Read Queen of the Dark Things Online
Authors: C. Robert Cargill
Queen of the Dark Things (20 page)
“Men study their whole lives to master what comes to you so naturally. Nothing that comes so easily can ever have value. Do not take your skills for granted or a man cleverer than you will rob you of all you have and leave you for the earth to take back.” Mandu smiled. “I know why you're here now, what I have to teach you. But there's someone you need to meet first.” He waved out into the bush. “Come on, come on. Don't stand out there with your jaw hanging loose. Come out and introduce yourself.”
From the darkness emerged the pretty little girl in the purple pajamas. She was a little younger than Colby, but beautiful, athletic, taller, her hair and dark skin almost sparkling in the light.
Colby turned to Mandu. “What is she?”
“I'm a girl,” she said.
“She's a girl,” said Mandu.
“No,” said Colby. “She's not real.”
“I'm real!”
“No, I mean, she's . . . she's . . .”
Mandu motioned to her. “She's a dreamwalker, Colby. She can leave her body when she's asleep and walk through dreamtime like you and I. It's her gift.”
“So she can see beyond the veil, but only when asleep?”
Mandu nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“So she's not really here, but she is?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling at her. “I'm Colby.”
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas smiled big and wide, her heart racing. This was a boy. A real boy. He was looking right at her. And he was talking to her. For the first time in her life, to someone other than her father, she was not invisible. “Hi, Colby. I've been waiting a long time to meet you.”
“You have?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What's your name?”
“It doesn't matter,” she said, shrugging.
“What do you mean it doesn't matter?”
“It doesn't matter.”
“Of course it matters. What am I supposed to call you?”
“Whatever you like, I guess. But you don't have to call me anything. When you talk to me, I know you're talking to me. And when you talk to the Clever Manâ”
“Mandu.”
“Whatever. When you talk to him, and you say
she
, he'll know exactly who you're talking about. So why do you need a name at all?”
“You want me to call you
she
?”
“I want you to call me whatever you want.”
“But what's your name?”
“I don't have one.”
“We all have names.”
“I have one back when I'm awake. But now I'm asleep. You don't need names when you're asleep.”
“But I'm not asleep.”
“Of course not. That's why you told me your name.”
“Why don't you just tell me your name?”
“Because names don't mean anything. A name won't tell you who I am. It doesn't tell you what a person is. It tells you what their parents thought was a cute name when they were born. That's it. Does a name tell you that I'm faster than you? Taller than you? Can cross the whole of Australia in a single night if I tried? No. It doesn't. And it never will. Because names are just that. So call me whatever you like. I'll only answer to it if I like you.”
Colby turned to Mandu. “She's weird.”
Mandu nodded, agreeing. “But a very powerful spirit.” He waved to the girl and motioned back toward their fire a mile away. “Go, tend the fire and wait for us. We'll be there shortly.”
“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “I haven't seen the bunyip.”
“Weren't you watching from up on that rock?”
“Yeah, but I didn't get to see it up close.” She walked over to Mandu and put a gentle hand on his elbow. “Don't worry about me, Clever Man. I'm fast. Faster than anything else out here. I'll be fine.”
The pretty little girl hiked up her pajama pants above her knees, rolling tight cuffs to keep them in place, then ran out into the water, slapping it with an open palm.
“She's a lot like you,” said Mandu to Colby. “She doesn't yet know how powerful she is. And she doesn't understand her destiny.”
“You can see her destiny?”
“I see a lot I can't speak of.”
“In your dreams?”
Mandu nodded silently, watching the girl play in the water.
“Have you seen mine?”
“Parts of it.”
“Really? What is it?”
Mandu grimaced, looking down at Colby as if he'd just sworn. “It is exactly as you wish, just not as you expect.”
“You have to tell me more than that.”
“The spirits don't bring dreams to the people who talk too much about them. I'd rather listen to you pester me the whole rest of the walkabout than shut you up and never receive the gifts of the spirits again.”
“So that's a no?”
“That's a no.” Mandu pointed at the water. “Now watch this. It's one of the best things I ever dreamed about.”
The bunyip poked only the top of its head out of the black water, its eyes, each almost as big as a grown man's skull, peering out at the girl splashing loudly about.
“She's quite clever, but so is the bunyip. Look at the edge there.” The water began lapping against the shore, creeping up inches at a time but never receding.
“It's rising!” said Colby.
“I wonder who will win,” said Mandu, tickled. He looked at Colby with a wry smile.
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas crept closer to the bunyip, pretending not to see it, slapping the water as if still looking for it.
The bunyip stood still, spying, waiting.
She waded closer.
It waited still.
She turned back to shore, smiling at the pair, rolling her eyes back toward the bunyip playfully as if to say,
Get a load of this guy
.
Then, without warning, the bunyip lunged, its massive paws swinging, its gaping maw wide open, teeth bared, snarling. Water sprayed, the lake exploding as if someone had dropped in a stick of dynamite. It descended upon her, chomping down to make a meal out of her.
But true to her word, she was faster. She leaped up upon the water, running so fast that her feet never sank in. She grabbed hold of its fur, flung a leg up and over, straddled the beast, mounting it. It flailed, cartwheeling in the water, bucking, kicking, but she held on. Try as it might, it couldn't shake her.
Splashing furiously it arched its long neck, gnashed its teeth, tried to bite her off its back like a dog chewing fleas. But she would not let go.
She only laughed, giggling, playing a game, dodging teeth, and mocking with childish faces. Completely unafraid.
Then the bunyip bucked one last time, finally shaking her loose. She flew back across the lake, flopping painfully against a large stone jutting out of the billabong, then dropping back into the water. But she ran again, her feet barely breaking the surface, bolting back out to shore, laughing all the way.
Mandu spun his bullroarer in the air, making the night again uneasy. The bunyip got the message, sank once more back into the dark, muddy water, letting the night at last settle back into peace. The water receded, slowly draining back into the billabong.
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas smiled, waved, and ran back toward camp, vanishing almost instantly, leaving Colby and Mandu alone again.
“So,” said Colby. “Was that supposed to be
fighting with cleverness
?”
Mandu shrugged sheepishly. “Meh. Sometimes bravery trumps cleverness. But you shouldn't make a habit of it.”
I
'm taking this seat,” said a sweet, lilting voice as it pulled a stool noisily away from the bar with an angry din.
Colby, Yashar, and Gossamer each looked up, saw a flash of blond hair, straw cowboy hat.
Austin plopped down on the stool with all the grace of a factory worker after a long day, sighing loudly. Her skin was sweaty, pallid, her eyes bloodshot and wide, as if she was keeping them open by force of will alone. “You know,” she said. “These hipster dive bars get harder and harder to find.” She waved a finger at the place, pointing almost to every corner. “I mean, I see the appeal. You already know everybody, no douchebags wander in and act like they're at a kegger. But at some point you just gotta draw the line and let a bar be a bar instead of a damn scavenger hunt.”
Yashar nodded politely. “Austin,” he said, his tone nervous, reserved. “I didn't hear you come in.”
Austin looked up at the ceiling, as if lost in thought for a second, then smiled coyly, looking right at him. “No one ever does.”
“This isn't a hipster bar,” said Colby.
“No?”
“No.”
“Because it used to be a fairy bar. Buuuuuut someone kicked out all the fairies. So what is it now?”
Yashar shuffled nervously behind the bar. “Outside . . . are they stillâ”
“The demons? All over the place.” She leaned forward on her stool, grasping her stomach to massage away a sudden discomfort. “Oh, I think I'm gonna hurl.”
“Not here you won't,” said Yashar.
Austin looked up at him through a strained grimace, her gaze made ever the more intimidating by her seeming illness. “In a bar? I'm not allowed to throw up . . . in a bar? If there was one place I should be allowed to chuck, I'd thinkâ” She took a deep breath, regaining a little of her composure.
“What do you want?” asked Colby, pointedly.
Austin smiled weakly, suddenly pouring on the charm. “You don't want to talk to me?”
“I . . . well. I mean . . .”
“Elevated heart rate, dilated pupils. The way you feel like someone is sitting on your chest when you look at me. Colby Stevens, if I didn't know better, I'd say you have a crush.”
Colby stared into his drink, wishing he was invisible. “Oh God. This is happening.”
Yashar nodded, half embarrassed himself. “Yep. It's happening.”
“It. Is. Happening,” said Austin.
“Can I get you something to drink,” asked Yashar, “or are you just here to humiliate my buddy?”
“It's a little early to be drinking, don't you think?”
“It's never too early for drinking,” he replied. He looked out toward the street even though there was no view from the bar. “Especially on a day like today.”
“I think you boys might have a problem. You know you're allowed to feel emotions without liquor being involved, right?”
“Yeah,” said Colby. “But the liquor lets us be a bit more honest about them.”
“It's just our way,” said Yashar.
Austin gaped at the two, her mouth chewing on a pregnant pause before winking slyly, eyes twinkling mischievously. “I'm just fucking with you,” she said. “I'm still drunk from last night.
Una cerveza, por favor.
”
“
Una cerveza,
” said Yashar, sliding an ice-cold IPA across the bar.
“How'd you know?” she asked, eyeing the label.
“You mean aside from the fact that I know the secret desires and wishes of a person's heart?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you joke about hipster bars, but I can't imagine there's one in town you don't drink at.”
“Guilty.” She sipped her beer, her face puckering as if it was sour.
“No good?” asked Yashar. “I've got others.”
“It's not the beer.”
“Then maybe you're a drink or two past the point of drinking.”
“It's not me being drunk either.”
“Then what?”
She clenched her fist and thumbed out toward the street. “It's them.”
“The Seventy-two?”
She nodded. “I've never felt anything like this before. They're making me sick.”
Colby tried to remain invisible, outside the conversation. He sipped his whiskey casually, but couldn't help peeking over to eye her up and down. Even ill appearing as she was, there was still something about her. Something that glowed without light, felt warm without heat. She wore a pair of faded skinny jeans with the knee torn out of one of the legs, a pair of painted Converse, different from the ones she'd worn the night before, and a black T-shirt that read:
LIMESTONE
KINGDOM
. That stung a little and his heart sank, just a little farther, and he found that he needed the whiskey more than ever.
“You're rejecting them,” said Yashar, nodding. “You've never had this many in town at once, have you?”
Austin shook her head, sipping her beer. “The city. It's like the sewers have overflowed and all the deep, dark, hidden shit that has been festering beneath it for years has spilled out and stunk up the whole damn place. These things, they're the worst of the worst. Corruption seeps off 'em into the air like cheap cologne. And anyone who gets a whiff gets nervous. Or angry. The whole city is on edge. They can't see 'em, but they sure as shit can feel 'em. People are doing things they ordinarily wouldn't. Getting downright mean. Hurting people they love. I've never had this much taint in the city at once. It feels like I ate a pound of fried shit and now I've just got to sweat it out until it passes.”
“When they leave,” said Yashar.
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing Colby suspiciously. “When they leave.”
He frowned, his heart still sinking. “Nice shirt,” he said coldly, his anger getting the better of him.
“It's an original.”
“Do you listen to yourself when you say shit like that?”
“I do. But are
you
listening? I said it's original. There were only about a dozen made. The only way to have gotten one of these isâ”
Colby's jaw dropped and he pointed a limp finger at her. “You were there. That night.”