Black Juice by Margo Lanagan Read Free Book Online Page B

the town’s edge. Without pausing, Booroondoon continued on under the moon towards nothing, only parasol trees that cannot be eaten, only a line that had stars above it, dry shadows below. We followed, and the town smells fell behind. Hloorobn, ahead of me, lifted her trunk. I head-bunted her rump, to keep her quiet, and she grunted low in surprise. Then we settled to a strong pace after Booroondoon, rolling our yearning rage out onto the plain.
    Several hours on, we were suddenly among the bones. Heightened as our senses were, we’d not anticipated these. And it is always difficult to move on from such places. Hloorobn, in particular, hung by the remains of her mother,our sister, Gorrlubnu, lifting and turning the bones, urging us to take and turn them also, tipping the great headbone with a thud and a puff of moon-silvered dust.
    Booroondoon went among the bones telling the names once only, touching the heads and leaving us to turn the lesser bones. Then she waited beyond, facing our goal but in all other respects patient, allowing us our youth and rawness and powerful pain, though her own was long ago distilled into wisdom and grace.
    We went on, our thoughts like weighted owdas slowing our steps.
    We walked far that night. Booroondoon said we should go straight out, for an improbable distance that peeple would not follow.
    ‘And if they do?’ said jittery Hloorobn. ‘If they surprise us?’
    ‘What can they do against so many Large?’ said Booroondoon. ‘Cannot herd if we will not listen. Can try, with their spear, but will have to spear us all to stop us.’
    She meant that such a spearing was not likely. But then, their taking Pippit had not been likely, either, yet it happened. In this night of walking in the wild, nothing was certain as it used to be.
    Towards dawn, we found water. There was no town behind us, no town ahead, only grassed plain, and rounded rocks like friends browsing. When we had drunk, we moved straight on, slower for a while to try the wild grass, pulled upsweet and still living. Booroondoon sang no longer, for we did not need to be led by that means now; we had seen our own courage and were rallied and moved and unstoppable.
    So the day passed, and several others like it. There was a night and day of terrible thirst, born of the need to walk a straight line from our starting point. Then we came to a broad, clear river, and we swam it, and stood in the shallows on the far side, and the water was magnificent in our throats, a delight across our backs.
    Late that day, when we had satisfied our thirst and settled the fears arising from it, Booroondoon said, ‘The place we want is not far now.’
    We sensed it, a big, rubbishy restlessness far down-river, a swarming movement in the ground that made our feet unhappy.
    ‘We must go into the midst of that?’ said Gooroloom.
    ‘They will not bring him out to us,’ said our wise mother.
    We walked awhile on the thought.
    Then, ‘I have it,’ said Booroondoon. ‘We will walk into the town as if we were led, so as to calm the little-hearts. We will go in a line, trunk to tail, and with care where the way is narrow. We must move slowly, for our Pippit’s smell may be easily lost among all the others, markets and meateries and skinworks and the like. But if we go graciously and let neither dogs nor peeple fright us—do you hear me, Hloorobn?—if we stay together in our line, we cannot be thwarted.’
    ‘As you say, mother and queen,’ we replied.
    We decided we would go into the town just before day hurried out of night, when the smells and peeple-movements would be less. Until that hour we lurked at a distance, in a bad place—stenchful, with death-birds crowding sky and ground.
    Their headwoman flapped to the top of the rubbish nearest us. ‘Any of youse sick?’ she skrarkled, eyeing us all.
    Hloorobn rumbled too low for her to hear.
    ‘Anyone dropping a baby soon? Youse all look pretty big,’ said the bird hopefully.
    Booroondoon