The Rain Heron Page 9

Which one?

  All of them.

  What?

  Her aunt slid her fork into a softened carrot.

  They’ve all gone weird. Offering bugger all.

  Why?

  Who knows?

  Zoe’s aunt bit into the carrot, mushing it to paste.

  Just a seasonal blip. We’ll be right.

  She went on eating, sawing at grey beef, flattening limp vegetables. The bottles shook as the table responded to her clattering cutlery, and the ink rocked, forming bright, viscous waves.

  Zoe kept chewing. She sipped at some water. She thought about adding more salt to her food, and tried to forget the questions bobbing in her thoughts.

  A blip, her aunt repeated. They’ll go back up.

  But the price of ink did not float back up—in the following days the prices stayed low, then sank lower. At first the harvesters took it out on the wholesalers, yelling at them, shaking fists, smashing jars of shimmering liquid at their feet. But the wholesalers—all out-of-towners who came in for a day or two to buy ink and take it back to the towns where they lived—could only shrug and apologise, saying that there wasn’t demand, that times were tough. This ink is a luxury good, they said, you all know that. People aren’t paying for luxuries right now. It’s the problems. The state of the country. You know.

  If the harvesters did know, they didn’t say. They turned from the wholesalers and went home, or drinking, or wherever these problems weren’t. Some began selling their hauls at reduced prices.

  Zoe’s aunt, convinced normal prices would return, kept hoarding hers. The ink bottles multiplied, crowding their dinners. When the ink covered more than half the table Zoe poured too much salt on her beef, and asked one of the questions she’d been trying to forget.

  These problems with the ink.

  Her aunt grunted.

  Is it because of what he said?

  Her aunt looked up from her plate.

  What? Who?

  The northerner.

  You spoke to him?

  No. He said it when he came here. Something about the rest of the country.

  She swallowed: hard gristle, soft throat.

  Her aunt sighed.

  No, Zo, love. No. That man’s not well.

  But was he right?

  I said no.

  Zoe felt a want inside her throat, against the gristly meat, a want to believe her aunt’s words. But as the space at their table grew scarcer, she began wondering if the northerner knew something they didn’t.

  30

  ONE MORNING ZOE’S aunt did not invite her to go inking. She offered no reason—she just got up and left the house, long before Zoe was out of bed. Zoe ate breakfast alone. While chewing her toast she suddenly considered smashing all the bottles of ink on the table, staining the kitchen into a vibrant, grotesque exaggeration of itself. The thought shook, and she pushed it from her mind. Then she pulled on her boots and walked to the white beach on the edge of town.

  On her way she noticed that the path to the beach was marred by a slimy, red-iced trail—a trail almost identical to the one her aunt had shown her outside the pub. It followed her, or she followed it, all the way to the shore. Where the asphalt ended it smeared onto the beach. There the trail stopped, but a furrow had been ploughed into the sand, roughly the same width as the shine on the street. Zoe stepped onto the beach. Sand squeaked beneath her rubber soles. She followed the furrow with her eyes, all the way down the shore, until she saw a column of smoke puffing from the wilderness south of the town.

  There were no roads or houses in that area. Nobody would be camping there in this weather—nobody sane. But the smoke puffed, a darker grey than clouds. She began to trudge. The smoke solidified in the nearing sky. The temperature dropped, and Zoe needed to keep blinking to stop her eyes icing over. She wondered how the ocean stayed liquid when it was this cold. She hugged her collar to her chin, her hands burrowed into her cuffs. For two hours she followed the furrowed sand towards the darkening smoke, until the beach met a thin stream that ran to the sea through a gap in the hard hills.

  She paused, taking in the scrabbled trees, the low slopes of the foothills, the tannic churn of hill water meeting ocean. Then she lifted her eyes, and saw the smoke climbing in a plume from somewhere upstream.

  She turned inland, following the fresh water, and when its path curved she finally found the source of the smoke. A fire had been built on the sand, feeding on long boughs of warped driftwood. Other, smaller fires had been built around the area, and all sat under a range of apparatus: urns, large kettles, and strange clear contraptions of evaporation and titration. Darker smoke rose from these vessels than came from the burning wood. Sacks of coloured powders were scattered among the bubbling concoctions.

  It was a scene that would normally command her full attention, but she was distracted by the bodies that lay nearby. A long row of squid corpses had been heaped by the water’s edge: huge, slack, porcelain. Zoe had never seen a dead squid before. As she stared at them, and as the rot of their death clawed at her nose and throat, she felt a hollowness expand in her chest. The smoke kept rising from the cauldrons and kettles. The smell grew worse.

  One other body was present in the clearing. The northerner sat by the main fire, wrapped in buttons and wool. Much of his face and hands were covered with tabs of plaster or bandages, although some wounds were untreated, scabbing across his cheeks. He was holding a piece of paper, moving his lips as he studied it. He didn’t see Zoe until she spoke. Her words came out as a yell.

  What are you doing?

  The northerner flinched. He looked up, and narrowed his eyes as they fell on Zoe. Anger came to his face. He crushed the paper and threw it onto the fire.

  She sent you, did she? Couldn’t be bothered coming herself?

  What?

  Your mother.

  He spat the words, and a cut snapped open on his cheek. He lifted a finger to collect the blood.

  Zoe was taken aback by the venom in his voice.

  She’s not my mother.

  The northerner’s tone shifted.

  Oh.

  She’s my aunt.

  He stood up.

  Your mother’s dead, then?

  Yes.

  Heat flashed through Zoe. The northerner wiped at his open wound, regarding her with a look she didn’t recognise. Then, in a tone of bitter contemplation, he said: They do that.

  Zoe stared at him.

  Die. Mothers.

  Her cheeks filled with blood. She would have said something, she didn’t know what, but the northerner remembered his anger.

  Why did she send you? To mock me?

  Nobody sent me. Why are you doing this?

  Zoe waved an arm at the contraptions, the bodies, hearing the anguish rise in her voice.

  You know why I’m doing this. I’m going to modernise…

  You’ve killed them! We never kill them!

  Don’t you?

  He looked at his collection of horrid alchemy.

  These things aren’t familiar to you?

  No! Zoe was crying. The smell was so thick, and the squid were so still.

  He gazed over the bubbling pots, the steaming glass.

  They’re so uncontrollable when they feed, he said. So enraged. He gestured at his face, his hands. You should see what they’ve done to my boat. You know they have teeth in their suckers? Very hard to remove. Especially when they’re thrashing around. You people never seem to get on their wrong side, so I thought it was a technique thing, one I’d eventually figure out. But if you’re not even killing them…

  He wandered over to one of the urns, where he scooped out a handful of dark wax.

  I’m trying to turn this stuff back into ink. But you know how it’s done, so if you don’t recognise any of this equipment, I suppose I need to start over.

  Why?

  Zoe kept staring at the urns, the fires, the colourless corpses.

  Nobody’s paying for ink at the moment. What’s the p
oint? Why won’t you leave?

  The northerner looked up. He took a long breath, but Zoe kept talking, cutting him off.

  Was my aunt right? Is someone in your family sick? Do you need money that badly?

  When she was done he took another, deeper breath.

  No, he said, finally. And yes. Nobody in my family is sick. I don’t have a lot of family, to tell you the truth. But I do need money. Very badly. And more importantly, I need to make this work. I need to prove I can do it.

  Why?

  He smiled at her—a patronising smile, rendered mad by his wounds.

  I have investors, he said. Dangerous people, it turns out. They’ve put a lot of capital into this venture, and if I don’t show that it will be successful, they’ll be very angry, and I’ll be in a lot of trouble.

  So it’s just money?

  Zoe was nearly shouting. She pointed at the corpses.

  All this, for a…business idea?

  Of course not, he snapped. I’m trying to make it easy for you to understand. It’s much more complicated. I’ve made promises…

  A thought crossed his face, and his expression became colder, calculating.

  You think I’m cruel, don’t you? But I’m no crueller than her. Who?

  Your aunt.

  She isn’t cruel.

  Maybe you’re as cruel as she is.

  She isn’t cruel, Zoe repeated, almost screaming now, her face a messy burn. She just laughs a lot. I don’t know why. It’s not about you.

  No, I’m sure it isn’t.

  He picked up a stick, and for a moment Zoe thought he was going to hit her. Again she remembered his gun, and panic zipped through her. But he just threw the stick on the fire.

  Anyway, he said, I was trying to talk about promises.

  He looked at her again.

  I’m close. I can sense it. If you were to just tell me—

  Zoe cut him off.

  When will you leave?

  You want this to end?

  Of course I do.

  He sat back down by the fire. Sand squeaked; embers glowed.

  This ends when you let it.

  31

  FROZEN, PALLID DAYS, drained of hope, stacked one upon another. Gloom fogged the town. Most of the inkers went on an indefinite hiatus. The rest of the port people lost their routines and fell into states of energetic rage or total listlessness. They stopped parking straight, stopped aiming rubbish at bins. Each morning revealed a worsened place, with worsened inhabitants. The town’s doctor was the only one in steady work. Each day his surgery was clogged with alcohol poisoning, frostbite, broken noses and depression. Ice webbed over cracked windows. Loose plastic froze stiff in the gutters.

  By midwinter ink prices had been falling for six weeks. That was when the wholesalers stopped coming. They gave no warning—one day they were just not there. Clean, empty slats of wood were revealed in the place on the pier where their stalls usually sat. The inkers who’d been out that day—only four of them, including Zoe’s aunt—stood on those strange planks, huffing steam, stomping their feet, waiting not because they believed the wholesalers would appear, but because they didn’t know what else to do. Eventually they shuffled off, lugging glass and ink.

  The next day Zoe woke to find her aunt ripping a slice of toast apart with slabs of fridge-hard butter, hours after she usually would have left for the sea. They didn’t speak. On the table, the swarm of ink bottles shone with a new, peculiar menace.

  Zoe did not return to the northerner’s camp. At night she dreamed of the squid she’d seen there, death-pale and reeking.

  32

  THE TOWN DIED on a Wednesday afternoon, by the doors of the pub. The weeks of despair had seen people drifting there ever earlier, often looking to replace their mid-morning coffee with pints of gravelly stout. The day it closed they were peering through the windows at ten-thirty in the morning, wondering why the lights weren’t on, why the stools were still upside down on the bar. They struck the glass with gloved knuckles, but the room stayed dark. One would-be drinker went to the dock and returned with a report: the publican’s boat was gone. The publican did not fish, dive, trawl; did not take pleasure in time spent on wide water; had never opened a vein over a wave. His boat hadn’t moved in years. The thirsty port people swore, and cried, and pushed their jacketed elbows through a few windows, and stole as much beer as their bellies could hold. Then they went home to pack.

  Zoe and her aunt lasted another week. Over dinner on the Sunday, as rain poured down outside, Zoe’s aunt laced her fingers together, unlaced them, then moved her fingers up her forearms, rubbing the corrugations of her scars. She drummed the table with a knuckle. She twisted a finger into an ear. When their plates were empty she gathered a breath, looked at Zoe, and began.

  Zo, love.

  I know.

  Relief relaxed her aunt’s face.

  We’ll come back.

  When?

  I don’t know.

  Rain hammered the roof, glugged up the windows.

  We’ll go in the morning.

  That night Zoe did not sleep well, even when the rain’s pounding lightened into a soft thrum. Too much had happened. She couldn’t put what she felt into an order that made sense. Her mind flicked through images, unable to focus on any single one. Her aunt bleeding over the boat. Light bouncing from pink granite, shining on bleached sand. Ink sloshing, bright and dark. The squirm of a puckered gland, the waves of ultraviolet colour on a squid’s hood. The pale corpses stretched out where the thin stream met the sea. Wounds fresh and old on the northerner’s face. Black smoke wafting; driftwood burning orange and green. Dull buttons hanging from his tattered coat.

  They woke the next day to a sky scrubbed clean of clouds. Zoe’s aunt blinked up at the blueness.

  Let’s go for a walk, she said, while we can. Plenty of time to pack.

  Zoe’s hands were deep in a half-filled backpack, and she felt groggy, but she followed her aunt through the door.

  The sun was bright, its heat stronger than it had been in months. The streets were wet with rain and frost melt as they wandered through the town. Occasionally Zoe’s aunt would point out a landmark.

  That used to be a bakery, she’d say. That’s where your mother and I used to throw rocks at the Harris boys. Over there’s where the pharmacist fell asleep in the gutter and never woke up. That was your mother’s favourite fence. Here’s a letterbox she stole, which I made her take back. I once slipped on that corner and shattered my knee.

  When they reached the pier Zoe’s aunt stepped out onto the planks. Zoe didn’t want to follow her. She was tired, and they would be coming back that way later.

  But her aunt yelled: Come on, it won’t be the same with our bags, and there was a wistful happiness in her voice, so Zoe did not object. They wandered down towards the boat, marvel-ling at the lightness of the wind, the pleasantness of the sun, until they heard the splashing.

  It was coming from the northerner’s boat. Water was being thrown over the side in fast, tenacious bucketloads. They came closer, and saw that the northerner was standing on the deck, shin-deep in ocean, scooping it as fast as he could and tossing it overboard. His efforts didn’t seem to be lowering its height.

  Unnoticed, they watched him bail on. Occasionally he swore, or spat something they couldn’t understand, but mostly he was silent. Zoe felt sadness, and sympathy, and an instinct to leap into the boat and help him. Then she remembered his camp by the stream, and the squid corpses, and what he’d said about her aunt and her mother, and her desire to help vanished as her feet glued themselves to the wood. Her aunt looked on, vaguely fascinated.

  Eventually the northerner stopped bailing, straightened up and rested his hands at the small of his back. Water splashed at his knees. He let out a high groan, and as soon as he did Zoe knew what would happen next; she heard the premonition of her aunt’s laughter before it escaped her lips. She grabbed at her arm and tried to stop it happening, but it was like herding
a wave, corralling a cloud. The laugh pealed out, full-hearted and throaty, and when it reached the northerner he swung around, churning little whirlpools in the boat water.

  His face was even more damaged than when Zoe had found him by the stream. He must have given up on plastering the wounds, for they had spread to cover the majority of his exposed skin. Small flashes of white peeked out from the red openings, which Zoe first took to be bone—but as she stared, she saw the curve in their shape, and realised they were the fangs he’d spoken of, the teeth that lived in squid suckers, detached from their tentacles and hanging in his flesh.

  Redness burst onto his face as he heard the laughter. The wounds squirmed under his fury. Zoe’s aunt kept laughing, and he shouted something unintelligible.

  Zoe dragged at her aunt’s sleeve, saying: Stop, stop it, stop laughing, but the sight of the northerner heaving his legs through the water only made her aunt laugh harder.

  He hauled himself onto the pier, a puddle of limbs and wounds, and her laughter became uproarious, enormous, and Zoe’s begs and tugs did nothing, and the sound only stopped when the northerner staggered before them, reached into the rags of his jacket, retrieved his gun and hung it in the air before her aunt’s nose.

  Zoe’s fingers froze in her aunt’s sleeve, hooked tight. Her aunt, at last silent, regarded the weapon with surprise and curiosity, but no visible fear. The only movement she made was to loop an arm around her niece, pulling her tight into her side. Zoe’s head butted against her aunt’s chest. The northerner glared, still short of breath and red of face, and met this movement by raising the gun higher, to her aunt’s forehead. A small scream came through his closed lips, and Zoe felt sure that his last rod of northern civility had shattered.

  But he only let out another anguished grunt, before lowering the gun. Zoe and her aunt relaxed. Her aunt let her go. She rocked back on her feet as the northerner turned to his boat. Zoe turned to leave. So did her aunt, but not before letting out a final chuckle. It was a small laugh—the faintest pulse of humour—but it was loud enough for the northerner to hear, loud enough to swing him back around. This time, he didn’t raise the gun. He just stared at Zoe’s aunt; then, in a surge of movement, he shoved her off the pier.