Ari Goes To War: (The Adventures of Ari #2)

by P. J. Sky

  “They let Starla back in?”

  “Yeah.”

  Keshia shook her head. “I don’t believe you turned down that high living. In the convent, we used to tell stories of the city. People said it contained these tall buildings that touched the sky, entirely made of glass, and covered in all these coloured lights like jewels.”

  “Yeah,” said Ari. “That’s the place.”

  “So you’ve seen it?”

  “Sure I have, an’ more an’ once. Anyway, it ain’t for me, so maybe ya should drop it.”

  Keshia saw Ari had clenched her fists and her jaw was now fixed and angular.

  “So you spent a lot of time with Starla?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You miss her?”

  Ari flashed Keshia an angry look. “No, I don’t miss her. She was a pain in my arse from the moment we met, always whining about this and that, an’ thinkin’ she was so high an’ mighty an’ better un’ everyone else.”

  Ari had quickened her stride now and Keshia had trouble keeping up.

  “Then why are we saving her?”

  “‘cause we are, that’s why, ‘cause I’m an idiot all right. Ya happy? Ya know, first time I met you, I shoulda’ left ya to get strung up by the Jackrollas.” Ari walked on quickly, then stopped and turned back. “An’ ya know wha’, all those folks campin’ outside Bo, if ya ask me ya don’t know nothin’ about it so I’d be careful before I started makin’ judgements.”

  Ari turned and strode ahead, leaving Keshia trailing behind.

  ∆∆∆

  Every step Keshia took felt like one more into another world. Both her head and her injured arm throbbed. Keshia’s sore legs drifted across the cracked tarmac and it was as though she were dragging her feet through a dense swamp. The hot air thickened, the dust clogged her dry throat, and the world around her boiled.

  At her feet, red dust worked its way into the cracked tarmac, forming a miniature landscape of unexplored canyons. Keshia’s eyes traced the faded white lines that ran along the centre of the road and her eyes blurred. For a while, Keshia tried counting the lines, but soon even this effort was mentally too great. She glanced at Ari who now walked in strides far ahead.

  She wondered, what did we argue about?

  It seemed unimportant now. Even the thought of all the half-moon coins she could carry had lost their lustre. Now, the far greater need for water was all she could concentrate on. Her mouth hung loosely open and her lips felt swollen and chapped. She pulled the shawl more tightly over her head. The sun beat down relentlessly.

  The road carried on into the distance, straight and flat, a river of tarmac through a world of rust. The dust moved in eddies and cast ghostly forms, like the lost caravans of another time. Emerging from a shimmering haze, low hills were now visible, and between them the grey column of smoke grew, thick and menacing.

  Keshia’s head began to spin and before she knew it she’d fallen to her knees on the tarmac. Her head lolled, her chin came to rest on her chest. Her tongue swelled against her cheeks and there was a sweet taste at the back of her mouth.

  She looked up. Ari had stopped. Her scrawny silhouette stood at the centre of the white lines with the grey smoke building up behind her like a giant mushroom. It was as if some great explosion had recently come to pass, and now they walked towards its epicentre, unafraid of the devastation they may find there. The world was gone and only they remained, the last survivors of some terrible impact.

  Keshia tried to speak but no words came. She closed her eyes. She felt the warm breeze and she shuddered, as if she felt the people of the spectral caravans pass right through her.

  I just need a moment, she tried to say.

  She saw the faces of Marie and Jericho, her lost friends at the convent that she’d so easily cast off. Now they joined the caravans of the dead, forever to roam this purgatory between life and death, on the dust plains of the wasteland.

  Just a moment, then we can be on our way.

  Keshia wasn’t sure if she’d said the words out loud. The last thing she felt was the loving warmth of the hot tarmac against her cheek.

  Chapter 19

  Keshia felt a moist rag pressed to her lips. She opened her eyes and saw, reflected in the moonlight, the smooth form of Ari’s scalp, like the crescent of a half-moon coin, and framed within a luminous carpet of stars that drew together in the cold to form the great, purple belt of the milky way.

  “There ain’t much of this,” said Ari. She sat cross-legged beside Keshia. “I could try an’ find more but it ain’t easy see, there’s a lot a’ rocks to look under an’ not much water.”

  Keshia swallowed dryly and shivered. At night the wasteland was transformed, as cold now as by day it was hot. For those caught in the open, the only comfort was the celestial drama that spread out overhead, full of more colours than the world below could ever imagine, yet it remained suspended, forever out of reach, as if the universe had forgotten this little lost rock and the people who endured it.

  “Ish okay,” she said, her tongue still swollen.

  The whites of Ari’s eyes flashed in the darkness. “Now this is gonna taste kinda bad, but we ain’t got nothin’ much to burn out here. I thought about burnin’ the rest a’ my shirt, but it wouldn't last long enough anyway. So try an’ drink some a’ the blood first, then chew on the meat.”

  Ari squeezed something over Keshia’s mouth; the taste was heavy and metallic. Instantly, Keshia wanted to gag, but as quickly as the sensation came it was as if her body decided otherwise and instead absorbed the liquid.

  “Snake blood,” said Ari. “I was hopin’ for a lizard, but out ‘ere beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Ari pushed a tiny lump of raw meat to Keshia’s lips. It tasted metallic, but also slightly sweet.

  “They say if ya eat snake, ya dream about ‘im. But I ain’t never ‘ad that problem.”

  Keshia chewed.

  “Tell ya the truth,” continued Ari, “come to think on it, I ain’t rightly sure if it’s snakes or crocs. But crocs ain’t so easy to catch. In my experience, it ain’t you who eats the croc, it’s the croc who eats you.”

  Keshia swallowed. She could feel the raw meat moving slowly down her swollen throat.

  “More?”

  Keshia shook her head.

  Ari slipped the meat between her own teeth and chewed. “Thing is see, we can’t stay ‘ere. Aside from bein’ on the road which is bad enough, we ain’t got nothin’ to keep warm with, I ain’t even got a shirt. An’ no water to last another day. An’ if we sleep ‘ere we’re easy pickin’s for the dingoes. So we gotta push on. Think ya can walk?”

  Keshia had no idea. She tried to sit up but her head spun and pain shot from her wrist to her elbow. She felt around with the fingers of her left hand and found her wrist was so swollen it was at least twice the size.

  “I… can’t.”

  Ari sighed. “Well then kid, it's a good thin’ there ain’t much of ya.”

  ∆∆∆

  Ari carried Keshia on her back. Keshia’s head lolled on Ari’s bony shoulder and Keshia’s limp right arm hung uselessly by her own. Sometimes, Keshia stirred and mumbled in her sleep but Ari couldn’t make out any words. Perhaps, she thought, she was having bad dreams. She suspected Keshia had plenty of bad memories to dream about. Keshia hid them well and kept them buried deep down, but just like her own, she suspected these memories resurfaced in her dreams.

  The big, golden moon bathed the flat landscape in a warm glow. The hills were closer now and their jagged forms glistened like the icebergs of that mythical frozen land, far away to the North. Ari’s eyes moved upwards into the luminous carpet of stars. A shooting star darted across the sky, vivid but brief, as was so often the nature of beauty. Her father used to call them the chariots of the gods.

  “See that Ari,” he’d say. “That’s how the gods travel between the stars.”

  High up, in the middle of the sky, faintly blue, Ari’s eyes fell on the Make
r Star. The star that never moved. And the star that speaks, the star that tells the story of the world, or at least part of it. A story of the world before, before the asteroid came and everything changed.

  Ari looked back to the hills. Sometimes she wondered if this landscape had always been this way. In the impact perhaps other places were destroyed, but here there seemed to be nothing to destroy, and perhaps there never was. Perhaps that’s what people got wrong? Maybe even, people came out here, into the wasteland, looking for safety. And maybe they built Alice first, the great walled city, and they built it like the world of the old, and they tried to carry on living like they did in the past. But then, over time, more and more people were exiled into the wasteland, just like her parents.

  Maybe, thought Ari, we’re all exiles from Alice; me, Keshia, the people in Cooper and Bo and Freehaven, the Black Mulga, the miners, the Angu villagers, we’re all exiles or children of exiles, ain’t none of us meant to be here. But in a way, if none of us are meant to be here, then all of us are meant to be here, because we’re all the same, deep down.

  Ahead, not too far from the roadside, Ari made out a series of round domes, their curved lids glistening in the moonlight like crescent moons. The closer she got, the more she could see. They were too large and too perfectly spherical to be boulders. She crept passed the domes but paused when, among them, she saw the faint glow of a campfire.

  Ari slid Keshia off her back and placed her on the ground by the roadside. Keshia murmured and pulled her knees up to her chest.

  Ari slipped the blade from its sheath by her ankle.

  Well, she thought, we can’t live on snake blood and the drops of moisture I may or may not find under rocks. And we won’t last another day in the sun. We need food, water, and shelter wouldn’t be a bad thing. So I’m gonna have to talk to whoever has that fire.

  Leaving Keshia sleeping in the relative safety of darkness, Ari slipped over the road and made her way towards the domes. Some domes were larger than others, but even the smallest was several times taller than her. They clustered together, like a small, silent town.

  Ari slipped between the landlocked moons. In the eerie silence she was aware of the crunch of her boots on the dusty ground and the sound of her own breathing, quick and shallow. She hunched down and sprinted from the shadow of one dome to the next. The spaces between the domes formed wide avenues. She narrowly avoided the bent shape of a triangular sign that hung precariously in her path. She circled the frame of what may once have been a building, its walls long gone leaving only jagged columns and rusty spikes.

  Ari slowed as she drew nearer the campfire. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She tightened her grip around her blade. She pressed against the curved wall of one of the domes. The metal surface felt cold. She slid around the dome, keeping to the shadows.

  Beneath the shadow of another dome, a small fire glowed, orange and welcoming, and beside it someone sat, their ancient face lit by the orange embers.

  Ari sucked at her bottom lip and waited. In her fingers she felt the blade, light and nimble.

  This person didn’t look like they’d pose any danger, but they might have a gun.

  Then the person looked in Ari’s direction and spoke. It was a woman’s voice.

  “It’s kinda rude of you to come sneakin’ up like that.”

  Ari froze. A cold shiver ran down her spine.

  The person spoke again. “Ya gonna stay in the shadows or are ya gonna come an’ join me by the fire? I saw ya sneakin’ in, ain’t nothin’ to worry about with me, I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

  Chapter 20

  “That wrist needs properly setting,” said the woman in a kindly tone. Ari had retrieved Keshia from the roadside and carried her to the warm fire. In the process, Keshia had barely woken before slipping back into sleep. “In the mornin’ when I can see it proper, I can make a paste an’ see if I can set it right.”

  Ari nodded. “Thanks.”

  The woman smiled. “Don’t ya mention it. I don’t get many visitors. I mean, mostly I like it that way of course, I likes my own company. But most everyone passes by here carries straight on over the hills to the mine, they don’t stop to even say G’day.”

  “Is it far?”

  “The mine?” The woman pursed her lips. “Not far, less ‘an half a day in fact.”

  Ari nodded. “Good.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Ya don’t seem like the type.”

  “Wha’ do ya mean?”

  “I mean, the type that listens to all that stuff the Bone Pointer says.”

  Ari took another swig of the water. She could feel its warmth radiate through her chest.

  “Wha’ does he say?”

  The woman smiled. “So you ain’t the type, ehh? Well, what business ya got at the mine then if it ain’t joinin’ his cult?”

  Ari didn’t answer, she just stared into the fire.

  “All right, well, ya don’t ‘ave to tell me. But let me tell you, if ya go there an’ you ain’t careful, the Bone Pointer will get in ya head.”

  “What do ya mean?”

  “I means just what I said. I can’t explain it. He didn’t get in my head, not like he did all the others. But he got in everyone else’s head. He says things, sometimes good things, sometimes bad things, but the things he says, it makes folks crazy an’ ready to do just about anything he says. But somehow I knew, I knew it was all a lie. But I was on my own. All the others went back.”

  “Well, I gotta go there.”

  The woman shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I warned ya.”

  Ari nodded towards Keshia. “Can she stay ‘ere?”

  The woman nodded. “For now. She looks a good sort.”

  “She is.”

  “Well, a few seasons ago I’d ‘ave said no, but it might be nice to get a little company round here.”

  “So, anything else ya can tell me about this mine?”

  The woman shrugged. When she started talking again her eyes seemed lost, focused on some far away plain, as if she stared into another time.

  “Well, from what I hear, an’ I likes to try to keep in the know, ya should know that about me. Well, a while back there was a fire at the mine an’ now no one can go down there. An’ the fire, it burns day an’ night still, the whole mine is smokin’, ya must have seen it on ya way from Freehaven. An’ that’s when the Bone Pointer crawled right out of there. They say he’s many centuries old, though I don’t believe it because I don’t believe nothin’ he says. An’ he comes out telling of this prophecy, you’ll hear about it if ya go there. He says the end of the world is comin’, as if it wasn’t pretty clear to everyone that’s already happened. An’ well, folks been flocking that way ever since. They get kinda crazy when they hear him speak. Not everyone, not me, hopefully not you, but he puts them in a kinda trance.”

  The campfire spat embers into the night air.

  “An’ what about you?”

  The woman smiled. “I was a miner, a slave, an’ one day the mine was burning and everyone was running free. It felt like the best day of my life to be out here in the open. A few of us came here an’ made our home in these ancient round buildings. I don’t know who built them an’ I can’t read a word of what’s on any of these signs, but they make pretty good homes.”

  Ari nodded at Keshia. “She can read. Where she grew up, she got the learnin’.”

  The woman nodded. “Maybe I’ll ask her what the signs say. Anyways, we came here, we set up home, for a while we were like a family, but eventually everyone went back. One by one, they were swallowed up into the Bone Pointer’s followers. So if ya don’t come back, I won’t be surprised.”

  Ari looked at Keshia. “I reckon I gotta come back for her.”

  “Ya say that now, but once ya there, she won’t matter no more. Not if ya like everyone else. But if ya really set on goin’, I won’t be standin’ in ya way. Way I see it, a person’s gotta walk their own path, even if it’s into the mouth of the b
east, an’ goin’ to the mine is just that. But if it’s ya destiny then go in peace but watch ya step. I got an old robe ya can ‘ave, so ya can blend in. Go there, listen to what the Bone Pointer says, an’ as I says, I’ll understand if ya don’t come back.”

  Ari nodded.

  “Ya never know,” said the woman. “Some folks can resist ‘is words.”

  “What’s ya name?” asked Ari.

  The woman smiled. “Ya can call me Bina.”

  ∆∆∆

  By the light of the oil lamp, Liviana led Starla into the caves that honeycombed the side of what must have once been part of the coal mine.

  In the cold, clammy atmosphere of the caves, Starla’s heart quickened. As if sensing her concern, Liviana gave Starla’s hand a squeeze.

  “It’s all right, really,” said Liviana. “Everything will be clear soon.”

  Nothing, thought Starla, is going to be clear.

  They entered a large grotto. Vaulted stalactites hung from the ceiling. In the lamplight, the grotto felt almost regal. Stood about were a few of the red-robed guards with spears that Starla didn’t find particularly intimidating. A stool had been arranged in the centre and Liviana beckoned Starla to take a seat.

  “This,” said Liviana, “is where he likes to meet people of importance, for the first time.”

  “I see,” said Starla.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” continued Liviana. “As if nature has gifted the Morning Star with a natural throne room.”

  But there’s no throne, thought Starla. I’m the one sat on the stool, and it's hardly a throne.

  Starla passed her eyes across the long, slender stalactites, and found herself wondering how much water must have once been needed to create them. The kind of water the outside world rarely seemed to have now, at least beyond the city walls. Perhaps this alone was what gave the cave its regal nature.