At the Edge

by Lee Murray

  ‘But mermen? Mermaids? Underwater ballerinas?’ Can Kendra really have seen Pania? Terry straightens his shoulders. Impossible. ‘And glowing underwater worlds? I tell you, she’s living in a fantasy. Has been since the baby died.’

  ‘Her medical records indicate a brief period of depressive psychosis after the miscarriage.’

  Now he’s talking. Terry nods. ‘That’s why I left her. She was in la-la land.’ The psychiatrist is frowning – he’s gone too far. Terry softens his voice. Injects just the right mix of desperation and pleading. ‘I’ve been so worried about her. About my kids. She may harm herself. Or them. There must be something you can do for her. Please?’

  ‘Well, there is new medication … there are side effects, but if she takes it, she can go home. That’s one option.’

  ‘Option?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Lenton. You’re saying she’s a danger to herself and the children, so if she refuses medication, we’ll commit her. Naturally, we’ll need your consent.’

  Given a choice, Kendra would never take meds. Terry pastes a bright smile on his dial to hide his twinge of guilt. ‘That’s fine,’ he says. ‘I have power of attorney for Kendra. I’d be glad to help her in any way possible.’

  The psychiatrist gives a grimace in return. ‘The side effects of the medication are not pleasant, but let’s hope it works.’

  *

  ‘Kendra,’ the psychiatrist says, ‘this drug will help you, but it can cause some memory loss.’

  I feel myself slump in the chair. Lose my memories? No Pania dancing on dolphins? Or Matiu beaming? No merman with sea-lettuce eyes full of love and care?

  ‘Mrs Lenton?’

  His surname makes me start. That’s right, we’re still two months off legal separation so, officially, I still bear Terry’s name. We’re still married.

  Slowly, I raise my eyes, noticing Terry’s signature on the corner of a form sticking out of my file. That cheating scum is behind this choice: be locked up, or take mind-numbing medication.

  A tic twitches in the psychiatrist’s cheek.

  There’s no way I can convince them what I’ve seen is real. No way they’ll ever let me have my kids back. Not with Terry pushing neglect and insanity.

  The merman’s voice comes to me, ‘We’ll love you, no matter what choice you make.’

  Searing pain carves me into tiny pieces. Pania’s grace and beauty, and Matiu, full of life. Or Aihe’s laugh, deep brown eyes and glossy hair, with Selina’s warm pudgy hand in mine. So young. Too young to have no mother.

  But they’ll have Sue. And their own Dad. A tear caresses my cheek.

  ‘Have you considered the options?’

  My voice is quiet, but firm. I won’t let Terry steal my memories, my mind. ‘I don’t want the drugs.’

  The psychiatrist nods. ‘You do understand we’ll have to commit you, move you to secure quarters?’

  Tears tracking down my cheeks, I hold my head high as two burly orderlies march me down the corridor.

  *

  Every night, he visits me faithfully, swimming through my dreams. ‘Kendra.’ His voice flows through me. ‘Kendra, I’ve brought your children.’ Pania dances through the waves, Matiu swimming beside her. They make this existence bearable.

  When I wake, my merman’s smile lingers like a summer sunset.

  I keep my dreams to myself. Pretend they’ve diminished, then disappeared. Acknowledge that I must have been deluded, delusional, have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, or a reoccurrence of psychosis.

  Guilt drives Terry to see me. Regularly. Once a week. Straight after my weekly assessment.

  I ignore him. Stare at the wall. Hope he’ll go away.

  He always does, if I wait long enough.

  Eventually, they release me, with a promise of weekly check-ups. I go for a while, to keep up appearances. Home isn’t home without the kids. They visit, but Sue stays, watching me with hawk-eyed sharpness. Terry’s taken everything – my heart, my trust, my love, and my children.

  I turn to the two things he can’t take away from me.

  My art.

  And the sea.

  *

  Ten years have passed since my big sister Pania went missing. I remember that day, although, after Mum got better, she never talked about it. They wouldn’t let us live with her anymore. Selina and I had to live with Dad and Sue and their baby. Until Dad left Sue. Now we live with him and Zoe.

  Mum started painting again. Prices for her art went crazy. So did stories of her madness. She painted endlessly – giant, wild-eyed dogs in shimmering aquamarine, grey storms whirling around them. Every one of them clutched a child – a dead baby, a ballerina, a smiling little boy with chubby hands. She painted mermaids, mermen, and dolphins with girls on their backs. Critics said her art glowed. Dad said she was nuts, but we know different.

  A year ago, Mum disappeared into the waves of Oriental Bay. Cops say, officially, she’s still a missing person. Last known location: her home. But I know she’s there.

  Dreams haunt me, calling me back to the beach, searching for the gentle tilt of Mum’s head on the crest of a wave; the trace of her smile in a trough of the sea; her caress on the fresh sea breeze; her laughter in the wild ocean wind that lashes my face in a storm.

  Now that I’m older, I like to go to Oriental Bay, swim out to the fountain and back with my friends. Sometimes I think I see Pania, hiding behind seaweed, or dancing underwater among the fish.

  Today I see her riding a dolphin in the bay.

  ‘Look, Selina.’ I point at the creature. ‘See Pania on its back?’

  She nods, her eyes following my namesake as it leaps in the harbour. ‘I’d like to see her,’ she murmurs.

  Great dogs chase Pania, leaping in the waves, wagging long tails of surf. Then there is nothing. Only seaweed and the faint call of merfolk on the breeze, the glint of their disappearing tailfins. The surf gurgles, carrying Mum’s laugh.

  ‘Aihe, Selina, come away from the edge.’ Zoe’s voice is tight, hands tense as she gestures me back from the waves.

  Dad nods at me. ‘Come on, love. Time to go home.’ He pats Zoe’s pregnant belly.

  Behind their backs, I roll my eyes. Selina tries not to giggle. ‘We’ll be there in a minute,’ I call. Squeezing Selina’s hand tight, I watch them until they disappear around the corner into the car park.

  I gaze at the sea. Dad’s right. It is time to go home.

  I take Selina’s hand. ‘Do you miss Mum?’

  She nods.

  ‘Would you like to see her again?’

  Her smile takes my breath away.

  The froth of newly flung surf creeps over our toes, then rushes back into the ocean, calling us to follow. Hand in hand, Selina and I walk into the sea.

  Responsibility

  Octavia Cade

  We were born at the same time, my sister and I, born into bodies of opposites. Yet for all that, we love each other – though her touch means death and mine does not. Though her house is full of zombies and mine is full of life. But sisterhood comes with responsibility and with care, so when she asks if I will house-sit for her while she goes from Auckland to New Orleans, to speak at conferences of deaths that are not her own, deaths that are dry-toothed while hers run with red, with soft and sinking flesh, I agree.

  Winter’s house is filled with tetrodotoxin and datura. Dried puffer fish hang from the kitchen ceiling and the benches are littered with pestles. There are two dogs that were schnauzers once, two cats who slink in silence, and six chickens in the pen, their feathers dull and drooping, but they all eat from her hand with relish and fight over fingerbones.

  She’s not three days gone before I find a chicken come to life in the coop. Poor little thing. I did not mean it. If it were mine I would cosset it with corn and oyster shell and care, but it is not
my chicken and I know that it would hurt my sister to see it so sickly, so far from how it should be.

  Winter called the one that lived Convulsion, because it was not near so blind as the others and its limbs would jerk and its wings flutter as if it were not fully dead, so if it had to be any pet, better that one, but … my margin of error is no longer. She hasn’t even been away a week. There are still three more to go!

  I buried the live chicken under the lawn. There was nothing else I could do for it.

  *

  Another chicken is sick. The other four seem fine, huddled and hunched with their eyes glazed over, but when I went to check on them, one was perked up in a corner, its feathers fluffed out and shining, and when it ate it produced diarrhoea instead of little dead pellets dried up like fossils. I made it bread pudding laced with ergot to help the stomach, and spent two days making pudding and almost forcing it down the gullet. I wish I knew its name, so that I could be more encouraging to it, but it blended so with the others that Convulsion was the only chicken I recognised.

  Fortunately, once I was able to convince it to eat, the chicken gobbled its pudding. I felt so sorry; it must have been desperate for proper nourishment. The sick chicken is still sick, but it’s looking better – slumping, sulking, still a bit of diarrhoea, but when I cleaned the cage today there was much less of it. Still, if it’s not better soon it’s vet time, or joining its friend two foot under the lawn.

  Thirteen days until Winter returns. It will be a relief. Her animals are spoiled and whiny – I woke yesterday to find the dogs had sneaked onto my bed in the middle of the night. I find this worrying. I realise they must be lonely, but the chickens only became sick after I arrived. I would not risk contagion.

  *

  It seems I am allergic to the eggs. I broke one open yesterday to find a little yellow chick inside.

  I cannot tell Winter. She’d be so embarrassed. She’s always telling me how fine and rotten they are. How much they stink of sulphur.

  *

  Luckily, the other birds continue healthy. The sick chicken has confined itself to the garden – it hasn’t wanted to leave it for the past day or so. It runs around, energetic, and has not shed a single feather. I believe it has even regrown a toe.

  But its droppings seem relatively normal (as far as I know, that is; I am more for rabbits than chickens) – they are no longer watery and diarrhoea-like, but hard and dusty pellets. Its eyes are dull and milky; its comb is pale and limp. Winter has left a list of instructions, and they tell me that a bright, colourful comb and shiny eyes speak of sickness. But the sick chicken clucks away quite happily at me when I come to feed it, and eats and drinks – gobbles, that is, all the treats I bring it (hemlock and nightshade and raw potato) that the other chickens aren’t getting.

  And yet it cavorts in the sunshine like a mad thing. I do not understand it.

  *

  There is nothing putrid about its feet or feathers that I can see.

  I’m taking it to the vet.

  *

  The chicken has a high temperature (38 degrees when it should be cold to the touch), and the diarrhoea is back. The vet pumped it full of worms and venom, and I have been given some plastic tubes of poison paste to stuff down its tiny beak twice a day.

  She is very kind, the vet. Although she did not seem hopeful, she took care not to blame me. Yet the chicken is very sick; the resurrection so advanced. I promised the vet that I would do the best I could, but flowers sprouted beneath my feet in the waiting room and I could see scepticism in her face.

  *

  The sick chicken has been isolated from the rest of the poultry. I tried to find a place where the other animals couldn’t get at it. The dogs are trained not to attack the chickens, but it can’t be restful to have the furry beasts snuffling at it all the time. So it’s on the deck, in a nice cool spot – the house and deck fence are on two sides, the third is an upturned deck table, and the fourth is made of boxes of bones.

  Its new sleeping place is the cat box in which it was shoved to go to the vet – it’s out there now nibbling on some grated puffer fish and hopefully dying.

  *

  Though – and this is the astonishing part – if I get sick, antibiotics will cost me nearly seven times more than what I paid the vet for poison! It really does not seem fair. I grant that Winter is a good housekeeper – for all I find her bread distasteful, there is no trace of mould – but it is really no harder to grow penicillin than it is to grow toxin.

  I have taken to calling sick chicken Esky, as a shorthand for Expensive Sick Chicken.

  *

  It is a disgusting day today, absolutely foul. The deck is very, very wet, so have had to bring Esky inside and give it a corner in the bathroom. It was out in the rain, actually frolicking, so I had to wedge it into the cat carrier as far as it would go. Now in the bathroom when it can only hear the rain, it turns its back and won’t come out. I wish I could say it was a sign of depression, but I believe it is just sickness and sulking.

  I’ll have to drag it out soon for its medicine: will try bribing it with a special treat of death’s head beetle. I know it enjoys them. (When I leave it with a range of foods in a wee bowl, it carefully picks out every scrap of beetle and leaves the rest.)

  Troublesome little brute.

  *

  The air today is sticky and miasmic. I can’t say that I enjoy it, but it’s good for the animals so I can’t complain. I put the sick chicken in its cat cage in a dank little corner of the garden with some datura for nibbling on and go take the dogs for a walk.

  Cue sudden heavy downpour of rain. It’s turned from mere thunderstorms to something more; it never takes long when I’m out in it, which under present circumstances is seriously inconvenient. It feels beautiful on my skin but the poor dogs are shivering and making pained little whimpers. I run with them back to the house, no small feat when I have to keep stopping to pick pieces of them up, and of course we’re all soaked. I go out front and there is Esky, looking like a drowned rat and delighted with it, trying to eat the parsley. Parsley. It could have skittered a few feet to the haven of the cat cage and its nice healthy datura, but no. It would rather be sickly.

  I spent ten minutes drying it off with an old tea towel. Its flesh was distressingly firm. Another chicken came to the back door and Esky could hear it clucking and started looking wistful. So I took it and its cage out back, where it can at least see its chicken friends. Two of the chickens seem relatively indifferent, two nearly bowl it over because they think I’ve got food – they’re right.

  One of the last two pecks Esky in the head. I’m not proud of it, but I backhanded that chicken like I was on autopilot. I’m not nursing Esky back to death so it can become a pariah!

  Separated the lot. Esky can see them and talk to them, and is scratching the ground in a desultory fashion, completely over any food that is not hand-fed to it. It still looks bright and less sluggish than the others, so I won’t be putting it back with them full-time yet, but it takes its poison well.

  Sadly, it looks like it might rain again soon, so whether Esky has the brains to get out of the way, I don’t know. The silly creature would recover from contagion only to succumb to the water of life.

  *

  Poor little Esky.

  I heard an almighty squawk from the back, and went out to find it huddled by itself under a yew tree and bleeding, feathers drifting. One of those terrible hens had ripped away some of its comb! Perhaps in an effort to help restore its appearance, I don’t know. I just wish I knew which one – I didn’t think their beaks retained that much strength. The infection better not be spreading. Perhaps I should have insisted Winter find another sitter.

  I rescued Esky and took it round the front, where it dived into its cat cage and won’t come out. At least the garden is no longer attractive to it. Perhaps the cat cage reminds i
t of its coop. Winter fashioned it out of coffins so they would be comfortable.

  *

  Esky still hasn’t come out of the cat cage. I don’t particularly want to drag it out if it is rebonding with the idea of small dark places.

  I felt so sorry for it that I let it stay in its cage on my bedroom floor last night (with lots of newspapers around it). There were a few clucks, but it didn’t sound so crushingly lonely.

  *

  Have one unopened tube of poison paste left. Am undecided whether or not to use it – Esky is distinctly unimpressed and becoming more difficult to dose with every passing day, but I don’t want to risk a relapse. Finishing a course of medication is important.

  *

  Esky has been attacked again. The leader of the chickens, the healthiest of the flock and so barely holding itself together, has been relentless. It paid no attention to my smacks – I had to kick it away and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning ichor off my boot.

  Poor Esky huddled in a corner, face to the wall in the classic ‘I can’t see it, so it can’t see me, maybe I won’t get hurt?’ pose. I brought it back to the house, where it sits upon my lap and shivers. It was looking exhausted, too – though it has been outside with them all day and it’s not out of the woods yet.

  I have started supplementing its diet with appropriate proteins: egg, which it does not like although that could be my influence, and chicken. There are pieces fallen off and scattered about the garden; it seems a shame to waste them. Perhaps the taste of rot will undermine its burgeoning immune system, and send it back to health.

  *

  I’ve had to adjust my approach. Practically pinned Esky to the deck in an effort to prise its beak open for poison, but no luck. I didn’t want to hurt it, so squirted the poison into a mixture of grated puffer fish and weed killer and Esky fell upon it.