Red Spikes Read online

  MARGO LANAGAN is a highly acclaimed writer of novels, short stories and poetry. She lives in Sydney. Red Spikes is her third book of short stories.

  Black Juice, her second collection of short stories, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Ditmar Award for Best Collection and was an honour book in the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

  ‘Singing my Sister Down’ (from Black Juice) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, the Aurealis, the Golden Aurealis and Ditmar Awards, and was short-listed for the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. ‘The Queen’s Notice’ (from White Time) won the Aurealis Best Young Adult Short Story Award.

  Black Juice was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards (Older Readers), the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Young Adult Book and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for the Christina Stead Prize. White Time was short-listed for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for the Ethel Turner Prize, the Ditmar Award for Best Collected Work and the Aurealis Convenor’s Award.

  Also by Margo Lanagan

  FOR TEENAGERS AND ADULTS

  Short Story Collections

  Black Juice

  White Time

  Novels

  The Best Thing

  Touching Earth Lightly

  FOR YOUNGER READERS

  Novels

  Wildgame

  The Tankerman

  Walking Through Albert

  MARGO

  LANAGAN

  red spikes

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the

  Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board.

  First published in 2006

  Copyright © Margo Lanagan 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander St

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Lanagan, Margo.

  Red spikes.

  ISBN 978 1 74114 657 8.

  ISBN 1 74114 657 7.

  I. Title.

  Designed by Zoë Sadokierski

  Set in 11 on 16 pt Cochin by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Reading group notes are available from www.allenandunwin.com

  CONTENTS

  { Baby Jane

  { Monkey’s Paternoster

  { A Good Heart

  { Winkie

  { A Feather in the Breast of God

  { Hero Vale

  { Under Hell, Over Heaven

  { Mouse Maker

  { Forever Upward

  { Daughter of the Clay

  { Baby Jane

  ‘Well, at least it’s a fine night,’ said Mum.

  She looked enormous, but that was mostly the bedding she’d gathered as she hurried out of the hut. Her hair, coming undone from its night-time tail, was a shock of silver on her shoulders.

  ‘Though how we’ll sleep with this moon I don’t know. It’s like the floodlights at the Cricket Ground. We need to find a place in the shade. Not under these gums, though – if they drop a branch, we’re dead. Down by the creek there, among the casuarinas—’

  A bellow interrupted her. Everyone looked up at the hut. Mum walked away down the hill, trailing a corner of the quilt across the moon-white grass. ‘And a good distance from that. That could go on for hours. Days. Come on, everyone, let’s get settled.’

  Dylan followed her slowly. She wasn’t acting right. Anything to do with babies and births, Mum usually took over. She became queenly herself, moving differently, spreading a radiant peacefulness all around. She paused the world so the baby could land on it safely. Yet here she was, walking away from a woman in labour.

  ‘I think we should get the police,’ grumbled Ella, lumbering down the slope; she was pregnant too; she was what Mum described as about ready to drop. ‘It’s outrageous. Whoever heard of it? Where did those people escape from – some kind of costume party?’

  Todd gave an enormous yawn. ‘Dunno what you’re moaning about – you weren’t asleep anyway. You never sleep, remember? ’S what you’re always saying.’

  ‘I do never sleep,’ said Ella. ‘Not these days. Or nights.’

  The family moved down the slope ahead, in among the darker trees. They weren’t nearly alarmed enough; that must be part of the magic. Dylan was panting, as if his body were trying to pump out the strong, wet-grass smell of bear and replace it with the proper bush smells of eucalypt and pine.

  ‘Check for sleeping snakes,’ Mum said when they reached the creek side, where the ground was flatter. ‘Bang about a bit.’

  So everyone stamped around in their pyjamas. It would have been funny if Dylan hadn’t been so frightened. Weren’t they worried about that bear? Weren’t they upset about what had happened? It was eerie that they were positioning air mattresses and spreading blankets and plumping pillows. Titch and Edwin were already asleep – look at them. They hadn’t even cried. It was all a dream to them. Dylan pinched the inside of his elbow hard; he rubbed his arm roughly against a tree trunk; he breathed in and stared at the frills of white water along the creek, at the shadow-people and the shadow trees, at the millions of stars above among the needly casuarina twigs. He smelt the smoke from the hut chimney. That funny man must be building up the fire. You needed boiling water when a baby was coming. What for? Dylan couldn’t remember.

  ‘Come on, Dylan. Come and settle down between Dad and me. We’ll protect you against jibber-jabbers.’ Her smile was the only part of her face that was moonlit.

  ‘Jibber-jabbers,’ said Dad dozily. ‘That’s going back a long way. What were those things, anyway, Dyl? You never told us properly; you were too scared even to talk about that nightmare.’

  Dylan crawled up the valley between them, laid his head in the pillow-cleft and shuddered. ‘They were these horrible creatures, hundreds of them, about up to my shoulders. They had big heads, big jaws, lots of teeth. Jibbrah-jibbrah, they said, jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah. They rushed at me out of the wardrobe and snapped their teeth.’

  Dad snored gently.

  ‘I still don’t like to think about them,’ Dylan said to Mum.

  ‘Don’t, then,’ said Mum comfortably. ‘I don’t know where they came from in the first place – some movie? None of the others had such night terrors.’ She closed her eyes with decision. She always knew what to do. Dylan tried to be as firm about closing his.

  They had rushed at him, jabbering, their eyes glowing yellow among the spines. And then a worse noise, a terrible rough growl, had stopped them, made them cringe, made them jabber quieter, at each other instead of at him. Zing! Someone had drawn a sword, over by the wardrobe.

  Then a white flash, and a snap, and they’d gone, and Dylan was sitting
up in bed staring at the wardrobe and yelling into the empty room.

  Now, he buried himself deeper between Mum and Dad.

  The creek rustled and chuckled and blipped.

  Todd farted musically.

  Ella said, ‘To-odd!’

  ‘What’s your fuss? We’re out in the open air, aren’t we?’

  Mum gave a little laugh through her nose and Dylan let his giggle out.

  ‘Sh, now.’ Mum turned on her side so that her face was out of the moonlight.

  Dylan followed the shadow-line of her profile, from silver-fringed forehead along to soft under-chin and lace nightie-collar. Nothing could go seriously wrong with the world while she hung there, could it? Or while Dad’s back was all up and down his own?

  He thought he heard a sound from the hut, through the creek noise. He tipped his head so that both ears were free to listen. His body had tensed; he tried to go floppy again.

  ‘Still . . . Doug?’ said Mum.

  Dad made an unwilling sound.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ whispered Dylan.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Dylan waited for her to speak again, but she didn’t. ‘What were you going to say to him?’ he whispered.

  ‘It is odd, isn’t it,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s very odd. It’s really, really, really—’

  ‘I mean, who are they? How come we just let them— Where did they come from?’

  Dylan lay there a while. He breathed and she breathed, and when he thought, from her breath, that she was possibly asleep, he whispered, very quietly, ‘I found them.’

  She lifted her head. ‘You found them?’

  He nodded. The moon jiggled in the tree.

  ‘When? On your walk this afternoon? Up on the mountain?’

  He shook his head. ‘When we were playing hidey. In among the rocks over there.’ And he pointed above his head, across the creek.

  ‘What, they’ve been lying low in the rocks?’

  ‘It wasn’t hard for them to hide,’ said Dylan. ‘They were only this big.’ He showed her with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Stiff, you know, not moving. On bases, like those soldiers Uncle Brett paints.’

  He had held the little figures in his hand in the sunlight, waiting for Aaron to find him. He had admired their detail, the pregnant queen’s fierce face and helm, the bear whose every hair seemed to have been moulded separately. Its claws actually dug into Dylan’s skin – he must make sure the littlies didn’t get hold of these. These were like Uncle Brett’s soldiers – they were not toys. And the funny bald servant-man, all hung about with bags and equipment – something about his face, Dylan just knew he was going to up and complain.

  Mum still hovered there.

  ‘So I put them in my pocket,’ Dylan said. ‘And when I got changed for bed, I put them under my pillow.’

  ‘And in the night they . . . expanded?’

  ‘Yes. Came to life.’

  And the bed had broken under their weight, and Dylan had tumbled off the stinking bear, and then the queen struck him aside with a gauntleted hand (he rubbed the welts on his cheek), and the little bloke’s bald head rose against the window and said some foreign words anxiously. The queen exclaimed and raved and waved her daggers about. The bear made an irritated noise on a blast of clover-breath, and then the man’s voice, which was high-pitched, almost like a woman’s, said clearly, ‘Please vacate the room. The queen requires complete privacy.’

  And here they were. Aunty Rachel and the others in the tents hadn’t even woken up. The dog hadn’t even woken when they filed out past its basket on the veranda: Mum and Dad, Ella and Todd, Ed and Titch and Aaron and, last of all, Dylan.

  All around him the sleepers breathed. The creek chuckled by. Mum’s head sank to her pillow.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand it, Dyl,’ she said. ‘I have to believe you, because you’re hopeless at lying, but a bear? And that woman with the armour? Whoever heard of maternity armour? It’s got me beaten. I dare say it’ll all come clear in the morning, though, even the bear. It’ll be her husband or something, in a bear suit – one that needs a good dry-clean. Didn’t it stink!’

  And she had talked herself, and Dylan, to sleep.

  A high, anxious voice woke him. Dylan lifted his head. The bald manservant was walking, bent and hesitant, among the sleeping family. He held something to his mouth, some kind of magnifying glass, only without the glass, and he spoke through it.

  ‘Can anyone help?’ he said. ‘My queen is in difficulties. Is there a midwife here? Any kind of leech, any wise-woman? Please, my queen is in great pain.’ And indeed, the bellowing from up the hill was rawer and more desperate now.

  ‘You want my mother,’ Dylan said as the man came close. ‘She knows what to do at births.’ He rocked Mum and patted her head.

  ‘She does?’ said the man. Another instrument gleamed at his ear, and his lips moved differently from the words Dylan heard, as if he were in a dubbed movie. ‘Then she is just the person we need. Bring her up to the hut immediately,’ he said, suddenly imperious. ‘I must return to my lady’s side.’

  But Mum wouldn’t wake. Dylan shook and shook her; he tweaked her hair; he pinched her cheeks; he held her nose and covered her mouth. She batted him away – ‘Don’t do that!’ – but her eyes didn’t open, and as soon as she could breathe again, she was deeply asleep.

  The queen’s roaring went on.

  ‘Come on, Mum!’ Dylan shouted into her ear. ‘Come and help with this baby! Mum, it’s Dylan! Wake up and help!’

  She didn’t move. Her eyelids didn’t even tremble. It was useless.

  Dylan stood up. No one else had woken up either; no one was going to. They were all magicked asleep, or weirded asleep. Whatever had to be done, he would have to do it.

  He picked his way among the bodies and uphill over the stones and tough grass. At the top, the veranda shaded the mad face of the hut, two yellow window-eyes and a gaping door-mouth. He didn’t know what the queen was saying, but there was so much rage in it that it must be swearing.

  He climbed the stairs even more slowly. The bear’s head was in the doorway – so big! – licking something off the floor. Dylan peered in, hoping the bear would move aside. The manservant wept and clasped his hands at his mouth, beside the roaring stove. A chain slung over one of the rafters held up a very dirty foot— ‘Oh, there you are!’ The servant hurried to the door. ‘Out of the way – move, brute!’ He pushed the bear’s head aside with his foot. He frowned into the darkness beyond Dylan. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She wouldn’t wake up.’

  ‘Fetch her, fetch her!’

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Dylan. ‘Whatever brought you here knocked everyone out. Put everyone to sleep. We’ll have to manage without her.’

  ‘And are you a midwife, too?’ The servant looked him up and down. Dylan felt less than impressive in his gold polyester boxer shorts.

  ‘Well, I’ve seen some babies born. And Mum and Ella, they’ve been talking non-stop about births for the last couple of months. And I can tell you right off, your queen is in the wrong position.’

  ‘What are you talking about? She’s in exactly the right position!’

  Dylan edged in around the bear’s head. The floor was sticky – the bear had torn open a squeeze-pack of golden syrup and was spreading it thinly and widely with its tongue. Now he could see the whole of the struggling queen. She was flat on her back on the table, with her feet chained high and wide, and her arms tethered with a leather strap that ran under the tabletop. The stupidest position, Mum always grumbled when she saw it on television. Flat on her back for the convenience of some doctor.

  ‘What have you got her like that for?’ Dylan heard Mum’s voice come out of himself. ‘How’s gravity supposed to help her there?’

  ‘I know nothing of this Gravity. It is always done like this at court,’ said the manservant angrily. ‘Look, here are the tools, all laid out according to the lore.’

  Dylan had never see
n instruments like these before. They looked very specific and very brutal – and very dirty. That was what the boiling water was for – for the midwife’s instruments, to sterilise them.

  ‘Well . . . well, you’re not at court now, are you? Get her feet down!’ cried Dylan over the queen’s noise. He took one of the daggers from the queen’s belt and cut the table strap. Immediately she grabbed both his upper arms and raved loudly, urgently, into his face.

  The manservant fumed by the door, hands on hips.

  ‘Move! Get her feet down! This is cruel! The baby will never come out like this!’

  The man closed his eyes, unhooked his listening-circle from his ear, and folded his arms.

  ‘You must let go of me,’ said Dylan to the queen. ‘I have to fix your feet.’ He twisted one arm free of her grasp, then the other, then – ‘It’ll be all right; you’ll feel so much better’ – he freed the first arm again. He pulled the woodbox up to the end of the table, and stood on it to work out how the shackles were fastened.

  ‘There,’ he said when the first was undone. He caught the queen’s foot and lowered it, hanging on to the open shackle with his other hand as the weight of her other leg dragged it high. She rolled onto her side and curled up tight around her big belly, panting.

  Dylan unfastened the second shackle, then clipped the two together. That would be perfect. She could hold herself up on that.

  He climbed down and went to the queen’s head. ‘You’ll have to sit up,’ he said. She opened her eyes and glared at him. ‘You’ll have to.’ He tried to show her with gestures.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ the manservant said disgustedly through his talking-loop.

  Dylan waved him over. ‘Quick, help me get her up before the next pain comes.’

  But the servant wouldn’t help. The queen, though, was stronger than other birthing mothers Dylan had seen. With only a little help she raised herself halfway to sitting. Then she stopped, and laid a hand on her belly, which began to gather itself with the next contraction. An expression of deep astonishment transformed her face.