Watcher's Web

by Patty Jansen

  She withdrew her hand from Dora’s skin and turned away. Did she have to come here to be reminded that she was infertile? Doctors had told her so many times. No boobs, no periods, not even a real woman. A freak.

  Ikay dug in the basket, producing a parcel wrapped in leaves and a curious contraption that looked, for all Jessica could think, like some kind of egg-whisk, except the metal bars at the top encased a pearl the size of a billiard ball. Ikay laid it on the rocks before unwrapping the parcel. It was far too dark for Jessica to see what was inside, but a rich smell of spiced meat drifted in the breeze-less night.

  OK, picnic time.

  Nobody spoke while they ate. There was something about this place that made talk seem trivial.

  When Ikay had finished eating, she heaved herself to her feet, picked up the egg-whisk thing and plodded towards the cave entrance. The white patterns on her back only just stood out in the dark. Jessica hesitated.

  “I hate caves!” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud.

  Then she hated herself for allowing her emotion to show. Never show your fear. Her father’s words. He talked a lot about dealing with criminal men. She wasn’t scared of raging bulls or bucking horses. She’d catch a koala with an attitude problem, or shoo a brown snake out of the hay shed. Leeches, she wasn’t so keen on, but one thing really gave her the willies: dark enclosed spaces.

  Ikay returned, put a gentle hand on Jessica’s arm, but tugged her further into that maw. Jessica strained her muscles, ready to yank herself free, run back into the lagoon, outside, where the air was fresh, where she could breathe.

  Ikay breathed threads of glittering mist; she was using Jessica’s own tricks against her.

  But she couldn’t fight it, or maybe she could, but she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. Click.

  Bright light flooded the cavern, from the pearl in the egg-whisk thing in Ikay’s hand, which she now held aloft. Sheesh—it was a torch.

  The cave was a few metres wide, high ceilinged and strewn with rounded boulders. Further into the rock, the passage narrowed and turned a corner.

  Now that the light allowed her to see, her fear seemed silly. It was only a cave. Rocks and sand, nothing else.

  Ikay led further into the cave. The ground was very wet here, and the boulders that lay scattered over the ground sank into the mud when Jessica stepped on them. Her feet were disgusting in no time.

  When they had turned the corner, they came to a large cavern with a huge pool. A muddy beach sloped down into water so black it absorbed the light of the torch. To the left and right of the beach, rock formations lined the water, their surface glittering with tiny crystals. Across the pool, a sheer rock wall rose into the darkness of the cavern roof, beyond the reach of the light.

  Deep grooves marked the surface of the rock and through the blackened covering of algae, Jessica recognised a five-pointed star. Like the one on the floor of the tribe’s hall.

  She’d been right that this place held some sort of tribal significance.

  Ikay planted the torch in the ground and walked into the water, gesturing for Jessica to follow.

  What? In there? You have to be kidding.

  But Ikay gestured again, this time with her tail.

  Jessica stuck her foot in the black water. The mud of the bottom was slimy and squishy on her feet. Her skin crawling with goosebumps, she let herself sink into the water. Cold closed around her chest like a vice.

  Her movements stirred up wells of even colder water from the depths, bringing with them smells—stale, oily, unnatural, with a scent of plastic.

  Ikay waited, treading water, on the other side of the pool, where the algae-covered rock wall loomed over them.

  Without warning, Ikay’s head disappeared.

  Large ripples and rising bubbles disturbed the water. Panic rose in Jessica’s chest. “Ikay.” Her voice sounded small. “Ikay, please.”

  Ikay’s head bobbed up again, muddy water running from her hair. Before Jessica could protest, Ikay’s hand grabbed hers and dragged her under. She just managed to suck a lung full of air. She struggled, she kicked, but Ikay was surprisingly strong and pulled her deeper and deeper into darkness. Jessica’s lungs ached to bursting. Patches of colour grew before her eyes. Up she pushed, kicking off a rocky bottom, swimming in desperate strokes. Ikay’s hand slipped from hers. Her head broke the surface of the water. Gulping the air, she looked around.

  Nothing.

  She held a hand above the water, but couldn’t see it, nor could she see the surface of the water, or the shore.

  Jessica stretched out her hands, feeling nothing but water surrounding her—water everywhere.

  “Ikay—help. Where are you?”

  From quite close by came the sound of splashing of water and Ikay’s voice, and then the slap of wet footsteps on rock.

  Then a small pinprick of light winked on, floating above Ikay’s forehead. It showed another cave, smaller, and filled with water. Slicks of an oily substance floated on the surface.

  Jessica swam to the side and clambered onto the rocks. Had Ikay brought her here just to play tricks with lights again?

  But no, as soon as Jessica had joined her, Ikay turned and led the way out of the cave. The tunnel climbed steeply and grew ever more narrow. Fortunately, the ground was even, or Jessica would have stumbled and fallen many times. Still they climbed, up, up, up. The air changed, became drier, stale, dead.

  After what seemed hours, but was probably no more than fifteen minutes, Ikay stopped so abruptly that Jessica almost crashed into her.

  An archway reached across the passage. Ikay’s light cast long shadows over the pillars that supported it, so straight they could only have been made by a stonemason.

  The pillar to the right of the path bore three carved signs. Topmost, an arrow; below it, two suns; and below that three people. Ikay stepped aside, gave a short bow and gestured for Jessica to walk under the arch, like a butler bows to his master.

  Unease made Jessica’s skin crawl. She shuffled forward into the pitch darkness of the room. The floor here felt smooth under her feet. Her breathing echoed unnaturally loud in the chamber, as if all sound inside it bounced endlessly from wall to wall. The air was heavy with the smell of dry stone, like an Egyptian tomb. God, how old was this?

  Ikay entered the room and came to stand next to her, still carrying the torch. Ancient reliefs covered every bit of wall space. Life-sized figures carved in yellow stone.

  The panel facing the door showed a landscape of reeds and a few trees that Jessica was sure depicted the marshland outside. A streamlined futuristic shape sat in the middle of the reedy field. Not an aeroplane, but a vehicle with a sleek triangular delta shape. Two pointed flanges at the back were tails. Bulges in the rear of the delta wing looked like engines. A large window wrapped around the front of the cabin. Three lines of rectangular portholes ran over the craft’s side.

  The craft didn’t fit in the landscape, the treeless plains of reeds. It didn’t even fit the ancient feel of the frieze. It was too modern, too futuristic. Yet, it was there, carved in perfect smoothness, in the reeds like an enormous beached whale.

  To the left of it lay a makeshift camp, sheets strung over sticks.

  Around the tents, people sat on the ground and stood talking. They had stern and proud faces, straight noses, high cheekbones. . . . Human, very human, no tails, no striped bodies.

  At the foreground of the picture stood a woman with a gauze shawl draped over long hair. Both hands reached out to a much smaller figure with large eyes and a tail: a Pengali male carrying a knife and wearing a cloak. He held a bowl out to the woman. Other Pengali people stood behind him, life-sized figures coming up to Jessica’s chest.

  In contrast, the human woman was her own height. Jessica let her fingers glide over the carved folds of her dress and stopped at the woman’s chest. It was flat, like her own. Her heart skipped a beat

  There was another woman, but she stood behind a child. A third woman a
lso had that masculine, triangular body shape, and so did a fourth. She moved along the frieze, studying every woman. Broad shoulders, tall figures. Narrow faces with high cheekbones, strong lips and pronounced chins.

  To her left, another frieze depicted a city of low, graceful buildings surrounded by airy verandas and topped with steeply thatched roofs.

  People in the streets gathered in knots, pointing at the sky. Faces showed mouths open in expressions of horror. In the sky hung a bright star whose rays outshone those of the two more muted suns.

  In an open space lined by large buildings stood the same craft amongst more people. A man hung a pendant on a chain around the neck of a woman. A young man clutched an older man, his face contorted with grief. A few people stood inside the craft, looking out the door. Others around the edge of the carving were being held back by armed guards.

  Tears pricked in Jessica’s eyes as she understood the horrific history told in these two pictures. That bright star was a celestial object, a meteorite or rogue planet, that was going to hit the home of these people. They had fled the disaster and come here, a long, long time ago. They had carved this room to preserve their story for the future and because she resembled these tall people more than the Pengali, Ikay thought—

  She shivered.

  These images were so life-like. To her left, a line of workers laboured to carry supplies on board the space craft. Broad-shouldered men wearing no shirts. Shadows pooled in v-shapes across the centre of their backs, formed by the pull of muscles which ran from both shoulder blades diagonally to his spine. Jessica’s mouth went dry.

  So often had she stood in front of the mirror and flexed those muscles, watching them alternately push up the skin and relax. She had hated them as much as she hated her white skin which never tanned or burned, and her flat, boyish chest. None of her friends had funny muscles across their backs like that.

  And these people . . .

  In the middle of the frieze was a flat panel with carved text, curved loops and characters that looked like a small letter n or u. She knew those shapes. They still burned in her mind like pink fire: the characters on her arm.

  God.

  Could it be?

  She staggered back. Thousands of questions shot through her mind. What? Who? Where? Why? But most importantly: who am I? Threads of glowing mist leaked from her skin unbidden, and spread around the chamber.

  Someone clutched her in a blanket and carried her. The person’s panting breaths sounded loud in the stifled silence of a stone staircase. Sandals slapped on stone steps. Down, down, down.

  A door creaked, footsteps shuffled. The door shut with a soft thud. The person who held her heaved something aside with the grating of stone on stone. A deep reverberating thud. Jessica wrestled in the constriction of the blanket. She was very young and didn’t understand what was going on around her, only that something bad had happened. A small light flickered into life above her. Wan and eerie, it lit the face of a woman she felt she should know. The woman’s straight nose and long eyelashes threw ghostly shadows over her face. Her skin was pale; she had high cheekbones and hollow cheeks. Deep black eyes stared down at Jessica, unblinking. A single tear tracked across dust-stained skin. Jessica reached for the woman’s hair. The woman bent over and planted a soft kiss on Jessica’s forehead, enveloping her in a scent so familiar, so much like home.

  A deep rumble shook the ground. The woman stumbled; the light flickered. Her eyes widened. She tightened the blanket around Jessica with one hand, while lifting her chain and pendant over her head with the other. The earth rumbled again.

  Cold metal touched Jessica’s skin when the woman put the chain around her neck. Her lips moved. “Am taali isverian.”

  Jessica whispered those words, “Am taali isverian. I am equal.” Her fingers traced the characters carved in stone.

  The woman bent further down and lowered Jessica into a basin. Water ran over her belly, her chest, rose up to her chin and then covered her face. The blanket floated around her like some slimy sea creature.

  I can’t breathe.

  Jessica struggled. The world had gone hazy green.

  I can’t breathe.

  Fluid filled her mouth with an acrid taste. Green and black mingled before her eyes. She kicked and kicked, but the firm grip of the hands that held her did not fail. Blackness closed in.

  In the cave, Jessica fell to her knees.

  11

  “ANMI, ANMI.” Ikay’s whisper sounded like a roar in the silence in the chamber.

  Jessica stared at the frieze, the carvings lit in sharp relief by Ikay’s light. She didn’t know when she had started crying, but her cheeks were wet with tears.

  With trembling hands, she ran her fingertips over the shapes of the woman taking the bowl from the Pengali man. Her ancestors? Her mother?

  “Am taali isverian; I am equal.”

  Her hand caressed the skin on her own upper left arm where the characters of the tattoo had faded—the same script as on these walls. A clue to her past she he had carried with her all her life.

  She had questions—thousands of them. How old was this frieze? Who were these people? Where had they come from? Were any of them still here? If they were not, could she find them? How had she ended up an abandoned baby in a derelict building in a small town in Australia? Did that—could it possibly—mean her real parents were still alive? That woman who had carried her down the stairs was her mother? What was with the water, and why would a mother drown a child?

  “Anmi.” The light hovered just above Ikay’s head, highlighting her hollow eyes, the pupils wide. Grooves on her face showed black like deep canyons. Her light looked faded, strangely weak. She pulled Jessica’s arm with her tail.

  But Jessica couldn’t leave. Not now, not while there was still so much to see. A whole room full of carvings to study. If only she had a camera, or a paper and a pencil even.

  She gestured to Ikay. “No, I’m not coming. I’ve got to know. Who are these people? Where can I find them? What does all this say?”

  The echo in the chamber repeated the “s” sounds in her speech.

  “Look, this is you—Pengali.” She pointed at the man with the bowl. “This is me.” She pointed at the tall woman. “What is she? Where did she come from? Where are her people?”

  Ikay’s mouth fell open, but it was not a look of surprise or misunderstanding. Her huge eyes went empty like holes. The light, now hovering a mere handwidth over her forehead, faded to eerie green.

  Jessica grabbed Ikay’s rough-skinned arm. “Ikay. What’s wrong?”

  Ikay’s skin felt cold. For a second or so, a pulling sensation tugged at the warmth in Jessica’s hand, as if Ikay’s body was trying to draw reserves.

  “Ikay, say something.”

  Ikay’s eyes glazed over. She swayed on her feet and staggered. Her skinny arm slipped from Jessica’s grip and her body crumpled to the floor. The light faltered and failed. Pitch darkness.

  Oh, shit.

  Jessica fell to her knees and groped around in the dark.

  “Ikay! Ikay!” The echoes of her voice laughed at her. The stony smell of the room became suffocating. Visions spun through her mind. Her breathing sounded ragged just like the woman’s breathing in that vision of her young self. Any moment now, she would hear a thudding door and the earth would shake, and this cave would fill up with water.

  Don’t be bloody ridiculous. We’re way above the water.

  She crawled over the stone floor, feeling her way. Her hand found Ikay’s arm, relaxed and limp.

  Jessica forced herself to calm down. “Panicked people are dead people,” was her father’s mantra. He had explained it so well, sitting in front of her class in primary school, talking about emergency evacuation procedures, in case of a flood or fire or some such. Her father knew everything so well, but reality was so different. How would he like to be in a cave on an alien world in the pitch dark?

  Come on, Jess, you’re bigger than this. If those pe
ople escaped the blowing up of their planet, then you can get out of this bloody cave.

  She heaved herself to her feet, pulling up Ikay with her. Just as well Pengali were so small.

  She shuffled sideways, waving her hand in front of her until it touched stone. Then she followed the wall to where it opened into the archway. One hand on the rock, one arm supporting Ikay, she inched down the slope.

  Ikay moaned and stirred. “Anmi.” She grabbed Jessica’s hands, clasped them and held them to her chest.

  “Yes, I’m here, I’ve got you.” Here in the passage, her whisper sounded quite normal, even a bit muffled. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Ikay held both her hands in a tight grip.

  Jessica tugged gently. “Let go, don’t be afraid, I’m trying to get us out of here.”

  Ikay moved her hands up Jessica’s arms until their forearms touched in a firm grip, like trapeze artists. What on earth was she—

  The skin on her arms warmed. Then she knew what Ikay wanted: to borrow some of her internal energy to make a light.

  Jessica hesitated. I have no control over it. When I let go, people get hurt.

  A prick of heat stung her skin, an impatient prodding.

  Ikay pulled herself closer, her breath warm against Jessica’s chest. A minty smell rose from her hair, homely, trusting. The soft tip of Ikay’s tail stroked her cheek, and pushed her eyes shut.

  Oh, all right, if you insist. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  Jessica breathed out, trembling from head to foot. In her mind, she imagined herself, her being, her essence, flowing out through her breath. At first, the mist fought her will, dispersing in all directions like it usually did. Then it wove into a web, and it came to her that maybe this was necessary to get it to work properly. This ability was not some sort of weird trick—it was a form of communication. She concentrated on her arms. The skin flushed with a burst of heat. Ikay gasped and tensed. Jessica opened her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt—”