Disharmony (16 page)

For the first few minutes, until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she had to make do with her memory of the way down to the river. She trod carefully, hoping to avoid sharp rocks and sleeping creatures. The path was narrow in places, and leaves and branches slapped and scratched at her when she strayed from the track. But when the path widened and she heard the water, her bunched shoulders dropped a little and she jogged lightly the rest of the way down to the river’s edge.

At this point in the river, the bush made way for a sandy beach of sorts, and the moon shone down, round and bright. Just around the bend, the trees marched all the way down, planting their feet permanently in the water. And over the other side of the river, almost impossible to see now, rocky ledges made perfect diving platforms.

With a shiver, Samantha stripped. She dropped her shirt, singlet and briefs onto a rock and, naked, squelched through the night-cold sand to the water. The full moon fractured and re-formed endlessly on the rippling surface and she paused at the edge, the river lapping at her toes. She took a deep breath and raised her arms high over her head. She sent a gypsy prayer out quietly across the shivering waters.

Oh Goddess Gaia, source of Gods and Mortals,
All-fertile, all-destroying, mother of all,
Immortal, blessed, crowned with every grace,
As You fly across the beauteous stars, eternal and divine,
Come, Goddess Gaia, and hear the prayers of Your daughter,
Draw near, and bless me.

Samantha walked into the river.

Despite the hour, the water was refreshing but not cold. It felt delicious on her bruised face and swollen mouth. She washed quickly and stepped out, dripping. It was a little lighter already. She had to get back. They’d kill her for coming down here alone. Lala had told her she wouldn’t be allowed to go to the Carnivale tomorrow, and she’d even hinted that she wouldn’t take her to the very last of the midsummer festivals tonight.

Sam knew Lala would never get away with that, though. The other witches would tell all their best clients that she wasn’t there and then there’d be trouble. She slipped back into her singlet and pyjama pants. Birthday Jones had told her that the Roma witches were now gossiping about her all the time, angry that many of their best customers were trekking out to their camp for Sam’s readings, abandoning the witches in town.

The old frauds, she thought. They’re just jealous. Maybe they’d keep their customers if they actually told the truth about what they saw in the cards, rather than always making up nightmares that would supposedly come true if they didn’t get more money.

She sighed. She and Lala had also done their share of that. They’d been paid by plenty of Gaje women to bless amulets and perform love spells tonight.

Lala will have to take me, she decided. If I’m not there, I’ll bet my tarot deck that those old crones will take out a newspaper ad to tell the world about it.

She gathered up some of the dew-wet herbs that grew close to the riverbank, wrapping them in her T-shirt. A peace-offering for Lala in case she was caught returning – herbs and
flowers collected at dawn were required for the potions they needed to make for the rituals tonight.

Sam loved midsummer, and all the gypsy rituals and festivals built up around the season. Well, most of it, anyway. What she couldn’t get used to was the guilt she felt being associated with the Roma witches. She knew that most of them were just in it for the hustle. And whether they believed they had special powers or not – and most of them seemed to have convinced themselves that they did – they rolled out the same script to all their clients. It was pitifully simple really, she thought, moving quickly back along the brightening path. In the very beginning, Lala had told her that ninety-five per cent of their customers would be female, and that seventy per cent of them would have a love-life problem. The other thirty per cent was split fifteen (money issues), to ten (the cursed), to five (health problems).

As she’d been learning the craft, she’d felt worst about the Gaje who were sick, or who came to see them terrified that someone they loved was going to die. She could
feel
their fear, their desperation, but more than that, with the unwell, she came to smell, to almost taste, their illness: a foul and putrid energy sucking and gnawing at its host. The stench grew so strong it became in her mind a creature, a monstrously fat, syrupy slug – a blonde and sticky tubular beast grown fleshy and fetid on her clients’ innards. It was eyeless, with only a round needletooth-ringed mouth that was always open and feeding.

When the image had first popped into her mind during a reading with an ageing Gaje grandma – Mrs Ungur – Samantha had screamed. Lala had apologised profusely, and tried to take over the session, but Mrs Ungur had stood,
obviously in great pain, begging for Samantha to continue.

‘You can see it!’ she’d cried, papery hands outreached. ‘You see it. It hurts. Help me!’

Samantha had stared at the woman, horrified. She’d tried to go back to the reading but she could only see the slug chewing flesh lazily, and before she could turn the next card she had run from the caravan, sobbing.

Her cheeks now burned with the memory as she ran through the bush. She’d prayed every night for Mrs Ungur, who had died within a week. She’d tried to forgive herself; she’d been only nine at the time.

Since then, she’d learned to ignore the slug. She’d discovered a way of making him see-through in her mind, translucent. It helped her to continue the session without any nausea, the way Lala wanted her to, and she’d embedded into every reading special prayers to the Goddess Gaia, asking Her to help her client. And something weird had happened. Many of her sick clients recovered. Like, much more frequently than they should have, according to their doctors. And word had spread, slowly at first, but by the time she was twelve, the Gaje knew exactly which towns Milosh’s camp would be visiting next, and she and Lala would almost always have a full day of work, five days a week, even when the roads were closed because of snow.

She’d heard Lala and Esmeralda arguing late at night, when they thought she was asleep, about the jealousy of the other Roma witches and what they could do to protect her. She’d also heard Milosh, constantly cursing in his drunken, ferocious voice, pressuring Lala to make her work harder. Lala always stood up to him, until one night Milosh had slapped her down – his own mother – sending her to the floor
of the caravan with a closed-fist swing.

Drawing close to the camp now, Samantha thought about that terrible night. She’d sprung from her bed, ignoring Lala’s number one rule:
never disobey Milosh
. She’d launched herself, fists flying, at the only man who fit the definition of ‘father’, in that she’d lived under his roof for as long as she’d been conscious of anything at all. That night, though, he’d been her enemy. One of her blows connected, but it had merely landed harmlessly on his hairy chest.

He’d punched her to the ground, where she cowered next to Lala, and suddenly it had seemed as if the air in the van had become hot and blood-red, seared to boiling point by Milosh’s anger. It sprayed from his scalp, shoulders and eyeballs in a fine crimson mist, smearing all surfaces in fury. She had learned early on, when she was only four or five, that others didn’t see such things, but for her that red haze had been as real as Lala’s tears. And it had grown thicker as Milosh reached for her. Lala had wailed, clutching at Samantha, and her son had kicked out at Lala’s ribs, her cries ceasing with a woof of pain as the air was booted from her lungs. Then he’d reached for Samantha …

Right now, remembering, Samantha stumbled in the grass near the horses as she realised something.

She’d done it then too!

The buttery light, the honeyed energy, the glow through her skin. She had
pushed
. She’d been terrified for Lala and suddenly the red wash in the van became watery, as though someone stood with a hose at the door, jetting it away. Milosh had stared at her in astonishment and then terror; he’d dropped her and run from the caravan. Now his eyes hooded when they met, and he glanced away quickly.

And he’d never touched her again.

Samantha’s heart raced. So
I
made Milosh put me down, she thought. And I did the same thing yesterday with that psycho with the sword.

She tiptoed back through the sleeping bundles at the campsite. Only Nuri was awake, the old woman prodding expertly at the fire. Thank Gaia she hadn’t yet put the big black coffee kettle onto the coals – the scent of Nuri’s coffee could wake the dead.

What exactly did I do? she wondered. How does it work? Can I do it again?

As she approached the fire, Nuri caught her eye, gave her a wide, toothless grin, and winked.

Although every surface of the huge industrial kitchen in the Dwight Complex was polished to a gleaming shine, Luke always thought it smelled funny. Lurking beneath the soap and disinfectant was a very faint, dank aroma, something dark and dirty, like an old onion had rolled under a cabinet and was moulding and rotting away, reminding him that nothing in here was ever really clean.

Facing him, across the shining tiles of the kitchen, stood a less subtle example of this fact. Chef Nick. One elbow leaning against the handle of the giant upright dishwasher, the other hand, as always, holding a cigarette, Chef Nick looked like no one you wanted around your food.

‘
He’s
the head of the kitchen?’ whispered Zac.

Luke raised his eyebrows. Grinned.

During his second week here, when he’d first laid eyes on Chef Nick, Luke had determined to eat nothing that wasn’t sealed in a package. Nick had long, grey, greasy hair, and the top of his head was usually wrapped in a faded bandana darkened with sweat at the brow line. Luke had never seen him without a cigarette between his yellowed fingers, and
he’d quickly joined Dorm Four’s obsession with watching and waiting for the inevitable long cylinder of ash to tumble from the end. Nick’s face was always glossy with sweat. Luke figured that the grease was doing a great job of feeding the twin patches of acne that pocked his cheeks. The white-tipped pustules were always plump and angry-looking.

But Luke had quickly learned that he didn’t have to worry about Chef Nick dropping ash into the food. Chef Nick did none of the cooking or cleaning in Dwight. That was what Catering Studies Lab was for. From week two on, every inmate of Dwight had CSL once a day, and if you were put on punishment, you got two or three CSL ‘lessons’ a day.

CSL stood for Child Slave Labour as far as Luke was concerned. He figured he’d peeled a thousand potatoes in here, scrubbed the gunk from two hundred twenty-litre pots, and had rubbed his hands raw at least thirty times making these tiles gleam.

Now that Zac had been here for a week, Luke thought, he had a lot to look forward to each day in CSL.

Chef Nick took a deep drag of his cigarette. Luke watched the ash. It held.

‘Bread today, maggots,’ Chef Nick said.

Kitkat groaned. Making the bread was heavy work and seemed to take forever. The eight members of Section Six, Dorm Four, moved towards the two massive mixmasters down near the ovens.

‘Black, Nguyen, take the flour down with you,’ said Nick. ‘Two bags.’

Luke sighed and led Zac over to the coolroom, stopping at a stack of sacks resembling large white pillows. Luke wished they weighed the same as a pillow. He bent his knees and
grabbed one of them. ‘You get on the other end,’ he said to Zac. ‘And make sure you bend your knees or you’ll be on sick report tomorrow with a bad back.’

He and Zac hefted the twenty-kilo sack of white flour and began to shuffle their way down the kitchen towards the ovens.

‘Did you bring the Yellow Stainers?’ said Zac quietly, as they passed Chef Nick.

‘Yep,’ said Luke. ‘What’s your plan?’

‘We need to dehydrate them,’ said Zac. ‘I was thinking of using the clothes dryer in the laundry, but I figure that if we put them in an oven on low, it’ll work just as well.’

‘So are you sure these are going to make people sick?’ said Luke.

‘Sick as,’ said Zac. ‘I told you I know what I’m doing with plants. You wouldn’t even be questioning me, though, if you’d been using the aloe plant I gave you for those bruises. Your face still looks like a dropped pie.’

‘Charming,’ said Luke.

The sides of the sack were dusty with flour and thicker than a phonebook and Luke and Zac had to stop to reposition.

‘Here, pass me your Stainers,’ said Zac when they paused.

Luke pulled the handful of mushrooms from his pocket and quickly passed them over to Zac, who shoved them down the front of his sweatshirt.

Luke would bet his life they were harmless.

Hefting the heavy bag again, he said, ‘Anyway, supposing it works, I know who I want to use them on.’

‘Toad?’ said Zac.

Luke smiled.

‘Well, when we get there with this bag, you turn the oven
on low. Real low. The lowest you can get it, okay? We don’t want roast mushrooms.’

‘And what’ll you be doing?’ said Luke.

‘When we get back with the second bag, I’ll slip them in. They’ll take a few hours to dry, though. We’ll have to find a way to get back in here this arvo.’

‘Oh, I can find us a way,’ said Luke.

By the time they’d joined the others with the second bag of flour, it looked like Kitkat and Barry had already sifted their flour into the mixer. Jonas was scooping up the pre-mix bread ingredients from a big bucket next to one of the mixers, while Hong Lo filled a two-litre jug of water.

Great, thought Luke. Looks like I’m on the losing team again.

Whoever got the job done first got to sample a slice of the finished product. In here, fresh, hot bread with real butter was as good as McDonald’s, especially when cold cereal was something worth fantasising over in this place. Luke didn’t make an effort in most competitions, but his stomach was flip-flopping now.

Chef Nick watched the show, every now and then raising a water bottle to his lips. The joke was that the bottle held straight vodka, but Luke knew it was no joke. He’d never seen anyone drain a bottle containing water as thoroughly as Nick. The only time he’d seen someone shaking out every last droplet from an upended bottle, there’d been a little something more in there than mere water.