by Lee Murray
Standing, I carry the vessel inland, passing the silent sentinels of the trees. I do not speak to them and I do not listen to what they may say.
Beyond the trees, I find the stones. They are carved in familiar shapes, faces and silhouettes of Sarny, Mother, Oolee, and the rest of the village. Sinking to my knees at the rounded feet of Gilly’s stone likeness, I dig with my hands into the soft earth. Then I lift the gourd and break its neck on the base of the statue. Pouring Gilly’s ashes into the dark hole fills it and the surface becomes the same as the black sand.
Now he is part of this land and too far from home to come back or to burn in the streamers of white flame. Here, Gilly will become part of the dark island and in time, he will return to the sea. I hope his soul will join the endless points of glittering light that look down on me as I return to the water and crouch, washing my hands in the white-foamed surf.
I slide forward into the first row of waves and the sea strokes me as it always has. I take comfort in the water’s embrace and swim through the darkness as I have swum through the lagoon since first night. The ocean flows through me and my gills open, drawing air from the water and turning it to fire in my blood. Where my skin has blistered and cracked from long exposure to the sun, the ocean sloughs it away. I shed strips of dead scale and flex my arms, feeling the stroke of the water against the webbing that runs from my arms to my body.
The moult is a great easing for my itching dry skin. My new adult form is stronger, more suited to the long swim through the horizon and into the distant ocean where the whales watch for the unwary. I can make it home now, back to the island where Sarny and Mother wait. Where we will drink kava, eat fish, and watch the sky burn while the crabs write the history of the world in the fluid script of charcoal on stone.
Back When the River had No Name
Summer Wigmore
Rey had been young when the world ended, and he didn’t remember much of the before times. He thought he remembered sleeping next to his mother, the shape of her beside him, but it wasn’t a comfortable memory. He didn’t like to think about things like that. Everything was beautiful and the world was good, but only if you tried hard enough.
He cycled up the hill, standing on his pedals to push. His mountain bike wasn’t as good as a motopaika for power, but it didn’t need gas and it was better than a car for swerving around the cracks and potholes. Once he was at the top of the hill, he rested with one foot on the ground. The road ahead was cracked too, but there were no real big holes, and no traps. He kicked off and swept down it, like he was flying with the wind in his face. He stood on his pedals and whooped. The framework of his bike juddered with each hole, but held.
He got to the bottom of the hill too quickly, but at least there was another one to climb. He pushed up this one too, legs burning, his pack heavier on his back. When he was nearly at the top, he had a bad feeling, so he got off and walked quietly.
He was glad he had. From the top of this one, he could see a camp of travellers, probably here, like he was, to cross the bridge and bargain with the Baron. They were a few hundred metres from the base of the Baron’s bridge, and had a fire. Rey went back and hid. He could be quiet when he needed, and the chipped plastic beads and things on his bike were easy to hide with the blanket from his bag, so if they had heard him they might not see him even if they came to look. He hunkered beside the bike and waited.
This was the only bridge across the River he knew of. Over the River there would be ruined houses and old supermarkets to raid. All the food was long gone, but there would be some bright plastics to scavenge, for his bike and hair and clothes, and maybe there would be proper dye that was better than the bleaches he used sometimes. They were bad for him, but it was good to know why his hair was falling out, and he liked it being colourful. It helped him keep happy and it was important to be happy. But the Baron was said to ask a high tax to cross their bridge, and Rey didn’t have much to give. Maybe the travellers would?
He waited until the sun vanished and the long thick cloud that was always in the sky went dark purples and blacks like a bruise instead of grey and grainy like dust. Once it was truly dark he left his bike and, keeping low to the ground, sneaked to where the travellers were.
They didn’t have scouts. It was a big party, two motopaika and a quad. No cars. Cars were good for carrying big loads, but you needed more people than this to get them through tight spots and out of muck. This was more people than he’d seen in a while but still not all that many, less than ten. More than five. He counted until he remembered the number, proudly: eight.
He scanned their resources. Big tins of gas for the bikes, blankets and knives, but no guns. One person had a knife lashed at the end of a stick, like a spear, and a few had jackets, but every single person had their own plate. The smell of food was good, even if the River stink ruined it. Rey crouched and watched, eyes gleaming. Food would be good, supplies. He could ask, maybe, or steal. Or kill them. But he hated doing that, even when it was people who weren’t people any more, like ghosties, and these were all still people, though some had wounds with that shiny look that meant they weren’t healing. He scratched at the scabs on his own leg, which bled a bit, so that was fine. One of the people didn’t have any legs, but that might have been from before the world ended. He sat near some of the others, playing cards. One was a child. Rey hadn’t seen a child in ages.
They looked cosy, like a family gathered around a TV, and it made something in his chest feel painful like it had got caught there, like a big splinter or bit of metal that needed to be pulled out. They looked nice, a big mix of people, the guy with no legs and a thin white girl and others. Maybe he could just go up and ask.
The scrape of forks on plates got quieter, and Rey sat straighter, like that was a signal, like something was going to happen. The oldest man there placed his cards down and cleared his throat. After he cleared it he had to cough, again and again, but at last he talked, and his words rumbled, strong despite the cough.
‘In the old days before the cloud came and the lifeless things,’ the old man said, ‘my people still lived near Oldland. Their waka was Tainui. My dad always had enough food and beer. He could invite friends to watch the game.’
‘To watch the game,’ the others murmured. It felt warm and close and reminded Rey of something. He ran.
He brushed through the rough grasses, but there wasn’t any shouting from behind him. He found his bike, pulled the blanket off it and laid it on the ground to sleep on later, underneath a bush so he would have shelter from the rains. He couldn’t make a fire this close to the travellers.
The story had been in English, which was good because Rey only knew a few words of the old tongue. They said in the old days people could speak it for a whole conversation. Sometimes they said there were people who still spoke it, them by the lakes that had sunk when steam came up from the earth: people who still spoke it, and spoke nothing else.
To Rey it was like the world that had been lost. It wasn’t a language he could use even if he remembered it, because the world it described was no longer there. He still reached for it sometimes without knowing why, the pieces sunken, too, beneath his memory.
‘My mountain is…’ Rey said aloud, but if he’d ever had one he couldn’t think of it. He paced, then tried again. ‘My mother’s name is…’
He huffed out a breath and crouched, giving up. He’d passed a deary a few weeks back, with some food inside. He had no meat left, but he still had a stick of candy. He chewed it slowly, hunkered over the emptiness in his belly, and afterward tied the wrapper around one spoke. Then he lay down and slept.
The bridge was grey and old-looking, big and broken and pitted like a tooth. Once there had been arcs of stone along each side like the back of a beast through the water, maybe for rituals. Now the pillars that had supported them were mostly broken off. It was the only way to cross the River unless you had a good
boat, and no one had a boat; the only bridge still standing, though it was snapped in two pieces, one veering out over the other.
There, the body of the bridge and its grey arcs angled down. The travellers made their way slowly across, and Rey followed them. He had left his bike behind, but he could go get it later. Bikes made noise, and Rey could be quiet. None of them saw him, not the people who were crossing the bridge, not the man with no legs either, left with a spear and the supplies at the bridge’s base. He hid behind pillars and inched down one of the thick ribbons of stone. The party reached the break-off of the bridge and stopped to talk to the Baron, and Rey crouched behind a pillar, and listened.
‘We need to cross, Baron Taniwha,’ one of the women called. Her mouth was twisted like she tasted something sour, like some of the meat Rey had taken from the deary, which had twisted his stomach for days and made him sick up and see things. Maybe it was the smell.
The Baron stood on her higher piece of bridge. Rey tilted his head to look at her better. She was like a ghostie, with her skin so pale and blue. A long gun hung from her hand in a casual way. She wore a tattered suit. ‘I control this crossing,’ she said. Her voice was flat, and grated like glass. She gestured with her long gun. ‘What do you have to trade? What do you have to give me?’ She looked to where they had left their stores. ‘Food?’
The woman who had spoken first stepped in front of the kid who was there. The old man cleared his throat, coughing, and said, ‘We need all the food we have.’
The Baron straightened and pointed the tip of her gun at them. ‘Get out,’ she said, the way you’d speak to roaches or rats, all disgust.
A man in a jacket pulled a small gun out from under it and pointed it at her. The air was silent and thick as stew.
‘I can pick you all out from here,’ the Baron said. Rey thought her back looked less straight than it had.
The man with the gun said, ‘Not before I hit you. Wing you at least.’
That was when Rey hopped down behind the travellers. ‘But you’re cornered!’ he said.
The kid and its guardian whirled. So did some of the others. The man with the gun and the other women didn’t move their eyes from the Baron. She had flinched her long gun a little in his direction when he came out, but now it pointed back at the group.
‘That’s right,’ she said, and gestured with the tip of it. She looked confident again now. ‘Get out, I said. Don’t come back without a toll if you know what’s good for you.’
Rey stepped to the side to let them pass, beaming at them. None of them smiled back. Like they didn’t know how important it was, being happy.
When they’d passed, he tilted his head to look up at the Baron on her ledge. ‘Is that worth the crossing?’
She didn’t say anything. She stepped back. After a second, the rope ladder dropped across the gap, only big enough for one person at a time. He climbed up.
There was a pile of stuff on the other side, more guns and vests and blankets, food.
‘Baron Taniwha?’ Rey said. She didn’t nod, just looked at him unmoving, the gun ready in her hand. She wouldn’t have let him across if she thought he was a threat, but no one survived long unless they acted like everything was. ‘You shouldn’t have a name like that.’
The Baron smiled without anything in it that a smile should have. Her lip cracked and a dribble of blue dripped down it. ‘Cry me a River.’
He looked back at the drop half a step behind him and the water beneath that. ‘There was a saying once, about this River,’ he said and frowned. ‘I don’t know what it was though.’
‘A lot of things have been forgotten,’ the Baron said. She didn’t sound upset by it. She raised her gun a little and gestured with it, between him and the bank. ‘Get going and keep going. I’ll welcome you back across if you pay the price. But friend, touch my storehouse and you’ll regret it. Or won’t.’
Rey stayed where he was. He felt rooted with wonder. ‘Friend?’ he said. ‘We’re friends?’
She stared at him. Her eyes were blue too, or grey, like dead fish. There were blue veins beneath her skin. Rey beamed at her.
The Baron’s eyes flicked to the water sludging below, then up.
‘Will you help me with something?’ she said, slowly.
‘Of course!’
You couldn’t trust anyone out here, not these days, not ever. But this was different. They were friends.
‘Then yes.’ She lowered her gun, and jerked her head for him to follow. ‘Come eat … friend.’
If he thought her pile of gear by the bridge was riches, then the stuff in her base underground was more than riches, was treasure. Rey wandered around, looking at the piled cans, the shelves of wood for burning, the food wrapped in plastic, crackers, biscuits, most of it still good. He bent to look at a stack of big squashy bags, touching the shiny plastic.
‘There’s nothing you can eat there,’ the Baron said. Rey snatched his hand back. He knew that smell.
He sat cross-legged across from the Baron and nodded in thanks when the Baron passed him a can of beans and a fork – a real fork, so he didn’t need to use his hands! He did anyway, scooping up the cold beans and eating them quickly.
‘Been a while since your last meal?’ the Baron said in her dry creaking voice. Rey set his emptied can back down, ashamed. He wiped his mouth.
‘My mum always fed me good when she was around,’ he said, because he didn’t want anyone thinking badly of his family. The Baron nodded without saying anything. She didn’t eat, just watched as Rey did, watched him like she hated him, but she couldn’t, because they were friends. ‘It hasn’t been that long,’ Rey said. ‘I’m sixteen.’
‘All right,’ the Baron said.
Looking for something to say, Rey smiled wide, wide enough that his mouth hurt, and waved the bean can. ‘You’re very generous.’
‘Ha,’ the Baron intoned. ‘Ha.’ She stood up and went somewhere. Rey rolled his can on the ground, batting it between his hands, until he got bored and just sat.
He gave a start when the Baron came back. She moved more smoothly, but her skin was paler and peeling, blue underneath.
‘You addicted to it?’ he whispered. ‘Pickle-juice?’ It was good for the people who needed to fight off illness and keep living, could clean your wounds out, and it preserved the dead, but if you took it all the time … he’d never even heard of that. ‘You mustn’t even feel alive anymore.’
‘What’s so great about living?’ the Baron said. ‘This is better.’ She kicked at Rey’s ribs to get him to move. ‘Sleep,’ she said. ‘There’s work for you tomorrow.’
Rey curled up on the cold concrete and did. He slept much easier that night. There was no chance of the rain getting him down here, and the rain sometimes bit like fire or insects, and made skin go red and blistery and fall off.
He woke up and didn’t know if Baron Taniwha had slept or eaten. She was still wearing the same clothes. She led him out, and stopped to show him another wonder: a whole stack of clothes, new and used and in all sizes, none with bad holes or stains. He felt them with his hands and whistled. ‘You could give clothes to everyone in the Islands.’
‘Give?’ the Baron echoed. There seemed to be a lot of words she didn’t know.
There were some trees growing near the Baron’s storehouse, and the hidden entrance they left it by. She took him out to the edge of her side of the bridge and pointed. ‘There. Do you see?’
He nodded. The River bent past the bridge, and in the crook of it the water seemed deeper, pooled, a patch of stillness. They went back.
Nearer the River the grasses grew smaller and brown. Several metres before the water’s edge they stopped and there was just mud. Looking up and down the bank Rey could see where the old town had gone into the water.
‘I need supplies,’ the Baron said. She levelled her long gun at Rey,
who blinked at it. ‘Get down there and find what you can. Bring it back up. If you try to hoard it and run, I’ll shoot you.’ Rey nodded. The Baron looked at him, pale-eyed. ‘Do you know what a gun is?’
‘Sure,’ Rey said. He pointed.
‘Have you seen one used?’
He shook his head.
The Baron pressed her cracked dead lips together. ‘What about this?’ she said, pulling a flare from her pocket, and Rey flinched. Those could hurt if they were let off too close to you, burn your skin worse than rain. ‘There,’ the Baron said, and pointed it at his face. ‘Do it or I’ll shoot you.’
Rey shook his head and laughed, turning his back on her and picking across the mud towards the water. His friend, the Baron, sure was a joker.
‘Food is good,’ she called after him. ‘Jewellery to trade. If there’s any bottled water that isn’t tainted, bring that back first.’
‘Okay,’ he said, focused on the River water. It was brown and thick, and didn’t move how water should. After the mud bank it dropped off steeply, so he didn’t wade in, just curved his arms above his head and dived into the water.
It swallowed him with barely a splash. Rey kicked his way down, then opened his eyes wide against the strain of the water. All his body stung, but his eyes were the worst. It was worth it though, because he could make out shapes further in, where the water was deeper.
He swam with all his body then, kicking like mad and making scoops of his hands to pull through the water, which was thick, making it hard to get through but easier to go against the current. He kicked his way down, eyes straining. Murk and darkness. There was a shadow, maybe a drowned building, maybe a rock. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and swore when that hurt.
Air bubbled thickly from his mouth, and he closed it quick, shuddering and going still. It felt like probing fingers had pooled into his mouth, not water at all. He wanted to spit it out, but he didn’t want to open his mouth again.
His lungs pressed hard against his chest. He should’ve taken more clothes off before he dived, but the problem was probably his lowermost vest, and he hated taking that off, except sometimes on girl days, and he hadn’t had a girl day all week. Besides, he didn’t trust this water.
