The Canals Of Anguilar / Legacy Read online

  Volume 5: Issue 5

  Lee Battersby & Amanda O'Callaghan

  Imprint

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “The Canals of Anguilar” Copyright © 2013 by Lee Battesrby

  “Legacy” Copyright © 2013 by Amanda O'Callaghan

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

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  This project has received financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

  And support from the Queensland Writers' Centre

  Editorial

  Kate Eltham

  One of the things that’s both a pleasure and a frustration of compiling a volume of short fiction for RAF is the awareness of just how many good writers Australia has. Even though I could fill ten volumes with wonderful stories, this particular volume was never going to be complete without a contribution from Lee Battersby.

  If you have even a passing familiarity with the genre of speculative fiction and the myriad anthologies and literary journals publishing it around the world, you’ve likely come across West Australian Lee Battersby before. And that’s because, with more than sixty short stories and two novels published—The Corpse-Rat King (2012) and Marching Dead (2013)—he’s one of the most prolific speculative fiction authors we have.

  In the best traditions of Poe and Dickens, Lee Battersby’s work tends to the dark and macabre, always with a touch of the wry or comedic. And like Pratchett, his stories have a strong sense of the ‘everyman’ which often finds its expression in the minor characters we normally relegate to supporting roles—the battler, the foot soldier, the petty criminal, the thief, the priest; characters who find themselves thrust into the ill-fitting role of hero or anti-hero, through whose eyes we are better equipped to understand the absurdity and wonder of the worlds Lee creates for them.

  In “The Canals of Anguilar” it is the printer’s apprentice who comes to grips with the guilt of past deeds that, no matter how far we go to escape them, drag at us like an anchor.

  Paired with Lee Battersby in this issue is the stellar emerging talent Amanda O’Callaghan. I became aware of Amanda’s fiction through a short story course she attended at Queensland Writers Centre in 2012. Her clever and confident prose immediately asserted itself and since I knew her stories would all soon find homes in publication, I was determined to nab one of them for the Review of Australian Fiction. Keep an eye out for her name in magazines and journals, you’re bound to see it more frequently in years to come.

  Both the stories in this issue deal in some way with the idea of legacy, of the past wrongs and tragedies that haunt us and guide our future choices. Amanda’s bittersweet story “Legacy” deals not just with the relics of our own experiences and decisions but the heritage of our parents’ and grandparents’ as well.

  Enjoy.

  * * *

  Kate Eltham

  Director, Brisbane Writers’ Festival

  @kate_eltham

  The Canals of Anguilar

  Lee Battersby

  We met in the Hall of Lost Bastards, a dingy little tavern in a forgotten quadrant of Budapest so shitty that not a single tourist had bothered wandering down to be mugged in well over a decade. Truth be told, few locals slouched past the grimy windows either. Every major city has a corner so dark, so disused and cobweb-strewn, that the collective psyche simply shrugs and gives up on it. The Hall of Lost Bastards, unloved and unremembered, was the perfect home for the miserable jetsam who washed in through its doors.

  We were cowards, every one. All of us running from something we dared not discuss, most of us running so hard and for so long that we had forgotten what it was we were fleeing. After a while, only the act of running itself holds any meaning.

  We came from any number of time periods; from wars that encompassed the sword, the stone axe, the gun, the thought-flash, the peeler; from countries that no longer existed, and worlds that were millennia from being discovered. Our colour ranged from white, brown, olive, to shades that only existed in a paint chart, and we were covered in scales, feathers, skin, or materials so exotic they barely had a name. None of it mattered. We were beyond such simple distinctions. We were all kin, of a type—no matter whether Viking, Atlantean, Scottish, Ionian, we wore the uniform scowl of the hunted, the shameful squint that came from knowing that no man could see our true nature and call us friend. In that bar, in that city, in that empty, unmeasurable time, it was enough. You had to be a certain type of weakling to find your way to the Hall of Lost Bastards. The hint was in the name. And each of us fit within its walls like we belonged there, because by the time we found it, we truly did.

  I had stuck to my booth for over a month before the thickness of the crowd pushed company into the bench opposite. Even amongst cowards, there was a space around me, a silent shield of wretchedness and failure that kept eyes averted, and conversation a stranger. But courage ebbs and flows like any other wave, and the population of the bar followed suit. A particularly high swell of fear filled the room with bodies, and my isolation was broken. Without wishing it, without even knowing what to do with them, I had companions.

  We sullenly appraised each other: a half-dozen guarded faces, hunched into shoulders like overprotective gargoyles, not one of us daring to look the other straight in the face. Eyes hooded, mouths set into thin, pursed lines, our hands gripping tankards of varying size and contents like they were life-preservers. I would not utter the first word. It was my space that had been invaded, my sanctuary that had been breached. I would not give up the final refuge of silence. In the end it was a bald giant in furs, crammed into the booth like a grizzly in a hole, who spoke first.

  ‘Agnar,’ he said, eyeing us as if breaking the quiet might destroy some sort of compact between us. When none of us reacted he licked his lips and tried again. ‘Son of Aki.’

  ‘Vikinger.’ The speaker was blue, clawed, a denizen of some time or space I did not recognise. The big bear nodded, warily.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Blue nodded. ‘Det. Third Brotherhood.’

  ‘Little Bear.’ A short, wide man with olive skin and eyes that barely seemed to open to take us all in.

  Next to him, a ghost-white fellow with burn scars that ran down one side of his face from his missing eyebrow to the collar he kept tightly buttoned despite the cloying heat. He licked his lips, glanced at us with a guilty squint. ‘Thomas,’ he slurred, and dove back into his tankard.

  And then we were all making introductions, cautiously, like whipped dogs sniffing each other’s arses, ready to bolt at the first sign of a raised hand. It was not until the woman slid in to the final space next to me that we ceased to be a group of cornered deserters and became a company.

  ‘So what do we do?’ she asked without preamble, staring at us in turn with quick pecks of her head. We said nothing, not one of us with the courage to answer her challenge. I kept my eyes pinned to the scarred tabletop. It had been too long since I had been in close proximity to a woman. She barely looked at me, just glanced long enough to size me up and deem me as worthless. After that she delivered her words to the group at large. I was included only because I was hemmed in by bodies. But at least I was included.

  Her name was Fastny. It didn’t take long to make a decision, once she was amongst us, needling, pushing, refusing to allow us to sink into the complacency that large groups of men, united by a common urge to drunkenness and forgetting, will resort to at a whim. We had no plan, no desire, until she arrived. But fear of her scorn replaced all our separate terrors, and with her nipping at our heels it was only a matter of time before someone mentioned Anguilar.

  Anguilar, city of the green walls: more canals than Ven
ice or Tellifluour, so remote that only a journey of seven deserts can take you there. It is not a destination. It is the very reason a journey is undertaken, a place so alone that of all those who set out to find it, less than a third ever get there. Where the others end up, nobody knows: the residents do not speak of them, and arrivals are too relieved to think about it.

  Thomas snorted. ‘Bullshit.’ He was already most of the way to drunk. His burn scars glowed unhealthily pink and glassy in the flickering light of the tavern. ‘No such place.’

  ‘It’s there.’ Det flexed his claws, and clenched them back into a fist.

  ‘How do you know?’ Thomas wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The rest of us looked away. Even amongst such craven company, he stood out. He was a sloppy coward, a man who covered his worthlessness with bravado and noise. At least the rest of us knew what we were and accepted it. We did not wish to attract attention. ‘Is just a myth, innit? Load of bullshit.’

  Det stared at him for long seconds, the muscles of his blue jaw working, rippling in ways that seemed barely human. ‘Then don’t come,’ he said, eventually, and just like that, it was decided. One final run, to a city at the far edge of all things, a final bolt hole in which we could hide forever. Why not?

  A dozen of us set out, yes, including Thomas. A band of deserters, fleeing from wars right across the sphere and the sight of our own eyes in the mirror. We had horses, and supplies enough to get us through, and we carried a map that gave us the when and where of it. Fastny had procured it somehow, from amongst the secret men who lurked deep in the shadows of the House of Lost Bastards. Nobody knew if they were cowards so deeply lost in their shame they could not bring themselves to leave, or something worse that none of us wished to contemplate. But Fastny dove into those shadows and emerged with what we needed, and we lacked the courage to ask how. We simply accepted the providence and provisioned ourselves accordingly.

  There were seven deserts between us and Anguilar. Not all were made of sand and heat, but all would be desolate, and dangerous, and all had developed a taste for man.

  We lost our first companion early, not even halfway across the Sahara. Marrakesh was our destination, or rather, a spot just outside the walls of the city where the air shimmered in a pattern unlike anything around it. A soul who entered that patch of soft air, carrying just the right amount of desperation and need, might emerge in a different time, in a different place, and be one desert closer to their goal. That was what we had been told, and had staked our future upon the knowledge. We could have flown. Perhaps we should have. But certain things must be done in certain ways. Flying would have been too quick. Too little of our desperation and fear would spice the air around us. It needed the heat, and our sweat, and hunger on the edge of starvation, to fuel our escape. So we rode, and walked, and gave ourselves over to self-hatred and struggle. The journey would cull the weaklings from our herd.

  We were an hour from nightfall, in a place between nowhere and nowhere else, with no recognisable landmark to be seen, and only the still sky for company. The heat was beginning to eat itself in preparation for the vicious cold of the night, and we had quickly learned to seek out low ground between dunes, where some pocket of warmth might remain for an hour or two longer than on the exposed peaks. We found firm footing on a dry creek bed surrounded by mountainous drifts, and looked about for solid foundation upon which to raise our tents. Thomas was complaining, as he had done since we began our journey. The others ignored him, pushing past him to strip canvasses and bedrolls from the animals. The night was as still as an echo. I pulled a hex block from my pack, and signalled to Fastny that I was going to light our little camp stove. She nodded back, her pale face half-hidden beneath swathes of cloth. The night seemed to pause, to become even more still than it already was.

  Then the wind was upon us, slashing through our clothes with a billion microscopic glass shards. In an instant I lost sight of Fastny, of everyone, as a wall of sand reared up between us and attacked. The hex block was torn out of my hands and I screamed as the flesh of my arm was thrashed by the hateful air. We were all screaming, diving for cover behind our horses, I hoped, as I was doing with mine, pulling him down to lie on the writhing floor, and wedging myself as hard as I could into the tiny gap between his spine and the ground, turning my exposed face inwards and trusting the layers of my clothing to provide protection. The wind howled around us, screaming banshee screams of rage as it tore the packs from the animals’ backs and scattered them across the gully, ruining food, shredding canvasses. I held the reins to my chest, hung on and prayed that my horse would simply die, lie still, and save me. Still the screaming wind rose, and rose, and...

  Just as quickly as it had arrived the mistral was gone. I rolled away from my horse, and came to my hands and knees, spitting sand and blood, trying to clear my eyes so I could see. Dimly I made out others, finding their feet, and flapping small beaches out of their clothes. I staggered upright. People were calling, checking off names and ordering each other to look for equipment, and survivors. I added my call to the tumult, and flicked at the reins still in my hand. My horse reared up, and shook itself. I patted his neck and led him about as we tried in vain to locate our missing saddle pack.

  It was a quarter of an hour before we realised that we were one horse short, and a companion with it.

  ‘Stides!’ Beulah, an old woman with a spiderweb of scars across her face and milk-white eyes, ran from companion to companion, shouting into our faces. ‘Where’s Stides?’

  A frenzied search found nothing. It was as if the sand had simply opened up and eaten him whole. It was Little Bear who eventually glanced up at the tops of the dunes around us, and nudged Jean-Paul next to him.

  ‘Look.’

  We followed his finger, noticing nothing. Understanding nothing.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  He stared at us, then back at the ridges. ‘They haven’t moved.’

  ‘What?’ Thomas leaned against his horse, spitting sand and blood down at his feet. ‘How do you even know that? Course they’ve bloody moved. They’re sand, ain’t they? It was a sand storm.’ But nobody believed him, and, not accepting him, we were forced to believe Little Bear.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked. Little Bear frowned.

  ‘Perhaps the wind didn’t reach them.’

  ‘What are you saying? That the storm just blew up around us?’

  Little Bear said nothing. But we were already spooked. That night we slept above the dunes, those of us who could sleep at all, and in the morning we made for Marrakesh at a canter, and dove through the gap between the worlds like fish escaping the grasp of a net.

  We lost companions at a regular rate: not so many or so quickly that we panicked and abandoned our quest, but enough that we were constantly one wrong word or careless action away from fighting amongst ourselves; one slip from winnowing our numbers by another abandoned soul. We lost Radi amongst the rocks of the third desert: he fell behind the group as we threaded our way through an outcrop of thin boulders and disappeared, and we didn’t need fifteen minutes to realise because there was nowhere for him to go, and yet he still wasn’t there. Leonid fell amongst snowdrifts and did not rise. And just before we crested the final rise of the final desert, and plunged through the last shimmering tear in the world, Beulah stepped on a stone pad that wobbled, and cracked, and plunged her down a crevasse into oblivion.

  Eight of us had survived to stand on a fern-swathed bluff and stare down in wonder at the green walls of our mythical, impossible destination. Good odds and a high enough number that we chose not to jinx ourselves: we raced for the city gates at a sprint, barely pausing to take in the fields of moss that gave the walls their colour, the sweltering humidity that clothed the surrounding valley in layers of ferns and wide-leaved plants, the indifferent stares of the resident caitiffs whose skin already matched the grey and green tinge of the stones around them. We scattered as soon as our feet touched cobbles, barely glancing at e
ach other as we staggered down boulevards that were old when the world we knew was still a mewling child, running fingers across stones that had known more generations of contact than Mecca, falling to our knees to drink deep from fountains that spilled water from the bowels of a dozen worlds. The closer we came to the centre of the city, the slower we scampered, until we stood in an uncertain circle in the midst of a great, green piazza, bumped by the unheeding crowd that pushed past, and we stared at each other in sudden fear of the unknown that had us trapped.

  ‘What do we do now?’ someone asked. Nobody answered. Nobody had thought beyond arrival. The destination was all. Now that we were here, where there was no more running, nowhere to run to, we were finally, irrevocably lost. We had spent too long trying to survive a series of todays. We didn’t know what to do when faced with the possibility of living in tomorrow.

  Fastny drove us forward. Always Fastny.

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing to a small eatery on the far side of the square, three windows covered by an awning with a scattering of half-occupied tables underneath. We had no money they would accept, but the owner knew where we could sell our horses, and gave us the names of a few cheap flophouses down by the more sluggish, rancid canals. A customer at one of the tables was looking for a couple of strong men to join a work gang chopping firewood up in the rainforests above the City. Agnar and Det caught his eye, and they sat with him while they listened to his terms. Thomas left to look for a bar. Det and Fastny shared another of the glances they had been giving each other most of our journey, and wandered away without a backwards glance. And I was struck by the sudden urge to be alone, away from faces that had grown too familiar. I wished to rid myself of my horse, my few remaining packs, and the mementoes of my former life.

  So we began the slow, painless process of assimilation, and the even less painful process of turning our backs upon each other. We eagerly disappeared into boltholes across the City, comforted by the knowledge that the only people who might wish to reach out and touch us were too afraid to do so, and pretended that this isolation was what we had really wanted from our flight.