Free Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan

longer?’
    ‘Last time I stayed an hour, but half of that I was behind this rock, not looking, while Ark and Chauncey went peculiar. I had to whack them in the end, to get them away.’
    ‘I heard that Ark hardly had any nose left.’
    ‘I dint do that. The other boy done that. Fighting like scranny-cats, they were.’
    ‘Is it true, then – they only hurt each other? Nothing else got to them, from down there?’
    ‘Ennink from down there ,’ said Razor, with a bitter smile, ‘the boy wouldn’t be alive, I don’t reckon.’
    It’s not possible, Tregowan had said. I saw Ark. No one the size and make of Thomas Chauncey could do such damage. His ear was torn near right off.
    Diammid hadn’t seen either boy right afterwards; by the time he’d got back from hockey practice Ark was gone to the hospital, all the way to London, and his parents shipped him home from there; Chauncey had been fetched from the school San and kept home six weeks. He had come back cold and quiet and no longer popular, lasted to the end of summer term and then gone away for good.
    Diammid glanced at Razor again. The older boy’s eyes were like pale-grey buttons; his mouth was always pursed as if he were remembering some new thing to worry about. He was one of those people who would go through to old age with barely a change; he would wrinkle up a little and his dull brown hair would go grey, but that would be all. And then he would die. Diammid rarely thought about deaths like Razor’s; he suppressed a shiver, and turned back to the Vale. ‘There are colours,’ he said. ‘Just not strong ones. Just very dim greens and browns, and you have to look for them.’
    ‘They might stren’then, if summink comes,’ said Razor. ‘They tend to.’
    ‘You never properly said what you’ve seen,’ said Diammid.
    ‘Sh,’ said Razor. He had not shifted his gaze from the Vale.
    A peculiar feeling flowed off Diammid’s last words to Razor, You never properly said . . . It hissed off Razor’s Shhhh . . . and it moved across Diammid’s mind like the black mist down there, which had just covered a patch of tree-trunks, tangling with the beardy stuff in the lower branches. Razor is lying, he knew all of a sudden. He’s faking. He’s making it up. He’s never seen anything here. He just —
    Then the mist passed, showing the tree-trunks again, the beards, the white haze of the beard-berries. And Razor’s eyes were steady; they didn’t dart guiltily or anything suspicious. And Razor hadn’t taken the money Diammid had offered him on Wednesday, had just looked at him by the roadside there where accosted and said, Course I’ll take you, if you’re sure. And pushed Diammid’s hand away, with the money in it. No, he’d said . It’s not a thing I do for money.
    Razor turned and saw the stare on Diammid. ‘Have a bite,’ he said. ‘It’s best not to be hungry. But be quiet about it. And keep looking. More eyes the better.’
    Diammid pulled out the cloth full of chicken-fritters, fresh-tuck swapped from a day-boy. He handed one to Razor and bit into another.
    Oh, there was nothing like eating outside; there was nothing like striding away from Grammar and going somewhere one shouldn’t go, and then eating; there was nothing like salty yellow-and-brown fritter full of shredded white meat and glossy green peas; Diammid only just restrained himself from grunting with pleasure as he ate! My heaven, it was good.
    You wouldn’t, Teasdale had sneered across the supper table.
    Would, too, said Diammid – it was easily said.
    You wouldn’t have the bottle. You’re just another spineless tweaker from Roscoe’s dorm, all farts and giggles. His cronies laughed like machine guns, showing half-chewed food.
    Yet here he was, scoffing fritter above Hero Vale. And when Teasdale heard he’d gone, he wouldn’t believe it at first, but then he’d have to – Diammid hoped someone was watching, and could tell him later about the look on Teasdale’s