Day Boy Read online

  For an hour I’m crouching in that water, clutching my knife. Twice a catfish brushes my legs, and it’s an awful cruel thing that I can’t slide my fingers under it and flip it free of the river—make a good meal, and Dain says I need fattening up. There’s gunshots in the distance, like a storm that’s building. The hunt’s on round the Summer Tree. Deer being culled in the heat.

  A different sort of hunt to what this fella engages in.

  ‘Not here to kill you.’ The voice comes clear through the reeds, and it’s all I can do not to let out a cry, and an accusation: the cut says otherwise. I’m shivering a bit, and catfish takes a tiny nibble at my calf just then and I nearly yelp again. ‘You’re near to being at your end of work. And I’ve need to a new boy. My last been kilt, down in the Southern Darks eight years back. I’m done with the lonely life.

  ‘Could kill you easy enough.’ There’s a slur to his words—still drinking. You don’t drink like that unless you mean to kill something, even if it’s just yourself. ‘You’ll see the truth of it soon enough.’

  My teeth chatter.

  ‘I’m patient,’ the Hunter says, telling me that he isn’t. ‘You don’t live in the places south and north of the line without being patient.’

  I can’t help but find a sliver of hope in that, forget awhile the chill seeping into me. I stay where I am in the brown muck of the river: still as still can be.

  ‘He won’t find you,’ the Hunter says. ‘We’ll both wait out here until you or me dies. I don’t intend dying today.’

  Neither do I. No one ever does.

  But every day holds its own terrors, its own surprises. That’s why the Masters have us Day Boys. The ones that keep the wheels spinning even while that Sun’s burning. We run their chores. See to their business and make it our own.

  And I’m doing none of it, stuck here in silt and menace.

  There’s another hour. Just me, and his voice calling and I’m not moving, barely breathing. That’s a hard labour all itself.

  There’s another nibble at my toes.

  Sometimes staying still can almost drive you out of your skull when all you want is to be running, all your head is saying is RUN RUN RUN. And I’m not a stay-still kind of lad. Never been that.

  ‘What you’ve got to hide for, boy?’ More slur. Which leans the odds to my advantage. The time’s coming, as I see it. ‘You know I’m not the bad man.’

  Not the worst man, no. But there’s all different types of bad. He’s got bad enough in him.

  I hear him moving through the reeds, he doesn’t feel he needs to hide—brazen as a bloody Master. I move and he’ll find me. He’s too far to the left.

  RUN RUN RUN.

  But I stay still.

  Something motors down the river. Mayor Aldridge’s tinnie, I want to call out to him, but by the time he comes my throat’ll be sliced into a second smile. No one ever expects to die. Death is death, and I’m in no hurry for it.

  The Hunter curses. I hear him back away.

  And still I don’t move.

  I wait. I wait.

  And the hours pass.

  Slow. They pass so slow, and the reeds move around me, as a wind picks up from the west with the dust from the west, and I can smell the river and the riverbank, and the slow passage of time, which Dain says is just an illusion, that if I saw it as he saw it I would know it was just an illusion.

  Catfish nibbles and I let it and don’t jump. I don’t hardly breathe.

  I wait till the Sun’s past setting, and then I move.

  Slow. Almost as silent as breath. I get to the bank. Take a step onto firm dry land, and another. And the machete slides under my chin.

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘NOT A WORD, not a squeak,’ comes the voice in my ear. Grog breath washing over me.

  I nod, feel that blade cut my skin, just a touch. My heart’s beating so fast, blood pumping so hard I’m surprised I don’t pop.

  ‘Drop your knife,’ he says. And I drop it.

  ‘Now you’re coming along with me. Slow. There’s a boat ten minutes down the river. You’ll walk with me.’

  ‘There’s no boat,’ I say.

  The machete presses tighter, I can feel its longing, the yearning to sink into flesh, to cut and carve its frustrations into me. I turn my gaze a little. He has a tattoo on his wrist, a spiral. A mark I’ve not seen before. It catches my eye and holds it.

  The machete shivers.

  ‘Walk.’

  And that’s what I do.

  ‘Eight years in the wilderness. Time I got an apprentice,’ the Hunter says. A rush of words after the hours of silence. ‘Eight years of solitary mindfulness. You’ll sign my papers and then I’ll have you, even them night things respect those papers. Nice, eh? Monster’s child groomed to kill the dark and the hungry things.’

  I’m not signing anything. I don’t care what he says, I can feel the death in him.

  Ten minutes? Twenty more like. Along the river, neither fast nor slow. Just how he wants me to go. Once I hear a dog barking that I reckon might be Petri over at Paul Certain’s farm. Certain would be good in this kind of trouble, that’s a man who’s known it. But there’s a hard mile between here and there.

  The Hunter freezes up, stands there still a moment, that machete getting closer to my veins. But there’s no more barking, and we’re walking again. And he’s mumbling about monsters.

  Storm birds call, and it’s the kind of sound that makes you ache. Always calling. Always storms coming, and falling away. Earliest sound I remember. Might be my last, too.

  At this rate we’ll be walking until after the Night Train pauses on its way to the city in the west, drops off the ice and fuel and picks up the produce. The odd head of cattle, grain, honey and ash. Mr Stevens waiting at the signal tower watching the east, waiting for it to arrive. Of course I’ll be dead by then, bled white and gutted. Nothing happens in Midfield. Nothing of consequence. Not really, we’re just the bit between here and there, between the city and the sea. My death won’t mean much. Won’t trouble the city folk, won’t bring on much of a tear. Maybe Anne’ll miss me. Maybe not.

  I snuffle a bit at the thought.

  ‘Stop yer cryin’,’ the Hunter says.

  Can’t even wipe my nose.

  Sometime along, we startle a few deer. It’s late in the season for them to be so close to the river, maybe the gunshots have driven them here. They crash into the undergrowth and leave us both panting. We stop for a second or two, before the Hunter’s pushing me hard in the back, driving me on. A little from the river, ’cause the land grows thick around, but we curve back.

  He pauses, hesitates at the bank. Curses, crouches down, machete still against my neck, his knees popping, and looks at the rope, cut neat through. And a river clear of any boat, just brown water, in either direction. He drops the rope, gets back to his feet. And I can see the knowledge in his white-rimmed eyes.

  ‘’S not here,’ he says.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ comes a familiar voice from the dark, an insinuating voice, angry, and my
skin crawls. I can’t help it—feel a bit ungrateful—but it does.

  I drive my elbow into the Hunter’s gut and the blade drops from his hand and I’m bolting free, but not before I feel his piss stream down my back. I’m swearing, rolling forward, then scrambling backwards smelling of his terror, and there’s a goodly bit of mine there, too. Death’s one thing, but there’s deaths and there are deaths.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Dain commands. ‘Don’t look, boy.’

  But I catch a glimpse anyway, of a man-shaped darkness. Darker than the night, eyes glowing like a fresh-stoked fire. The Hunter’s stepping backwards, one arm flung out, other hand around his throat, blood spilling through the fingers. He’s turning, starting to run if such a broken motion could be called running. But the dark and the fire is upon him.

  And I feel the fits rising in me, feel the shakes. But it passes. It passes and the whole world stills.

  I close my eyes, and the screaming starts. I squeeze them shut as silence washes over me, a silence of small sounds. Bones breaking, skin tearing.

  ‘Go home,’ the dark says, voice down low. ‘Go home, you’ve chores to do. I’ll deal with you later.’

  I hesitate.

  ‘Go!’

  And then, for the first time in forever, I’m running, running, like the Devil’s at my back.

  And he may as well be.

  Home through Midfield. Down Main Street and west along Zephyr, past picket fences and tall houses, brick and wood and verandahs edging every one, bringing each the comfort of shadows. Past jacaranda trees full and leafy, and loud with the scratch of cicadas. The smell of lawns freshly cut, a few lights lit in windows, a few shadows moving. Flying foxes dark across the sky, screeching when they find a tree fruiting, real foxes calling out in the hills. The town is winding into sleep. But there’s blood in my head, thoughts rushing and my back’s sore where I was cut and I’m sticky with piss and sweat.

  The Sewills are sitting on their verandah, and they wave at me. Night isn’t full deep yet, and there I am walking in the middle of the road. I wave back like it’s any other day.

  And it is, I guess.

  Tomorrow, in fact, I’ll be marking their door. Glance at their lawn, too long, and I’ll be the one to mow it. Pushing their damn mower that’s never sharp enough no matter how I sharpen it. Going to wear me out, but maybe I need that.

  I don’t see any Day Boys and that’s a relief. But I catch a shape that might be Egan, a darkness leaping between roofs. It sees me, two circles of fire regard me, and then it’s gone. It still gives me a shiver. There was enough hate in it that I’m certain it was Egan.

  I make it home, check that the fire’s burning clear, and it’s not. So I get to fixing that. And then I drop to bed. Need a bath. Infections are getting worse these days, Dain says. But I’m too knackered to be drawing one.

  I doubt Dain will talk to me tonight. His talking to me later will stretch across days.

  Isn’t the easiest sleep I find, but I find it anyway.

  ‘We need to talk, boy,’ Dain says, pulling me from dreams of water and fish that nibble at my toes until the flesh is all gone and they’re nothing but bones. Can’t be too much more than a few hours since I made it home. Glad I’m not stuck there; not so happy to wake to those fiery eyes.

  I yawn, my body’s sore and hot. Should have drawn that bath.

  Dain sniffs. ‘He cut you, Mark?’

  I nod. My shirt’s stiff and stuck to my back. ‘Then you will bathe, and then we will talk.’

  I groan. All that work! Dain pats my arm. ‘Strangely enough, I appear to have drawn a bath.’ And I think of him, my Master, drawing a bath. Heating the water in the copper, taking it bucket by bucket and pouring it into the tub. A steady serious sort of labour for a man like him. ‘It will go to waste otherwise, and you know how I feel about waste.’

  I stagger to the bathroom strip, and sink into the water. It turns a little rusty, and where I was cut, it burns. But then the aches subside and I’m sinking my head under the water (which tastes of salt) and looking up at the single burning lamp, and wondering if this is at all like the sea in the books I get to read, or is that brown like the river?

  Comes a knock at the bathroom door.

  ‘Hurry boy,’ Dain says, though there’s little hurry in his voice. The night is his.

  I’m as reluctant to get out as I was to get in, but I do.

  Dain’s waiting for me in the kitchen. His face long, his elbows resting against the hard table—Formica, he says. All I know is that it’s crooked and old and he’s far too attached to it.

  ‘He was from the Red City—the city of iron and dust—not the City in the Shadow of the Mountain: though they sometimes are, that place can turn a bitterness in a man.’ Dain says that last bit as though it still surprises him. ‘He told me so much, a flood. But he was addled.’ He sips a brandy, washing the taint away. Hunter and Hunted, both of them been at the drink. Didn’t help the hunted, and I’m still hearing that bone crunch. I winced at the smell of the grog when I’d poured Dain’s glass, hand pinched over my nose until he’d slapped it away.

  ‘Enough of that pantomime! You shouldn’t have been there, Mark. Do I not keep you busy enough?’

  ‘Never seen a Hunter there before.’

  Dain’s rage rises. ‘And you would argue the point? You’d argue it even after a blade’s been pressed under your throat?’

  ‘I’m not unacquainted with terrors.’

  Dain laughs the chillest sort of laugh. I lower my head, and I don’t look up until he stops. And there he is, staring.

  ‘So, you’ve chores aplenty tomorrow,’ Dain says, eyes serene unless you know him like I do and can see the rage in him. I keep waiting for the back of that hand. It’s been a long time since I was struck, but I know you’re never too old for a clip under the ear.

  He passes me a list, longer than what I was expecting this morning, and I try not to cringe. He looms over me, all storm front and night lightning. Hairs on the back of my neck try to run off. Instead I get the cold shivers.

  ‘He would have killed you,’ Dain says.

  ‘I know.’ I don’t look him in the eye. ‘I didn’t see him coming.’

  ‘Which is why you do not go there, by that part of the river. The edges of things are deadly.’

  I shrug.

  Big mistake. Do I ever learn my lesson?

  He lifts me with one arm and pulls me close to his face. ‘As much as it pains me to say it, I do not want you dead. You’ve earned more than that, and the future holds possibility—so, please, do not betray my trust.’

  There, so close to grinding jaws, eyes death black—all the fire gone out of them—and empty, I find it hard to trust in his affections. I try to speak and he gives me such a withery look that I do not.

  He lets me drop. I land with a whoomph and by the time I’ve caught my breath he’s gone, and I’m left holding his list. And I remember that tattoo, the spiral. Was going to ask on it, but then, it’s nothing. Course it is, and I’ve lots of chores, two days’ worth at least. I’ll be up with the dawn, visiting homes, gathering ash, ba
gging it, getting it ready for the train.

  Never going to sleep. My head full of things. But back to bed I go. Got to at least try.

  And damned if I don’t sleep despite it all.

  I dream again of Hunters and spirals that gyre up from torn wrists, and catfish.

  Wake up hungry for fish.

  So I go back out there and catch that nibbler, and it’s not easy, gives as big a fight for its life as I would and no Master to rescue it. Me and the other boys, all six of us, feasting on that plump fella. Dougie, the Parson Boys stick thin and laughing, Grove and Twitcher. Big fish, big party. And I told them my story, but not as I’m telling you. More swagger, less piss in pants. We’re Day Boys, we’re brave and foolish, and we don’t ever let on that we’re not.

  We shouldn’t have been there, but it’s the shouldn’ts that are the sweetest.

  Shouldn’t be monsters. But there is.

  They worship the Sun because it is the only god as cruel as them.

  You see it on them, the circle with its radiants. They cannot let the Sun touch them, not without, as they say it, Severe Consequence. But it marks them just the same. The bangles they have fashioned, the tattoos, scratched with bone—because it scores permanent—and ash—because it burns likewise—into their cold skin.

  Some of them find shame in this fascination. Dain, at times, seems embarrassed. But it doesn’t stop him praying to the fire, playing old knuckle bones carved with the Sun through his fingers.