Singing My Sister Down and other stories

by Margo Lanagan

Behind him, servers and fighters were twittering. ‘Stop your gabble!’ the queen shrieked at them, rearing up. ‘Bring me food! Attend me, and fast! Come here, Quinnink – I will bat your eyes out for uselessness!’

  With his fellow fighters, Dybbol forced a way through the dithering servers. Out in the passage, other smells reached them – pantry was best, and they followed that upward. Hard fighting always made them hungry.

  At their head, Dybbol met Amkarra, and made ready to lock teeth with her as always.

  But she gave no fight. ‘Hunh?’ he said. ‘Why do you back and abase yourself?’ He pursued her down a side-tunnel. Behind him his fellows flowed on towards pantry.

  ‘I serve Her-Madam. I keep the colony,’ Amkarra muttered.

  ‘Lock with me! Give me your teeth!’

  But she put down her face and would not engage.

  ‘Come at me!’ He batted her stupid head.

  She muttered into her paws.

  ‘Tell me, then – why be abased?’

  ‘You have Queen’s Notice all over you,’ she said, and backed further, and somehow turned herself in the narrow space, and fled.

  It was true, he did smell, strongly and cleanly of deep earth and queen-favour. His mind was beginning to fill with other things, as a quick-tunnel trickles full of loose earth, but he still had the queen’s scent in all his skin-folds, creeping in his mouth-hairs, raw and clear, warm and sweet.

  But pantry called, and company, and he went to answer both.

  He could not find a good fight. Whenever he closed his jaws on someone, they only lay limp. If he took hold and dragged, no one braced or threw their weight. No one would lock teeth and rock with him; no one would bat him back.

  So when the beak-snake came, he heard it a long way off; he raised his head before anyone, and was the first one up the best tunnel and blocking. Dig and dig and dig – he sprayed the hard, smooth snout of the thing with earth as it came on. It bumped against the blocking mound, and he felt a flicker of its tongue as he closed the passage, closed out light and snake. He was all fervour and favour, nose to nose with the queen’s enemy; he scraped and tamped, while the others hung back and trilled.

  ‘I must save us alone?’ he grunted.

  Amkarra came forward, and could not stop abasing herself. ‘A true scent breathes from you,’ she said. ‘You have become too beautiful to fight beside.’

  ‘Bah. Go and report, then.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, and the others twittered, too. ‘Her-Madam will want you.’

  He knew that. It was new, but it was true. He hurried away, trailing the clean, strange smell of his own bravery.

  The young were days livelier, beginning to speak and close their jaws on each other. The queen lay almost as if dead, weak from their constant feeding. Beside her lay a bulb so fresh that Dybbol went straight up and secured a bite of it before he reported.

  ‘Ah. You. Bold one,’ murmured the queen. ‘What do you bring me?’

  ‘Another victory, queen below us all, heart of all our hearts.’ It was his gullet speaking, so grateful for food after fighting.

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Snake, coming from sun-end as they all do, hot with light and hunger.’

  ‘And the size of it?’

  ‘Bigger than any before, Your-Madam. Stronger than twelve cousins. Only speed saved us.’

  The queen gave a purring sigh and raised her head. ‘Your speed, Dybbol?’

  ‘Among others, all our queen.’ Dybbol made to leave.

  ‘Linger!’ cried the queen. Her breath flew at him, cleansing him of hunger and care, and he was there before her, their muzzles touching, her scent locked bright in his head. Deeper in the chamber her immenseness moved against the spilling pile of young. He knew what to do, knew even though it was new: he must go to the far end of her great spine-arch. A scent was coming from her there, that spiralled higher and sweeter in Dybbol’s head than any other ever, a scent that beckoned, that dragged him from her muzzle—

  Sharp teeth caught in his haunch and flung him against the wall, knocking all scent from his nose. Servers ran anxiously about; young cheeped and squirmed.

  The queen shifted. ‘Now is not yet the time,’ she breathed.

  ‘The time?’ He tried to shake his head clear.

  ‘When these Two-Dozen disperse,’ she said, ‘that will be your time.’ And she pulled the bulb towards her and was gnawing.

  He hurried away, dizzy with favour. Near the pantry, he met Barraud, one of the queen’s two paramours. Dybbol did not give way as he should; instead, he reared and gaped, roughing the air in his mouth-hairs. Here at last would be a fight! Oh, and he was ready – he was unafraid even of a paramour today! He hissed and went forward—

  —and met nothing. He fell to his paws. Barraud was gone off-side, two tunnels along.

  ‘Aargh! Face me! Come at me!’

  ‘I will not,’ came Barraud’s trilling. ‘You are all over favoured and must save yourself for Her Immensity!’

  ‘I am not so favoured,’ cried Dybbol, pursuing. ‘Come, I must put my teeth in something!’

  ‘Not me!’ Barraud sped ahead, threading through tunnels, forcing cousins aside. ‘I will not fight a favoured one!’ came back faintly.

  Dybbol began to lose him to the weaving tunnels, to the earth – and to a strong scent of alarm, souring the tunnel-mouths to one side. He veered that way, the scents showing place and activity and size-of-danger on the colony-map in his head – in two places. Two different dangers. He made, fast, for the digging danger, which was farther but greater. A snake would only take one fighter, then would leave; a digger might want several, might dig deep, might uncover the colony’s heart.

  ‘We serve,’ he panted, turning into the dangerous tunnel. ‘We serve our queen. We keep our colony.’

  The tunnel was loud with flung earth and the snouting and clawing of the danger. Others were there, behind those doing the blocking. ‘Let me by! Let me help save Her!’ cried Dybbol. But cousins braced themselves there, several clotting the tunnel. ‘Let me through! Make way!’

  ‘We may not,’ they said. ‘Sniff yourself, man – smell how favoured you are now! Save yourself; we have plenty of warriors.’

  ‘Myself? But we must save the queen!’

  ‘We have plenty of brave. Run along and eat, and save up your strength.’

  Dybbol turned back. His whole body swam with energy against the danger; his teeth ached to lock, his jaws to dig hard earth. He went to pantry and found a good rock-root, the biggest there and the hardest. He wrenched it out of the pile, and the pantry-wardens let him pass with it, making no murmur.

  He gnawed and chawed all that day in a side-chamber. All the colony’s doings came to him on the breezes past his nose, in tremblings and skitterings transmitted through the earth to his sensitive paws. No one called him, to watch, to work, to anything. He crouched, he ate, he slept – in daytime, slept! And in the night ventured to pantry again, past his fellows heaped in corners, their warmth cupped in the dormitory chambers and trailing down the breathy tunnels. And Dybbol gnawed, and slept, and gnawed, and listened to the colony all around him – its vast, safe busyness so wonderful – and slept . . .

  . . . and woke to the queen’s screaming. ‘Arraaaagh! Where is my-bold-one-my-Dybbol?’

  He was fear all through, a throbbing thunder of it. The queen’s voice caught him low in the spine and spread out from there. He sensed her turning in her chamber deep below, shoving her cousins away, shoving her cousin-cousins harder, roaring and shrieking. The young are not in the queen-chamber, the echoes told him. And not long afterward, The cousins also are cleared. Her-Madam awaits you. And the smell of the queen’s greatest need, wild and sweet, spread through the colony. It crept into Dybbol’s chamber and caught in the few outer hairs he had, around his nostril-folds, and clung there like thistle-fluff. He batted his own nose with his paws; he pressed his face into the earth wall, shaking all over.

  Fighters came for hi
m. He reared, he gaped, he hissed, frantic. There were too many of them.

  ‘Come, now,’ said Barraud. ‘No one can escape the Queen’s Notice.’ And they dragged and shoved him, struggling, from the chamber. ‘Good man,’ said Barraud. ‘Fight all the way. Make yourself delectable.’ For the first time Dybbol’s head-map of the colony failed him. He did not know where he was, only that the queen’s need was strengthening towards him, winding its tingling tendrils into his spine, spinning terror out of his loins as mean and hot as snake-breath.

  Then he was there, wrestled into the chamber by paramours and fighters. He tried to scrabble out, but they were digging, flinging earth, trapping him there with the roaring queen—

  —who fell silent; who loomed up and clouted him to the floor with her great paw; who stood over him, lust-breath whistling in her mouth-hairs. And humming in his jaws, boiling along his body, moving his nerveless paws for him was that fierce, new, intensely sweet scent that twirled out of the queen, behind.

  He dreamed he was young again, in a heap of young, interleaved with cousins. He chirped weakly, and they shifted, and their warmth intensified against him, pulsed him softly back to sleep.

  He woke in pain, from nose-bristle to tail-nub – and alone, in a chamber too small for a dormitory. The only sounds were above him.

  Amkarra came in, rolling a new-cut sweetbulb.

  ‘Where am I, Amkarra?’ said Dybbol. ‘Where is this chamber?’

  ‘Why, right by Barraud’s, of course, along from our Deepest Heart.’ She pushed the bulb towards him. ‘This is for you.’

  He found a feeble voice. ‘Enjoy it with me, cousin.’

  She put down her face. ‘I may not, bold one, queen’s paramour. But I hope it fills you as your children fill the queen, for our colony’s prosperity.’

  ‘For our colony’s prosperity . . .’ He lifted to the bulb a paw that shook with weakness.

  Amkarra abased herself and backed away down the tunnel. Dybbol felt her go, her earthy fighter-smell fading under his own sweet reek. Then the fresh breath of the sweetbulb asserted itself, and he turned from the tunnel and began to gnaw.

  WELL, IN THE TOWN where these two beautiful daughters lived there was a fascinator, name of Gallantine. He was neither young nor handsome, but he had no wife and he was as interested as any of the young men were in getting one of the girls – if not the rich elder girl, the more beautiful younger one. Whichever he won, he would be an object of other men’s envy – and even magic-men are not immune to wanting that.

  Gallantine did all the things that those young men were trying. First he put himself regularly in the young women’s way, happening by outside their house just as they crossed from door to carriage, or arriving at the edge of the path as they made their daily park promenade. Tall and thin in his dark suit, he lifted his dark hat and lowered his gaze to their lovely feet as they passed.

  On one of these occasions, seeing that the mamma’s carry-dog was suffering some kind of skin affliction, he struck up a conversation with her, professing more interest than he truly felt in the care of such animals. Afterwards he sent her a pot of a cream to apply to the dog’s skin. He had magicked the cream both to cure the lesions and to engender tenderness towards himself in any person who touched it. Which ended with my lady’s chambermaid developing quite a crush on him, while Mamma herself, who almost always wore gloves when carrying the dog, came no closer than being able to abide having Gallantine near, where before she had felt a natural repugnance towards his self-conscious bearing, his funereal clothes and his conspicuous lack of associates or friends. The two beautiful daughters, who thoroughly disliked the dog, no more noticed him than they noticed iron fenceposts or singular grass blades among the many.

  Gallantine was thus driven to exert his powers more forcefully to impress himself upon the young ladies. By various subtle hand-wavings he managed an invitation to one of the mamma’s afternoons, and to hold the girls’ admirers at bay long enough to engage, first the older then the younger in several minutes ‘conversation’, during which each responded most politely to his observations on the weather, the present company and the pleasantness of walking in parks.

  He came away satisfied that he had fixed himself in their memories as an intriguing man of the world. He read interest into the smiles he had collected, quickenings of the heart into the girls’ casting their glances downward or away from him. He was very hopeful of his chances with either of the lovelies.

  He next engineered his attendance at a ball at which the daughters were to be present. He went to great pains and some expense to prepare himself, travelling up to the port city to have himself outfitted by a good tailor. Once he was dressed he put what he felt must be an irresistible glamour all around himself, and he was rewarded at the ball by many glances, dances and fan-flutterings from the older women, as well as a dance with each of the daughters. He was light on his feet, you can imagine, which left the girls free to concentrate on words, and words they had in plenty, buoyed up by their excitement at being out in society and by far the most marriageable persons in the room, indeed in the town. Gallantine read their happy chatter entirely as regard for himself. Watching them in exactly the same play with others on the dance floor, he thought the girls very kind for their patience with lesser men when their hearts were so clearly leaning and yearning towards his own.

  When he felt that enough such meetings had taken place, Gallantine made his feelings known, first to the older daughter and then, on being rejected by her repeatedly, to the younger. At first made gentle by her own surprise and by the strong glamours he had carried to the meeting, this lovely girl did not utterly reject him, but soon, with her sister’s and her mother’s horrified exclamations ringing in her ears, she found sufficient will, reinforced by true and natural feelings of revulsion, to be definite enough in her refusal of him that he could hold no further hopes of a match with her.

  Well, it’s never a good idea to get on the wrong side of a fascinator, is it? For he’s unlikely just to retire and lick his wounds. Gallantine went off to his house – which was not small and not large, and not in a good part of town nor yet in a bad, but which of course bore no womanly touches barring some lace at the windows put there by his late mother that, if touched (which it never was), would have crumbled from age and poor quality – and he brewed himself a fine magic. It was so powerful that to all intents and purposes Gallantine did not exist for a while, except as instrument or agent of his own urge to revenge. And so at this point in the story it behoves us to leave Gallantine in his formless obsession and join the two daughters, through whose eyes the working-out of that obsession is much clearer.

  So here is the younger girl, alone in her room, sitting up in bed writing a breathless account of that evening’s events in her day-journal.

  And here is the older, sitting more solemnly in front of her mirror, having just accepted (her father is to be consulted tomorrow) an offer of marriage to a most suitable gentleman: young, fine-looking and possessed of a solid fortune, and of a character to which her heart can genuinely warm.

  Under each girl’s door, with a small but significant sound, is slipped a white envelope. Each starts up, and crosses her room; each takes the envelope up and listens for – but does not hear – receding footsteps outside. The seal on the envelope is unfamiliar, marvellous; breaking it releases a clean, pine-y, adventurous scent onto the bedroom air, and each girl breathes this scent in.

  Step through the door, says the card inside. Each girl hesitates, then reaches to take the doorknob. But the doorknob won’t be taken, will it? The hands – the younger tentative, the older more resolute – close to fists on nothing.

  Step through the door. Two hands touch two doors, and find the timber to be, in fact, a stable brown smoke. The hands sink into the surface; the smoke curls above the pale skin like stirred-up silt. The moment passes when they might choose whether to stay or go, and they step through.

  And they are in a wood, a dim, col
d, motionless wood. The trees are poles of indigo with maybe foliage, maybe cloud, on high. The light is blue; the ground is covered with drifts of snow.

  They see each other, the one in her white nightgown and wrap, the other in her dance-dress, the hothouse orchid still in her hair. Each gives a cry of relief, and they run together.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here, sister!’

  ‘Where are we? In a dream?’

  ‘I’ve never known a dream so cold!’

  They clutch arms and look around.

  ‘There, look! Is that a fire?’ For warm yellow lights move, far off among the trees.

  ‘It must be! Let us go and warm ourselves!’

  They set off. Bare or in thin embroidered slippers, their feet are soon numb with cold. But the ground under the snow is even, and the strange trees are smooth and sprout no projections to catch their clothing or otherwise hinder them. Music floats to meet them, music such as they’ve never danced to, beguiling, rhythmical, minor-keyed. Their minds don’t know what to make of it. It seems ugly, yet it attracts them. It is clumsily, grossly appropriate. It is a puzzle, and to solve it they must move closer and hear it more clearly.

  Apart from this music the wood is like a large and silent room. No bird flies through it; no wind disturbs the air. The chill rises like a blue fume from the snow; it showers with the grey light from above.

  The music deepens and brightens as they stumble on; various hummings as of rubbed wet crystal, and many different pitches of tinkling, or jingling, adorn its upper reaches. It grows other sounds that are nearly voices, uttering nearly words, words the two daughters want to hear, are convinced they must hear, if they are to understand this adventure. A deep, slow, sliding groan travels to them through the ground.

  ‘It is!’ says the older girl, peering around a tree. ‘It’s a carousel! An enormous one! Beautiful!’

  ‘Oh, I’m so cold!’

  They hurry now, and soon are in the clearing where the magnificent creation revolves. The music is rosy-fleshed arms gathering them up in a dance; the horses rise and fall with the rhythm, the foxes too, the carriages and sleighs, the swans and cats and elephants. The lightbulbs are golden; the mirrors shed sunlight, the carven faces laughter; the revolving makes a breeze that flows warmly spring-like out into the daughters’ faces, that lifts the manes and tails and furs and feathers of the carved animals, that brightens the horses’ flanks until the older girl is convinced she sees galloping muscles move, until the younger would vow on a bible that she saw a fly land on that bay’s shoulder, and be shaken off by a flesh-tremor.