At the Edge Read online

  At the Edge

  Edited by Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray

  Paper Road Press

  Wellington, New Zealand

  2016

  Table of Contents

  Introduction Angela Slatter

  Editors’ Note Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray

  The Leaves no Longer Fall Jodi Cleghorn

  The Urge Carlington Black

  Boxing Day Martin Livings

  The Architect (Part I) Phillip Mann

  Hood of Bone Debbie Cowens

  Crossing Anthony Panegyres

  12-36 EG Wilson

  Crop Rotation David Stevens

  Narco Michelle Child

  The Great and True Journey Richard Barnes

  BlindSight AJ Ponder

  In Sacrifice We Hope Keira McKenzie

  Little Thunder Jan Goldie

  Street Furniture Joanne Anderton

  Call of the Sea Eileen Mueller

  Responsibility Octavia Cade

  Hope Lies North JC Hart

  Seven Excerpts from Season One David Versace

  The Island at the End of the World Paul Mannering

  Back When the River had No Name Summer Wigmore

  The Architect (Part II) Phillip Mann

  Splintr AJ Fitzwater

  One Life, No Respawns Tom Dullemond

  And Still the Forests Grow though we are Gone AC Buchanan

  About the Editors

  Contributors

  Introduction

  Angela Slatter

  Writing is hard.

  Writing short stories is extra hard.

  Writing good short stories is harder still.

  You see, you don’t have the luxury that you get with a novel, which allows enough room to meander through your myriad chapters and slowly build up things like character and backstory, to give the reader lavish descriptions of setting, appearances, the turning of the seasons, all ten courses of a magnificent feast, et cetera. No. With a short story it’s straight into the action because you simply don’t have time to set things up in a leisurely fashion; a novel’s a marathon, a short story’s a sprint, don’t they say? Or was that just me?

  Don’t be fooled, though. That doesn’t make a short story easy – or quick – to write. In a short story every word must count, every description must earn its keep, justify its place; every single element you put in must be precisely the right one for that tale. You need to present characters who spring forth fully formed, yet not as stereotypes; you need to be wary of writing a white room setting that leaves a reader dazed, confused and geographically embarrassed; your dialogue needs to sound like human speech even though it isn’t, but rather a really sneaky and convincing facsimile. Everything you choose to put in absolutely must be the thing that is most required at that point in time, space, and plot.

  If you want to write a good short story.

  Over the years I’ve had students and just-starting-out writers say, ‘I’ll begin with short fiction: it’s fast and easy.’ That’s my cue to laugh. Sometimes it’s a light, tinkling sound to show how much they’ve amused me, other times it’s a full-on, earthy Bwahahahaha accompanied by moustache twirling and the theatrical wrapping of a black cloak around myself as I disappear into the mists. When I wander off on such occasions, I’m continuing my own personal journey to discover fine short stories. I’ve been lucky: I’ve found writers like Kelly Link, Hannah Tinti, Karen Russell, Kaaron Warren, Lisa Hannett, Steve Almond … all writers who can give you a tale short enough to sit on the head of a pin, yet knock you for a six with its precision, its beauty.

  Such stories haven’t simply been written, but crafted. Their authors have audited as well as edited their works, asking whether or not this element fits, does its job, belongs. And when they’re done, what they’ve created are bright little stars, something that shines so intensely that, despite its small size, it catches the eye. That, when read, sticks in the brain and stays there for a very long time, percolating and, if you’re lucky, changing the mind in which it’s lodged. That’s what the best fiction of any length should do: disrupt a reader’s everyday. Re-wire the way they think. Evolve new ideas, make way for different concepts, throw a mind wide open.

  Then there are the folks who decide it’s not enough to just write a good short story … they want to do more: they want to pull together an anthology. They set themselves up for all manner of time-consuming blood, sweat, and tear-based activity: finding a publisher, putting out calls for subs, trawling and swimming and splashing through the slush in the hope of coming up with a bunch of those bright stars. Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts are such people – I’ve met them, they’re lovely, they seem quite normal for writers – but, I suspect, there may well be traces of masochism in their make-up. It’s not enough that they’ve a large collection of publications and Sir Julius Vogel Awards between them. And it’s not enough to just create a book showcasing New Zealand talent. No, they’re bringing together writers from New Zealand and Australia. It’s a weirdly natural mix, after all, we’re kind of friends, kind of rivals, kind of cousins … but we’re all most definitely at the edge.

  Herein you will find work from writers of repute, writers at the top of their game. Herein you’ll find work from new names, names to watch out for, to seek in the future. You will find tales of apocalypses both soft and hard, you’ll find Lovecraftian horrors to please the most cosmic of palates, you’ll find hints of fairy tales and myths and paths less travelled by. You’ll find horror, fantasy, science fiction and stories that meld all three together with bold strokes and determined stitches. Most of all you will find heart, and you will most certainly find some bright stars.

  Angela Slatter, Brisbane, Australia, February 2016

  Editors’ Note

  Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray

  It’s a sticky evening in February. We meet in the capital at the Thistle Inn, New Zealand’s oldest surviving tavern, right around the corner from Katherine Mansfield’s family home. She used to come here and there’s the proof: an excerpt of her writing on the dining room wall. I arrive first and take a seat on the downstairs patio, clutching my piece of paper with my notes, a few numbers crunched on the back. I don’t have to wait long for Dan and Marie, and it’s just as well since the pub is as popular as it ever was and I’m in danger of losing the chairs. Dan has worn his good shirt. We talk about the weather, and how difficult it is to get a park around here.

  Say something! I send Dan a telepathic message.

  So, the Baby Teeth thing, he says, that was good.

  We chat about the charity project that evolved from a flyaway comment, re-energising the local speculative fiction community, discovering some new talent, and developing our strengths as a creative team.

  Good times.

  Yes, good times…

  So, Lee and I were thinking about another anthology, Dan says.

  I slap my page of notes on the table. I’ve been fiddling with it and the edges are already curling.

  I don’t remember all the words, but there’s some excited talking. A blurt of pros and cons, and stars-in-your-eyes ideas. Let’s make it broad this time, we say. Not just us. We have to include our friends across the ditch.

  Nodding. There’s a whole continent of talent there. And they have the same mindset; there’s an empathy. They even liked our work enough to give it an award.

  Two awards, actually.

  That’s true. There’s a pause as we contemplate that unexpected windfall.

  We’re looking at a lot of work. Definitely hard yakka.

  A beer glass is rolled between two palms.
There’ll be nothing to show for it, either.

  When did that ever stop us?

  So – Australia, then?

  Just think of the stories: taniwha and bunyips.

  Across the table, Dan is already dreaming of monsters.

  Perhaps it’s significant that Chief Te Rauparaha once tied his waka below the Thistle Inn at the edge of the same body of water that laps at the shores of Australia, because Marie barely looks at my carefully crunched numbers.

  Yes, she says. I like this.

  It was an edge of sanity moment because as I recall it, none of us flinched.

  After that, the fliers went out, social media sites buzzed and the stories came in, slowly at first and ending in a deluge. The response was like a national anthem sung in a stadium, both in terms of volume and quality. We could have filled two books. This wasn’t like Baby Teeth: Bite-sized Tales of Terror (Paper Road Press, 2013), where the stories, and the people, were self-selecting. This time the trainer wheels were truly off: Dan and I were going to have to make some hard decisions.

  Just one more, then?

  We can’t afford one more. And which one, anyway?

  If writers think getting a rejection is hard, letting some of those stories go was even harder.

  Dan contacts his former mentor, the local, Arthur C. Clarke-nominated science fiction author Phillip Mann, who offers us a story, too. A foreword by World Fantasy Award winner Angela Slatter? Why yes, please.

  Editing the stories is a pleasure, especially when you’re dealing with writers bent on improving their craft, willing to fine-tune every nuance until their stories are as sharp as a greenstone patu.

  And so, a year after that meeting at the Thistle, we have another anthology.

  Dan, Marie and I are privileged to share At the Edge with you. It is a superb collection by some fine writers, people we are proud to call our friends.

  Their stories tested us. They made us shiver, and gave us hope. They are stories which balance on the edge of madness, the edge of the universe, the edge of time, the edge of reality. They hover on the precipice between life and death, between passion and ennui, between certainty and indecision. And all of them are infused with that bloody-minded quality that embodies the Antipodes, a resilience inherent in nations born of warriors and wanderers, the children of whalers, convicts and miners: people not afraid to roll up their sleeves, or strike out for new territories, innovative resourceful sorts prepared to find meaning in the expanses out here at the edge of the world.

  Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts, Wellington, New Zealand, February 2016

  The Leaves no Longer Fall

  Jodi Cleghorn

  ‘Deciduous was once a word everyone knew,’ I say, choosing a red paper leaf from the old pillowcase. ‘It was how trees that lost their leaves in autumn were described.’ The paper leaf dangles from my fingers, trembling as I brush it through the air.

  Ty, seated in my lap and chin slick with drool, reaches up with chubby hands for it. Jamie, just two, kneels at my feet watching. I let the paper leaf go. It zigzags to the grassed floor, lacking the natural grace of leaf fibre.

  ‘First the leaves turned red. And yellow. Orange,’ I continue, finding leaves of the corresponding colours so Jamie can name them. ‘The leaves were beautiful and when they fell, the ground turned into a colourful carpet. You could kick them and throw them. Jump in huge piles of them.’

  ‘Jump!’ Jamie says, scrambling to his feet and bouncing up and down. ‘Jump-jump.’

  I prop Ty against the buttress roots of the Moreton Bay fig growing in the space my mother-in-law used as a second lounge room before she died, and shake the pretend leaves over Jamie’s head. He giggles and turns crazy circles trying to catch them. Once they settle, scattered about him on the grass, he bends to collect handfuls and throw them over himself, squealing. Ty mimics him.

  ‘Shhhh, honey,’ I say, trying not to cry, thinking of all the things lost to my sons. Jamie should be outside where he can be as loud as he wants to be. Run as far as he wants to go. ‘We don’t want to wake anyone.’

  My throat closes up and I lie back on the grass, force myself to think of good things. And breathe.

  On the inside of my eyelids, Dan digs through the cracked foundations of this room when we first arrive in Central Victoria from Rookhurst. I remember how I spent the final months of my pregnancy with Max improving the soil, building sub-tropical humus. After Max was born, we planted the seedling with his placenta and the fig flourished, grew as our family did: first Max, then Jamie and Ty. And the unused rooms of the ridiculously large house became homes for refugees fleeing the North, waiting for a chance to buy a place on a boat to Tasmania. The desperate and hopeless, whom Dan gave a second chance at life.

  Please, please Dan. Please find some other way to help. It’s too dangerous.

  Useless words now. Useless words echoing in an emptiness that threatens to consume me.

  Jamie sings ‘jump-jump’ and the paper leaves rustle at his feet. I squeeze my eyes shut so hard it hurts – one pain to temporarily mask another – and force myself back to the happy memories.

  One morning … one morning, when Max was tiny, Dan arrived home with the coloured paper and I traced and cut leaves, wanting to give the tiny babe at my breast some sense of the world I’d come from. One he’d never have a chance to explore.

  I open my eyes. Above, through the wash of unshed tears, the branches transform the room into a natural cathedral. A tiny skylight lets in enough sunlight for vitamin D and photosynthesis. Everything carefully measured and balanced to ensure the tree and the boys thrive. But the vulnerability of life – the impermanence of it – sits heavy on my chest.

  ‘Let’s collect the leaves,’ I say and wearily sit up, rubbing eyes longing to weep. ‘All the red ones first.’

  ‘No!’ Jamie folds his arms and thrusts his bottom lip out.

  ‘Then orange ones first.’

  ‘No.’ The way he stands with his legs slightly apart reminds me of Dan: that stubborn stance, inside and out.

  ‘If you’re not going to clean up, you can go back to bed.’ The words snap from my mouth.

  ‘No!’

  I kneel in front of him and force a sing-song edge to my voice. Settle the fury boiling in me as much as the one in him. ‘The leaves need to go to bed. And so do we. It’ll be twilight soon and time to get Max ready for school.’

  ‘NO.’

  Ty pitches forward from the buttress alcove and starts to cry, grass and dirt stuck to his mouth. I draw him to me, set him on my hip, and return the leaves one-handed to the old pillowcase, ignoring the small storm building in Jamie. If both our storms merge, a supercell will tear through the artificial calm that seals in my grief.

  A knock on the lounge room window startles us all. Jamie stares at the glass so black the world outside is hidden. No one should be out there before twilight. A white handprint burns into the darkened glass. The bottom falls from my stomach and I take several tentative steps toward the window, clutching Ty to me, and trying to turn Jamie away before a face from the past appears.

  *

  Only madmen like Dan and Jackson made it their business to be outside when the sun was up. Jackson ambles down the hallway, stripping off his insulated coat and ice vest, as if nothing suddenly terminated our friendship seven years ago. As though Rookhurst is down the road and he’s just dropped in for a quick chat and a cuppa.

  Jamie gawks around the corner of the lounge room.

  ‘Who?’ he asks, his father’s brazen confidence in that single word.

  Jackson drapes his protective gear over the back of a kitchen chair. ‘Who would you like me to be?’

  ‘Supe’man!’ His small face lights up.

  ‘Don’t get too excited.’ I sweep into the kitchen to prepare tea; busy hands to still my mind. ‘He says that for just ab
out everyone. Gets it from his brother.’

  ‘And Dan.’

  I hold the kettle in the void over the sink, the tap running, precious water wasting.

  ‘The news reached us a month ago. I’m sorry, Annabel. We’re all sorry.’

  I thrust the kettle under the stream of water. ‘When heroic deeds in a humanitarian crisis are considered criminal acts…’ I can’t finish the sentence; the rage and grief and futility seethe dangerously close to the surface. ‘They didn’t even have the decency to—’

  I take a deep breath and jam the power cord into the socket.

  ‘You found out from the broadcast?’

  Jackson looks stranded in the revelation. Unsure in the foreign landscape of my home.

  I slam two mugs on the bench and force myself to stay calm. ‘It’ll have to be black. We haven’t had sugar or milk since I was pregnant with Jamie.’

  Jackson nods and bends so he’s at Jamie’s height. ‘Go play in the other room, little mate,’ he says and my middle son actually does as he’s told, taking a battered board book over to ‘read’ to Ty.

  My stomach clenches, waiting for the kick Jackson is about to deliver.

  ‘Morrison’s dead.’ The breath expels from him as he slides into the seat on the opposite side of the bench, like he was somehow simultaneously holding it and talking. ‘You can come back now.’

  ‘Back?’ The floor drops from under my feet and my hand clamps on the edge of the bench. The words pepper me like they did when I heard Dan had been shot dead by Immigration Police just the other side of the New South Wales border. ‘Back to Rookhurst?’

  ‘It’s your legacy.’

  The ecstasy on Morrison’s face when he stumbled onto my heritage and realised how it influenced my research is still crystal clear in my memory: my mother the botanist, my grandmother the glass blower. How he wooed and seduced me into thinking his science enclave in the mountains was the answer to the most immediate crisis facing us as a nation. He made me believe I could solve it if I could just make glass live.

  ‘We always knew, all of us, that Morrison was Edison to your Tesla.’ The kettle whistles and my hand shakes as I pour water into the mugs. The precious teabag floats to the surface, inflated by hot air. ‘We knew the bacteria in his glass was yours. We knew Dan argued with Morrison because he stole your work. We know that’s why you left.’