Free Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan Page A

face.

    Who will vouch for this boy Rickets? For this worm? For this weed?
    Bully Raglan rowed and boxed and played rugby. He and all his lads were big, stuffed tight with muscles, excepting Arthur Septimus, who was tiny and weaselly and did all Bully’s listening and spying. Bully strutted about in the quad, ridiculous in his short pants and braces. Diammid wondered at how such a big baby-looking boy could make the whole quad-ful of boys stiffen and stink with fear.
    Teasdale and his boys were up on the hall balcony, jostling and egging Bully on.
    Rickets was white and his eyes were lowered; there was a spot of pee on the front of his shorts from when Bully Raglan had grabbed him so suddenly out of the huddle of new Preps.
    What happens if no one vouches for him? whispered a Prep behind Diammid.
    He will destroy him, is what Hopper says.
    What, beat him up?
    Well, that too.
    No one? cried Bully. Rickets is alone in the world? Rickets is entirely without protection? He smirked. And such a fine figure of a man, too. Shall we see just how fine? he called up to Teasdale’s lads.
    Show us his haunches! they cried out. Show us his scrawny chest!
    They won’t, will they? Diammid thought unhappily. They won’t take off his clothes?
    Rickets slowly raised his face, the face of a boy who was always smallest and palest and most picked-upon. Diammid saw not only that they would strip Rickets and worse, but that Rickets knew they would, knew and was already resigned, so resigned he was almost saintly with it, sagging in his captors’ arms, reading his future in Bully’s bully eyes.

    Razor touched Diammid’s elbow. He was staring, caught in mid-chew, towards the far rim of the Vale.
    Diammid swallowed; a big lump of fritter went down unappreciated. Here it was, then, the sight he’d come to see, the tale he’d come to fetch and take back to Grammar and widen the fellows’ eyes, and quieten Teasdale a minute.
    Copper and emerald brightened in a high part of the forest thick with mist, almost boiling with it. Then the mist passed, and the copper gleamed, and the emerald turned and flashed, and there was some shape to the thing.
    ‘Is that the head?’ Diammid muttered. ‘That whole thing’s the head? But how far away . . .’
    ‘Arr, gawd,’ said Razor through fritter. ‘Always when I bring you Grammar lads. I come by myself and all I see is elefumps or horned horses that stray out and wander and stray back. But that’s a full hero, that one. The real thing. Oh, my.’
    ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
    ‘Might be good, if we keep very, very still. Might just look about a bit and pass on. That’s what Mr Ark’s and Mr Chauncey’s did. Set them against each other summink terrible, but it didn’t do aught itself.’
    In shape and solidity the head was like a cauldron, or maybe a boat, a high-sided coracle. It looked as if it were made of iron, iron covered with a coppery skin. Its thin, shiny black hair was tied behind; one ear was clear for a moment, intricate, with coppery gleams inside. Diammid didn’t want to look at the face. He turned his own face away, but his eyes would keep on looking. The hero’s nose and mouth were small and delicate, almost pretty. But the eyes above the great broad cheeks, sitting on the cheekbones like plates propped on a mantel, were wide and indistinct. The grey irises slid and jittered, shrank and swelled on the vast, wet whites.
    ‘Euh,’ said Diammid.
    Razor’s hand touched his arm again behind the rock. ‘Nought sudden,’ he murmured, and resumed chewing very slowly.
    The hero moved, from the upper right of their view down through the trees towards the middle of the Vale.
    ‘Is it just a head, floating?’ said Diammid.
    Razor swallowed. His voice came much clearer, but much quieter. ‘There’s a body. Watch. Where there’s less mist.’
    The head coasted down the hillside, closing its eyes and pushing its face through branches, or looking from side to side in a slow,