‘Finney?’ he whispered. ‘Finney, it’s me, Soldier.’ He leaned over the stone wall that banked the path to the castle and saw Finney lying, curled up in a ball, as if in bed. He climbed the wall and squatted down. Finney stared up at him, red-eyed and pale, as if he was not sure if he was dreaming. Then he sat up and grinned.
‘We thought you died.’
‘Well, Finney, I’m not dead yet, but now don’t come close ’cause I got some sickness in the sewer and I wouldn’t want you to catch it. Tell me what happened. What are you doing here all alone? Where’s Meegey?’
Finney gave a little cry and looked like he was about to plunge back into his sobbing. But he sniffed and straightened.
‘When Gollub pushed you, he came back from the window and he grabbed me, with his arm round my neck, so tight I could hardly breathe, and he said if anyone came near him he would break my neck and like that he started to back out the door. So Meegey said he would go instead of me. Gollub said not unless Meegey was handcuffed, which he did. So Gollub took Meegey and he said if anyone followed, the guards down below would take their swords to them. But there were no guards down below. After a while Calloot and Jacka went down and they came back and they were shining, they said we were free, there was no one there. So everyone ran, and Diffan took me down and told me to stay here while he went to find Meegey and he said he would come back as soon as he could.’ Finney gazed up at Soldier timidly. He lowered his eyes and murmured, ‘You set everyone free, Soldier.’
Soldier shook his head. ‘But not Meegey.’
At this Finney began to slowly shake his head too and then he gave a little sob and said it was his fault Meegey had gone. Soldier said it was nobody’s fault. They sat side by side for a while and Soldier thought about what to do next. The sky was blue, cloudless and bold, and while it made Finney feel small and quietly respectful beneath it, it tore a hole in Soldier’s heart. It was as he had dreamed, to be free beneath the sky, in the clear warm air, but he didn’t feel he would live to know it well. Now, he couldn’t think what to do next. He couldn’t go further till he had set Meegey free, but he was so weary and sick he almost felt he could lean into the wall and sleep and not do another thing. In fact he did close his eyes and drift away and perhaps would have fallen into a sleep, if Finney hadn’t nudged him.
‘Soldier, wake up. I hear someone. See who it is. It could be Diffan come back.’
Soldier hardly had the strength to rouse himself. He crawled along the wall away from Finney and then pulled himself up to look over.
It wasn’t Diffan coming down the road. It was Gollub, and in front of him was Meegey, his hands bound behind his back. Meegey walked oddly, stumbling forward and then teetering. He had taken a beating. Gollub gave him a shove every time he slowed, but Meegey seemed not to even look where he was going, his gaze was blank, frozen and pained. They were heading back to the tower.
Soldier climbed over the wall. He began limping towards them. Meegey uttered a cry when he saw him, his eyes lit up in a moment of happy recognition and then he began to shake his head, calling out, ‘Run, run Soldier.’
Soldier didn’t run.
He kept walking, his bad foot dragging.
Gollub’s face lightened when he saw Soldier, and he gleefully flung Meegey aside, strode forward, and rolled up his sleeves as if he were about to get his hands dirty. He thrust his head forward, hungry for the vengeance he’d thought he would never have. He reached out, grabbed Soldier by the throat and began to shake him.
Soldier knew he didn’t have the strength to fight Gollub. His head shook violently and his limbs were flaccid and yielding. He saw something, in the blur that his vision became, moving towards them both, moving fast, but he could not focus either his eyes or his mind on anything other than his own plan. He heard Meegey yelling and Gollub grunting and saw Gollub’s gritted teeth and lank lips close and almost upon him. His own teeth clattered and he struggled to draw his mouth tight and with the last strength he had he stiffened his body and spat directly at Gollub’s sneering mouth.
Gollub let him go and drew his elbow to his mouth and stared, horrified, at Soldier’s pale sweating face. Soldier stared back, and tried to calculate from the contortions on Gollub’s face whether it was disgust, rage or fear of the disease that might have been passed between them which drove him now to raise his arm and to bring it down with all his force on Soldier’s head. Soldier’s eyes flickered, he saw the sky once more and then he sank to the ground and let the blackness come in.
In his blackness Soldier dreamed of the girl with the green dress. He was in a forest and there were shadows of trees and light that was speckled and shimmery and pulsed slower and slower, as if it was fading out and returning to black. The girl was there in the forest, she had come to tend to him. She touched his foot, his ribs, his mouth, his head. His head hurt, but her hand was cool and white. The blue shawl fell from her shoulders as she leaned over him and Soldier looked into her eyes and felt everything was ready now. He could feel her hair on his face.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Have I died?’
She smiled. ‘Not yet.’
When Soldier woke up he found himself alone in a room. It was night-time. There were poultices tied to his wrist and feet and something bandaged round his chest. He tried to sit up, but was too weak and instead turned on his side. The moon shone in the window, casting a silvery light on the hearth. There he saw the girl in the green dress sleeping on a chair. She was curled on her side with her hand tucked under her cheek and her mouth slightly open, the shawl pulled around her. He could see the long curve of her neck and the freckles scattered across her nose and the gentle mouth, open as if waiting to speak. It didn’t occur to him to wonder if he was awake or asleep or dead or alive, he didn’t care. He lay still and watched her sleep until he too fell back into a feverish slumber.
Many days passed like this, Soldier slipping between dream and wakefulness without knowing which was which. His mind seemed to be adrift, far away from the deep struggle of his body. If he tried to focus his mind, to clear it, it ached and made his eyes close in pain. Either way he began to expect her to be there, standing with a warm bowl of broth, holding his head up, changing his poultices. He could hear the rustle of her skirt, or the sound of her step coming and leaving again. Sometimes he spoke, asked her questions.
‘So you are really here?’
‘Yes I am.’ She seemed to laugh with her eyes and sat down on the bed. Then she touched his hand to show him she was real. He closed his eyes to let the touch on his hand be the only thing he felt.
Later he said, ‘I thought I was dreaming.’
‘You have been dreaming, a lot, and talking in your sleep.’ She was again trying to make him eat some broth. He wasn’t hungry and turned his face away.
‘What do I speak of?’
‘You call out names sometimes.’
‘Meegey?’
‘Yes, Meegey.’
‘I don’t know your name.’
‘I’m Callise.’ She folded her arms and looked at him quietly. He wanted to sit up. He wanted to tell her that he had loved her from the tower. But he was shy. He lowered his eyes.
The next time he woke, his head felt cold but clear. It was dark. He called out her name. He wanted to talk. She came to his bed, wearing a long white nightgown, her hair long and free. She swooped down to him like a white bird landing.
‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s nothing. It’s just I feel clear.’ She tilted her head and considered this and then went to get a candle. She lit it and sat on the bed.
‘Could you eat some broth then? It would help if you did. It’s full of herbs to bring down the fever,’ she said coaxingly.
‘Tell me what happened to me. Where is Meegey? Can you tell me what happened? Who brought me here?’
‘Who brought you here? Well Meegey did, with Satcho, on Satcho’s cart. And the other boys too. But Satcho
has taken them to where they will be safe, in another village, till all the trouble blows over, then they’ll come back. Meegey is very worried about you. But Satcho knows I can care for you. Satcho is a herbalist, and she has shown me everything. But you have to take some herbs or we won’t get the fever down. Satcho will think I have not tended to you properly if you don’t take them,’ she pleaded, pressing her hand on his.
‘I have the phoidus and you shouldn’t come near me,’ Soldier suddenly remembered. He drew back from her, but she didn’t move away. ‘How do you know Satcho?’ he asked.
‘Satcho is my mother.’ The girl lowered her eyes and let out a quick breath. ‘We lost my father and brother. We thought my brother might have been in the tower – we had heard talk that there were boys there. So I asked for the job cleaning the castle rooms, so I could watch out for him. But you were the only one I ever saw. And then I saw you pushed out. Satcho was looking for you, and then she found you.’
She glanced at him shyly and then straightened up and glided away into the dark of the room again, as if to let him consider this privately.
‘Wait, what was your brother’s name? I can tell you if he was there.’
Soldier could not see her but he could hear her. He wanted to be able to help her. She came forward for a moment and whispered, ‘His name was Arlon, but Meegey has already told us that of all the boys who were there, there was no Arlon.’
Now Soldier lowered his eyes solemnly. It was true there was no Arlon. He felt a pain in his heart for her and she saw that he did. She held the bowl towards his mouth, but Soldier took it from her, and spilt it on the covers. She sighed and frowned. ‘You have to let me help you.’ She seemed childishly cross.
Soldier had never been helped before, only by Meegey. He grinned. Her little tantrum amused him. He let her tip the bowl to his lips, and took as much as he could. But there was still more he needed to know.
‘Why was I not killed by Gollub?’
She lifted her chin proudly now. ‘I wasn’t there. But they said it was because of my mother. She’d followed you because she felt you might be going to the tower. When she saw him choking you, she grabbed her knife from the vegetable cart and ran and cut the rope on Meegey’s hands. He took Gollub round the neck with the rope and stopped him kicking you to pieces.’
‘I saw her coming. I didn’t know it was her, but I saw something.’ Soldier sat forward with an excited cry, as if it were all happening again in front of him. ‘But what of Gollub? Did they kill him?’
She tossed her head like a horse. ‘No, Satcho doesn’t believe in killing. She said there was no need for any more violence. You had already done the job by spitting in his mouth. They took him to the tower and left him there. He will not have anyone to tend him through the fever. He was a guard at the castle. I used to pass him when I worked there.’ She gave a little shudder.
Soldier smiled and flopped his head back on the pillow. So there it was. Meegey was safe. And he was here with the girl in the green dress. He really was here with her. And everything, everything else was all right. If only for this moment he could hold that feeling inside and not think forward or backward, not think at all. He closed his eyes, but then he wanted to open them to gaze upon her. As he tried to sit up again, he felt the sickness rise up and take hold once more and he remembered there was still one last battle to fight.
He woke again at dawn. She stood with her back to him at the window. Her hair was in a plait hanging down between her shoulders. When she turned, he saw she had been crying.
‘You’re sad?’ he said.
She shook her head and went quickly to make the herbs.
‘I’ll be good now, I’ll take the herbs,’ he called out. She came to him with them, put the bowl to his mouth and said, ‘How long did you live in that room?’
‘Ah,’ said Soldier, ‘see, this is a good sign. Now you are asking me questions. I must be getting better.’
She smiled and he remembered her smile and how it had given him joy and now she was right here next to him, the smile was so unmistakeably his that he felt like a man who has just made his fortune. Suddenly he reached towards her, afraid that time had let him go. Everything was alight, but thin and wavering. She was bright and beautiful and agitated, and even in her agitation, he loved her. He put his hand in hers. He leaned forward, burning as he was to take her in his arms and dance her round the room. Then he remembered the phoidus and moaned, ‘Oh but you can’t come near me, you’ll catch this cursed illness.’ It was the first time he had admitted it stood between them. There had been the tower and now there was this. It defied him.
She came anyway. She stood beside him and put her hand to his mouth.
‘Thirty days of fever – if we get through them we live. Satcho will get us through,’ she murmured and looked at him with great intensity as if she knew she could lead him through if he would only come. He would have stopped her but she was already bending towards him moving deliberately and steadily, without pause, as if she had decided before she even said it. Her head was on his shoulder. He could feel her breath on his neck, the weight of her leaning into him. His arms, without him even asking, had moved to hold her. Her face came to his so he could see her green eyes shimmering with the tears sliding down her face. Like one window onto another, he thought. Only he didn’t have to jump; he was there. She said his name and he heard it and they held each other and Soldier knew he was not alone.
I didn’t actually choose ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ straight away. My first choice was ‘The Little Mermaid’, but it was already taken, then I tried ‘The Ice Queen’, but that also was taken, so I set upon ‘The Ugly Duckling’ thinking it was a nice outsider story, which always resonates with me, but I got some way into it and thought: Could I make anything harder for myself than writing something from the point of view of a duck? I then plunged back into my copy of Hans Christian Andersen and came across ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’. In this tale, a tin soldier is the only one of twenty-four identical tin soldiers to have just one leg (another outsider). He can’t take his eyes off a paper dancer in a paper castle, wishing she could be his wife but worrying he has nothing to offer her. It is uncertain whether he is pushed – perhaps by a goblin – or falls from the window, but after a series of adventures he ends up back in the nursery, where a boy throws him in the fire. A gust of air blows the paper dancer into the fire with him and they burn together, though I suppose she burned quicker than he did.
I immediately felt a kinship with the steadfast tin soldier. I’m neither steadfast nor one-legged, though I do have a load of other injuries to contend with, but I was recently in Paris with my then-two-year-old daughter doing a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, and the room I lived in looked directly onto a dance studio, so that I would find myself, every night, ‘trapped’ in my small room, while my daughter slept in the cupboard. From my window I watched all the different dance classes, and gazed at the dancers with some longing. I longed to be dancing as they were, and all the while the city of Paris lay beneath me, loud and lively and mostly out of bounds. I may as well have been made of tin, or swallowed by a fish . . .
I didn’t plan a way to treat the story, I just started with the idea of a young man locked up and lame, and looking out at someone he longs to know, but can’t. I didn’t at first know why he was locked up until Gollub entered. I expect I made Gollub up out of the remnants of the slightly nasty Goblin in the original fairytale. The tragic note also appealed to me, as it is always such a neat ending when someone dies; it’s perfectly final. But once I wrote it, I felt I couldn’t really kill him off because I had become quite fond of him and I wanted to reward his courage and his steadfastness, if only to believe that life would do the same.
Margo Lanagan’s fantastical writing includes four short-story collections and two novels, and she is a four-time winner of the World Fantasy Award. She is currently researching and scrapbooking towards another novel, as well as writing short storie
s. She lives in Sydney, works as a technical writer and constantly wishes there were more hours in the day.
Isobelle Carmody has had over thirty books and many short stories published. She is now working on the last book of her award-winning fantasy series, The Obernewtyn Chronicles, and on a second collection of her own short stories, titled Metro Winds. She lives between Prague in Central Europe and her home on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, with her partner, a poet and jazz musician, and her wild sprite of a daughter.
Rosie Borella spent ten years working in journalism and fifteen years in public relations, marketing, and science writing. Her short stories have been placed in national writing competitions run by the ABC (Bicentennial Awards), the City of Brisbane and the City of Glen Eira. At present she is finalising work on an eco thriller called Whisperland. She lives on a farmlet on the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong, Victoria, with her mum, boyfriend, horse, and two dogs.
Richard Harland was born in the north of England and migrated to Australia at the age of twenty-two. After several years as a folk-rock musician and more years as a university lecturer, he became a full-time writer. His fifteenth book, the steampunk fantasy Worldshaker, became an international success in 2010 and was followed soon after by its sequel, Liberator.
Margaret Mahy wrote her first story when she was seven, and has gone on to publish well over a hundred picture books, novels and short-story collections. She has won several major awards, including two Carnegie Medals in 1982 and 1984 for The Haunting and The Changeover, as well as both the Order of New Zealand and the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her contribution to children’s literature. When she was a child and said she wanted to be a writer, people told her she just could not do that, but she is pleased to have proved them wrong.
Martine Murray lives in an old house with her daughter Mannie and her dog Maude and a hive of bees who have no names but have been known to sting. There is also a chicken who lays blue eggs. Martine’s novels and picture books are published internationally and she has won several awards, including the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adults for How to Make a Bird, and the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Books for The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley.
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