The Bone People (68 page)

luminous days when the paintings grew like music under her brushes, and it was apt and fitting to go this

way, to end the stupidity, decaying piece by piece.

The nights were full of the musk of gorse.

It is calm outside tonight, no wind, frost, bright stars. I have lit the fire.

There is a constant rustling... moths, fluttering, flattening, giddying at the window. For now, we are

uninhabited by Mothon, goblin spirit of drunkenness and bestiality.

A sober night, straitly joyful is looked forward to. For some deep mystery has decreed the momentary

relaxation of battle. The canker is there, but not omnipresent. I no longer feel drained by its growth. Drawing

breath for the next round? Maybe. And yet... despite this truce, I am bothered. For all the calm stillness, a

despair pulls at me from beyond the doorway. An alien despair.

It seems unfair that on this rare eve of peace, something other than my own revolting condition should

interpose itself.

Try the guitar... I could get to love this badly varnished parody. For it gives me back music, music to match

the images in my mind, to draw them out and make a realm of exultant leaping joy.

Something calls in the dark beyond and I must fret strings until I can answer it.

Let the door creak open. For this moment, I need the cold sweep of air over my skin.

There are trees, like dim stagmen on that shadowed hill, caught and frozen by the over-riding moon. The

ground is uneasy under the frost. I feel it mourning. So back to the fire.

It's dying slowly. Whole areas of ash and then sudden blazing flare, one high arm of flame aloft, unfurled. A

sap reservoir, amber and sizzling, that lasts for minutes of sparking fire.

A moth has come in.

Furry, and horned like a foreign owl.

E, silvergrey fleeting-feelered moth messenger of night, who cries out there?

It leaves my finger and flies heavily away. It is a gravid female, plump banded body ripe with eggs, O lay my

loverly, lay--

I keep hearing someone walking.

The feet have a rustly echo echo that sounds about my dreaming... the moth brushes past and the tickle

persists, itching my nose... there is no-one here, just feathered air--

But who is it?

I can feel that despair out there, closer now, crouched and solitary. Let me in, it whimpers.

I am minded of that night in Whangaroa, at the pub with Joe, and that voice beat against my heartboards. I

am minded of the in his silent darkness.

But I can no longer share even my thoughts with them. I am too near my death.

And why must I be bothered by the ills of the world at this late time?

Ah berloody hell, pass me the whisky bottle, self, and down drown the whole berloody sickness.

Shitworld, I leave thee in thy chamber.

Without even prayers.

Seventhly

For most of the third week, she lay unmoving in bed.

Reduced to unsteady crawling, she shitted outside, but only just.

Part blind, and the world growing dimmer daily, she no longer painted.

The dead fire stayed cold. She no longer ate.

She didn't endure pain any more either, but swallowed whisky and hallucinogen water that stood in the billy

by her bunk.

"Every pig to its trough," huskily one daynight, before lapsing back into slurred horrifying confusions of dreams.

Something screamed.

Simon stands, with strange crooked eyes. His lips are corroded with small slots of ulcers. A worm writhes out

of his mouth. Hi! he gurgles, I'm clear. He dissolves into sanies.

Something screamed.

Rich red ash on the ledge of the fire. There are bones under it. They begin to inch forward, wriggling like

maggots. She prods them back, but there is a suffocating weight on her chest and she falls under it. She

recognises the weight as a head, Joe's head, his black hair curling dreamily round the sawn bloody edge of his

neck.

Something screams.

Her family stand with bird spears, laughing and chattering, and poke at her in the pit. Fat bubbles break

around her ears, cracking with rich shit voices that sneer You? You? You? She calls to her mother, her

brothers, Help me out! her sister, Give me a hand! but the bone tips of the spears pierce as they push her

under.

Something screams.

The seagull cry, the world wound.

God!

It's not the gullcry that perturbs me but all the waves falling on the sand....

in the quiet, the dream sea resounds like a wind, crying round the hills.

Eighthly

I feel obscurely wet.

It is very very cold.

That little toadstool over there, the one with the pale grey cap? Look at the perfection of its gills... see?

Delicate, shadowed, full of subtle silent life... it tastes watery. In fact, it doesn't taste damnall.

There are little pearls all over this grass!

More toadstools over there.

Come on, c'mon, no need to cram. They grow in circles, you can get plenty if you crawl right limberly.

Somehow I can't get warm. I feel cold to my very bones.

But I haven't got bones now. They're fired, dissolved, earth to earth again.

"But if I had bones mister, I did say if, what would they show in the cold? The skeletal leftover... and she was rough flesh, blunt and gentle and silver-refined. Above all, she was incredibly incurably sense-able. To all

modes, declensions, conduits and canticles of feeling -- she would never, could never, stop being conscious.

And thinking of herself. Her gift and her burden. Not bones."

"What do you love?"

"Seriously, my only lonely love, what do I love?"

(Dreamily smothering the drops of frozen pearls over her body.)

"Hey you! You really want to know?"

"Yes."

"What do I love?" musing on it.

"Very little. The earth. The stars. The sea. Cool classical guitar. Throbbing flamenco. Any colour under the

sun or hidden deep in the breast of my mother Earth. Ah Papa my love, what joys do you yet conceal? And

storms... and the thunderous breaking surf. And the farout silent waves... and o, dolphins and whales! The

singing people, my sisters in the sea... and anything that displays gentle courage, steadfast love. The still

brilliance of garnet, all wine, water of life and bread of heaven and grave shimmering moon--"

"Yes -- can you stand?"

"Sure, anything. Whoops! Those pearl things are berloody slippery y'know."

Chanting,

"Rain jetting, whirl of gut, cut and shielding skin, let me in, let me in, o it's me, Kerewin --"

Steady on her feet, bare arms spread, stopped in surprise, "but not me alone. He's the bright sun in the eastern sky, and he's the moon's bridegroom at night, and me, I'm the link and life between them. We're chance we

three, we're the beginning free."

She sighs.

"It don't make sense but it's the only sense, and o lady of the southern land, dear dear to me are my loves."

"Yes. That is good."

Of a sudden, crystal distilled clarity. A small dark person, all etched sharp. She blinks and it splinters. "I can't see you any mind more." She murmurs it sleepily.

"You will." "I have just discovered," says Kerewin. And fell.

Life is lonely.

Foe we all are,

one apart from the other.

There is a time, when passing through a light, that you walk in your own shadow.

Lastly

All fall down. But gone on up. A funny feeling. Light as a balloon, light as a cloud. She raises herself easily

on an elbow, floating upright, and looks toward the fireplace, and there, poking through the ashes, is a thin

wiry person of indeterminate age.

Of indeterminate sex. Of indeterminate race.

Browned and lined, and swathed in layers of old blanket weathered and sundyed. Silver hair. Silver

eyebrows. A massive burnscar for half a face, with mouth and eyebrows wreaked and twisted by pink keloid

tissue.

Watery eyes. Snaggle teeth.

It says, coming over and bending in by the bunk,

"You can understand now?"

The whispery hoarse voice has no accent: a flat papery enunciation of words.

"Kkkik," says Kerewin, meaning Yes.

Her mouth and throat are webbed with mucus, strings of it, thick and partly dried.

She swallows, but it isn't much better.

The odd head vanishes.

"It doesn't contain your, hur, additives."

She takes the profferred cup with a shaking hand. It takes seconds to steady her hand, more to bring the cup

to her mouth. She drinks deeply-A

sour brew. Red currant juice? Here? After she drains the cup she holds it out.

"Thank you."

Questions are swivelling round her like small green bats. She is half-inclined to swat some of them.

"That's okay." It takes the cup carefully. "I'll be going now."

"Who are you though? I owe you sanity, if not life, I think."

"O, you'll live long enough," it answers. "And your mind would have straightened, you're lovestrong enough.

I just cleaned up a bit." The snaggletooth grin. "My name wouldn't mean anything, now or later. You're an

artist by the look of things. I saw your sketches. And your writings. So paint me down, write me down.

That'll mean something."

It pulls the blanket wrappers closer, and glides towards the door.

"There isn't any debt of gratitude. I didn't really do anything."

It chuckles, a croupy bubbling wet-level version of. its speaking voice.

"See you round," and vanishes into the misty outside.

She drifts back to lie down in the sleeping bag again.

Her body is a fined down version of itself, but itself alone.

The thing that had blocked her gut and sucked her vitality is gone.

A growing fire of joy flares through her as she sinks into sleep.

it

It's a dismaying face, encompassed in a pocket mirror. Thin and rigid under layers of peeling skin. Panning

the mirror down, migod whatta sight. Wizened dirty skin.

The great muscles gather and stretch under my foul hide, feeling a way out. Slack belly... folds of flab, but

better than deadly mounds... and breasts dangling, not in the natural aging curve though. All the fat flesh has

melted and left bare gland in a flap of skin.

"A bit close to the skeletal for comfort, my soul."

And,

"Hell, this place stinks." Sniffing again. "Correction. I stink. Like an old fart or stale stale."

Away with the mirror and the horrid scrutiny, and arrange a spring clean. Even though it's getting on for

summer.

Bless the dear little soul. As well as cleaning up the shit, it's filled the tank. And stop calling it 'it': yer got yer one great invention,

remember Holmes? The neuter personal pronoun; ve/ver/vis, I am not his, vis/ve/ver, nor am I for her,

ver/vis/ve, a pronoun for me, (slopping another tin of water out ready).

She boils the water and scrubs herself down while the stones heat,

mess tin of hot to. billy of cold, nice lukewarm blend to which we added schloop, a dash of disinfectant and

generous amounts of soap--

By the time she's clean, the stones are ready, not hangi-hot but hot enough. She piles armloads of manuka on

them, and then pours a bucket of water over the pile at a time, while she stands on the springy bed.

The steam is hot and aromatic.

An illusion, dear heart, but it feels like all my individual pores are unplugging and gulping it in. And what

they're sweating out is nobody's business,

rubbing herself down with a cloth and sweating on gleefully.

Can you get drunk on manuka steam? O pungent o resinous o beautiful plant, none of your tender buds which

died today died in vain--

stepping away from the steampit, relaxed to the point where she feels boneless.

Flopping down on her spring cleaned bed and bag in naked ease, looking round the doubly spring cleaned hut

through half-closed eyes.

The clothes hang drying by the fire, the fire is loaded with wood: they'll dry while I snooze... Jesus holy, I

musta been far far gone, I've never got into such slack filthiness in all my years... beating my denims down

on the rocks and all kinds of debris floating free with the suds. Part drying them on the bushes... they'll be

steeped in the scent of gorse and me in manuka, and I look kinda twiggy, mistaken for ambulant scrub when

seen wandering by--

She wakes with a start, peering into the red eyes of the coals... who said that?

Haere mai! Nau mai! Haere mai!

an earthdeep bass, a sonorous rolling call that reverberates still in my gut. Getting up cautiously, her skin

feeling pleasantly tight and new, sniffing the plant-sweet air.

No-one's here? No-one living could have that voice anyway--

She shakes her head, and stretches her thin body until the useless muscle crack and all the misaligned

vertebrae pop into place. A sudden tide of wellbeing floods through her, a fierce joy at being alive.

And she is hungry enough to eat anything on legs or off 'em . . . there's a pound of oatmeal in the cupboard,

some honey; two bottles Of whisky; a covered jug -- the creature must have left that -- it lives somewhere

near? -- the sour red juice is from currants; skim milk and potato flakes, and that's all? That's all, unless you

count the dried moth or two and a curled bunch of a spider ----

She makes a billy full of porridge, and devours it and its syrup Of milk and honey, and surprises herself by

making and eating a second, a third.

Satiated; stretched now, in front of the rebuilt fire. Full of new wiry strength and gentle energy, and

determined not to wreck it ... she drinks a whisky in civilised measure, and in between sips, practises scales