Day Boy (25 page)

‘He does,' Sarah says, voice low. ‘He likes whatever Certain does. You come with
us, you'll break that man's heart.'

And she says it like it's a fact not good nor bad, just something lying there for
me to either pick up or discard.

‘What about you?'

‘I made my choices. Ain't for love, that's sure. Hearts break, they're about the
most fragile thing we've got.' She shrugs. ‘I made my choices, and so did Certain.
Don't let anyone tell you choices are easy. But what Rob says is true. It's a wild
beautiful world out there. You get in your heart to travel, you find us out if you
can. Ain't no life like it.'

She gives the town a longish look. ‘Sometimes it'd be nice to—' She shakes her head.
‘No, it wouldn't. Sleepy towns are for sleepers.'

‘Not too sleepy,' I say. ‘When there's a fella set on blowing up the tracks. ‘

‘Sometimes sleep is troubled,' Sarah says. ‘Don't mistake it for nothing else.'

‘I know restlessness, and I know sleep. This town's stirring,' I say, and it is,
I can feel it, even in this winter cold. And it scares me a little.

She reaches out, grabs my face with her rough hands, and looks me deep in the eyes.
I can't help but turn away. ‘Maybe. Or maybe it's just you, kid.'

That stings a little: I'm no kid. But her laughter softens it. There's generosity,
not mock. My face burns.

Rob and Sarah leave without me. I can hear Sarah's laughter on the wind, the warmest
sound in the winter air. Rob gives me one last hard look, but he accepts my decision.

‘So what are you going to do?' Thom asks.

‘Do what I'm supposed to do,' I say and head off to Certain's place to help out.

He nods at me when I arrive.

That's all he needs to do. And we work at the fence by the creek, rewiring it—the
damn thing broke, all his cattle finding their way to green and dangerous pastures—getting
them to come back into Certain's land is the hard part.

But it's good work, turning thoughts from miseries to the actions of the hands, and
the back, the joy of work met and accomplished. We finish it by late afternoon. All
stock accounted for.

Certain swings the eastern paddock gate shut, resting his elbows on it, staring at
the field below, and the mist that's rising as the Sun falls. ‘Glad you made your
choice,' he says.

‘For now,' I say.

‘Every choice is only ever for now. You start thinking anything's permanent you're
in trouble. Nothing's permanent about life but death.' He gives me a rare grin. ‘And
that's coming from a fella named Certain.'

CHAPTER
36

THOM LOOKS AT me, up from the thing he's whittling. A stake—taipan curled about it.
He puts his carving down, keeps a hand knuckled around the knife, and listens.

Singing. Maybe. Wind's howling, so it could be that. Shouldn't be able to hear much
of nothing anyway, we had a snow fall about a week back, last huff of winter as spring
starts to spring.

But there's that windblown song, carried to us from the edge of town. Persistent
and sweet.

‘It's the cold children,' I say.

His face does a little sort of skip, his eyes widen a bit. ‘You're lying. No cold
children around here.'

‘No, not often. But they come. There's cold children everywhere.' I tap my chest.
‘We've a truce and everything.'

‘You got a truce with them?'

I consider. ‘More of an agreement.'

The singing's getting louder. It grabs you by the short hairs,
faint then loud then
faint again. It gets in your blood and plays with the rhythm of your heart.

‘How'd you sleep with them singing like that?'

‘Best to ignore it,' I say.

‘Where's Dain?'

‘Out on business, they all are. Said he might be gone all night.'

Which is why, I reckon, they've chosen to come here now. The Masters are away. It's
a time for children.

‘Best we stay indoors,' I say.

I grab my coat.

Thom's still holding his knife, a little thing scarcely good for grazing anything
but supple wood. And the cold children are hard. ‘I'm not going out there.'

‘Suit yourself,' I say. I don't blame him, last time I took him into the night he
saw the truth of our Masters plain and simple. This isn't much safer; might be the
opposite.

But he comes when I open the door. Scarf around his neck, shrugging into his coat.

Dougie's walking down our street whistling.

‘You gonna see the cold children,' I say.

He smiles, gives an expansive sort of wave. ‘Got an agreement, don't we?' His eyes
are shining. I reckon mine are too.

So it's the three of us that walk along the cold dirt road heading out of town. Why
just us, not Grove or the others? I couldn't tell you. And the singing gets louder
and quieter and louder, but gradually the quieter is shorter and the louder longer.

Past the end of town near the bridge there's a clearing edged to the west with trees.
Old ones, pines as high as
anything out of the city beneath the mountain. We stand
there and the singing swells and fills our blood.

I don't know the words, but there's hunger in them, and something of the stars and
the darkness between. There's a weariness too. I feel all weepy just standing there,
and I catch Dougie rubbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, and I wonder why I didn't
bring one, my nose is streaming in the cold. And a wind's got up, so loud and fierce
it almost drowns out the singing, until it gives way.

And then, in the dark, the singing stops.

And it's silent.

Thom grabs my hand.

‘No need fer that,' I say, then I realise that it isn't Thom. The fingers have snatched
the heat from me, my teeth are chattering.

A girl with bright eyes, moon-bright, dead-light-bright, looks up at me and smiles.

Her teeth are sharp as killing blades, her smile is cold and cutting and about as
beautiful and dangerous a thing as you might see.

‘Hello Mark,' she says, all sing-song and radiance.

‘Mol,' I say.

‘You remember me?' Mol says.

Of course I do. I remember when she wasn't so cold. When she used to pull my hair,
when I was younger than her. But now she's younger than me and more ancient, there's
the timeless weight of star-shine to her.

I blink. ‘I remember our agreement.'

‘Agreements are odd things, Mark. Tenuous. Light as the wind, and as swift to shifting.'

I clear my throat. ‘We're bound to them, by law.'

‘No lawyers in the woods. Just trees, and the air, and us.'

And there, in the woods, I feel my throat catch. She's got that sharpest of grins
out, the widest of eyes.

‘Where's Thom?'

‘Safe.'

‘Safe? Master would kill me if I—'

‘Dain is far away, far, far away. And I am here.' She touches my throat with a fingertip.
Mol's eyes are bright as glass beads.

‘Yes you are.'

‘Yes, I am. Shall I sing for you?'

‘I think you already have,' I say.

‘Shall I sing some more?'

I nod.

And she does, and I remember those days before she was cold. I remember the sadness
of it, the death that wasn't a death but a mistake, a bit of the Change that got
in her and spread.

Masters have a dread of ending those they make—unless they're born of punishment,
like those insurgents marked for a cruel death beneath the Sun. Such mistakes are
hard admitted, and feared too, feared almost as much as anything.

Most of the cold children do die in time, of their own accord. But those that don't,
they call to each other. Like lonely birds or wolves or something mournful and beautiful.
And they gather, and they sing.

Sometimes they hunt.

But we have an agreement.

She's singing, they're all singing, her kindred gathering around, glowing all fairylike,
dancing, too. And it's a sound
sweet as it is terrifying. It's a hook that can land
you, lance you so deep.

She touches me once and hesitates. ‘Your agreement is sound, my sweet little boy.
But we can still play.'

I blink and there's Thom, and there's Dougie. And they're looking at me eyes so wide
it'd be funny if we weren't piss-ourselves scared.

‘Run,' a little voice whispers.

‘Run,' I say. And the others are already running, and things are coming out of the
dark: all teeth and claw and leering grin.

And that forest seems awful big, all at once, and we're awful small and racing. Snot
and tears frozen to our faces, lungs as raw as the winter-hard earth. Trees slapping
us, branches snapping and grabbing. Wind a screaming pressure at our backs only to
flip—
light as the wind and as swift to turning
—and whip our faces like we're the
ones running in circles and maybe we are to that sound of children that aren't children
singing.

We run, and we run.

I don't know when I fall, but I do and something grabs me, and lifts me as though
I'm feather light, and I struggle. Like a tiny bird might struggle in the hands of
a giant. Cold hands. Hands colder than you could imagine grip me.

‘My, you're all grown up, aren't you?'

And she laughs and it's the sweetest, most terrible sound.

I wake in my bed, my chin bloody, my body a length of bruise given arms and legs
and a voice to squeak. Out of the sheets I jump, and they're tight around me. I struggle
free, there's a
boot still on one foot and muddy footprints leading to my bed. The
room's cold, the window's open and first light is shining through.

I check on Thom. He's all right too. Sleeping, thumb in his mouth. Doesn't even stir,
but he's breathing. There's specks of blood on his pillow, I know we lost a little
blood. But that's all right.

I've half-convinced myself it's a dream when I go downstairs. Dain's left me a note.

You should know better than to play with children
.

CHAPTER
37

THOM'S LESSONS ARE going well. He's settled in, knows the people who like their lawn
mown just how, and who will be surly, and who is lazy, and just how much nonsense
Mary can stand in her shop—and it's always more from him. And I'm trusting him to
doing things by himself. Why, I'm almost a man of leisure with time to amble.

Leisure can be a dangerous thing.

I'm near Main Street when I get hit round the ankles. I almost tumble, but as tackles
go it's weak. I'm yanking my leg free and he's shushing me with an urgent hiss.

‘You,' I say, and feel like a halfwit.

Grainer looks at me. Wild-eyed, desperate, but still with teeth to his grin. Even
this far from home, he's the old Day Boy let loose. He's still my unwelcome future
come to meet me.

‘Me,' he says. ‘All the way from the city.'

‘You shouldn't be here.'

‘No, I shouldn't, but after you was caught they got us all.
Broke in and chased us
out and worse. I was lucky to get away. Skill too, a'course, on the roof and off;
but luck mostly. Now I'm here.'

‘You been travelling all this time?'

He nods, gestures out towards the main road. ‘It ain't good out there but the train
line's easy enough to follow, even it's dangerous.' Another hint of the old swagger.
‘Things wait along that line that even fire don't scare none too much. Creatures
all tooth and cruel-eyed. Some of them men.' He wipes at his brow, he's half a finger
missing, the little one, its end an angry raw stump. ‘I need you to put me up.'

‘I can't,' I say, but it don't sound all that convincing to me. ‘I can't.'

‘But you're home and still got your Master. You're someone of consequence and matter.'
He looks so down, fumbles with his hat—where he got it out there or who he got it
from, I don't know—there's a bit of act to the clumsy and the humble. This isn't
Grainer, not as I remember him. It is as well, though.

Must be too quiet for too long, because he looks up at me.

‘My time's almost up, our house is too full,' I say, ‘and my Master would know, soon
as he opened his eyes. He'd smell you. He'd smell the red dirt on you. He'd gobble
you up.' I know he most probably wouldn't, but I like a little drama, and I don't
want him too cocky.

His head dips lower.

And I take a deep breath. Don't like what's coming, but I say it anyway. ‘I know
where you might be able to stay.'

‘You do?'

Certain looks him up and down. Shakes his head, but I can tell it's for show.

‘You done much yard work?' he asks. ‘Speak truthful now.'

Grainer shakes his head. ‘Been a Day Boy, been a scrambler, don't know much about
yards.'

‘You'll learn quick enough. There's chooks that need feeding over yonder.' Certain
points to the pen. ‘Fill that bucket hanging from the fence with the seed you'll
find in the box in the pen. Then scatter it across the pen, handfuls. The birds ain't
fussy. Do you think you can do that?'

Grainer nods. Certain frowns, grabs Grainer's hand, studies that bloody stump of
a finger. ‘We'll see to the proper cleaning of this, first.'

‘I'm right with it,' Grainer says.

Certain shakes his head. ‘You'll be right with it until your hand drops right off.'

He treats the boy and cleans the wound and it's a painful business. But when it's
done and Grainer's got his colour back he says his thanks and gets to work.

‘What you doing putting this on me?' Certain says, but he don't sound too angry.