Mandu waved away the withering critique with a single hand, as if swatting away flies. “You talk. Words come out. But they mean nothing. You don’t care about that. Laws and traditions mean nothing to you.” The two stared at each other in silence, Mandu taking a seat on the other side of the fire. “You have no idea who the boy is or why he’s here.”
“I know all I need to know,” said Koorong.
“The only people who say that are those who are both ignorant of what they are talking about and too obstinate to bother changing their mind when they aren’t.”
“I’m not going to stop coming for you.”
“I know,” said Mandu. “You are no longer human enough to see reason. You know only what your instincts allow.”
“Careful, Mandu, you presume much that you cannot see.”
“We both do. Which is why you thought you could trust whatever spirit told you where to find me.”
Koorong nodded, narrowing his gaze. Mandu knew more than he was letting on. “They’ve not lied to me so far.”
“So far as you can tell, you mean.”
“They told me you were teaching the whitefella things you ought not to be sharing.”
“His name is Colby. And they didn’t tell you anything about him.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because,” said Mandu with the flicker of a smile, “if they had, you’d not be so keen to be near him. I’ve been with him for days and I barely know what he’s capable of.”
“Capable?”
“Very strong eye. Dangerous, though. His are the old ways of his people. Scorched earth magic. Ruinous stuff. Takes the dream right out of the air and makes awful things with it. Given time, he will drain the world of every last drop of dreaming. But I can train that out of him.”
“Given time,” said Koorong ominously.
“But I don’t think we have much time, do we?”
“No. We are sadly out of time, all of us. You can’t scare me off with your lies.”
“No lies,” said Mandu. “No need for them.”
“No?”
“People believe that when you find someone you can share all of your secrets with, someone you can be completely honest with, then you have found the love of your life. That just isn’t true. There will always be things you have to keep from them, things you yourself are ashamed of. Things you want to keep even from yourself. No, the one person you can really trust, the one you are free to be completely honest with, is the man who hates you enough to try to kill you. That’s a man who cannot judge you any worse than he does now, and whose opinion simply won’t change.”
“I might hate you, Mandu, but that’s not why I have to kill you. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“Run out of powerful souls?”
“Yes.”
“Keep that up and you will one day be left with only your son to feed off of. And where will you be then?”
“Starving.” He looked down at his sleeping son. For the first time, so did Mandu. At once Mandu saw the wound below the heart and the paleness of his flesh.
“What did you do?” asked Mandu.
“I didn’t do this. Other Clever Men did.”
“In retaliation for something you did.”
“It doesn’t matter why,” said Koorong, a twinge of guilt stabbing him in the gut.
“How long does he have?”
“Quite some time. He’ll live long off two souls as powerful as you and your student.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Mandu, shaking his head. “The boy has a powerful destiny.”
“No destiny is written in stone. Those dreams that fill you with all your hope and dread are nothing but idle speculation of the spirits. Don’t let them fill your head with more lies. Speaking of which, which version of the story are you telling these days?”
“About you?” asked Mandu.
“Yeah.”
“The one that’s close enough to the truth to keep people frightened, but far enough away from knowing how you do it.”
Koorong grinned broadly. “Good. Good. And you’ve edited yourself out?”
“Of course.”
“You were never that interesting a character in it, anyway.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.”
“What did the spirits ask for?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Koorong. “The spirits will get what the spirits want.”
“Of course it matters. Spirits don’t trade for nothing. You’re doing their will, even when you think they are doing yours. Do they have what they want? From you?”
Koorong peered closely at Mandu. “Are you asking me if I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain?”
Mandu nodded. “Too right.”
“No.”
“Then you have no choice.”
“I don’t.”
“I thought as much.”
“So why come?” asked Koorong.
“Truth?”
Koorong nodded hesitantly. “Of course. Why bother with a lie at this point?”
“For my conscience. I’ve seen this. The spirits told me my past was coming, showed me all the signs. I know what paths of destiny look like after this. This was the last choice I really get to make. Everything else from here on out, through the end of your sad, miserable life, will stem from what you decide to do. Tomorrow morning that little boy will wake up, he’ll look out at the rising sun, and he’ll ask you, ‘Dad, what now?’ And your answer will determine the direction of all our lives.”
“You put too much stock in your dreams. I remember when I used to have them. They showed me only lies.”
“Well, very soon I’ll get to find out if they’ve treated me any better. Before this is done, it will rain terribly. Twice. It has to. For justice.”
Koorong pulled out his dagger with one hand and picked up a smooth stone with the other. Then he casually, deliberately, sharpened the blade, making sure to stroke it after each slowly spoken sentence. “Have they shown you your own beating heart ripped out of your chest? Your soul being drained into a catch? My son sticking your whitefella with his wand? Carving out his femur to turn into a pointing bone? All while you both bleed out together?”
“No,” said Mandu.
“Then they’ve lied. Get running. We’ll catch up to you soon enough.”
Mandu smiled, nodded, and bid Koorong adieu, his spirit vanishing, embers popping off him like the fire, turning to ash as he faded away.
Koorong stood up and stared out into the darkness. Mandu and the whitefella would be too far away now. They would keep moving, stay on the run. The clock was ticking. Two days. One day left before his son was too sick to move; two until he was gone for good.
“I told you I would help your son,” said the spirit from behind him.
Koorong turned to meet his gaze. But he wasn’t a dog anymore. He was a man. Copper skin, deep wrinkles, and a wide, untrustworthy grin, he was unlike any man Koorong had ever seen. “He was warned.”
“Yes.”
“By a spirit.”
“Yes.”
“By you,” said Koorong accusingly.
Though it seemed impossible at the time, the spirit smiled even wider. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I told you, I’m going to help your son. You would not have taken their souls. Not there. Not like that. They needed to be scared. They needed to know what they were up against so they could go to the one place they felt strong enough to make a stand.”
Koorong stared off into the distance, deep in thought, trying to work the whole thing out. Then it dawned on him. Hammer Rock.
8
The forest was still, dead quiet despite the life teeming throughout. No insects chirped, no cane toads croaked, everything dug well into holes and hollows. It was as if the swamps had been cleared of every living thing, the eerie calm unsettling, dreamlike. Mist rose off the billabongs like a ghostly militia setting the charge, the for
est beginning to take on the night’s chill.
Koorong knew exactly what this meant. He was walking into a trap.
With a gesture he motioned for Warra to ease his pace and keep his footfalls silent. But in the thick mud, even as small and light as Warra was, it was nearly impossible not to snap twigs or make the occasional sucking sound of a foot being pulled from the muck.
Mandu had chosen well. He knew this land. He knew the perils of the wet season. And he had something up his sleeve that was keeping everything else in the forest from piping up. Whatever it was, Koorong preferred caution over bravado. There was no time to be foolish—one mistake and he would lose his son forever.
“They know we’re coming,” said Koorong.
“I know,” said Warra. He coughed weakly. “We’ll just have to be stronger.”
Koorong nodded. Even in death, his son was stoic. If ever he needed proof that Warra was in fact his son, it was this. He placed a firm hand on Warra’s shoulder and they pressed on through the forest.
They came upon a large stone plateau, rising like a giant mushroom out of the sea of mangrove trees, its faces sheer, wider at the top than at the middle, reds and browns dripping down the sides, jagged rocks climbing the western face like chiseled stone steps. It looked like an abandoned Aztec temple, overgrown and swallowed by time, overlooking a wide billabong. Hammer Rock.
As they drew closer, they could see the ten-thousand-year-old rock art, ancient but bright, unmolested by time. Reds, ochers, blues, blacks. Smears and stains, depictions of stick men covering it top to bottom, colors often inverted with negative space, detailing the magic aura of dreamtime with pigments, leaving the stick men colored by the rock, dotted here and there with little dabs of paint.
The fire was visible, glowing atop Hammer Rock, flickering like a giant torch rising out of the marsh. The trees around the rock danced, their shadows long, strobing in the firelight; the magic in the air the only thing thicker than the mud. This was about the worst place in the world to sneak up and steal a man’s soul.
This was not to be an ambush, but an all-out brawl.
Mandu had warned him. All Koorong could do now was hope his visions were lies.
They crept closer, using the shadows of trees to mask them from the firelight for as long as possible. Warra stuck close, Koorong painfully aware of how dangerous this raid had become. They were thirty yards out from the rock, but Koorong couldn’t even be sure that Mandu and the whitefella were really there. Mandu was clever enough to paint the night with an illusion; he was also clever enough to know that Koorong would expect that. Though Koorong was looking right at Mandu, there was no way of knowing which trap he might be walking into—the one in which Mandu ambushed him from hiding, or the one in which he did it from plain sight.
Mandu and the whitefella sat quietly next to the fire, neither of them moving very much at all, both of them bristling and tense. Koorong’s anxiety grew. The closer he got to Hammer Rock, the more it dawned upon him that he might never step away from it; Warra might never step away from it.
This spirit who was so eager to help had set him up. And he had walked proudly into its trap, thinking himself its master all along. He’d been a fool.
But now was not the time for self-pity. Now was the time for savagery. If he was going to survive this, if Warra was going to survive this, they would have to be vicious, merciless, and cruel.
Koorong raised his arm and whipped his bullroarer around in the air, filling the night with the echoes of Hell. The very trees seemed to cower, the darkness creeping in on the fire.
“Mandu!” Koorong shouted at the rock. “I’ve come as I promised.”
But the figures around the fire did not move.
“Mandu! Don’t think I can’t see through your trickery at this point!”
Still, they did not move, Mandu’s eyes not even flickering at the sound of his name.
Warra looked nervously up at his father. “Dad?” he asked. “Is that them?”
Koorong looked around, then peered closer, trying to discern what trick this was. “No,” said Koorong, “it’s them. It has to be them. This is no illusion.”
“But . . . they’re not moving.”
“That’s because they’re clever.”
“Cleverer than us?”
Koorong grimaced. “That remains to seen.”
Warra’s hand clutched his pointing stick while his father still spun his bullroarer.
The night was none but noise and chaos. And still the figures did not move.
Koorong nodded and the two raced in, blitzing toward the fire. The bullroarer howled. The figures remained solid and unwavering until the very last second.
And then they shot to their feet, both of them leaping off the rock at once, each in a different direction.
Colby leapt into a tree, vanishing.
Mandu did the same on the other side of Hammer Rock.
At once Koorong realized what was happening. He and Warra were alone. In the dark. Surrounded by nothing but trees.
“Warra, keep your—”
A staff emerged from a tree, clobbering him midsentence, knocking him to the ground; the bullroarer falling silent, toppling with him to his side.
Warra looked up in time to see Mandu appear from out of a trunk, as if he were popping up out of a pool of water, before dunking quickly back into it. Distracted, he didn’t notice Colby, who appeared and elbowed Warra in the nose, breaking it.
Colby grunted as he struck Warra, and jumped back into the nearest tree before Warra could retaliate.
Warra dropped to the ground next to his father, grabbing his nose as blood spouted from it. His eyes welled with tears, face flushed numb with pain, brain ringing. He was out of sorts with the world, completely off-balance. For a moment he forgot where he was. Then he let free the anger and rage brewing in his belly and jumped to his feet, screaming bitterly.
“Where are you, whitefella?” he bellowed. “Coward!”
“Right here,” said Colby, appearing behind him, rabbit punching him in the base of the skull. “No fair fights for soul thieves.” The whitefella fled again through another tree.
Warra flailed, swinging his pointing stick wildly, hitting nothing but air. “I’ll kill you!”
“Nope.” Colby materialized again, this time clocking Warra in the jaw.
Gone. Nothing but the night air. Night air and trees. Trees like doors. A thousand open doors.
Koorong scrambled to his feet, his hand massaging the growing knot on his skull. “Relax,” he said. “Try to feel the trees. You can sense our opponents coming through. Point your stick at the tree when you do and you’ll stick yourself one of them.”
Warra nodded, trying not to show how terrified he was.
“Stay close to me. We have a better chance working together.”
Koorong grunted, falling to his knees, struck again on the back of the head by a walking stick. Mandu winked at Warra before blending back into bark.
Warra kicked the tree with all his might, but only hurt his foot. “Which trees are they in?” he asked, his voice more frightened than angry. “We should cut them down and trap them there.”
“They aren’t in the trees,” said Koorong. “There is no space inside of the tree. They’re just doors, the spirits of each tree connected to the ancestors that birthed it. Mandu and the whitefella are in the forest, just like us, waiting for the right moment.” He looked down at Warra with pride. “But you have the right idea.” Then he smiled cruelly, began singing and stamping his feet in the mud, drawing upon the most powerful magic he knew.
The earth shook. The ground grumbled. Trees quivered. And the entire swamp filled with the sound of slowly snapping timber. The forest moaned, creaking, trunks falling away from the pair, ancient trees trying to hold firm to the ground, but failing, falling, dying in the mud. Koorong and Warra stood in the middle of a circle of uprooted timber.
“That,” he said, “is the end of that.”
&nb
sp; The air of the forest was thick and heavy, but once again eerily silent.
Koorong held his hand out, palm up, swearing in an ancient tongue. Fire erupted, a sphere of burning blue dancing on his fingertips. “Mandu!” he yelled. “You don’t have your trees now. Let’s do this proper.” He lobbed the flame into the dark, the orb lighting a small radius as it passed before detonating bright orange against a tree.
The blaze licked the bark, climbing the branches, setting the whole tree alight.
“I can play this game too,” he said. “I can set your whole sacred wood on fire. Scrape the painting off the rocks. Burn the very dream out of the air.”
“And it will all grow back,” said Mandu, walking out into the light of the burning tree, bullroarer in one hand, walking stick in the other. “And the rocks will be repainted. And the dream will be dreamt again. But you will never again have a soul of your own. It will never grow back. You will always be an animal, feeding off the imagination of the souls you drink. But your son, he’ll be spared that fate. He’ll be dead by morning.”
Koorong cursed again, another ball of fire appearing in the palm of his hand.
“Kill him, Dad,” said Warra.
“Quiet,” said Koorong softly. “Not until we know where the boy is.”
“I’m over here,” said Colby, flanking them from behind.
Koorong smiled wickedly over his shoulder, eyeing Colby. “Not so clever standing so far from your teacher.”
“The time for cleverness is past,” said Mandu. “Now is the time for strength. And in that respect, my student is much stronger than I am.”
Koorong spun, flinging the orb at Colby like a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball.
Colby held out his hand, and the orb stopped. It sizzled away, disintegrating into embers before fizzling out a few feet in front of him. He cocked his head, unimpressed.
Koorong took a step back toward his son, understanding now the folly of this raid. Fear welled within his gut, tightening his muscles, roiling into a frothing anger. His bullroarer burst into flames and he flung it about, lighting the forest around them with a hellish green glow, the sounds tortured, anguished, the swamp itself moaning with the voices of the dead.
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 21
