Red Spikes

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘Here, grab the chain! Put your feet here on the box!’ He helped her place them.

  She braced her legs, and clung to the chain, and swung forward off the table edge with the contraction. She cried out – a good, long, pushing cry, that one, Dylan heard Mum say with a smile. By the light of the odd little lamps dotted around the hut, Dylan saw the bulge of the baby’s head-top between the queen’s thighs. She opened there, a wedge of the head-skin showed, scrawled with flat, wet, dark hair – and the contraction was over, and she hung from the chain exclaiming down at him. She was excited now – now that she wasn’t strapped down and being tortured.

  ‘I can see it. It’s good!’ Dylan grinned up at her and kept his hands underneath her to show he was ready to catch the baby. ‘Now you must do little breaths,’ he said, ‘so it doesn’t rush out and tear you.’ Because if you need stitches, things could get complicated, doctors and hospitals and such. Police, maybe. Immigration people. ‘So huh, huh, huh—’

  She echoed him. Another contraction came, and her face stretched, but she stayed with him, and the baby’s head was out.

  The bear pushed forward, vast and grass-smelly at Dylan’s shoulder, and licked the top of the baby’s head.

  ‘Stop that!’ He smacked the black nose, and tried to shoulder the great head away without moving his hands from under the baby. The bear let itself be pushed, but swung straight back, snuffing at the baby.

  ‘You there!’ he called out to the manservant, trying to push his body in between the bear and the queen’s trembling, sweat-slicked thigh. ‘Grab the honey!’

  ‘I see no honey-urn.’ Good, the silly man had put his listener on again. ‘I see no urns at all.’

  ‘On the shelf, with all the other glass jars. The one with the yellow label.’ Would he know what glass was? Would he know what a label was?

  The bear was busy behind Dylan. Any old second it would slash open his back with its claws, or simply toss him aside. The queen’s belly tightened, and her eyes needed him to be there and breathing with her.

  ‘This one?’ The servant thrust the jar in front of his face.

  Without taking his eyes from the baby, all the time panting with the queen, he grabbed the jar, opened it, put it behind him on the floor, and brought his hand back in time to catch the baby as its shoulders eased out. The rest of the body rushed after it, looped about with the cord, and Dylan had to snatch the baby out of the way as the great crimson cloak of the placenta slithered out as well, and fell onto the woodbox.

  He checked that the baby was breathing all right, that its mouth was clear. ‘Here, hold this,’ he said to the servant over the furry hummock of the bear’s back. ‘No, fetch me a cloth first, from – where is it? From that bag there. Bring the whole bag.’

  The manservant did so, weeping and exclaiming joyfully. He took the baby and Dylan passed him one of the ratty, soft old holiday bath towels to wrap it in. Then, working around the bear, which was licking up the spilt honey and exploring the jar with its large, thorough tongue, Dylan folded another towel into a soft pad, put it on the table, and helped the queen lower herself shakily onto it.

  He felt Mum’s queenly calm inside himself; he knew what to do, and how to move without hurry or stress from one task to the next. He brought Edwin’s baby blanket to cover the queen’s lap with, and put another towel around her shoulders. He brought her water and she drank thirstily. He brought a bag-clamp and a chopping board and Mum’s best sharp knife, and attended to the cord.

  All the while the manservant crooned. When the umbilical cord was cut and clamped, he handed the baby into the queen’s arms. ‘My lady.’

  Dylan tidied the placenta into the empty kindling-bucket. He put another towel down to soak up the placenta-blood on the woodbox. Then he came to the queen’s elbow to see the baby. ‘Oh, it’s a girl,’ he said.

  The manservant fumbled his translator to his mouth, ‘A princess. One day to be a queen.’

  ‘Does she have a name?’

  The servant recited a lengthy sentence that the translator could do nothing with. ‘However,’ he added, ‘you will choose a different name for her to use in this place, to keep her safe here, and undiscovered. Something very plain and common.’

  ‘To keep her safe here?’ said Dylan.

  ‘My lady can hardly take her into battle.’ The servant rolled his eyes. ‘You must keep her here until such time as we have cleared the Pestilence and re-established order.’

  ‘We must?’

  ‘Yes, and then we will send for her.’

  The queen was kissing the baby, its face, its tummy, its protesting legs and arms. She laughed at its squeaking cry and gave a squeaking cry herself. Then she wrapped the baby up and thrust it at Dylan, smiling.

  ‘Um, how long is that likely to be?’ he asked the servant. ‘A week? Two weeks?’

  The servant tapped his earpiece and gave a supercilious laugh. ‘A great deal longer than that,’ he said.

  ‘Years?’

  ‘Yes, some years, probably.’

  Years? Dylan knew that this was crazy and impossible; he knew also, in his calm, that there was no point protesting. This was a queen, for goodness’ sake! When a queen – a queen with a belt full of knives – tells you to do something, you don’t fuss and whinge. You do it or you probably die.

  The queen was dressing, visibly gathering strength as she did. Dylan watched her intently. Every layer she put on, all the grey underthings with their ties and drawstrings and monograms, the padded gear to protect the royal skin from the rub of the armour, the armour itself, the broad belt with its stones and scars and heavy sheathed weapons – he memorised it all so he could tell baby . . . baby Jane about it when she grew old enough to understand. He would borrow Uncle Brett’s sketchbook tomorrow and try to draw everything, and describe the bits he couldn’t draw, like that belly-piece the queen was adjusting, now that her belly wasn’t so firm and high and full of baby.

  The bear idly wandered around the hut. It huffed into corners, drank noisily from the dog’s bowl by the door, hoisted itself to its full height to paw things off the mantel.

  The manservant went about gathering all the lamps. They were like little glowing crabs propped on their claw-tips. They looked delicate, but they must be strong, the way he blew them out and tossed them casually into a bag.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, when only one lamp, on the table, was left. ‘We must depart. My queen requests that you accept this contribution to the princess’s upkeep.’ He laid a small black pouch on the table.

  ‘Would you please thank Her Majesty . . .’ Mum’s calm suddenly drained out of Dylan, and he felt rushed and confused. ‘For – for this honour.’

  The servant conveyed his meaning. The queen looked up from adjusting her swordbelt. Under her raised faceplate, her eyes brightened with laughter. She strode to Dylan, clapped his head in her jingling, gauntleted hands, and planted on his forehead a kiss that was more metal than flesh. Then she lowered her splendid helmed head to her sleeping daughter, and drew in a long breath, as though she would gather in all the baby-scented air around the tiny body. She spoke, and the manservant lifted the last crab-lamp to his lips.

  There was a stunning snap as he blew it out.

  ‘Oh!’ Dylan staggered. Against the complete darkness an after-image faded from his eyes, of the queen wading back to her world through a knee-high mass of gape-jawed creatures, spiny-eyed, starven-bodied, frozen mid-screech in the flash of other-world light.

  ‘Jibber-jabbers!’ Dylan clutched baby Jane to his thudding chest and pressed her cheek to his. She was hot and velvety; she smelt of clean blood and the insides of her mother. She was real. Jibber-jabbers were real too, but they were somewhere else, closed off from him now, while this soft, harmless baby was here, drawing the pain out of his welted cheek, smoothing the welts flat by contact with her freshness and newness. The windows and door of the hut emerged from the dark, full of starlit trees. The died-down fire ticked in the stove.


  Holding Jane close to keep from shaking too badly, Dylan fetched his torch from among the splinters that had been the head of his bed. He found the figures on the floor, the queen and the manservant by the table, the bear near the stove; he laid them next to the payment-pouch on the table. He brought the one unsmashed lamp from the mantel, lit it with a wobbly match struck from an unsteady matchbox. He arranged Jane more firmly in his arms and looked about helplessly. Such a mess! Where to start?

  A cry came from outside, from down near the creek – a woman’s cry. It was Ella, Ella in labour, Ella about to drop. And Mum, her smiling voice: ‘That’s my girl. Let’s have a good push with the next one.’

  ‘That’s what we’ll do,’ said Dylan. ‘We’ll boil some water.’ He laid Jane in a nest of clean towels on the table, kissed her frowning forehead, and went to the tank-tap. ‘You always need boiling water when a baby’s coming.’

  The water rushed into the kettle with a nice, normal sound. The princess lay quiet among her cloths, moving her hands slowly as if through water, looking at the rafters with her clouded eyes, breathing in the warmth of the new world.

  { Monkey’s Paternoster

  Our Hannimanni was sick. We were all jumpy as fleas.

  He sat on the watch-rock at the top of the House, at the top of the world, and I would hardly have known of His sickness, except for the tremble that went through Him now and again. He kept up the patrols, but they were shorter, and crankier; everywhere He went, He scared a spray of sons and daughters before Him – sometimes even a wife was run off with a claw-line in her flank.

  ‘Enough days of this,’ said Broketooth, my gran-mammy, ‘and we’ll have bachelors at our borders.’

  ‘You reckon?’ said some cousin, clutching her new child close. ‘Won’t He rally?’

  ‘He might,’ said Broketooth. She fingered her tooth, which was full of grey lines, and which her gum was all pouched around, red. ‘He might not, and then things will be different.’

  The cousin watched Him snarling and skrarling around down there. ‘I hope He does get better, and soon.’

  ‘Hope away,’ said Broketooth.

  I was pretty small, and I didn’t know nothing about Life yet, so I didn’t say nothing either way.

  Hannimanni came back up. I waited until He had settled, until plenty of others had moved up and shown it was all right to pick at Him, before I went near. I sorted through some of His fur well back behind, where others would cop it first if He took it in mind to slash out.

  He smelled all wrong. I nearly said so to the wife next to me, it was so strong: How can He smell this bad and still He walks around? I nearly asked.

  Then our servants called us, which I was relieved for, and we bounded down the rocks and along the flats and ridges for our food. They had cakes as well as rooties and fruits of all flavours; I ate and ate in good health; I bulged at the belly.

  When I came back, starting to feel sleepy-ful and carrying extra cakes, I met Hannimanni, coming down, but not able to move fast.

  ‘Here,’ I said, and I gave Him a cake.

  ‘That’s good,’ He said. He did not lift His face to me, nor did He smell, either of sex or anger. He sat and ate, but slowly as if the cake were poor and He was thinking He might throw it away. I put down my other cakes and rooties and did some part-and-seek among His fur.

  ‘That’s kind,’ He said, and ate more, but still without relish.

  I felt like I gleamed with health beside Him. It made me bold. ‘You want to buck up,’ I said to Him.

  ‘You’re right,’ He said. ‘I do want to.’

  ‘You’re all the protection we’ve got.’

  I was just mouthing. Protection against what? I’d never come up against more than one of those raggedy doglets, myself. Bachelors, says Broketooth, but those skinny losers? They never come close enough to smell.

  ‘Ay,’ said Hannimanni, and sighed. ‘There’s such a lot of you. So many sons and gran-sons and gran-dotties. I don’t know.’ He sighed again, and some of it blew at me, smelling of cake and illness.

  As we settled that evening in the overhang, some mam said, ‘I don’t like to lie down, somehow. I don’t like to close my eyes, this night.’

  ‘I wish night would not come,’ said another.

  I thought Broketooth would say Wish away at them, but she was busy eyeing very hard all the borders she could see.

  I pushed in among those close to her, among their warmths. I watched the sky where the sun had gone, and tried with my eyes to stop the rest of the light from dropping away too.

  What woke me was – well, no one was exactly sleeping. But a bachelor made a wrong leap somewhere close, and shrieked as he died on some wires, and his fellows shrieked too. They’re not very healthy or limber, and they just don’t know their way around, here near House Hill. And of course they’re always nervous. They know about our Hannimanni’s heroic deeds and defences; if they don’t wear a scar themselves, they’ve got all the legends to make them clumsy.

  Anyway, I saw the sparks shower from a pole-head, and the bachelor flew all limp and wrong from the wires, then dropped out of sight.

  ‘Oop,’ said Broketooth. ‘That one’s not going to make Hannimanni.’

  ‘Make Hannimanni what?’ said Kinnick-Tiddit, an older cousin of mine.

  ‘Become Hannimanni,’ said Broketooth. ‘Make us a new Hannimanni, of himself. Take over. He weren’t big enough anyway. Lands, my tooth hurts, this early. Come up, sun.’

  A new Hannimanni? What was she talking about?

  ‘Take over?’ said Kinnick-Tiddit.

  ‘Well, look at Our Father,’ said Broketooth.

  Several of us came out of the overhang and did so.

  There He was, flat along Top Ledge.

  ‘He looks dead already. Paw Him, someone. Go up there.’

  ‘You go. You paw Him.’

  ‘No, you. I’ve got this babby. Go on. He should be up and running about. Look, everywhere, they’re popping up, those smellies.’

  A growl bubbled inside Hannimanni, but there was no gleam of eyes. Every other head of us, though, the eyes were opening – plink here, plink there, mammies and babbies alike. Heads were poking up all about, look-look, foreheads wrinkling. On every rock and ledge the piles of us were clamming together tighter, while all around our borders loser-heads bobbed up, bobbed down, bobbed up somewhere else.

  I sat in the middle of a pile; all the bobbing, all the looking about, made me feel chittery. I had to chew on an old, not-very-choice piece of sweet-rooty to stop myself bursting out of the clammed pile and running – running anywhere, anywhere there wasn’t a bachelor bobbing up right in front of me – which wasn’t smart, with so many of them about.

  Everyone was getting to the same state. The ones with the babs was worst, crooning and twitching and trying to talk away their fear.

  ‘If we were to go right up on the top of the House,’ said someone, ‘right up onto the lap of that carvenservant, onto its head, maybe a ring of our teeth would keep them back, keep them off us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Broketooth nastily. ‘Or maybe if we grew wings. Or maybe if we just now grew twice as big as we are, with twice as long teeth.’

  ‘There’s got to be some way,’ whimpered a mammy.

  Broketooth just sucked on her tooth. Everyone would have preferred to hear her scoff more, but she didn’t.

  The bachelors were getting bolder, particularly as the centre of us was deadish grey Hannimanni lying there, instead of the explosion of danger that He usually was. Any moment now, I thought, He will bound up and start priding around and snapping His lips back, going big at these smelly boys, pissing on everything, making the world smell right again. Any moment.

  But He continued to lie. His eyes, among all our fearful ones, were idle, soft in the firstening light, as if this were a day of leisure just dawning, not of battle. I swallowed a hard piece of rooty and chewed off another.

  A loser – a big one! I didn’t know th
ey grew so big in the wild – he danced right up the House and paused by Top Ledge. Then he came forward to sniff the situation of our Hannimanni.

  ‘Insolence!’ chattered a frightened mam.

  ‘You stink!’ shouted another at the line of bachelors creeping towards us. Everyone at the edge drew in their tails, and some showed teeth at them.

  The big one leaned right in close to Hannimanni, who lay there drowsy, showing the very tips of His teeth, His lip too languorous to roll back and cover them.

  On a House-ledge across from us, a pile of wives blew apart. I heard the scutter and the screaming, but I didn’t look. I was busy – we were all busy – watching these dancers mince forward, shrink back, try different roundabout ways at us. Bachelor heads hung out from the stone above, whiskers against the sky; they were there at the edge of my eye just as the fleeing mammies and children were there, even while I was fixed, all of me, on the biggest, nearest dancer as he propped and sneaked towards the overhang.

  I could see everything, smell all the smells; everything was still. Even this bachelor was still, for the moment, because Broketooth had snarled. I smelled the sparky smell from the wires, and the poor-food funk of bachelor, and the sweetness of morning garden; the last star faded with a smell just like a drop of water drying off sunny carvenstone.

  Then they jumped in among us.

  ‘Never!’ someone screamed.

  We ran – except we weren’t we any more. Each was a lone dottie, without help or hero, a tiny sole vulnerable, running across the rocks, bounding up among the carvens, smelly shadows at her tail. I seen one of those paws dash a little babby-head to the rock, like breaking an egg. I turned and seen that mother taking it, all teeth and trembling, the bloke behind her keeping her in place with his claws, working at her all intent. They’re everywhere, the filth, the grey filth, each sprouting a sex that’s the first proper colour of the day. They bound and they look and they follow and we can’t be not seen, none of us can.