We Call It Monster

by Lachlan Walter

“I don’t really know – I’ll have to talk to Marcus and Cynthia. But let’s say two or three days, at a guess. What I propose is that we use this time to send out a couple of warriors, people who can take care of themselves if there’s any trouble. The coast is barely a day away now, so they’ll either bump into our scouts and report back or work out what went wrong and haul arse.”

  None of Mykul’s peers liked his idea. He couldn’t blame them, he didn’t like it much either. But unless the scouts reported back soon there was no other choice – he couldn’t lead the whole tribe into the unknown, not if something had gone wrong. And so he told his friends of the decision that he had made by the fire.

  “I’ll lead the warriors. I know the way, I’ve got the know-how to fix the transmitter, I know what to do if something goes arse-up. And I can’t ask someone to do something that I’m not willing to do myself. What kind of leader would that make me?”

  For a long moment, no one said anything.

  “It’s your funeral,” Belinda spat, finally breaking the silence. She turned her back and stomped out the door and Mykul just let her go.

  This was something that he had to do, no matter the cost.

  “Luke?” Mykul’s voice shook although he was trying hard to hide his distress from his old friend.

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Can you choose three of your best to come with me?”

  “Now?”

  “Yep. Wake them up if you have to, we’re burning daylight.” Mykul looked around the room. No one else chipped in, knowing better than to try and change his mind. “Okay, thanks everyone, that’s it.”

  His friends started shuffling outside, glad to leave him alone with what could be considered his foolishness. None of them met his eye, and he didn’t care whether they thought him mad or brave or courageous.

  He wasn’t doing it for them. He was doing it because it needed to be done.

  ***

  They left within the hour, just Mykul and three warriors, a party small enough to make quick work of the walk to the coast. Belinda didn’t bother seeing Mykul off, still too angry to even look at him. He didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have wanted her to go, if their roles had been reversed. He was sad about it nonetheless, but knowing what he had to do, he did his best to squash it down and bury it deep.

  He hoped that he could keep pace with the young women who were there to keep him safe. Unlike most members of the tribe, they weren’t in the slightest bit intimidated by him or deferential towards him. In fact, after he had been told for the third time in as many minutes that he was never to leave their sight, and told in no uncertain terms that he was to do as they said without question or hesitation, he began to suspect that they might have even been enjoying their job.

  Mykul didn’t really mind. He knew that it was for his benefit, and he actually found their attitude refreshing.

  They walked on.

  Two of the warriors took point, walking a couple of hundred metres ahead. They both carried rifles, borrowed from what Mykul laughingly called the tribe’s ‘armoury’. They had been instructed to conserve the precious ammunition they carried, and to only use it if absolutely necessary. Mykul had made clear the importance of this himself.

  They walked on.

  No one spoke; the warriors were conserving their energy, behaving how they had been trained to behave, while Mykul didn’t know what to say now that he was temporarily free of his responsibilities. Any attempt at conversation he did make was denied by his warriors’ studied determination, and so he instead looked over the land trying to reconcile the happiness he felt at walking the last leg of their trek with the worry he couldn’t shake regarding what they might find.

  He had always loved this last leg, loved the faint smell of the ocean that he knew would steadily grow stronger, loved the mix of pasture-turning-to-scrub and thick bush and crumbling suburbia that made up the patchwork land around them.

  They walked on and on and on.

  The sun slowly crawled across the sky. At some point, it dipped behind Mykul and the warriors. They let him rest every hour or so; they never sat down themselves, remaining vigilant and wary. They ate when it seemed time to do so, taking it in turns to keep watch.

  And then they kept walking.

  At some point in the middle of the afternoon, something finally happened. It began as a fuzzy shape in the distance that slowly drew closer, walking the same broken highway as Mykul and the warriors. When the two warriors on point decided that the shape was close enough, they gestured for Mykul and the remaining warrior to hang back, before unshouldering their rifles and taking aim and waiting. The warrior with Mykul never took her eyes off her sisters-in-arms, everyone just waiting as the shape slowly-slowly-slowly approached.

  Mykul suddenly cursed his old-man memory, remembering one of the few things he had brought with him. He dropped his pack to the ground and started fishing through it, soon drawing out a cracked-leather case sealed with tarnished brass buckles. Carefully working the buckles free, he withdrew his most cherished possession: a pair of worn but still working binoculars, one of the few things that his father had left him.

  Mykul stroked them almost lovingly, before raising them to his eyes and checking out what was what. His eyes widened – the tribe’s scouts were slowly plodding down the highway, one lying motionless on a stretcher that was being carried by the other two. Without a second thought, Mykul tucked the binoculars away, slung his pack on his back then started walking to meet them. They were his people, it was his duty, and now that he knew they weren’t dead he needed to find out what had gone wrong.

  But a firm grip on his arm stopped him dead.

  “Don’t,” said the warrior who had remained with him.

  Mykul looked down at the short, stocky young woman who held him tight, and he couldn’t help smiling. He had been there when she had been born, had helped comfort her when her parents had passed away, and had watched her grow up and fall in love and get married. And there she stood, telling him what to do as if he was the child and she was the elder.

  He couldn’t help being impressed by her confidence, but he still told her to let him go.

  “No way, don’t be stupid,” she said. “Not until it’s safe – we don’t know what happened yet. It might have been an accident, yeah, but it might have been something else. Maybe he’s sick, maybe it’s contagious, we don’t know. And so you’re staying here until we do.”

  Insulted and ordered around by someone barely out of their teens, Mykul couldn’t really believe what was happening to him. But nonetheless, he was proud of this young warrior.

  “You’re the boss,” he said with a laugh.

  She didn’t acknowledge his slight joke, but she did let him go. Together, they watched as the two warriors on point conducted a shouted conversation with the scouts. Most of their words were lost on the wind, and Mykul had no real idea what they were talking about. Frustrated and impatient to keep on, he tapped his feet, crossed his arms over his chest, paced back and forth. He imagined that this was how the tribe’s camels must feel when they were desperate to run but instead had to make do with chomping at the bit.

  After a long time, the warriors on point lowered their rifles and waved the scouts on, before turning to Mykul and his escort and signalling the all clear.

  The story that Mykul heard almost broke his heart.

  Two great beasts had been battling on the beach that the tribe thought of as their summer home. The scouts had crested the hill overlooking the coast in time to witness the end of the fight, and had seen the beasts inflict mortal wounds on each other before collapsing onto the surf and sand. They had seen the ocean turn a purple-red. They had seen the scavenging birds and rodents keel over as they fed on the bodies of the beasts; they had seen the fish floating belly-up next to the hulking, twitching remains. The scout lying motionless on the stretcher? He had drawn the short straw and been the one to investigate. But something had gone wrong.

  “What happen
ed?” Mykul asked the scouts who could still stand.

  “We don’t know. He didn’t get within twenty metres of them before collapsing. We tried to help, but he warned us off.”

  One of the scouts looked down at his stricken friend. “He crawled back to us. Can you believe it?”

  Mykul could. The tribe’s scouts and warriors were tough; if they had to, they would walk barefoot over broken glass to protect their people, which some of them had actually done.

  “Any idea what’s wrong with him?”

  “Nope. We just bundled him up and strapped him in and hauled arse.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. This was a disaster; that particular stretch of beach had fed the tribe for years, there was something about it that made it perfect for spring spawning.

  The warriors and scouts looked at Mykul, waiting for him to decide what to do next. But Mykul literally didn’t know what to do. The only thing he did know was that he had no need or desire to see the bodies of the beasts. He had seen enough death in his time, both of the human and monstrous kind. And there were more pressing matters – if the fish that had filled the tribe’s bellies year-in-year-out now needed a safer and more inviting place to breed, the tribe’s only alternative was to walk and walk and walk in search of a new spring home.

  “I hate my job,” he muttered to himself, the only words that seemed necessary.

  And This too Shall Pass

  When the elders called for the latest child-of-age, she and her little brothers were out in the bush-field, collecting fruit with the other children of the tribe. Three adults kept watch, turning a blind eye when the children’s work became play as it was wont to do, smiling to themselves as bright laughter filled the air. But the child-of-age resisted the urge to join her friends and climb the immense Tentacle Trees or scale the black bubble-boulders that dotted the land or frolic and run and have fun. It wasn’t fear that held her back – all the children understood the boundaries of their world. They knew what was safe and what wasn’t; they knew not to wander beyond an adult’s eye. These had been their earliest lessons, backed up by horrific night-time tales such as ‘The boy who grabbed the Biter-Vine’ or ‘The girl who ate from the Eucalyptus tree’ or ‘The lost child who fell into the Glass Pit.’ Every child knew someone who had ignored a lesson or broken a rule and paid the ultimate price.

  No, it wasn’t fear that held back the child-of-age. She was simply hungry, and knew that not enough work had been done to fill her own empty belly, let alone those of the rest of the tribe.

  “Melaarny!” someone called, a hoarse voice coming from somewhere unseen.

  She broke from her thoughts at the sound of her name. The voice didn’t belong to any of the adults keeping watch over them, but it was familiar nonetheless. Deciding to first finish the work in front of her, the bunch of grapes she had just cut went into the sack beside her.

  “Melaarny!” the voice called again.

  Curiosity had her. She wiped her hands clean on the seat of her tattered pants before drinking a little water from a skin hanging from her belt. She finally turned to look. “Shit…”

  “I heard that,” her big sister said, towering over her. “If you’re not careful, I’ll get mum to wash your mouth out.”

  “Jax!”

  Melaarny threw herself at her big sister and hugged her tight. Jaxinta kissed the top of Melaarny’s head. They both shed a few tears of happiness. It was beautiful.

  And then Jaxinta broke their embrace, pushing her little sister away. “Don’t hog me, Mel. You aren’t the only little bugger I’m here to see.”

  Jaxinta smiled a cheeky smile then pointed at their brothers, who were hacking away at the vine in front of them and loving every minute of it.

  Eidwood and Maffu were twins, barely six years old, shy and wary yet absolutely fascinated by the world. Melaarny knew that it was really her job to keep them safe and teach them what they needed to know. She took a certain pride in this responsibility; unlike her friends, such a task wasn’t a burden to be begrudged.

  She looked over at her big sister. Tall, muscled, weather-beaten and unmistakably adult, Jaxinta couldn’t have been more different from the short, skinny child-of-age that shared her blood. Melaarny knew that her load was nothing compared to that shouldered by Jaxinta, yet the thought of everything her big sister had seen excited her. She couldn’t wait for her time to come – the four years that separated them was a gulf wider than the ragged chasm at the far-end of the bush-field, the southern border of their land.

  “Eid? Maff? Aren’t you going to say hello?” Jaxinta asked, squatting in front of them.

  The twins turned at their names and looked upon the fearsome sight of their eldest sister. Eidwood actually dropped the mess of flesh and juice he was holding, all that remained of the grapes he had been squishing between his fingers. Maffu’s mouth hung open; a fly-catcher, as the adults called them. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition in their faces.

  Melaarny reached out and closed Maffu’s mouth before cupping her hand and whispered in her sister’s ear. “Sorry, Jax, they probably don’t remember you that well.”

  Jaxinta’s expression hardened. “It’s me,” she said. “It’s your biggest sister. I told you I’d come back, and here I am – back from the land of never-never and far far away.”

  The twins smiled at this; just the night before, the family had sat down together and their dad had told them that story.

  “Never-never, like Peter-the-man-Pan,” Eidwood said with a gap-toothed, little-boy smile.

  “How will we get there?” Maffu asked excitedly.

  “By riding the Fixed Bird!” all four of them shouted.

  Maffu held his arms out by his sides and started whooshing back and forth. Jaxinta and Melaarny laughed and shouted encouragement. Maffu kept whooshing. Soon, Eidwood was trailing in his wake.

  “They’re good kids,” Melaarny said.

  Jaxinta snorted at her little sister’s unintended irony, and took the opportunity to stand back up. “I’d expect nothing less, with you looking after them.”

  Jaxinta stretched her spine, reaching for the sky. She twisted her head back and forth, her neck cracking with a sound like breaking wood. Melaarny looked up at her, jutting her chin defiantly, trying to summon up the courage to ask a question that had been bothering her a long time.

  “You’ve been gone for ages, Jax. I reckon three summers and a bit. Where were you? What happened?”

  Jaxinta’s face hardened once again. “Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon.”

  Melaarny’s jaw literally dropped, and Jaxinta couldn’t help smiling. She bent down and kissed the top of her little sister’s head for a second time.

  “That’s right, it’s time,” she said. “But it’ll be okay, you’re as sharp as a bone-knife.” She took Melaarny’s hand. “You ready?”

  Melaarny was suddenly nervous, and she knew that it showed. But she held her head high, doing her best to look determined. “No worries.”

  “Well, come on then, let’s go.”

  ***

  The child-of-age and her warrior-sister strode across the bush-field, heading for the cave system that the tribe called home. They walked side by side; Jaxinta was neither hurried nor unhurried, Melaarny pushed herself to match her big sister’s stride. The twins ran ahead, still holding their arms out at their sides and whooshing back and forth. It wasn’t just the story of Peter-the-man-Pan and the land of never-never that featured the Fixed Birds; the children had been told time and again how they had once crowded the sky, and how their birdsong used to echo across the whole world, and that a long time ago their hairless skin shone and glistened in the sun. Melaarny couldn’t believe such childish tales. Wings shattered and cracked, rusty bodies broken, squat faces buried in the earth – the Fixed Birds were just dead things blocking some of the paths and tracks through the tribe’s land.

  Jaxinta caught her eye. “I never believed it, either,” she said, plucking the thought from
her little sister’s head as easily as plucking ripe fruit from a low-hanging tree.

  “And now?”

  Although she tried hard to hide it, Melaarny couldn’t suppress the excitement in her voice. Jaxinta thought it over for a second; there was no right way to answer her little sister’s question, it wasn’t her job or her responsibility. She thought it over some more then finally shook her head.

  “You’ll see,” was all she said.

  Melaarny didn’t reply, her face falling into a pout. Jaxinta decided not to indulge her.

  “Let’s pick it up, little sis. We don’t want to be late.”

  They continued across the bush-field, heading north, heading home. Other children worked and played around them, picking fruit and harvesting vegetables, rough-housing and running as free as they could, watched over by older siblings or the three adults acting as their shepherds. As usual, everyone stayed well clear of the rubble slope of Bourke Hill. It was a deadly place of ruined earth and steel and wood: craggy spires and mesas towered over their heads, twisting spikes jutted into the air, a few Fixed Birds and black bubble-boulders clung precariously to its face. The tribe’s land stretched no further to the east than the start of its slopes. To go beyond was forbidden, every child knew that. And none of them knew anyone who had been brave enough to try.

  Jaxinta and Melaarny walked on.

  Jaxinta let her little sister sit with her thoughts. She didn’t want to over-excite her, didn’t want to comfort her, didn’t want to delude her. It was Melaarny’s time; how she dealt with what came next was up to her alone.

  And so Jaxinta kept her mouth shut, barely saying a word as they left the bush-field behind, entrusting the twins to the three watchful adults. She didn’t comment on the no-man’s land to their west. It was a treacherous plain that shaped their path, full of unexplored caverns and caves, riddled with tunnels that shifted and spoke during the strongest of winds. The furthest edge of this no-man’s land was lost in the depths of Lizzie’s Creek, while the bank opposite seemed a mirror of the rubble slopes of Bourke Mountain.