One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries Read online

  One Small Step

  an anthology of discoveries

  Edited by Tehani Wessely

  One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries

  First published in Australia in 2013

  by FableCroft Publishing

  http://fablecroft.com.au

  This anthology © 2013 FableCroft Publishing

  Cover design by Amanda Rainey

  Design and layout by Tehani Wessely

  Typeset in Sabon MT Pro and Footlight MT Light

  Introduction ©2013 Marianne de Pierres

  Always Greener ©2013 Michelle Marquardt

  By Blood and Incantation ©2013 Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter

  Indigo Gold ©2013 Deborah Biancotti

  Firefly Epilogue ©2013 Jodi Cleghorn

  Daughters of Battendown ©2013 Cat Sparks

  Baby Steps ©2013 Barbara Robson

  Number 73 Glad Avenue ©2013 Suzanne J. Willis

  Shadows ©2013 Kate Gordon

  Original ©2013 Penelope Love

  The Ships of Culwinna ©2013 Thoraiya Dyer

  Cold White Daughter ©2013 Tansy Rayner Roberts

  The Ways of the Wyrding Women ©2013 Rowena Cory Daniells

  Winter’s Heart ©2013 Faith Mudge

  Sand and Seawater ©2013 Joanne Anderton & Rabia Gale

  Ella and the Flame ©2013 Kathleen Jennings

  Morning Star ©2013 D.K. Mok

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred e-tailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (ebk)

  Title: One small step : an anthology of discoveries /

  Tehani Wessely (ed.) ; Thoraiya Dyer ... [et al]

  ISBN: 9780987400000 (pbk.)

  9780987400017 (ebook)

  Subjects: Short stories, Australian.

  Science fiction, Australian.

  Fantasy fiction, Australian.

  Horror stories.

  Dewey Number: A823.01

  The editor gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance given by Marianne de Pierres, Elizabeth Disney, Dirk Flinthart, Amanda Rainey, and the amazing authors — I never cease to be impressed by the depth of talent and professionalism among our Australian authors.

  As always, Tehani would like to thank her ever-enduring husband and children for their patience and support, and for keeping her away from the computer when she should be.

  Contents

  Foreword — Marianne de Pierres

  Always Greener by Michelle Marquardt

  By Blood and Incantation by Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter

  Indigo Gold by Deborah Biancotti

  Firefly Epilogue by Jodi Cleghorn

  Daughters of Battendown by Cat Sparks

  Baby Steps by Barbara Robson

  Number 73 Glad Avenue by Suzanne J. Willis

  Shadows by Kate Gordon

  Original by Penelope Love

  The Ships of Culwinna by Thoraiya Dyer

  Cold White Daughter by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  The Ways of the Wyrding Women by Rowena Cory Daniells

  Winter’s Heart by Faith Mudge

  Sand and Seawater by Joanne Anderton & Rabia Gale

  Ella and the Flame by Kathleen Jennings

  Morning Star by D.K. Mok

  Contributor Biographies

  Also on Kindle from FableCroft Publishing…

  Foreword

  Not so long ago, I attended a seminar on the topic of “Australian Victorian Female Crime Writers”. I was struck by how many there had been, but more importantly, how I had never heard of them. History can be very selective in what it chooses to publicise.

  When invited by Tehani Wessely from Fablecroft Publishing to write this foreword, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to help ensure that the current generation of Australian female genre writers don’t suffer the same anonymity as their Victorian crime-writing sisters.

  Within these covers is a collection of thought-provoking, entertaining and engrossing stories by a crop of talented writers who have earned the right, not only to be read, but to be remembered.

  They have treated the concept of One Small Step imaginatively; between these pages you will find a gamut of speculative genres, from traditional fantasy, horror and science fiction to contemporary slipstream, and the telling of one small step towards either self-determination or self-realisation.

  Reading this collection is like partaking in a strange intense dream that at the same time wonders if it might be real.

  Mostly though, you cannot absorb One Small Step and be left unmoved. These are stories that provoke emotion; tales of prejudice, affliction, resurrection, survival and new beginnings. Each one so different from the last and yet all connected by characters with conviction.

  Enjoy the feast between the covers, and then I urge you to talk to others about it. For it is only in our conversations and stories that we live on. It is in them that our legacy is transferred. It is in them that we make sense of the past, present and future. It is in them that the insights of our notable women storytellers will be recalled.

  Marianne de Pierres

  February 2013

  Always Greener by Michelle Marquardt

  “They’re ugly,” I said, squinting at the aliens over the interweaving mesh of Grass. “Why did they have to put them here?”

  Mark looked at me sideways. It was cramped on our side-by-side squashing boards and we were standing hip against hip, the dense wall of Grass around us. I could feel the calculation in his gaze. He wanted to argue with me, but was unwilling to risk another bout of shouting that would end in tears. I didn’t think that would happen today, but my grief was an unpredictable thing and he was right to be wary of it.

  In the end he just shrugged, reached out with a gloved hand and pushed aside more blades to get a better view. “I don’t think the Council had anywhere else they could put them. The Grass makes a better prison than anything we’ve got in town, and who’d want them there anyway? The truce finishes in four days. One of their ships will come and get them before then. Better that happens out here with nobody about.”

  Nobody except us. I stared at the two figures as they moved slowly over the expanse of open rocky ground. Their three short fat legs inched their massive bodies along, while their varied arms balanced the building material above their tiny swiveling heads. They were pulling apart the last skeletal remains of the hut that had once stood at the highest point of the field, though there was no sign of what they’d done with any of the pieces.

  “They’re stupid too,” I said. “That hut was the only shelter they had. What if we get early snow?”

  Mark didn’t point out that the few remaining uprights of the old hut would have provided little protection anyway. “Maybe they don’t care about snow. Maybe engineers are designed to be weather-proof. It’d make sense.”

  “Maybe they’ll just freeze.” I waited f
or a twinge of satisfaction at the thought, but it didn’t come. “I don’t know why I came here,” I said. “I hate them.”

  But I didn’t really hate these sad slow creatures, despite all my intentions. They were builders and fixers, or so we had been told. A harmless variation of a species we still knew almost nothing about. They were trapped and alone and had probably been born to be slaves. These weren’t the ones that had killed my dad. They hadn’t flown the ships that had dropped in their thousands from the sky.

  “I think they’re starving,” said Mark. “They’ve been stuck in that field for weeks.”

  My gaze followed the busy figures as they moved over the rocky terrain. “They don’t look it.”

  “How would we know? I’ve brought them something to eat.”

  So that was what was in the lumpy rucksack on his back. “How do you know what aliens eat?”

  He looked vaguely embarrassed. “I don’t. I just brought stuff. I guess they can take what they want.”

  Stuff? What could his family possibly spare?

  He opened the bag and we both stared inside. Some vegetable peelings, probably stolen out of the compost, an old shirt that was so cut up and tattered it couldn’t even be used as rags, some bits of an old tyre. The plastic leg of a chair.

  “You’re going to give them that?”

  He shrugged. “Better than nothing.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. “Alright,” I said. “I want to see them.” I wasn’t sure where the words had come from, but as I said them I suddenly knew that I had to do it. “I want to see them up close.”

  I knew he wouldn’t argue, because of what had happened to my dad, and I knew it was unfair of me to take advantage of it. But lately I had stopped caring about fair, as though the weight of everything else had forced me to shed things, with consideration for other people the first to go.

  Wordlessly he handed me the sack.

  Part of me wanted to go up to where the Grass stopped and the bare rock began, to let them see that it was me who was bringing them these things. Another part wanted to stay back, within the razor sharp safety of the Grass.

  In the end it was the vegetable peelings that made my decision for me; I had no way of throwing them any distance. So I walked to the edge, laying my squashing boards carefully before me to press the Grass down and provide safe passage. I felt exposed and a little foolish and I realised, when I was almost there, when the big lumbering shapes had stopped their progress and swiveled their tiny heads towards me, that in the Grass it was impossible to turn and run.

  The two giants remained still as I reached the open ground and, still standing on my board, emptied the contents of my sack onto the stone. My offering seemed pitifully small as it scattered. When I looked up the aliens were heading straight for me.

  The need to run was so sudden that I almost stepped off my board into the waiting blades, but a lifetime of careful movement stopped my raised foot at the last moment, made me step slowly back along the board I was on and onto the one that was lined up directly behind it. My gaze remained fixed on the hulking figures moving towards me. My throat tightened and my heartbeat pushed against my eardrums.

  I lifted the board I’d just vacated and the Grass began to slowly rise, a curtain of safety before me.

  The aliens had covered two thirds of the ground between us, moving faster than I’d ever seen them, their stumpy legs motoring along in coordinated swinging movements, rolling their bodies along, their tentacles and appendages clamped down to their sides, as though it would somehow make their ungainly bodies more aerodynamic.

  I stopped my retreat three boardlengths out from the edge, twice again what I thought their longest tentacle could reach, and feeling a sudden light headed courage, turned to watch what they would do.

  It wasn’t me they were after, it was the things on the ground. They slowed as they approached, little heads craning forward, arms waving excitedly over my offering, as though they were frightened to touch. I saw for the first time that they had four eyes, two in the center and one on either side of their heads. I’d expected them to be like the pictures I’d seen of insect eyes, many faceted and cold, but these were big and soft and brown, like horses’ eyes. They blinked every now and then, one at a time.

  The one on the left seized a piece of tyre in one tentacle and inspected it carefully, first bringing it up to its eyes, then wiping it against its chest, where there was a moist looking patch between the armoured plates of its hide. Then, quite suddenly, a hole opened below the patch — it looked like a round, pink, fleshy mouth. In went the rubber and then the hole was gone.

  “Cool.” It was Mark’s voice rising from his hiding place amid the Grass.

  I found that I was grinning.

  The other alien had wasted no time in imitating its fellow. Within a few seconds all the rubber was gone.

  The shirt went into the same hole as the rubber, after being carefully divided between them. The vegetable scraps went into a different hole, further up, just below the head.When everything was gone and the questing tips of their tentacles had inspected every bit of ground, their heads turned towards me. There was a brief humming sound in the air, something that echoed inside my skull rather than through my ears, then they turned away and headed back to their collection of dismantled hut parts up the hill.

  “Cool,” said Mark again from behind me.

  I watched their retreating forms. “I hate you,” I said. “You had no right to come here.” But the words felt hollow as they came out of my mouth and I didn’t even know why I had said them. Was there something wrong with me? Some defect that prevented the self-righteous anger I knew that I was entitled to, that my father was entitled to? I suddenly felt I had betrayed him by helping these things, by failing to hate them the way I should.

  In the distance, the tinny rattle of our yard bell sounded, calling me home. I reached back and grabbed the squashing board behind me. The track we’d made getting here over the Grass had already disappeared, blades springing back up neatly into place as though they’d never had our weight crushing them down.

  I wanted to hate the Grass too, but I couldn’t manage that either. Maybe if I’d been born on another world, like my parents, and hadn’t always looked out over a dazzling velveted landscape of green. Our town looked like a scar to me, the bare earth around the houses stark and naked, the various Earth species that struggled to grow in the depleted soil all sickly and wrong. All around the Grass stretched out, perfect and unstoppable. I was proud of it in an odd way. I didn’t tell my mother that. Every day since my father had died, the defeat had pushed itself a little further into the lines of her face. It sat in the distant unfocused look in her eyes and every aspect of the way she moved. I wanted to lift it away from her as though it were a clinging veil, to reveal the mother I remembered. But I didn’t know how to begin and my concern for her had started shifting into anger.

  The thought dragged at my movements as I made my way over the Grass towards the road, leather gloves protecting my hands from the blades as I replaced one board with another before me. There had been times, before The War, when I’d actually wished my father would leave, when the strained silences over the dinner table or the sudden vicious arguments had made me wish for peace, an end to the tension that sat like a live thing in the air between my parents. But the two of them had always worked it out in the end. There would be a huge fight and then the next morning it would all be gone. For a while at least.

  It was gone forever now, and the guilt I felt at ever having wished it away sat like a small furtive animal in my mind, darting out when I least expected it.

  At the road, Mark headed off in the opposite direction, waving a hand in farewell, boards tucked under his arm. I wasn’t the only one who had clearing to do before dinner.

  ∞¥∞Ω∞¥∞

  The small rectangle of our yard was empty when I got home, my mother probably inside preparing dinner. I grabbed the heavy secateurs from their hook
by the back door without going in. There would be enough indoor time this evening for me to sit through.

  I started with the track to the creek, like I did every day. The narrow path ran downhill from the end of our yard for about a hundred meters to the slow, twisting, rocky banks of the stream that cut across our claim. On every side was Grass, blades reaching inwards about waist high to swipe at the skin of anyone who wandered by without their leather coveralls on.

  I started by cutting back the overhanging blades, needing both hands to close the secateurs on the fibrous stalks, tossing them back into the ocean of green as I did so, methodically working each side down to the slick mossy banks of the creek. Then I turned around and did the runners, green tendrils inching across the clean soil of the track. They grew about ten centimeters a day here, this close to water. I pulled them up, cut them off and threw them back to join their fellows.

  My father told me once how amazing it had been to see this new world as they descended from space. How beautifully, dazzlingly green it had been. How the colonists had laughed and hugged one another with joy that their world seemed so rich and abundant.

  You never could tell, he said, what you were getting, no matter how many bribes you’d paid. There were always stories of colonists being sent to desert planets, or frozen wastelands, or worse. After all why should the Earth authorities care? It wasn’t as though you could go back and ask for a refund.

  As it turned out, our world was a sort of wasteland after all. And he’d been right, we couldn’t go back.

  Once the track was cleared, I hauled water in buckets up to our straggly vegetable garden, which covered most of the cleared area of our yard. Something was still eating the cabbages. I examined the neat semicircular defects along the edges of the leaves and searched for the hundredth time for caterpillars or other insects. There was nothing. I suspected it was a fuzzer, one of the matted puff-ball rodents that lived in the underlayer of The Grass. The thing had obviously braved the exotic terrain of the open yard and developed a taste for something besides Grass stems, but there was nothing to make a trap with and no money for netting.