by Charlie Nash
She raises her eyebrows, hopeful. I look away. I name a hideous price, more than enough to pay the djinni for a half-year.
She nods slowly. “I will pay you half now?” she asks. Her hand darts to her bag. So swift. So unexpected. I catch her before I realize what I have done. She stares at me, frightened green eyes, my hand closed about her wrist.
No, no, I say, dropping her. In my head, my tongue is tasting her blood. Pay when I finish. For then there is no transgression until the end.
She almost protests, but I have scared her. She leaves me with the drawing and the rising panic in my ill-fitting body prison. I go to walk into the back, but a fit comes and I throw the paper down. My head is full of her design: a bird, wings outstretched, a hunting form, talons out, eyes focused. I felt that, once. I shrug off the human brain, and the smell of prey sharpens. I leap onto the cabinets and scan the revealed shadows. The mouse is still there, I sense him. I wait, watching him along his usual track. I pounce.
The cabinet crashes to the side. I’m aware of the mouse-steps, accelerating. But this body is ungainly. My good shoulder crashes into the wall. A silk drape comes down. I chase the small gray haunches and lose the ability to recall.
When I wake later, it is dark and I am under a cabinet. The shop is a mess. There is fur on my lips and blood in my mouth. Even after I have cleaned, I am not sure if it is mine or mouse.
I work on the piece in a feverish state. For the first two days, my hand shakes whenever I think of it, and I cannot begin any part of the bird. I raid my treasures and make the circlet from a platinum sword pommel. I select diamonds for inlay from a sultana’s bracelet, and gold and silver from other jewels that once sparkled in the mountain sun.
She comes back in two days. I show her the circlet, and she leaves quickly. I stare after her again, trying to place how she looks different each time. Maybe just because I have been dreaming of her blood and flesh.
I make the parts for the bird over the next three days, but I do not meld them. Each is small enough not to exceed the djinni’s conditions, but even still, I begin to dream of the night I hunted, and woke up in the djinni’s palace, a slave for eternity.
The next time the woman returns, I refuse to show her my work. I am not happy with it, I say. Besides, my tooth is hurting and it gives me a headache. She purses her lips. She tries to persuade me. She is excited to see her piece, she reassures me she will love it. I refuse more sternly. I tell her to come back later, that I am not feeling well.
After she leaves I stare at the pieces on my bench, holding the tooth through my pallid cheek. Sales are still not enough to meet my payment. But I am scared of this piece, of making a whole picture. My human mind is strong on craft and finances, but it has limits in regulating my real self. If I make this thing, will my mind break? Will I hunt this woman and kill her? Will I be found, imprisoned and unable to pay the djinni?
My fingers slip inside my lips to test the tooth. I grunt, surprised, as it comes away in my hand. My focus shifts to the twisted roots, pinkly stained. Am I hallucinating?
I lie on my cot and push the tooth back into place. It fits with a dull pain, and later when I wake, it sits solid in my gum.
My hand sweeps the work pieces into a box and shoves them beneath the cot. Then I dream of the mountain air, of wings so large they spanned the peaks, a cave of treasures, and a dozen other things gone forever. And I wake with my shoulder aching and tears on my cheeks.
She returns again in two days, in a suit this time, her hair braided tightly behind her head. She smiles again. “How long to go now?” she asks. “Can I pay you?”
I don’t respond, but this time I take her to the workbench. I have taken the pieces from the box, unchanged. I have prepared this moment. I tell her I cannot complete the piece, but that she can take the pieces to someone else to assemble. I have not been well, I say. I show her my hand. It shakes with the restless nights and the fear of being imprisoned. But if she will buy the pieces separate, I can pay the djinni; another month will go on.
She purses her lips, but she puts a kind hand to my shoulder. “But I want you to finish it. You must.”
I stare at the platinum wing, at the exquisite detail on the feathers. No wonder she does not believe I cannot complete it. But I wish she would not touch me, those blood-smelling fingers on my wasted flesh. I step away.
“Do you know what this is?” she says softly, tapping her finger on the now-smudged drawing. “I looked up the name of your shop,” she continues, as if this will explain it. “Parvaz. Persian. And so”—she taps the drawing—“is this rukh. So, you have to finish it. Please. No one else can. I have your money all ready.”
I stand a long moment, my true name tripping ugly memories, knowing I have no time to make other sales. My shoulder aches. I dare not look at her.
Friday, I say. Come back Friday.
When she is gone, I open the shop windows, and the door. Outside, the market tents crowd together under the building walls and sky. The breeze snaps pennants at the tent crowns, the air cool. I look for ebony hair. There is none, but I am bothered the same.
I make a wheeling turn back into the shop. The breeze is lofting the silk drapes, like it did in a sultan’s palace, long ago. I stop in the entrance to the back room, see the pieces lying on their table.
She said Persian … unusual. And she said rukh, not roc. Perhaps she is a scholar? But her keenness to pay … I rub at my shoulder. The ache is dull now, as usual. I stand there and ponder, as the sun goes down and evening comes.
Then, I go to my workbench, take up the pieces, both those in gold and the ones in my head. And I smell jasmine coming in from the street.
I am dreaming again, though this is a place I have been before. Another cave in my mountains, but one lower down, reachable for a great bird with a broken wing. I am frantic in the way living things are when they are going to die and can’t accept it. I know who lives here and should not go in; this djinni is clever; he knows how to trap things, even one as great as I.
I should not go, but I want to live. I need the djinni’s magic. For how can a rukh hunt with this useless wing? A piece of feather drifts to the djinni’s feet. He seems a savior. He can make me a human body, where a wing is not essential. But I must pay him each moon, in human money, not with my treasures. And those I cannot sell as they are; they must be transformed, but never as a bird-form complete, or weighing more than my broken feather. He twirls the white shape in his hand. I will starve slowly, or take this chance.
I work through the remaining days and Friday comes with the piece finished on my bench. It violates every term of my salvation. Too large; showing a bird-form complete. In those last hours, its emerging splendor sent me mad with memory. Snowmelt I could taste, clear skies I could see. But now it is done.
My shoulder aches. It should. She is nearly here. I have put this puzzle together. My heart bounds for what could happen now.
The bells chime on the door, and she enters. Again, different. Sharper, less feminine. I show myself.
She smiles, again, a quick movement. My reflexes scream, but I control them now. I am focused.
I am hunting.
“You are finished?” she asks.
I nod and beckon her towards the workroom. She comes almost reluctantly. I shift my shoulders against the prickle there, like feathers pushing against a cloth. A feeling that now makes sense. She pauses in the door as she sees the finished piece.
Her rukh streams in gold, platinum and jewels, immaculate. She grasps it in her hands, testing the weight.
“I should pay you,” she says.
This, here, is the moment. I look her in the eye as she hands across the cash. The contract closes. And then, for a second, I see the flames dance in her pupils. As soon as I take the notes, her smile twists, and I have confirmation of who she is.
“You are mine, rukh,” she says. She does not bother to disguise her voice now. It is the rumble of the djinni. My mind gives me pictures o
f dungeons in his mountain palace. The djinni bounces the piece in her hand. “Too heavy for our contract,” she says. “And a form complete, besides.”
I am not blinking now. I am fixed, waiting for what she will do. My back itches, my shoulder burns. Wait.
“You will be my slave now,” she says, slipping the piece about her neck, satisfied. My blood thrums as I see her pulse there, just against the circlet. “I have waited a long time, rukh, to have you like this.”
You tricked me, I say. You asked me to do this!
She laughs, not unkindly. “There is no rule against that. Now come.”
My vision focuses on that one square inch of flesh. But you have broken a rule too, I say. You were too confident. You forgot something.
She laughs, amused. Her pulse rises and falls. “And what is that?”
I can hurt you.
She laughs again. “You are trapped in that form, rukh, and I am immortal. You cannot hurt me.”
My smile, if I could, would be slow. She has not realized what I have, why I felt as I did each time she came. Your magic does not work when you wear human form.
Then the feathers rip through my skin, the talons burst my shoes.
But my beak is what kills her. It plunges into that soft neck and spills blood and flesh across the floor. I feast on her lifeless form, hunted and destroyed. And it tastes like winging over imaginary mountains, like freedom I once had.
The One You Feed
Sometimes, betrayals are innocuous things. Your friend tells your secret when they promised not. You hate them for it, but real damage is slight, so the elders say. No one takes slights of word seriously here, where a boy is born with two selves. When every day until the age of fifteen is focused on refining the good-self and shunning the monstrous self, until that day, at rite of passage, when the boy enters the stadium and slays his dark self so the good will become the adult.
For Garrick, that day is today.
I am nervous. Garrick’s twin-self crosses the red dust, far beneath the rising seats. A sheer wall separates him from the watchers, and above is a ring of archers. He enters a twin, two boys the same, but only one will leave. And if the monster is the victor, then none will. I could lose this friend today.
But no one thinks the worst will happen; it almost never does. Boys are trained in how to protect their good selves, how to nurture them with learning. Their fathers pass the wisdom of their own battles; those with fathers, at least. I finger the stones behind my back, wondering if I can still feel regret about that. I wait, but none comes. No, then. I am cured of it.
Garrick, both of him, makes his bows. No one can tell which is the good-self and which is the monster; that will come only with victory. But I can tell. I know him well.
They each take an edged weapon from their belts, and step away into the dust, as if they are just to spar. Expectation is oddly dim here; the crowd almost look bored. Good, that is good. They think they know Garrick well. They know he is the son of the highest elder, the most educated, the most dedicated. Destined for greatness. This is almost a formality; his monstrous self should be so weak from neglect, the battle will be over quickly.
The first blows fall metal on metal. Good-Garrick and monster-Garrick circle and clash. Dust rises, cloaking their skin, sticking to sweat. They are soon both red-dust boys, no skin to be seen, and only the metal edges glint through the fray. Then, there is a stumble. One Garrick goes down, the crowd leans forward. The other Garrick does not hesitate; he drives the point of the blade through the downed Garrick’s chest. The downed Garrick jerks around the blade, curled like a spider on its back, then flops still.
My heart fights my breath for space in my throat. My skin drums with the noise from the stands. The victor Garrick stands before the applause, a red-skinned version of the Garrick who walked in. He closes his eyes and raises his palms, salute to the elders. The archers relax. Then, Garrick retrieves his sword and strides towards the exit.
No elder moves. They maintain applause, standing now, tears on some faces. Pride, I believe, for they see the good-Garrick leave. Passed through the rite, and now to be a man. This is the great moment for them.
For them.
I do not stay to witness more but descend to the arena level on the seldom-used stair. Garrick is waiting in the tunnel, and he brings his eyes up from the dust. We look at each other, with our black irises reflecting the torchlight. Garrick, so dusty no one can see the evil marks. Me, with the control I learned from my father, using my mind to not show the marks. Monsters, both.
This is the great moment.
I offer the eye lenses he will need to stay concealed. Garrick nods his thanks. He has learned well in all our lessons, proved himself capable of skill and concealment, even from his good-self. And the good-self never realized another could teach his monster just as well. My pride burns my eyes when he leaves.
Now good-Garrick lies dead in the dust. The elders will be slack, not bothering to clean the body of the assumed monster-self. They will not find the unmarred skin.
You see, some betrayals are innocuous, but others are not. Words can cut as deep as a sword, and bring death when spoken wrong. The good-Garrick told my secret and so now the monster has his chance.
The 7:40 from Paraburdoo
Dave fumbles for the jack and splits a nail against its metal. The tearing pain brings curses, words that fall dead at his feet. He bites his lip to silence, exposed under the word-eating, indigo sky. His body tenses like an animal. He darts his gaze from the ribbon road to the scrappy grass tussocks, then further to the low hills, barely standing out from the pre-dawn sky. He sucks the finger and the blood taste spirals his thoughts, down to the black earth under all that grass. He comes apart, scattering like spilled crazy balls. There’s something out there, he thinks, looking back from beyond the headlights. That hunts; that eats. That sees this lame Prado, obvious speck in the lonely Pilbara road.
Hurry.
He gets his mind back, hefts the jack and slams the rear door. His words won’t echo, but this bang does. Sound rejected, not of interest. Dave thinks, the land knows what to listen for. It knows his voice. Will hunt him. Erase him. Knows he’s stopped, vulnerable. Full on crazy stuff. Gives him the creeps. Air gusts, lifts his shirt, but nothing else moves. He shivers. Dave left Mt Tom Price two hours ago. Wishes he’d done it sooner. The mine’s there, the mine where he worked. He’s supposed to be on shift now.
He’s still forty clicks from the airstrip in Paraburdoo, where the seven-forty to Perth will get him out. Forty long k’s through the twisting Pilbara road. He glances at his bare wrist; watch missing, forgotten.
Doesn’t matter, keep moving.
He snatches up the nut shifter, bangs his knee on the tow bar as he hurries round to the busted tire. He feels for the wheel nuts, covered in fine red dust. His cargos and boots are thick with the stuff; it’s in his hair and nostrils, parching him dry as roo bones cracking in the Pilbara sun.
He hears faint rushing; a truck maybe, somewhere near the horizon. He stands, straining to hear, his mind gone animal again. The sound bounces and comes at him from all around. He thinks, the road winds on itself, I’ll drive and drive and get nowhere at all.
He works faster, wrestling with panic. He knows the road. He counts the bends to Paraburdoo in his head. Ordered thought. Banish what has happened. But he checks the silence after each nut. He wants sound – a car, a birdcall, anything – and yet he doesn’t want them. Alone is safer. But then he listens until the silence becomes creepy. And he starts to think like he’s a child again, when monsters hid in shadows, and he felt their breath on his shoulder, and the worst thing was when the silence was broken. He starts with the tire again. Nut, dust, metal, dust. Thoughts come unbidden now. He remembers where this started.
There was an accident. A bad one. Well, incident, said the paperwork. Three men in the crusher, red stains among the red dust. Just a terrible accident. But Dave knew better. He was meant to be in there to
o; he’d been on that shift. The three guys had been his mates. But Dave knew the crusher wasn’t at fault; no, that wasn’t it. All this was because of the black ore.
Dave has the last nut in his hand when he remembers the jack, still sitting on the road. He’s forgotten it, like his watch and jacket. Got the tire nearly undone and everything. Frustration strips a curse from his throat. He’s scared for real. Been stopped too long. Needs to get moving. His voice shakes as he talks to himself. He wants to stop, but he can’t, he’s getting crazy. He drags the jack into place, fumbles along the chassis for the spot.
A footstep clicks on the asphalt. Dave whirls, flashlight in his teeth, and drool slicks cold around to his chin. He snatches the thing from his teeth. The thin beam shakes as he lights up the tar. A man stands on the road, just feet in the torchbeam, straddling the dashed white line. Boots with odd laces, odd socks. Feet pointed his way, shins angled because he’s leaning forward. Watching him. Johnno. Dave swings the light up to the face, but Johnno is gone. There’s nothing on the road, just the meaty lump of a dead roo.
Of course. Johnno is dead like the others. Dave tells himself he’s seeing things, but he doesn’t quite believe it. This cold sweat is a truth serum, tells him his fears are real. That if he doesn’t get his ass on that plane and off this soil, he’ll be dead meat too. There’s a slickness in his palms, blood or oil, or both mixing with the dust. It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. He spins the jack up, faster and faster.
He’d been doing the same thing when he’d first heard about the black ore. One of the haul trucks had blown a hose out on the pit road. He’d been in the crib room, got the call to come down and get the thing moving again. Tons were what counted. So he’d taken a ute and got out there. Twenty minutes later, up to his elbows in red-dirt laden grease, Troy had crackled on the radio.