Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [2]
By the time they got to the hilltop Billy was just about puffed. No one had helped him with the long-stemmed ashtray or the fragile rose, although Pumfter von Schnitzel had been passed from boy to boy all the way. He was now in Alex’s shirt, his kind face poking out between buttons. It’s all right, he seemed to say to Billy. None of them are clean, but you can wash me, remember? Just throw me in the machine.
Jo was idling on the picnic table at the hilltop. Trees crowded behind him. The pinking light in their upper branches glowed also in the pale, grubby cloth of Jo’s shirt.
Shai gave his whistle and Jo came alert and called out, in Travellers’ language, and Shai called back.
‘And bnah bnah blah blah Billy?’ said Jo.
‘He’s here.’
To Billy it was a marvel, that they could switch between one language and another. And a shame and an honour both, that they would stay in his language while he was with them.
‘You’re set?’ Shai called out.
‘It’s not a matter of me being set.’ Jo’s face moved against the dark trees, searching for some sight of them.
‘Well, we’ve got everything. You can start any time.’
‘You got three things?’
‘Aye.’
‘Choose one, then. Put it forward of you, and keep the others back. Behind a stone or a big tree or something.’
Alex scrabbled Pumfter out of his shirt. The boys all looked to Billy.
‘No,’ said Billy. ‘Let’s put this flower first, before it spoils or gets stepped on or something.’
‘Here.’ Shai ushered him towards a boulder covered with picnickers’ graffiti. ‘INDIA 4 STORM—remember that. Put the others behind there.’
‘Why?’ Billy laid Pumfter down and propped the ashtray against some stones so that it wouldn’t roll. ‘I mean, why remember? We’ll be right here, won’t we?’
‘Maybe not. There might be a bit of travelling involved. A bit of wandering.’
‘Oh.’ Billy had thought it would be more like a show, where they sat and rested and watched.
‘So. Put that forward on the ground there. But not anywhere Jo can see it.’
‘I can’t see nothing in those bushes,’ said Jo. ‘I’m not even trying.’
‘It’s forward. We’re ready,’ said Shai. ‘Do your thing.’
‘Yer, shake yer booty,’ said Castle.
‘Ah, shhh!’ said Shai. ‘You’ve got to be serious.’
‘I can’t help it. It’s funny.’
‘You spoil this, I’ll whack you so hard,’ hissed Alex.
‘Quiet in there, then,’ said Jo from the clearing. ‘I can’t go with all that racket.’
‘Can’t go? What’s he doing, working up a good crap? Ow.’
‘Shut up, you meelmeek.’
‘All right, I’m going,’ Jo sang out.
‘Where to, is he going?’ Billy murmured to Shai.
‘Off away to the inside of his own head,’ said Shai. ‘He’s got to use the psychic place. It’s right in the middle, he says. In his lizard brain.’
They waited. For quite some minutes they were four boys crouched in bushes, one boy on a picnic table, and a fragrant rose in between. Evening hung above them, its high, cool note singing on and on over the crickets’ pulsing. Birds flew home and put themselves to bed here and there. Some land creature moved, Billy couldn’t tell how far away, or what size, shrew or badger or wandering pony.
Then Jo got up and, with fluid movements that were not his own, stepped from table to bench to ground. He groped at the two buttons of his pinkish-whitish shirt, undid them by hauling rather than finger-work, dragged the shirt off over his head and stood there frowning, swinging his face blindly.
‘’S around here somewhere,’ he said in a deep, drugged voice.
He lifted his face to listen. Rose-ness welled up out of the evening and rushed at them. Alex gave a shout. A sweet-scented shock hit Billy, a velvety punch. Down the slope he tumbled, alone in a storm of blooms, streaked and scraped with darker leaves. His lungs struggled, his skin dissolved, his thoughts turned to vapour as the rose essence passed through, roaring.
Corin was at the bins. He felt it coming as you feel a wave in the sea; it sucked stuff away, ahead of itself. Corin gripped the rim of the council wheelie-bin, tried to stand firmer on the bumpy ground of the bin yard.
It hit, a powerful