The Rain Heron Page 8

  His eyes snapped up, and Zoe saw the same anger in him that she’d seen when he’d been punched: anger heated by shame. His next words had an edge that was completely unlike his usual, conciliatory tone.

  You don’t know what’s happening in the rest of the country, do you?

  We’ve heard things.

  You clearly haven’t heard enough.

  The rage stayed in his voice as he stood, turning to the door. Zoe’s aunt followed him.

  Look. You seem like a nice guy. But it doesn’t matter how nice you are, or even how desperate. You aren’t going to find what you’re looking for.

  He pulled on his jacket, muttering under his breath.

  She slurped at her tea.

  I’m trying to be kind.

  Some tea drew up her nose, and despite the gravitas she was trying to summon she snorted, spraying tea onto the table, which prompted a bray of laughter.

  He paused at the door. His voice was quiet.

  Why do you keep laughing at me?

  Zoe wanted to say something. She wanted to jump from the couch to yell that it wasn’t him, that her aunt laughed at everyone and everything, but before she could speak her aunt laughed again, a ruckus of hard humour, and then the night blinked, winter ran inside, the door slammed, and the northerner was gone.

  26

  IN THE WEEKS that followed the wind grew sharper, the days shorter, the frost thicker. The northerner let go of the cautious optimism he had brought with him. His speedboat remained moored at the pier, but the man himself wasn’t often spotted. When he was, it was usually on the beaches, wandering in jagged lines, staring out at the grey roof of the sea. The port people kept ignoring him, but in a way that was now more condescending. When he walked past they would exaggerate the way they’d move out of his way, or they stared up at the sky with comical effect, as if a low-flying plane had just buzzed past. If he spoke they whistled loudly, where before they’d just pretended not to hear him. He became a defeated figure, in the way he moved and the way he was treated. Only Zoe was cautious around him. Only she had seen his gun, and only she had noticed the depth of his determination.

  In the evenings he went to the pub near the water. He’d sit alone at a booth by the window, under the ink-enriched painting, watching the sky and sea darken, drinking beer, eating steak. He spoke to no one, and nobody approached him. After his third or fourth pint he would take out a pen and a stack of clean paper, and start writing what looked like letters. The first few pages would come out quickly, his pen running clean lines across the paper, but as the evenings wore on his pace would slow. Steak glugged his stomach; beer dragged his blood. He’d lift his pen from the page and hesitate, his face all frowns and grimaces. Eventually he’d lower the pen again, but usually to rewrite his previous sentence, or to strike out whole lines. New words became less common than corrections. As his frowns grew he kept signalling the publican, whenever his glass clinked empty. He drained beer after beer. He would abandon trying to write new pages and start going back through the first ones he’d filled, taking his ink to them with hot vigour, deleting lines, marking large crosses across whole paragraphs, whole pages. By the time the publican was ringing his bell the northerner had thrown his pen at the window, as if aiming at the ocean beyond the glass, and was screwing all his pages into tight-scrunched missiles. As he lurched to the door he tossed the balled paper onto the pub’s fire. By this time he was staggering, but he never missed the flames. The last thing he burned was always the one piece of paper he hadn’t attacked—an envelope he’d laid beside his pages the moment he’d begun writing. He would watch the yellow flames chew up the name and address he’d printed neatly on its face. Then he’d crash through the door, drunk, letterless, alone.

  It seemed inevitable that he’d leave. On the mornings or afternoons Zoe saw him—often clambering awkwardly in or out of his speedboat—she found herself wishing that it was the last time. Part of this desire came from her memory of his gun, but mostly she felt sorry for him. She knew that her aunt was right, and that every day he stayed was prolonging his suffering. She’d never even witnessed his aborted attempts at writing letters in the pub. If she had, she might have begged him to leave. Each time she saw the blend of shame and sorrow in his features she felt her guts twinge. She felt bad for him, and she felt bad about herself, for she had played a role in his sorrow—she had denied him, had lied to him. On her inking mornings her aunt would tread the pier, chuckle at his boat, and Zoe would stare at her boots or hands, wishing he would leave.

  One cold morning, the sun weak and heatless above them, she and her aunt walked to their boat and saw that his was gone. Zoe felt a tide of relief wash through her, but didn’t say anything. She was surprised, however, to hear her aunt blow out a sigh. She looked up and saw that her aunt had stopped walking.

  Thank god. He was a determined one.

  Zoe looked at the patch of water where the speedboat had been moored. I thought he was all right.

  Oh yeah, he was all right. A perfect gentleman.

  We didn’t need to be so mean.

  Her aunt rubbed her head.

  It’s the only way, love.

  That day was the first time Zoe’s aunt let her bleed. She’d wanted her aunt to do the cutting, but she’d been told that she had to do it herself or she’d never learn how to do it properly. Pressing the knife to her skin had felt unnatural, almost sickening. The coldness of the metal felt like a burn, before she’d even made the cut. She looked at her aunt, who nodded. The swell was light, the waves rocking the boat with weak force. Zoe bit the blade into her skin. Pain bloomed. She sucked air through clenched teeth and dragged the point of the knife down, half a centimetre, so the blood would run. Then she held her arm over the water and watched her blood free itself down her wrist, through the air, into the salt. When a fair-sized pool of it had fallen her aunt said: Enough, Zo, good job, and tugged the back of her shirt. Zoe stepped backwards as her aunt wrapped a bandage around the wound.

  This’ll make a neat little scar. Your mother’s first was just like it.

  Blood left Zoe’s wound and rushed to her face. She sat down, dizzy. She stayed in this state, high and loose, as the squid rose to take her offering. She watched as her aunt waited for it to bob, then netted it, dragged it aboard, positioned the tray near its mouth. Zoe only stood back up when her aunt beckoned her. She moved to stand above the beast’s great filmy eye, raised her opened arm and removed the bandage. When she felt the trickle of blood collect at her elbow she aimed, as she’d seen her aunt aim so many times, at the puckered white gland by the squid’s beak. The drop fell, straight and true, and landed in the centre of the gland, which took on a sudden squirm. The huge eye unfilmed, resuming its golden stare, and the hood began shifting colours in wondrous, flickering patterns. Red-green-blue-purple-orange-yellow-pink, and all shades and hues in between, until the ink began to flow. Laughter bubbled from her aunt, in time with the gush of ink.

  Bottles full, they returned to the port. Zoe’s arm hurt, but the tight-wrapped pressure of the bandage had dulled the pain. She welcomed the sensation: it reminded her of what she’d finally achieved. Her aunt hummed something like a tune as they motored along, and the ink slopped in the jars, and when the port came into view Zoe thought that its light had never blinked so bright. Never had the sea and sand felt so welcoming. Never had the granite shined with such pale power.

  Her mood stayed high, the world shinier in her eyes than it ever had been, until they reached the dock. As they were unloading their boat she bumped into her aunt’s back. She glanced up, wondering why they’d stopped moving. Then she saw what her aunt was staring at.

  The northerner’s yellow speedboat was back, moored in its usual spot. The northerner himself was standing on its small deck, beside four rusted oil drums. He was rummaging around, doing something Zoe couldn’t figure out, but when he saw them watching him a smile shone across his face—a toothy, lip-stretched smile, although his eyes remained fla
t and hard. Then he dipped a hand into the closest drum. He kept smiling as he pushed his whole forearm down, and still he smiled as he slowly removed it, as if teasing what he was about to show them.

  His arm emerged red—a bright liquid red, from hand to elbow. He held it out and let the blood drip from his fingers. Scarlet spattered on yellow paint. His laugh shot across the cold pier, long and loud, happy and cruel.

  27

  ONE MORNING SOON after, the port people woke to white flakes falling from the sky. It had never snowed at the port, but it could be nothing else. It was cold, after all, as cold as anyone could remember: maybe snow had finally reached them. They tumbled outside, their palms pointing up, waiting to feel the sky’s softness on their skin. But nothing touched them. They stared at each other across the frosted streets. The space between them seemed full of snowflakes, wafting in the easy morning wind. They could all see it. But none of it collected on the ground, or the roofs, or their outstretched hands. In under a minute the air cleared; the snowflakes, or whatever they’d been, stopped falling.

  The port people rubbed at their eyes, swung their necks, touched the ground. Did you see it? they asked each other. Did you feel it? Where’d it go? They all agreed that the snow had been there; they had all witnessed it; they couldn’t all have seen the same illusion. But the evidence had fled. Later-waking citizens didn’t believe them. The ones who’d seen the snowfall turned bitter and bewildered. Anger stirred in them before they remembered the northerner and his barrels of blood.

  Nobody knew where he’d learned about it. All the active harvesters denied having told him, and those who had retired kept their faces stony and didn’t bother answering. When Zoe was asked she shook her head and told the truth: that the only time she’d spoken to the northerner was when he’d come to her aunt’s house. She was believed, but her answer brought no satisfaction. The port people were furious that an outsider had discovered their secret, and they were hungry for someone to blame and punish.

  It doesn’t matter, said Zoe’s aunt, a few days after he’d returned. It’s not human blood; it won’t work; he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

  Zoe believed her—it seemed impossible that the mild northerner would have access to that much human blood—but she also heard the sullen worry in her aunt’s voice and she realised that, since the northerner had returned, she hadn’t heard her aunt laugh.

  The northerner was laughing all the time. He paraded his knowledge up and down the dock, waving bloody fingers at anyone he saw, beaming and chuckling and telling anyone within earshot: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right. Now we can start modernising. Now we can gain security.

  But despite his confidence, he soon proved Zoe’s aunt right. As he stalked the piers he was still staring into boats, studying the harvesters’ gear. When he finally did take his boat and barrels out he returned empty-handed, although his smile did not waver. Three more fruitless journeys followed, although when he returned after the third he was breathless, excited, and could hardly keep his experience to himself.

  After his fifth trip with the blood—on a grey day fat with wind and ice, the coldest day of the season so far—he returned to the dock late. The other inkers were already at home or the pub. The ones who were drinking noticed his return when they saw him through the pub windows, walking slowly down the pier, pushing into the wind. They turned back to their pints, and paid him no more attention until he had reached the town, when those glancing through the glass saw that he was dragging something along the cobbles. It was freezing outside, and nobody could be bothered to investigate until the northerner began shouting. Over the hubbub of the pub, these shouts pierced the windows and could not be ignored. Furious, triumphant, they grew louder and stranger, until the drinking inkers crashed down their glasses, abandoned the fire and trudged out into the winter’s teeth.

  They found the northerner in the middle of the street. Fog heaved from his lungs, frost hoared his buttons and wounds covered his skin. Scratches, bruises, cuts—he looked like he’d been in a road accident. His hands were the worst. They had been flayed, as if he’d been whipped or slashed, with skin hanging in strips from his fingers and the rent webbing between them. One thumb was shorn of its nail. Ice had filmed over the exposed meat. But despite these injuries he was still smiling, in the same manner he had ever since he’d returned with the barrels. Behind him was the misshapen, colourless hulk of a dead squid.

  It had left a smear of mucous slime on the cobblestones it had been pulled across: a wide, glinting trail that had already frozen over. Sections of this trail sparked red with bits of blood or flesh—flesh that once might have belonged to the squid but, given the state of him, probably belonged to the northerner. More red, ripped flesh rimmed the suckers on the squid’s tentacles.

  The northerner looked at the shivering crowd. He seemed to be thinking of something to say. His eyes wandered over the inkers, and steam rushed from his nostrils as he pulled his back straight, his chin high. But nothing came to him, or his tongue had frozen solid, so instead of speaking he pulled a knife from his belt and knelt beside his kill. He jammed the blade into the hood, halfway down, and began sawing at the meat. Ice had bloomed in the dead muscle, which made the cutting difficult, and it took many minutes until the northerner had sliced open a section of flesh large enough to reveal the squid’s inner workings.

  The purple-yellow sheen of tissue and organs was dulled by the cold, but it was visible, and it was horrid. None of the assembled inkers had ever gazed inside a squid’s body. They were revolted, and they were angry, but they knew what would happen next, so they did not disturb the northerner as he reached into the beast and began shifting its guts around, poking with his knife, chattering his teeth until he found what he was looking for: the ink sac.

  He began sawing more delicately, until he’d released the sac from its membranous connections. With it in hand he stood, lifting it from the corpse and putting the knife aside. It was a small, bulbous organ. There was a dark shimmer through the thin wall of flesh. The northerner raised the sac to eye level and held it out, slicked all over with blood and ice and slime and salt, showing the crowd, grinning and shivering. Ugly victory shone in his ruined features. His teeth parted, his chest swelled, but before he found words one of the gathered inkers barked at him.

  Squeeze it!

  The northerner’s triumph morphed into a frown.

  What?

  Give it a squeeze, son.

  The northerner looked at the organ in his hand, then did as he was told. He pushed his mangled fingers into its contours, and it changed shape, but slowly, strangely, not in the way one would expect liquid to behave. The northerner pulled a glass jar from his pocket, placed it on the ground and held the sac above its opening. He retrieved his knife and, after a hesitation, cut a small slit in it. Nothing fell. Nothing even dripped. He looked up at the crowd of people, who were not moving or speaking. The northerner pushed a finger inside the slit and pulled at it, widening the aperture. Still no ink flowed. Three fingers then dived into the organ, tearing at the membrane, unwrapping it until the contents wobbled gently into the northerner’s hand.

  It was a lump of waxy, wobbly goo. He let the substance settle onto his palm. It was the same colour as the ink, but of a much duller shade, with no gloss or shine. He poked at it, rubbed it, caressed it, rolled it over and between his fingers, but nothing he did made it act like anything other than soft candle wax. He looked back at the inkers, but they were stumbling back into the pub. He rolled the wax in his hand, turning it into a dark, rubbery sausage, then pulled it into pieces, which he shoved into the many pockets of his over-buttoned jacket. Then the northerner seemed to remember his injuries, his pain, his tiredness. Something bent inside his spine. His shoulders fell and his back slumped. The wind cut at the mouths of his wounds, and he began to shake harder.

  Only a few members of the crowd remained. One of them was Zoe’s aunt. When the northerner saw her watching him, he fl
inched. She opened her mouth, not to laugh but to speak, but his words shot out first.

  Don’t. Please don’t.

  He stumbled back to his boat, dragging his wounds and the squid into the night.

  28

  ZOE LEARNED ABOUT this incident the morning after it happened. She and her aunt walked through the dawn-dark to the pier, where Zoe saw the northerner’s trail. She kicked at it, her boot making no mark on the iced gunk. She looked up at her aunt, a question on her face. Her aunt stopped walking. To Zoe, it looked like she was making a decision. Finally, she turned to her niece and explained what had happened the night before.

  The ink turns that way when a squid dies, she said. It reverts to the form it takes when the beast is in deep water. Something to do with pressure, and the body going cold.

  She sighed, rubbed at her mouth.

  He shouldn’t have come back.

  Zoe took the story in without speaking. She thought of a squid’s colours in the moment it released its ink. How death might drain its flesh blank.

  Her aunt beckoned her to the pier. Zoe stared at the sheen of bloody slime, and felt herself tighten.

  29

  HARD WEEKS PASSED. In the screeching wind and aching-cold sky, winter showed its claws. Elderly members of the town stopped waking up, and people stopped saying the cold snap would pass.

  In the eye of the season, a new trouble bloomed. Zoe first became aware of it one evening over dinner. Normally it was just them, but on this night they had guests of a sort—two jars of fresh ink, sitting by their plates.

  Her aunt usually sold the ink to one of the wholesalers who waited at the dock each evening. As she chewed, Zoe indicated the ink with her head.

  Why’s that here?

  Tried to rip me off.

  Who—Mrs Zhang? Ahmed? Sally?

  Yep.