The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  Miranda feigned ignorance, even though she knew full well these semi-rural outposts had caveats you’d never see in the suburbs, things like maintaining your paddock and not letting your stock wander across the road.

  “And we’ve received a couple of complaints,” the council man sighed, as if the complaints were something both he and Miranda shared, an onerous burden he confided to her alone. “The noise. You know.”

  The council would never have come in the first place if the neighbours hadn’t complained. Not if it hadn’t been for DeDe’s friends, the ones who sat on the back landing, hollering and pissing on the boards so that the urine sunk into the dry wood and gave the porch an ammoniac stink. They’d taken to lobbing their beer cans into the back yard, and oftentimes the debris would clear the rear fence to clatter on an adjoining roof. The grass didn’t like them. It never gave Miranda gold presents on a night they were around.

  “So yes, if you could get the backyard under control and limit the noise to daylight hours . . . ”

  He handed her some leaflets for a gardening service, left with a cheerful wave.

  She ignored him as a daylight ghost, and returned back to her work. The rock-climbing magazine had commissioned her for more layouts. She’d sold some of her coins recently, had bought a very nice upgraded computer. What else was she supposed to do? It was not as if there were any instructional guidelines in dealing with the flora of carnivorous suburban landholdings. She was free climbing out into the unknown now. Aid-category climbing on uncharted routes. Tenuous placement of bodyweight-only holds. Complex and time consuming.

  * * *

  Only much later, when Miranda pondered over What Happened Next, did she realise she should have factored DeDe in to the problem that the yard presented her. Despite her clever hiding place, DeDe had probably discovered the Gumption container during a careful reconnaissance of everything that might hold money. DeDe had developed hunter’s patience since the biscuit tin incident, had watched the container’s value increase. Like a climber who knows they cannot top-out alone, DeDe needed a belay-holder to make the last ascent into some ill-gotten wealth. Called her druggie friend, who came over to wait for Miranda to come home.

  Now Miranda was lying on the ground, him standing over her, the ringing in her boxed ears like a Puccini opera. The friend’s thin druggie face had paled down to a bloodless pudding-bag of rage that made his face look like a mangled, chinless ghost over his shabby black shirt.

  He grabbed Miranda by her hair.

  Panic is a funny thing, has its own anaesthetic qualities. The room spun. Her graphic-design brain kicked in, saw everything from a camera-view. DeDe leant against the Dutch-angled doorway, saying, “Just tell him where you’re finding the money, Miranda. He’ll kill you otherwise.” She dropped the cigarette butt on the carpet, stubbed it out with kitten heels.

  “I’ll call the cops,” Miranda blurted.

  “You fucking call the cops you’ll be dead before they find me. And your brother.”

  “Hey, Ronnie, you goose,” DeDe shouted, “Leave Noel out of this.”

  “Shut up,” Ronnie said to DeDe. “You’s the one owes me the money.”

  Miranda sagged against the grip of her hair. He let her go, a man who knew surrender.

  “In the back yard,” Miranda said. The words came out cold.

  “All of it! All of it!”

  The cold night stung her freshly cut face. The bunker-light above the porch didn’t illuminate the yard, only set the rotting wood apart from the rest of their property, now awash in soft darkness. Her cheek throbbed. She tasted her own blood.

  “Go on then. Go get it.” DeDe’s friend shone a flashlight into her face.

  She didn’t fear Ronnie so much as she feared the beast she had been feeding for the past twelve months. Perhaps it would see her as the ultimate meal. She hesitated, earning her a shove. Not hard, only disrespectful, making her wince from the sheer embarrassment of it. Ronnie was a man used to hitting women.

  She stepped off the landing and into the grass. She could feel it move beneath her feet, an undulating carpet, rippling like the back of a large animal when a fly lands on its hide. It tasted her blood. The flashlight at her back didn’t help. She didn’t quite want to see what was coming.

  Condemned, Miranda walked into the centre of the yard, her feet feeling the emplacement of bones throughout the warp and weft of the grass. Bigger bones than the lamb shanks and spare ribs she had ever thrown it, and with all the surrender of a drowning man she bent over, waiting to be seized.

  And yet. And yet.

  “Why are you taking so fucking long?”

  “Box is heavy,” she called back. “Can’t lift it on my own.”

  “Jesus,” he cursed, “Jesus, bitch, whore.”

  Funny enough, that in the end DeDe wasn’t so dumb. Only she said, “Ronnie, careful, there’s something moving out there.”

  Too late really. Half a dozen paces, then the yard ate him.

  * * *

  Perhaps he didn’t really get eaten by grass. Perhaps metaphor, mnemonic, memory-fault. Whatever it was, DeDe fled inside before Miranda returned to the porch. Didn’t see Miranda weeping in exultation, as if she’d topped out on a killer peak, arms raised in weary triumph: Vincero! Vincero!

  Didn’t call the cops either. Didn’t do much more than collect her belongings and Ronnie’s car-keys, her mouth pursed in a resentful cat’s-arse. The script had played out wrong. Wasn’t supposed to be this way, DeDe’s gangster moll fantasy ending disrupted by a projectionist’s error, like when you’re halfway through a gangster heist movie and the reel skips over into the B-movie sci-fi title.

  DeDe called Noel three hours later, hysterical over the phone. Noel couldn’t get a word in edgeways. She refused to come back, ever, ever, oh my god!

  “DeDe, please, please.”

  His sister hung up. The tide had washed her out.

  Miranda comforted Noel after.

  “It’s for the best, darling,” she said. “It’s for the best that she’s gone.”

  The recriminations were personal, self-pitying. If Mum was still alive, she would never forgive me! DeDe has a condition! She can’t look after herself!

  Now that was so much bullshit, but Miranda only pressed her battered cheek into the indentation between Noel’s sob-heaving shoulder-blades. Later, she would blame her cheekbone bruise on a door, that old, old excuse.

  And Ronnie? Well, bone and gristle he was, and meth-bitter to boot. Maybe you weren’t supposed to taunt the yard with a diet that might not be repeatable. But he had a transactional value, and had once been living meat. Worth more than a coin, definitely. Perhaps even an entire fifty-k credit card debt. Tomorrow morning, before Noel was up, she would see what the backyard’s learned opinion amounted to, and collect her side of the bargain.

  The Love Letters of Swans

  Tansy Rayner Roberts

  The papyrus was warm between my fingers as I sat on the wall above the port of Sparta, feet swinging in the sunshine. “She imports this from Egypt,” I said aloud. “My mistress loves the Phoenicians and their magics. I believe she would gild the whole Palace if the king would let her.”

  Chloris, sitting beside me, reached out a hand as if longing to touch the letter for herself, then let it fall. “Your mistress is a slut, Hymnia,” she said. “Everyone knows it.”

  No, not that, never that. I shook my head at her. “She’s never done this before. Never made eyes at a single dignitary, or flashed her breasts at a passing prince. She chose the king good and proper, and she seemed to like him well enough.”

  “And look at her now, making eyes at a Trojan,” said Chloris. Her eyes gleamed in the sunshine. “Can I read this one?”

  “Only if you know the secrets of the Nile,” I scoffed. “My mistress is not going to let her words out into the world without enchantments on them, is she?”

  “I know a few secrets,” said Chloris, reaching her hand out for the letter.
>
  I held back, not wanting to let her try. “There’s a word that unlocks it. She gave it to me. But I mustn’t tell you, it’s only for his ears.”

  The boat was not yet here, still bobbing out at the horizon.

  “Tell me the word,” begged Chloris. She was so pretty, and so bold. I would never catch the eye as she did, nor command others to my will. Gods pity me, but I craved her friendship. She was a slave, every bit as I was, and yet I wanted her to like me.

  “Eggshell,” I said in a whisper, and the papyrus shimmered before us. My mistress’ words danced across the rough brown surface, burning like the sun.

  Paris, Prince of Troy

  Your words are attractive, and your poetry extremely elegant. I am impressed that you take so many words to convey a simple message: ‘Fuck me, lady, I have earned you.’

  Believe me when I tell you that nothing you or your goddess of love have ever done has earned a night in my bed, much less the disruption of my rather comfortable life.

  You are a beautiful, shameless man, and you dishonour us both with your passions and your promises. Our poets run wild with tales of wives who lost everything because they believed a lovely, wicked tongue.

  Do not write again, baby prince. You are out of your league.

  Helen, Queen of Sparta.

  “See?” I said, delighted. “She’s not a slut. She’s sending him back where he came from, good and proper.”

  “She’s not virtuous neither, not with words like that,” said Chloris, much impressed with ‘fuck me, lady’ sprawling across the page in gilded ink.

  “He’s hardly acting like a gentleman himself,” I sniffed. “Begging her to run away with him, just because she smiled once or twice in his direction at her husband’s banquet. Not a brain in his head, that one.”

  “I’d give him a tumble in a heartbeat,” said Chloris with a throaty laugh. “Half a heartbeat, all painted and oiled as he was that night, ready for action. He wore sapphires in his own ears. Imagine what he’d give to a wench he liked.” She shivered in delight at the thought of it.

  I rolled my eyes and risked a friendly elbow in her direction. “He had no eyes for any but my mistress. You think he’d want you? He believes the goddess of love has Queen Helen marked out for him, that she is a grand reward for his mighty deeds. He’s not going to take a wine pourer instead.”

  Chloris gave me a dirty look. “There’s more than wine pouring in my future. You just watch me.”

  * * *

  Queen Helen was bathing when I returned to her, the papyrus all but on fire between my guilty fingers. She reclined in a shallow bath as two house slaves scraped at her skin with oil and strigils. Another combed and trimmed her hair close to her head, so that it would be comfortable beneath her many golden wigs.

  Helen had learned many tricks from Egypt in her youth, when she and King Menelaos were first married and the world loved them for it.

  She had secrets too, my mistress. Two long, fine scars ran down her back, between the shoulder blades and all the way to her waist, where the wings had been severed only days after her birth. My mother was midwife to Queen Leda, and always scoffed at the idea that Helen and her sister were born from eggs.

  “That lady worked as hard as any other mother, to bring her screaming scraps into the world,” she insisted when anyone got a cup of wine into her.

  No one wanted to know that, though. They wanted to know if it was true that the Queen had lain with Zeus in the form of a swan. If you’ve ever wondered how stories like that get started, you need look no further than the slaves after dark, drinking and telling tales of their masters.

  “I’ll say nothing more,” my mother would insist, and then if a cup or three were forthcoming, she would tell the tale of the baby princess who was born with white wings, and had to have them removed by a doctor’s knife.

  I always thought she was exaggerating, until I came to the Queen’s household myself and saw those scars of hers. Occasional fine white feathers grew back along the scars from time to time, and discreet slaves plucked them out before they became too obvious.

  Those scars weren’t the only mark of the swan upon Queen Helen. White downy feathers grew thickly at her pubis, instead of curly hair, but she refused to let the slaves do anything about that. Menelaos, the king her husband, liked to be reminded that she was divine.

  In bed, he called her ‘my goddess’ and ‘queen of the heavens’. Hard to imagine she would look elsewhere, with a husband who saw the stars every time he gazed upon her.

  Today, though, I was not sure her thoughts were on her husband at all. The queen tipped her head back, allowing Eurynia to massage her scalp with oils.

  “What did the ridiculous prince think of my letter, Hymnia?” she asked in a lazy voice.

  I hesitated. I had never spoken anything but the truth to my mistress, but today the truth might earn me a beating. “He laughed, my lady,” I confessed.

  “Did he indeed?” Helen sounded intrigued rather than angry. “Did he scribble anything in return? A grovelling apology for his cheek?”

  “He wrote you a message,” I murmured, trying not to think about how Chloris and I had already pored over his reply before returning to the palace. I was worried she would see it in my eyes, that I had betrayed her confidence to impress a friend. “I have the papyrus here. The release word is ‘sea-foam’.”

  Helen, Queen of My Heart

  Your crudeness wounds me, though it makes you no less lovely in my eyes. Indeed, I have earned you. Indeed, I will fuck you. I offer you my father’s city across the wide waters, and myself—a husband young enough to keep you wet with pleasure for the rest of your life.

  The goddess Aphrodite has spoken, that you shall be mine. I would bow down and worship you in her name. Helen will be wife of Paris, and princess of Troy. There is no other possible future for us.

  You were made for our goddess, born of the lusts of Zeus and his concubine Leda. Your mother may have thought herself a queen in her own land, but she learned quickly that it is wise to kneel down in submission when offered a mightier phallus.

  Submit to me, Helen. Let me love you. The seas will burn with the flame of our lusts, and the goddess shall be sated at last when you cry my name to the winds.

  Paris, Servant of Desire.

  “Gods above,” Queen Helen whispered as the papyrus grew taut in her hands. “This man is dangerous. There shall be no more letters, Hymnia.”

  “As you say, my queen,” I said in relief.

  Helen stood up, allowing the water and oil to cascade off her as she strode carelessly across the room, dripping on the mosaic tiles. “No, wait. I shall write once more. I must convince him that I am an impossible mark for this quest of his.”

  My heart sank. A bold young man like Prince Paris would surely respond to words like ‘impossible’ as nothing more than a challenge. “As you say, my queen.”

  Paris, Prince of Fools

  Queens and wives have been ruined for far less than these letters between us. We shall not speak, nor write again. You have nothing to offer me, younger son of a lesser land. I am the queen of the city that birthed me. I chose my husband to rule at my side. You will not break me nor tempt me to leave Sparta, and you shall never possess me.

  Sail back to Troy and be grateful that you escaped the flames that would set the world alight if Menelaus, King of Sparta, thought himself cuckolded by a whelp like you.

  Favourite of Aphrodite, never forget that I am a daughter of swan-shaped Zeus. Approach me again, and I shall peck your eyes out.

  Helen, always of Sparta.

  * * *

  We sat on the sun-kissed wall, Chloris and I, reading the letter that Helen had dictated, crossed out, and re-written more than a dozen times before she was satisfied with it.

  “That’s that, then,” I said, wanting to believe it. “We’ll never see him again.”

  “Are you blind?” said Chloris. “She’s practically begging him to snatch her out from u
nder her husband’s nose. That’s a call to arms, that is, not a farewell.”

  “She wouldn’t,” I insisted. Above all things, I believed in my mistress’s fidelity.

  “You’d better hope he sees it as a love challenge and not a rejection,” said Chloris.

  My confusion must have shown on my face.

  “Well, if he takes it as an insult, he’ll lash out at you, won’t he?” she pressed. “Whip you, I wouldn’t be surprised. Got no reason to be kind, if the lady he wants is having none of him.”

  I had been whipped before, but not since coming into service for her mistress. Queen Helen had always been gentle in her admonishments when a mistake was made. “He wouldn’t dare, not the Queen’s messenger,” I whispered.

  “You won’t be the Queen’s messenger any more, not if he don’t need you to send no more messages,” taunted Chloris. “And she can’t defend you, can she? Not and risk him telling the king what the letters were all about. Best to drop the papyrus into the ocean, never let him see it.”

  I drew my knees up to my chin and hugged them close. “Can’t do that. She’d expect the papyrus back.” One way or another, I could be in for a beating today.

  “Tell you what,” said Chloris, with a smile as bright as day. “I’ll take it for you. I’m not afraid of the prince. And he won’t know me, so can’t risk offending my master, can he?”

  I felt a shameful flood of relief. She was my friend after all. Maybe all this had been worth it. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

  “Why not? I fancy another glimpse of the pretty prince.” Chloris hopped off the wall. “I’ll bring the papyrus back after.”

  * * *

  I waited on the wall as long as I could, but Chloris did not return. Finally, I ran back to the palace to perform my various duties. There was a fancy dinner on this evening and it was easy to keep out of the queen’s way, with all the dressing and primping and tasting to be done.