The Bone People (30 page)

guide, to play surgeon and open the outlet the abscess had made for itself in her jaw.

She wasn't successful.

The next moment she was still looking in the mirror, and her two front teeth had changed to soft

bloodstreaked stumps. The enamel all ground off, the spongy nerve and bone centre exposed... how to bite?

She had only to touch them and she would dissolve in anguish. And then the teeth resolved themselves

closer.

Her six front teeth loomed astonishingly white. But small yellowish holes of decay sat like ulcers near her

gums, and there were brown stains from coffee and nicotine. In nearly every tooth, the enamel was marred by

the black and silver inlay of fillings... except for those unexpectedly bright upper front teeth.

Dissolve.

There is a brilliant flare like a volcano erupting, shooting up through the after-image of the white teeth.

Draw back through a darkened window.

"Hell, what was that?"

"Fire," said Number Two laconically.

"Spot welding," someone else suggested.

Sitting up, struggling against the weight of clothes and was it bodies? "What? What?"

There is a sharp drawnout pain against her throat as though someone has fastened their lips against it,

suctioning.

Still struggling. Arms come out, and they're too warm. They surround.

It is fire out there in the landscape of dark lunar shadows.

Again the sharp smart at her throat.

She says to the man with the sallow face and shadowy trace of moustache on his upper lip, "Are you kissing

me?"

He replies lazily, wearily, and with a shade of alarm in his dry voice,

"I wouldn't exactly call it kissing."

The pain increases.

At the top of her voice, in terror, "He isn't kissing me?"

The shadow people rush in, tearing. Warm gush down her throat.

Weakening into black horror.

She wakes, shaking.

God, did I yell?

She listens hard. The child is breathing through his mouth. Usual. Behind the even, noisy breaths, she can

hear the soft, regular snoring of the man. Still asleep. Mother of us all, thanks. For that small mercy anyway.

She is still shaking.

Dream vampires... what in the name of all holiness did I do to deserve them?

She edges out of the eiderdowns, shivering, and slips on her jeans and jersey.

Sneaks out of the room, opening and closing the door with stealth. She collects a thick canvas-backed blanket

from the sideroom, and goes out into the night.

It is quiet and dark, and it's drizzling. Although she can't see much, she can feel that dawn isn't far away. The

ghost hour.

"Aue," sighing. She makes the blanket into a tent, and shelters in it. She lights a cigarillo, and smokes it, calming her breathing, listening to the sea.

The horror of the nightmare fades.

After a while -- the drizzle gets heavier, it's nearly day, the sand gets hard under her behind, the smoke is

finished, and her head is clear -- she goes back to bed. There is an insistent but minor ache in her gut. It's like

a period cramp, or the aftermath to a blow in the stomach.

But she hadn't been hit there.

She hadn't got hurt at all.

The air is full of spray. The rocks are black and jagged and wet. Not bare rocks: covered with life of all kinds,

grapeweed and kelp, coralline paint and slow green snails. But the impression they give is desolation: black

broken rocks, streaming seawater.

I feel an intruder, he thinks. Unwelcome. As though this is ages past and people haven't lived yet.

She apparently finds it homely enough. She smiled as she started walking away.

The further she went from me, the more alien she became.

She is standing now at the far seaward end of the reef, on a black tongue of rock. A strange person in blue

denims, sometimes obscured by mist from the waves that explode like geysers in the blowhole. She looks

tense and desperately unhappy. Like she's at war with herself. Like a sword wearing itself out on its sheath.

She doesn't look like a woman at all. Hard and taut, someone of the past or future, an androgyne. She hasn't

moved from the rocks there for ten minutes. Still as a rock herself.

The whoomph! and hiss of the blowhole sounds again; the spray drifts behind her, hiding her again.

She hadn't said much, walking with him to the reef.

She hadn't said anything at all when he said, "I'll sit here and have a smoke eh. I don't think my shoes'll go

too well on those rocks."

She just looked, then walked away.

He sighs and shivers. The very air is wet. And cold. He bends down to stub out his cigarette, and when he

looks up, Kerewin is running back over the rocks towards him. She moves fast over the seaweed and studs of

snailshells and limpets, never skidding or stumbling.

Eyes in her feet, he thinks, wondering what has made her run. Something in the water?

The tide is coming in?

"And you saw the sea," he says to her, his eyebrows lifting.

"Yeah." Nothing else. She isn't even breathing hard.

"I saw something," waving a hand at the beach. "Look what's crawled out of the woodwork." The small figure trudging along the beach doesn't wave back.

Simon sidles up, glares at them both, and declares war.

That was by holding up Joe's note, and tearing it carefully into bits.

Joe shakes his head and draws in his breath, saying, "E tama, tama--"

Kerewin stares. "So what was in it? An invitation to commit seppuku?"

The boy sneers.

Joe stands. "Nope. It went, word perfect as far as I can remember it, 'We're going now. We can't wait all day.

Kere is surprised at you. No wonder! You're being very stupid! Don't worry, I'm not mad. If you want to hide,

instead of having a good walk, okay. And when you're finished, come out and make us a drink. It's cold out

here, and it must be cold under there!' That's all."

"Innocuous, kind even... so why're you uptight?"

The boy scowls.

"You don't have to come with us you know. You can head straight back for the baches if you're in a bad

mood. Speaking for myself, I've seen enough to sour today without having obstreperous brats around."

He goes on scowling at her.

"Whee! Shitty liver!" Kerewin laughs. "Or does ould Ireland fear retribution at the poker table?" and the child suddenly bends and picks up the nearest thing to hand and hurls it at her.

It's a green snail, a pupu, and it just misses Kerewin's eye.

Her hand flicks to one side in a blur of movement.

"Careful," she says, and all the laughter is gone. "Don't do that again, urchin. I'm just bad-mannered enough to throw something heavier back."

Joe hasn't moved but his fingers are twitching.

"I dunno, there must be something in the air that's getting to you fellas. Come on, let's all go back. The tide's on the turn, and

"To hell. It's miserable. I've been cold and miserable ever since I arrived."

"Well go away then," Kerewin's voice is dangerously low.

They're glaring at each other now, Kerewin listening to herself saying, Stupid! Stupid! Break it up! in her

head, and watching Joe's lips quivering uncontrollably with incredulity.

Hell, he is near breaking point,

and Simon comes off the rocks on to the ochre sand.

"Come here you!" Joe calls, and every word shakes. The scar up his ribs is blazing and Piri's retorts still shriek in his head.

The boy stops, and looks, and spits at him. His eyes flicker to Kerewin, and away, and he walks on again.

Incredible, Kerewin shaking her head in awe, fantastic... look at it, will you? Battered matchstick person

flirting with death. You'd think he'd never been hurt at all, didn't give a damn about the consequences.

Strolling away casual and apparently carefree... picking a fight? O you're right, man... but I wonder why?

The spit didn't hit -- Simon's ten feet away -- but Joe flinched as though it did. He shouted inarticulately, and

lunged for the child.

Blown his top! Blown his cool! Berloody fool!

She is screaming with delight inside herself, trembling with dark joy. Fight. Fight. Fight.

O me killer instinct, riding high on my shoulders, wide with teeth and smiling!

And more or less under control, a pity.

"HAI," and the man stops involuntarily for half a second.

Plenty of time, plenty of time, sings Kerewin to self, floating over the barrier of space between her and the

child, who has also been halted, midway through a cringe.

Ninny, she thinks fondly to herself, as she drifts to a stop beside him, trying to solve it all yourself, were you?

And with violence yet, tchh, tchh. She notices, seeing every hair on the child's head distinctly, that there is a

hole in his left ear. Like a small circle of flesh has been punched from the lobe. An earring? A brand? The

awl mark of a slave?

The sand sprays outward, and Joe keeps coming, hands clawing for the boy. The man's eyes are blank.

I've driven him over the edge? her body smoothly assuming a stance of defence.

How did she move so fast? It feels like I'm swimming in glue.

Nope, he's okay. If that clout had connected with your shell-like ear me sweet chy-ild though, it woulda

broken de temporal bone

and de mastoid process and de styloid process, ho hum,

as her hand caught the edge of Joe's fist and sent it flying harmlessly downwards. Her right foot arced into his

kneecap a split part of a second later.

He sees the blows coming as blurs and can't avoid them. He goes down hard on the sand, but shoves himself

back to his feet with extraordinary strength and quickness.

All right, woman, you think you can fight a man?

and strikes for Kerewin's face.

She weaves, seemingly. Her hand flows in between his moving fist and her face somehow creating a vacuum

that sucks his hand upwards, outward, over her shoulder. She twists away from his falling body.

As he goes, This is wrong that's not what she should have done, and again he lands bone shakingly hard on

the sand. Kerewin kicks him in the side and dances round Simon, who is lying nearby, flat on his face. She

calls out, "Easy meat! So easy!" She is grinning wildly, her teeth bared.

Even as he scrambles to his feet, awkward and gasping, he wonders why the taunt should make him so angry.

Careful, that's Kerewin, someone says in his head but he yells at them "Fuck her!" crouching as he yells and powering his fists in a flurry of blows into her. This, he thinks with satisfaction, bloody kick me would you?

But none of the blows connect. It's like beating on air. She slips past the flailing hands and hits him on the

mouth with the side of her open hand. It feels like being hit with a board. He staggers, is spun round and

kicked viciously in the back.

"Upsadaisy," calls Kerewin. She is high with amusement, wavering and bobbing on her feet and grinning like a gargoyle.

He gets up raging. Stop her mocking, get her, stop her, but he whimpers as she whacks his face again and

then steps sideways and drives her knuckles across his midriff. His breath fails him. He feels his hands drop,

clench over his belly, thinks No what did I did she? feels his knees buckle, and the hard knock of a fist

beating the small of his back, his kidneys, his bare spine. As he falls, Kerewin boots him in the ribs again.

"Huh..." gasping continually, halfconscious and groaning for air. It aches when he tries to draw breath, chest and stomach, and his back is still curling away from

the pain at its centre. He can feel blood trickling from his welted mouth. And somewhere, in the background,

Simon is crying.

But I didn't hit you... o sweet God it would be so easy to die--

His breath is coming more easily. He keeps his eyes shut. But I better get up or Haimona'll be scared.

Haimona is.

All morning the feeling had grown, start a fight and stop the ill will between his father and Kerewin. Get rid

of the anger round the woman, stop the rift with blows, with pain, then pity, then repair, then good humour

again. It works that way... it always did. There isn't much time left for anything to grow anymore. It must be

in this place, or the break will come, and nothing will grow anymore.

So start a fight.

Easy.

It had been.

But he didn't know what would happen after Kerewin winning. He thought, They'll kiss and make up, or I'll

get a hiding, or maybe both, but he had shied away from thinking much about it. He hadn't reckoned on this,

Joe bloody and moaning and breathless, and Kerewin gone white and screaming to her knees beside him, and

neither of them capable of anything else.

Everything's gone wrong. The world's turned on its head. Simon weeps.

She had stood gloating a minute after Joe went down for the final time, Ahh little eater of people-hearts,

relish this... aren't you glad you never let me loose in a more warring time? Or maybe you howl and gnash

your pointy teeth for the mistiming? Speaking of howling, trust old heart-and-flowers to be crying his eyes

out... where do your sympathies lie, child? Entirely away from yourself? Survival ain't that way, Sim...

though I do feel vaguely sorry for the fella myself now... she is starting to feel queasy at Joe's hard hurt

breathing, so she goes to help him. Press the two points: one either side of the nose, pinch the heel, and it'll

all stop, man... kneeling down to do it, and then screaming convulsively. She falls the last few inches to the

ground. She twists over to one side, hands pressed deep against her belly, a simulacrum of Joe's agony a

minute back.

It isn't mockery. The only thing she can think about the searing pain in her gut is that someone has stuck a