When Dark Roots Hunt, page 1
WHEN DARK ROOTS HUNT
WHEN DARK ROOTS HUNT
ZENA SHAPTER
First published 2023 by MidnightSun Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 3647, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, Australia.
www.midnightsunpublishing.com
Copyright © Zena Shapter 2023
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers (including, but not restricted to, Google and Amazon), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of MidnightSun Publishing.
Cover design by Abby Stout
Internal design by Zena Shapter
Typeset in Book Antiqua, Orator and Linotype.
Printed and bound in Australia by McPherson’s. The papers used by MidnightSun in the manufacture of this book are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well managed forests.
Because trying is all anyone can do.
CHAPTER 1
No matter how gently I unlatch our cabin door and ease it open, it’s always too loud; especially when I’m the only one awake in our soundless sleeping village. Ancient hinges groan, then give a final creak so sharp they could sever the antennae off a water-ant across the lake. My father’s sleep-breathing shifts, lightens. I wince and stop moving. The mudskipper bag in my hand swings.
My furry black pointer Spyke sniffs at it. Fresh mudskippers. He bucks at the scent, then looks up at me with knowing: this isn’t another practice. He snaps his long downy snout around to assess my father, slowly raising two of his six leg-spikes to the door frame. Is he preparing to tap? To wake Father?
I place my hand on his rear, just before his bushy green-feathered tail, and give him a tap of my own. When he faces me, I shake my head and mouth a firm ‘no’. In the moonlight, I know he can see my face.
He huffs loudly, his only way of making sound.
But Father was up as late as anyone last night. Too tired to be roused, he rolls over and drops back into his dreaming. Thank keei. May everyone’s sleep be as solid tonight.
I usher Spyke outside, close the door and steal through a crisp motionless air, sneaking barefoot along stilted boardwalks, salty lakewater rippling underneath. Rhythmic and steady, they mask our passage with a dark lullaby, curling around the village’s lakeside shadows, serenading us with a half-hearted promise that, as long as I slink under open windows in wyann-wood walls, as long as Spyke taps gently over boardwalk connections and doesn’t jump or skip, no one will hear us. A quiet blanket of night will wrap itself around us, weighted with a familiarity that whispers: everything is going to be alright. I have a good idea, the only idea, and everything will be alright.
A lacklustre gust threatens to disagree, limping its tired warning through a nearby keei-scale wind-chime, tinkling to tell me, ‘go home, Sala’; because who am I to think I know better than elected councillors? I shouldn’t even care, given no one else does.
As we near Aten’s cabin, I check the sky. A bright gibbous moon amid a neverending darkness. No more comet. No more…
My foot catches on something and sends me falling across the boardwalk, across someone. I thud painfully to my knees. My mudskipper bag spills, scattering the crunchy morsels across planks and into the water.
‘Sala?’ mumbles a familiar voice.
I push aside the wiry dry hair falling about my face as a dark ragged curtain.
Aten unfolds his arms and pushes himself upright. His usually smiling ruddy face seems glum in the shadows. With his back against his cabin and legs across the boardwalk, it looks like he drank too much dag last night and fell asleep out here. But Aten wouldn’t do that, which leaves only one other reason he’s here.
I free my foot from under his thigh and use his frame for balance as I crawl across him. My hands find firmer muscles than I expect in his arms and chest. All the heavy lifting he’s been doing for the clinic has clearly bulked him out. Not that I’m going to tell him I’ve noticed. Aten doesn’t need that kind of encouragement from me. ‘What are you doing out here?’ I ask casually.
‘What am I?’ He rubs his eyes of sleep, then leans out of the shadows. His tufty white-blond hair gleams in a moonbeam. ‘I knew you’d try something tonight.’
He knows me so well. ‘So you’re here to help?’
He tuts like the answer is obvious.
I smile as a warmth lifts me in its arms and gives me a hug. If Aten believes in me, I must be doing the right thing. I straighten out my shorts and the oversized hoodie I wear everywhere in Itta, tie my hair into a rough ponytail. ‘Does anyone else suspect?’
‘You mean did I tell anyone? Of course not, Sala.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumble with a smile, then loosen my bag’s drawstring, feel along the boards to find what mudskippers I can and stuff them back inside. ‘Truly, this is incredible, Aten.’ I hope he can hear the gratitude in my voice. ‘I mean, I know we’re best friends and all, but this is above and beyond.’
Spyke taps onto Aten’s lap, nuzzles into him.
Still groggy, Aten gives him a head scratch. ‘So you’re really on your way to the lake? What about the water-ants? Just one ant sees you, and the entire colony will scout our side. They’ll find Itta, they’ll attack us.’
‘Nah, they’ll never risk the ivy. They’re too scared of all that.’ I gesture at the immense ivy-clad perimeter fence that hides our village from the lake, and at the cracked brown barrel-sized shell of a water-ant carcass just visible above its upper trellises – one of the many humongous dead ants we keep staked outside the fence as warnings.
‘So now you’re a trainee engineer and water-ant behaviourist?’
‘Oh come on – all our solar panels, all our heat lamps, and the ants never even come close.’ I crawl along the boardwalk to reach the furthest fallen mudskippers. ‘One touch of ivy and they’re dead. Don’t worry, I’ve thought it all through.’
‘And what about you, Sala?’ His voice catches with emotion. ‘One slash from an ant’s jaw mandibles and you’re dead. If you’re not paralysed by the venom, you’ll be dead at the next slash. Some have mandibles the size of scythes.’
I tut. He needn’t worry so much. My plan is a solid one. ‘It’ll be fine, Aten – ants sleep until dawn, and I’ll be back before then. We’ll be back. I mean, there’s not much for you to do out there, given I’ll be doing all the diving and milking. But you can keep watch with Spyke, and it’ll just be nice having you there. Oh, I know, you can be my witness! When we get back, you can tell the council how easy it all was.’ I find a mudskipper in the shadows by Aten’s cabin wall, search around for more.
‘You want me to talk to the council. Okay, Spyke, off now.’ Aten nudges Spyke until he leaps off and around him.
‘Well, realistically, they should have done this years ago. Can’t they see how empty our fishery vats are?’
‘Oh they see, Sala. And if they don’t, your father tells them. And if they still don’t, then you tell them. Our solar panels are degrading too fast,’ he mimics my serious voice. ‘Soon there won’t be enough power for heat lamps. Our breeding pairs are growing infertile quicker each season. Hunters return with less and less eggs every day.’
‘All too true for comfort unfortunately. Milking adult keei fish on the lake – whose glands actually benefit from milking – it’s the only way.’ With no more mudskippers to retrieve, I tighten my bag and turn to face him.
Aten’s head is bowed, he’s staring at the water and tensing his neck as he does when trying to calm himself. ‘I don’t think you understand, Sala – I’m not coming with you.’
‘Okay,’ I say slowly, trying to make sense of him. ‘Then stay here, cover for me if anyone notices I’m gone? Stronger than a wyann spine you may be, but the lake isn’t for everyone.’
‘Did that comet last night melt your brain?’ His words stab like starved wyann roots. ‘You know it wasn’t an omen, right? A passing rock of ice, an unusual orange tint in its tail, that’s all.’
‘Of course I know that.’ I frown. What is he saying? ‘Ittans use any excuse to drink Lowry’s delicious sweet tomato dag in the Angle. But everyone up late means everyone solid asleep tonight – so the perfect time for this.’
‘Councillor Lowry told you the council would see to it.’ He narrows his eyes like I’ve just murdered his family’s pointer.
Whatever’s going on with Aten right now, I don’t like it. I stand and beckon Spyke to my side. ‘The council said the same last year too, Aten. They say the same every year. But my father can’t keep working the hours he does to keep everything running – he’ll fall sick again.’
Aten stands to tower over me. ‘Everyone appreciates your father’s efforts, Sala, but we don’t need more keei oil. We milk plenty right here.’
‘No, we used to milk plenty. There’ll be no juveniles left if we keep squeezing them to death.’
‘Death takes two or three milkings at least. No one else in Itta wants anything changed.’
I shake my head, backing away. ‘Change is coming whether Itta wants it or not. We need to be ready for it.’ I thought Aten knew that. ‘But you’re just like the rest of them. In denial.’ I shiver from the cold of it.
‘And you’re infuriating! Wh
‘Because when something needs fixing, we either do it ourselves or leave it for someone else. Are you that someone else?’
He huffs like he’s losing patience. ‘I can’t let you go.’
‘You can’t let me?’ I chuckle, because he has to be joking.
He crosses his arms in answer, flexing. He’s not joking.
‘And you expect me to respond to that? Have you even met me? You’re being a sludge.’ I don’t know what else to say, so just turn away.
Aten moves as if to grab my arm, then thinks better of it.
I snatch myself out of reach and glare at him.
Spyke stiffens at my sudden movement.
‘Good boy, Spyke. Because that comet last night clearly melted someone’s brain – someone who’s forgotten you’re a cross-breed. Not only the best watcher-pointer in Itta, but with hunter-pointer leg-spikes – so scaly and sharp-tipped no wyann would ever smell you tapping through their roots, and no creature would stand a chance if you jabbed at them to protect me.’
‘Spyke wouldn’t hurt me,’ Aten scoffs. ‘He’s known me his whole life.’
‘As have I – yet here we are. Spyke,’ I command, ‘protect.’
Spyke immediately leaps between us, turns on Aten; then hesitates, his tail drooping like limp ivy, reluctant.
‘Spyke,’ I repeat, ‘protect.’
This time he raises his two front leg-spikes at Aten, firmly planting his other four.
‘You know,’ I tell Aten as I move away, ‘you could have come with me. If you were that worried about my nefarious plans, you could have helped. But now, if you call out, or follow me, Spyke will attack you.’
‘Oh come on, boy, you know me.’ Aten reaches to touch the pointed tips of Spyke’s scaly front legs, presses to lower them.
Spyke jabs him away.
‘Go back to bed, Aten. Pretend you never saw me – for your sake as well as mine. If people think you keep secrets for that annoying Sala girl, your patients won’t trust you anymore, and Kerrin won’t be able to graduate you from the clinic. Itta needs more medics. Spyke, stay. I’ll be back before dawn.’ I turn and jog towards the juvenile keeiling ponds on the village’s outskirts, our ivy perimeter rising beyond them. How dare Aten be like this! Friends support each other, see their truth and value it.
At least he’s given me something I didn’t have before: resolve.
A sudden gust claps along the perimeter’s exterior, clacking twigs together, clattering as water-ants do when hunting.
I check all around me.
No one and nothing is there.
Good. Hopefully Aten’s listened. Rethought. I weave around the outer keeiling ponds.
At the perimeter, I find the boxed-out gap in the ivy where my dinghy bobs, hidden in Itta’s northern flax field. Its antique wooden hull groans as I step into it, sling my bag into its dark stern, untie the mooring line, and… jump out of my sink-slop skin when Spyke pokes his snout through the ivy gap.
He taps the dinghy rim with a front leg-spike.
‘Aten?’
Spyke points his snout over a shoulder.
There’s no one behind him. Wherever Aten is, he’s not here.
‘Come on then.’ I lift Spyke in. His coarse musky fur tickles my nose. Now we’re both out of sight, I take off my hoodie. It’ll be easier to swim in just shorts and a top.
Spyke settles himself on top of my mudskipper bag, tucking in his leg-spikes and curling his tail feathers into a neat pillow. He likes to sit on squishy things.
‘It’s time, Spyke. We’ll prove them all wrong, my best friend included.’ If I can still call Aten that. We’ve had arguments before, but none like this.
I untie my mooring line, then heave quickly on the oars.
With the first few row pulls, my oar paddles stick in the thick tufts of coarse yellow flax blocking our glide. But beyond the floating boom that protects Itta from the lake’s surface oils, every stretch and pull casts us further away, slips us deeper into dark empty air, away from Itta, away from Aten and all his sloppy reasons arguing against clear-sky common sense.
CHAPTER 2
Ripples swell as I row across the dark lake, its cavernous night waters deepening. Salty breezes gather speed. The constant whirring of Itta’s solar inverters fades.
‘Aten has sludge for brains,’ I mutter, the quiet of open space swallowing the sound. ‘Not wanting things to change – ha! Things already have.’ I let the frustration of it fuel my speed. I had wanted to be in the lake’s centre by now. ‘Itta’s sloppy councillors aren’t even the real enemy.’
As if hearing me, the four colossal hillfarms of Wrion, Tuglow, Summerhill and Frond soar into shape behind and along from Itta, dominating the entire south-eastern lakeside with their immense angular forms. Straight-edged and sky-high, their hulks loom above the surrounding wyann swamps, distinct against a delicate drift of stars lighting the southern night sky. The violet glow of overnight oil fires purple each hillfarm’s top, hinting at where Tillars live in homesteads, or where fields of crops grow or livestock graze – so many families and farms to each lofty community.
During the day, the ivy that swathes the sides of these and every hillfarm – thick green leaves with bright orange blossoms – reflects colourfully on the lake’s bright blue waters. But at night, the hillfarms are dark and foreboding. Faint lines dangle off their sides and disappear among the wyann, merely suggesting where hanging bridges might connect them, though the bridges are wide enough for solar karts to buzz along. How superior Tillars must feel living up there. Dominating the skyline. Dominating all of us.
‘Look at them up there, dirt-high Tillars. They’ll leave Itta falling behind as soon as they can find a way. Liars, each and every one of them. No one ‘stumbles’ on new technology. Relics can’t be ‘replaced’. They know exactly what they’re doing up there, developing new tech and keeping it all secret. Why can’t Aten see that?’
At the sound of Aten’s name, Spyke surveys Itta’s lakeside. Finding no movement, he closes his eyes – just like Aten, choosing not to see.
‘Well, I see it. I saw how many dead fish we scooped out the keeiling ponds the other day. Father almost cried, counting off so many.’
The memory gives my rowing a renewed focus, picturing each lifeless keeiling curled up in their deaths and glistening like coloured berries.
Push and pull. Push and pull.
Finally, we near the lake’s centre.
‘Okay, this is it, Spyke. Watch for fins. Tails. Big ones.’
Spyke’s breathing deepens. Sleeping.
He may as well, for now. The ants are asleep. We’re too far from shore for any wyann trees to be a danger. And if Aten has gone to tell anyone about me, it’s too late – I’m already here.
I raise my oars and lower my eyes to the water-skin, watching as I have since I was young. ‘Do you remember,’ I murmur to Spyke, ‘when we used to look for keei together, watching through the ivy for the slightest sign. You were just a pup…’
Spyke tilts floppy black ears towards my voice. Dreaming?
I give him a pat, just as I used to when we were younger and he’d sit with me on Itta’s boardwalks, peering for hours through boxed-out ivy gaps. He’d always spot the keei first, tapping the boards then pointing to show me. A magnificent dorsal fin, carving up the water. A rainbow-scaled tail, flipping to dive down. Scales of so many colours. And always in pairs. Mum had left us by then, but never the keei – they’d swim out on the lake every few hours, rain or sun.
They’ll swim here soon too. I’ll see the sunrise in good time. And I’ll show Aten just how much of a sludge he is. I grip the dinghy’s rim, watch and listen.
Nothing.
Maybe my rowing scared any keei away?
Our slipstream fades.
We drift. And I wait.
I wait and wait; but thanks to Aten, soon there’s no more time for waiting. I reach under Spyke, pull out a handful of mudskippers and sprinkle them into the empty water either side of the dinghy. They plonk with an echo in the hollow pre-dawn air.
‘Where are they, Spyke?’ I whisper, sprinkling more.
