Day Boy (8 page)

He had fought for his family. He had done all right.

But wasn't a time for all rights. Was a lean time, a storm-thrashed time.

And his family died. He was—

Was burying his sons.

They'd sickened.

The Angry Gods had come and made them dance and die.
And he was the last, and weak,
and sickly himself, but he took up that shovel, and dug. Bent his back to the labour
of his grief.

He buried them in that storm. Shovel biting the earth, hard and dry, then soft and
sticky as the rain fell. He'd bundled them in sheets and towels.

Both of them.

He was sad.

Course he was.

But he was angrier than that storm.

Angry like that storm, in fire and rage and madness.

Angry and wanting death.

The world bubbled and spat, and fell.

He brought his boys down into the liquid earth. He buried their flesh and their bones,
and the world cut its fire and shadow around him. And when he was done, panting and
weary. The Dark whispered in his ear. The Dark brought its teeth. The Dark bit.

They say the Change is easy for some. Wasn't easy for him.

He fought it.

Let me tell this story.

He fought it. He raged against it. But rage is nothing to the new blood, the new
birth, and what's rage when your boys are dead? What's rage to a storm? A storm laughs
at your rage, and the biting Dark laughs with it.

Was a while he walked the earth, buried himself when the Sun came up. But he took
to the roads. He took to the roads, and he wasn't all cruel.

The Imperatives bound him, even then.

CHAPTER
10

IF I HADN'T been all busy yawning and grumbling under my breath, I'd have seen it
before it hit me. Might have been able to duck, but no. I fell on my bum, blinking,
and the missile bounced off me and rolled away. I'm up quick, and there's a laugh
in the not too distance, a laugh I know well. One that brings a bit of heat to my
face.

‘Very funny,' I yell, eyes scanning the trees on the edge of the property, rubbing
my head where the half-ripe peach struck it.

A small shape drops from the tree nearest, light-footed as she's deadly with a peach.
She's holding another and grinning, fierce as any Day Boy.

Takes a bite. ‘Thought you'd fancy some breakfast,' she says between crunches.

‘No time for playing, Anne.'

Anne throws the peach at me. This time I'm ready, but it nearly gets me regardless.
‘Won't be brushed off by the likes of you,' she says.

She's a hard one to cross, and a friend as good as any I got. Mary's daughter. Mary
who owns the grocers. Who I need to visit this afternoon, because I need milk because
ours has gone off. Always forgetting the milk. Anne's da, no one talks about him.

I shrug. ‘Master's got me chored to the teeth today,' I say.

‘No time for fishing then?'

‘You at school today?'

She glares at me. ‘If I was at school would I be here?'

I shake my head. ‘No time.'

‘You want a hand?'

Give another shrug. But she's already gunning for the gutter, clambering up the ladder
and onto the roof faster than me. ‘These won't clean themselves.'

‘Don't you fall,' I say.

‘Falling's the best thing!' Anne says.

I clear my throat. ‘I don't want Mary coming after me.'

Anne's head juts over the roof, eyes that trip me up and make me fall myself. ‘And
she would, you know. My ma's got a backbone all right.'

Two people that Dain doesn't ever get me to mark their doors. Paul Certain's one
of them, Mary's the other. I know Dain visits her, but I don't draw the seven at
all there. He says they have other arrangements.

I don't know what her ma thinks about her coming and helping: probably takes a dim
view on it. But Anne's her own girl, no Master to lord it over her. I like her. I
don't know if she likes me.

A handful of leaves finds my head, and then another.

‘I'm taking that ladder,' I say.

‘And I'll just jump on your head. Thick enough from all accounts.'

Yeah, yeah, she's right. Chores are easier shared. If she wants to share them with
me, I'm not fighting her. And she's good: she's a worker. She can hold a tune too,
and I like listening to her sing. Sometimes I like watching her sing when she don't
think I am: I don't think I've ever known such earnestness.

We're done with those gutters in under an hour, and a good thing too, because the
Sun's fierce this morning. Then there's the lawn, and the garden and the raking and
the verandah to be swept and cleared. By the time we're done the Sun's well past
noon. And we're lying on the grass in the shade of those leafy trees looking at the
clouds, and I've pulled two cool drinks from the cellar. Anne won't go down there
with me. She thinks it's where Dain is in repose, and I won't make her no wiser.
Some lines I won't cross for no one, no matter how much I might want to impress.
Besides, Anne's stronger and mostly tougher than me: it's nice to show a bit of bravery
to her.

Sweet cider, a blue sky streaked with clouds and the smell of fresh-cut grass.

‘Useless, you Day Boys. Tits on a bull,' Anne says, drinking deep. Eyes fixed on
me.

‘You know it,' I say. A bit stung.

‘Never understood why there weren't Day Girls.'

‘Same as why there aren't woman Masters.'

‘Mistresses,' Anne corrects. I wince, feel heat in my face, hotter than the day.

‘The women come out all crooked; it breaks them, burns 'em up. Girls is a bit different,
Dain says.'

Anne puts her glass down, brings her face close to mine. I swallow; try not breathe
her in. Try not to look like it anyway. My skin prickles, my head is light, like
I could just float into that blue sky.

‘You know what I think?' she says.

‘I guess I will in a moment.'

‘I think they're frightened of us. And…' I look in her eyes, dark as the sky in the
middle of the night. ‘They should be.'

She smiles, touches my nose with a finger, swings back from me and picks up her drink.
The day's slowed. My heart's beating hardly at all, I reckon. I take a breath, and
another. I can feel her so close, a thousand miles away.

‘Nearly was killed last week,' I say.

Anne frowns. ‘You been annoying Mr Dain again?'

‘Again?'

‘You're trouble and everyone knows it,' Anne says. ‘Only a matter of time till you're
et, if not by him then one of the others.'

I laugh, low and easy. ‘Who says?'

‘No one.' Anne's lips thin. ‘Maybe Sally Dalton.'

‘Sally Dalton don't even know me.' Feel my cheeks go hot all over again.

‘Makes big enough eyes at you.'

‘Never seen that,' I say, though I probably have. We're Day Boys, we expect big eyes.
‘She's most likely right, but…No, it weren't Dain but a Hunter.'

‘From the city? You wandering where you shouldn't be?'

‘Where else?' I take another swig. Drag a finger across my neck. ‘He was going to
slit my throat.'

‘And you're sitting here all calm.'

‘Dain saved me, but not that I needed him. Cool as this cider, I was.'

Anne snorts, and I know I've taken it one brag too far.

I pull out a smoke and offer her one, and her face falls. ‘That'll kill ya just as
good as any Hunter.'

‘Nothing going to kill me,' I say. ‘Not a Hunter, certainly not plain old smoke.'

‘You're a damn fool,' she says.

‘Maybe I am.' But I put the smokes away.

‘There's never any maybes with you,' she says. ‘Sun and Sea take you!'

And I don't know how to feel about her anger.

No time for reflection anyway, because just then the world thinks otherwise. A green
ant stings my arse; they've got a damn lot of venom in them, and I'm up and jigging
like a maniac trying to get the bloody thing out of my shorts. Not the way to impress
a lady. Not even close. Anne leaves me to my misery, her laughter stinging even more.

I didn't even get a chance to thank her for her work. Just watch her leave with a
tightness in my belly, and my skin turning dull and tired.

Soon he'll have to make a decision, and my thoughts don't come into it.

Put me out into the town, or out of the town altogether and have me trained for other
work or draw me up to become what he is. Send me to the City in the Shadow of the
Mountain to learn my lessons, a year or two, then into the Change. But that's a most
unlikely settlement. I'm no Dav. Even I know my edges are too rough.

I've known what I was since I could know such things. And now I don't. There's a
deal of hurt in that.

I don't know what I want. I guess I don't want anything much. I would have nothing
change, but the older I get, the more I see it. Everything changes whether I want
it to or not.

Dain raised me. And he didn't raise me stupid. It wasn't just facts he hammered into
my skull.

CHAPTER
11

THERE'S A WIND blowing in after the night, hot from the west and whispering when
Certain comes to visit, Petri waiting outside like the good dog she is. Certain doesn't
always spend his time on the farm and he's good mates with Dain. He's an Old Boy,
one of them who was once a Day Boy but didn't take, wasn't offered, the Change. Certain
was allowed to live on the edge of town, given land and an occupation. If it rubs
him the wrong way he doesn't show it. We don't get many visitors, it's usually Dain
that does the visiting.

Certain's arms are long and ropey. His smile a thin slash that you'd be hard to see
as warmth. He is wide across the chest but he limps, favours his left leg more than
his right. You can see the scar a quarter inch above the knee if you look hard enough.

‘World tackles you, boy,' he told me once when I stared too long. ‘Sometimes you
get up fine, sometimes you get up a little broke.'

I've had my share of breaks.

‘Here to see your Master,' Certain says, standing at the door, and he's dressed up
a little. Shirt and long pants, shoes that are too long gone for buffing to bring
out much good in them, but they're cracked and comfortable.

‘Business or pleasure?'

‘Bit of both. Mainly for that whisky sour he's got, I guess. You do have lemons,
don't you? Sugar?'

I don't understand whisky, tried it once and it made me sick. Give me a cider any
day. I pull a face.

‘You can come in, I guess.'

‘He out, is he?'

‘Not fer much longer.'

I pour him a glass of that rough stuff, squeeze in some lemon juice.

Certain raises his glass, peers at me through it. ‘Could do with some ice.' So I'm
down to the cellar and the ice chest. Shaving bits off the shrinking brick down there.
Bring him back his glass.

Takes a good long sip. ‘That's the stuff,' he says. He leans back in his chair. ‘You
given much thought to your what-comes-afters?'

‘What do you think?' I say.

‘I think time's moving fast. My last years did. Faster than I'd ever thought they
could.'

‘I'll be all right,' I say.

‘Keep to that thought. Hold it, and you might just be. There's coming a time when
you'll make decisions, even if it don't feel like you are. What kind of man you'll
be. Or perhaps not a man.'

I snort. ‘No chance of that. ‘

Certain rattles the ice in his glass. ‘More peculiar things have happened. Man or
monster. There's different types of both.'

‘I'll decide,' I say.

‘Funny thing is, you never stop deciding. Never wanted to stay in this town, but
that's the way it turned out. And I've found I'm glad of the fact.' He takes another
sip. ‘Right now, you are what your Master decides, but one day…' Certain looks into
his glass. ‘This is empty. A refill if you please.'

Like I have a choice in that!

‘You weren't the only one here today. And I'm not talking about our evening caller,'
Dain says, an hour after he's finished his drinking with Certain, not even noticing
the verandah, but you can bet he would have if I hadn't tidied it.

‘Just me and Anne.'

Dain frowns. ‘You are not to consort with the child.'

He don't like it, and neither does Mary, though she's polite enough with me.

‘I don't consort with no one, she helped with my chores.'

‘She should be at school, not with you. And I think her mother would agree.'

‘I don't encourage it.' I fold my arms. Dain raises an eyebrow.