Willow Pattern Read online
Table of Contents
24HB Online
How This Book Was Made
Here Today - Angela Slatter
Cloudburst - Steven Amsterdam
Mandala - P.M. Newton
Exquisite Corpse - Krissy Kneen
A Strange Way to Catch Barramundi - Geoff Lemon
Gifted - Simon Groth
Uninterrupted Study - Christopher Currie
Aftermath - Nick Earls
Dark Tides - Rjurik Davidson
Willow Pattern. Copyright © 2012 by individual authors.
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This ebook was produced with http://pressbooks.com.
24HB Online
This book can also be read online at http://24hb.pressbooks.com
How This Book Was Made
9 writers
On 11 June 2012, if:book Australia challenged a team of writers and editors to collaborate, write, and publish a book in a single 24-hour period.
24 hours
At midday, nine writers gathered at the State Library of Queensland and began writing furiously. Their stories were written live on the day, with work in progress posted online to allow readers to watch the story unfold and to submit ideas, suggestions and contributions across media. As the stories were completed, a team of bleary-eyed editors took the text from manuscript to a book.
1 book
On the 12 June (at midday of course), the finished book was published in both digital and print editions. This is that book. We hope you like it.
Why a 24-Hour Book anyway?
Our pithy reasons for doing a 24-Hour Book are ‘because we can’ and ‘because it’ll be fun’. As slight as that sounds, in most cases that was enough to convince some of Australia’s best writers to get involved. The project was an experiment, an exploration of how the digital process informs and influences collaborative writing and editing in a combination of face-to-face and screen-to-screen. Three collaborations took place: author to author, author to editor, and book to audience. Work in progress was made accessible on the web, the audience able to see the work unfolding on screen and interact with it via comments.
Alongside the digital and print editions of the final text, we also have a complete record of the book’s creation, from the first word of the first draft to the final edit before publication. We hope to be able to mine this data for more detail, exploring how many ways a book’s ‘data set’ can be represented.
Collaboration and data is really at the centre of the project (the timeframe being just a convenient way to get both). Digital and online writing tools are, at heart, collaborative tools. Every blogging platform is built to handle multiple authors and editors (our tech for the project is based on a blogging tool). Although collaborative writing is the driving force of other media like film, it’s relatively rare in narrative fiction. I suspect writers are far more gregarious than popular perception would have you believe. Writers love working together and bouncing ideas off each other, and this is the kind of atmosphere we hoped to generate. I think we did.
In this case, the digital environment was merely a system to help us navigate a more traditional idea of collaboration: writers physically together and discussing their stories. Where digital really comes into its own is the ability for collaboration to go much, much wider. Opening the text up as it unfolds allows us to seek feedback on the fly. Sure, we’ll have no filter and no idea whether such feedback will be constructive or even welcome, but hey that’s the web for you. Digital writing is expected to be flexible: bloggers respond to their readers, readers expect to be heard and acknowledged. Why should we be any different just because we’re writing in a different form?
So, what’s the result? Were we successful in this crazy all-night experiment?
That’s probably up to you to decide. We’re too tired to make the call right now. But if you’re holding this book in your hands or eyeballing it on a screen, that’s a good start.
Bonus points if the current time is 12:01 pm on 12th June 2012.
Here Today - Angela Slatter
One, two, three, four.
Beat, two, three, four.
A dirty beat, a lazy beat, a beat to settle itself beneath your skin and wriggle around for a while. The homeless guy beneath the spreading jacaranda was smacking out the rhythm on a homemade drum—an ice-cream bucket, family-sized. Vanilla.
I’d been watching for two hours, almost. Listening just as long. Hadn’t been watching the homeless guy, though I’ll admit I’d given him a glance. Decided he wasn’t quite right, then turned away. There were a lot of not-quite-right things going on, however, he wasn’t one of the ones on my list. If he wasn’t making trouble—the drumming was quite soothing—then I wasn’t going to poke around.
Meanwhile, back to the watching. I’d been staring at a space above the Brisbane River as it churned by, displaying all its forty-eight shades of brown. I couldn’t help but notice that the rapidly thinning banks were restless with animals that usually stayed in the water: frogs, toads, fish, some snakes. All looking as distinctly unhappy as such critters are able. They didn’t want to stay in their element. Something was coming and they knew it.
But it wasn’t the river I was supposed to be paying attention to and I had to remind myself of that every so often. Raise my eyes not quite skyward, just up until I could see the fracture in the hot-blue air. Not really noticeable, unless you knew what to look for. It had the vague purple blush of a healed-over scar, in fact, as if it was no longer active, no longer a threat. Like someone pretending they hadn’t produced an especially fetid burp and then taken a few steps away as if to say, It wasn’t me.
I’d have had a better view if I’d gone into the library, sat quietly in the weird viewing platform that is the Red Box, but sitting and waiting for two hours requires coffee and cigarettes. Coffee, I could smuggle in, but it’s the getting of the coffee that’s fraught—if you’re lucky, you get the good baristas, if you’re not you get the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of beverage-making. I figured my odds weren’t good.
And the cigarettes, well, speaks for itself. Next to me was a tiny mountain of butts, each with a faint imprint of pinkish lip gloss around them, as if they’d had a kiss before dying. Now all I could smell was smoke from the Alpines—which tasted a bit like chewing a car freshener made from pine needles and tobacco—and my mouth was not happy with me. Smoking was a recent affectation and I wasn’t good at it—the nicotine tended to do a tarantella under my epidermis—but it seemed like the fastest way to lose the extra kilos that had been making my relationship with my jeans combative. Me, I like fast solutions. Hey, I didn’t say it was a smart solution.
Over the bridge, in the city streets, sand was piling up. Not so you’d notice immediately, but it was definitely there. Every morning it got washed down the gutters by the street cleaners as they hummed and bustled their way through the skew-whiff checkerboard of Brisbane, down into the sewers and then into the steadily-rising river. But eventually there would be too much, too much to sweep under the carpet, so to speak. Too much to ignore. The city was shifting, shrugging, struggling with what was happening to it, but no one was really paying attention. Like most big inconvenient events, there were always warning signs and always people to pretend there weren’t. Always people to shriek in the aftermath about the things we didn’t see coming. I wondered what else was on its way.
Whatever it was, apocalypse big or small, Armageddon or not, life still went on. The place still breathed and so did we—we existed, we moved, we rose and went to work, came home, ate, hug
ged our children, and went to sleep. Stuff still needed doing, lost items needed to be found, cases that confounded the cops still needed to be investigated by someone. And yours truly still needed to pay the bills.
The click of heels got my attention although it took me a moment to locate the source. Long legs, muscular and sun-bronzed, feet jammed into a pair of shoes that probably cost more than my entire outfit. Who am I kidding? More than my entire wardrobe. I’m not a fashionista—basically, clothes are just there to cover the horrible nakeds as far as I’m concerned—but I could certainly appreciate the footwear and the way it didn’t clash with the soft folds of the equally expensive dress, a triumph in golds and greens and smoky blues. There was a handbag to match the shoes—if I owned a handbag like that I’d have to live in it to justify the cost. I looked up and took in the face: all sheer angles, blonde shoulder-length hair, make-up applied so perfectly that you almost didn’t know it was there. The woman gave me a smile as she breezed past, her perfume wafting along on the wind and blood-warm air. On its heels was a stink of decay, regurgitated up from the river, I thought. I breathed shallowly for a while.
My natural low-level jealousy was tempered by the knowledge that I would never have the energy required to go into that level of personal maintenance. Or the money. I didn’t begrudge her and she was a bright relief on an otherwise bankrupt kind of a day.
The rhythm of the drumming had picked up and I pitched a glance towards the homeless guy. Nope, nothing happening there, just a burst of enthusiasm for the tune. He shook his head from side to side, a dog distracted by nothing in particular, the shredded scarf he’d wrapped around his bearded face flapped gaily like ribbons on a maypole. His lips had curved into a slight smile and his eyes were closed. Yep, transported.
‘Fassbinder, I’m fairly sure,’ came a clipped voice, ‘that you’re not supposed to be here.’
‘I’m a member of the public,’ I said evenly. ‘This is the State Library, belonging to the people of the state. I’m one of them. Until I get a repo notice, I’ll continue to visit as and when I please.’
She was young, Sammi Bernhoff, new to her position of authority and she hadn’t quite worked out how to deal with people like me. I wasn’t going to make it easy on her. To be fair, she’d been very new at her job a few months back and had witnessed an incident in which I was involved; books were damaged, people were slightly singed and the tea cup collection on the Queensland Terrace was irreparably, errr, diminished. Back in the old days, librarians had been able to turn evildoers to ash with a single glare. Apparently no one was left to teach the new ones the knack. Bernhoff tried for a good few seconds to get the upper hand, but it was never going to work—an old school book ninja would have kicked my arse in the blink of an eye. Amateurs.
I looked upwards to the Terrace, imagining I could see one of the few pieces of porcelain that had survived my activities, a large vase, willow pattern blue and white. Once upon a time, it was as ubiquitous as steak knives in Australian households; now the leftovers of Nanna’s crockery were as scarce as hen’s teeth. I suspected if the vase hadn’t remained intact, I might not have made it out of the library alive.
An added complication: we’d dated the same guy at the same time. The relationship didn’t stick, but the animosity did.
Sammi did something with her mouth that in a three year old would definitely be a pout, but in a twenty-something just looked pathetic, and leaned against the wall I was sitting on. Fidgeting with her security pass, she looked at me sideways. Her hands, on the pass, used its sharp edge to clean the dark moons of dirt from underneath her nails.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Detecting. It’s what I do.’
‘Person or thing?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Dead or alive?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Well, what do you know? I’m trying to be helpful.’
I blew out a breath. ‘Sorry, that’s just such a new thing, I’m not sure how to react.’
She swore and pushed herself off the wall, made to stomp away. I put out a hand, gave her forearm a light touch and she stopped. I couldn’t quite bring myself to apologise—not my forté, so I just told her straight, about the scar in the sky, the changes in the city, about the rising river, the call from the cop who’s a little dirty, a little useless, and the disappearing families. I told her I was looking for clues and I was coming up empty.
‘Whole families?’ she asked and I nodded.
‘Except one—kid was away for a couple of weeks over the holidays. Came home to an empty house.’ I’d spoken with the girl but she had nothing to offer, so whatever happened had been done after she’d left home.
‘Nothing’s been found?’
I shook my head, then lifted my chin towards the break above the water.
‘But someone saw the rupture, saw it tear and saw something tumble through. Something gleaming and fast and formless that bolted out of sight very quickly.’
‘Who reported it?’
‘Came up in the daily dispatches, some drunk got moved along by the cops while he rambled and ranted about this light, star in the east, et cetera. No one worried about it until the disappearance came up—five families that they know of so far. Your friend and mine, Detective Constable Burleigh decided there might be a link—it was beyond his ken, but someone should do something about it.’
‘You’re on his speed dial?’
‘I don’t imagine much Burleigh does involves speed, but yeah. He’s caught up in this little girl lost case and, I’m quoting, “Doesn’t have time for this weird fricking shit.”’ I thought about sparking up another cigarette but decided I was already sufficiently twitchy. ‘And look at you, all interested in the super-unnatural.’
‘You think you’re the only one noticing oddities? You think freaky shit isn’t happening here?’ She cast a look up at the library’s strange bulk, then leaned over to whisper, ‘The books are moving.’
‘For serious?’
‘And they’re changing. The text—it’s shifting. This morning I found chunks of Pride and Prejudice in Patrick White’s The Vivisector.’ She shook her head. ‘I just don’t know what to do about them.’
Privately I thought the change could only improve White’s work, but kept that to myself. Bernhoff was being helpful and I should try really hard not to alienate her, at least at the moment. I pulled out my wallet and flipped through the collection of cardboard slips, then handed over a sepia-toned one. The librarian took it as if it might bite.
‘Maybe they can help.’
‘“The Library of Lost Books”,’ she read out, eyebrows shooting up so high they disappeared into her hairline.
‘Sometimes they can . . . fix things. Find books, reset books that have gone out of whack, make others a bit more . . . fluid in their contents. Tell Sukie I sent you.’ I stood, resisted the urge to knead my backside, which had gone to sleep during my watch. ‘Good luck with it.’
‘Your problem? Go to the Security Office—they’ll have the tapes from around the library. Tell them I sent you.’ She winced a bit at that. ‘You might pick up something there. Probably not.’
‘But maybe. Thanks.’
***
If it hadn’t been for the coffee I wouldn’t have seen it.
I’d watched the tape five times, seen the flash and split of the rent in the air, seen the silvery birthing tumble and streak away along the river bank until it disappeared under the boardwalk, heading in the direction of South Bank. I reached out to hit replay yet again, caught the side of the coffee cup and almost sent it over. I managed to save the situation with only minimal brown splodges on the desk and keyboard. And looking down, trying to mop up, I caught sight of her in the lower right-hand corner of the monitor. A flicker of a red dress passing, not hers, and then the face.
Lucy Faith Armistead, the girl who came back to nothing.
The little girl, all alone.
I checked the da
te stamp on the screen—just over two weeks ago, the day before she went to camp. She was just in shot, walking along, her face turned towards the river, just before the flash. Smiling at someone just out of sight—family member? Someone else?
At any rate, I needed to talk to her again.
***
Lucy’s aunt answered the door.
We’d met the last time I spoke to her niece and she didn’t seem to mind letting me in. In fact, she did it so unquestioningly that little cold fingers touched my neck and darted down my back. I shook them off, tried for a name. Anna. Anna Armistead, Lucy’s father’s sister. Her eyes were underscored with dark circles. Ordinary loss hits people hard enough, but the kind of eldritch loss she’d suffered . . . well, recovery wasn’t easy and took a long time. The little girl would never see her parents or three siblings again. There might not be time enough in the world for her.
‘Lucy’s out the back, playing,’ she offered. ‘The police woman’s there too.’
Police woman?
‘I need to talk to her again. I’m really sorry—I know you’re trying to help her forget and move on.’ And I was sorry—I’d been through enough myself to know that forgetting was an unlikely balm. ‘I need to ask her about the day she went to the library.’
Anna blinked, nodded. ‘They went there the day before she left for camp. They always did family stuff before anyone went away. Just in case . . . ’
‘Has she said anything? Remembered anything?’
She shook her head. ‘She just wakes up crying in the middle of the night.’
I gently pushed past her, uncertain what to say, and made my way along the carpeted hallway that opened up into a kitchen, which then spilled out onto a wide back deck. I walked to the edge of the deck, leaned against the rail and peered down into the yard, picking out the bright green and yellow swing set—too new, screaming of trying too hard to be cheerful.