Free Black Juice by Margo Lanagan

alive, in peace.’
    ‘Did you pay?’ said Dot, feeling sinful. He wasn’t supposed to be curious about money—none of the Bard’s people were.
    ‘I paid all we had, and all Morri had, and all Morri’s brother Temba had, who died in the same skirmish.’
    ‘Was that a lot?’ whispered Dot, feeling a little sick.
    Bonneh went back to grinding, one eyebrow raised. ‘I suppose,’ she said carelessly. He knew she was hoping he would let it lie, but when she next looked up he was still there waiting.
    ‘Well, my peach … on one side there was the money, and Morri’s … associates, bothering for it all the time. On the other side? Some distance, safety, my two babies, and beingleft alone. You know I hardly saw your babyhood, with the maids? You remember?’
    Dot shook his head. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere, and watch her hands in their work.
    ‘My father was a merchant, wasn’t he? Did you learn from him to make deals?’
    ‘My whole family were merchants and dealers. Like the Bard says, we were the core of the world’s troubles.’ She flashed him another smile. ‘We fuelled all the evil.’
    ‘But you
repudiated
that,’ said Dot, also bringing out some Bard-speak, but earnestly.
    ‘Well, I put it aside, let’s say. I was very bitter, after what happened to Morri.’ She pointed with her chin. ‘Move your sister now. That sunlight is starting to bother her.’
    Dot went to the other end of Ardent and pulled the cloth she lay on until her face was in shadow again. That word
skirmish
—for a long time Dot had thought it was some kind of party, with cakes and other immoral things.
    His friend Winsome tried not to laugh the day he mentioned that. ‘No, it’s a war thing,’ she said. ‘Like a tiny bit of war. Just a quick guns-going-off and then everyone runs away. Except, of course, the ones that gets killed.’
    ‘But guns go off at parties.’ Dot was momentarily confused; he’d had the cakes-and-colours picture in his mind for so long. ‘People shoot them in the air. I thought maybe the thing bounced off a ceiling or a wall and hit him. The bullet.’
    Winsome shook her head. She had the kindest look on her face. ‘Out on a road somewhere, it would have been,’ she said. ‘The truck goes past, and the men with the guns fire from behind a rock, or a building or something.’
    Dot had looked down through the Free-Stones game they’d been playing, making over his memory with this new information.
    ‘Something like that,’ said Winsome. She was anxious for him.
    He gave a sage, Bard-like nod. ‘It’s your throw,’ he said, to move them both on from their embarrassment.
     
    D OT’S SISTER , A RDENT , had got spoiled somehow, and never grew properly. She was even darker than Dot and Bonneh, and she was all elbows and knees. She was like a folding chair that was stuck halfway between open and closed. She could move her right arm a little; if you put things in that hand, she would appear to play with them. Her left elbow poked straight out in front; that hand was a claw at her right ear. Her eyes looked outward in different directions, and sometimes only one, sometimes neither, was able to fix on things.
    Ardent could lie on her left side only, or be carried around in a bag. Bonneh carried her on her back most of the time while she worked during the daylight, or put her under a shade tree nearby. Ardent had to hear voices all the time; her mother’s was best, but Dot’s would do at a pinch. If you weregoing to be quiet, you had to let Ardent know you were still there, lean against her or put your hand on her pointed foot, or she would start to jerk and stress.
     
    ‘M Y MOTHER SINGS A NNEH ,’ said Dot, as the Bard got up and lifted the House back to its shelf. ‘A lot of the mothers do.’
    ‘And the fathers sing Robbreh,’ said the Bard with satisfaction.
    ‘Sometimes the mothers go as low as that, too,’ said Dot. ‘Or they beat an