The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  “Well,” Pietersz shrugged, “You’ve not been forthcoming in doing this sort of stuff yourself so far.”

  “Perhaps,” Cornelisz favoured him with a sidelong glance that took in all his failures. “I should have done so much earlier.”

  “Perhaps,” Pietersz replied sourly, “Perhaps.”

  Hayes’ island was half the size of Cornelisz’s, with the same low, scrubby vegetation that scratched at their legs and caught their trousers as they trudged out of the boats and up the well-worn paths they had followed during the failed assaults. Above them, on the single hill the island possessed, lay the ramshackle assemblage of stone walls that Hayes had fashioned for his defence. Cornelisz eyed them with distaste.

  “They’re tiny,” he remarked.

  Pietersz sighed.

  “Small, but aided by the rise. All we have are our blades and poles. They can throw stones down onto us long before we get close enough to use them.”

  Cornelisz turned away from him.

  “Attack,” was his only reply.

  * * *

  They attacked, again and again, and were forced back, again and again. For every foot they pushed forward they fell back ten inches, creeping their way across the rise until they camped directly under one of the walls, protected from the falling rocks by a spur of sand and a thick covering of vegetation.

  “They’re running low,” Pietersz reported as they crouched below their meagre covering.

  “How do you know?”

  “The rocks aren’t as heavy as before. They’re waiting until we get closer.”

  “Then push harder,” Cornelisz shouted. “Push faster.”

  “We’re exhausted. Half the men are injured. We’ve no supplies, and hardly any water.”

  “All the more reason to finish them now, don’t you think?”

  Pietersz opened his mouth to reply. One of the men behind him slapped him on the back. “What?”

  The attacker pointed across the rise towards the tiny bay upon which their boats had landed.

  “A sail,” Pietersz whispered, then louder, “A sail!”

  Cornelisz stared at it in mounting horror. A single white sail, a smudge against the grey-black of the ocean, no more than half an hour away.

  “Pelsaert,” he whispered. Pelsaert, who had abandoned the colony, had slipped out at night with nothing more than a boat and a handful of sailors, throwing empty promises behind him. Ragged cheers broke out amongst the soldiers in the fort. Cornelisz snapped back to the present.

  “Get a boat.” He pushed Pietersz. “Get out there, now!”

  “And do what?”

  “Stop Hayes getting there first!” Already, they could see soldiers scrambling down the far side of the hill, racing towards the beach. Cornelisz and Pietersz exchanged panicked glances. “Move, you fool!”

  Pietersz slithered back down the rise, pushing subordinates before him as he went. Half a dozen of the men took off in pursuit. Cornelisz turned back to the wall above him. There was nothing for it now. All he could do was take the fort, kill Hayes before the ship arrived. Once Torrentius was summoned, the power of the Master and his allies in the dark would remove Pelsaert, the ship, and all who stood between Cornelisz and the new world.

  “Move it, you rabble!” he shouted. “Over this wall and kill them all!”

  * * *

  Cornelisz walked the line of shackled prisoners and stared down at them with undisguised contempt. Waves crashed against the sand behind him, their laughter loud in his ears. The captives kneeled on the hot sand, their heads bowed in abject misery and surrender. Cornelisz reached the end of the line, and turned to face the way he had come.

  “Pathetic,” he announced. “Utterly pathetic, each and every one of you.”

  “That will be enough!” Commander Pelsaert stood a dozen steps away, surrounded by the men of the ship Sardam. “Put that man on his knees.”

  The sailor who had hold of Cornelisz’s shackles kicked his knees out from underneath him. Cornelisz sank to the ground. The sailor grabbed his hair and yanked it back so he could look into the face of the Commander, and see the rough gallows that had been erected at the head of the beach. Behind Pelsaert he could see Hayes, unbowed despite the fury of the battle three days previous, and beside him, the gaunt figure of Lucretia, staring poison over the Opperkoopman’s shoulder. Cornelisz grinned, and had it wiped from his face by the back of the sailor’s hand. He tasted blood, and spat it onto the sand.

  “For the act of mutiny against the rightful command of the ship Batavia, I find you guilty,” Pelsaert began to intone. “For the crime of murder against no less than one hundred and twenty of the King’s citizens, I find you . . . ”

  “Oh, for everyone’s sake just shut the hell up and get on with it, you decrepit old windbag!” Cornelisz shouted his scorn across the beach. “Don’t leave us out here in the sun to burn to death.”

  Pelsaert gazed at him like a child about to step on a bug. “Very well,” he said, “If you wish.” He nodded to the sailor at Cornelisz’s back. The sailor tugged him to his feet. Cornelisz shrugged him off for a moment, but the sailor grabbed his wrist and twisted, grinding the bone hard against the metal of his cuffs so that he gasped with pain. He was dragged in front of Pelsaert and forced back to his knees. Hayes stepped forward, and laid a block of wood in front of him. Cornelisz was freed from his shackles long enough for two sailors to grab his forearms and stretch his hands across the block.

  “What is this? What is this?” Cornelisz struggled, but his captors had the advantage of weight and angle, and held his arms rigid. He stared up at Pelsaert.

  “The sentence is death.”

  “Of course it is. But what is this?”

  Pelsaert smiled; a cold, thin little thing full of disdain. “I have been reminded by Mrs Van der Mylen of a clause in company law relating to the penalties for acts of treason. I am told that it is, in this case, particularly apt.” He turned to Hayes. “Remove his hands.”

  Hayes stepped forward. He held a hammer in one hand and, in the other, a chisel.

  Cornelisz screamed once after the first blow, then watched silently from a million miles away as the second descended. It took eight blows in all. Cornelisz stopped counting after three, and caring after four. The sailors to either side kept him upright as his hands were lifted from the block and carried down to the water’s edge. Then they were thrown into the waves. The ocean ate them with glee. As if to thank him for this final gift, the darkness shut off his view of the world and accorded him one final vision.

  His master Torrentius stood before him, brush in hand, a canvas sitting on an easel at his shoulder. On the far side of the board sat the same ascetic, sharp-faced King with whom the waves had once tormented Cornelisz, his shoulders wrapped in ermine, his neck and wrists dripping with jewels. A King for a King, the voices whispered. Cornelisz felt his blood dripping onto the sand, imagined it staining the water, and understood, at last, the sacrifice they required.

  The waves had given him an island and he had made himself its King. And in return for his sacrifice, the King of another island would travel to Holland and free Torrentius, as Torrentius and his dark allies had desired all along.

  Cornelisz laughed, and the spirits laughed along with him. They laughed as he was carried along the beach, his blood staining the sand with every step; as the noose was tightened around his throat; as he was hoisted above the sand, and the water, and the cares of the world.

  They laughed, until the only sound in the entire world was the pounding of waves in his ears.

  Flight

  Angela Slatter

  The feathers were tiny and Emer hoped they would stay so.

  Indeed, she prayed they would fall out altogether. They were not downy little pins. Small, but determined, their black shafts hardened as soon as they poked through her skin, calcifying under her touch as she stroked them in dreadful fascination.

  All day she’d felt something happening beneath the gloves
hastily donned after her morning’s escapade. The sight of those ladylike coverings had brought approving nods from both her mother and governess, as if they were a sign she was finally listening to their exhortations. A princess does not run. A princess does not shout or curse. A princess keeps the sun in her voice, but off her fair skin. A princess sits quietly, back straight. A princess smiles at a gentleman’s tasteful jest, but never laughs too loudly. A princess never furrows her brow with thought. A princess does not chew her nails.

  Emer had been determined that nothing untoward was occurring; that the healing salve she’d sneaked from her mother’s workroom would put everything to rights.

  But that night, when Emer closed her bedchamber door and finally peeled away the doeskin gloves, she found that the wound in her palm was sprouting dark fronds around its ragged edge. They looked like the collar of her mother’s favourite cloak—except those feathers with their vibrant eyes were from the palace peacocks. A great ball of fear threatened to stopper her throat.

  It had been the madness of a moment, to sneak away and run through the gardens with the sky so blue, the clouds so white, the grass such a vibrant green. Trembling in the breeze, the flowers shone like delicate gems: wine-dark amethysts, sun-bright topazes, heavenly sapphires, rubies red as blood, beryl the colour of a storm-tossed sea and, stranger still, the roses.

  She’d danced and run, bounded and rolled like a child of five not a young lady of thirteen. Not like a princess on the eve of her fealty ceremony, someone who shouldn’t frolic until her gown, once a triumph of pink embroidered with daffodils, had its hem torn and trailing, one sleeve held in place by four tenuous threads, and grass and dirt staining the pattern. Tradition decreed the heir—even if, to the regret of many, she was female—be left unattended this day, not so she could play, but so that she might stand vigil, alone, unsupervised and mature, meditating on her future life of state. Preparing to pledge herself to the land, to be its sovereign and its succour, now and always.

  Leaving the manicured lawns upon which she was usually permitted a chaperoned stroll, Emer had wandered into unkempt areas where the demarcation between garden and myrkwood was little more than a rough boundary of aged briars. Smooth malachite stems spiked with roses’ thorns—roses black as ebony!—entwined seamlessly with the gray and brittle barbs of the brambles.

  A burning glow from the heart of each bloom had compelled her closer; an opalescent flash of green and red and gold, orange and azure and magenta had drawn her. She’d reached out to touch the nearest one, careful to avoid its prickles. The petals were like velvet. As she pulled away, she felt a stabbing pain in her upturned hand.

  One moment the air in front of her was empty and the next, a raven, which had sat so still that it’d been invisible in the chest-high hedge, occupied the space with regal mien, its claws fixed tightly around the briar barrier. The crimson wound in the centre of Emer’s palm showed where it had made its mark.

  Emer stared at the bird; its feathers glistened tenebrous-dark, yet radiant as if moonlight had been woven into their undersides. The raven gave a harsh cry—if she hadn’t known better, she’d have said it sounded apologetic—and Emer noticed its eyes burned with the same fire as the blossoms, colours flickering and dying, only to be replaced by the next brilliant hue. The creature took off, flying higher and growing smaller until finally it dove, plummeting straight at the girl, veering at the last second and shooting into the shadowy depths of the forest.

  That was when Emer’s nerve had broken. Hitching her skirts, she’d fled to her rooms, changed her dress and hid the destroyed one. She’d smoothed her hair and washed her face, slipped on the snug gloves, and spent the afternoon, heart aflutter, sitting in the solar. Feigning contemplation of the book on her lap whenever her mother or governess swept past, and hoping ever so hard that nothing would come of her misadventure.

  Now, Emer removed her frock slowly, fearfully, wondering why she did not feel the cold. She stood in front of the mirror and turned. An inverted feathery triangle lay across her back and shoulders. At the nape of her neck were knots and twists where her tresses had begun to tangle into a kind of plumage. Her nails had toughened, lengthened and grown points. Her thumbs and little fingers were shorter.

  Yet she did not call for help.

  Emer knew the price of magic—something outlawed since the beginning of her father’s reign. Herbcraft was acceptable; although leechwork was a gray area, its benefits were acknowledged; but witchcraft? Enchantments had enabled the Black Bride to bring calamity, to blind the King to the one he loved, to almost ruin a prosperous land, and to leave the Queen permanently scarred. Emer, transforming as she was, must be committing sorcery, even if it wasn’t her choice.

  No, she would not call for help. Surely it would go away. Surely all she needed was to apply more of her mother’s lavender nostrum. Surely in the morning, she thought, upending the bottle of ointment and slopping it up her arms, surely by then this would all be gone.

  * * *

  At dawn, as the final act of her vigil the princess dressed all by herself for the first and last time.

  A cream silk wimple, a veil of amaranthine gossamer, and a circlet of engraved gold hid the tight calamus cap her hair had become. Only Emer’s un-feathered face remained visible. Her high-necked ruby robe had sleeves long and loose enough to conceal her glossy black body and her arms, which were rapidly knitting into wings. Stubbornly, she fumbled with gloves, but didn’t bother with shoes—her legs had wizened, toughened with dusky gray skin, finished with pronged feet. Now three clawed toes click-click-clicked as she walked.

  And so it was that the kingdom’s firstborn, pride and joy (and occasional frustration) of her royal parents, entered the great hall with a strange new gait. Her eyes, once blue, were black, and her head moved this way and that, taking everything in with a darting gaze. She promenaded along the ermine carpet to where her parents sat, enthroned and enthralled by her terrible progress.

  When she stood before them, dropping into the queerest curtsey ever seen, the Queen and King began to weep and wail respectively.

  Emer’s hands convulsed and the delicate gloves, which had been shoved onto the tips of her transmuting fingers, fell away as the flesh melded. The gown, too, was rent, and soon the princess was jiggling about on one leg then the other, kicking away the rags. Her head grew rounder, tinier, and her ears disappeared; the coronet slid down to sit around her neck like a collar. Wimple and veil hung loose until she shook them off. Emer’s nose and mouth speared into a scintillating beak.

  Ladies-in-waiting screamed and lords bellowed. The noise was astonishing; it swelled until the crescendo broke over the raven-girl and she tottered about, looking for escape. One of the high-reaching windows was open to allow the cool breeze in, and she half-ran, half-skipped towards it, shrinking, until the golden circlet slipped away and she leapt through the opening as if performing a circus trick. She hopped onto the sill, gave her parents one last look, and caw-cawed, a sound that echoed the whole sad length and breadth of the chamber.

  With one swift beat of her new wings she caught an updraft. Her parents, released from their paralysis, ran to the window and watched as their daughter joined a waiting unkindness of ravens that greeted her with croaks. The sun kissed her wings and she and the birds were gone, faster than thought, faster than possibility.

  * * *

  They flew toward the horizon. Emer-that-was wondered how far they’d come—and when they’d stop—as they floated over fields and rivers, mountains and valleys, towers and turrets of rulers petty and great. But Emer-of-feathers did not ponder, merely obeyed instinct and followed her fellows. They flew for so long that Emer-that-was despaired of ever finding her way back.

  When finally they began to descend, it was toward a huge granite edifice positioned astride a river, nothing like Emer’s hilltop home of polished marble and clear glass. This was a castle fit for battle, with windows so slender they were suitable only for shooting arrows
through, or sending out the occasional pigeon bearing a message to an attacking general, saying he may as well piss into the wind, for this bastion would never fall to the likes of him.

  The flock aimed itself at the closed portcullis, winging precisely through the grille, Emer as lithe and light as the rest. They traversed a deserted courtyard, thence towards a great set of doors hewn from oak and banded with silver. The doors, as if sensing their approach, opened at the very last moment, but the winged host did not slow, did not hesitate, as if cooperation was to be expected.

  They flew along hallways lined with threadbare tapestries and paintings of people who’d been obscured not by time but by the tearing and shredding of canvas. They flew through rooms lined with rows of weapon racks filled with rusting swords and battleaxes, unstrung bows, decaying spears and toothless morning stars. They flew through bedchambers so thick with dust they had to rely purely on intuition to navigate. They flew until at last they came to a hall as lofty and lengthy as a cathedral’s nave, as cool and dim as one too, for most of the tall pointed windows were shuttered. At the farthest end sat a woman.

  Bustling around the chamber was an army of servants. Here and there, valets and footmen, butlers and a majordomo, maids and ladies-in-waiting, some of them in the costume of courtiers and some of them in rustic attire, but Emer had no doubt they were all, without exception, slaves. No matter their garb, none wore human form. Each was canine, walking upright and wearing a motley mix of livery, using fans, carrying trays, bearing tea pots and saucers, one the lord of a samovar, another king of the canapés.

  Emer glided onwards, unaware that her companions had dropped behind. She slowed, and descended, carefully avoiding the shifting mass of what appeared to be large rabbits—no, hares kicking at each other in occasional ill-temper. She alighted on the shabby red carpet leading to the dais upon which a cushioned throne was set. Three short steps separated her from black-booted toes.

  Lifting her gaze, Emer took in the woman’s face, gypsy-hued, marred with long-healed scars; her hair and eyes like jet, lips like a damson plum. And the features somehow familiar, yet Emer could not place them. The woman in a long charcoal dress, with carmined nails, smiled down at the raven who was a girl. Emer shuddered deep inside her hollow-boned body. She wished to fly, to flee, but her limbs would not obey.