She Walks in Shadows (24 page)

The place reminded me of a beehive, a human beehive. People sat at the lip of those caves in complete silence, staring down at us with a kind of hungry patience. Hundreds of them. They all wore identical white robes. While most of them had normal features, some had the flattened skull and protruding forehead of the one I’d disturbed behind the boulder. There was something eerie about the unnatural passivity of these people, the feverish tension hidden behind unblinking eyes.

“Well, will you look at that,” Laurie breathed. “It’s like an ... like an arena. An arena of bones. And up there are the box seats.”

I sucked in a breath. Shade was fighting the reins like he wanted to bolt. I didn’t blame him. The ground was littered with sun-bleached bones, thousands of them. Most were unrecognizable, but I could make out skulls, goat mainly, but there was a fair number of human skulls, too. Shade balked as the bones crunched under his hooves and only the soothing murmur of my voice kept him moving.

“Mum!”

I hadn’t noticed the beat-up old truck parked in the shade cast by the walls. Hadn’t noticed it until Lula’s voice swung my glance that way. There she stood, dressed in the white robes, just like all the others. She was holding a rope tied around the neck of the scrawniest goat I’d ever seen, trying to pull it out the back of the truck.

“Hi, kiddo!” I called out to her, as if I’d just seen her on a street in Darwin. “How’s things? Thought I’d come and check out the stock. Buy a goat or two, maybe.”

She laughed at that, a horrible, shrill sound.

Laurie was kicking Blimp, trying to get the horse closer to follow Shade. But Blimp wasn’t planning on moving, not unless it was in reverse.

“You okay, Lula?” he said. “We’ve come to get you, if you want. No need to stay here with these people. Who’s in charge here, anyway? Where’s the Great Mother ...?”

Laurie was babbling and I wished he’d just shut up. Bad move, bringing him with me. You could feel the panic coming off him in waves. I knew that whatever lived in this place would feed off that.

“The Aboriginals call these caves the Sick Place for a reason, Lula!” Laurie was shouting across the cul-de-sac. “There’s radiation in those caves and it can hurt you bad. You need to come back with us before you get sick.”

Lula shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear what he was saying and tugged again on the rope. “I got a job to do here,” she threw back at him. “The Great Mother loves me. She gave me a job. I’m the Mother’s goat girl. Somebody’s got to look after the goats.” Then she gulped and made a funny noise. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying.

“Well, the Great Mother can get herself another goat girl.” I dug my heels into Shade’s flanks, forcing him towards Lula. He was a big, strong animal and could carry the two of us back to Noonamah easily. But he trembled, fighting the reins.

As if Shade’s terror was some sort of trigger, the people in the caves started chanting. A hundred booming voices, bouncing around that cul-de-sac until you thought you’d go crazy at the sound. “
Iä! Shub-Niggurath, Iä! Shub-Niggurath, Iä! Shub-Niggurath.
”

Lula had started to cry. It couldn’t hear it over the chanting, but I saw her contorted face, the uncontrolled shaking of her body.

I kicked Shade harder than I’d ever kicked him, or any other horse, and he leapt forward as if wasp-stung. In seconds, we were at the truck. I bent and grabbed Lula by the arm, dragging her across the saddle like she was a calf.

“Shub-Niggurath is my mother!” Lula was sobbing hysterically now. ”She won’t let me go. Not unless you pay the price. She won’t let me go. You’re a bad mother. And Shub-Niggurath won’t give me back, not unless you pay. She’s good to me. She’s a good mother and I’m her goat girl.”

“Bullshit,” I snarled, yanking on the reins and turning Shade towards the exit of the cul-de-sac.

That’s when I saw it. I guess it was human. Everyone has heard of people being born with two heads, so why not this?
Radiation poisoning,
I kept telling myself.
That’s all it is.
A mutation caused by the uranium. The cult had lived here for decades, bred here for decades. Who knew what kind of monster could come from that?

“
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!
” There was a sound of rapture in the chanting now. As if a signal had been given, the cultists began to sway from side to side in their beehive caves.

The creature they called Shub-Niggurath was standing over Laurie, who lay sprawled in the dirt like a broken doll. Unconscious or dead, I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t moving, though, and the angle of his neck made me feel sick. I’d seen rider’s heads twisted like that more than once in rodeo arenas.

Shub-Niggurath’s left arm was curled around Blimp’s neck, crushing it. That’s how big it was. Freakish big and freakish strong. Blimp’s struggles were about as useful as a kitten’s.

People are born with two heads. Extra arms and legs. So, why not this?
Sure!
my mind screamed.
Anything is possible.

It stood upright, about two metres tall. While the upper half of its body was a woman’s, below the waist, it had the haunches and legs of an enormous goat. And its head ... yellow, slit-pupiled eyes stared out of a goat’s head the size of a bull’s skull. There was a brutal intelligence in those eyes — savage glee, an hysterical sort of amusement. It made sure it had caught my eye and slowly it tightened its arm around Blimp’s neck.

I turned away, burying my head into Lula sweaty hair. I heard Blimp’s squeal become something else, something impossible to listen to and ever forget. I never heard a worse sound, I swear it, than the shrill scream of that poor horse as Shub-Niggurath’s grip tightened. I heard the snap of bones — Blimp’s neck, breaking as easily as a chicken’s. Then a terrible quiet. Maybe the chanting had stopped, or that hideous scream, severed so abruptly, had swallowed all sound. I whispered into Lula’s hair. “What’s the price, Lula? What does Shub-Niggurath want?”

Lula was crying quietly, her hands knotted in Shade’s mane, the knuckles white.

“The Great Mother only asks for what you love most. Eight seconds, Mum. Those precious eight seconds you live for, the most important thing in your life. That’s what she wants. That’s her price.” Then Lula twisted her head and looked at me, and there was something smoldering in her eyes, something that made my guts churn. Maybe it was hatred, all mixed up with resentment and confusion and despair. Maybe I saw love there, too, or maybe I just needed to.

I slid off Shade like I had a thousand times before, grabbing the coiled whip on the pommel, and forced the reins into Lula’s limp hands.

You can’t let yourself think,
This is the last time I will do this, or see this, or touch this.
You can’t think like that when you’re a rough rider, climbing on the Devil’s back, when you feel the heat of his fury rising up through your leathers. There’s only one thing you say to yourself:
Eight seconds.
That’s all it takes. Stay on for eight seconds and you win.

“You go, girl. Shade knows the way.” I spoke calmly, as if everything was going to be just fine, and I stroked Shade’s silky mane. It felt as beautiful as life under my fingers.

“Mum?” Suddenly, her voice was thin, a little girl’s voice, a little girl waking from a bad dream.

“Go, girl. Get out of here. I just — I just want you to know ... I couldn’t change what I was.” I guess it was an explanation of sorts, or maybe an apology, if a person could apologize for being born what they were.

I whacked Shade on the rump before Lula could reply and he shot across that arena like a bullet. I didn’t look at Lula. Lula — my
daughter
. The word had a strange feel in my mouth, like the taste of a life I would never know. Maybe I was getting soft, easier to break on the inside. I knew I wouldn’t be able to look at her and then have the courage to walk across the arena to the monster waiting for me.

As Shade galloped towards the path out of the cul-de-sac, Shub-Niggurath threw back her head and wailed. Inhuman as the sound was, I recognized in it the anguish of loss. For a terrified moment, I sensed the creature was poised to leap after Lula, so I unfurled the whip and sent it snapping outwards with a crack like the sound of thunder. It was a challenge that couldn’t be ignored.

Shub-Niggurath turned back to face me with promised violence in every line of her hideous form and the chanting of her worshippers became frenzied, thick as blood — a victory chant.

I hope I walked across that arena like I owned it. I know I managed not to look away from the creature’s goat eyes, though it was like staring into a furnace. You don’t crawl whimpering to your death, not when you’re a rough rider.

Ever played a hand of poker with the Devil, knowing that if you could keep the game going for eight seconds, just eight seconds, you’d beat the bastard and then you’d get to be a god for a day?

I have. Not a lot of people can say that. But the day comes, sooner or later, when the Devil has the winning hand. There’s a legend that says a rough rider can tell when his time is up by looking into the eye of the beast. You hit the dust and you know you won’t be getting up again. Today was my day. I saw my end in Shub-Niggurath’s eyes.

But eight seconds is enough time to get out of Hell, for a girl on a good horse. And that’s good enough for me.

THE EYE OF JUNO

Eugenie Mora

SEALED WITH WAX
and scribbled in spidery script, the General’s letter commanded us to
come swiftly, before I kill her.

In the exaggerated language of the Roman elites, I understood this to mean,
My wife will not do as I ask
, but my master insisted on heeding the summons.

Thick, icy rains greeted our journey. In the Doctor’s sneeze, I heard the indignation he would keep silent until he could expend it in violence, presumably upon my back.

“You said this was the road,” he accused.

The cadences of his Roman brogue were as familiar to me as the perfume of rain-soaked Caledonia. “It is. Do you not see the fort?”

The Doctor made a shelf of his hand and squinted into the bleak night. “Don’t see anything.”

I pointed. “Where the oaks are. See how the tree line slants?”

A hundred miles south, stone pillars rose out of the dirt like mountains. Lit torches burned nightly beneath wooden roofs, a beacon and a warning both. There was no such gleam here. Emperor Severus had lent his name to the sod wall that girdled Rome’s influence far into the Briton north, but there was little of glory in these ramparts.

We approached the fort in silence. Engatius did not enjoy being shown up by anyone, let alone a slave girl. He nudged his horse to a trot as soon as he glimpsed the first man-made structure — a row of wooden hovels leaning drunkenly upon each other — and pranced on ahead. Saddlebags weighted with wine and food slapped against the flanks of his white mount.

A garrison had been dispatched here in the warm summer months, when days were long and game plentiful. It was spring now and as best I could tell, the legionnaires had not finished erecting the
vicus
, nor bounded the stables with more than a few rickety planks. The granary was a squat stone enclosure, waist-high, lacking a roof.

I would have thought my understanding of our destination wrong, were it not for the two watchtowers overlooking the sod wall, or the
praetorium
between them.

Engatius dismounted into a puddle. In Calleva, where Engatius had purchased me, roads were paved and awnings shaded the doorways of the poorest homes. We would have been hard-pressed to skulk to the door of a villa without some servant to intercept us.

Here, the Doctor rapped his knuckles against the wooden door three times before there was the slightest inkling of human life.

“Who’re you?” A soldier’s silhouette filled the gap. His uniform had seen better days. Dark patches pocked the bronze plate and his woolen tunic was torn at the sleeve. Although he towered over Engatius, the grip he held on the hilt of his sword was that of a frightened recruit.

I wondered which of the North’s many dangers could instil such dread in a grown man.

“Marcus Engatius, physician and friend to your general. Is … he not here?”

One of the horses whinnied.

The soldier’s gaze locked onto mine. Contempt was the prevailing Roman sentiment for my people, but I saw surprise in the legionnaire’s eyes, as though he could not fathom what might bring a plainly Pictish woman back to her ancestral home.

“May we come in?” Engatius entreated, shivering at our host. “We’ve been riding with the rain for days.”

That broke the soldier’s fascination with me. He welcomed the Doctor inside and directed me to the stables.

As soon as the door swung shut, I led the horses around the villa and freed them of their saddlebags behind a small shed. A wooden plank kept the worst of the rain from their heads. Damp scrub grass would do to feed them.

I wanted the animals near. Something about this thick, oppressive night made me both anxious and excited. This was the closest I’d come to the Highlands since I was a girl. I could all but smell the pine and heather.

Inside the villa, a different scent pervaded — that of corruption and death.

Calleva had accustomed me to scores of slaves bustling in and out of kitchens, baths and bedchambers. Their absence spiked my pulse. I took stock of the foursome of soldiers in the atrium and felt their eyes creep down my body with equal circumspection.

Just as I gathered my courage to ask where I might find my master, Engatius’ voice echoed through the silent villa.

“Seonag, I need you!”

Relief washed over me. I tracked the Doctor’s inimitable timbre through the
tablinum
with its carved writing tables and padded stools. The courtyard beyond it was striated with the shadow of sandstone colonnades, yet the fish ponds reflected only darkness, a faint flicker of movement trapped in the shimmering pools.

Weighted down with our saddlebags, I shambled awkwardly across the tile floor, momentum carrying me past the bedchamber door before I could ask permission.