Day Boy (23 page)

IT IS ANOTHER cold night deeper into winter when I wake Thom. He blinks at me, and
I feel a little poor for him. Been a busy day cleaning the Sewills' yard—we'd marked
the door the day earlier—and that's always hard labour, they let us do the work.
Those Sewills are getting on, about the oldest couple in this town. Both of us are
sore and weary. But this evening's not one for sleep, it's a night for other things.
The moon's where it should be, and I can feel it.

Thom raises a feeble hand, like he's never been woken before; almost makes me feel
sorry for him.

‘You best get used to waking in the middle of the night,' I say.

His lips curl solemn, and he gives me a sort of look that's all hardness. ‘I'm used
to it.' And he's up and on the edge of the bed. ‘What needs doing?'

I shake my head. ‘Not what needs doing but seeing. Dress warm.'

I'm all ready to go. Which is mean of me, I guess. It's so I can glower and mutter
at his slow dressing, but we've plenty of time.

We open the door onto the night and it draws us out, like a true night will, as though
we're nothing but dust lifted on the wind.

It's bitter cold, and a sky so clear that the stars burn. Breath steams from us,
and no matter that we're dressed warm, it's still a shock, like jumping into water
that's colder than you expected. The moon's a sliver in the sky, but everything is
so clear. Land looms around us blue and hulking, drawing in and receding, and you
suddenly get a sense of how big everything is and how little you are, but it's still
wonderful, because small and brief you're still here and breathing plumes in the
dark: defiant and proud. And there is no one more defiant than us.

I can't help it: despite everything, I start humming. I shouldn't, but I do. Not
everything is a should: some things are a must.

‘Why you so cheerful?' Thom asks.

‘It's night. It's night and we're alive!'

‘You're crazy,' Thom says, but I can hear the joy in his voice, and I know he understands,
a night like this you can't help but.

We leave our yard, by the back way, jumping the fence and following a path marked
by roos and strengthened by the boys that have followed it, boots hardening the earth.
It runs up into the ridge. But we're not heading that way.

We walk in the dark, but it's not so dark when your eyes adjust. Something crashes
away through the undergrowth; roo or razorback, though they stink to high hell and
this don't smell of anything, and the cold air's too clear, and a boar's usually
too smart to come this close to a town.

About half an hour of walking, and I turn to Thom.

‘Now, you must be quiet,' I say.

Thom starts to say something, and I shoosh him good.

‘Silence and we live. Noise and…we may not.'

Thom looks at me. And I wave my hand in the dark. ‘But what a night to die!' I say.

A little further on we start to hear it. At first it's nothing more than a faint
low sound, but it's the thread that we follow and it thickens as we approach.

Singing.

Pure and wild song.

A couple of the other boys are in sight, Dougie and Twitcher, and I nod to them.

We clamber over a rise, and then another.

And there's light as well as song, and I'm gesturing to Thom to get on his belly.
That last rise we crawl up. And there they are.

The fire's burning. A bonfire bright and huge, and they're throwing logs into it,
stuff the size of big tree trunks, and tossing them with an ease that only the Masters
possess. And they're singing to the fire. Singing in some language I don't understand.

The song is sad and pure in the cold air. It's everything I feel whenever I stare
up at that clear starlit sky.

All of them are there below.

Building the fire, dancing around it. And when the ash rises they let it fall where
it will, no matter how it burns their flesh.

And in this light I can see Thom's face, see the curl of his lip. And then the understanding;
well, the first crack of it.

They're singing to the Sun. They're mourning it. They're yearning for it. But all
they have is the night, and the flame—which could kill them just as proper. And now,
and here, they're not being the Masters, but folk bereft. Folk who've given up their
past for something else.

There's weakness and sadness here. There's all the things that the Masters hide.
And it makes your eyes well, you feel something rare towards them, and it's pity.

Poor lost men. Poor yearning men, with just their stars and moon while we have everything,
all of it spread out across the night and day. Some things don't have a substitute.
Some doors closed can't be opened anymore, because in their closing they become walls.

I can see the pity in Thom's face too. But we're not done yet. I can feel it coming
close. The song bunching up, filling the dark, and then there is a moment of silence.

They bring in the man. Dain does it, leaving the fire for the shadows, and leading
him back in. The man stumbles, and Dain is gentle in his handling. He whispers something
like you might at a frightened animal. There's no cruelty in this, that's for later.

The man is short, not much taller than me. But he stands there steady, still some
strength in him. I can see he's frightened, but he's like the mouse the cats catch
and play with. There's no chance for him and he knows it.

Egan's the first, and I see it because I know where to look. His mouth widens, and
with sudden movement, he's by the fire, metres crossed so swift it is like they weren't
metres, like the world made a mistake of measurement and is cruelly readjusting.
Then he's biting the man's neck. The man howls,
and the rest are at him too, all
those distances corrected. And there's no singing, just the sounds of feeding. The
slaughterhouse sounds of bone cracking and muscle being ripped apart.

‘Close your eyes,' I whisper.

But Thom doesn't, and I'd think less of him if he did.

I didn't either when I came here, dragged awake by Dav, who showed me this, because
we need to understand.

It's not pretty, but it's the truth of them.

There's another victim, and another.

I don't recognise any of them, but that doesn't make it any easier. We watch those
two, and then Thom's tugging at my hand. And I understand and we leave the Masters
to their feasting. Dougie and Twitch coming with us, grinning like loons.

Thom's crying. And I let him cry. I don't feel all that good either. But some things
must be done.

‘Shut up,' Dougie says. ‘Shut up little cry baby.'

And I'm ready to backhand him when there's a distant detonation, and another.

In the heart of Midfield, a bell starts ringing.

Dougie and I look at each other, then down into the town where the noise has come
from and there's a flare blooming in the dark. Bright enough that we can see each
other's faces clear.

‘The Night Train,' we say, both at once.

And we're, all of us, running into the night, towards fire and doom.

CHAPTER
33

WHEN I SEE the ball of fire, rolling up into the sky, I can almost feel the heat
of it. I cover my eyes to shield them from the light, but it passes.

Others are with us, more boys. Thom's by my side, panting from his run. There's confusion
everywhere, it's not just us. Unsettled men failing to settle their horses, a few
guns visible, but no one with any idea where to point them. Constable Mick's there
too. Looking at that fire on the horizon.

‘What's been done here?' Dougie stands next to me, brings one hand to his slack mouth.
He shakes his head, like that will tug loose the image from reality. ‘What's been
done here?' he says again, and there's another great bang.

We have our ideas, but still we run and run, and we get to those tracks and the bridge
over the river, only it isn't a bridge but a twisted wreck dropping into the brown
water, a scattering of debris, and there's the flaming ruin of the Night Train.

‘Look,' Dougie says, finger pointing at the river.

Black forms float there, shapes moving in the river and the river itself on fire.
Smoke rising, mingling with the river's mist, then the wind tears it open a crack.
And I get a glimpse of a world's ending. Death I've known, but not so much of it,
not all at once.

There are screams. Dark shapes lifting, lit and blazing, along the bank.

Me and Thom stand there, both of us steady and stupid. But we can't stay here long.

We turn a bend in the tracks, crawl a little more and then we run, back into town:
the light behind us. From the thinning screams of people dying.

The Masters are there, coming down out of the hill. Swift and silent. And they stop
when they see us. Dain gives me a hard look, a suspicious look. He doesn't say anything.

‘The Night Train,' I say. ‘Blown up on the bridge.'

Egan looks to us. ‘All of you boys. Home with you all. This is not work for you.'

‘Home, the two of you, home,' Dain says, straight in my ear, and he's gone before
I can even say yes, or tell him to be careful.

And then they're all gone and going, rushing past me like an ill wind, so fast I
hardly see them.

And there are other boys coming.

‘Back to bed, we've been told,' I say. ‘Back to bed.'

‘What does it mean?' Twitcher asks.

‘Insurrection,' I say, not knowing anything, not knowing anything at all. The night
is lit with that fire. People already rising, the rest of the town coming to life.
Shocked awake and hurrying to the river.

‘What do we do?' Grove says.

‘Nothing to be done. We've been sent home,' I say. ‘Let them find out for themselves.'

Dain is late coming back, almost with the dawn. His lids are heavy, his lips droop.
He smells of smoke and ash, and there's blood beneath his nails that he's quick to
wash away in the sink, as though he's embarrassed.

I wait for him to speak. Watch him work at scrubbing his nails and brushing the ash
from his hair. He cleans his face but half-adequate. This night's had its taxing
of him.

‘Didn't save a single one,' he says, soft and low. ‘That river, that fire, and we
on the other side of it.'

‘What does it mean?' I say.

Dain just shakes his head.

He leaves me then to go to his rest, and Thom and I do something we've not thought
to do, nor ever considered needing to. We make sure our knives are close at hand,
and we guard our Master's house.

And in the brief times that I let myself drop into sleep, all I can see is those
flames, and the dark shapes rising, and all I can hear is the echo of those screaming
voices.

No one comes that day. Nor the next. But that's the way of change I reckon. You think
you see it when it's coming, but you don't until it's done. Maybe not even till long
after.

As it is, two nights later there's a shifting and roaring to the west—the sound of
engines and energies—and I wake, and Dain is standing over me.

‘Stay here, boy,' he says. ‘Do not dare to leave this house until the morning.'

His eyes allow no space for insubordination.

Next morning we're all at the river, and there it is. A new-built bridge entire.
So much for rebellion or whatever it was. The night after that the Night Train comes
through, and it's like it never happened at all.

But it did.

CHAPTER
34

IT'S COMING ON late but a few days after the bridge grew itself anew, twilight near
enough, there's a knock on the front door and I know it's no one that I know. Small
enough town and you can recognise any knock. Most of them sound the same: a little
hesitant, a little forced.

But this was confidence, even threat. Don't ask me how I can tell, but I just can.
I nod to Thom and he's got his knife clear and so do I. Uncertain times and it don't
hurt to be too careful.

I'm the one that answers the door and there's a man with a beard down to his chest—like
some bushranger of old—and he flashes a smile that makes me even more wary.

He's holding his hat in one hand, gripping it tight with hard fingers and scarred
knuckles. The hat's about as beat-up a thing as I've seen, patched and re-patched.
His face isn't much better.

‘You Thom or Mark?' he says.

‘What do you reckon?'

That ugly smile only gets wider; he aims a spit back onto the ground. ‘Mark, may
I enter?'

I don't move, and he lifts the chain around his neck. A gold Sun: there's a Sun tattooed
on his wrist as well. ‘I'm one of them that serves,' he says. ‘I'd speak with your
Master.'

‘You know he's not up yet.'

‘I know, but I'm not waiting
out here
when there's
in there
. Neither's Sarah.'

‘Don't intend on it,' comes a warm voice from behind him. I look past him to a woman
in shirt and pants stained with dirt. Sarah smiles at me from beneath a brimmed hat.

‘Hello Mark,' she says.

‘Who are you?'

‘We're the servants, like Rob said. Auditors. The ones that keep the wheels turnin','
Sarah says. ‘We're just like you.'

‘But you're a girl?'

Thom snorts at me like I don't know anything. ‘Women can be servants,' he says.

Sarah's grin turns a bit wry. ‘The Masters aren't as particular when they need things
done,' she says. ‘Now, let us enter.'

Still I stand there, knife in one hand.

‘Let them in,' Dain says from behind me. His eyes are wide with first evening, hazy
even, but they narrow when they focus on me. ‘Hurry to it, boy.'