Red Spikes
Authors: Margo Lanagan
M
ARGO
L
ANAGAN
is a highly acclaimed writer of novels, short stories and poetry. She lives in Sydney.
Red Spikes
is her third book of short stories.
Black Juice
, her second collection of short stories, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Ditmar Award for Best Collection and was an honour book in the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.
‘Singing my Sister Down’ (from
Black Juice
) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, the Aurealis, the Golden Aurealis and Ditmar Awards, and was short-listed for the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. ‘The Queen’s Notice’ (from
White Time
) won the Aurealis Best Young Adult Short Story Award.
Black Juice
was short-listed for the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize, the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards (Older Readers), the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Young Adult Book and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for the Christina Stead Prize.
White Time
was short-listed for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for the Ethel Turner Prize, the Ditmar Award for Best Collected Work and the Aurealis Convenor’s Award.
Also by Margo Lanagan
FOR TEENAGERS AND ADULTS
Short Story Collections
Black Juice
White Time
Novels
The Best Thing
Touching Earth Lightly
FOR YOUNGER READERS
Novels
Wildgame
The Tankerman
Walking Through Albert
MARGO
LANAGAN
red spikes
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board.
First published in 2006
Copyright © Margo Lanagan 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Lanagan, Margo.
Red spikes.
ISBN 978 1 74114 657 8.
ISBN 1 74114 657 7.
I. Title.
Designed by Zoë Sadokierski
Set in 11 on 16 pt Cochin by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Reading group notes are available from
www.allenandunwin.com
C
ONTENTS
{ A Feather in the Breast of God
‘Well, at least it’s a fine night,’ said Mum.
She looked enormous, but that was mostly the bedding she’d gathered as she hurried out of the hut. Her hair, coming undone from its night-time tail, was a shock of silver on her shoulders.
‘Though how we’ll sleep with this moon I don’t know. It’s like the floodlights at the Cricket Ground. We need to find a place in the shade. Not under these gums, though – if they drop a branch, we’re dead. Down by the creek there, among the casuarinas—’
A bellow interrupted her. Everyone looked up at the hut. Mum walked away down the hill, trailing a corner of the quilt across the moon-white grass. ‘And a good distance from
that
. That could go on for hours. Days. Come on, everyone, let’s get settled.’
Dylan followed her slowly. She wasn’t acting right. Anything to do with babies and births, Mum usually took over. She became queenly herself, moving differently, spreading a radiant peacefulness all around. She paused the world so the baby could land on it safely. Yet here she was,
walking away
from a woman in labour.
‘I think we should get the
police
,’ grumbled Ella, lumbering down the slope; she was pregnant too; she was what Mum described as
about ready to drop
. ‘It’s outrageous. Whoever heard of it? Where did those people escape from – some kind of costume party?’
Todd gave an enormous yawn. ‘Dunno what you’re moaning about – you weren’t asleep anyway. You
never
sleep
, remember? ’S what you’re always saying.’
‘I
do
never sleep,’ said Ella. ‘Not these days. Or nights.’
The family moved down the slope ahead, in among the darker trees. They weren’t nearly alarmed enough; that must be part of the magic. Dylan was panting, as if his body were trying to pump out the strong, wet-grass smell of bear and replace it with the proper bush smells of eucalypt and pine.
‘Check for sleeping snakes,’ Mum said when they reached the creek side, where the ground was flatter. ‘Bang about a bit.’
So everyone stamped around in their pyjamas. It would have been funny if Dylan hadn’t been so frightened. Weren’t they
worried
about that bear? Weren’t they
upset
about what had happened? It was eerie that they were positioning air mattresses and spreading blankets and plumping pillows. Titch and Edwin were already asleep – look at them. They hadn’t even cried. It was all a dream to them. Dylan pinched the inside of his elbow hard; he rubbed his arm roughly against a tree trunk; he breathed in and stared at the frills of white water along the creek, at the shadow-people and the shadow trees, at the millions of stars above among the needly casuarina twigs. He smelt the smoke from the hut chimney. That funny man must be building up the fire. You needed boiling water when a baby was coming. What for? Dylan couldn’t remember.
‘Come on, Dylan. Come and settle down between Dad and me. We’ll protect you against jibber-jabbers.’ Her smile was the only part of her face that was moonlit.
‘Jibber-jabbers,’ said Dad dozily. ‘That’s going back a long way. What were those things, anyway, Dyl? You never told us properly; you were too scared even to talk about that nightmare.’
Dylan crawled up the valley between them, laid his head in the pillow-cleft and shuddered. ‘They were these horrible creatures, hundreds of them, about up to my shoulders. They had big heads, big jaws, lots of teeth.
Jibbrah-jibbrah,
they said,
jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah-jibbrah.
They rushed at me out of the wardrobe and snapped their teeth.’