Free Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan Page B

wavering, over-sized way. Something hung from its underside, some dark spindlyness, some bright metal.
    Slowly, behind the rock, and with his eyes on the floating head, Diammid pulled the glass open to its full length.
    ‘Ooh,’ said Razor. Diammid could hardly hear him. ‘I’m not so sure about that now. With this one.’
    ‘Just to see that body, the nature of it.’ Slowly Diammid raised the glass to his eye.
    ‘Mmph.’ Razor shifted uneasily.
    ‘Phaugh, you should see this, Razor!’ Diammid whispered. ‘It’s just like us, only all streakly and straggly. Weird. Like dangling iron. But – what’s that on its back?’ He took his eye from the glass and checked, then put it back.
    ‘I wouldn’t be looking through that,’ whispered Razor. ‘I don’t know—’
    ‘Why, it’s a shield! Great long thing. And his swords! See how they flash, their curved blades? – Ooh, you should see the hilts of them. And he’s got knives at his waist, and an axe, and— What are those beady things hanging from his belt—’
    ‘Sh! Put it down, Master,’ Razor hissed. ‘He’s coming clearer. I’m sure you can see him just as well with your own eye now.’
    Diammid took down the glass and scowled into the Vale. The hero had paused in a clearing, about to plunge into a part of the Vale where the trees grew taller than himself. His heavy head turned and nodded, choosing the way. The head moved first and the slender body swung and drifted after it, brandishing its swords.
    Diammid put the glass to his eye again. ‘I just want to see—’
    ‘Master, I wouldn’t.’
    The hero’s head swivelled dozily towards them.
    ‘Oh, look at the earring! It’s—’
    Diammid’s eager voice switched off, as suddenly as if by electricity. Diammid was gone from beside Razor. The red leather spy-glass hung where he had held it. Comb-marks streaked the air where he had stood. Swirls at the other end showed the force with which he had been sucked through.
    The glass dropped, clink-tap-clink, and rolled, and lay. Smoke wisped out at the top; a trickle of molten orange glass ran out the bottom, and pooled on the rock.

    ‘Psst! Anderson!’ said the coat-rack.
    ‘What?’ Diammid stared. ‘Who’s that?’
    A coat kicked out with a thin bruised leg, and now he saw the eye in the shadows. ‘Rickets?’
    The boy hung there like a hunchback by the collar of his blazer. ‘Can you get me down, Anderson?’
    ‘Yes, but they’ll—But I’ll—Is it Bully has done this, or Teasdale?’
    ‘Just for a piss, Anderson, and then you can hang me up again. Please. I’m busting . It won’t take a minute.’
    ‘Oh, all right.’ And he lifted the boy down and waited there nervously. It took more than a minute, but eventually Rickets came hurrying into sight. ‘Quickly! I can hear them coming back from Gym!’
    And it was accomplished.
    ‘Thanks, Anderson.’ Rickets pulled the coats around himself. ‘I owe you. Go away, now – you’d best not be found here.’
    Diammid went, trying to shake off the scrape of Rickets’ boot against his shin, the imprint of his bony hip as he lifted him down, the pale face with the watery greenish eyes, the smell of drains about the boy.

    Bells rang above Diammid. His eyes would not open.
    It seemed to him that he had only just been born. A great amber eye had brought him into being. He had started as a hot line on the air, then suddenly, violently been plumped into shape and thrown down on this grass. And now he was a dense honeycomb of pain, his every cell outlined with fire.
    The hero’s towering shadow darkened Diammid’s eyelids. The black mist came and went. When it was there, it furred everything – sound and taste and skin – like iron filings on a magnet. It made the bells at the hero’s waist clank and clack; when it cleared they rang sweet and properly metal.

    Diammid’s cheerful voice chimed across the supper table.
    Where they come from, they come from other worlds. Where they go,