Out of Here

by Patty Jansen

  Besides, hadn't Lucy's parrot told me I didn't do it?

  But I can't tell Annelise that.

  * * *

  Lucy is waiting at the door of the Geography classroom. Rather odd, really, now I come to think of it. Doesn't she have any friends? Does she ever talk to anyone? I don't even know what her voice sounds like. She may well have been wandering around in the place where we usually leave our bags.

  She glances, sees me coming, and looks away. Does she know why I'm here? Is she scared?

  'Lucy, can I talk to you a bit?'

  She shrugs. Doesn't look at me, and then digs in her pocket for her mobile phone. Looks at the display.

  I press on. 'You know Josh had fifty dollars stolen from his bag, and there are kids out there saying that you have stolen it?'

  She shrugs again. Her shoulder twitches.

  Geez, what's it like talking to a block of ice? 'Just tell me if you didn't do it.'

  Flapping wings. I gasp, but it's only the cockatoo. It lands on her shoulder and unlike her, looks at me. That is, if birds look at you with just one eye. I think they do.

  Lucy doesn't notice it, of course. I've never met anyone who can see pet ghosts like I do.

  The bird mumbles a bit and then says, 'I didn't do it.'

  'You didn't do it?' I clamp my hand over my mouth. Stupid. I've never spoken to any of the other pets except Lolita. I shouldn't, not in the presence of others. The pets can't communicate anyway. They're dead.

  Lucy frowns. My heart thuds like crazy. I'm preparing to say to say those words I've rehearsed so many times. You see, it's like this: when someone's pet dies, the animal leaves a ghost that always remains with the person whose pet it was. I can see those ghosts . . . kinda . . . and they . . . uhm How totally lame does that sound? No sane person is going to believe it.

  I find some more words. Look, Lucy, I'm really sorry I've never told anyone, but you're not the only one who's weird . . ._

  Then Lucy who shakes her head and my mind scrambles back to the last thing I said--the question I asked the parrot. Hey--even without the parrot, the conversation makes sense, kinda.

  'You didn't steal the money?' My voice is hoarse.

  She shakes her head again, but still says nothing.

  'Lucy, I need to hear it from you, and you'd probably best tell the principal, too, because he's not kind to people who steal, and if you haven't stolen anything . . .' I spread my hands.

  She says nothing.

  'Lucy?'

  She shakes her head vigorously, and runs off.

  Geez, I'm trying to help you.

  * * *

  Lucy doesn't turn up to Geography, and I start to wonder if perhaps Annelise is right about her. If she's been caught stealing and is now in the principal's office. I feel uneasy, because what the animals let me know has never been wrong. But why doesn't Lucy tell anybody? Where is she, anyway? Was I too harsh with her? Probably. I was too shocked to notice. Maybe she has problems--parents divorcing, mother sick, whatever.

  I ask the teacher if I can go to the bathroom, but she's not dumb and doesn't fall for it. 'You've just had lunch,' she snipes and tells me to wait until the end of class.

  Lolita sits on the empty chair next to me.

  'Do you know what Lucy looks like?' I whisper.

  Lolita just stares. We're in the library and there for a cat to study: clicking keyboards, students eating lollies, crinkling the wrapping paper.

  'Go and look for Lucy.' I push open the window while the teacher isn't looking. Lolita jumps on the windowsill and out into the quad. Her tail is the last thing to disappear.

  Trust Lolita to stay away a long time. In fact--never trust a cat. She's always doing other things when I let her go. Chasing after the dogs. Watching the goldfish in the biology classroom. There is so much distraction for a curious puss, even a dead one. I spot her running across the teacher's car park followed by Josh's Rottweiler.

  Oh, well, it was worth a try.

  Which leaves me with the next dilemma: is my getting a detention for being late in science worth looking for Lucy? She never wanted me to help her after all.

  An uncomfortable though crosses my mind. Maybe she thinks I'm weird.

  Then Lucy's parrot lands on the top of my computer. It says again, 'I didn't do it.'

  'Didn't do what?' I whisper. Just as well we're doing research and people are talking. The teacher is way over at the other side, and there's a computer screen between my desk and her.

  When parrots talk, they don't really speak. They just repeat the silly noises us humans make. Like Lolita, or Josh's ill-trained and pampered dog, the parrot doesn't understand. But it's jabbering garbled speech again. When I listen carefully, I hear it's reciting numbers, interspersed with a couple more I didn't do its. While it paces over the top of my computer screen, I jot down the numbers until I'm sure I have them in the right order. It's a mobile phone number. Lucy's?

  I guess I shall just have to break the school rule on mobile phones. I take it out of my bag and turn it on. It makes a little jingle. Oops, I've forgotten it does that. Fortunately, the teacher doesn't notice. I punch the number and a quick SMS.

  Hi its Tanya

  Her answer is fast in coming back. I dint do it So she doesn't speak, but she does talk to others via SMS.

  Why dint u tll me

  There is no response. God, this girl is weird.

  The cockatoo says something; the voice is kinda squawky and I don't catch the words. It sits with its back to me, obscuring the monitor with its tail. It turns around and says again, 'Lalophobia.' It repeats the word several times.

  What the . . .?

  But hey, I'm sitting here in the library in front of a computer that doesn't have a whole battery of ridiculous restrictions that stop me getting on the internet. I google it.

  Lalophobia: an extreme phobia of public speaking. Sufferers may even fear speaking to another person one-on-one. Often results in severe social isolation.

  It all makes so much sense like it hits me in the face. The note Lucy gave to the teacher, the turning away when I asked her a question. I reach for the phone and send a message.

  Im srry I hope she understands. Then I add, da tchr tld me I can hardly tell her I heard it from her long-dead parrot. She'd think I'm nuts. I guess that makes two of us.

  She messages back. s OK There is a lot of sadness in those words. They tell me, 'I'm used to being teased.'

  Then she says, I fnd da $ in da hstry rm

  * * *

  Josh has a sheepish grin on his face. His boyish hand is too large for Lucy's as he takes the fifty-dollar note from her. 'Hey, thanks.'

  She looks down.

  'I'm sorry we were all really stupid about you.' He pauses. I'm loving this moment, where Josh is forced to eat his own stupid words, and apologise. The attitude suits him. The dog sits next to him, wagging its non-existent tail. Maybe Josh is not so bad after all.

  Then he smiles. 'Hey, does your . . . condition mean that you're allowed to use your phone in class?'

  Now Lucy returns his smile. She gets all embarrassed about it and tries to hide her face behind her hair, but in doing so, knocks the parrot she can't see off her shoulder. It gives an undignified screech. Josh's dog jumps up and barks at the parrot like mad. Lolita shoots out from somewhere behind me, spitting and hissing, her tail bunched up like a brush to clean test tubes. These animals are definitely going back to business as usual. We should do the same, never mind our oddities.

  I hold out my hands. 'Friends?'

  We perform an odd three-way handshake.

  Then the bell goes and we walk off to the next lesson together.

  I have a new friend; her name is Lucy. She doesn't speak, but her parrot does.

  About this story:

  I had never heard about the condition where people are too shy or inhibited to speak until it became clear that my cousin's little daughter suffers from it. I wanted to show that we're all odd in some way, even if we se
em normal at a glance.

  Metal Dragon

  Originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issue 46

  Li Li squinted into the shadowy space underneath the bridge, where struts formed a lacework of metal. Standing at the foot of the pylon, her feet in the slippery mud of the riverbank and her hands on the rungs of the ladder, she could already feel the pain.

  It's suffering.

  The people in the street blamed the government, and the government blamed foreign countries, that would never deliver all the things they promised. While everyone was blaming each other, and no one was doing anything, Li Li did her silent work.

  She climbed up the pylon, into the smog-misty air that cast an orange haze over the city. Waves of pain pulsed down the ladder.

  Hastily built with poor materials, the bridge had already taken so much of her. Yet, Gong Gong was always trying to destroy it, as he destroyed everything the people built. Gong Gong hated people.

  He was the foul water in the river, the fish with the two heads that the men in the boats brought up in their nets.

  The rails on the bridge vibrated. A train was coming.

  Quick!

  Li Li laid her little hands on the metal, and gasped from the pain that surged through her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fed magic into the struts. Her power speared out through cracks, filled and sealed them. The metal fought her, wanting to break, but she pushed harder, until the entire bridge glowed in her mind.

  Like a blind man, the train rumbled on, safe to the other side.

  Phew!

  Li Li opened her eyes. Her woollen jerkin hung loosely around her shoulders, and her trousers, already rolled-up, fell over her feet. With every bit of magic she used, her experience un-learned, her age unravelled. One more fix, and she would be too young to remember, but one more train, and the bridge would collapse, feeding the souls of the people to Gong Gong's fetid waters.

  The first train would rumble across the bridge again at dawn. Nor was it the only structure under threat; there were banks about to collapse, rails about to slide into the river, and in the city centre, a leaking sewer had eaten a huge hole under one of the platforms.

  And Li Li's magic slipped further from her grasp as she was pushed back into her toddler years.

  * * *

  In the empty wagon, Li Li sank to her knees and scrabbled a chipped bowl and a pair of chopsticks from under the seat. The depot was dark, but she made her way around with the stealth of a tiger. Gave thanks to the sun and moon that she was still old enough to remember the way. She had been six when she had first come here. Alone, abandoned. Parents wanted boys, not girls, not even girls who were a goddess reincarnate.

  Across the street, the man the people called Grandfather Peng waited in the door to his shop. Cured hams, smoked fish and chicken feet hung from the ceiling. He was talking to another wrinkled man with sun-damaged skin, who squatted on the steps, gesturing with his hand. Glancing at Li Li, he rose, dusted his grey overalls, and scurried away.

  Heaving a sigh, Grandfather Peng led her into the shop, past sacks of rice and smoke-stained walls. In the kitchen, a table with two chairs stood next to the stove, where steam rose from simmering woks.

  Grandfather Peng ladled chicken into Li Li's bowl and sat down opposite her, his dirty fingernails tracing the grain of the rough wood of the table as she ate. Grandfather Peng didn't comment on Li Li's garments, now even bigger for her than they had been yesterday. It had been a long time since he had last commented on her womanly figure; she had lost them with her regressing age. It was an even longer time since she'd been old enough to share his bed. The only sound was the ticking of Li Li's chopsticks against the porcelain.

  Grandfather Peng rolled a cigarette and blew smoke out the open back door into the hazy evening sky. The setting sun silhouetted factories with their billowing chimneys. A boy on a bike raced through the alley, followed by two mangy dogs.

  Finally, Li Li said, 'You must help me. I can't fix the bridge anymore. Gong Gong is going to defeat us tomorrow.' She really wanted to say 'me', since there was no longer an 'us'. Grandfather Peng had given up the fight long ago. He just fed her every day and seemed not to mind that like the city around him, he festered with sores of old age.

  'You know I cannot,' he said, without looking at her. 'Age has made me frail.'

  Li Li put her bowl down with a thunk. 'If you had used your magic, you would not be old. Do you even remember how to use it?'

  He flinched. Ever since they had lived amongst the people, he had wanted to fit in. So instead of using magic he sold hams and chicken feet and chatted with old men after work. What a glorious existence.

  'I can't see the point of using magic. No one believes in magic. The people must find their own way to defeat Gong Gong. I know they can. They have knowledge; they made all this.' He gestured at the factories. 'They can easily defeat a vengeful spirit.'

  Li Li stared at him. 'No, they can not. Do you care so little? The people are our children. Have I not made them out of mud with my own hands?' She held her hands out to him--so young, so small.

  'Our stories don't interest the people anymore, Li Li. Why should they bother, when they have music and TV?'

  Li Li pushed herself up from the table. 'You have become a bitter old man. Will you be happy tomorrow when hundreds of people drown and everything I know about magic is gone forever?'

  He licked his lips, stubbed out his cigarette, opened his mouth, but still said nothing.

  Li Li pushed her chair back. 'Forget it. I don't even want your help anymore. I'm going to find the dragons myself.'

  * * *

  On the bus, Li Li mingled with other passengers, a little girl with a scruffy map spread on her knees, tucked between a peasant woman with a cage of chickens and a young man who slept leaning his head against the window, while music blared out of his earphones. He smelled of cigarette smoke. Every time the bus hit a pothole, Li Li hung onto the seat, the chickens clucked, and the young man's head sagged a little further. The bus, too, was in pain, as were the crumbling roads and the concrete bridges. So much magic is needed, Li Li thought, so much . . .

  When the bus stopped and Li Li jumped to the ground, her nose wanted to smell manure, her ears wanted to hear clucking chickens, and her eyes wanted to see fields of vegetables and pigs lazing in the mud, as she had the last time she had come here; that had been long ago. Now even the faintest trace of farm smells had gone, as had the little houses and the fields and the pigs to make way for a three-storey, concrete-and-glass construction named 'Jade Gardens'.

  Li Li closed her eyes and tasted the air for dragon magic, but the concrete wall that surrounded the complex was too thick for her weakening power. The building behind the wall was well-lit: lamps with frilly covers in the windows, pale white lights on the balconies, and there were little pinpricks even in the trees. Inside the windows, she saw curtains, and velvet-covered chairs, and glass-fronted cupboards full of pretty cups. TVs glared their coloured glow in every room.

  Dragons looked after themselves well.

  She inched to the gate, where a man in uniform pursed his lips at her. 'What are you doing here, girl?'

  The buttons on his jacket glistened in the sun. Li Li had to fight the urge--a childish urge--to reach out and touch them. Nothing she possessed shone so bright.

  On the other side of the gate, Li Li glimpsed a garden with a fountain and flowers and, through an opening to a floor below the building, shiny cars. Nothing like the battered old ones she saw from the window of the trains.

  She said in her most adult voice, 'I want to talk to Liu Wei.'

  The man laughed. 'Liu Wei? No, no. Only people who live here can come in.'

  Li Li drew herself up and took one step towards the beautiful garden and the cars. 'It's important!'

  The man held her back with just a single clean hand. 'Go and play with your friends. Mr Liu is much too busy to talk to beggars.'

  Li Li drooped off and st
alked along the wall. Had she been grown and healthy, she would have blasted her way in with magic, but as it was, she had little to spare. There were no trees to help her climb into the garden.

  Li Li didn't think Mr Liu would listen anyway. He might have the blood of the dragon in his veins, but he had lost his dragon's heart. Grandfather Peng said Mr Liu owned many shops in town. The other dragons now hid behind the tinted windows of their cars.

  With his car and his beautiful house, why should Lui Wei care about the bridge?

  * * *

  Li Li still pondered that question on her way back to town after visiting most other addresses on her list. Only once did she manage to speak to a dragon, before he sent her away as though she were an annoying little beggar girl.

  From the bus station she trudged down to the rails on her way to the last dragon on her list, certain he would be no different from the others.

  In the night sky, the bridge stood mighty and empty, little lights blinking down the sides. Such a construct of human prowess; it was hard to believe that the weight of a small car would make it collapse, and it was easy to see why Grandfather Peng thought humans could defeat the gods.

  Structures were deceiving, though. In the big cities, glittering buildings pointed towards the heavens, and dragons rode their metal steeds, but the common people breathed the foul air and drank the fetid water. The dragons no longer cared about the people. For every peasant there was another. But was that true? Even as she had that thought, a prick of magic stabbed her.

  The last dragon's factory was on the other side of the river. In a room on the top floor, the light was on.

  Li Li tiptoed across the bridge; the metal groaned even under her insubstantial weight. She shivered and hoped it held until she was on the other side and she didn't end up in the river. Then Gong Gong would truly have won.

  Li Li shivered when she stepped into the dark maw of the factory entrance where she waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness.

  Many tables stood in rows, each with a sewing machine. In one corner, racks with rolls of furry material towered to the ceiling. On a table nearby lay piles of cut-out patterns. Bulky bags of stuffing material looked like bloated pigs' corpses and, on another table, floppy skins of fluffy animals waited to be filled. A crate held bags of little horses, their noses and limbs squished against the plastic. There were stacks of boxes filled with 'Made in China' labels