like a big warm hug up my legs,’ said Ik. ‘Come here and give me a hug, little stick-arms, and let me check. Oof, yes, it’s just like that, only lower down.’
‘You’re coming down to me,’ said Fel, pleased.
‘Yeah, soon I’ll be able to bite your ankles like you bite mine.’
Around midafternoon, Ikky couldn’t move her arms any more and had a panic, just quiet, not so the bank-people would’ve noticed.
‘What’m I going to do, Mumma?’ she said. ‘When it comes up over my face? When it closes my nose?’
‘Don’t you worry. You won’t be awake for that.’ And Mumma cooled her hands in the ice, dried them on her dress, and rubbed them over Ik’s shoulders, down Ik’s arms to where the tar had locked her wrists.
‘You’d better not give me any teas, or herbs, or anything,’ said Ik. ‘They’ll get you, too, if you help me. They’ll come out to make sure.’
Mumma put her hands over Felly’s ears. ‘Tristem gave me a gun,’ she whispered.
Ikky’s eyes went wide. ‘But you can’t! Everyone’ll hear!’
‘It’s got a thing on it, quietens it. I can slip it in a tar-wrinkle, get you in the head when your head is part sunk, fold back the wrinkle, tell ’em your heart stopped, the tar pressed it stopped.’
Felly shook his head free. Ikky was looking at Mumma, quietening. There was only the sound of Dash tearing bread with his teeth, and the breeze whistling in the thorn-galls away over on the shore. I was watching Mumma and Ikky closely – I’d wondered about that last part, too. But now this girl up to her waist in the pit didn’t even look like our Ikky. Her face was changing like a cloud, or like a masque-lizard’s colours; you don’t see them move but they become something else, then something else again.
‘No,’ she said, still looking at Mumma. ‘You won’t do that. You won’t have to.’ Her face had a smile on it that touched off one on Mumma’s, too, so that they were both quiet, smiling at something in each other that I couldn’t see.
And then their eyes ran over and they were crying and smiling, and then Mumma was kneeling on the wood, her arms around Ikky, and Ikky was ugly against her shoulder, crying in a way that we couldn’t interrupt them.
That was when I realised how many people were watching, when they set up a big, spooky oolooling and stamping on the banks, to see Mumma grieve.
‘Fo!’ I said to Dash, to stop the hair creeping around on my head from that noise. ‘There never was such a crowd when Chep’s daddy went down.’
‘Ah, but he was old and crazy,’ said Dash through a mouthful of bread, ‘and only killed other olds and crazies.’
‘Are those fish-people? And look at the yellow-cloths – they’re from up among the caves, all that way!’
‘Well, it’s nearly Langasday, too,’ said Dash. ‘Lots of people on the move, just happening by.’
‘Maybe. Is that an honour, or a greater shame?’
Dash shrugged. ‘This whole thing is upended. Who would have a party in the tar, and with family going down?’
‘It’s what Mumma wanted.’
‘Better than having her and Ik be like this all day.’ Dash’s hand slipped into the nearest ice-basket and brought out a crumb of gilded macaroon. He ate it as if he had a perfect right.
Everything went slippery in my mind, after that. We were being watched so hard! Even though it was quiet out here, the pothering wind brought crowd-mumble and scraps of music and smoke our way, so often that we couldn’t be private and ourselves. Besides, there was Ikky with the sun on her face, but the rest of her from the rib-peaks down gloved in tar, never to see sun again. Time seemed to just have gone, in big clumps, or all the day was happening at once or something, I was wondering so hard about what was to come, I was watching so hard the differences from our normal days. I wished I had more time to think, before she went right down; my mind was going breathless, trying to get all its thinking done.
But evening came and Ik was a head and shoulders, singing along with us in the lamplight, all the old songs – ‘A Flower for You’, ‘Hen and Chicken Bay’, ‘Walking the Tracks with Beejum Singh’, ‘Dollarberries’. She sang all Felly’s little-kid songs that normally she’d sneer at; she got Dash to teach her his new one, ‘The Careless Wanderer’, with the tricky chorus. She made us work on that one like she was trying to stop us noticing the monster bonfires around the shore, the other singing, of fishing songs and forest songs, the stomp and clatter of dancing in the gathering darkness. But they were there, however well we sang, and no other singing in our lives had had all this going on behind it.
When the tar began to tip Ik’s chin up, Mumma sent me for the wreath. ‘Mai will have brought it, over by the chief’s chair.’
I got up and started across the tar, and it was as if I cast magic ahead of me, silence-making magic, for as I walked – and it was good to be walking, not sitting – musics petered out, and laughter stopped, and dancers stood still, and there were eyes at me, all along the dark banks, strange eyes and familiar both.
The wreath showed up in the crowd ahead, a big, pale ring trailing spirals of whisper-vine, the beautifullest thing. I climbed up the low bank there, and the ground felt hard and cold after a day on the squishy tar. My ankles shivered as I took the wreath from Mai. It was heavy; it was fat with heavenly scents.
‘You’ll have to carry those,’ I said to Mai, as someone handed her the other garlands. ‘You should come out, anyway. Ik wants you there.’
She shook her head. ‘She’s cloven my heart in two with that axe of hers.’
‘What, so you’ll chop hers as well, this last hour?’
We glared at each other in the bonfire light, all loaded down with the fine, pale flowers.
‘I never heard this boy speak with a voice before, Mai,’ said someone behind her.
‘He’s very sure,’ said someone else. ‘This is Ikky’s Last Things we’re talking about, Mai. If she wants you to be one of them…’
‘She shouldn’t have shamed us, then,’ Mai said, but weakly.
‘You going to look back on this and think yourself a po-face,’ said the first someone.
‘But it’s like –’ May sagged and clicked her tongue. ‘She should have cared what she did to this family,’ she said with her last fight. ‘It’s more than just herself.’
‘Take the flowers, Mai. Don’t make the boy do this twice over. Time is short.’
‘Yeah, everybody’s time is short,’ said the first someone.
Mai stood, pulling her mouth to one side.
I turned and propped the top of the wreath on my forehead, so that I was like a little boy-bride, trailing a head of flowers down my back to the ground. I set off over the tar, leaving the magic silence in the crowd. There was only the rub and squeak of flower stalks in my ears; in my eyes, instead of the flourishes of bonfires, there were only the lamps in a ring around Mumma, Felly, Dash, and Ikky’s head. Mumma was kneeling bonty-up on the wood, talking to Ikky; in the time it had taken me to get the wreath, Ikky’s head had been locked still.
‘Oh, the baby,’ Mai whimpered behind me. ‘The little darling.’
Bit late for darling-ing now, I almost said. I felt cross and frightened and too grown-up for Mai’s silliness.
‘Here, Ik, we’ll make you beautiful now,’ said Mumma, laying the wreath around Ik’s head. ‘We’ll come out here to these flowers when you’re gone, and kn
ow you’re here.’
‘They’ll die pretty quick – I’ve seen it.’ Ik’s voice was getting squashed, coming out through closed jaws. ‘The heat wilts ’em.’
‘They’ll always look beautiful to you,’ said Mumma. ‘You’ll carry down this beautiful wreath, and your family singing.’
I trailed the vines out from the wreath like flares from the edge of the sun.
‘Is that Mai?’ said Ik. Mai looked up, startled, from laying the garlands between the vines. ‘Show me the extras, Mai.’
Mai held up a garland. ‘Aren’t they good? Trumpets from Low Swamp, Auntie Patti’s whisper-vine, and star-weed to bind. You never thought ordinary old stars could look so good, I’ll bet.’
‘I never did.’
It was all set out right, now. It went in the order: head, half-ring of lamps behind (so as not to glare in her eyes), wreath, half-ring of garlands behind, leaving space in front of her for us.
‘Okay, we’re going to sing you down now,’ said Mumma. ‘Everybody get in and say a proper goodbye.’ And she knelt inside the wreath a moment herself, murmured something in Ikky’s ear and kissed her on the forehead.
We kids all went one by one. Felly got clingy and made Ikky cry; Dash dashed in and planted a quick kiss while she was still upset and would hardly have noticed him; Mumma gave me a cloth and I crouched down and wiped Ik’s eyes and nose – and then could not speak to her bare, blinking face.
‘You’re getting good at that flute,’ she said.
But this isn’t about me, Ik. This is not at all about me.
‘Will you come out here some time, and play over me, when no one else’s around?’
I nodded. Then I had to say some words, of some kind, I knew. I wouldn’t get away without speaking. ‘If you want.’
‘I want, okay? Now give me a kiss.’
I gave her a kid’s kiss, on the mouth. Last time I kissed her, it was carefully on the cheek as she was leaving for her wedding. Some of her glitter had come off on my lips. Now I patted her hair and backed away over the wreath.
Mai came in last. ‘Fairy doll,’ I heard her say sobbingly. ‘Only-one.’
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 220