Authors: Anne C. Petty
He knew the particulars of the death adder: lightning fast strikes from a mouth that held the longest fangs of its serpent family. Its venom attacked the nervous system and voluntary muscles, causing massive swelling and tissue destruction. Screaming in his mind, Ned reached out and pushed the fanged mouth away from his face. Whether real or a poison-induced hallucination, he little knew nor cared; he fought it with every sinew, thrashing into a stand of sweet pepperbush and black ti-ti.
“No, Mamma, please, I don’t wanna ... no!” His mother held his arm stretched out over her knees. “Please don’t,” seven-year-old Ned had begged, choking his tears back. She’d stroked his forearm, her fingers brushing the many tiny scars that covered it like a gauntlet, looking for an unblemished spot. His other arm was similarly marked.
“Hush,” she’d whispered, “it’s just a drop, just a little drip I need. It won’t hurt.” She pressed the tip of the filleting knife against the soft skin and a bright bead of red appeared. “Nhuh huh huh.” Ned gasped for air as his mother held his arm over a small ceramic bowl and guided several ruby drops into a pool of yellow venom. “There, now.” She kissed his forehead and pressed a wad of toilet paper over the nick, then walked away with the bowl.
Neddy had wiped his tears on the cotton undershirt donated by a soldier who’d come for a good luck charm to take back to his carrier in the South China Sea. It was supposed to ensure his safe return after the war. “I hate you,” Neddy snuffled, watching his mother’s back as she bent over her work. A shiver had passed through him as he’d sensed the Other and felt its hungry need. It wanted to lick his arm.
“Get the fuck away from me!” Ned’s poisoned vision was a red blur, but he could make out the flattened snout of the death adder too close to his face. Bucking under its weight, he held the monster at arm’s length with all his failing strength, but it was within inches of winning. Then, with a jerk that sent him sprawling, the adder whipped out of his grasp. Above him, two snakes now writhed, grappling each other with sinuous, muscular necks. They pushed backward and forward against each other, their upper bodies twisted into a tight rope of rasping snakeflesh.
The new snake was longer and more slender than the adder, with glossy olive scales and a small, elegant head. Its body emitted a faint golden sheen as it fought with its heavier, clumsier opponent. With a sharp ripple of its whiplike tail, the taipan pressed the adder to the ground, forcing its head into a fire ant mound.
“You bin know better,” she hissed at the adder. Ned shook his head, trying to stay conscious. He recognized her, that other voice that sometimes lived in his head, the one that held the dark presence at bay. “Neddy-boy got a job to do—can’t be dyin' yet,” the Taipan Ancestor scolded as the death adder beat the sand with its tail, its head covered in ants. It gave one loud honking hiss at its captor and disappeared in a curl of gray smoke.
“Well. You bin want looking after, don’t you?” The liquid reddish-brown eyes of a slender, golden-skinned woman looked down at Ned, her soft brown hair streaming outward from her head in a halo of spirals. She took both his hands in her long thin fingers, and he felt a stinging, burning heat flow from her into his poisoned body. Blinking, he watched in shock as the taipan bit into his hand and held him firmly. Ned spasmed, his body absorbing the counter-venom as it scoured the battleground of his ravaged body.
“Neddy,” the golden Aboriginal woman continued, pressing his hands against the cool silky skin of her small breasts, “you bin left that little boy behind. You a big man now. That mob up in Sky Home, they bin watching you. They bin tell me, go down there, tell him to fix that dingo-clan taboo, make things up right.”
“Wha...?” Ned was beyond coherent speech
“You got to put back the tjuringa.”
The what? Ned wanted to complain that he didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about, but his tongue wouldn’t function. He was dying and too weak to move. The taipan released him, stretched to her full height—nine feet of swaying olive-golden serpentine beauty—and then was gone. Ned gasped as a cramp knotted his guts. He let out a shuddering breath and, finally, lay still.
Smoke from the burning blew up from the marsh and over the piney flatlands, catching the nighttime attention of owls and raccoons, shy deer, and a nervous gray fox that lashed the underbrush with its black-tipped tail. A flash of lightning lit the sky, and a few tentative raindrops soaked into the sand, but Ned was beyond caring about such things. He slept the sleep of the dead.
Chapter 1
July 4—Present Day
“Alice! Wake up.”
Alice Waterston struggled to the surface of a dream. She’d been standing on an escarpment of weathered limestone and darker boulders, looking down into a narrow gorge with outcroppings of palms and eucalyptus. Far below, the hiss and boom of restless water pounded ancient rocks as an incoming tide brought the open sea into a bottleneck between sheer cliffs. Across the gorge she saw a galaxy of stars. Someone grabbed her shoulder from behind and pushed, she was falling …
“Holy shi…oh. Nik.” She jerked, then rolled toward him, sleep-fogged and relieved.
“The phone’s ringing.”
Alice sat upright, and then bolted out of bed. In the dark kitchen, she cracked her little toe against a chair leg as she grabbed for the receiver. Motherfuck! “—ello?” Her voice was a frog’s croak. She cleared her throat, curling her foot in pain. “Hello? Yes, this is Alice Waterston.”
She listened in silence to the ward nurse calling from Gull Harbor, informing her in carefully measured tones that her mother Suzanne had just passed away. Standing naked in the predawn darkness, Alice noted the time on the microwave—two forty-five in the morning. It was Monday, July 4. Independence Day. Suzanne’s liberation. The obituary was already writing itself in her mind as she listened.
Nik came into the living room, pulling on his jogging shorts and turning on the light. Alice blinked at him and mouthed, “She’s gone.” Nik nodded, tossing her his well-worn Mycological Society T-shirt. Alice put the phone down for a second and shrugged into it—the shirt engulfed her, the hem reaching halfway down her thighs.
The nurse was saying something about a quiet, peaceful passing. Alice bit her lip. “Right, it’s for the best. We’re all glad she didn’t linger,” she said, her thoughts spiking ahead to funeral plans and back to images of Suzanne and Margaret playing together on the beach. “Thank you so much for calling. Florida Shores Funeral Home, that’s right. They should already have her instructions on file. Yes, her brother, Harold Blacksburg, will take care of the arrangements. You should call him to pick up her things from the hospital—oh, he did already? Was he with her when she...? Well, thank you again for everything. Yes, goodbye.”
Alice hung up and stood quietly, ignoring her throbbing toe, letting the news sink in. It was what she’d been expecting, even hoping for, and yet now that it was true, she felt strange.
Margaret slipped into the living room, rubbing her eyes.
“Mom? What’s going on?”
Alice reached out and pulled her daughter close.
“Grandma Suzanne’s passed on.”
“Oh.” Margaret’s face was a mask, but Alice knew the loss was severe. Suzanne doted on her only granddaughter, and Margaret had adored her in kind. Alice felt the girl’s chest rising and falling. When at last Margaret pulled away, there was a damp spot on Nik’s shirt, just over the mushroom logo.
“What’ll happen to Carlisle?” Margaret raised her head, damp strands of hair stuck to her face.
“Hal’s keeping him.” Suzanne’s Afghan hound had been her companion for the past eleven years, but Alice supposed he could keep Hal company just as well. “Carlisle’s an elegant dog, pedigreed with papers and all, but they never showed him. Poor Carlisle. Hal says he’s pretty sad. Looking for Suzanne.”
“I want him if Uncle Hal doesn’t.” Margaret wiped her cheeks.
Alice watched her pad back to her room, face shielded by her tangled mass of red curls. The bedroom door shut softly.
“Will she be all right, then?” Nik touched her hand.
Alice nodded. “It’ll be hard, they were tight. But yeah, she’ll deal with it. You know how she is.”
“Ja,” said Nik. “And you?”
“Me? I’ll miss her, I guess. I can’t say I loved her. Shit, let’s be honest, I didn’t even like her. But ... there’s a hole.” Alice shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Do we need to do anything tonight?”
“No, Hal’s in control, as usual.”
“Then come back to bed, try to sleep. You haven’t done much of that while she’s been ill.”
“I know.” Ahhhh. Alice leaned against Nik as he massaged the base of her neck with his big hands. Nik was tall and lean as a lodge pole, like his Viking ancestors. His flax-colored hair fell loose over his bare shoulders. Alice yawned and thought about the week just past.
She’d spent the last six days in Suzanne’s hospital room, keeping vigil. The doctors told her the stroke was massive and that her mother might not wake up again and, in fact, might remain unresponsive for however long it took her to die. Your basic vegetative state, she’d told Nik on the phone. She’d called Shelton, her boss at the Hardison Museum, and asked for a short leave of absence to help Hal with doctors and lawyers, and to sit beside the hospital bed waiting for some sign of consciousness beyond the steady hiss of the respirator.
That sign had come the second night, when Alice sat staring at Suzanne’s thin, remote face, thinking about nothing in particular. Her mind had been wandering, mulling over mundane stuff like getting Margaret enrolled in the university’s summer Science Camp for gifted middle-school kids and taking Dawg to the vet for his annual rabies shot. Then she’d seen a single tear pool at the corner of Suzanne’s closed left eye and slide down the sunken cheek into her ear. From that point on until yesterday when Alice had driven the hundred miles back to her own safe haven, her house in the pines near Citrus Park where the museum was located, she’d talked to Suzanne. Saying things she’d wanted to say for years and trying to take back other things, hurtful things, that she’d actually said. But that single tear was all she got for her effort.
Now, settled comfortably back in bed with Nik, all that seemed so pointless. It was over; Suzanne was gone and couldn’t care less how Alice felt about her or what kind of parent she’d been. Alice pressed her back against Nik and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking.
With Suzanne gone, she was now officially an orphan. Which meant she was no longer anchored to a family, had no parent to impress with the way she’d turned out. But had Suzanne ever praised her or openly demonstrated love that she could remember? She couldn’t think of a single instance, but other memories fought their way to the surface.
“Mama, can I come in?” five-year-old Alice asked, peeking around the doorframe. Her mother sat at her bedroom window, watching a summer squall blow sheets of rain through the palms lining the driveway. It had taken her a full minute to respond. Alice knew because she’d counted to sixty-three before Suzanne turned around.
Alice’s memory rendered the scene in CGI detail. She’d approached her mother, holding her breath. “Papa says,” she’d whispered, “that he’s going to the market and wants to know if you want anything.” Suzanne had stared at her as if she’d spoken a foreign language.
Tiny-boned and fine-featured, Suzanne Blacksburg-Waterston sat still as a porcelain doll on the cushioned window seat, her flame-red hair unbrushed and her white satin dressing gown untied. “Come here,” she’d said, and stretched out a thin hand toward Alice. Alice had gone to her, hoping for but not really expecting some sign of affection. Suzanne had taken Alice’s face in her hands and looked her in the eyes with such unblinking fascination that Alice had begun to tremble.
“You have his eyes,” she stated to no one. “They’re not natural. Yellow, with blue rings around the pupil. Who has eyes like that?”
“Papa says they’re hazel,” Alice responded, shaking. Her mother’s fingers reached up into Alice’s thick hair, pulling her head back. “His hair,” she said, “That thick sandy …” Then she’d erupted, scratching Alice’s cheek and hitting at her in a blind fury. “Get out! OUT!” Alice had fled down the stairs at a pounding run, ending up in Hal’s study where she’d recounted between sobs what had happened.
Squirming against Nik, Alice endured the memory to its end. Hal had washed her face, put an antiseptic on the scratches, and taken her out for ice cream. She’d stayed away from her mother’s room after that.
Nik rolled over and fitted himself to the curve of her body, his free arm holding her lightly, reassuring but not binding. His lips brushed her shoulder, and she smiled in the dark. She should marry this man before he got away, the eight-year difference in their ages notwithstanding. The age gap seemed irrelevant to them now, but when he eventually reached his forties, she would be fifty. It was something to think about.
Listening to Nik’s even breathing, she began to doze.
“But why? Why would she call me something like that?” Nine-year-old Alice’s face was flushed, her voice hoarse from yelling. Hal had picked her up from school just in time to derail the shouting match between Alice and a schoolmate. On the way home, she’d poured out her fury and embarrassment, her voice rising until all she could do was squeak.
“She asked me if I was adopted. She said my mother and father are really brother and sister, and if I’m not adopted then I’m a sin against nature ‘cause they would have to commit incest to have me.”
Hal had looked at her with an unreadable expression. In her enraged state of mind, his silence had been worse than any answer. Furious, Alice had plunged ahead. “I looked it up. Incest means that a brother and a sister—”
“I know what it means.” Hal shut off the car. They were sitting in the curve of the long driveway, halfway to the house. “Let’s go for a walk. I need to explain some things to you.” The tone of his voice, normally so reassuring, was constricted, and Alice remembered how much that had frightened her.